• In January, cloud data company Talend recruited Christal Bemont as its new CEO, following her 15 year stint at Concur. 
• Just a couple months later, she had to lead the company through the coronavirus crisis, but still managed to exceed Wall Street's expectations in the first quarter. 
• Bemont says that she pulled on her past experiences with adversity to help her lead. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As the oldest in a family with four children squished into a trailer in Missouri without electricity or running water, Christal Bemont had to grow up fast. She got a job starting at age 10 to contribute to the family's finances and helped grow food so that they'd have enough to eat.  She eventually became the first person in her family to go to college, taking out student loans that would take her ten years to pay off. 

"When those things happen at a very early age, I've seen people fall to the ground and succumb to their circumstances," Bemont told Business Insider, "Or figure out a way to get through that."

She chose the latter: "What it taught me was resilience," she said. 

Bemont's penchant for strength in tough circumstances came in handy earlier this year: Just two months after data company Talend recruited her as CEO, she found all her plans thrust into turmoil because of the coronavirus crisis. Like all leaders, Bemont had to adjust on-the-fly. 

"No company or person has gone through anything like this," Bemont said.

During her first quarter as CEO, Talend, which builds software that helps with managing and analyzing large amounts of data, managed to beat Wall Street expectations. It reported total revenue of $68.1 million, up 18% from the first quarter last year. Its annual recurring revenue grew 20% year-over-year and its annual recurring cloud revenue in particular grew 150% from last year to $61.1 million.

Bemont's strategy during the coronavirus pandemic is to make sure the company spends its time wisely and comes out stronger, while being sensitive to what's happening in the market. While Talend had to put some deals on hold in March, it also signed on plenty of new customers. 

"The real self imposed challenge is to say, 'How do we serve our customers at any point? Meet our customers where we're at?" she said. "Let's figure out how we can partner with you."

Why Bemont took the job at Talend 

Early on in her career, Bemont worked at companies like Motorola, Extensity, and Clarify. Most recently, she worked at Concur, spending a total of 15 years at the company, including during its 2014 acquisition by SAP. While there, she moved up through various sales roles, eventually becoming chief revenue officer of SAP Concur. This January, she decided to make the leap to Talend. In doing so, she was finally achieving one of her long-time aspirations — to be a CEO — which was based in part on a memory from childhood when a woman whose house she cleaned offered assistance by giving her food and a place to stay. 

"Seeing that act of kindness was extremely foundational for me," Bemont said. "People have shown me that true humanity can make a difference in one person's life. That is the thing where, if I leave a legacy behind, I want to impact as many lives as I can. It drove why I wanted to be a CEO."

Bemont decided to take the role as Talend's CEO because she was always interested in data, and how companies could use it to inform how they run their businesses.

"I was thinking about how important data is to the lives of every customer," Bemont said. "If I was going to move somewhere, it was going to be right in the center of that."

Read more: Google Cloud lures 2 key hires from SAP and rival Amazon Web Services

During the coronavirus pandemic, Talend has been working with health researchers to build data products to analyze COVID-19 datasets.

In her reign, Bemont has also prioritized expanding leadership roles for women at her company. At Talend, half of the leadership team is women. When she became CEO, she brought on two other teammates from SAP Concur: Ann-Christel Graham as chief revenue and Jamie Kiser as chief customer officer.

"I am deeply passionate about the mindset, how I've traversed my career, how I apply myself to business problems, and how I think about interacting with people," Bemont said. "The people I surround myself with have been really important to my achievements and how I show up in an authentic way."

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@businessinsider.com, Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request. 

SEE ALSO: Students say that Holberton School, a coding bootcamp where students don't pay until they get a job, is more like 'Lord of the Flies' than the inclusive educational experience they were promised

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

• TikTok is still a relative newcomer to the social-media world, but it's quickly grown into one of the most popular video apps among creators.
• As its stars have built massive followings, talent managers and agents from both upstart companies and legacy Hollywood talent firms are racing to sign the next generation of digital stars.
• Business Insider looked into how different talent firms are approaching the app, and built an exclusive interactive database with 95 of the top managers and agents nabbing these creators. 
• Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

As TikTok stars build large and loyal followings on the short-form video app, a slew of talent managers and agents from both upstart companies and legacy Hollywood talent firms are racing to sign them as clients.

The opportunity is clear for industry insiders. 

TikTok trends are spilling over onto Instagram, YouTube, and TV shows like Saturday Night Live. Its stars are appearing in Super Bowl ads and late-night talk shows. And songs that become popular on TikTok are topping Billboard and Spotify charts. 

Agents and managers who already have built-in connections across the entertainment industry can sometimes turn a TikTok comedian, dancer, or singer into a mainstream star in just a few months. 

"I think it's super exciting to have a new platform that is another pipeline for us to discover talent," Joe Izzi, a digital agent at the Hollywood talent agency WME, previously told Business Insider. "Regardless of the platform, the No. 1 thing we always look for is talented creators — people that we can help build a business around that's long-lasting."

"It started this frenzy," WME digital agent Justin Greenberg said of TikTok. "We found it really interesting because we are now dealing with sort of the premier Gen Z creator, who is defining the various pop-culture trends for teenagers."

TikTok's most followed creator, 16-year-old Charli D'Amelio (66 million followers), signed up for the app just a year ago and has already danced alongside her idol Jennifer Lopez, voiced part in an animated movie, and is teasing a reality TV project. 

"Charli is just so popular right now in mainstream culture," said Greg Goodfried, cohead of the Hollywood talent agency United Talent Agency that represents D'Amelio and her family. "There's tons of brands that she loves, so [we're] making sure she's connected to those brands and getting those opportunities."

D'Amelio, her sister Dixie, and their two parents are all comanaged by the firms Outshine Talent and Manncom Creative Partners, and represented by UTA for larger business ventures, like going on tour. 

Dixie also has a large following online (27 million TikTok followers) and this week she released her first song, "Be Happy." One of her managers, Billy Mann, who is the founder of Manncom Creative Partners and The Well, had writing credit on the song. 

TikTok is opening up a new group of talent managers and agents 

While traditional talent agencies like UTA and WME have been aggressively signing TikTok stars in recent months, there are also a variety of upstart talent firms that have popped up recently to help TikTokkers capitalize on social-media fame. 

Devain Doolaramani founded a new TikTok-focused talent management agency, The Fuel Injector, while studying finance at Chapman University. After graduating this spring, the 21-year-old now represents dozens of TikTok stars, many of whom have millions of followers on the app. 

The talent management company TalentX Entertainment — cofounded by two YouTubers in December 2019 with a focus on TikTok creators — has been expanding rapidly, poaching agents from legacy firms like A3 Artists Agency and expanding into new business categories like gaming and music.  

"These guys are the next generation of YouTubers, like it or not," TalentX cofounder Michael Gruen recently told Business Insider. "When you put a video with their name in the headlines, they're going to get a 100,000 views."

An inside look at who is working with these top stars

In reporting on the rise of TikTok stars and the agents and managers signing them, we realized there wasn't a central database to view the top power players in the influencer business and who they represent.

So we decided to build one.

Business Insider drew on our reporting and conversations with professionals to identify the talent managers and agents signing innovative creators and helping them build lasting businesses. We created an exclusive interactive database of 95 managers and agents that gives an inside look at who is working with the top influencers on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and more in 2020.

View the first-ever interactive database of the top managers and agents for YouTube creators, Instagram influencers, and TikTok stars, here.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

• Virgin Galactic is continuing to test its SpaceShipTwo system for rocketing passengers to the edge of space in spite of the coronavirus pandemic.
• But the company, which is now partnering with NASA to train private astronauts, is also exploring a future business in high-speed travel with a supersonic or even hypersonic transportation system.
• Concorde was the last and only supersonic passenger airliner, but George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, says much has changed since the jet's conception in the 1960s and its retirement in 2003.
• Whitesides believes Virgin Galactic — by leveraging its SpaceShipTwo rocket ship, and by partnering with other companies — could lay claim to up to 5% of the $300 billion premium long-haul airline travel business.
• "It's not going to be next year, but it is something that I think we can continue to work on in a sort of a staged approach and hopefully change the world," Whitesides told Business Insider.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Virgin Galactic wants to be a lot more than a company which flies wealthy passengers to the edge of space on small rocket ships.

The company, which went public in October 2019, recently partnered with NASA to help train private astronauts to reach the International Space Station. NASA also just booted up a new Suborbital Crew office with an aim of using Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, among other suborbital vehicles — perhaps even stratospheric balloon ships— to fly scientists and their involved experiments to space.

But Virgin Galactic is looking to expand far beyond all of these businesses, as CEO George Whitesides explained in a recent interview with Business Insider.

In the not-too-distant future — he couldn't say exactly when — Virgin Galactic hopes to leverage its suborbital space tourism operations and data, along with new research and development, into a high-speed transportation system. The  goal: Claim a fraction of the airline industry's premium long-haul travel business, which totals about $300 billion a year.

"If we can just capture 5% or something like that, then it's still a huge number. I mean, $10 to $15 billion of revenue is is a massive opportunity," Whitesides told Business Insider in May, adding that he believes people will want to go places faster in smaller vehicles, and are willing to pay for the privilege. "The things that we're working on are very much part of our aviation future."

The gap for such operations is wide open, given that the Concorde — a supersonic passenger airliner — retired in 2003. That's not to say it will be easy or inexpensive to reclaim, improve, and expand such business territory, but Whitesides feels Virgin Galactic is up to the challenge, even in the face of prior failures to create new supersonic and even hypersonic passenger vehicles.

"The words 'many companies have tried' is music to my ears," Whitesides said. "People said we couldn't build up human spaceflight company. People say we couldn't go public."

'We're building spaceships — we can do these things'

It's not hard to see why another high-speed transportation system has not hit the commercial market since the Concorde's retirement.

The supersonic passenger jet did operate for nearly three decades, but its initial development required nearly 20 times the funding that its founders anticipated — so the UK and French governments ended up absorbing the costs to get the aircraft off the ground.

That colossal initial investment, the disruption of sonic booms, resulting limitations in where supersonic jets could fly (i.e. over oceans), and high maintenance costs limited the numbers and use of the Concorde.

However, many decades' worth of improvements in aviation, propulsion, and computing technology have passed since the Concorde's creation, including work by NASA and its contractors, such as Lockheed Martin's X-59 QueSST jet— an experimental aircraft designed to produce quieter sonic booms, and is slated for first flight in 2021.

"I think the Concorde was designed with like the computing power of, I don't know, my pocket calculator calculator. It really was 60s-era propulsion," Whitesides said.

Such developments, along with Virgin Galactic's own and growing experience in flying rocket-powered passenger spaceships, gives Whitesides confidence that now is the time to look past the failures of prior attempts to make high-speed travel work for consumers.

"We're building spaceships — we can do these things — and we can tackle big, big, big challenges, particularly when there's such a big opportunity on the other side," Whitesides said. "It's not going to be easy, but I think that we actually have a unique head-start because we've been doing all this other stuff."

Whitesides indicated that its development effort may cost billions, and said the emergence of its plan to tackle high-speed travel, let alone a flyable prototype, is likely years down the line.

Virgin Galactic is seeking industry partners in industry to realize its concept — whatever that may be

Whitesides was reluctant to share details of Virgin Galactic's futuristic high-speed travel concept. But he said it's not because he didn't want to, but rather because he couldn't: The company is in its earliest stages of research, development, and data gathering, and is not yet certain of its direction.

"Where you choose your technology approach will shape — dramatically — the development costs and the technical difficulties. What we're trying to do, as we think through the problem, is to make smart choices, to do something that's compelling," he said. "There's no question that this is going to be something that will require the resources of multiple partners, so you can definitely see potentially various companies being involved in this."

Whitesides said "a very wide range of potential options" is on the table since "propulsion technology is light-years ahead of what it was with ... the Concorde propulsion."

Supersonic travel, or between Mach 1 and Mach 5 — one to five times the speed of sound — will most likely lead to the use of an air-breathing engine, as the Concorde used. But the company is most experienced in the reusable rocket-engine system that powers SpaceShipTwo. The vehicle has flown five employees to the edge of space over two flights, though it has not yet rocketed any paying passengers.

That rocketry know-how might be leveraged into a hypersonic system that could fly between Mach 5 to 25, which is what SpaceX hopes to eventually do with its fully reusable Starship-Super Heavy launch system. In theory, a hypersonic vehicle could launch from New York and to Shanghai in less than an hour.

But Whitesides said hypersonic speeds introduce a large amount of complexity. A vehicle moving at such speeds requires cruising through space and would generate searing-hot plasma during its reentry, mandating the creation of a robust, lightweight heat shield.

"I'm not going to promise Mach 25, because that that definitely suggests a certain type of propulsion that we haven't formally thought through," he said. "Mach 25 would be great, but you do have high heating and higher [gravity]-loads on reentry. So you've got to think through all of these trades to make sure that the whole experience that you're providing to people is compelling and can be widely adopted."

Whitesides said flying passengers in SpaceShipTwo at Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound — the vehicle's top speed, which it uses to fly more than 50 miles above Earth — will help Virgin Galactic gain an edge over competitors.

"We're going to be building up a huge database of high-speed flight," he added. "It's going to be unrivaled, except for maybe the biggest defense primes. ... But nobody's flown a bunch of people at Mach 3 who are not test pilots or fighter pilots."

For his part, Whitesides said he's trying to keep his "personal emotions" out of the effort and "just let the engineers do their thing."

"They'll present the [trade-offs] and then we'll try to rapidly move forward," he added. "It's not going to be next year, but it is something that I think we can continue to work on in a sort of a staged approach and hopefully change the world."

Do you have a story or inside information to share about the spaceflight industry? Send Dave Mosher an email at dmosher+tips@businessinsider.com or a Twitter direct message at @davemosher. More secure communication options are listed here.

SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin thinks it can beat SpaceX back to the moon with a 'divide and conquer' approach

DON'T MISS: A fast-growing startup led by former SpaceX and Blue Origin employees just scored 2 huge wins in its quest to launch 3D-printed rockets

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why NASA waited nearly a decade to send astronauts into space from the US

• Arrival has unveiled a zero-emissions public transit bus with configurable seating arrangements to promote social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic.
• The bus's price is comparable to that of a traditional fuel-burning bus, allowing its purchaser to save money long term, according to its maker.
• Arrival plans to ship 1,000 "microfactories" — where Arrival's transportation products will be manufactured — around the world by 2026.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Public transportation ridership has gone down due to the coronavirus, but newcomer Arrival has a solution: a zero-emissions public transit bus with seating options that are social distancing-friendly.

The Arrival bus was designed to have configurable seating, according to Arrival's GIFs of the interior. The bus's layout includes rows of paired seats that are placed side-by-side. But amid social distancing efforts, the seats can be physically removed, creating more space in-between seated passengers.

This concept of leaving seats empty to accommodate travel amid the pandemic isn't a novel idea among transportation-related companies. Similarly, several major airlines have already announced that they will halt selling tickets for the middle seat to create a larger bubble of empty space around seated passengers.

Besides its modular layout, the Arrival bus also has the added benefit of having a price tag that is comparable to that of a traditional fuel-powered bus, allowing its purchaser to save money long term by not having to pay for fuel, according to its maker.

This electric bus isn't Arrival's only foray into the growing electric transportation industry. The company is also developing electric cars, taxis, delivery robots, and more, all with the goal of creating zero-emission vehicles. Its line of electric delivery vans has also already received a 10,000-unit order from UPS.

Keep scrolling to see the bus:

SEE ALSO: Tokyo's Haneda Airport is adding self-driving electric wheelchairs for social distancing — here's how they work

According to Arrival, the bus "promotes a positive perception of public transportation."

Source: Arrival

The interior has the typical fixings of any public bus, such as seats and handrails.

But unlike a typical city bus, the Arrival bus has a skylight across the length of the roof, The Verge reported ...

Source: The Verge

... and a screen towards the front of the bus that displays information about upcoming stops and changes.

The bus will be built at Arrival's "microfactories", which can be sent and used globally to build an expansive network of independent Arrival manufacturers.

Arrival plans to ship 1,000 microfactories to other countries by 2026.

The company is currently headquartered in London and has offices in five other countries ...

... totaling over 800 employees.

Hyundai and Kia invested €100 million, about $112 million, into Arrival, and will soon be using the startup's technology to "develop mobility services and electrify their vehicle fleets," according to Arrival.

Source: Arrival

• Silicon Valley is the epicenter of the US tech industry.
• The region and the powerful companies and leaders therein have a long history — it can be a lot to digest.
• But if you're looking for a place to start, look no further than the myriad streaming services at your disposal.
• We stuck to movies and TV shows that we found were free to watch with subscriptions at the time of writing this post. Sorry, "Pirates of Silicon Valley."
• Here are 9 movies and TV shows you can watch on HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and more to brush up on your Big Tech knowledge.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: Here are 8 answers to some of the internet's questions about Silicon Valley

1. Devs (2020) — FX on Hulu

Rotten Tomatoes Rating:81%

What is it: The show tells the story of a computer engineer employed at a cutting-edge Silicon Valley tech firm who suspects her boss's secret organization has something to do with her boyfriend's disappearance. The sci-fi series is a bit of a slow burn— creator Alex Garland told Insider's Kim Renfro that the production is for someone "who is patient, and just sort of drifting through imagery and ideas and music and stuff like that."

What you can learn from it: The world portrayed in the show is rife with Silicon Valley stereotypes and loosely mirrors that of its real-life counterpart, from the region's striking wealth disparity and its sprawling tech campuses to the quirky founders that run the most powerful tech companies. "Devs" also heavily plays on the "God Complex" and the narcissism that is ingrained in some parts of Valley culture.

2. "Silicon Valley" (2014) — HBO Max, HBO Go, Hulu, Amazon Prime

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 94%

What is it: The comedy TV show follows a group of bright, introverted computer programmers living in a Bay Area startup incubator as they navigate the tech industry and its ego.

What you can learn from it: The show perfectly captures the Valley's idiosyncrasies— the hoodies, the job perks, the tech offices, the promise of stock options in the big tech gold rush. The show's creators consulted real-life techies — including writer Mike Judge who worked as an engineer in the Valley in the 1980s — to make sure they were staying as true to reality as possible. "Silicon Valley" is full to the brim of insider tidbits that the region and its inhabitants, for better or worse, are known for.

3. "Halt and Catch Fire" (2014) — Netflix, Philo

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 90%

What is it: Starring Lee Pace, the show begins in the 1980s and follows a fictional ex-IBM executive bent on reverse-engineering the firm's PC technology with the help of a brilliant coder.

What you can learn from it: As The Verge reports, Pace's Joe MacMillan has all the familiar elements of eccentric tech founders like Steve Jobs. The show draws on other tech archetypes but does it in a way that paints a humanizing picture of the internet age and tech innovation of the time.

4. "The Great Hack" (2019) — Netflix

Rotten Tomatoes Rating:88%

What is it: The documentary film delves into the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal that centers around the mining of data from millions of Facebook users without their consent. 

What you can learn from it: The 2018 data scandal teaches a cautionary tale of social media's weaponization of consumer data and the power such companies can wield in the political landscape — in this case, the 2016 US presidential election.

5. "The Social Network" (2010) — Netflix

Rotten Tomatoes Rating:96%

What is it: The award-winning movie portrays Facebook's brilliant founder Mark Zuckerberg as a Harvard student and as one of the world's youngest billionaires.

What you can learn from it: The movie can help you understand Zuckerberg and the company's early days, but as The Verge noted in 2017, the criticism depicted in the movie looks dated and tame in retrospect. It's been a decade since the movie came out, and a lot has changed since then, including the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data scandal that thrust Facebook and its leader to the forefront of the great "techlash." 

6. "Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates" (2019) — Netflix

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%

What is it: The 3-part Netflix original documentary, which also includes insight from his wife Melinda, explores the brilliant mind of the former tech CEO and the goals he has for his post-Microsoft future, including striving for climate change solutions.

What you can learn from it: "I don't want my brain to stop working," Gates replies when asked what his worst fear is in the trailer for the program. The documentary shows how the visionary, philanthropist, and businessman is not slowing down.

7. "Jobs" (2013) — Hulu, HBO Max, and HBO Go

Rotten Tomatoes Rating:28%

What is it: The biopic, reviewed at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of Apple founder Steve Jobs, from his 1976 invention of the Apple 1 computer in his parents' garage to his ousting from the company he co-founded.

What you can learn from it: Reviews of the biopic critiqued it for its "skin-deep" and "incomplete" portrayal of Apple's visionary leader, though Ashton Kutcher's take earned him some praise. But it still depicts some of the juicy, inside bits of the company's culture "that should make Apple fanatics happy" read a 2014 Verge review. 

8. "Steve Jobs" (2015) — Netflix, Max Go

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 85%

What is it: The big studio 2015 film centers around three of Apple's mega-product launches and ends with the 1988 unveiling of the iMac. The movie features Michael Fassbender's take on the New Balance-wearing trailblazer. 

What you can learn from it: The movie highlights some of the company's most significant product launches in the 1980s, but it also weaves in details of Jobs' personal life, including his relationship with his daughter Lisa. Jobs died in 2011.

Also of note, but not currently listed on any streaming site, is "Steve Jobs: The Last Interview," a 2012 documentary featuring an unedited interview with the founder with tech journalist and ex-Apple employee Robert Cringely. It has a sweeping 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

9. "Triumph of the Nerds" (1996) — Sling TV, Amazon Prime

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: N/A

What is it: This three-part, ultra-90s documentary features interviews from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others and follows the development of the personal computer. 

What you can learn from it: The PC is the star of the show, but the doc also highlights the steps that Silicon Valley-based Apple and Seattle firm Microsoft took to transform it into a ubiquitous aspect of our daily lives.

• Munich-based Wirecard, founded in 1999, was established with the intention of assisting websites with credit card payment collections from customers.
• In the past week, the company has witnessed a spectacular fall from grace amid a massive accounting scandal, its former CEO's arrest, and an insolvency filing.
• But can fintech rivals benefit from its downfall? One analyst says that it is possible.
• Wirecard is "beyond salvageable," Neil Campling, Head of TMT Research at Mirabaud Securities said.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

German fintech group Wirecard became one of the hottest European stocks while battling endless allegations of fraud.

The former-CEO Markus Braun claimed a clean sheet for the company until as recently as May 17 when he tweeted: "When all the noise and dust settles, Wirecard will still be a company that generates a billion Euro of EBITDA this year and is one of the fastest growing in its industry."

The allegations intensified when the company claimed €1.9 billion from its balance sheet probably never existed, and Braun was arrested. Wirecard filed for insolvency on Thursday, ending a dizzying few days for the scandal-hit company.

Read more:Jefferies says buy these 14 cheap stocks that are financially strong and positioned for market-beating returns

When the company's shares dropped by nearly 90%, it would have been easy for hedge funds with short positions to take a profit and run, said Peter Hillerberg, co-founder of Ortex Analytics.

But data shows that a vast majority of short sellers held on to their positions, and in some cases increased them, in anticipation of a further reduction in share price.

"It looks like their patience will pay off," Hillerberg said. 

Some hedge funds have already won big, however, with the Financial Times reporting that UK and US funds have reaped more than $1 billion in profits this week from the stricken fintech.

But how did things go so wrong for Wirecard? No one can know for sure right now, but questions are now being asked about whether the company's rivals will be able to benefit from its spectacular fall from grace.

Read more:A market-crash expert known as 'Dr. Doom' warns a 10-year depression is coming — and says investors are far too confident about a possible recovery

A Boon for fintech peers? 

Rivals can expect only a "very small opportunity" for some incremental business since most of Wirecard's transactions were fictitious, according to Neil Campling, Head of TMT Research at Mirabaud Securities.

Wirecard's peers do not stand to gain from its insolvency, he said.

"Yes there could be scraps for Adyen, Square and PayPal to pick up but do you really think Wirecard has 300,000 paying customers as they claimed? There never was €1.9 billion." 

Its insolvency is "not a boon," he continued.

Side note: Boon was the name of Wirecard's app at the centre of their "ecosystem". 

Read more:The stock market's fear gauge is sending a persistent warning that has a 30-year track record of signaling meltdowns ahead

Mirabaud Securities does not expect Wirecard to continue as a going-concern since it no longer has any assets of value.

In all likelihood, Visa and MasterCard may revoke their licences as the firm is in breach of their code of conduct, and only few "real" customers will seek alternative payment providers. 

Wirecard is "beyond salvageable," Campling said.

Here's how Wirecard went from analyst darling to a $2.2 billion accounting scandal — and cost SoftBank hundreds of millions in the process

SEE ALSO: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fought off a Wall Street-backed election challenge. Here are some of the titans of finance who backed her opponent, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

• Electreon Wireless is working on a test to create an electric road in Tel Aviv. 
• Coils under the road will charge electric vehicles while they drive. 
• Its goal is to build the first electric city road in the world.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Electric cars might be the way of the future, but 'range anxiety' is one of their weaknesses. Israeli startup Electreon Wireless is developing a solution, creating roads that can charge electric vehicles as they drive.

Electreon markets its system primarily to governments, cities, and fleet operators, with a proposal to increase efficiency by lowering battery size, cost, and weight. Electric coils installed under roads can transmit energy to electric vehicles on them, charging them as they go.

The company first successfully demoed an electric road in 2019, and they have another project planned for a small area in Tel Aviv this summer, before implementing a test in Sweden by the end of 2020.

Electreon intentionally chose to start working first on public transportation, like shuttles between train stations and airports. According to its website, Electreon chose this point of entry because of the large population served by urban public transportation, and its role as a large polluter. Eventually, it hopes to expand to ridesharing, trains, and autonomous vehicles.

Here's how the world's first electric road will work. 

SEE ALSO: The rise and fall of the Segway, the oft-mocked 2-wheeler that was supposed to revolutionize the way we get around cities

Electreon works on making heavy utility vehicles electric, to minimize their outsize environmental impact.

As electric vehicles become more common, electric roads would expand their range, instead of relying on charging stations.

Electric charging roads can also be shared by many vehicles without the infrastructure and space demanded by charging stations.

It is planning for 1.2 miles of electric road in Tel Aviv in August, between the university and the train station.

If that goes well, the plan is to stretch the road further into the city.

The shuttle between the train station and university would be a way to test out the concept compared to traditional transportation.

In 2019, Electreon successfully tested an electric truck in Sweden.

That project was part of Smartroad Gotland, a plan to put a public shuttle service and electric road between the airport and city on Gotland, an island in the Baltic Sea.

Coils under the ground power the electric vehicles, sending energy to receivers on the bottom of cars and trucks.

Up to two-thirds of a mile of coils can be installed in a single night.

Electron says that once the initial investment is made for cargo and public transportation, it can also be used by private electric vehicles.

Beyond freeing up space used by charging stations, electric charging roads could also let cities get more use out of shuttles and vehicles.

Vehicles can charge while they are driven, without requiring extra downtime.

Electreon says there are several benefits for cities as well.

The initial setup is relatively cheap and doesn't require new grid infrastructure like charging stations would.

Lighter electric vehicles, without the need for heavy batteries, will use less energy and cause less pollution and wear and tear on city streets.

• Abby Miller Levy, 45, is an advisor and entrepreneur in the wellness industry, former the president of Thrive Global, and former senior vice president of strategy and growth at Soulcycle.
• In response to a recent article by Scott Galloway in which he writes that no successful media-tech companies were founded by people in their 60s, Levy counters that it's 'factually incorrect' to make an age-based correlation between a person's success or failure as an entrepreneur.
• She points to examples of successful older entrepreneurs like David Duffield, who founded software company Workday at age 64, and Arianna Huffington, who founded media company The Huffington Post at age 55.
• Rather than stereotyping entrepreneurs as all being 20-something workaholics, let's support older founders who are further along in their careers with equal enthusiasm, she argues.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Recently, Scott Galloway argued the reason for Quibi's teetering performance in a post he wrote for his personal blog that was republished by Business Insider.  

"The answer is obvious, and ageist. To my knowledge, there's never been a successful media-tech firm founded by people in their 60s. The young brain is crazy, creative, and willing to work 80 hours a week, as young people think they'll live forever. People in their 60s are not blessed/cursed with any of these things, which makes them decent leaders, great mentors, and s----y entrepreneurs."

Galloway was right about WeWork— Adam Neumann definitely worked 80 hours a week and that didn't prevent the company from effectively going under — and he may be right on Quibi, although the vote is still not in. 

But to openly make an ageist correlation between age and business success or failure is not just ethically challenging, it is factually incorrect.  

There's no arguing that there are legions more younger entrepreneurs than those with more years of life and work experience. But that isn't because younger founders are inherently better at business creation. In fact, according to Harvard Business Review, "When you look at success rates conditional on actually starting a company, the evidence against youthful entrepreneurial success becomes even sharper. Among those who have started a firm, older entrepreneurs have a substantially higher success rate."

Take Arianna Huffington, who at age 55 founded the Huffington Post — arguably one of the most successful media startups in the past 20 years. And now, at age 66, she started Thrive Global, a behavior change technology company addressing employee performance and wellbeing.

I had the pleasure of working with Arianna as President of Thrive Global and can attest that her energy, brilliance and creativity has fueled the growth of the business and resulted in strategic partnerships with many Fortune 100 companies, including Accenture, Hilton, Walmart, Salesforce, EY and Verizon, among others. Working side by side with Arianna to start Thrive, she not only ran circles around competitors, she was generous enough to coach and help them. 

Speaking of colleagues, ironically, Galloway should have turned to his right-hand partner, Kara Swisher, who started Recode at age 52 and is one of today's most famous tech and business media personalities at age 57. 

Another larger-than-life example: Barry Diller was both inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and founded IAC when he was 53, which he has grown to nearly $5 billion in assets today. 

Or consider David Duffield, who founded Workday at 64 and took it public at 71. Or Julie Wainwright, who founded TheRealReal at 53, took it public at 61 and is still running it today at 62. Some of America's greatest successes were the fruit of those who some would say are past their prime: GEICO, KFC, McDonalds, and Coca Cola.

If being a great entrepreneur was only a byproduct of Galloway's stated conditions of being 'crazy, creative, and willing to work 80 hours a week', then the success rate of new ventures would be higher than it is at 10%. 

So let's turn this on its head. Let's support founders with life and work experience, in all fields, not limited to media and tech. Let's lean into the trend of boomers starting businesses and fund them aggressively. 

Age before beauty, experience over enthusiasm, and fact over fiction — or opinion.

Abby Miller Levy has spent her career helping businesses and consumer brands grow as an operator, entrepreneur, and advisor, most notably in the wellness sector. Most recently, she was the senior vice president of strategy and growth at Soulcycle. Levy has also been a founder herself, teaming with Arianna Huffington to launch Thrive Global, an emerging leader in employer well-being solutions. In her role as president of Thrive, Levy partnered with Ms. Huffington to fundraise, build the team, launch, and commercialize Thrive's media and enterprise services platform.

SEE ALSO: Working side by side with Arianna to start Thrive, she not only ran circles around competitors, she was generous enough to coach and help them.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

• Ford revealed its all-new, 2021 F-150 pickup truck last week, and it's packed with technology.
• The F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the US for 43 straight years.
• The Tesla Cybertruck was unveiled last year and immediately captivated and polarized opinion with a radical, futuristic design.
• The F-150 hits the market later this year, while the Cybertruck won't start deliveries until late next year.
• Ford hasn't yet detailed pricing, but the top-spec F-150 and the best-equipped Cybertruck should both cost north of $70,000.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

There was already a truck war raging in the US before the Tesla Cybertruck was unveiled last year.

The Ford F-150, the Chevy Silverado, and the RAM 1500 were going head-to-head, with Toyota's Tundra and Nissan's Titan also in the picture. The Silverado and RAM 1500 were relatively new, and the 14th generation F-150 was on the way.

The all-new 2021 F-150 arrived last week. The iconic pickup continues its legacy of being America's best-selling vehicle for 43 consecutive years. Last year, nearly 900,000 examples rolled off dealer lots.

The Cybertruck won't launch until late next year, at the earliest. It could signal a brave new all-electric future for pickups. And it could in fact beat the all-electric version of the new F-150 to market by a year.

But for now, the F-150 is headed to market, while wannabe Cybertruck buyers have to content themselves with a $100 deposit to secure a truck.

Here's how the two trucks stack up, on paper:

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Let's start with the insanely futuristic, all-electric Cybertruck. It's largely stainless steel ,and it signals a significant departure for Tesla as far as the company's design approach is concerned.

Tesla revealed the Cybertruck in late 2019 — and the debut was incredibly controversial. With Tesla's Full Self-Driving capability installed, the Cybertruck would price from between $47,000 to $77,000.

The Cybertruck has three configurations: a single-motor rear-wheel-drive, and dual motor all-wheel-drive, and a tri-motor AWD.

Tesla said the single-motor has over 250 miles of range and a 0-60 mph time of less than 6.5 seconds. The dual-motor serves up over 300 miles and a sub-4.5-second 0-60. The tri-motor has more than 500 miles of range and a sub-2.9-second 0-60.

The Cybertruck doesn't have a bed or box — it has a "vault," protected by a retractable cover. There's 3,500 lbs. of carrying capacity and 100 square feet of space. Being all-electric, the truck should also be able to power a lot of gear.

Tesla says that the top-spec Cybertruck can tow 14,000 lbs.

The Cybertruck can also be configured for outdoor lifestyles.

The typically minimalist Tesla interior seats six. Like all Teslas the center of the action is a large dashboard touchscreen — 17 inches for the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck should also join Tesla's fleet in enjoying frequent over-the-air software updates.

Full-self-driving capability isn't yet available on any Tesla vehicle. But the hardware comes standard, and when the Cybertruck launches, it should have Tesla's Autopilot semi-self-driving tech.

Some folks have already proposed that the Cybertruck could be used a law-enforcement vehicle.

On to the all-new 2021 Ford F-150. This iconic pickup has been the best-selling vehicle the US for 43 straight years. The 14th-generation of the truck builds on the aluminum-body innovation that arrived with the 13th generation.

Last week, Ford unveiled the New F-150 via YouTube, amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

The F-150 has both rear-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive configurations.There's a total of six engine choices: a base V6, two turbocharged EcoBoost V6 motors, a V6 turbo diesel, a V8, and a new V6 hybrid.

The PowerBoost hybrid should be the most powerful F-150 in the lineup, serving up 700 miles of range on a tank of gas.

Ford really pulled out all the stops with the "working end" of the F-150: the liftgate. There are three boxes available: 5.5 feet, 6.5 feet, and 8 feet.

Ford said "Pro Power Onboard," an integrated generator, "means customers can leave the generator at home and free up cargo space; there's enough energy to power 28 average refrigerators, charge a bed full of electric dirt bikes or run an entire job site worth of tools."

Towing capacity for F-150s is critical. The new pickup can tow 12,000 lbs., if properly configured.

That supports work as well as play. Ford owners can use their F-150 at both the job site and the campsite.

The F-150 will also have available hands-free highway semi self-driving tech, through Ford's Co-Pilot360 system. Ford hasn't yet disclosed performance specs, but the hybrid could yield a sub-five-second 0-60 mph time.

Ford has a long history of supplying law-enforcement with vehicles. So look for the 14th generation to join its 13th-gen counterparts.

Hello everyone! Welcome to this weekly roundup of Business Insider stories from executive editor Matt Turner. Please subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Sunday.

Hello!

Money talks. A flood of high-profile advertisers announced this week that they would boycott advertising on Facebook through July, responding to criticism of Facebook's inaction on hate speech. Facebook's stock fell 8% on Friday, wiping $7 billion off of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's net worth.

The boycott has sent Facebook execs scrambling, with the social media giant's top ad exec on Friday sending a memo to advertisers promising an external audit of its safety tools and practices. Facebook also said Friday that it is going to start labeling posts from politicians that break its rules but are "newsworthy" enough to remain on the platform.

The boycott is another example of the increased willingness of big brands to take a stand, as they respond to pressure from their own employees and customers. But as Tanya Dua, Lauren Johnson, and Lucia Moses report, many of these advertisers didn't spend much with Facebook, and the boycott statements are temporary and vaguely written, which could make it easier to resume spending after July while winning goodwill in the meantime. From their story:

Most of Facebook's advertising comes from small companies that can't afford to turn off the channel. Smaller brands that join the boycott could risk losing up to 80% of their monthly revenue, said Devin Whitaker, director of performance marketing at ad agency Good Moose.

Meanwhile, advertisers like Coke can come off looking virtuous by pulling their ads with statements that increasingly upped the ante.

In addition, as Tanya, Lauren, and Lucia report, a lot of advertisers spend less in the summer and in an election year anyway because sales are slow and there's so much noise to break through. You can read their story here:

Facebook and advertisers are locked in an image war, and advertisers are winning

What do you think? Is this a turning of the tide for Facebook? Or will big advertisers rush back to the platform once July is through? I'd love to hear from you. Email me at mturner@businessinsider.com

Read on for more on a tech dealmaker who's drawing comparisons to Warren Buffett, a toxic culture at a Wall Street firm, and Tesla's battery challenges.

Tech's top dealmaker

Dakin Campbell and Casey Sullivan this week published a profile of Egon Durban, the co-CEO of private equity firm Silver Lake Partners who's a newly-minted billionaire drawing comparisons to Warren Buffett. As per their story, Durban, who made his name acquiring and then selling Skype, has rapidly become the lead dealmaker on investments spanning entertainment, media, and technology. 

When Twitter shareholders demanded the ousting of its CEO, Jack Dorsey, Durban stepped in and put up $1 billion. The lead instigator, Elliott Management's Jesse Cohn, settled his campaign. And when home-for-rental company Airbnb faced a dropoff in business, Durban again pulled out his private-equity wallet.

Business Insider interviewed more than 40 people close to Durban and Silver Lake, including those who do or have worked directly with him and across from him, to get inside the media-shy firm and understand how Durban will drive its investment choices for years to come. 

They described how one of the most prolific private-equity executives climbed the ladder in an organization, pushed for more control, and then proceeded to put his mark on the firm. 

You can read the story in full here:

40 insiders reveal the meteoric rise of Silver Lake's Egon Durban, the tech-focused PE firm's No. 1 dealmaker who strong-armed his way to the top and is about to get $18 billion more to invest

A toxic party culture

Nicole Einbinder and Rebecca Ungarino reported this week that former employees say BTIG, a Wall Street firm backed by Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, had a toxic party culture. From their story:

Interviews with more than half a dozen former BTIG employees, and a review of court records and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission documents, reveal allegations of a boys'-club culture, excessive drinking at company events, and sexual banter at least into 2019.

An investigator with the EEOC contacted at least two former BTIG employees within the past 18 months seeking information about allegations of sexual harassment at the firm.

In an ongoing lawsuit filed in 2019, one former employee alleged that an executive in the firm's San Francisco office directed BTIG staff to screen out job candidates that "looked black," and to avoid female job applicants since it was "too risky to hire a woman." The executive apparently remained at BTIG until June of this year, when Business Insider inquired about the lawsuit. BTIG says he is no longer with the firm.

You can read the story in full here:

Former employees say BTIG, a Wall Street firm backed by Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, had a toxic party culture that was stuck in the '80s

Tesla's battery challenges

From Linette Lopez: 

Tesla knew its Model S cars were equipped with a battery-cooling system that had a flawed design in June 2012, as those cars started being delivered to customers, according to three people familiar with the matter and internal documents viewed by Business Insider. But the company sold the cars anyway.

The flaw in the design made the cooling system susceptible to leakage. Once coolant leaks into a battery pack, it can short a battery or cause a fire, industry experts told Business Insider.

As Linette reports, Tesla has been dealing with questions about the safety of its batteries for years. And The National Highway Transportation Agency is investigating whether Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles made between 2012 and 2019 had battery defects that could cause "non-crash fires."

You can read her story in full here:

Tesla knew its Model S battery had a design flaw that could lead to leaks and, ultimately, fires starting in 2012. It sold the car anyway.

Below are headlines on some of the stories you might have missed from the past week. 

— Matt

The chief strategist of $2.5 trillion State Street recommends 7 ETFs for investors looking to profit from a permanently altered post-coronavirus landscape

Accenture is cutting US staff, and top execs just warned of more pain to come as the consulting giant promotes fewer people and looks to control costs

SoftBank's Vision Fund is scrapping an 'IPO readiness group' and telling its portfolio companies to handle the process themselves

WeWork is ditching a major Manhattan office lease, and it's the first big step in a turnaround that's put its entire real-estate portfolio under review

Former employees and a cofounder explain what went wrong at Microsoft's Mixer, which is shutting down even after spending millions of dollars on top streamers like Ninja to compete with Amazon's Twitch

Red Bull employees leaked an offensive slide from a company meeting. It showed a repurposed map meme that described India as 'call centers,' China as 'they make our stuff,' and Africa as 'zoo animals come from here'

These are the 19 Airbnb execs rebuilding the company for growth and an IPO amid the biggest travel industry crisis in decades

Cyclica is already using AI to discover new medicines based on psychedelics. Here's the presentation the biotech startup used to raise a fresh $17 million.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Tax Day is now July 15 — this is what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

With speeds up to 100 times faster than 4G, and latency up to 120 times lower, 5G is poised to revolutionize the tech industry.

Telecoms in 18 countries will roll out 5G networks by the end of 2019, which means the race to secure global 5G leadership is officially underway. Winning would allow the opportunity to shape the future of the telecommunications industry, and could come with more than a decade of competitive advantages.

As the biggest mobile market in the world, China is at the front of the pack of global 5G development. China is projected to have 460 million 5G connections by 2025, which would make it the largest 5G market worldwide. After largely missing the opportunity of the 3G and 4G eras, 5G leadership is a top priority for China.

In the 5G Snapshot: China report, Business Insider Intelligence breaks down the key components and advantages of China's 5G mission, and provides summaries of the country's 3 largest wireless operators.

This exclusive report can be yours for FREE today.

Join the conversation about this story »

• Starbucks announced Sunday it will suspend all of its advertising across social media platforms as it conducts discussions "internally, with our media partners, and with civil rights organizations" about ending the spread of hate speech.
• Facebook, in particular, has taken criticism for its response to hate speech on its platform and its decision to allow President Trump to make controversial posts, such as calling protesters "thugs" and writing "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
• Starbucks joins Coca Cola in announcing an outright suspension on all social media advertising, while other companies have announced temporary bans on Facebook ads.
• While the company is suspending its social media ads, it is not joining the #StopHateForProfit campaign bolstering the Facebook advertising boycott, according to CNBC.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Starbucks on Sunday announced it was immediately suspending all of its advertising on "all social media platforms,"becoming the latest company to suspend social media advertising in the wake of criticism that companies aren't doing enough to protect users from hate speech. 

The suspension of social media advertising will not include Google-owned YouTube, a company spokesperson told CNBC.

"We believe in bringing communities together, both in person and online, and we stand against hate speech," Starbucks said in a statement Sunday. "We believe more must be done to create welcoming and inclusive online communities, and we believe both business leaders and policy makers need to come together to affect real change."

According to the statement, the company will pause all advertising on social media while continuing to have discussions "internally, with our media partners, and with civil rights organizations" about ending the spread of hate speech.

Civil rights organizations like the NAACP, Color of Change, and Anti-Defamation League have called on major companies to suspend their advertising on Facebook following the May 25 police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minneapolis and ensuing nationwide protests over police brutality. 

The campaign, called #StopHateforProfit began June 17 after Facebook refused to take action against a post made by President Donald Trump, which threatened the protesters with violence.

Trump wrote "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" and also referred to the protesters as "thugs." The president made a similar statement on Twitter, which labeled the tweet as "glorifying violence." 

As Business Insider reported, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday the company would begin to label "newsworthy" posts from politicians that break its rules on hate speech or violent speech. In response, the campaign criticized Zuckerberg's response  and offered ten steps that would "not be enough to address all of Facebook's problems, but they would be a start." 

Starbucks joined Coca Cola in announcing an outright ban across social-media companies. On Thursday, Coca Cola announced a 30-day ban on the advertisements while the company reconsidered its own policies. Starbucks has not announced a time frame for its advertising suspension. Facebook shares have fallen since Coca Cola announced its advertising suspension, as Business Insider previously reported. The social-media giant makes nearly all of its revenue from advertising.

Other companies like The Hershey Co., Unilever, Verizon, Honda, Birchbox, Ben & Jerry's, The North Face, REI, and Patagonia have paused their paid advertisements on Facebook, for varying amounts of time, as Business Insider reported.

Starbucks said it will continue posting to social media during its advertising boycott, according to CNBC.  

Read more: 

All of the companies no longer advertising on Facebook due to the platform's lack of hate speech moderation

Mark Zuckerberg had $7 billion wiped off his fortune as advertisers boycott Facebook. He's going to be just fine.

Facebook and advertisers are locked in an image war, and advertisers are winning

After deflecting scandals for years, Facebook now faces a rapidly growing advertiser boycott that is the biggest threat to its business yet

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Inside London during COVID-19 lockdown

• When we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, some of us may take the plunge on car ownership.
• It's going to be easy to buy or lease a gas-powered vehicles, but the time couldn't be better for checking out an electric car.
• To that end, Tesla should be high on your shopping list.
• But the brand comes with some pros and cons. Here's a rundown.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In the car business, a debate has broken out. As the US emerges from the coronavirus lockdowns, there's a chance that consumers will avoid public transit, favoring automobiles instead. 

But with gas prices lower than they have been in years, the question is: Will they go for traditional vehicles, or take the plunge on electric cars? No one could be sure, but the landscape favors the gas-burners; there are more of them waiting around to get sold, and the manufacturers and dealers are likely to offer plenty of sweet deals.

But! What about the dramatic improvement in air quality experienced by smoggy cities in even EV-friendly states such as California? Do people really want to squander that, having seen what a pre-car LA, for example, is like? (It's sublime, by all accounts, and that isn't taking the emptied-out freeways into consideration.)

Opportunities like this don't come along very often. If just one or two in 10 new car buyers went electric, it would very much move the needle, almost overnight.

There are plenty of EVs in the market. But invariably, a lot of consumers will gravitate toward Tesla. Understandably, as Tesla makes excellent all-electric cars.

But they aren't without a few drawbacks. Here's a rundown of the pros and cons:

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PRO: Design. Tesla's electric-vehicles are currently the best-looking EVs on the market, with an aesthetic that's both venerable and elegant. You won't get tired of looking at your car.

PRO: Obviously, your gas-pumping days are history. Teslas don't require petrol, so you can say goodbye to the filling station, forever.

PRO: Improved air quality. The coronavirus pandemic shutdowns so greatly reduced traffic in smoggy cities like Los Angeles that residents got their first real look at what a post-fossil-fuels future could be like. And it was pretty stunning.

PRO: Performance. The fastest Tesla, a Model S, can outrun Ferraris and Lamborghinis in a sprint from 0 to 60 mph. But even the, ahem, slowest Tesla leaves most gas-electric hybrids in the dust.

PRO: Over-the-air software updates. Tesla routinely upgrades the software in its vehicles. The updates are wirelessly beamed to vehicles, so owners can wake up and literally have an improved car.

PRO: Innovative technology. Tesla's battery and powertrain systems are impressive from a big-engineering standpoint, but the company even gets the small stuff right. Its smartphone app is just about the only useful one offered by any automaker.

PRO: The Supercharger network. Tesla's extensive, multinational fast-charging network makes long road trips possible. It's also an intelligent network, in constant communication with Tesla vehicles so that extended routes can be plotted. It isn't free — it used to be — but it's Tesla's biggest competitive advantage.

PRO: Batteries. Tesla's battery design was at first considered idiosyncratic — thousands of lithium-ion cells, wired together. But over time, it's proven itself. Tesla also sells home-energy storage systems, using the same tech found in its cars.

PRO: Autopilot's potential. Unlike other semi-automated systems, Autopilot has the potential to operate at all speeds on many different types of roads. At the moment, it's still a work in process and nowhere near being fully autonomous. But it could surpass its competition if the company's ambitions for Autopilot are realized.

PRO: Elon Musk. He's the Henry Ford of the EV era. A visionary technologist who has taken Tesla from being a tiny, obscure, struggling startup to a company that's worth more than GM, Ford, and FCA combined.

CON: Price. Teslas aren't crazy expensive, but the cheapest Model 3 is still about twice as costly as the least expensive gas-powered sedan you can now buy.

CON: Charging times. There's no way around it. Teslas have big batteries, and even with fast charging, a "refill" can consume an hour. You can run a gas vehicle to empty and restore it to 400 miles of range with a five-minute refuel.

CON: Lack of dealerships. Tesla operates stores and can sell direct to consumers in some US states. But the lack of traditional dealerships makes the purchase or leasing process more awkward than the traditional method.

CON: Ludicrous Mode. Ludicrous Mode, which takes advantage of powerful batteries and dual electric motors to deliver staggering acceleration, sounds great, and is great — the first few times you do it. But it's almost too much for Tesla's sedans and SUVs.

CON: Autopilot's attention demands. At the moment, Autopilot can't be used in fully hands-free mode (don't do what I'm doing in the photo). So, the system pesters you constantly to place you hands on the steering wheel — a good thing, but it's almost easier to just drive the car yourself.

CON: Home charging. Tesla will sell you a 240-volt, Level 2 home charger for about $500, but you have to arrange for installation. I think Tesla ownership is less fun without this option. But, of course, nobody has to have their own gas station in the garage.

CON: Lack of inventory. Tesla has but one factory in the US, and it tends to sell cars as fast as it makes them. So, buyers don't have a lot of pre-built inventory to choose from, if they want a car in a hurry. Current delivery times for ordered Model 3s, for instance, are eight to 12 weeks.

CON: Not an ideal road-trip vehicle. I've taken two long-ish road trips in Teslas and come up against charging waits both times. My kids, as a result, have banned me from ever using a Tesla for this purpose again.

CON: The federal tax credit has expired for Tesla. The $7,500 federal tax credit was a big incentive to go Tesla, but it has phased out now that the company has sold more than 200,000 vehicles in the US.

CON: Elon Musk. Unpredictable, controversial, outspoken — Musk is the opposite of the careful, diplomatic auto executive. You have to take the good with the not-so-good, when it comes to Tesla's CEO.

• A Montreal-based creator modeled a miniature replica of IBM's iconic 1401 computer system.
• Nicolas Temese told Business Insider that the scale model includes everything from the setup at the time: a punchcard reader, tape drives, a query console, a central unit, and a line printer.
• Temese said his model is going to be displayed in Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum, which also showcases a working, real-size 1401 computer system.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Nicolas Temese doesn't work as a modeler full-time — he's a technical director at a small animation studio in Montreal, Canada, where he's based.

But he's spent hours creating a mini version of IBM's successful 1401 computer.

The machine celebrated its 60th anniversary last year. It debuted in 1959 and became one of the first mass-produced computers. It was relatively affordable and sold 12,000 units, with standard businesses gravitating to the machine for its ease of use. It was a labor-intensive process, according to the Computer History Museum, but some nations used the machine well into the 1980s.

Temese's model shows the various components of the IBM 1401 data center. There's a punchcard reader, which could punch and read data cards. There are two tape drives and a query console, where data scientists could search for data from computers and tapes. There's a central unit, which was essentially what we now know as a CPU. And then there's a line printer.

He told Business Insider that he began work on the set in late December 2019, but only in the evenings.

"I do have a day job, so only a few hours every week," Temese said. 

He started posting photos of his designs online a few months ago on his Instagram account and started seeing them gain some attention.

The designs are built from scratch — he cuts sheets of polystyrene and assembles the objects himself.

"I like 3D printing, but I like to do those objects by hand to capture the texture and the feeling of it," Temese said.

He has more ideas in the works to model other types of vintage computer systems and also delve into doing commissioned work.

Temese said the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, where Google is headquartered, approached him and asked if he'd be willing to donate the model. The museum is currently closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home order, but it has a working, real-size copy of the system.

"It's going to feel right at home there," Temese said.

SEE ALSO: Here are 9 companies IBM could buy given that new CEO Arvind Krishna said that it will get back to its 'acquisitive strategy' in a few months, according to experts

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

• You cannot clear the cache on Roku devices because they don't have one, according to the company.
• Instead of trying to clear a cache, you can try to restart the player and see if that resolves your issues.
• There are several ways to restart a Roku, including the "System" menu, a button sequence, and unplugging the device.
• Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

As a general rule, your Roku streaming media player should work mostly error-free. It's been designed to require no routine maintenance or troubleshooting. Nonetheless, sometimes even the simplest of devices can run into problems, and your Roku might misbehave. 

You might have read that if your Roku is experiencing performance issues, particularly with glitchy playback of video or channels not loading correctly, that you can clear your Roku's cache. This is not accurate – the Roku's cache cannot be cleared. 

While there's no cache, there are ways to address loading and playback issues with your Roku. Here's how. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Roku Ultra (From $99.99 at Best Buy)

Why you can't clear the cache on a Roku

The problem is that the Roku does not have a conventional cache, so there is no cache to clear. Numerous websites claim that by pressing a sequence of buttons on the Roku remote control, you can clear its cache.

Roku representatives have confirmed to Business Insider that in reality, those button presses merely reboot the Roku. To be clear, Roku devices do not have a cache.  

What you can do instead of clearing the Roku cache

If you encounter a performance issue with your Roku, you may be able to resolve it by merely restarting the device. For ways to do this, read our article "How to restart your Roku device when it's freezing or running slowly."

After the restart, use your Roku the way you usually would. If the issue you were having was related to something that could be addressed by restarting the device, your problem should be resolved. If not, you may need to contact Roku technical support for additional help. 

Related coverage from Tech Reference:

• How to create a Roku account using the website or mobile app

• How to cancel your Roku subscriptions in 2 different ways

• How to move channels on your Roku to prioritize the icons you click on most often

• 'Why does my Roku keep buffering?': How to fix Roku streaming issues in 3 ways

• How to use Roku search to find content across channels

SEE ALSO: The best media streaming sticks and devices

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

• Sandi Lin started Skilljar after spending years nearly four years at Amazon because she wanted to find a way to improve customer interactions. 
• Her company makes a customizable customer-training platform for software companies and has signed on big clients, like Tableau, Verizon, and Zendesk. 
• It's seeing demand skyrocket in the remote-work era as companies quickly look to connect with customers digitally, and having what one of its investors calls its "Zoom moment." 
• Online education and training are effective ways for businesses to engage with their user bases, Lin said, especially in this moment when all customer interaction is online.
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

As a senior product manager at Amazon in customer-facing roles, Sandi Lin always felt like there was a disconnect between her customer interactions and the product training those customers would receive. 

With the belief that she could create a better system, she took a leap of faith and left Amazon in 2013 to start her own company. She's since built Skilljar into a platform that allows companies to customize their own customer-training programs. Skilljar got its start by participating in the Techstars accelerator program in 2013 and has raised $20 million at a $46 million valuation from investors, including T-Mobile founder John Stanton's Trilogy Equity Partners. 

Since its launch, Skilljar has signed on big customers like Tableau, Zendesk, and Verizon. Now it's seeing its demand skyrocket in the coronavirus-related remote-work era as companies are quickly looking to train and connect with customers digitally. The company's growth prompted one investor to describe Skilljar as having its "Zoom moment." 

With all customer interactions moving online for the foreseeable future, Lin said companies were relying more than ever on their customer-training teams to engage with new and existing customers to drive product adoption and customer success. Online classes and training are ways to do that.

"Executives are now relying on their customer-training teams to be the front line," Lin told Business Insider. 

Skilljar provides templates for businesses to build online training programs for their customers, including webinar-style courses, quizzes, and live video training in a self-contained website. It also integrates with tools like Zoom, Webex, Salesforce, Box, and other customer-facing tools that businesses use. 

So when customers go to Tableau's online learning academy or Zendesk's training website, they're powered by Skilljar behind the scenes, though the company's branding is rarely displayed on the page. 

Skilljar has had increased interest and demand amid the pandemic

Lin said she's noticed that customers who already used Skilljar now use it even more — in some cases, companies have done five times the amount of virtual training than normal to accommodate what previously was done in person. Some customers, like Tableau, have opened their virtual training tools to everyone for free, even though the service is normally reserved for paying customers.

It's not just software companies that sell to corporate offices that have to rethink customer education, Lin said. Skilljar's clients include a music-technology company that sells to schools and a student information system company. Across the board, Skilljar's customers are relying on it more than ever. 

April was the company's biggest sales month this year, Lin said. All of its customers with over 100 employees renewed contracts this year, she said, and it's signed on new customers too. The number of active "students" using Skilljar's technology and the number of students signing up for courses on the platform have both more than doubled between January and April.

"COVID-19 has changed how companies think about education in general," Aashish Dhamdhere, Skilljar's vice president of marketing, said. "It wasn't top of mind for a lot of companies and they've suddenly realized that education is a great way of driving customer engagement."

Many of the startup's customers have realized that education can be delivered to customers effectively online and will permanently switch most of their education to a digital format, Lin added.

Skilljar fills a big hole in the customer-training market 

Rajeev Batra, a partner at Mayfield, was an early investor in Skilljar and sees it as having cracked the code on customer-education software. He said most companies buy software and employees don't really know how to use it to do their work more efficiently. No one reads manuals either, so training is key, he added. 

The way most online education works today is not super effective, but Skilljar seems to have gotten it right.

"[Lin] worked on cracking the code of building a really great product that supports different learning modalities, different tools, different tech, different approaches, different content is delivered in different ways and different types of people and audiences learn differently," Batra said. "They built an incredibly interesting and very modern approach to helping these companies actually help their customers learn and use the products."

Other online training companies are more focused on internal employee-facing training versus a customer format, he said, though he could imagine Skilljar eventually expanding outside customer-training tools.

For now, though, Lin said the company was focused on keeping up with its newfound demand.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@businessinsider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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• Lenovo makes some of the industry's most celebrated laptops, especially 2-in-1 hybrids having coined the brand name "Yoga" describing their 180-degree bending hinges. Yoga has since become akin to what "Kleenex" are to tissues.
• The company sells plenty of other effective laptops in several subcategories, including Chromebooks, gaming laptops, and a range of straight Windows laptops from budget to flagship luxury prices.
• Lenovo discounts its laptops regularly, and right now is putting on a major sale through Woot on a select few popular models.
• See also: The best laptops, the best Chromebooks, and the best gaming laptops.
• Visit Insider Reviews' deals page for more sales.

At this point in modern life, it's not hyperbole to say that absolutely everyone needs a laptop. Of course, we include laptops of all shapes, sizes and budgets in that claim. Even if it's a $100 Chromebook, the world that it opens you up to is practically priceless. It's no wonder then that people are always searching around for laptop deals.

However, it takes a trained eye to find the best laptops deals out there, especially because individual laptop models are sold in several configurations of varying power and capability. We've been collectively looking at laptop deals as professionals for a few decades now, so we know a real savings when we see one.

From the time of writing until June 30 at 12 a.m. CT, Woot is selling six different Lenovo laptops for up to $350 off.

We're particularly bullish on the Lenovo Chromebook 14 S340 for just $259.99 and the Lenovo Flex 15 for $649.99. These deals are especially welcome at a time when laptops are being up-marked on retailers listing third-party sellers, like Amazon, so act quickly if you're comfortable with refurbished products.

Here are some of the best laptop deals happening right now:

• ASUS ROG Strix G GL531GU gaming laptop, $999.00 at Newegg (You save $300)
• Dell Inspiron 15 5000 (5575) general use laptop, $629.00 at Walmart (You save $70)
• Gigabyte AERO 15 gaming laptop, $1,499.00 at Amazon (You save $400)

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NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

• Civil rights organizations including NAACP, Color of Change, and Anti-Defamation League asked advertisers to stop paying for advertisements on Facebook in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
• Since Floyd's death, Facebook has allowed posts in which Trump called protesters "thugs" and suggested violence when he wrote, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided not to take action in removing the content despite requests. Twitter, on the other hand, flagged Trump's tweets using the same language as "glorifying violence."
• In light of Zuckerberg's inaction, companies like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Unilever, Verizon, Honda, The Hershey Co., Ben & Jerry's, Denny's, The North Face, REI, and Patagonia have halted their paid advertising on Facebook — some of them just for the month of July.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: 'We're In. We're Out': The North Face becomes the first major company to boycott Facebook as the calls for advertisers to walk out of the platform in July intensify

The North Face was the first major brand to halt its paid advertising on Facebook.

The North Face announced its decision on Friday.

The clothing company said it would also stop advertising on Instagram, which Facebook owns.

"We know that for too long harmful, racist rhetoric and misinformation has made the world unequal and unsafe, and we stand with the NAACP and the other organizations who are working to #StopHateforProfit," Steve Lesnard, The North Face's global VP of marketing, said in a statement.

Patagonia announced Sunday that it would boycott Facebook over "hateful lies and dangerous propaganda on its platform."

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1274832570891431936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
For too long, Facebook has failed to take sufficient steps to stop the spread of hateful lies and dangerous propaganda on its platform.

REI said it would stop its Facebook ads for the month of July.

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1274110350703554560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
For 82 years, we have put people over profits. We're pulling all Facebook/Instagram advertising for the month of July. #StopHateForProfit

Learn more: https://t.co/XCQSnUO8XJhttps://t.co/Jp1GaKdCUN

Talkspace, a mental health app, also halted its Facebook advertising. CEO Oren Frank said he "will not support a platform that incites violence, racism, and lies."

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1267504648275005440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
We at @Talkspace discontinued our partnership discussions with @Facebook today. We will not support a platform that incites violence, racism, and lies. #BlackLivesMatter

Software company Braze did the same. CMO Sara Spivey called for other companies to join the boycott on Twitter.

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1268172965952327680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As a CMO, I am reallocating dollars planned for Facebook advertising to other places. I won't fund an org that fails to act against divisiveness and hate, hiding behind "freedom of speech." Fellow marketers, join me. #nomoremoneyforFacebook

Fons, a payment company, has sworn off Facebook advertising too.

CEO and co-founder Eric Branner said that the boycott could potentially lead to Facebook changing its policy.

• Read more:
• Facebook has now removed the Trump post featuring doctored video of a Black toddler and fake CNN graphics
• After 4 years of timidity, Facebook and Twitter are finally taking basic steps to curb Trump's worst instincts
• Twitter marked a Trump tweet mocking CNN as 'manipulated media'

Ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's called on Facebook to take "clear and unequivocal actions" to stop the spread of "racism and hate" on its platform.

Ben & Jerry's, which has campaigned against racial inequality for years, tweeted its announcement Monday.

"We will pause all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the US in support of the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Facebook, Inc. must take the clear and unequivocal actions to stop its platform from being used to spread and amplify racism and hate," the company said.

Clothing company Eddie Bauer is suspending ads on Facebook and Instagram through the end of July.

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1275597057818951685?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In support of the #StopHateForProfit initiative, Eddie Bauer will suspend all paid ads on Facebook and Instagram through the end of July, effective immediately.
Learn more here: https://t.co/0oMnahL1Mh

Arc'teryx, an outdoor clothing brand, said it will pause advertising on Facebook and Instagram through at least the end of July. The brand tweeted: "We need a break @facebook."

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1275482126599639040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
We need a break @facebook. Effective immediately, we will be halting our global advertising with @Facebook& @Instagram until at least the end of July in support of the #stophateforprofit campaign & donating those dollars towards building more inclusive outdoors.Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1275506187195179008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
We are proud to stand with the #StopHateForProfit campaign - @Facebook profits 'will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism & violence.' Learn more: https://t.co/T81TtElTCH

Magnolia Pictures — the studio behind "I Am Not Your Negro" and upcoming documentary "John Lewis: Good Trouble" — is pausing its advertising.

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1275420847151300615?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In solidarity with the #StopHateForProfit movement, Magnolia Pictures has chosen to stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram, starting immediately, through at least the end of July. We are seeking meaningful change at Facebook and the end to their amplification of hate speech.

Upwork, a virtual freelancing platform, is halting its advertising. CEO Hayden Brown tweeted, "We're out too."

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1274110168402280448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
We're out too. No @Upwork ad spend on Facebook in July. Thank you @NAACP@ColorOfChange and others. #StopHateForProfit

"We cannot stand by and be complicit to or complacent about the spread of hate, racism and misinformation, and that is why we are supporting the Stop Hate for Profit advocacy campaign, which calls for pausing advertising on all Facebook platforms in the month of July. Upwork will pause advertising on Facebook and Instagram as a part of this campaign," Brown told NBC News in a statement.

Limeade, a software company that focuses on employee experience, is also halting advertising.

Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1275847665679503373?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
.@Limeade will be pausing all of our Facebook ads through the end of July or until meaningful action occurs. @Facebook#stophateforprofit. Learn more at https://t.co/daW7khxn5t. Sign the pledge.

After the ADL sent a letter to Verizon, the company told AdAge it would pause advertising until Facebook could "create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable."

After the Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to major advertisers allegedly showing their ads next to hate speech on Facebook, Verizon decided it would temporarily halt advertising on the platform.

"Our brand safety standards have not changed," a Verizon spokeswoman told AdAge, adding: "We're pausing our advertising until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable and is consistent with what we've done with YouTube and other partners."

Unilever, a major multinational consumer goods company that owns brands like Dove, Lipton, Breyers, Hellman's, Q-tips, and Vaseline, said it would halt US ads on both Facebook and Twitter for the rest of 2020.

"Based on the current polarization and the election that we are having in the U.S., there needs to be much more enforcement in the area of hate speech," Luis Di Como, Unilever's head of global media told The Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report the news.

"There is much more to be done, especially in the areas of divisiveness and hate speech during this polarized election period in the U.S.," Unilever said in a statement. "Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society."

Facebook's stock tumbled as much as 7% following Unilever's announcement.

Honda's US division, became the first automaker to join the ad boycott.

"For the month of July, American Honda will withhold its advertising on Facebook and Instagram, choosing to stand with people united against hate and racism. This is in alignment with our company's values, which are grounded in human respect," Honda told AdAge.

Birchbox, a subscription company that sends customers samples of makeup and other beauty-related products, has joined the boycott as well — one of the first beauty companies to do so.

"In support of the #StopHateForProfit campaign, Birchbox US will be pausing paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram during July, and plan to re-allocate our advertising dollars to other platforms and to support more individual content creators," the company said in an Instagram post.

"We want Facebook to acknowledge this demand for change and to commit to making the necessary changes suggested on StopHateForProfit.org," it added.

The Hershey Co. is halting ad spending on Facebook and Instagram in July and will cut spending by a third for the remainder of the year.

"As a company, we stand for the values of togetherness and inclusion and we are resolute in our commitment to make a difference and be part of positive change," Jill Baskin, The Hershey Co.'s chief marketing officer, told Business Insider. "We are hopeful that Facebook will take action and make it a safe space for our consumers to communicate and gather."

Baskin added that the company told Facebook that it was unhappy with its stance on hate speech earlier this month but was not satisfied with its response. The company also said that it cut its spending on the platform by a third for the remainder of the year.

"We do not believe that Facebook is effectively managing violent and divisive speech on their platform," Baskin said. "Despite repeated assertions by Facebook to take action, we have not seen meaningful change."

Coca-Cola said it would pause paid ads on all social media platforms so it can "reassess" its ad spending policies.

Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey told Adweek that Coca-Cola will pause international paid ads across all social media platforms for 30 days so it can "reassess our advertising policies to determine whether revisions are needed."

"There is no place for racism in the world, and there is no place for racism on social media," Quincy told Adweek, adding that the company expects "greater accountability and transparency from our social media partners."

Liquor company Beam Suntory will also halt its Facebook and Instagram advertising through July.

"We stand up for what's right, and we stand with all who are committed to the fight against hate speech, racism and prejudice," the company said in a statement. "That's why Beam Suntory is joining #StopHateForProfit, pausing all paid Facebook and Instagram advertising in the US across our brand portfolio throughout July. We hope this collective action helps catalyze positive change and accountability, and we will evaluate our advertising approach beyond July as we await Facebook's response."

Starbucks is pausing advertising on all social media platforms.

The coffee giant did not mention Facebook by name, but said it is continuing internal discussions with partners and civil rights organizations "in the effort to stop the spread of hate speech."

"We believe in bringing communities together, both in person and online, and we stand against hate speech," the company wrote on its website on Sunday. "We believe more must be done to create welcoming and inclusive online communities, and we believe both business leaders and policy makers need to come together to affect real change."

Denny's became the first restaurant industry brand to join the boycott, saying it would halt all Facebook ads starting July 1.

"Denny's is a place where folks from all walks of life are welcome and accepted for who they are. We are committed to promoting diversity, equality and inclusion across our restaurants nationwide and fighting for racial justice. This commitment extends well beyond our restaurants' doors and into our workplace, as well as the thousands of local communities we serve each and every day," Denny's said in a statement to Business Insider.

"As America's Diner, we offer an inclusive and welcoming environment where all people can enjoy a nice meal and we strongly oppose hate speech of any kind. It is our belief that Facebook has not done enough to address this important issue on its platform and we are calling on Facebook to make positive changes to its process for combatting hate speech and disinformation. We are proudly joining the #StopHateForProfit campaign and pausing all paid advertising on Facebook, as of July 1," the company added.

Clorox is pausing Facebook ads through 2020.

"As a people-centered company committed to our values, we feel compelled to take action against hate speech, which we believe will increase through the balance of the year," Clorox Chief Marketing Officer Stacey Grier told Adweek, adding that the company will shift its ad spending to "other media."

Adidas and its subsidiary Reebok are pausing Facebook and Instagram ads globally through July.

"Racist, discriminatory and hateful online content have no place in our brand or in society," Adidas told Adweek.

Ford is pausing all social media advertising in the US for the next month.

Reuters reported that the second largest US automaker is reevaluating its presence across all social media platforms and ad spending outside the US as well.

A Ford spokesperson told Reuters that hate speech, violence, and racial injustice in content on social media "needs to be eradicated."

PepsiCo is reportedly pulling Facebook ads through July and August.

Fox Business reported that Pepsi will halt ads on the platform globally during July and August but that the company has yet to make an official announcement.

Pepsi subsidiary Sodastream is also pausing Facebook ads, The Jerusalem Post reported, citing an Israeli local news outlet.

• On Friday, Twitter users noticed that the platform was marking tweets mentioning "5G" or "oxygen" with a warning about COVID-19 misinformation.
• Mislabeling tweets that link 5G and COVID-19 could help to "raise the profile" of the popular conspiracy theory that the cellular technology caused the coronavirus outbreak, according to social media researcher Wasim Ahmed.
• In a statement to Business Insider, Twitter said it had make a mistake and was working to "improve" its labeling process. It blamed the error on the algorithm it has been using to prioritize the immediate labelling of 5G-related tweets.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Twitter has admitted it mistakenly slapped a coronavirus misinformation warning on some tweets mentioning 5G technology, but experts say the error could have far-reaching implications in social networks' struggle to battle COVID-related conspiracy theories.

Several Twitter userspointed out Friday that the platform was marking tweets mentioning "5G" and "oxygen" — including some that used these terms in jest — with a label indicating their posts contain misinformation regarding COVID-19, the coronavirus disease. Twitter, in a statement to Business Insider later that afternoon, said that it had made a mistake by labeling "unrelated" posts, and attributed the error to the algorithm it's using to identify tweets containing coronavirus-related misinformation.

Nonetheless, the labels suggesting users "get the facts about COVID-19" still appear on the tweets in question as of Monday afternoon. Clicking on the warning label brings users to a Twitter Moment about the particularly widespread conspiracy theory that blames the coronavirus outbreak on the rollout of 5G, a new technology designed to increase mobile connectivity speeds.

Twitter first added the COVID-19 misinformation label in May, in an attempt to crack down on "potentially harmful and misleading" coronavirus-related content. The 5G-related conspiracy theory has garnered widespread attention online for months, even though there's no scientific evidence to support it. It's led to dozens of arson attacks on 5G cell towers and other telecom infrastructure in the UK and Europe. It's also been spread online by Hollywood celebrities and popular artists to their hoards of fans and followers.

However, social media researchers say that Twitter's mixup in its attempt to fight misinformation could end up having the opposite effect of what's intended. According to researcher Wasim Ahmed, mislabeling these tweets could "inadvertently raise the profile" of the conspiracy theory, spreading its reach to more users online.

"This mislabeling could be used to further strengthen the belief in conspiracies by saying, 'Look what's happening on Twitter, it looks suspicious,'" Ahmed told Business Insider. "Mislabeling non-offending tweets with an incorrect label linking to a Twitter moment, showing 5G and COVID-19 are not linked, may also inadvertently draw more attention to it, as it could lead to further tweets on the topic."

Twitter's "false-positives" in labelling coronavirus misinformation could reduce users' trust in the platform to tell them when information is accurate, according to misinformation expert John Cook.

"We want people to be resilient against misinformation. If you put people on high alert that misinformation is out there and dangerous, the danger is they can become cynical," Cook told Business Insider. "We need these kind of warnings to be more surgical. We want to bring down the misinformation, but not hurt accurate information."

The link between coronavirus and 5G is just one of the bizarre bits of misinformation that has spread on the internet in recent months related to the disease, as well as nationwide protests against police brutality. Outlandish conspiracy theories have blamed Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates for the pandemic, and backed a "Plandemic" video that insists social distancing and wearing masks makes people sick.

More recent conspiracy theories have claimed the far-left group "antifa" is stoking violence during Black Lives Matter protests. Some pieces of misinformation have had more serious consequences: Many have bought into fake coronavirus treatments costing thousands of dollars, and BLM protests have become targets for alt-right supporters instigating violence.

In response, social networks have struggled to adequately stymie the spread of misinformation on their platforms. Facebook, in particular, has been slow to moderate hate speech and misinformation, which has led dozens of advertisers to boycott paying for advertisements on the platform.

Twitter, meanwhile, has been celebrated for recent actions taken against Donald Trump's policy-violating tweets. But when it comes to coronavirus misinformation, the platform has seen such content flourish. A report in April out of the University of Oxford found that nearly 60% of coronavirus-related misinformation on Twitter remained without a warning label.

SEE ALSO: A group of young techies is behind '👁👄👁,' a mysterious meme that succeeded in getting Tech Twitter to donate to Black Lives Matter charities and clamor for invites to an app that doesn't exist

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• YouTube creators who are part of the Partner Program can monetize their videos with Google-placed ads and often it's a big chunk of their overall income. 
• But the amount of money different creators make per view varies based on a variety of factors like content category and viewer demographic.
• Business Insider spoke with dozens of influencers who broke down how much they'd earned per view, and what they made on videos with 100,000 and 1 million views.
• Some also shared their monthly and yearly incomes, as well as their highest-earning videos of all time.
• Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

This is the latest installment of Business Insider's YouTube money logs, where creators break down how much they earn.

Influencers who are part of the YouTube Partner Program can earn money off their videos with Google-placed ads.

But how much do they make? 

Many factors — like whether a video went viral, or whether the audience that watches their content is valuable to advertisers — will determine what a creator earns per paycheck. YouTubers are paid out monthly and either receive a check by mail or direct deposit. 

To start earning money from YouTube, creators must have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year. Once they reach that threshold, they can apply for Partner Program.

Making money through Google-placed ads isn't the only form of revenue for these digital stars. Creators on YouTube can earn their money a number of ways, from sponsorships to selling merchandise.

But revenue from Google ads is a big chunk of many YouTube stars' incomes.

Over the last few months, Business Insider has spoken with dozens of YouTube creators about how much each of them earn on average per view (their CPMs), and on videos with 100 thousand, 1 million views, and even 150 million views.

Some also shared with us their monthly and yearly incomes from YouTube, as well as their highest-earning videos of all time.

Here's a comprehensive breakdown of what they said:

How much YouTube pays per 1,000 views (CPM)

For every 1,000 views, creators get paid a certain CPM rate by YouTube. But no creator consistently has the same CPM.

Advertisers usually pay more for an informative, business-related video than a vlog-style video. The rate can also depend on seasonality, with lower CPM rates at the start of the year and higher ones toward the end.

Some subjects, like talking about money on YouTube, often can boost a creator's CPM rate by attracting a lucrative audience.

We spoke with 16 YouTube creators on how much money they earn on average for every 1,000 views.

Here's what they said:

• Jimmy Ton (30,000 subscribers) — between $2 and $4, he told Business Insider in April. 
• Shelby Church (1.5 million subscribers) — between $2 and $5, she told Business Insider in January. 
• Thomas Game Docs (177,000 subscribers) — between $3 and $5, he told Business Insider in April. 
• Marina Mogilko (1 million subscribers) — between $4 and $14, she told Business Insider in March.
• Michael Groth (1 million subscribers) – between $5 and $12, he told Business Insider in April. 
• Austen Alexander (435,000 subscribers) — between $7 and $9, he told Business Insider in November. 
• Natalie Barbu (278,000 subscribers) — between $7 and $20, she told Business Insider in February. 
• Jade Darmawangsa (330,000 subscribers) — between $8 and $15, she told Business Insider in March. 
• Sienna Santer (354,000 subscribers) — around $8, she told Business Insider in March.
• Ruby Asabor (173,000 subscribers) – between $10 and $20, she told Business Insider in February. 
• CurlyCandi (29,000 subscribers) — between $11 and $18, she told Business Insider in March.
• Griffin Milks (40,000 subscribers) — between $12 to $34, he told Business Insider in March. 
• Cathrin Manning (183,000 subscribers) — around $17, she told Business Insider in March. 
• Marko Zlatic (385,000 subscribers) — between $20 and $27, he told Business Insider in February. 
• Roberto Blake (454,000 subscribers) — around $21, he told Business Insider in March. 
• Jessica Stansberry (80,000 subscribers) — around $31, she told Business Insider in March.

Read the full post: 16 YouTube stars reveal how much they get paid per 1,000 views

How much YouTube pays for 100,000 views

We spoke with four YouTube creators on how much money they earn on average for every 100,000 views.

Here's what they said:

• Natalie Barbu (278,000 subscribers) — between $500 to $1,000, she told Business Insider in February. Barbu has more lifestyle and vlog content on her channel. 
• Roberto Blake (454,000 subscribers) — between $800 and $1,500, he told Business Insider in February. Blake is a tech YouTuber. 
• Marko Zlatic (385,000 subscribers) — between $1,300 and $1,500, he told Business Insider in February. Zlatic's videos are dedicated to personal finance. 
• Ruby Asabor (173,000 subscribers) — between $2,200 and $2,500, she told Business Insider in February. Asabor makes business videos. 

Read the full post: How much money a YouTube video with 100,000 views makes, according to 4 creators

How much YouTube pays for 1 million views

How much money a YouTube creator makes for a viral video with 1 million views can vary wildly — but it's usually quite a payday.

We spoke with five YouTube creators on how much money they earn on average for every one million views.

Here's what they said:

• Jade Darmawangsa (354,000 subscribers) – $3,600, she told Business Insider in March. 
• Shelby Church (1.5 million subscribers) — between $2,000 and $5,000, she told Business Insider in July 2019. 
• Austen Alexander (435,000 subscribers) — around $6,000, he told Business Insider in November 2019.
• Marina Mogilko (1 million subscribers) — around $10,000, she told Business Insider in August 2019.
• Kevin David (1 million subscribers) — around $40,000, he told Business Insider in August 2019.

Read the full post here: How much money a YouTube video with 1 million views makes, according to 5 creators

How much YouTube pays for 4 million views

We spoke with two YouTube creators, Shelby Church and Alyssa Kulani, about how much each of them earned from videos with 4 million views.

Here's what they said: 

Shelby Church — $15,000

Church, who has 1.3 million subscribers, told Business Insider in November 2019 that she earned $15,000 from a YouTube video with 4.1 million views — the most she's ever made from a single video in nine years as a creator.

Her video, titled "This Is How Much YouTube Paid Me for My 1,000,000 Viewed Video (not clickbait)," is about how much YouTube paid her for a previous video with 1 million views.

Alyssa Kulani – $23,000

Kulani's video, titled "Telling my best friend I like him...*PRANK*," was picked up and recommended by YouTube's algorithm, which prompted the video to go viral and gain 4 million views, she told Business Insider in November 2019.

Read the full post: 2 YouTube creators told us how much money they earned from videos with 4 million views

How much YouTube pays for 150 million views

Paul Kousky films videos about Nerf guns for YouTube and has 10.9 million subscribers. 

He told Business Insider in December that he earns a majority of his revenue through ads on his YouTube channel, PDK Films.

Kousky's highest-earning video is one he posted in February 2018 titled "Nerf War: Tank Battle," which went viral worldwide six months later, he said. 

By the time the video had hit 150 million views (it continues to rack up views), he earned $97,000 in AdSense revenue, he said.

Read the full post here: How much money a YouTube video with 150 million views makes, according to a top creator

The most money YouTubers have made from a single video

Business Insider spoke with 13 creators with very different channels and they shared the most amount of money YouTube has paid them for a single video.

Here's what they said: 

• Cathrin Manning (183,000 subscribers) — $3,886, she told Business Insider in April. This is her most viewed video, titled "How Long It Takes To Get Monetized On YouTube," with 541,000 views. 
• Jessica Stansberry (80,000 subscribers) — $4,091, she told Business Insider in April. The video is about how to use Trello, which is a project management system, she also said is repeatedly her top-earning video each month.
• Jade Darmawangsa (330,000 subscribers) — $5,000, she told Business Insider in April. The video, "How To Grow with 0 Views and 0 Subscribers," has 2 million views.
• Kyra Ann (88,000 subscribers) — $6,000, she told Business Insider in March. Kyra is a minimalist who shares her experience and tips on YouTube with her 77,000 subscribers.
• Natalie Barbu (278,000 subscribers) — $8,000, she told Business Insider in February. The YouTube video was about how to start an online store, which has 390,000 views.
• Ruby Asabor (173,000 subscribers) — $9,000, she told Business Insider in February. Asabor is a 22-year-old YouTube content creator and motivational speaker.
• Alyssa Kulani (732,000 subscribers) — $23,000, she told Business Insider in November. In late 2018, YouTube's algorithm picked up and recommended a video she posted in October of that year titled, "Telling my best friend I like him...*PRANK*."
• Shelby Church (1.5 million subscribers) — $30,000, she told Business Insider in January. The video, about Amazon FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon), had an unusually high CPM rate and had about 1.8 million views.
• Kevin David (1 million subscribers) — $50,000, he told Business Insider in August 2019. The video is a how-to guide for using Facebook ads.
• Brian Barczyk (2.7 million subscribers) — $50,000, he told Business Insider in January. This was Barczyk's highest-earning video, which he posted in July 2017, titled "MY SNAKE IS EGG BOUND!!! NOW WHAT?!!!" The video has over 28 million views.
• Graham Stephan (2 million subscribers) — $56,000, he told Business Insider in March. The video titled, "How I Bought A Tesla for $78 per month," has 6 million views.
• Marko Zlatic (385,000 subscribers) — $70,000, he told Business Insider in February. The video, titled "How Car Dealerships Rip You Off," has 6 million views.
• Paul Kousky (13 million subscribers)— $97,000, he told Business Insider in December. He films videos about Nerf guns, said the video, titled "Nerf War: Tank Battle," had 150 million views.

Read the full post:13 YouTube stars break down the videos that earned them the most money, from $4,000 to $97,000

How much money YouTubers make a month

Each month, many YouTube creators earn money off the ads that play in their videos.

Creators on YouTube earn their money a number of ways, from sponsorships to selling merchandise.

Still, one of their main sources of revenue is often directly from YouTube through ads. So how much do YouTubers generally make per month? We spoke with seven of them.

Here's what they said:

• Amanda Ramirez (32,000 subscribers): $554 (May 2020)
• Joe Farrington (100,000 subscribers): $560 (May 2020)
• Erika Kullberg (57,000 subscribers): $9,000 (May 2020)
• Jimmy Ton (30,000 subscribers): $1,680 (April 2020)
• Austen Alexander (435,000 subscribers): over $12,300 (April 2020)
• Graham Stephan (2 million subscribers): $141,356 (February 2020)
• Kyra Ann (88,000 subscribers): $1,817 (February 2020)

Read the full post here: YouTube creators break down their monthly incomes from the platform

How much money YouTubers make a year (2019)

We spoke with four YouTube creators on how much they earned in 2019 from YouTube ads.

Here's what they said: 

• Sienna Santer (397,000 subscribers) — $44,000, she told Business Insider in January. 
• Andrei Jikh (760,000 subscribers) — $100,000, he told Business Insider in December. 
• Shelby Church (1.5 million subscribers) — $140,000, she told Business Insider in January. This is more than double what she made in 2018.
• Ryan Scribner (640,000 subscribers) — $220,000, he told Business Insider in May.