• This week, we saw a tech fight for the ages, as Epic baited Apple and Google to remove its 'Fortnite' app from their stores.
• They did, and Epic responded with lawsuits and a parody video that attacked Apple's stringent App Store policies.
• With Facebook also entering the fight, Apple appears to be running out of friends. The next few weeks will test just how tough its walled garden is.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

This was the week that tech went to war with itself – and it may be the beginning of a protracted, wide-ranging conflict.

Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, fired the first shot on Thursday when it deliberately violated Apple's App Store rules. On its face, the dispute is about the 30% app store fees that Apple (and Google) charge developers. 

But the heated, at times surreal, spectacle that followed — including lawsuits, slick video propaganda, hashtag sneak attacks and pile-ons — points to a more complex web of conflicts, alliances and agendas.

For years, Apple has capitalized on its ad-free business model to bludgeon Facebook and Google for their mishandling of user data. Now Facebook finally has an opening to press its advantage against Apple. Meanwhile Spotify, which has long argued that Apple's in-house streaming music service is inherently anti-competitive, has no choice but to now jump into the fray alongside Epic.

It's no coincidence that all of this is happening against the backdrop of the Big Tech antitrust crackdown in the US and Europe. Antitrust however, is just one facet of a deeper destabilization shaking up the tech market. 

As we've seen with TikTok and Microsoft's arranged-marriage talks, and President Trump's comments about taking a cut of proceeds, the tech market's traditional rules of engagement no longer seem to apply. Anything is possible, and that's a threat to established structures like app stores, walled gardens and revenue sharing pacts.

There's a lot at stake, and all sorts of competing interests that are likely to emerge. Here's a look at where things stand in the early stages of what could turn into a tech industry upheaval.

Epic set the trap

It all started on Thursday when 'Fortnite' maker Epic Games announced it would introduce its own in-app payment system, circumventing Apple and Google's 30% fee.

A few hours later, Apple pulled the app for its store, citing a violation of its policies. The problem for Apple: Epic knew this was coming.

Just a few minutes after the app was pulled, Epic filed a lawsuit accusing Apple of anticompetitive behavior. It also launched a hilarious Easter egg-filled protest video which skewered Apple's famous 1984 advert and called on players to #FreeFortnite.

It was a trap, and Apple walked right into it. Google soon followed – and so did a second lawsuit – although sadly Epic denied us the Google equivalent of Apple's 1984 parody.

But the timing here was very deliberate. Just two weeks earlier, Apple CEO Tim Cook was summoned to Capitol Hill to defend against accusations that Apple was behaving in ways that stifle competitors. During that historic antitrust hearing, much of the attention on Apple focused on the App Store.

With a co-ordinated series of moves, Epic was this week able to demonstrate just how much power Apple and Google hold, and how the 30% cut these companies take on in-app purchases .

Facebook jumps into the fray

It was also meant as a rallying cry, and soon other voices came to its defence. Spotify, never one to miss an opportunity to swing at Apple, took its shot by calling out Cupertino 's "unfair practices." As did Tinder.

But things got more interesting on Friday when Facebook entered the arena.

Apple, it said, had refused to reduce the 30% fee on a new paid feature, which Facebook argues could help small business owners during the pandemic.

This wasn't the first time Facebook had aired grievances against Apple's App Store policies. Just a week ago, the social network finally launched its gaming app on iOS with a major caveat: users could only stream games, they couldn't play them.

Like Epic, Facebook had been squabbling with Apple for a while. And like Epic, it now has another thing to point at to make the case that Apple is harming competitors. 

Facebook attacking Apple in this way was a big deal. You should remember it was only two years ago that Apple was slamming Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The problem for Apple, and possibly Google too, is that both are under huge antitrust scrutiny. And as Epic tries to rally the industry, Apple could also be running out of friends.

Google keeps similar rules over app purchases, of course, but it's akso been more lenient. For example, Google also refused to waive that 30% fee on Facebook's app this week, but will allow Facebook to process payments through Facebook Pay. Apple said it won't.

It's also because of Apple that the 30% tax became the industry norm – another reason why it's attracting so much fire.

And with an industry of developers now turning against it and antitrust scrutiny hanging overhead, the next few weeks will show us just strong the walls around Apple's garden are. One thing is for certain: this war is far from over.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The rise and fall of Donald Trump's $365 million airline

Happy Saturday!

Hedge funds that love to use Robinhood data to hunt for winning ideas won't be able to tap its enormous pool of trades in quite the same way anymore. As CNBC first reported, Robinhood is no longer publishing how many customers held a particular stock, and the retail-trading app is also limiting access to its API.

And as Dakin Campbell and Dan DeFrancesco learned, hedge funds were pinging other data providers within hours of hearing the Robinhood news to try to line something else up. 

Read the full story here:

Steve Cohen's Point72 and other hedge funds are sending urgent requests to find a replacement after Robinhood data on hot stock trades suddenly went dark

What does it take for vendors to win customers over on a data feed that's not quite so high on their list of priorities? Dan teamed up with Bradley Saacks to ask gatekeepers at top alt-data consumers what they look for in a pitch. You can read all their responses here:

How to pitch Bridgewater, Balyasny, and other big names on buying new data sets, according to 7 people in charge of their strategies

Goldman Sachs is among bidders for GM's credit-card business, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, a move that could mark another big push into consumer finance for the firm. Meanwhile, Goldman and other banks have been going all in on creating their own internal content machines in a bid to win customers — and the general public — over.

Dakin Campbell and Rebecca Ungarino took a look at who's driving that push and how work-from-home has taken those efforts to the next level. Read the full story here: 

Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs have been building out their own in-house media organizations to help control their image. Now they're kicking production into overdrive.

More big headlines from this week below, including pay drama at PwC, how in-person client schmoozing is making a comeback, and the latest on what's going on inside Merrill Lynch's financial-adviser trainee program after an unusual pause on client outreach. 

If you're not yet a subscriber to our finance newsletters, you can sign up here.

Have a great weekend, 

Meredith 

The head of Merrill Lynch's financial adviser training program, the firm's main talent pipeline, is leaving

The head of Merrill Lynch's financial adviser training program is leaving after a year and a half in the role, industry news website AdvisorHub first reported on Friday. Jennifer MacPhee's successor, who the firm will name in the coming weeks, will have to contend with a shifting adviser training and recruitment landscape in an aging industry trying to attract new blood.

Bank of America's wealth manager recently prohibited its financial advisers in-training from reaching out to prospective new clients. And as Rebecca Ungarino reported earlier this week, the reason for Merrill Lynch's temporary pause was "many" outreach-related violations across the organization.

A former PwC partner just sued the firm for $15 million in compensation, offering a rare look at pay and wrangling over clients at a Big 4 firm

As Jack Newsham reports, a new lawsuit is packed full of details about compensation and how partners get credit for business they bring in at PwC — including a copy of a PwC offer letter that was attached to the complaint. 

Wall Street is taking clients for long walks on the beach and out to dinner outdoors in the Hamptons as safe schmoozing picks up

Offices may still be largely empty, but Wall Street is upping its game when it comes to entertaining clients. Dinners in Manhattan are back on — but not everyone is thrilled about sitting on a city sidewalk in the summer heat. Those looking for an alternative can try golf, beach walks, or dining al fresco in the Hamptons. Bradley Saacks, Meghan Morris, and Rebecca Ungarino have all the details 

Investment manager TIAA is shrinking headcount with buyouts offering up to 2 years of pay. Now 10% of its workers are cashing out.

Investment manager TIAA's voluntary employee buyout program was so successful that the company now says it can avoid layoffs through 2021. Meghan Morris laid out how the buyout offer played out and which areas of the firm saw the most uptake. TIAA's asset-management arm, Nuveen, saw lower participation in the program than the overall company.

WeWork nabbed a fresh $1.1 billion in financing from SoftBank as the coworking giant's membership dropped

WeWork saw its membership number fall in the second quarter, but the coworking giant continued to add locations and nabbed a fresh $1.1 billion from lead investor SoftBank. Meghan Morris rounded up details on revenue and the firm's latest take on how a multi-year turnaround plan is playing out.

Investments in risky hotel debt could get wiped out as travel gets slammed — and one group of lenders may see an outsized hit

South Korean lenders poured billions of dollars into US commercial real-estate acquisitions in recent years, including hotel properties that have been battered in recent months by the pandemic. Dan Geiger explains what drove the investment spree and what's next for the firms. 

Equifax's CTO walked us through a Google Cloud migration that's addressing security concerns, cutting $240 million in costs, and helping speed up product launches

Dan DeFrancesco chatted with Bryson Koehler, the chief technology officer of Equifax, who detailed the digital transformation the consumer credit-reporting giant has undergone over the past two years. Koehler shared that Equifax has put a significant amount of a $1.25 billion investment toward full adoption of the public cloud, already decommissioned 10 data centers, and is on pace to save $240 million.

On the move

• $34 billion Citadelpoached a rising star from billionaire Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital to join its Ashler stock-picking unit.

• Deutsche Bankhas poached a senior trader from HSBC to bolster its distressed-credit business, a powerhouse group that's been hit with defections in 2020.

Careers

• Students are weighing the pros and cons of virtual law school. Here's why some are deferring, and what that means for job prospects.
• How people of color can identify mentors on Wall Street and progress their careers, according to a Black JPMorgan VP

Private equity

• Private-equity fundraising hit a 2-year low in Q2 as coronavirus wreaked havoc with businesses and travel. We spoke to experts about why the drop is a 'pause, rather than a wholesale change.'
• Private-equity giants like Carlyle are inking more deals in Asia. Here are the areas where they see the most investing opportunity.

Real estate

• Neighbor, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup that wants to be the Airbnb of self-storage, is partnering with landlords to turn empty offices into spaces for people's stuff
• A student-housing developer is facing backlash after pressuring schools to bring college kids back to campus so it could keep its revenues up
• Real estate giant CBRE has an 'unparalleled' amount of data. Its tech chief lays out how it's putting it to good use.
• Massive office landlord Vornado is planning to install face-reading cameras to track tenants in the bulk of its huge portfolio
• SL Green is moving to foreclose on a building on NYC's glitzy Fifth Avenue shopping corridor, highlighting a dismal outlook for commercial real-estate

Payments and fintech

• A fintech that helps Twitch, Showtime, and CBS manage their subscriptions is eyeing international growth after nabbing a big investment from Accel-KKR
• TD Ameritrade's growth accelerator just launched an app for college debt as its first startup. Execs at the brokerage giant explain why it's a key tool to build entirely new businesses.
• A Y Combinator-backed payments startup that's raised $16 million just launched out of stealth mode. Here's a look at how it's plugging into accounting software like Quickbooks to help companies manage bills.
• PayPal-backed rewards app Dosh is eyeing 150 million new customers through partnerships with Venmo and other fintechs as it taps into the booming cash-back industry

Hedge funds

• Dan Loeb lays out why $13 billion Third Point is loading up on Disney stock and calls the streaming business an opportunity of a lifetime
• Data scientists and engineers are leaving Amazon and Facebook for hedge funds. Here are the firms that are winning the battle for top tech talent.

Asset management

• Here's who's most at risk once asset managers ramp up layoffs as the pandemic pressures the already-squeezed industry

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why you don't see brilliantly blue fireworks

• As nightlife reduces to a simmer across the globe, a group of European club promoters, creatives, and technologists have banded together to create a virtual experience: "Club Quarantäne."
• The virtual nightclub boasts a 360-degree video dance floor and sets from DJs and artists across Europe. 
• Since its inception, the club has hosted three parties and about 700,000 visitors. And like the exclusive Berlin club scene it's based on, 40,000 people were turned away on its first night.
• In a time when people are feeling more isolated than ever, the project says it aims to bring a sense of community — and a little bit of humor — to even the loneliest on lockdown. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

What is it, exactly, that makes a club a club?

Is it the music? The lights? The bouncer tending the line outside? The revelers you chat with while waiting for the restroom?

Carlo Luis Ruben Schenk might know the answer. He's a promoter from the clubbing capital of the world: Berlin. And since nightlife has been reduced to a simmer across the globe, he's been part of a team creating a virtual club for hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Club Quarantäne has been that digital sanctuary for clubless bacchants. The venue, which can be attended through any desktop web browser, boasts a 360-degree-video dance floor, with the thumping bass of a techno set and visuals that range from futuristic greenhouses to industrial tunnels filled with laser lights. 

There's even a "line" outside, with a countdown clock to getting in. A virtual bouncer asks questions like, "Do you know who's playing tonight?" and "Are you already a supporter?" When asked if there were any right answers, Schenk smiled.

"It's random," he said in an interview with Business Insider, adding: "It's also a joke about security guys and the night hosts in clubs. Sometimes it really feels random why you aren't chosen to get in."

The site is full of tongue-in-cheek references to Berlin's nightlife. Schenk estimated that 40,000 people, or 30% of attendees, were rejected during the club's first night. The good news: They can always refresh their browser and try again.

There has been no shortage of digital music festivals since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Behemoths like Tomorrowland and small local concerts have all gone online. With the exception of Travis Scott's impressive Fortnite concert, the technology is pretty much the same: a livestream of a performance and the occasional link to an official Zoom party. 

But the Club Quarantäne team, which includes promoters, technologists, and creatives from across Europe, believe that clubbing is more than just watching a DJ set. Rather, the team says, it's about the unique space that's created by artists and strangers that are pulled together by music. In a time when people are feeling more isolated than ever, the project aims to bring a sense of community to even the loneliest on lockdown. 

The project has set itself apart from other online festivals by diving headfirst into the virtual experience, taking lessons from video gaming to reconstruct a club online. Since its inception in March, it's hosted three parties — which can each last up to 40 hours — and 700,000 visitors. 

"You can listen to the music, you can join a Zoom party, you can chat with people, you can watch the visuals, you can influence the visuals," Schenk said.  "There were different ways of gameplay,"

For one party, the team created a "drip button." The more the users collectively clicked, the more the visuals morphed. The team has future plans that include making visuals steam when more users enter the dance floor, and leveraging microtransactions to let users buy "trees" to fill a virtual field.

There are also "bathrooms" where users can pick a color to serve as their avatar and message with people across the world. People from Detroit to Warsaw chatted and passed out Zoom links to video-chat parties, attendees said. 

Music quality was a big part of the initiative, too. Schenk's team asked artists for clubby sets — upbeat techno, atmospheric music — the stuff you'd hear in a boiler room at 4 a.m. They said they wanted a high-quality stream that could cater to users with serious sound systems. 

Danya Adib, a 24-year-old from Redwood Shores, California, turned up her subwoofer to listen from her bedroom in the Bay Area. She said she used to frequent San Francisco's electronic music scene.

"I closed my eyes and for a second I felt like I was back," she said in an interview with Business Insider.

The nightlife industry globally has been shut down and struggling since the pandemic began. Approximately two-thirds of Berlin's 140 clubs are now facing acute threats of closure, according to ClubCommision, a trade organization. Some well-known institutions like Tresor, Sage Club, and The Watergate have survived through government loans, but many others, especially smaller clubs, have fallen into heavy debt or closed permanently. Gretchen, a club in Berlin, accrued more than 50,000 euros in debt, according to The Wall Street Journal. Club Quarantäne is not affiliated with any particular nightclub.

Entry to Club Quarantäne is free, but visitors can make donations at a virtual "bar" that's already raised 14,000 euros for charities like Seawatch, which rescues refugees in the Mediterranean, or racial justice organizations. 

The team says it's planning to come out with a series of Pride events that focus on queer collectives around the world. In the long term, the team hopes to move beyond their own Berlin club scene, to help brands and artists of other genres throw unique virtual events.

"We don't want to do something that just fills the gap until Covid is over. We want to create a new way of performing music in the internet," Schenk said. "It should not replace live music, but it should be a serious way of sharing your musical art."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why you don't see brilliantly blue fireworks

• Palantir Technologies plans to go public using a direct listing in late September, according to Bloomberg. 
• It would make Palantir the third technology company to do a direct listing, a alternative public listing process pioneered in the industry by Spotify in 2018 and Slack in 2019.
• Spotify and Slack both hired Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Allen & Company as financial advisors on their direct listings. It's unclear who Palantir will work with.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It's a truth universally acknowledged among technology bankers that only one company a year will have the right financial situation to skirt the more traditional IPO in favor of a direct listing.

In 2020 that designation was supposed to be left to Airbnb – then Palantir stepped up to the plate. 

Palantir, the secretive data analytics firm founded by Peter Thiel, has spent nearly two decades running on venture capital, and eventually, on revenue. The company plans to go public through a direct listing in late September,  Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

The company announced last month that it had confidentially filed draft paperwork to go public, but so far none of its financial information has been made public. Still, the direct listings of Spotify in 2018 and Slack in 2019 give some clues as to what is to come for Palantir.

Direct listings, the most exciting trend to hit investment banking until SPACs came onto the scene, enable companies to trade publicly without floating any new shares. Instead, the company simply begins trading on an exchange and existing shareholders (private market investors and employees) are free to sell their stock to public market investors. 

A company doesn't lose any of it ownership in a direct listing but it also doesn't get to raise any new capital. This makes Palantir an unexpected candidate for a direct listing since, unlike its predecessors, Palantir actually needs the cash.

Palantir has made up for this need by turning to the private markets. A public filing from early July shows the company is in the process of raising $961 million in private capital. So far it has raised $550 million, mostly from the Japanese holding company Sompo Holdings. 

Why would a company raise private funding when it could just raise that cash in an IPO? Sam Dibble, a San Francisco-based partner at the law firm Baker Bott, isn't surprised. He said that speed and a guaranteed valuation both make private fundraising more attractive than that initial IPO float. You also don't have bank underwriting fees, which cost a company around 7% of what it raises in a traditional IPO.

"Most companies, if they can get all the money from one ATM as opposed to hundreds or thousands, would rather go to one or two big investors," Dibble told Business Insider.

Once Palantir has been public a year, it will be eligible to raise additional funds through the public markets in a process that's much faster than an IPO.

"The key from a securities law perspective is to buy one year's worth of runway," Dibble said. "After that, you're eligible and able to raise quickly from the private markets, and usually at a reduced underwriting cost."

Spotify and Slack led the way

The direct listing processes for Spotify and Slack closely mirrored one another, and while nothing is certain, they could shine light on what is to come for Palantir.

It's unclear which banks Palantir will work with on its upcoming public listing. But unlike with traditional IPOs, direct listings don't require dozens of underwriters to finance the IPO.

Both Spotify and Slack direct listings relied on the same three financial advisors: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Allen & Company.

Slack actually listed 10 different banks on its S-1 but the rest of the banks just provided research on the company, sources told Business Insider at the time. Those three banks split around 90% of the $22 million in banker fees, Bloomberg reported.

It's also not clear which exchange Palantir will list on, but both Spotify and Slack listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

As for timing, Bloomberg reported that Palantir's direct listing is planned for late September, which means the S-1 could come out any time now. Spotify filed its public registration on February 28, 2018 and listed five weeks later on April 4, 2018. Slack filed its S-1 on April 26, 2019 but didn't list until June 20, 2019.

• Read more about Palantir and its plans to go public:
• Secretive data firm Palantir built its business on a cloak-and-dagger image. But as the company braces for an IPO, insiders say it's lost its mystique and is struggling to figure out a steady revenue model.
• These 11 people should grow from rich to richer if Palantir has a successful IPO
• Palantir's move to go public could ditch the standard IPO process. Here's why that move could pay off for the secretive $20 billion company.
• Palantir's latest controversy is on its board: a Wall Street Journal reporter who is friends with Peter Thiel and whose father is the novelist Tom Wolfe

SEE ALSO: 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why American sunscreens may not be protecting you as much as European sunscreens

• Cloud giant Salesforce is said to be looking to acquire a company that specializes in robotic process automation, or RPA, technology that helps businesses automate common and repetitive computer tasks.
• The move would help boost Salesforce's position in the cloud applications market, at a time when the tech giant is going through a period of slower organic growth, partly due to the coronavirus crisis.
• We checked with analysts on the RPA companies that could be potential acquisition targets for Salesforce. Here are the 10 possibilities they mentioned:
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Salesforce, like other enterprise software companies, has so far seemed to weather the pandemic better than those in certain other sectors.

However, the cloud software giant is still being cautious, and in May cut its full-year revenue targets from $21 billion down to $20 billion. That would show revenue growth of 17% from a year prior, as opposed to the higher 23% it was aiming for, which would in turn show some of Salesforce's weakest growth in recent memory.

Over the last few years, Salesforce has turned to large acquisitions — like Tableau and MuleSoft— to help meet its ambitious growth targets. It has also brought several smaller names into the fold, like its most recent acquisition of Vlocity in February. 

While CEO Marc Benioff said in February that he doesn't "anticipate any major acquisitions in the short term," he also described the acquisition of Vlocity for $1.3 billion as too good to pass up. And with the company forecasting a slowdown in organic growth, that could mean that another big acquisition is at least under discussion.

"It would make sense that they would be looking for a pretty high profile acquisition, given that they had to adjust their revenue guidance, like every company did, because of COVID," said Dan Elman, an analyst with Nucleus Research. It would help Salesforce "recover the year" and boost their growth numbers in the long term, he added. 

As for what kind of company Salesforce might like to actually buy, a hint may have come in the form of a recent profile of Benioff in The Information, in which an advisor to the company said that there's some interest in making a deal in the market for robotic process automation, or RPA. A Salesforce spokesperson said that the company doesn't comment on rumors or speculation. 

RPA is technology that helps businesses automate the common, repetitive computer tasks, that are traditionally handled by human employees. It's a market where titans like Microsoft and its Power Platform compete with leading startups including UiPath and Automation Anywhere. Salesforce, for its part, has already been investing in RPA startups via its venture capital arm, even as it builds those capabilities into its core product.

Analysts tell Business Insider that a heavier investment in RPA would be a smart move for Salesforce, which "is going to want to keep up and accelerate faster," said Dan Newman, an analyst at Futurum Research. 

"It would definitely be a growth opportunity for Salesforce, enabling them to accelerate for customers, the bot capabilities that they've already made an investment in Einstein," said Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst at Valoir. Einstein is Salesforce's artificial intelligence tool, embedded in all of its apps. 

The ultimate goal, is all about making customers stick around, Newman said.

Business Insider asked analysts which RPA companies Salesforce might be eyeing for an acquisition, (with all private company valuations taken from PitchBook estimates, and market caps at the time of writing).Here are the 10 companies they thought would be a good fit:

Automation Anywhere

Valuation: $6.8 billion

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: Automation Anywhere already has deep ties to Salesforce, beyond just the software integrations between the two. First off, Salesforce is already an investor in the hot startup, and led its $290 million Series B round in November. On top of that, Bill Patterson, Salesforce's executive VP of CRM applications, sits on Automation Anywhere's board. 

Automation Anywhere's technology would complement, but not compete, with what Salesforce is already doing with its Einstein AI bots, said Valoir analyst Rebecca Wettemann. Also, Automation Anywhere has industry-specific automation capabilities, so it would complement Salesforce's current strategy in targeting sectors like finance, healthcare, and government.

UiPath

Valuation: $10.2 billion

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: UiPath is one of the most popular RPA companies in the market right now, and has a sky-high valuation after a $225 million funding round in June. With all of the new funding coming in, investors will likely be looking for an exit soon, either by public offering or acquisition, Valoir's Rebecca Wettemann said. UiPath is also already a Salesforce partner, with integrations between their two products. 

UiPath had a rocky 2019, when the company was forced to cut 400 jobs, around the same time its well-regarded CFO Marie Myers left the company. As of its new funding round, however, UiPath appears to be back on track. CEO Daniel Dines recently told Business Insider the startup is eyeing an IPO in early 2021. UiPath has raised $1.2 billion from investors, including Sequoia and Accel. 

Pegasystems

Market Cap: $9.21 billion

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: Pegasystems makes tools for customer engagement and has a platform for business process automation and custom apps. Pegasystems is somewhat of a competitor to Salesforce because it also provides customer relationship management software. As a public company that's been around for over 35 years, it may not necessarily be looking to be acquired, some analysts note — but the fact that it is a leader in the RPA market and has a focus on CRM software could be attractive to Salesforce.

Pegasystems and Salesforce do have some "competitive overlap" but it would enable Salesforce to expand its portfolio, said Futurum Research analyst Dan Newman. Like Salesforce, Pegasystems also focuses on industry-specific solutions, selling products into specific market verticals like finance or manufacturing.

Blue Prism

Market Cap: $1.25 billion GBP ($1.6 billion USD)

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: Blue Prism is considered to be the pioneer of robotic process automation technology. Its chief technology evangelist, Pat Geary, is credited with first coining the term "robotic process automation." It's a publicly traded company, based in the UK, with about 1,000 employees and over 1,500 customers around the world. 

Although it was an early player in the space, it has fallen off the conversation radar, said Futurum Research's Newman, but that's exactly why it could be a target for Salesforce. A deal could help highlight Blue Prism's lead in the space, while also giving Salesforce credibility by adding a very established company. Dan Elman at Nucleus Research agreed and said the software as a service model that Blue Prism operates under would fit into Salesforce well. 

WorkFusion

Valuation: $400 million

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: WorkFusion creates intelligent process automation software that's powered by pre-trained bots, artificial intelligence technology and advanced analytics. WorkFusion "just sort of aligns with that Salesforce strategy of picking one of the leaders in the space and then buying out that established customer base and using it as a cross-sell opportunity," said Nucleus Research's Daniel Elman. 

Its technology is often seen as competitive to Salesforce's Einstein AI bots, said Valoir's Rebecca Wettemann, but it does have pre-trained systems for financial service and insurance. "That would be attractive given Salesforce's industry solutions focus," she added, and definitely attractive to Salesforce's customers because of how simple the tools are to use. 

Craig Le Clair, an analyst with Forrester and an RPA expert, also cited WorkFusion as a potential target for Salesforce, noting that the company has "a lot of depth in no document extraction and machine learning and text analytics."

"WorkFusion is a strong company," he said. "They'd also be getting a really good book of business as well."

Appian

Market Cap: $3.77 billion

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: Appian does more than just RPA, but that is  just what could make it attractive to Salesforce, analysts said. Appian has an app development platform that helps users create apps without much code, automate mundane tasks for employees, and easily integrate with other business tools like Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, DocuSign and the like. 

While Appian is not a big Salesforce partner, and doesn't have an app on the Salesforce AppExchange app store, a lot of customers use the two together, said Valoir's Rebecca Wettemann. "Appian has a lot of interesting industry-specific capabilities that would be attractive beyond RPA that accelerate time to value to customers and play into Salesforce's industry solutions capabilities," she said. 

Similar to Salesforce, Appian also has an emphasis on company culture and social responsibility, which would make it a good fit in that sense as well, Wettemann said. 

Apttus-Conga

Valuation: Before their merger, Apttus was valued at $1.86 billion Conga at $715 million for Conga, but their combined valuation is currently unknown.

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: Startups Apttus and Conga recently merged. Apttus makes software to help sales people generate quotes for potential deals, while Conga makes software to draft sales contracts. While Conga hasn't marketed itself as an RPA company, its overall set of tools includes the relevant technology.

Notably, not only does the combined company already partner with Salesforce for product integrations — Salesforce Ventures as an investor in each of the two companies even before the merger. Salesforce buying it up, it would get not only the Apttus-Conga RPA tools, but also its specific products for salespeople.

Digitech Systems

Valuation: PitchBook does not list venture capital investors or a valuation for Digitech Systems.

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: Digitech Systems primarily provides enterprise content management software, helping customers manage all of their documents, photos, and other information. Over the years, however, its product has grown to include RPA capabilities, to help share that information across other apps and services. 

The main thing Salesforce could find attractive about the company is its partner ecosystem, said Valoir's Rebecca Wettemann. "They have intelligent automation, they have industry capabilities, but because they sell largely through partners, they have a partner ecosystem that's already implementing their capabilities, so could be a way for Salesforce to build out more implementation partners as well," she said. 

Kryon

Valuation: $132.3 million

Why Salesforce would want to buy it: Kryon, which was founded in 2008, is based in Tel Aviv and New York. Analyst firm Gartner has praised its robotic processing technology's "strong capabilities around process/task discovery...based on captured keystrokes, mouse clicks, data inputs and outputs of business users."

Kryon also has been named among the top RPA companies by IT Central Station, the professional IT review site. Forrester analyst Craig Le Clair said Kryon could be a good fit for Salesforce given the software giant's more customer-facing orientation and its heavy focus on customer support and services.

Antworks

Valuation: PitchBook says that Antworks has raised $25 million in funding to date, but did not list a valuation.

Why Salesforce would buy it: Antworks, a Singapore-based AI and automation company, has been attracting attention for its "intelligent automation software" used for extracting data and insights from documents.

Craig Le Clair of Forrester said the company has "some really some good analytics around email management and combining with bots and so forth."

• The Trump administration's moves to throttle TikTok are serving as a kind-of wake-up call for the venture and startup communities about the risk of doing business with foreign companies and investors. 
• The administration's attack on TikTok has been rooted in two longstanding authorities that it has been using more aggressively to scrutinize foreign investment, particularly in tech firms.
• Both authorities give presidents and their aide wide discretion to act in the interests of national security, a concept that they are free to define for themselves and increasingly has been considered to encompass economic issues.
• Venture investors say the moves add to the risks of dealing with foreign buyers and investors and may make them wary of doing so.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Trump administration's crackdown on TikTok has served as a kind of wake-up call for Silicon Valley about the risks of getting in bed with foreign investors and companies.

On Friday, the president issued an executive order ordering TikTok parent ByteDance to undo the merger that led to the app's expansion into the US and around the world. The order followed one from last week that would effectively ban the video-sharing app in the US. And those actions came in the wake of threats by the administration to force a sale of TikTok's US and other operations and essentially undo a years-old acquisition that paved the way for its expansion into this country.

Together, the moves show the increasingly skeptical view the US government is taking of foreign investment — particularly from China — into technology and internet companies. They also illustrate the president's far-reaching powers to block or unwind such deals — even years after the fact — or to throttle foreign-owned companies seeking to do business in the US.

"I don't feel that enough of the venture companies and the [private equity] backed companies in tech and data understand that this ... could be a real issue," said Doreen Edelman, a partner at Lowenstein Sandler and the chair of the law firm's global trade and policy group.

The president is using his emergency powers to attack TikTok

The president's moves against TikTok have been undergirded by two primary sources of power — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which itself has its foundation in a series of laws and executive orders. Both IEEPA and CFIUS allow the president to take steps to protect national security.

IEEPA allows the president to restrict or bar US individuals or companies from doing business with a foreign entity after declaring a national emergency related to an "unusual and extraordinary threat" from a foreign actor. The law has been used primarily to put in place sanctions, such as those Jimmy Carter slapped on Iran following the hostage crisis in that country that started in 1979 and those that Trump put on foreign actors who interfered in US elections.

Trump's executive order last week was based on his authority under IEEPA. Having already declared in May of last year that the acquisition of certain technologies and services represents a national emergency, the president asserted that TikTok represents one part of that threat. In his order, he declared that in 45 days any transactions between US individuals or entities and TikTok would be prohibited.

The president has extremely broad powers under IEEPA and companies or individuals targeted by it have little way to defend themselves in court against it, said Amy Deen Westbrook, a professor of international and commercial law at Washburn University School of Law.

"We're talking about a national security determination by the executive, which is almost unreviewable," Westbrook said.

Trump's cabinet and aids have also been scrutinizing TikTok

CFIUS, meanwhile, is an interagency group composed of the heads of presidential cabinet members and advisors, including the secretaries of Treasury, State, and Defense. The committee has the power to review transactions involving foreign actors purchasing or investing in US companies or real estate. It can rubber-stamp such deals, force the parties involved to modify the deals to address national security concerns, or recommend to the president that the deals be blocked.

It was the president's authority under CFIUS that he used Friday to order the unwinding of ByteDance's 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, which led to TikTok becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

In the past, the parties involved in foreign investments or acquisitions weren't required to notify CFIUS. But under a 2018 update to the laws underlying the committee, such parties now have an obligation to alert it to certain deals, most notably those involving companies that are involved in the production of particular technologies or infrastructure or that collect sensitive data on 1 million or more US individuals.

Some of CFIUS' authorities are extremely broad. It can review and force changes to deals long after they were finalized by the parties involved, if it was never notified about them when they happened. That retrospective power can extend back to deals that are years, potentially even decades old.

"There's no time limit," Edelman said. "Anytime in the future," she continued, "the government can decide this is a national security issue and come after the transaction and require a divestiture."

And a decision by CFIUS to rubber-stamp by sending the parties a so-called no-action letter doesn't necessarily mean they're home free. In 2006, the committee gave approval for a transaction in which a Dubai-based company would purchase a British one that operated several US ports. Despite CFIUS's approval, Congress objected to the deal and essentially forced the Dubai company to sell the US operations to an American firm.

"Even if you negotiate one of these mitigation agreements with CFIUS or even if CFIUS gives you the thumbs-up right away, there's no guarantee that that's a permanent approval," Westbrook said.

Another tricky thing about the CFIUS rules is that it takes a very broad look when considering the nationality of parties involved in a transaction. An individual or entity can be considered a US business even if it's based elsewhere and has a minimal presence in this country. The statute underlying the committee defines a US business as simply a person or entity engaged in interstate commerce in this country, no matter where they're actually based.

On the flip side, an acquirer or investor can come under scrutiny even that entity is based in the US or a friendly country. The CFIUS process looks at whether such parties are ultimately owned or controlled by foreign actors that may trigger a national security concern.

TikTok got snared by CFIUS's broad powers

TikTok got caught up by both of those CFIUS provisions — the committee's broad definition of nationality and its power to review deals long-since closed — thanks to parent company ByteDance's acquisition in 2017 of rival video sharing service Musical.ly. The app, previously focused on a Chinese audience, became a US and global phenomenon after that deal. ByteDance rebranded Musical.ly, which already had tens of millions of users around the world, as TikTok, combined the app with its own, and used Musical.ly as the basis for TikTok's global expansion.

Both ByteDance and Musical.ly were based in China. At the time of the deal, ByteDance was not required to notify CFIUS about it, and it didn't do so.

But Musical.ly had a US office in Santa Monica and millions of US users. That was enough for CFIUS to have the authority to launch a retroactive review of the deal two years after the parties announced it.

In terms of the size of the presence a company has to have in the US to fall under CFIUS' jurisdiction, "there's no de minimis," Edelman said. "There's no lower threshold."

Another complicating factor: With both CFIUS and IEEPA, "national security" is left largely undefined, the legal experts told Business Insider. That's intentional, because it allows the government to adapt to new challenges or policy priorities as times and administrations change.

In years past, national security was usually construed in terms of military or geopolitical threats, rather than economic ones. But that's no longer the case.

"The distinction between economic and national security or military-national security is fully blurred at this point," Westbrook said.

Venture investors are worried about the risks

The stepped-up use of CFIUS and IEEPA by the Trump administration — and potentially by its successors — poses a distinct risk for the venture and startup industries. The vast majority of startups that don't go out of business are acquired, either by other companies or by private equity firms.

Foreign buyers play a big role in that market. Nearly 30% of all venture-backed startups that were acquired last year were bought by foreign companies, according to PitchBook. And of all the money that was spent to buy or acquire those startups, nearly 40% came from foreign investors.

At least some venture investors are worried about the increasing scrutiny the government is giving to TikTok and other such deals. The Trump administration's concern about China's access to data on American citizens and companies and China's encouraging of censorship of information critical of it companies based there is legitimate, said Duncan Davidson, a general partner at venture firm Bullpen Capital

But the way the administration has gone about addressing those concerns seems unprincipled and is leading to a lot of uncertainty in the market, he said. Such moves make Duncan less likely to invest in foreign companies or pursue foreign buyers of his startups.

"It seems a little random," he said. "Unpredictability is not good."

Venture investing already entails lots of risk, said James Currier, a managing partner at venture firm NFX. Investing in foreign-based startups adds even more potential complications — legal, cultural, geopolitical — on top of that, he said.

Venture investors invest for the long term, not expecting a payoff for 10 or more years into the future. They have lots of experience weighing risks over such time scales. Many successful ones choose to focus solely on their home markets rather than investing overseas as a way of mitigating such risks, Currier said.

Currier isn't as concerned as Duncan about the impact of Trump's moves against TikTok and other companies on venture investing. But, he said, the aggressive stance the Trump administration has taken toward foreign investment, particularly from China, does compound the problems faced by firms that invest in or seek investment from foreign companies and pushes such firms into largely uncharted territories. Few venture investors have experience navigating trade wars and how such disputes can affect their investments, he said.

"This stuff is not predictable," Currier said. "There's no historical intuition," he continued, "that we as a group have about how these governments might impact the outcome for one of these companies 6, 7, 8 years from now."

Business Insider reporter Max Jungreis contributed to this story.

Got a tip about startups, venture investing or TikTok? Contact Troy Wolverton via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• Read more about the TikTok dispute:
• SCOTT GALLOWAY: Why TikTok is unlikely to be banned in the US, despite plenty of US apps being banned in China
• TikTok reportedly has 18 million users who are 14 or younger, renewing concerns for children's safety
• TikTok's US employees are scared they won't get paid if the app is banned, and now they're planning to sue the Trump administration
• Here's everything we do and don't know about Microsoft's bid to acquire TikTok so far

SEE ALSO: These 3 startups were recently accused of misstating their financial information, highlighting how little such companies may be required to disclose to their VC backers and other investors

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why American sunscreens may not be protecting you as much as European sunscreens

• Many of the UK's most famous castles can be toured virtually.
• Virtual "vacations" are on the rise amid travel restrictions due to the coronavirus.
• There are outright bans or strict rules in place for visiting some countries, including many in Europe.
• US citizens have to quarantine for 14 days after arriving in the UK, while borders to the EU remain shut to US tourists.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It's that time of year — or at least, it's that time of the pandemic — when photos of Europeans going on vacation to Italy or the south of France take over social media.

It hurts only a little, especially as the borders to the EU remain closed to US tourists and a 14-day quarantine is mandated for those traveling to the UK. Many countries are keeping American travelers out because the outbreak is not considered contained in the US, with total reported cases approaching 5.5 million at last count — far more than any other country's reported case total.

Luckily, a few English and Scottish castles were nice enough to "open" their doors so anyone (including US citizens) can virtually take the holiday we all very much need. And though we can't actually sit in the gardens at Scotland's Blair Castle or walk the rooms of the Queen's Palace of Holyroodhouse — with a good internet connection, we can pretend that we're right there.

Too bad no one has recreated this virtual experience for the beaches in Portofino (yet, anyway). 

Here's how to access the online tour offerings for five stunning English castles that make for an ideal virtual-weekend escape.

SEE ALSO: 5 ways to throw a posh virtual cocktail and dinner party, from the owner of the 'Downton Abbey' castle

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The Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland

Noted for being Queen Elizabeth II's official residence in Scotland, the Palace of Holyroodhouse offers a free virtual tour of its Royal Dining Room, its Grand Stair, and its Morning Drawing Room. 

By touring the place and clicking the "I" icon that hovers over some objects in the rooms, people can learn more about this famous Edinburgh palace and its history.

For example, in the Morning Drawing Room, virtual visitors can learn about the cloisonné enamel copper incense burner, which was given to Queen Victoria in 1896 by Chinese Ambassador Li Hongzhang on behalf of the Emperor of China. The burner dates back to the second half of the 1700s.

Typically, the Palace of Holyroodhouse palace is open year-round to the public and even hosts garden parties. 

Access to Virtual Tours: HERE

Source: Royal UK

Blair Castle & Gardens in Perthshire, Scotland

Located in Perthshire, Scotland, Blair Castle currently has free virtual tours of its gardens and a few of its rooms.

The castle is best known for being home to 19 generations of the Atholl Family, a prominent Scottish family whose members included politicians, entrepreneurs, agriculturists, scholars, and soldiers.

Each generation of the Atholl family has made its mark on the castle, and a tour of its grounds captures key moments in Scotland's history. 

Access to Virtual Tour: HERE

Source:Blair Castle

Sissinghurst Castle in the Weald of Kent, England

Located in Cranbrook, Kent, the Sissinghurst Castle offers numerous free tours of its gardens, courtyard, and libraries. It is part of the National Trust, a charity organization in the UK that seeks to preserve heritage monuments. 

In the 1930s, the castle underwent a massive transformation by writer Vita Sackville-West. Her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, helped map out the garden rooms. The Sissinghurst Castle Gardens created by Sackville-West and her husband are among the country's most famous gardens today.

Previously, in the 1700s, the castle was a prison, before it went on to house the women's land army and later became a family home. The virtual tour of this castle also gives access to the top of its famous Tours, in which the entire 450-acre estate can be seen. 

Access Virtual Tour of Garden: HERE

Access Virtual Tour of Rose Garden: HERE

Access Virtual  Tour of Courtyard: HERE

Access Virtual Tour of Library: HERE

Source:National Trust

Buckingham Palace in London, England

Perhaps the most famous palace in the world, many parts of Buckingham Palace can be virtually toured for free from the comfort of one's home. 

The tours give access to the Grand Staircase, the White Drawing Room, the Throne Room, and the Blue Drawing Room. Located in the Westminster area of London, England, Buckingham is best known as the official London residence of Queen Elizabeth II.

Access All Virtual Tours: HERE

Source: Royal UK

Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England

Blenheim Palace, located in the Woodstock region of Oxfordshire, England, has been home to the Marlborough family for centuries. 

Through the palace's website, visitors can book specialist virtual tours with Blenheim's palace historian, Antonia Keaney.

Rich with history, people will be able to choose what type of experience they want to have and can dive into the storied background of the palace, including learning about Winston Churchill and his relation to the palace, what life was like at the palace during World War II, and the story behind the first Duchess of Marlborough who lived here.  

Each tour lasts about 45 minutes, and tickets can be purchased in advance.

Book Virtual Tour: HERE

Source: Blenheim Palace

• Vornado Realty Trust began installing facial recognition systems in buildings it owns in New York City five years ago. 
• The company, one of the city's largest commercial landlords with 19 million square feet across 35 buildings, recently expanded its use of the tech to 11 buildings and plans to roll it out across its entire portfolio.
• The coronavirus pandemic has prompted landlords to scramble to create seamless and touchless methods for tenants to pass through lobby security and dispatch elevators. 
• Vornado believes its use of facial recognition could help it encourage tenants to return to the pot-Covid workplace.  
• Vornado executives say the company uses facial recognition responsibly, allowing tenants to opt in and out voluntarily and securing and anonymizing the data. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Vornado Realty Trust, among New York City's largest office landlords, said it uses facial recognition in portions of its expansive portfolio and plans to expand its use of the controversial technology as workers are expected to migrate back to the office in the coming months.

The nearly $7 billion public company, which controls 19 million square feet across 35 properties in Manhattan, is one of the only major commercial landlords to embrace face reading, a technology that has raised public concerns over surveillance and privacy.

In a conversation with Business Insider, Vornado executives described the company's deployment of facial recognition in detail for the first time, stating that it was part of a push to modernize its buildings technologically in recent years and create more convenient entry systems for tenants.

Read More: Facial-recognition could be coming to your office. Here's how companies are pitching the tech to landlords and trying to allay privacy concerns.

Touchless methods that allow employees in large office buildings to quickly pass through lobby security and dispatch an elevator have gained importance amid the coronavirus pandemic as tenants have become concerned about the transmission of germs in public spaces and the workplace.

Vornado has used facial-recognition in some office buildings for the past five years

In Vornado's case, the company has employed face-reading systems in its buildings for the past five years, it said, positioning it as a potential leader in creating the kind of accessibility that landlords hope will encourage a return to the office.

"We are constantly looking to adopt new, cutting-edge technologies that will make our buildings more efficient and life more convenient for our tenants," said David Greenbaum, Vornado's vice chairman and one of the company's senior leaders. 

Greenbaum said that he first began discussing the technology with Vornado's chairman and CEO, Steve Roth, about six years ago after noticing that some tenants in Vornado properties had to carry with them two entry cards, one to clear through a building's turnstiles and another to access the doors to their specific space.

Read More: Facebook just reached a blockbuster deal to lease the massive Farley Building in NYC as a tech and engineering hub. Here's why it's a huge win for a shaken office market.

Facial recognition offered the promise of creating an entry credential that required no phone, wallet, or access card.

Prior to 2020, the company installed the systems in 5 of its buildings. It later sold one of those office properties, leaving the company with 4 buildings where facial recognition is in operation. This year it accelerated work to install the technology in 7 additional buildings after Covid-19 hit. Those systems are now operational.

The company plans to install face-reading systems in its entire portfolio, but has not laid out a timeline when that work will be complete. Among the buildings where it will soon deploy the technology are One and Two Penn Plaza, large office properties that the company is in the process of extensively renovating. Among the buildings where face reading is already in operation is the large Midtown office tower, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, and 340 West 34th Street, where Amazon has offices.

Greenbaum initially suggested that Vornado would have face-reading cameras at the Farley Building, where it just signed a blockbuster lease with Facebook to occupy the over 700,000 square feet of office space at the property, which Vornado is redeveloping. A person at Vornado later clarified that that was not the case, stating the building would not be equipped with the technology. A spokeswoman for Facebook told Business Insider confirmed that employees wouldn't be using facial recognition as an entry method at the property and would instead use the company's standard badge system for access. 

How office workers can opt in to facial recognition 

Tenants can opt in and out of the system voluntarily and there is about a 40% participation rate in the 4 properties that had the technology prior to 2020, a total of about 6,000 of the 15,000 office employees who work in those properties. 

"Virtually everyone who has used the technology has liked it," Greenbaum said. "I never had a preconceived notion of what the adoption rate would be, but as our tenants see others using it, they are becoming increasingly comfortable with the technology."

It isn't clear yet what the participation rate will be in the 7 properties where the technology was recently brought online because most tenants haven't yet returned to the workplace, Vornado said.

Gaston Silva, the company's New York area chief operating officer, said that tenants who participate have their photo taken and that their biometric data is stored anonymously in onsite systems.

"Every face is assigned a number that is disassociated from someone's identity," Silva said. "The information is encrypted and stored on systems that cannot be accessed from the internet."

Many landlords have shied away from using facial recognition technology, especially as controversies have erupted over its use.

China uses it to surveil its citizens and oppress the Uyghurs, a minority population of Muslim citizens along its western border, actions that have drawn worldwide condemnation.

Clearview AI created an algorithm that pulled billions of faces from pictures posted on the internet, creating a database that could be used to identify nearly anyone.

"Based on my conversations with tenants, many find the concept of facial recognition to be creepy and they are opposed to the idea," said Craig Deitelzweig, CEO of Marx Realty, which has a portfolio of 4.6 million square feet of commercial space.

Facial-recognition proponents insist there are ethical ways to use the technology, including by taking the key steps of receiving consent from participants, securely storing their data, being transparent how it is used, and giving participants the right to opt out.

Vornado has used third-party facial reading technology and outside vendors to help it deploy the systems in its buildings, partners it declined to name. On its website, Vornado states that it uses the security company GMSC, which is owned by Vornado and has its headquarters in the Vornado-owned office building Eleven Penn Plaza, to help it manage tenants and visitor access to its buildings and "biometric facial recognition installation and enrollment assistance."

GMSC, on its website, says it handles security work for Amazon, Facebook, and Bloomberg, all three of which are tenants in Vornado's New York portfolio.

Subsequent to deploying face-reading systems, Vornado developed mobile applications that allow tenants to use their smart phone to pass through lobby security. Some tenants prefer facial recognition, Greenbaum said.

"In fact, facial recognition is easier than using your phone," Greenbaum said. "If you are on a call when you enter the building, you likely would prefer not to move the phone from your ear in order to bring it closer to the turnstile."

SEE ALSO: Facebook just reached a blockbuster deal to lease the massive Farley Building in NYC as a tech and engineering hub. Here's why it's a huge win for a shaken office market.

SEE ALSO: Facial-recognition could be coming to your office. Here's how companies are pitching the tech to landlords and trying to allay privacy concerns.

SEE ALSO: Mandatory temperature-taking is largely seen as a critical way to return workers to offices. But some big NYC landlords are worried about its effectiveness.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why American sunscreens may not be protecting you as much as European sunscreens

• Michigan announced this week plans to turn a busy stretch of interstate into a self-driving car corridor. 
• An Alphabet-backed startup has been tasked with turning a stretch between Detroit and Ann Arbor into a connected highway. 
• The goal is to aid in developing infrastructure for self-driving cars as well as autonomous buses and shuttles. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The state of Michigan is planning to work with a Google-funded startup to transform a section of interstate highway into a self-driving car utopia.

Cavnue (pronounced like "avenue"), a newly formed subsidiary of the Alphabet's Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, won the state's bid for the project Thursday, and plans to move from lab-based experiments to actual public roadway within two years.

Several major automakers and self-driving developers are also advising on the project, but there's no word on how much money's being invested into the project.

Autonomous vehicles have been testing for years in California and other states. Waymo has even launched a self-driving taxi service on Lyft's app in Arizona. But this is the first time public infrastructure has been dedicated to the pursuit of driverless vehicles.

Eventually, the goal is to enable an express bus lane on the busy corridor between Ann Arbor and Detroit that's currently occupied by Interstate 94 and historic Michigan Ave, the first road to connect Detroit with Chicago, two industrial powerhouses and population centers in the late 17th century. Like most of the rest of the country, the rise of highways meant the death of public transit.

"A primary, or "anchor-use," of such a corridor would be to provide a public transit alternative – an autonomous shuttle service that may offer greater safety, throughput, and system-level efficiency than otherwise possible when compared with conventional vehicle or transit services, such as bus rapid transit ("BRT") or light rail transit ("LRT")," Cavnue said in its proposal.

It's a big bet — one many people, including Elon Musk, are making — but nobody's been able to truly improve upon the efficiency of true public transit. In the face of budget cuts and years of disinvestment, however, there's no reason not to let them try

Eventually, the connected infrastructure could help even "low level" autonomous vehicles, those that may not have the expertise to navigate crowded parking lots or side-streets, operate autonomously on the highway. Several trucking startups are already doing this with convoys of tethered trucks, and consumer software can already handle some highway driving in cars currently on the market.

"Just as the interstate highway system shaped transportation in the 20th Century, the Project can shape that of the 21st Century, while also seeking solutions that "future-proof" new infrastructure," Cavnue says.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why you don't see brilliantly blue fireworks

• Facebook had a bad week when it came to cleaning up toxic content on its platform.
• The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook refused to take action against a politician who violated its hate speech policies for fear of backlash, just months Trump's controversial posts suggesting violence against protesters.
• Another report from NBC News found that Facebook has discovered a community of millions of QAnon conspiracy theorists on its platform, and according to a report from Tech Transparency Report failed to deliver on its pledge to crack down on violent boogaloo hate groups.
• The company also got slammed for a loophole in its fact-checking policies that allow climate change skeptics to spread falsehoods by labeling them as "opinion," The Verge reported.
• Amid a scathing civil rights audit, grilling from lawmakers, and major advertiser boycott, Facebook has promised to "get better" at tackling hate speech and misinformation, but this week's missteps show that the company still has a long way to go.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In early July, Facebook executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and chief product officer Chris Cox geared up for a meeting with civil rights leaders who were fed up with what they called the company's failure to curb hate speech and misinformation on its platform.

The groups had organized an unprecedented advertiser boycott over the issue and did not mince words in their criticisms of the social media giant.

"We have been continually disappointed and stunned by Mark Zuckerberg's commitment to protecting white supremacy, voter suppression and outright lies on Facebook," Color of Change president Rashad Robinson said in a press release at the time.

The call to boycott Facebook came just weeks after a series of controversial posts by President Donald Trump where he suggested violence against anti-racism protesters and spread false claims about mail-in voting. Facebook said neither post violated its policies.

Despite the blowback, the company insisted its policies were fine, it just needed to step up enforcement.

"We have clear policies against hate — and we strive constantly to get better and faster at enforcing them," Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post ahead of the meeting with civil rights groups. "We have made real progress over the years, but this work is never finished and we know what a big responsibility Facebook has to get better at finding and removing hateful content."

This was far from the first time the company had pledged to "get better," and civil rights groups emerged from the meeting unconvinced this time would be any different, saying Facebook "is not yet ready to address the vitriolic hate on their platform."

A day later, Facebook released its first-ever civil rights audit, which slammed the company over its refusal to moderate political speech. Sandberg offered a lukewarm commitment to implement some, but not all, of the auditors' proposed changes.

Facebook gave critics some brief glimmers of hope in the following weeks. It announced tweaks to how it labels posts from politicians that violate its hate speech policies, added a label to a Trump post making false claims about mail-in voting, took down his post containing COVID-19 misinformation, and shut down accounts associated with violent hate groups and conspiracy theorists.

But this week's news shattered any illusion that Facebook had made meaningful progress toward its purported goal of cleaning up the platform.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Facebook (again) let politicians break its rules for fear of political backlash

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Facebook refused to apply its hate speech policies to T. Raja Singh, a politician from India's ruling party, despite his calls to shoot Muslim immigrants and threats to destroy mosques.

Facebook employees had concluded that, in addition to violating the company's policies, Singh's rhetoric in the real world was dangerous enough to merit kicking him off the platform entirely, according to the report, but the company's top public policy executive in India overruled them, arguing that the political repercussions could hurt Facebook's business interests in the country (its largest market globally).

Facebook has faced similar criticism in the US, where employees have complained that Facebook allows Trump and other conservatives to consistently bend its rules and doesn't take action because it fears political backlash.

Conspiracy theory groups are still flourishing on Facebook

On Monday, NBC News got a sneak peek at an internal Facebook investigation showing that thousands of groups and pages affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory have spread across its platform and attracted millions of followers.

NBC News reported that Facebook has been crucial to QAnon's growth because of its emphasis on groups, which its algorithm recommends to users based on their previous interests. Facebook executives even knew that the algorithm was pushing people to more radical positions, yet they shut down efforts to fix it, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Just months earlier, Facebook boasted that it had removed 11 QAnon accounts for using fake profiles to amplify their reach. But the investigation reported by NBC News reveals that Facebook has only chipped away at a tiny fraction of the conspiracies running rampant on its platform.

Violent extremists are evading Facebook's crackdowns

An analysis Wednesday from nonprofit group Tech Transparency Project said that "boogaloos" — violent anti-government extremists who advocate for a second Civil War and often espouse white supremacist views — were escaping Facebook's efforts to force them off the platform.

In June, Facebook said it banned hundreds of boogaloo-affiliated accounts, groups, and pages, and designated it as a "dangerous organization." But TTP's review found that Facebook's "slow and ineffective response has allowed the movement to persist on its platform."

More than 100 new groups popped up since Facebook's announcement, and others simply changed their name to avoid the crackdown, according to TTP, in a sign that boogaloos' tactics are evolving faster than Facebook can snuff out offenders.

Facebook fact-checking loophole lets climate change skeptics pass off falsehoods as opinion

Critics have long accused Facebook's third-party fact-checking program of lacking real teeth or enough resources to effectively fight back against misinformation.

One prominent example has been its policy exempting "opinion" pieces from fact-checks, which drew scrutiny last fall when Facebook overruled one of its fact-checkers. The fact-checker had determined that a post expressing doubt about climate change had cherry-picked data and labeled it "false," but after some Republicans alleged bias, Facebook removed the label, saying it was actually an opinion article.

Democratic lawmakers called on the company to close the loophole, but on Thursday, The Verge reported that Facebook is refusing to budge. Spokesperson Andy Stone told The New York Times last month that the company has bigger priorities, like coronavirus misinformation.

Unfortunately, it's not even clear Facebook can tackle that. Just two weeks after Stone's comments to The Times, Facebook took down a conspiracy theory video about the pandemic — but not before more than 14 million people had viewed it.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• "The Umbrella Academy" and "Selling Sunset" are just two of Netflix's originals that are popular on the service this week.
• Netflix introduced daily top lists of the most popular titles on the streaming service in February.
• Streaming search engine Reelgood keeps track of the lists and provides Business Insider with a rundown of the week's most popular TV shows on Netflix.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Netflix's "The Umbrella Academy" is a monster hit for the streamer. It's not only its most popular TV series this week, but the most in-demand streaming original in the US, according to data firm Parrot Analytics.

Netflix introduced daily top 10 lists of its most viewed movies and TV shows in February (it counts a view if an account watches at least two minutes of a title).

Every week, the streaming search engine Reelgood compiles for Business Insider a list of which TV shows have been most prominent on Netflix's daily lists that week. 

SEE ALSO: Should you pay for Peacock? Data reveals you can watch most of its movies and TV shows on the free version.

9. "The Rain" (Netflix original, 2018-present)

Description: "Six years after a rain-borne virus wipes out most of Scandinavia's population, two siblings join a band of young survivors seeking safety — and answers."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A

What critics said: "Perhaps it was better left to the imagination, because this is a disappointingly dull slog that injects almost three hours of filler into about an hour and a half's worth of plot." — TV Guide (season 2)

8. "Immigration Nation" (Netflix original, 2020)

Description: "With unprecedented access to ICE operations, as well as moving portraits of immigrants, this docuseries takes a deep look at US immigration today."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 100%

What critics said: "Immigration Nation transports viewers inside detention centers and ICE field offices across the country, and even into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. But it's the stories of the victims, torn from their children and parents, that prove the most haunting." — Daily Beast

7. "The Last Dance" (ESPN, 2020)

Description: "This docuseries chronicles the rise of superstar Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls, with unaired footage from an unforgettable 1997-98 season."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 96%

What critics said: "A stunningly refined and comprehensive look at the legacy and inner turmoil of one of the most essential sports teams of all time." — RogerEbert.com

6. "Wizards: Tales of Arcadia" (Netflix original, 2020-present)

Description: "Merlin's apprentice joins Arcadia's heroes on a time-bending adventure in Camelot, where conflict is brewing between the human, troll and magical worlds."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A

What critics said: N/A

5. "Selling Sunset" (Netflix original, 2019-present)

Description: "The elite agents at The Oppenheim Group sell the luxe life to affluent buyers in LA. Relationships are everything, and that often means major drama."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A

What critics said: "The Oppenheim Group is seemingly being held together by a thread and with more at stake than ever, season four can't come quick enough." — Radio Times (season 3)

4. "Shameless" (Showtime, 2011-2020)

Description: "This dramedy based on a British series centers on siblings in a dysfunctional Chicago family who struggle while coping with their alcoholic father."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 85%

What critics said: "Shameless no longer has the power to surprise us, since the writers have already put the characters through seemingly thousands of TV's most outrageous plots." — Boston Globe (season 10)

3. "The Seven Deadly Sins" (Netflix original, 2014-present)

Description: "When a kingdom is taken over by tyrants, the deposed princess begins a quest to find a disbanded group of evil knights to help take back her realm."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A

What critics said: N/A

2. "World's Most Wanted" (Netflix original, 2020-present)

Description: "Suspected of heinous crimes, they've avoided capture despite massive rewards and global investigations. A docuseries profiling the world's most wanted."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: N/A

What critics said: N/A

1. "The Umbrella Academy" (Netflix original, 2019-present)

Description: "Reunited by their father's death, estranged siblings with extraordinary powers uncover shocking family secrets — and a looming threat to humanity."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 82%

What critics said: "The Umbrella Academy season two greatly improves on the show's first year, and a combination of great characters, memorable performances, and crazy twists will leave you desperate to return to this wonderfully quirky world for a third season ASAP." — ComicBook

• Business Insider surveyed CEOs and human resources chiefs from some of the enterprise technology industry's most valuable startups about what jobs they're looking to fill. 
• We also asked them what qualities they look for in a job candidate.
• Below is a list of the top startups that are hiring, as well as what their CEOs or HR bosses had to say about how to make yourself stand out as an applicant. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Finding a job during a public health and economic crisis is difficult, but the enterprise technology industry is among the best bets for job seekers as it's been more insulated to the effects of the downturn than consumer technologies.

Business Insider surveyed the most valuable enterprise technology startups to find out which are hiring and what exactly they need – both in terms of open positions and the qualities they look for in job candidates.

Job seekers should keep in mind that we surveyed startups based on valuation, not other important factors such as a financial performance or company culture, though we have noted when startups have faced challenges of which we're aware.

Most information on company valuation and employee count via PitchBook. 

Here's what CEOs and HR chiefs from 23 of the most valuable enterprise technology startups told us about what positions they need to fill and what qualities they look for in job candidates they hire:

SEE ALSO: Meet the 54 most valuable enterprise tech startups, worth as much as $216 billion collectively

UIPath

Headquarters: New York, New York

Year founded: 2012

Valuation: $10.2 billion

Total raised: $1.2 billion as of July 2020

Employees: 3,000 as of July 2020

What it does: UIPath builds helps businesses automate common and routine tasks through a technology called robotic process automation (RPA). The startup is eyeing an IPO next year, as Business Insider recently reported.

Open positions:UIPath is "actively hiring" for more than 130 open positions, including product support consultant, automaton consulting director, senior application developer, HR manager, enterprise sales leader, software engineer, and customer support manager. The company is also hiring for internships in sales and product marketing, including sales development representatives and university partnerships roles.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "Our company's core values are to be humble, be bold, be immersed, and be fast," UIPath CEO Daniel Dines told Business Insider. "We look for candidates who embody those traits—specifically, individuals who are eager to listen and learn, challenge conventional ways of thinking, experiment, and use their imagination. Culture is incredibly important to us, and we make it a priority to ensure that the individuals we hire will be a good fit." 

Automation Anywhere

Headquarters: San Jose, California

Year founded: 2003

Valuation: $6.8 billion

Total raised: $840 million as of November 2019

Employees: 2,600 as of May 2020

What it does: Automation Anywhere is another RPA startup that helps companies automate repetitive tasks. CEO Mihir Shukla recently told Business Insider that the startup can now "automatically discover" business tasks to be automated.

Open positions: The company is trying to fill technical roles such as such as software engineers, developers, UX designers, and data scientists focused on cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and user experience.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? Here's what Chief Human Resources Officer Nancy Hauge told us:

"During the pandemic, we are interviewing candidates primarily over Zoom, and are discovering new insights from these interviews, compared to interviews we had in the past conducted in person. Social distancing has in some ways created a greater intimacy because there is a lack of predictability. Interviewers are seeing the candidate wholly. For example, there may be a child interrupting because they need attention, or a dog that suddenly jumps on their lap. How does the candidate react to these distractions?

There is so much more to be learned about a candidate over Zoom. Take the background screen. If they are using a background or filter for their Zoom interview, what is the candidate willing to disclose about themselves on a personal level? As an interviewer, you get to see how someone is marketing themselves by the created environment they invite their interviewer into. Is it a quiet room with a blank space or the chaos of a household? What has changed in evaluating candidates during this time is that interviewers and hiring managers need to be more consciously competent about getting to know people. We cannot rely on the routine ice breakers we had before, but I believe this adds to the quality of our hiring."

Plaid

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Year founded: 2012

Valuation: $5.3 billion

Total raised: $309.3 million as of January 2020

Employees: 500 as of July 2020

What it does: Plaid's payment infrastructure software connects users' bank accounts to financial applications like Robinhood and Credit Karma. Visa in January announced plans to acquire the company for a whopping $5.3 billion.

Open positions: Plaid is hiring for roles including in product, engineering, sales, and legal.
 
What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "We look for a mix of experience and potential," head of people McKenna Quint told Business Insider. "We really want to bring people into Plaid who can grow as the company grows. We also look for candidates who are motivated by our mission to empower innovators and democratize financial services. These candidates often have tremendous  drive to create impact, and a steadfast commitment to continuous improvement."

HashiCorp

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Year founded: 2012

Valuation: $5.27 billion

Total raised: $349.53 million as of March 2020

Employees: 1,000 as of June 2020

What it does: HashiCorp sells a slew of cloud tools that assist in solving security and operational issues for cloud infrastructure developers. As for HashiCorp's future plans, CEO Dave McJannet recently told Business Insider it intends to be "large standalone independent company."

Open positions: Most of the company's open roles are across sales, engineering, and customer success, but it's hiring across all departments.

"While cognizant of the challenges brought by the current economic environment we believe that this will ultimately accelerate the cloud transition and so we are continuing to selectively hire great talent to join our teams," HashiCorp CEO Dave McJannet told Business Insider.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "At HashiCorp, we believe an organization is driven by its people and culture," McJannet told Business Insider. "Broadly-speaking we think about two categories: skills and attributes. The unique challenge of startups is the pace of change — the job by definition changes and evolves as the company scales. As such we identify functional skills required to succeed in a particular role, but also focus on a set of role-specific 'attributes' that we've found best enable people to succeed as the company changes.  These include innate intellectual curiosity, humility, and the ability to distill simplicity out of complexity, to name a few.

We believe that this balanced focus on hiring for skills as well as attributes allows us to hire top talent at scale while removing bias from our interviewing practices. These core practices ensure we hire the best person for every role who will have long term success at HashiCorp."

Toast POS

Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts

Year founded: 2011

Valuation: $4.9 billion

Total raised: $897.25 million as of February 2020

Employees: 3,000 in February, before cutting "roughly 50 percent through layoffs and furloughs" in April. Current employee count unclear.

What it does: Toast makes software for restaurants and had to cut half its staff in April after the coronavirus crisis hit the industry hard. The company had raised $400 million just before the crisis, and if it had not raised that round in February, "it'd be in big trouble," investor Mitchell Green of Lead Edge Capital told Business Insider around the time of the layoffs.

Open positions:Toast is hiring for a bunch of positions including in engineering, product, marketing, sales finance, and customer success.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? "Empathetic, hospitality-minded, humble, curious, strong problem solvers," Director of talent acquisition Lori Busch told Business Insider.

Confluent

Headquarters: Mountain View, California

Year founded: 2014

Total raised:$455.9 million as of April 2020

Employees: 1,000 as of June 2020

What it does: Confluent builds a platform to help companies stream and analyze data in real-time.

Open positions: "We're still growing significantly and are hiring for over 100 distinct roles across every department," Confluent cofounder CEO Jay Kreps told Business Insider.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "We look for people who are smart, humble, empathetic, passionate about what they do, and who get stuff done," Kreps said. "To get a job, you can just apply. We carefully review every applicant and would love to hear from you."

Zenefits

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Year founded: 2013

Valuation $4.5 billion in 2015

Total raised: $598.27 million as of March 2019

Employees: 450 as of May 2020

What it does: Zenefits offers human resources and payroll software for small and medium-sized companies. As Business Insider reporter Rob Price writes, Zenefits was once one of the buzziest startups in Silicon Valley but dealt with various scandals and ultimately saw its valuation drop to $2 billion in 2016, replaced its CEO, and was fined by California regulators. Zenefits has laid off 15% of its staff in April; its current valuation is unknown.

Open positions: Zenefits is currently hiring for roles in customer care, engineering, legal, security, payroll operations, marketing and sales teams, including sales growth account executives, and software and cloud security engineers. 

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "We are looking for people who can thrive in a fast, flexible work environment, who are autonomous, and who manage their time effectively," Zenefits chief people officer Tracy Cote told Business Insider. "As we are all remote for the foreseeable future, and as we move to more of a 'remote-first' culture going forward, a proven ability to communicate effectively and collaborate remotely are critical. At Zenefits, we always hire for the team, not the role, so what we are looking for varies and is dependent upon our current business needs. To get a job at Zenefits, you don't have to know anyone or do anything special — we review every resume submitted, so if your background is the right fit for what we need, we'll be delighted to engage with you."

TripActions

Headquarters: Palo Alto, California

Year founded: 2015

Valuation: $4 billion

Total raised: $125 million as of June 2020

Employees: 900 as of June 2020

What it does: TripActions helps customers plan and pay for business trips without having to go through the arduous approval and reimbursement process that most companies use. 

TripActions has faced challenges during the pandemic. As Business Insider's Megan Hernbroth writes, it cut roughly one-fourth of its global workforce in March, slashed benefits, closed offices, and cut its cofounders' pay in half.

Open positions:TripActions is hiring sales development representatives and account executives in offices including in San Francisco Bay Area, London, New York, and Sydney, and it's hiring product managers, engineers, and designers in the Bay Area and Amsterdam.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "We hire to core competencies based on the profile of skills and experiences needed to be successful in the particular role," TripActions chief people officer Leslie Crowe told Business Insider, "We also assess against our core company values." 

Here's how Crowe said TripActions' current interview process works: "Candidates either apply directly or are referred to us by existing employees. A recruiter will conduct a screening interview to ensure the candidate has the appropriate skills and experiences for the given role, then will arrange a series of interviews including with the hiring manager and often peers, direct reports and appropriate leadership. Interviews are happening by Zoom until we are back in our offices post COVID, then interviews will resume back to in person at our offices."

Gusto

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Year founded: 2011

Valuation: $3.8 billion

Total raised: $200 million as of July 2019

Employees: 800 as of May 2020

What it does: Gusto makes human resources software for small businesses. 

Open positions: Gusto is "continuing to grow and hire for strategic roles," the company said, but did not specify which roles.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "We look for alignment around values, motivation and skillset," Josh Reeves, CEO and cofounder of Gusto, told Business Insider. "At Gusto, we've been very intentional about the culture we've built and the values by which we operate. When there's alignment around those values, when there's alignment around motivation and skillset, that's when employees can truly thrive, be successful, and contribute to what we are building." 

Freshworks

Headquarters: San Mateo, California

Year founded: 2010

Total raised: $401.1 million as of November 2019

Employees: 3,000 as of June 2020

What it does: Freshworks builds customer relationship management software. 

Open positions: Freshworks is hiring for over 200 positions to support its tech team, including data scientists, data platform engineers, data analysts, account managers, and machine learning engineers. CEO Girish Mathrubootham recently told Business Insider the company has pledged not to hold any layoffs during the pandemic, though it has paused hiring.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? Here's what Girish Mathrubootham, the CEO of Freshworks, told Business Insider:

"There are a lot of talented people in the market right now. We're looking for something extra. Beyond talent and smarts, we want each hire to add to the culture that we have built at Freshworks. Our culture code, CHAT, emphasizes craftsmanship, building a happy work environment, agility through empowerment and being a true friend of the customer.  We look for individuals who can embody these principles and those that combine a passion for what they do with a strong sense of purpose.

Our hiring process is designed to test all the required skills for the role be it technical skills, design capabilities, problem solving and having the drive to create a better experience for our customers -- irrespective of the function they are applying for."

Rubrik

Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA

Year founded: 2014

Valuation: $3.3 billion

Total raised: $553 million as of March 2020

Employees: 1,700 as of March 2020

What it does: Rubrik builds a cloud data management platform. 

Hiring: "Rubrik is always looking to hire strong talent, and that's especially true as the company enters its next phase of growth," CEO Bipul Sinha said. The company is hiring "highly qualified and highly committed individuals" across departments, with 42 open positions in engineering. 

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? Here's what Sinha told Business Insider:

"When we established this company, as founders, we envisioned the attributes of the best team that we could bring together: We wanted to be around people who are excellent at what they do, work fast, and who are trustworthy and open. That's how we came up with our core values: Relentlessness, Integrity, Velocity, Excellence, and Transparency (RIVET). As we continue to scale and grow, we're focused on bringing on top talent that exemplifies and adheres to those values. We're also committed to maintaining a low-ego, high-inclusion culture, where a multitude of ideas, appearances, perspectives and backgrounds are embraced and valued. This is the kind of place where individuals who are genuinely determined to move quickly to achieve success with and for others, as much as themselves."

Netskope

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California

Year founded: 2012

Valuation: $2.8 billion

Total raised: $744.3 million as of February 2020

Employees: 1,000 as of July 2020

What it does: Netskope builds a cloud security platform to help companies monitor how employees are using cloud software such as Slack and Google Drive — and make it more secure.

Open positions:Netskope is hiring in all departments, especially research, engineering, and customer success. Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri told Business Insider: "Digital Transformation is causing rapid growth across industries right now and has accelerated the inevitable transformation of enterprises' security stack."

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "Culture is very important at Netskope and a culture fit is something we prioritize for every position," Beri said. "Netskope has a strong emphasis on collaboration and transparency throughout our entire company and we look for employees that exhibit and live that culture. When interviewing we take the time to learn about the candidate beyond their resume, ensuring that the company is a fit for values, skills, and interests. While domain expertise and experience is vitally important, culture outweighs both."

GitLab

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Year founded: 2011

Valuation: $2.75 billion

Total raised: $413.82 million as of September 2019

Employees: 1,200 as of June 2020

What it does: Gitlab is a code-collaboration platform that rivals Microsoft-owned GitHub. 

Open positions: GitLab in April said it would close job postings and only hire for critical positions to save money amid the coronavirus crisis. Its outbound recruiting model is set up for recruiters to reach out to potential hires, particularly in support and security.

"This allows us to be more intentional about who we are hiring and makes it easier to manage the thousands of inbound applications we received per month," GitLab CEO, Sid Sijbrandij told Business Insider. "It also enables our recruitment team to focus on hiring team members for our open, priority near-term roles," 

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "'Values fit' is more important than culture fit," Sijbrandij said. "We aim to hire team members who share our company values of collaboration, results, efficiency, diversity, inclusion & belonging, and transparency. Specifically, we look for team members who are passionate and self-motivated to make a change—managers of one. Our mission is 'everyone can contribute"' which is something we firmly believe, regardless of position within GitLab."

Collibra

US headquarters: New York, New York

Year founded: 2008

Valuation: $2.36 billion

Total raised: $389.96 million as of March 2020

Employees: 655 as of March 2020

What it does: Collibra builds a platform to help companies manage, track, and learn from their data. CEO Felix Van de Maele told Business Insider in April that he expects demand for data services to continue despite cuts to IT budgets during the pandemic.

Open positions:Collibra is hiring for roles in engineering, IT, finance, and people. The company is hiring at a slower pace than it anticipated this year. 

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? Here's what Collibra CEO and cofounder Felix Van de Maele told Business Insider:

"We look at a number of factors, but an important quality is also one of our core values: open, direct and kind. We want to make sure that as our team grows, we intentionally maintain a culture where Collibrians can speak openly about what's on their minds. Another important element for us is to seek candidates who have the ability to embrace and drive change. Especially in this current environment, we know that constant change is the only way forward and we should all have the courage to both initiate and embrace it. A phrase we use a lot is 'we are One Collibra,' meaning that as a diverse, innovative team, our success is driven by the sum of our parts. As we keep moving in one common direction, we will always be more successful together"

Uptake

Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois

Year founded: 2014

Last known valuation: $2.3 billion in 2017

Total raised: $293 million as of December 2018

Employees: 750 as of February 2018

What it does: Uptake builds a predictive analytics platform to help companies gain insights from their data. The company was valued at $2.3 billion back in 2017. Crain's Chicago Business recently reported that Uptake had cut jobs as recently as December. 

Open positions: Uptake is focused on hiring what the company calls "market-facing" roles, such as industrial experts, marketing and sales jobs. The company also plans to add 10 new positions on its technology and products teams within the next four months, including roles such as engineers, data scientists, and product managers.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "We look for candidates who are: Resourceful, curious and ambitious, self starters and collaborators, strategic thinkers, willing to tackle problems with unknown solutions, and able to make the complex simple and understandable," Uptake Founder and CEO Brad Keywell told Business Insider. "Uptakers move fast. As a startup, Uptake tackles problems without ready-made  processes or clarity. To work here, you have to also be energized by ambiguity and not scared off by it. As we like to say, we're not just a 'Silicon Valley' software company. Our data scientists have dirt on their boots and grease under their nails. They've been in the field and know the problems facing each industry.  Culture, diversity, and inclusion are important to us, and we look for candidates for whom these values are important too."

Postman

Headquarters: San Francisco, California

Year founded: 2014

Valuation: $2 billion

Total raised: $208 million as of June 2020

Employees: 250 as of June 2020

What it does: Postman builds a collaboration platform offering application programming interfaces (APIs) that's used by Microsoft, Twitter, and Cisco.

Open positions: CEO Abhinav Asthana told Business Insider that Postman has been "growing at a rapid pace, and have continued to grow throughout the pandemic." The company is hiring for roles including in software engineering, marketing, customer success, and design.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "At Postman, we create with the same curiosity that we see in our users—and we look for job candidates who embody that curiosity in their professional and personal lives. We value transparency, honest communication, and individuals who are dedicated to delivering the best products possible," Asthana told us. "We have a diverse, global workforce with about 250 Postman employees located in seven different countries, and we value an inclusive work culture. As we hire new Postmanauts, we're continuously striving to increase the diversity of our workforce and the inclusivity of our culture. We hire through multiple channels: in-house recruiting team, referrals, job openings on our website, and social channels."

Auth0

Headquarters: Bellevue, Washington

Year founded: 2013

Valuation: $1.92 billion

Total raised: $333.47 million as of July 2020

Employees: 700 as of July 2020

What it does: Auth0 is a cybersecurity software startup that manages user authentication and secures the login pages for large consumer and enterprise businesses.

Open positions: "Thankfully our team has been in a position to not only keep our team intact but grow beyond what we originally forecasted when the pandemic first hit," CEO Eugenio Pace told Business Insider.

The company has hired 140 new employees in 2020 and is "actively" hiring for positions in departments including marketing, customer success, engineering, finance.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "We are a company of doers — we're not a company of big ideas and no execution. In terms of advice for potential employees during interviews, I would put an emphasis on what you've done as opposed to who you are. While your credentials, where you studied, and where you are from are all important aspects of who you are, Auth0 wants to see what you have done and what you are capable of doing in the future at the company," Pace told us.

Sprinklr

Headquarters: New York, New York

Year founded: 2009

Last known valuation: $1.81 billion in 2016

Total raised: $228.5 million as of June 2017

Employees: 1,800 as of May 2020

What it does: Sprinklr builds a platform to help enterprise businesses manage social media. Back early 2019, Sprinklr told Business Insider that it hit between $250 million to $300 million in revenue and was preparing to go public. It's been mostly quiet since.

Open positions:Sprinklr is hiring for roles including sales positions, managed services, and implementation consultants across all major cities in the US and Europe and hiring development engineers and product support specialists in India.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? Chief culture and talent Officer Diane K. Adams told Business Insider the following:

"Sprinklr prioritizes hiring based on cultural 'fit' — fit also means people who can expand who we are. We look for candidates that align with The Sprinklr Way, which is our foundation for living, working and being. 

There are four cultural attributes which foster inclusion, belonging and diversity at Sprinklr: We hire for culture, we treat employees like family – with dignity and respect, we passionately, genuinely, care, and we help others succeed.

Our hiring process involves a diverse interview team (minimum of six interviewers), and I partner with Sprinklr's CEO & Founder Ragy Thomas to interview every people leader. Our vision is to encourage an environment of belonging no matter where employees are based, and create a culture where we embrace each other for who we are -- in a judgement-free zone."

Dataminr

Headquarters: New York, New York

Year founded: 2009

Valuation: $1.6 billion

Total raised: $572.37 million as of October 2019

Employees: 650 as of April 2020

What it does: Dataminr has an artificial intelligence platform to track social media and has customers including American Airlines, McDonalds, and Home Depot. The Intercept recently reported that Dataminr helped police monitor protests following the police killing of George Floyd.

Open positions: "Dataminr has continued hiring throughout the pandemic across locations, levels and functions," the company said, but did not specify for which positions its currently hiring.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? Chief people officer Whitney Benner told Business Insider the following:

"Our employees are passionate about what they do, and you can feel that in a meaningful way throughout our offices (even when we are virtual). We look for that same passion in our prospective employees. 

Employees who do well at Dataminr generally possess three key characteristics - willingness to take initiative, find innovative solutions, and work collaboratively. All of which are embodied in our core values: Own It, Find a Better Way, Bring Others Along, and Drive Results. Our business is fast-moving, and we rely on our new employees to immediately help make an impact.

Our ultimate goal is to provide a pathway for our employees across the globe to thrive, so we have additional core competency assessments to gauge each candidate's deep subject matter expertise in their field during the hiring process."

Dataiku

Headquarters: New York, New York

Year founded: 2013

Valuation: $1.4 billion

Total raised: $147.3 million as of January 2020

Employees: 400 as of February 2020

What it does: Dataiku's machine learning software helps companies turn large amounts of data into concrete insights. CB Insights lists Dataiku's valuation as $1.4 billion while PitchBook lists it as of November 2018 as $671 million.

Open positions: "We currently have open roles across our global offices, as well as open roles that are fully remote, from sales, strategy, product and engineering to people ops and marketing," Dataiku CEO Florian Douetteau told Business Insider. "Locations run the gamut too: from business development in Dubai and full stack engineering in France, to enterprise account executive in Detroit. 

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "Our core values are ownership, passion, autonomy, and friendliness, so naturally we look at those attributes in candidates, regardless of role or location," Douetteau told us. "At Dataiku, we believe that people are a (if not 'the') critical piece of the equation in building data-powered companies, so it's important that everyone, regardless of job title, plays a role in using data for radical business transformation."

Qumulo

Headquarters: Seattle, Washington

Year founded: 2012

Valuation: $1.2 billion

Total raised: $363.01 million as of July 2020

Employees: 315 as of July 2020

What it does: Qumulo is a hybrid cloud storage startup that helps customers manage data inside their own data centers and the cloud. Qumulo more than doubled its valuation in a recent funding round and told Business Insider that it shows how investors are betting big on digital transformation amid the pandemic.

Open positions: Qumulo is "actively recruiting and hiring" and currently has more than 75 open positions. 

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "There is a combination of qualities and values we look for in each of our candidates: We have a set of core values that were developed by our founders, are ingrained in our culture and are part of the fabric that makes Qumulo different from other companies," Qumulo CEO Bill Richter told Business Insider. "Everyone is looking for smart and capable experts but it's more than that for us. We look for the qualities that embody the values of Qumulo and we believe that distinction gives us a significant business advantage.  We're also willing to look beyond our immediate industry for diverse talent that brings unique outside perspective and expertise to our team. Each Qumulon is driven toward the goal of making our customers successful."

FiveTran

Headquarters: Oakland, California

Year founded: 2012

Valuation: $1.2 billion

Total raised: $163.12 million as of June 2020

Employees: 350 as of June 2020

What it does: FiveTran builds a platform to bring together all of a company's data into a single dashboard.

Open positions: Fivetran is hiring in multiple roles including engineering, sales, human resources, marketing, product managers, and technical success.

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "For starters, the qualities we look for in candidates are those that align with our company values: The Fivetran Core Values are the backbone of our amazing company," Fivetran's VP of global people operations Amanda Townsend told Business Insider. "They are not just a marketing ploy, but an active part of our daily life in and out of the office. We feel that when someone sees our values in action, they can relate to them because we live them every single day. To get a job at Fivetran you need to first apply and then go through the interview process. Once that is complete, if a candidate fits our qualifications and aligns with our core values, we will extend an offer.

Icertis

Headquarters: Bellevue, Washington

Year founded: 2009

Valuation: $1.15 billion

Total raised: $171.5 million as of July 2019

Employees: 1,000 as of June 2020

What it does: Icertis builds a platform to help customers manage contracts in the cloud, which its leaders say increases a company's capacity for contracts, ensures those contracts comply with regulations and policies, and reduces costs.

Open positions: "We are currently hiring across teams – engineering, marketing, sales, customer success – and expect to fill more than 200 new jobs by the end of 2020," VP of human resources Brooke Hue told Business Insider.

 Icertis hired a total of 319 employees around the world in the first six months of 2020, the company said, including more than 50 class of 2020 graduates. 

What qualities do you look for in a job candidate? How does someone get a job at your company? "At Icertis, we are passionately committed to a values-driven approach to doing business – how we get there is as important as the destination," Hue told us. "We look for candidates who by live our FORTE values – Fairness, Openness, Respect, Teamwork, Execution."

• Safety is a growing concern as the number of people at airports steadily rises: In early August, more than 700,000 travelers passed through TSA, a significant increase from 87,000 people in April.
• Airports are implementing some low-tech safety measures, like protective plastic screens and new signage, to mitigate health risks and manage crowds.
• Additionally, airports are partnering with companies like StickerYou, QLess, and WhereiPark to create decals and signage, manage large security lines to protect their employees, and handle parking for unused rental fleets. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

How do you keep yourself safe while traveling these days? Travelers on social media report boarding planes with masks, gloves, and even full-bodyplastic coverings. Airlines have their own stipulations about cleanings and staff wearing masks while on duty (including, in JetBlue's case, using an ultraviolet robot to sanitize in between flights). 

But what about airports, those notoriously crowded, hectic public spaces where thousands of strangers have to come in close contact daily? COVID-19 has necessitated that small, private companies step in and provide a lot of formerly unconventional services to airports: finding parking for cars that aren't being driven, pasting stickers everywhere to remind passengers to stay away from others, and keeping lines of people out of airports — atypical for a place where waiting in line is the main thing a traveler does.

According to the TSA, the number of people coming through airports in the US dropped from 1.2 million on March 16 to less than half a million on March 22. The numbers continued to drop steadily for the next month, bottoming out at a little more than 87,000 on April 14, 2020. For comparison, April 14, 2019 saw 2.2 million people put through TSA checkpoints in the US.

For better or for worse, many states in the US are now in some stage of reopening. With this comes an increase in travel, and the need for airports to mitigate becoming a viral hotspot. Many have had to improvise their own answers to the question of how, exactly, to do this, as the numbers of travelers has started ticking steadily upward: On August 13, 761,821 travellers were put through TSA, according to its website. That's still significantly less than the same day saw in 2019 (2.6 million), but a big step up from 87,000 people in April.

Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) announced in March that it would be performing "on-site screening" of all passengers for coronavirus, something it'd put in place for international arrivals in January: taking temperatures, asking passengers if they felt sick, and having them fill out questionnaires. The move led to some snarls and delays at the airport: A spokesperson told Business Insider that despite the pandemic, DFW was one of the busiest airports in the world in May, June, and July.

Some are opting for low-tech solutions: Boston Logan announced new plastic screens in "high-traffic spaces" to protect employees, amongst other measures. Salt Lake City has said it was restricting entry into the airport to only employees or ticketed passengers. Phoenix now requires masks on the premises. 

A spokesperson for the Orlando airport told Business Insider that it was managing crowds with new signage and screens around the terminal to remind passengers to keep their distance and wear a mask. Earlier in July, it also announced it was installing vending machines that would dispense personal protective equipment. 

A representative for the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA), which runs O'Hare and Midway airports, told Business Insider that it'd had "hundreds of floor decals" printed "to remind passengers to maintain social distance and guide them how to form appropriate lines." The San Francisco Airport also told Business Insider that it'd installed around 15,000 new physical-distancing markers.

The low-tech solution: signage

StickerYou, a 90-person, 10-year-old decal and professional sticker company who said its clients have included SpaceX, Google, and Home Depot, told Business Insider that it's begun working with some airports around the US to enhance their signage. Originally, StickerYou set out to make customized decals for skateboarders, but found that small and medium-sized businesses, such as craft breweries, became its biggest clients. With the pandemic came requests from airports and hotels, a market segment that hadn't previously been very open to them before.

"We pivoted to marketing to airports in March," said Michael Ishak, vice president of sales at StickerYou. "When COVID-19 hit, we flipped to making floor decals and hand sanitizer labels."

Airports requested custom decals to direct traffic, as well as wall stickers, window clings, and table and chair decals to keep people away from each other. Hotels, meanwhile, were ordering "seals" for rooms — stickers with perforations — that would be put across a door after it had been cleaned to show that the room hadn't been tampered with. In the end, Ishak said, airports were ordering bigger sizes and more decals than they ever had before, all in the name of enforcing social distancing.

"There's something to be said for having a more aggressive messaging," Ishak said.

Managing long lines and crowds

Along with trying to keep passengers in the proper line, sanitized, and away from each other, there are also airport employees to worry about. QLess, a California company whose name is a play on "queue-less," is a line-management software that said it's now working with San Francisco and Denver to help keep the amount of time airport employees have to wait in line to a minimum. QLess launched in 2007, and said it now works with more than 1,000 companies and organizations around the world and claims that it's saved more than "100 million people more than 6,000 years from waiting in line."

SFO confirmed to Business Insider that it's in the process of implementing QLess operations and expects to have them in place by the end of August 2020. The Dallas, Minneapolis, and Phoenix airports also said they'd had QLess on board since before the pandemic, and while the services were useful, now they're necessary.

Think of how a restaurant (remember restaurants?) will text you to let you know what your place in line is if there's a long wait. QLess provides a similar service. Instead of waiting for hours at an office for an employee's name to be called, the employee can now wait at home until they actually need to show up for their appointment.

"We're one of the biggest airports in the country, and people constantly need to go to the badging office to get their badges renewed," said a spokesperson for DFW. "These are now turning out to be very helpful in these times when we're trying to keep people from crowding."

Security offices at airports are some of the busiest spots in the terminal, said Charlie Meyer, vice president of sales at QLess. On average, they get between 100 and 500 security requests a day for new badges, renewals, fingerprinting, or replacements for lost IDs. Before COVID-19, by 10 or 11 a.m., a security office could have a full line of people for the rest of the day, waiting for hours.

"It's definitely been a wake up call," Meyer said. 

"We were fortunate. We're kind of like Zoom right now as far as interest and sales going through the roof," he added, in reference to the popular video messaging software that grew exponentially once the pandemic started and working from home became standard across the board.

When contacted by Business Insider, a spokesperson for the Denver Airport said their badging office "had to make several adjustments to daily operations to limit customer contact and social distancing." It brought in QLess to assist with this to better keep everyone safe.

"All DEN airport employees can view wait times at both Badging Offices and enter the desired queue directly from the DEN Insider employee mobile application without having to be in our office," a spokesperson for the airport said. Employees are then notified by text message when it's their turn. 

"This helps us with social distancing protocols by reducing the number of customers in the badging office at any one time," the spokesperson said.

QLess said it's been "in touch" with the TSA about providing similar services for passengers, but nothing has come of it yet. Independently, the Minneapolis airport said it was working with a separate company to provide "lobby flow management" and "help balance passengers between our checkpoints."

Moving forward past COVID-19, Meyer said he fully expected their partnerships with airports to continue. After all, if you can wait in line for hours digitally instead of physically and go about your life in the meantime, why wouldn't you? 

"In a lot of ways, we were ahead of the tech curve when it comes to mobile queueing," Meyer said. "It's nice to see society catch up."

Solving the parking problem

In addition to airport security and passengers, many businesses associated with airports have taken a hit in the pandemic. WhereiPark, a small company out of Toronto that launched in 2014, was already working at 300 properties across North America. Since the beginning of April, it said that it's added "all the major car rental companies" at Seattle, Chicago O'Hare, SFO, Denver, and LAX to their client list: all huge hubs that needed to find spots for the hundreds of cars that would normally be out on the road.

The company focuses on finding open parking areas, whether it be at residential or commercial sites, that are currently underutilized due to a lack of people commuting or traveling. Even before the pandemic, the company was looking to make better use of urban spaces. 

"If you have an apartment building with a commercial office tower nearby, those have exact opposite times when people need to be parked there," said Jeremy Zucker, one of the founders of the company.

When the pandemic hit, rental car companies at airports found themselves in a pickle — and without any space. These companies base their real estate decisions (i.e., how many parking spots they need) off of the assumption that only 30 to 40% of their fleet will be on the premises at any one time, said Alex Enchin, WhereiPark's other founder. But that's clearly not the case anymore.

"If you look at airport parking, the pricing is based on high rates for short-term parking. Hertz and Budget don't want to spend $1,200 a month to park 400 cars," Enchin said. Initially, when the rental cars started coming back, he said, the cars were lining up the streets because the outlets didn't have anywhere to put them.

"We've helped a lot of these companies find other locations for their cars rather than at the airport," Enchin said. The company located recently refurbished warehouses, stadium parking lots, church parking lots, and university campuses that were otherwise unused and helped the companies store them for the duration. Avis/Budget declined to comment. Enterprise and Hertz did not respond to a request for comment.

Beyond airports, Zucker and Enchin said they're hoping they can develop programs for flexible parking arrangements everywhere, especially as people remain wary of taking public transit. 

"There is massive change happening," Zucker said. "Who knows what will really unwind here."

SEE ALSO: Companies used to rely on lavish trips and excursions to reward top performers. Event planners and leaders share how the pandemic has reshaped incentive travel.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What it's like inside North Korea's controversial restaurant chain

The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in a period of rapid change and uncertainty across the global economy.

Prolonged lockdowns, government stimulus, and accelerated digitization have fundamentally changed how businesses operate and how consumers are spending. Due to this disruption, our outlook for the rest of 2020 has changed significantly from when we made predictions for the upcoming year in December 2019.

Considering the impacts of the pandemic, Insider Intelligence has put together a list of 18 Big Tech Predictions for the Second Half of 2020 across Banking, Connectivity & Tech, Digital Media, Payments & Commerce, Fintech, and Digital Health.

This exclusive report can be yours for FREE today.

Join the conversation about this story »

• Most international travel is on hold because of COVID-19.
• Expedia created GIFs that show how ancient ruins would have looked in their prime.
• Countries around the world have banned American tourists from entry, so virtual travel will have to do for now.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus has put travel on hold for the foreseeable future, but there are still ways to see the world and scratch that travel itch. Expedia commissioned artists to create GIFs showing how seven ancient wonders looked in their prime, and the results are fascinating. 

US residents probably won't be taking international vacations anytime soon. Most of the European Union, along with China, Japan, New Zealand, and others, have banned American tourists due to its ongoing struggle containing the coronavirus pandemic.

Back in March, Google Earth put together a list of 30 UNESCO World Heritage sites anyone could virtually visit and learn about. Now, Expedia's GIFs are expanding the virtual travel experience. 

SEE ALSO: See inside the Idaho factory where a company turns shipping containers into sustainable tiny homes

The ruins of the Parthenon in Greece are restored to their full glory as a temple for the goddess Athena.

Little of the Area Sacra di Largo Argentina temple ruins in Rome survived, but the ruins are now home to hundreds of cats.

The Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico is one of the oldest and largest in the region.

Luxor Temple in Egypt was built in 1380 BCE, and restoring obelisks and statues shows how impressive it once was.

Milecastle 39 in the English countryside was once part of Hadrian's Wall.

The Temple of Jupiter was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in Pompeii, but this recreation shows how formidable it was.

Finally, the Mayan ruin of Cobá wasn't discovered until the 1800s, because it was hidden by dense jungle.

• Product managers play a central role in enterprise tech, and typically take the lead in planning, troubleshooting and rolling out new products.
• Their job has evolved dramatically with the rapid growth of cloud computing, and the emergence of new technologies, such as AI and big data.
• Here's how much Oracle, Cisco, SAP, Workday, ServiceNow and VMware pay product managers, based on disclosure data for permanent and temporary workers filed with the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification in 2019.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Product managers play such an important role in tech that Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz once argued that "a good product manager is the CEO of the product." 

The statement sparked some debate, although there's little disagreement about the importance of product managers in the technology industry.

Product managers are deeply involved in pretty much every key step in rolling out a new product, from the planning to troubleshooting to figuring out how to get customers to buy it.

The job has become even more critical in the enterprise tech market which is undergoing a dramatic transformation with the rise of the cloud, and the emergence of cutting edge technologies, including AI and big data analytics.

"In today's era, the product manager job is more critical than ever," IDC President Crawford Del Prete told Business Insider. "The function of managing the product development, delivery and support is critical in today's market."

He cited the rise of "as a service" products which allow businesses to access different tools, including applications, data storage and even platforms, based on a subscription or on usage. It's a system that typically features "a steady stream" of products and features, instead of "big version announcements" which requires product managers to be more nimble and to have a clearer sense of product roadmaps, he said.

The product manager's job is expected to become even more challenging in a work from home economy, Eric Hunter, a senior director at Gartner, said. More businesses are looking to set up their networks in the cloud, even as they require more and new tools to manage a remote workforce.

"Product managers have significantly adapted how they manage their strategic roadmaps and in how they relate with delivery teams as a result of the cloud," he told Business Insider. "COVID requires product managers to be even more effective leaders."

That's why it's not at all surprising that product managers are among the top paying roles in tech.

Business Insider analyzed the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification's 2020 disclosure data for permanent and temporary foreign workers to find out what five major enterprise-tech giants — Oracle, Cisco, VMware, SAP and Workday — pay product managers.

Companies are required to disclose information such as salary ranges when they hire foreign workers under the H-1B visa program, giving insight into what these major companies are willing to shell out for talent. Note that for some positions, the companies involved only gave salary ranges, rather than specific figures.

Here's how much these top enterprise-technology companies paid product managers hired in 2020:

SEE ALSO: Tech sales and marketing salaries revealed: How much enterprise giants IBM, Oracle, Dell, Cisco, and VMware pay sales reps, managers, and consultants

SEE ALSO: Here's the pitchdeck template that $1.3 billion cloud HR startup Rippling used to raise $145 million from investors led by Founders Fund

SEE ALSO: Experts predict 15 gigantic tech mergers we could see in a recession, from Amazon buying Oracle to IBM buying Dell

Cisco hired a product manager in North Carolina with a salary in the range of $116,000 to $138,000.

Cisco, the dominant vendor for networking equipment, is one of the traditional enterprise tech vendors that is adapting to the cloud.

The company got a boost from the coronavirus crisis and the sudden pivot to remote work given the need for secure, reliable networking systems. But Cisco recently warned that it is bracing itself for more uncertainty in the enterprise market, especially small and medium-sized businesses. The company said it plans to cut more than $1 billion in costs.

Cisco has continued to hire, and recently brought in more than two dozen product managers.

Here are some of Cisco's recent product manager hires based on 695 approved visa applications and how much they're paid:

Product manager (California): $170,000 to $234,000

Product manager (Washington): $192,000 to $212,000

Product manager (Texas): $165,000 to $193,000

Product manager (Georgia): $112,000 to $150,000

Product manager (North Carolina): $116,00 to $138,000

Oracle hired a product manager in Florida with a salary in the range of $79,000 to $212,000.

Oracle is making an aggressive bid to become a stronger player in the cloud, where it lags rivals led by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google.

The Silicon Valley recently filled at least three product manager positions in Florida, Washington and Texas. 

Here are some of Oracle's recent product manager hires from 452 approved visa applications, and how much they're paid:

Product manager, strategy and development (Florida): $79,000 to $212,000

Product manager, strategy and development (Washington): $153,000 to $189,000

Product manager, strategy and development (Texas): $124,000 to $179,000

SAP hired a product manager in California with a salary range of $177,000 to $300,000.

SAP is one of the top enterprise software vendors in the world. Like other traditional enterprise software companies, the German tech giant has been pushing to strengthen its position in the cloud market.

The company filled at least two key product manager roles, according to the data.

Here are SAP's recent product manager hires based on 393 approved visa applications and how much they're paid:

Product manager (California): $177,000 to $300,000

Product manager (California): $138,000

Workday hired a principal product manager with a salary in the $154,000 to $232,000 range.

Workday's platform enables businesses to manage their finances and human resources.  The Pleasanton, California-based company is considered one of the pioneers of cloud computing,

It made at least two product manager hires, both in California.

Workday is a major cloud player whose platform enables businesses to manage company finances and human resources. 

Here are some of Workday's recent hires based on 117 approved visa applications and how much they're paid:

Principal product manager (California): $154,000 to $232,000

Technical product manager/API platform (California): $116,000 to $174,000

ServiceNow hired a senior principal product manager in Washington with a salary of $189,000.

ServiceNow is another cloud computing pioneer whose platform enables businesses to automate and manage their workflow.

The company recently filled at least eight product manager jobs in California, Illinois and Washington.

Here are some of ServiceNow's recent hires based on 225 approved visa applications and how much they're paid:

Technical product manager (California): $147,000 to $170,000

Senior product manager, platform (Illinois): $92,000 to $140,000

Principal product manager (California): $138,000

Principal product manager, outbound legal (California): $160,000

Senior principal product manager (Washington): $189,000

VMware hired a senior technical product manager in California with a salary of $214,000.

VMware blazed the trail in virtualization, or software that lets businesses tap disparate computer systems as one network, which has been an important technology in cloud computing.

The tech giant has filled more than dozen product manager roles recently, mostly in California.

Here some of VMware's recent product manager hires from 717 approved visa applications and how much they're paid:

Senior technical product manager (California): $214,000

Senior technical product manager (California): $189,000

Senior product manager (California): $195,000

Senior product manager (New York): $155,000

Senior product manager (California): $153,000

Senior product manager (Georgia): $122,000

Product manager (California): $120,000

Product manager (Georgia): $113,000

Product manager (Georgia): $105,000

• Hungarian design studio Hello Wood created a minimalist tiny cabin.
• The prefabricated structure comes in four sizes between 129 and 215 square feet, starting at $10,200.
• To keep costs down, buyers can purchase parts and instructions to assemble themselves.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Many people stuck at home around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic are seeking creative solutions for places to work, study, or just relax. Budapest-based Hello Wood design studio's solution is the minimalist Kabinka cabin that can be assembled by non-experts.

With the popular rise of tiny homes in the last decade, other companies have proposed similar ideas. US smart office company Autonomous is selling a minimalist, 68 square foot office for up to $15,000. Hello Wood itself is working on other tiny cabins that could be used as offices or retreats, like the Workstation cabin, and the expanded Grand Cabin.

The variety of sizes and prices, depending on how many add-ons buyers choose, could make the Kabinka a more realistic and useful solution than some luxury tiny offices on the market. The smallest option starts at $10,200 for just the structure. 

Here's what it looks like. 

SEE ALSO: This 15-sided, 86-square-foot tiny home is designed to be the perfect backyard office for $28,000 — see inside

The Kabinka cabin comes in four sizes, between 129 and 215 square feet.

Though floor space is limited, ceilings are over 12 feet tall.

High ceilings can be used for loft space for storage, decor, or a reading nook.

Even the small loft space can fit adults, though the Kubinka could also work as a playhouse for children.

The wooden cabins are minimalist, because Hello Wood was focused on creating an affordable tiny option.

With such a minimalist design, many interior layout options are possible.

The main way Hello Wood kept Kubinka affordable was through assembly.

All the prefabricated pieces are cut out with a CNC machine.

Then for the most cost effective method, buyers can buy all the parts in a flat pack to assemble themselves.

The pack comes with all the construction directions a builder would need, and on-site assembly should take between one and three days.

Designers say that anyone should be able to follow the instructions and put Kubinka together, provided they have a "good bunch of helpers, basic tools and enthusiasm."

For buyers who are less confident in their building skills, Hello Wood can add on-site construction for an additional cost.

Hello Wood says the small cabin should fit a "tea kitchen," couch, and stove.

Hello Wood suggests using the cabin as a private workspace or as a community meeting room for a company.

The base model isn't set up for year-round living, but with extra insulation, it could be adapted into a true tiny home.

Without much modification, it could work as a low-cost vacation home during the warmer months.

Other features are available at an additional cost for nearly endless customization possibilities.

Hello Wood can add extra exterior cladding...

...kitchen furniture...

...landscaping options, and more.

• BJ Siegel, a former Apple Design Director, collaborated on the design of his Sonoma home.
• The weeHouse is larger than a tiny home but is prefabricated and modular the way many tiny homes are. 
• The home was completed in 2016 for a total of $600,000.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple is known for its thoughtful designs and its attention to detail in its iPhones, laptops, and AirPods.

A California home design from Alchemy Architects gives a look at what the Apple design aesthetic might look like applied to a house. 

BJ Siegel was a senior design director of real estate and development at Apple for 10 years, according to his LinkedIn profile.  In 2016, the designer collaborated with Alchemy Architects to create a customized version of their weeHouse design.

Siegel's house isn't quite a tiny house; it's two structures that combine to be nearly 1,000 square feet, although it is modular and assembled off-site, as many tiny homes are. The sleek, minimalist design has some qualities in common with Apple products, in neutral colors and high-end finishes. Take a look at the house here. 

SEE ALSO: Facebook just leased office space in a 128-year-old New York City post office — here's a look at the building's fascinating history

The house is really two structures: a 640 square foot main house, and a 330 square foot guest house.

The two open-sided structures, which both sit on concrete, were shipped nearly completed.

They were designed to each ship in two pieces, with boxes shipping as one module, and detached porches as the other.

The two buildings are connected by steel stairs and railings, also designed by Alchemy.

The main house is set up like a studio, with an open kitchen, living room, sleeping area, and bathroom.

The guest house is a smaller version of the main home, and also has its own bathroom.

The built-in oak wardrobe adds storage, and also acts as the wall to the bathroom, blocking it off from the rest of the home.

They have ipe wood interiors, with custom oak cabinet doors.

Both buildings are open-sided, to best take in the views from the Sonoma site.

Nine-foot tall sliding glass walls mean the home can easily continue into the outdoors, or onto the porch.

Both buildings have weathering steel siding.

For this project, Alchemy adapted its original weeHouse design to add high-end finishes requested by Siegel.

It was designed in Minnesota, and mostly built in Oregon.

Alchemy said that the structures were 90% done when they were delivered to the site in California.

They were placed on a hill surrounded by oak trees, positioned specifically for the views.

In 2018, the design won the American Institute of Architecture's Small Project Award.

• Google is going deeper into the healthcare industry after a past effort flopped.
• Starting when Dr. David Feinberg joined the company in 2019, the tech giant is building a team of health pros.
• Called "Google Health," it includes more than 500 managers, scientists, and engineers – and plans to get bigger.
• Business Insider identified the 18 most important people shaping the new group's strategy.
• For more stories like this, sign up here for our healthcare newsletter, Dispensed.

Google is going after the healthcare industry with renewed intensity.

Starting when Dr. David Feinberg joined the company in 2019, the tech giant is consolidating many of its health efforts onto a single team.

Called "Google Health," it's got more than 500 managers, scientists, clinicians, engineers, and product experts right now – and plans to only get bigger.

Read more:11 tech chiefs, analysts, and bankers in healthcare reveal how Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have used the coronavirus to make new inroads in the $3.6 trillion industry.

A past iteration of the team, which tried to offer online personal health records, never took off. The company shut it down nearly 10 years ago, citing a lack of widespread adoption.

But the new group is an ambitious, self-described "product area" within Google that's hoping to transform the way everyday people get care, and how the system delivers it.

Inside Google, Google Health oversees artificial intelligence projects and work with Verily, YouTube, and search teams. It's also known to be a kind of medical voice and advisor to higher ups like CEO Sundar Pichai.

Read more:As Verily looks to IPO, CEO Andrew Conrad says an inter-Alphabet 'sibling rivalry' with Google's own health team is hurting both companies.

Externally, the team has ongoing projects with public health officials, academic medical centers, and health systems like Ascension.

Business Insider identified 18 of the top leaders steering this still-developing part of Google's strategy into the future. 

From members of former President Barack Obama's administration to scientists on the cutting edge of machine learning, it's a star-studded lineup given the difficult task of executing Google's overall health mission: "improving the lives of as many people as possible."

Here's a rare look at the power players at Google Health, according to Google and other sources, listed alphabetically: 

Afia Asamoah – Head of Legal

Afia Asamoah has a long history with health initiatives within Alphabet: She was the first lawyer to support Google's health project back in 2014 when it was called Google Life Sciences.

Her early work included the licensing of Google patents for a partnership with Alcon on a smart contact lens. When Life Sciences became Verily in 2015, Asamoah remained as the group's senior counsel, and becoming Verily's first trust and compliance officer.

In 2019, she moved back over to the mothership and joined Google Health as their new head of legal.

Dr. Robert Califf – Advisor, Clinical Policy and Strategy

As the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration under Obama, Dr. Robert Califf is one of Google Health's highest-profile hire for regulatory work. 

Starting in the fall of 2019, he's been leading clinical policy and strategy for Verily while also advising Google Health.

In fact, his work with Verily, which centered on provider-friendly tech, began before he joined Alphabet full-time. 

"My hope is that Silicon Valley and entrepreneurs nationwide will collaborate on building an environment capable of linking the more than 300 million people in the U.S. to information that helps them live healthy, productive lives," Califf wrote in 2017. 

A cardiologist and researcher, he's still an adjunct professor at Duke University, where he helped create the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the largest academic clinical research organization, and Duke Forge, a center for health science data, according to Duke.

Greg Corrado – Distinguished Scientist

A Google "Distinguished Scientist," Greg Corrado is one Google's brainiest brains. 

Armed with a PhD in neuroscience and master's degree in computer science from Stanford University, he heads Google Health's research and innovations division. 

Lately, Corrado is focusing on machine learning in healthcare, overseeing research in genomics, clinical predictions, medical image interpretation, and novel signals research, according to Google.

Prior to that, he cofounded the Google Brain team, which is laser focused on artificial intelligence. And before Google, he modeled human neural networks for a variety of applications at IBM.

Jeff Dean — Senior Fellow, SVP of Google AI

Jeff Dean has been at Google since 1999 and is something of a legend in the ranks. He was one of the earliest members of the Google Brain team, an autonomous research group, and now leads Google's entire AI division.

Health has always been close to Dean's heart. In the 90s, he worked on statistical modeling for the World Health Organization before joining the tech giant – and he now oversees Google Health group as part of his duties.

Dean has worked on research in using deep learning for electronic health records, and overseen the rollout of projects including a joint venture with Verily to use AI to screen for diabetic eye disease.

Feinberg reports to Jeff Dean, who is one of Google CEO Sundar Pichai's small handful of direct reports.

Dr. Karen DeSalvo – Chief Health Officer

Dr. Karen DeSalvo is Google Health's Chief Health Officer and the broader company's "go-to medical expert," according to Google. She's meant to bring a holistic view of health to Google's products and services, as she said in a recent Google interview. 

Lately, DeSalvo, as one of Google's most prominent voices in public health more broadly, is leading a lot of the tech giant's response to coronavirus outbreaks. One such project includes getting Google's search results to prioritize credible information about the pandemic. 

DeSalvo is on the advisory board for Google's sister company Verily Life Sciences, as well as the board of directors at Welltower, a real estate investment trust, according to her resume. She also served on Humana's board until 2019. 

Prior to joining Google, DeSalvo helped re-engineer healthcare in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. At the US Department of Health and Human Services, she facilitated upgrades to the US health system's sluggish IT.

A physician and professor, much of her work and research has focused on barriers to care.

Dr. David Feinberg — VP and Head

When Dr. David Feinberg became the head of Google Health in January 2019, he took charge of a newly-formed organization made up of the Google Research health team, Deepmind Health, and one of Google's hardware teams.

It was a major new effort to align Google's thinking about health under one roof, and a big signal that Google was taking health seriously.

The health organization spans a range of consumer product and research projects, and insiders say Feinberg has spent a lot of his early term trying to determine what Google's role in healthcare should be. Not to mention how the company's various initiatives, including the life sciences arm Verily, should work together.

Feinberg started as a child psychiatrist at UCLA, helping patients with mental health needs. He later went on to become CEO of Geisinger Health, overseeing a community of more than 3 million patients.

Although David Feinberg leads Google Health, he reports to Jeff Dean – Google's head of all things artificial intelligence – a signal of how important AI is to the company's healthcare efforts.

Read more:We just got our first look at what Google's grand plans are for healthcare after it brought in a top doctor to lead its health team

Kristen Gill — COO, VP of BizOps, Business Finance Officer

Kristen Gil has been directing business operations inside Google since 2007, working with leaders across the company on strategies to grow and monetize.

Gil now oversees Google Health as part of her role – with one of the busiest job titles in the organization.

She's helped Google to continually re-architect its structure as the company has grown, and can occasionally be seen at conferences offering a glimpse into the inner-workings of the tech behemoth.

"I think [process] can both be a real way to unlock innovation and it can also be a real way to suck the life blood out of innovation," Gil told an audience at a re:Work event in 2016.

Dr. Michael Howell – Chief Clinical Strategist

As Google's chief clinical strategist, Dr. Michael Howell is focused on various applications of the company's technology within the healthcare system at large. 

Much of his work at Google and elsewhere is about improving and studying the actual delivery of care — like using data from electronic health records to figure out how people get infections in hospitals, according to the company.

Before Google, he was chief quality officer at the University of Chicago Medicine. 

Alan Karthikesalingam – Research Lead, UK

Dr. Alan Karthikesalingam is the head of Google Health's machine learning research group in London. A surgeon, he's a key figure in Google's work to aid medical diagnoses. 

Prior to joining Google Health, he led DeepMind and Google's teams through landmark studies about breast cancer screening, blinding eye diseases, and patient deterioration with the US' Veterans Affairs, all of which tested various applications of AI, according to the company. 

Now, Karthikesalingam's work is largely focused on Google's development of products for clinical care, AI safety, and algorithmic bias, according to Google.

With a PhD in vascular surgery, master's in advanced surgical practice, and a medical degree, Karthikesalingam is still a practicing surgeon and lecturer at the Imperial College in London.

Dr. Dominic King – Director, UK lead

Prior to joining Google Health, Dr. Dominic King was the health lead on DeepMind, the UK-based AI research lab acquired by Google and later spun out into an independent Alphabet company.

Last year, DeepMind's health team merged with Google Health, positioning King as the new director and UK lead.

"Under the leadership of Dr. David Feinberg, and alongside other teams at Google, we'll now be able to tap into global expertise in areas like app development, data security, cloud storage and user-centered design to build products that support care teams and improve patient outcomes," wrote King in a blog post last September, announcing the merger was complete.

Matt Klainer – VP, Business Development

Matt Klainer leads up business development on Google Health, putting him in charge of all efforts to commercialize the business and form key partnerships.

Klainer joined the Google Health team in January and replaced Virginia McFerran, previously of UnitedHealth Group, who was at Google Health for just seven months.

Klainer reports to Donald Harrison, Google's president of global partnerships and corporate development, who's a direct report of Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler.

Klainer's tenure at Google spans back to 2008 and has seen him working on areas such as Android and consumer communications products.

Michael Macdonnell – Director of Global Deployment

Michael Macdonnell leads the deployment of Google Health's technologies to provide doctors and nurses with helpful patient information.

"Over the coming years, these tools will incorporate cutting-edge machine learning with the aim of predicting and preventing illness, or acute deterioration, before it happens," he wrote on his LinkedIn bio.

Before it was absorbed into Google Health, Macdonnell was at DeepMind Health overseeing the development of Streams, an AI assistant for clinicians in the UK.

Macdonnell is very familiar with the UK's National Health Service. His previous job was national director for transforming health systems at NHS England, giving him years of insight into the healthcare industry.

Paul Muret – VP, Product and Engineering

A company veteran, Paul Muret joined Google in 2005 when it acquired his web analytics startup, Urchin. He then led the Google Analytics for several years, later adding Display, Video and Apps to his title responsibilities.

In 2018, Muret moved over to a new VP role in AI and health, and CNBC reported that he advocated for the idea of forming the Google Health organization before Google named Feinberg CEO.

Now, he leads Google Health's entire product division.

Mike Pearson – Chief of Staff

As Google Health's chief of staff, Mike Pearson is responsible for the execution of the health team's various projects.

Pearson, who has previously worked on business development across Android and Google Life Sciences (before it was renamed Verily), reports directly to Feinberg at Google Health.

Prior to joining Google's health wing, he helped erect CapitalG, Alphabet's private equity investment vehicle, led development of Android stores, and worked on strategy for apps.

Dr. Lily Peng – Product Manager, Research

Dr. Lily Peng leads the product management team for the medical imaging and diagnostics team at Google Health, which is one of the busiest in the organization. 

Her team works with deep learning, with the goal of making healthcare more accurate, according to Google. Their recent projects tap AI to detect diseases, predict cardiovascular health factors, classify skin diseases, and more. 

In fact, Peng's team recently made an algorithm that identifies diabetic retinopathy. It's already being used by doctors in Indian, Thailand, and Europe, according to Google.

Before Google, Peng worked at Doximinity, an online networking platform for medical professionals, and cofounded Nano Precision Medical, a medical device startup. 

Linda Peters – VP, Quality and Regulatory

Linda Peters started working at Google in the fall of 2019.

She's tasked with making sure that Google's portfolio of health products — which includes cancer screening, image processing tools, and far more — lands regulatory approvals and otherwise complies with the law. 

Prior to Google, Peters worked for medical device giant Becton Dickinson, where she reported directly to the CEO and oversaw areas including FDA approval of drugs and software. 

Dr. Alvin Rajkomar – Research Scientist

A researcher for Google Brain and product manager, Dr. Alvin Rajkomar is focused on a huge subset of Google Health's work: provider-facing tech tools. 

He spends a lot of time combing through big clinical databases with deep learning. The goal is to find ways of improving care based on information from the masses.  

Rajkomar is also a key leader in Google's oft-reported work with Ascension, which aims to create search tools for clinicians that call up patients' information from health records, among other things.

His team of researchers, meanwhile, is similarly focused on tech that unifies patient information, from lab results to diagnoses, into one place for clinicians, according to Google.

Outside of Google, Rajkomar is also a practicing physician at the University of California, San Francisco, and holds an adjunct faculty position. 

Read more: Google is working with a massive health system to gather data on millions of patients. Here's an inside look at the tools they're developing.

Shashidhar Thakur – VP, Engineering

Shashidhar Thakur – known as "Shashi" to friends and colleagues – made his mark at Google working on search products including Google Discover and the knowledge graph.

Thakur, who for many years worked closely with Google search guru Ben Gomes (now overseeing Google's education initiative), jumped over to the Google Health team in 2019 where he's currently VP of engineering.

Insiders say Thakur's work in search and AI makes him perfectly placed for Google Health's ambitious to bridge the divide between health and tech.

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

Hello!

Palantir Technologies is one of the oldest unicorn startups in Silicon Valley. It's now preparing to step out of the shadows and enter the public markets, as Becky Peterson reported this week.

She writes:

It's known around the world as a magical enabler of government surveillance thanks to its close relationships with contentious agencies like US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, various police forces, and the military. Its founder Peter Thiel's close relationship with President Trump has only intensified fears around its technology.

But this reputation doesn't tell the full story. Behind the scenes, much of Palantir's work is par for the course in enterprise software, and the company has struggled to build a business model that matches its outsized reputation.

You can read her story in full here:

Hot biotech startups

It's a critical time to be in the biotech business, as companies race to find new ways to treat and prevent the novel coronavirus. With all eyes on the industry, Andrew Dunn and Lydia Ramsey Pflanzer asked 12 top biotech venture capital investors which startups they think are poised to take off in the next year. 

They asked the investors to name startups from their firms' portfolios, and ones they haven't invested in. For some, that meant looking outside of drug development entirely to diagnostic companies testing for conditions including COVID-19, like Sherlock Biosciences. Others opted to pick companies finding new ways to tackle untreatable conditions, like Dewpoint Therapeutics. 

You can read the list in full here:

Meet the 21 biotech startups that top VCs say are poised to take off in the next 12 months

Related:

• 10 healthcare startups that could be M&A targets after Teladoc's record-breaking $18.5 billion deal for Livongo
• Subscribe to Dispensed, our daily healthcare newsletter, for more dispatches from the team.

A rare look at pay and wrangling over clients at a Big 4 firm

PwC has been hit with a $15 million lawsuit that provides a rare look behind the curtain on partner compensation and disputes over credit, writes Jack Newsham. 

He writes:

John Cahill, a former tax partner based out of the Big Four firm's Minneapolis office, said he was recruited from a senior role at an asset management firm and soon brought in a client worth $10 million in annual business to PwC, smashing the performance goals that had been set for him. But Cahill claims he was forced to share credit for the job with other partners and ultimately was pushed off the engagement.

He claims in his lawsuit that he'd originally been told that he was the most successful "catalyst partner" PwC had ever hired, but was ultimately forced to leave the firm this summer. PwC has denied the claims and has asked a New York court to make Cahill arbitrate them privately.

You can read the story in full here:

A former PwC partner just sued the firm for $15 million in compensation, offering a rare look at pay and wrangling over clients at a Big 4 firm

Related:

• 'Big 4' salaries, revealed: How much Deloitte, KPMG, EY, and PwC accountants and consultants make, from entry level to executive roles

Join the conversation about this story »

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