But it was Yetunde’s childhood in Berkeley, Calif., that lent her an even more important perspective. Her mother, Eleanor Mason Ramsey, is the president and C.E.O. of an Oakland-based diversity consulting and public policy firm. Her father, Henry Ramsey Jr., was a civil rights attorney, judge, law professor and dean (he also happened to be an early mentor for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris; Yetunde wishes he’d lived to witness this year’s historic election). They both taught her to fight for equality and inclusion at the highest level and, as Yetunde adds, act “with a strong sense of fairness, justice and integrity in everything you do.”

In that spirit, Essènci rejects mainstream beauty ideals centered around whiteness — “As an African-American woman, finding products that hydrate has always been really difficult for me,” she explains — as well as certain marketing myths that reinforce impossible expectations about aging. Rather, its messaging seems more focused on helping people consider what is the safest, and healthiest, way to take care of their skin. And although Yetunde created Essènci with women in mind (the company, with the exception of Michael, is currently staffed by an all-women team), she always envisioned men using its products as well. I first tried the Elixir as a base underneath my foundation; it gave my skin a healthy, dewy sheen that lasted throughout the day. In the evening, I reapplied it to my bare face and found that its gentle, grassy scent helped me drift to sleep.

Lately, the Beutlers are attempting to maintain their own Zen, despite the challenges that come with launching a brand during a global pandemic. Yetunde still finds time for Italian lessons — as well as her outdoor boot camp and ballet classes. Both she and Michael are devoted parents to their four-year-old son, Gabriel, who bounded into the frame at the end of our Zoom call. Seeing them as a family (the couple also have a 20-year-old daughter, Anaïs, who is currently attending Utrecht University in the Netherlands), I was acutely aware of how, these days, we are all forced to confront the tenuous future of the planet — that we must think not just of ourselves but for those who will come after us. “Being a sustainable company on all levels, it’s not easy,” said Yetunde. “It goes beyond just skin care.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/t-magazine/essenci-sustainable-beauty.html

Jockey Meets Kotex

When Ms. Welch turned to period underwear for her child, it was a solution, but it wasn’t perfect. Most pairs ranged from about $25 to $40, and she didn’t want to pay $40 for juniors underwear.

The market’s two dominant brands are Thinx and Knix, both founded in 2013. At one point, Thinx was considered one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. It made headlines for its subway ads and its founder Miki Agrawal, the self-titled “SHE-EO” ousted in 2017 following sexual harassment allegations (which she denied). Another competitor, TomboyX, specializes in gender-neutral underwear, while Ruby Love (formerly PantyProp) was founded to help address urinary incontinence.

The founders of the Period Company said they’re fans of these brands, but, as Ms. Welch has repeated, she and Ms. Markova are more interested in being like Jockey, offering basic no-frills underwear, than like La Perla. Their prices fall between $12 and $14. (Comparatively, a pack of disposable tampon or pads typically costs under $10.)

Their underwear fits tightly but with some stretch, not unlike shapewear, if shapewear had a pad sewn into the crotch between two thick layers of cotton; converting to the underwear seems easiest for those who already rely on pads. There are a few different cuts, including high-rise and bikini. They’re all black, except for two gray junior-size styles. After a day of wear, the product is rinsed in the sink and wrung out, then laundered or hand-washed. Sizes go up to 3X, although the company expects that by the holidays, they will go up to 6X.

“The only way you can really have change is if you’re available to everybody, and you’re affordable and you’re willing to go to a really mass market,” Ms. Welch said. “We don’t want to be posh. We want to be accessible.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/style/can-these-period-underwear-crusaders-convert-you.html

Natalie Young had quit her job as a chef on the Las Vegas Strip just a few months before she was introduced to Mr. Hsieh by a friend who ran a coffee shop in downtown Las Vegas. She recalled on Saturday that he had once asked her, “What size restaurant do you want?” and had later offered her a $225,000 loan. With the money, she opened her first restaurant, Eat, in 2012, and it became a hit. As her own business grew, she also saw her downtown neighborhood change.

“I remember standing on the corner at Eat and looking both ways and seeing nothing — like, nothing,” she said of the time before she opened her restaurant. But after it opened, and as Mr. Hsieh’s investments attracted more businesses and people, downtown became a destination, she said, and suddenly parents and children were arriving on bicycles at her restaurant’s front door.

As much as she loves the new downtown, Ms. Young acknowledged that it had come with trade-offs; the coffee shop that her friend owned closed in 2016 and was replaced by a restaurant that is part of a California-based chain, exactly the kind of business Mr. Hsieh once said he wanted to avoid in favor of unique shops.

“That kind of stuff made you sad, but it’s also a part of growth,” Ms. Young said.

In recent years, as Mr. Hsieh became less involved in the Downtown Project, it was increasingly run “like a traditional urban planning project,” focusing on real estate and investing in more lucrative projects, Aimee Groth, who penned a book about Mr. Hsieh and the project, wrote for Quartz in 2017.

Leah Meisterlin, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University, said on Saturday that Mr. Hsieh’s project was an early attempt to bring a fast-moving Silicon Valley approach to city planning. Despite his generous investment, Ms. Meisterlin said, the project may have been slowed in its ambition because cities can benefit more from slower, careful changes.

“They didn’t have any experience in urban planning, but what he had was over $300 million of his own wealth that he was ready to invest,” Ms. Meisterlin said. “What he chose as his subject — a city — necessarily slowed him down, whereas many endeavors might not have, and I think that was ultimately for the best.”

Mayor Carolyn Goodman of Las Vegas, whose city boundaries do not include the Las Vegas Strip and its many landmarks, wrote on Twitter on Saturday that Mr. Hsieh had been a visionary for the city’s downtown.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/us/tony-hsieh-las-vegas.html

Some cannabis farmers chose to stay on their farms, in some cases defying evacuation orders, to try and save crops from fire using methods like watering down the plants. One of those farmers was Ms. Peterson’s father, a retired firefighter.

After surviving previous wildfire seasons, other marijuana farms have diversified into additional crops, or focused on growing inside (as the majority of Colorado’s cannabis farms do). But even indoor grows are not immune to wildfire damage.

Ms. Hollingsworth doesn’t yet know the impact of the smoke on her crops, which are grown in climate-controlled greenhouses, but “they’re not perking up as much as they usually do,” she said. Right now, she is most worried about the sky. “Sun rays, they can’t filter through the smoke,” she said. “And we really rely on the greatest resource that the planet has ever known, which is the sun, for us to grow.”

Still, Ms. Hollingsworth has no plans of giving up on her family business. Last year, she and her brother were featured on the cover of Cannabis Business Times, and they appeared on an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown.” “I hope that we can continue on this pathway of growing sustainable cannabis and showing people that it can be done,” she said.

Ms. Peterson’s family plans to rebuild their house with wildfire considerations, including steel, solar panels and no windows facing the forest. “We’re going to keep going,” she said. “I want to raise my kids on my family property. That would be the dream, to continue the farmstead on to the next generation.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/style/cannabis-farms-wildfires-weed.html

Go to the Source

There are always times when you need delivery. But on other days, think twice about how you order takeout. Rather than using a delivery app, ask for curbside pickup: Sites like Grubhub and Uber Eats charge restaurants fees that can reduce already thin margins. Instacart and Shipt, two companies that offer shopping and delivery, also charge the merchants who use the sites.

And while it is easy to purchase through a so-called digital shop on sites like Facebook and Instagram, shopping through third-party apps typically reduces the net profit for the merchant. (Facebook, which owns Instagram, has waived selling fees through the end of the year but will re-evaluate the practice in January, a Facebook spokeswoman said in an email.)

Be Social

Help bolster a business’s social media presence by “liking” hardware stores, dry cleaners and other independent shops on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Write positive reviews, post photos generously of purchases, and don’t forget to tag the businesses. And consider slightly broader efforts, like community email lists and social media groups like Nextdoor.

Retailers are savvy when it comes to selling, but many don’t fully understand that social media plays a crucial role, Ms. Breunig said. Through her Facebook group, she started an “adopt a shop” effort, in which residents select a store and commit to shopping there once a week (with no spending minimum) and posting about their experiences on Facebook. Within five days, Ms. Breunig said, 24 Evanston stores were “adopted.”

Beyond Charity

You can double the effect of philanthropic efforts by involving small businesses whenever possible. Order meals for essential workers from independent restaurants. Shop local when buying for clothing drives. And even if it’s a bit more expensive, purchase from local markets for food drives.

Suzanne Fiske, the director of on-air development for WHYY, the public radio and television stations in Philadelphia, had yet another idea. “Our listeners care about the mom-and-pop shop next door that is having trouble during the pandemic,” she said, so she asked donors on social media platforms to name their favorite local business when they contributed to be read aloud. The station awarded the two with the most votes — Horsham Square Pharmacy in Horsham, Pa., and MYX, a Bryn Mawr, Pa., start-up that creates a custom-blend beverage dispenser — radio advertising worth $3,500. The promotion also motivated listener donations, with more than 700 contributors calling on the day of the small-business challenge, close to three times the typical number, Ms. Fiske added.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/business/smallbusiness/how-to-support-small-businesses.html

For now, she’s open for business with reduced hours and capacity. “But I’m hanging in there,” Ms. Burns said. “I’m still in a revenue hole, though, for 2020 as compared to last year — about a 30 percent year-over-year drop.

“Coronavirus cases are surging in Ohio right now, so I am unsure how it will play out — we’ll see,” she added.

Here’s a rundown of what resources are available to small-business owners like Ms. Burns. Keep in mind that the rules continue to shift.

Small Business Administration

The P.P.P. program is closed. For small-business operators who did receive one, the loans are forgivable; in essence, they are turned into grants, if the funds were used for payroll costs, interest on mortgages, rent and utilities (a portion of the forgiven amount must have been used for payroll).

Originally, the loans had to be used within eight weeks of receiving the money. That allotted time was pushed to 24 weeks through the P.P.P. Flexibility Act, which also extended the deferment date of the first payment on the loan to 10 months after the end of the covered period, and the loan forgiveness application was simplified.

The S.B.A. does have other helpful offerings. Its Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program provides up to six months of working capital, with a fixed interest rate of 3.75 percent. Payment can be deferred for a year, but interest will accrue. Loans have repayments of up to 30 years.

The agency is also providing small businesses that have a relationship with an S.B.A. Express Lender to access a bridge loan of up to $25,000.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/business/smallbusiness/small-business-loans-assistance-resources.html

In the two years since that conversation, Roy, who used to bake dinner bread with his grandmother while growing up outside Montreal, has transformed himself from a hobbyist to a professional baker. He’d made the transition from amateur to expert once before: When he was a 21-year-old graphic designer in Nashville, he bought a Minolta X-370 to shoot test images for his girlfriend, an aspiring model; three years later, he moved to Paris with $400 in his pocket and a dream of becoming the next Richard Avedon. In the early days, his process revolved around the painstaking technique of developing his own color film, but as digital took over, it left him yearning for something new to do with his hands. Last year, he enrolled in a bread-making boot camp at the San Francisco Baking Institute, and back home, he rented a 7,000-square-foot red brick building in downtown Hudson to create a 50-seat bakery called Breadfolks. Roy designed the space and did much of the finishing himself, reimagining it with hardwood floors, whitewashed walls and Germanic stencil typography on a coal-black facade. He bought Italian baking equipment, including a stainless-steel Logiudice oven, known for its precision, and plunged his fingers into the flour.

Roy was determined from the start that Breadfolks, which has a dozen or so employees, not be a vanity project. He starts baking at 4:30 each morning, adjusting recipes as he goes. “A Breadfolks product is something that has these deep undertones of caramel and chocolate,” Roy says. He’s captivated by the Maillard reaction, in which sugars and amino acids are activated by heat to brown the ear and belly of the bread, and though he makes ciabatta, focaccia, bagels, baguettes, croissants and cruffins, his signature is a custardy country loaf that blends whole wheat and rye. “My products have a patina feel to them,” Roy says. “I like texture.” The bakery, which officially opened in August, was an instant hit, and by early September, they were selling 1,000 pounds of bread each weekend.

Still, success is relative in this line of work: “I’m making a living two, three dollars at a time,” Roy says. “There’s nothing more humbling than that after spending years in five-star hotels and private jets.” He and Joanna are also launching a coffee brand, Roastfolks, along with a utilitarian, all-matte stoneware line called Clayfolks, creating a complete ecosystem in one building. The next step is franchising. “I’m not interested in ever opening a Breadfolks in New York City or places like that,” says Roy, whose photography is now mostly relegated to his bakery’s Instagram feed. “My intention is to create these micro bakeries in these micro places.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/t-magazine/breadfolks-norman-jean-roy.html

Then, of course, the pandemic happened.

Yet for Geojam, that wasn’t the end of the story. While the pandemic vastly curtailed live events, which like the hospitality, restaurant and travel industry ground to a near halt, the company and the artists found a way to come together.

In March, Ms. Figueroa decided to use her company’s technology to directly connect artists with their fans, with a similar engagement model. More social media interactions around a particular artist equated to greater reward points for fans, who could exchange them for interactions with an artist, like one-on-one FaceTime calls, Zoom cooking classes or even an appearance in an advertising campaign.

What Ms. Figueroa, her two co-founders and investors were able to do isn’t going to work for everyone. But their pivot may offer useful lessons to other entrepreneurs regardless of their wealth and experience. And those lessons may come in handy as coronavirus cases rise again and small businesses that have made it this far struggle to get through a tough winter.

Have multiple lines within a business. Geojam was not Ms. Figueroa’s first venture. At age 26, she already had a hit (Undorm, which she started while in college to advertise apartments to college students and social organizations), a miss (Lenzjam, which she called a too-early version of TikTok) and one so-so venture (One Box Agency, a music marketing agency that gave her the idea for Geojam).

She was eager to test the concept of rewarding fans for their enthusiasm while compensating artists and turning a profit. In the live event model, there would have been plenty of sponsor cash to support Geojam’s planned data mining of fans’ reactions to sponsors’ marketing efforts. It was the kind of microtargeting that sponsors are eager to have.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/your-money/entrepreneur-pandemic.html

The start-up culture wars are also evident on Clubhouse, where people join rooms and chat with one another. The app has been a popular place for investors such as Marc Andreessen and other techies to hang out in the pandemic. (Mr. Andreessen’s venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has invested in Clubhouse, Coinbase and Soylent.)

On Oct. 6, Mr. Andreessen started a Clubhouse room called “Holding Space for Karens,” which describes having empathy for “Karens,” a slang term for a pushy privileged woman. Another group, “Holding Space for Marc Andreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessen,” soon popped up. There, people discussed their disappointment with the Karen discussion and other instances when, they said, Clubhouse was hostile to people of color.

Mr. Andreessen and others later started a Clubhouse room called “Silence,” where no one spoke. Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment.

At a “town hall” inside the app on Sunday, Clubhouse’s founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, were asked about Coinbase’s and Expensify’s political statements and where Clubhouse stood. They said the company was still deciding how Clubhouse would publicly back social causes and felt the platform should allow for multiple points of view, a spokeswoman said. She declined to comment further.

Yet even those wishing to stay out of politics are finding it hard to avoid. On Saturday, Mr. Armstrong shared Mr. Rhinehart’s blog post endorsing Mr. West on Twitter. “Epic,” tweeted Mr. Armstrong.

Several users pointed out the hypocrisy in Mr. Armstrong’s sharing something political after telling employees to abstain. One of his employees, Jesse Pollak, wrote that Mr. Armstrong had shared something with “a large number of inaccuracies, conspiracy theories, and misplaced assumptions.”

Soon after, Mr. Pollak and Mr. Armstrong deleted their tweets.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/technology/politics-tech-start-ups-culture-war.html

Pumping a supercold liquid through plastic tubes that snake around the hardware — “it looks kind of like bright blue Gatorade,” Mr. Hedges said — the chillers did what they were supposed to do. But they required extra attention, especially since Mr. Hedges and his family had just bought a new dog, and the puppy enjoyed chewing on the tubes.

“If the dog had ever bitten through the tube, there would have been pumps shooting fluid everywhere,” he said.

For his wife, the bigger problem was the never-ending whir of the chiller pumps. “That’s what drove her over the edge,” Mr. Hedges, 45, said.

In July, he moved some of the gear back into the Cerebras offices, where he now works on occasion, largely alone. Only seven other people are allowed in the 35,000-square-foot office, with most others still at home with their own gear. The arrangement works well enough, Mr. Hedges said, though he does not always have the equipment he needs because it has been scattered across so many people’s residences.

Like Cerebras, other tech start-ups are finding that they need to move their makeshift labs from one place to another — or have several jury-rigged labs going at the same time — to keep development going.

Voyage, a self-driving car start-up in Palo Alto, Calif., initially bought various self-driving car parts and shipped them to two engineers so they could work at home. The start-up sent them lidar sensors (the laser sensors that track everything around the car) and inertial measurement units (the devices that track the position and movement of the car itself) so they could keep testing changes to the car’s software.

But Voyage did not just rely on the at-home setups. In some cases, it arranged for engineers to log on to their home computers for remote access to a collection of car parts set up at the company’s offices.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/technology/tech-startups-garage.html