Even as reports of a new viral outbreak in China started popping up during the first weeks of 2020, most people were slow to pay sufficient attention to the developing threat. In contrast, Bill and Melinda Gates acted decisively and quickly. On January 29th, the Gates Foundation pledged $10 million “to help frontline responders in China and…
Shortly after I graduated from college in 1990, America entered a recession. The unemployment rate peaked at 7.3 percent in 1991. That same year, the U.S. experienced a record number of murders. The world was also in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Tens of thousands of people around the world were dying from a…
From the moment Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign in June 2015, I’ve been a Never Trumper. That was because he’d spent zero minutes of his life as a public servant — and virtually every minute of his life engaged in narcissistic self-promotion. He started out slapping his name onto skyscrapers and casinos, and then less grandly,…
By Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to batter the world, many have declared an end to the “Unicorn Era” in general and blitzscaling in particular. Suddenly, capital is harder to come by, customers aren’t buying, and none of us can leave our homes. Meanwhile, the United States has already lost more lives to the disease than…
I was delighted to learn that WaitWhat, the startup company that makes my podcast Masters of Scale, is up for a few Webby Awards. There’s a popular choice vote that finishes tomorrow, Thursday. Initially, I resisted posting about it and encouraging people to vote; it felt too self-serving. But then I found out that Jessi Hempel is also up for a Webby…