WOR LD

CHANGING

WILL
IDEAS
ISSUE

GOOGLE’S
ALPHA
BET PAY
OFF?
6 Ways Alphabet
14 Food
Innovators
Changing the
Way We Eat

Starbucks,
CEO Larry Page is Lyft, and the
reinventing his Anti-Uber
company to beat Alliance
APPLE, FACEBOOK
How WeWork
& MICROSOFT Is Taking Over
the World
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WELCOME TO OUR WORLD
 April 2016
Contents

COVER STORY

The ABCs
of Alphabet
Details about the newly
formed company of
companies (formerly known
as Google) remain murky,
but there’s a lot we can
learn from the ways in which
it resembles Microsoft, Nike,
GE, and more.
Begins on page 60

Lofty goals
Extending wireless
Internet service to
places cell towers
can’t reach is among
Alphabet’s many
Courtesy of Google

world-changing plans.
(page 60)

On the cover: Photograph by David Black April 2016 FastCompany.com 3

 Contents

Soul proprietor
WeWork cofounder
Rebekah Paltrow
Neumann makes
sure the company
stays true to its
mission. (page 92)

FEATURES

Styling: Christian Stroble; hair: Tomo Jidai at Streeters London; makeup: Regine Thorre; production: LOLA Production NYC
Ly f t ’s f r i e n d s w i t h b e n e f i t s
86 By forming alliances with the likes
of Starbucks and GM, the No. 2 ride-
sharing company is creating a path
forward in its race against Uber.
By Rick Tetzeli

W e W o r k ’s g o l d e n t o u c h
92 Can 50,000 members—and a multi-
billion dollar valuation—turn WeWork
into a household name?
By Sarah Kessler

4 FastCompany.com April 2016 Photograph by Steven Klein

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 Contents

Failure is not
FEATURES on the menu
“It has to work. I just
can’t understand any
other scenario. But it’s
a hard way of running a

People
company,” Chang
says. (page 70)

Changing Food
70 As his Momofuku empire expands
to new platforms, David Chang stays
focused on the umami-rich details.
By Rob Brunner

78 Celebrity chefs Roy Choi and Daniel

Patterson are serving up a different
kind of fast food.

80 A fourth-generation Oregon rancher

found a way to revive her family’s
land—no chemical fertilizers required.

82 Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square

Hospitality Group, is eliminating tip-
ping in his fine-dining restaurants.

84 More foodies who matter, includ-

ing a pair turning crickets into baked
goods and a chef using creative recipes
to combat diet-related diseases.

DEPARTMENTS

12 From the Editor

Most Innovative Companies

14 The latest from McDonald’s, ESPN,
SpaceX, and more.

Most Creative People

18 Yancey Strickler wants to hold Kick-
starter to a higher standard.

The Recommender
20 From jelly shoes to a sleek coffee-
maker, what we’re loving right now.

My Two Cents
108 Why choosing a job can also mean
choosing a life.
By Jon Birger
Set design: Alex Brannian

8 FastCompany.com April 2016 Photograph by Herring & Herring

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 Contents

NEXT
What’s measured is what matters
25 Nielsen’s quest to solve the TV
ratings conundrum raises as many
questions as it answers.
Skin deep
48 Gregg Renfrew is taking toxins
out of beauty products—and
lobbying the government to
follow suit.
Pedal pushers
52 Biomega’s high-design e-bike
targets urbanists with style.

The brand builder The talents of ReverbNation

32 Alessandra Ghini helped shape 54 Data from 4 million musicians
Apple and Starbucks by targeting is informing new understanding,
consumers’ emotions. opportunities, and connections.

Surprising work tips Crossing over

34 What Pulitzer winner Charles 58 Religion scholar turned televi-
Duhigg learned from studying the sion host Reza Aslan on making the
habits of the highly productive. jump to Hollywood.

Power to the patients

36 Kaiser Permanente’s redesigned
medical offices prioritize both com-
fort and efficiency.

Bright lights, Broad Cit y

42 The creators of the hit Comedy
Central show on provoking the
right reaction.

Five takes on virtual realit y

46 These creative VR pioneers are
worth watching.

Hair: Marcel Dagenais; makeup: Sarah Egan

Dynamic duo
“We are five steps
more absurd and five
steps more grounded
and real,” says Broad
City’s Ilana Glazer
(right, with cocreator
Abbi Jacobson) of
season 3. (page 42)

10 FastCompany.com April 2016 Photograph by Ben Rayner

 From the Editor
That twist of magic
When it comes to world-changing ideas in business,
vision must be married to practicality.
If you believe in fate, there are signs that ride-sharing company
Lyft has destiny on its side in its competition with Uber. After all,
before Lyft’s two founders ever met, one of them had launched
a company called Zimride; the other founder happened to be
named Zimmer. They have become best friends, with weddings
and children’s births coinciding with key moments in the compa-
ny’s history. Serendipity seems to arrive at opportune moments.
But luck is not a business strategy, and fortunately for Lyft,
neither of its founders is waiting for the world to come to them.
Instead, as editor-at-large Rick Tetzeli reports in “The Race Is
On,” beginning on page 86, Lyft has maintained its relevance in
an Uber-obsessed culture by focusing on the details it can con-
trol. What animates the company is a breathtaking idea: that
ride sharing can radically change our transportation system,
climate-change footprint, and even the way people interact. But
what dictates its actions—including a slew of new partnerships
with the likes of Starbucks and GM—is actually pragmatism.
12 FastCompany.com April 2016
Bold ideas get tossed around a lot (particularly
during a presidential election season), but turn-
ing them into reality requires more than mystical
sleight of hand. This month’s cover story about
CEO Larry Page’s reconfiguring of Google into
Alphabet is a prime example. Page has taken one
of the most successful enterprises of all time and
radically restructured it. As we explain in “Search
for the Future,” beginning on page 60, Alphabet
faces some devilishly complicated challenges,
in part because it seeks to provoke Olympian
change—in communications, health care, and
more. To understand Page’s solution, we’ve bro-
ken it down into pieces, using as analogies the
challenges faced (and posed) by companies from
Apple to Nike. What this analysis reveals is how
inspired and targeted Alphabet’s new structure is.
It’s hard to overstate how difficult it is for
any leader or organization to defy conventional
thinking and instead give rope to a truly creative
idea. And yet that’s exactly what is required to
generate world-changing impact. Members’ cult-
Better together like enthusiasm for WeWork took real estate and
WeWork has
attracted more workplace experts by surprise (see “Members
than 50,000 Only,” page 92). Unconventional restaurants are
members to its
vision of communal remaking expectations around what and how we
work spaces. eat (see “People Changing Food,” page 70).
Sometimes success requires more than one
leap of faith. Google had made plenty of jumps
(buying YouTube, launching Android) before
Alphabet came along. Lyft, too, has had to ex-
ercise continued creativity, particularly as rival
Uber built a seemingly insurmountable lead
in customers, funding, brand recognition, and
more. What Lyft has done, though, is find areas
where it has its own advantages and aggres-
sively leaned into those opportunities. That is
no guarantee that Lyft will ultimately succeed.
But by taking its own shot, defining success in
its own distinctive way, Lyft at least has a chance
to participate in and advance that breakthrough
idea at the heart of its enterprise. It’s one more
vote of confidence for the road less traveled.
Celine Grouard (Safian, WeWork)
Robert Safian
editor@fastcompany.com
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Most Innovative Companies Updates from the alumni
The golden ticket?
McDonald’s hopes new menu
items like breakfast bowls will
continue to attract visitors.
A breakfast
boost
MCDONALD’S
What does a fast-food juggernaut
do when customers no longer seem
to be lovin’ it? It listens to what they
really want—which, as it turns out,
is hash browns and hotcakes.
Since launching an all-day break-
fast menu at 15,000 of its 36,000
locations last October, Mickey D’s
is the most profitable it’s been in
three years, revealing a 6% jump in
U.S. sales in Q4 2015. The brighter
outlook comes just one year after
the burger chain brought in CEO
Steve Easterbrook to restore the
Golden Arches to relevance amid
consumers’ increasingly selective
eating habits.
But McDonald’s isn’t resting
on breakfast. To help sustain the
14 FastCompany.com April 2016
“We ask the Big 3 to step
growth, it’s become focused on
improving customer experience,
experimenting with tech-infused
store concepts and unveiling new
eco-friendly packaging that sports
bold and colorful lettering in an
ongoing effort to catch up to more
savvy competitors. Can McDonald’s
finally attract a new generation of
noshers? Or will two-for-$2 value
meals lose their appeal?
Milestones After resolving
a handful of food-safety scan dals
in China, McDonald’s is opening
150 of its “Create Your Taste”
custom-burger locations in
the region in 2016 after much
success in the United States.
Challenges While sales are up,
store traffic continues to decline
with the number of McDonald’s
visitors dropping by 3% in 2015.
Buzz
“What our customers are
expecting from us today versus
15 years ago is changing.”
Matt Biespiel
Senior director of global brand
development, McDonald’s
ESPN
Milestones For the 2016
Winter X Games, ESPN
partnered with Intel to
install its Curie sensors in
contenders’ snowboards,
enabling the sports net-
work to display real-time
data like acceleration,
altitude, and rotation
during events.
Challenges ESPN, which
accounts for 32% of parent
company Disney’s reve-
nue, has lost 7 million
cable subscribers within
the past two years.
Buzz
E M I R AT E S A I R L I N E S
up and start competing
on the fundamentals—
product and service.”
Sir Tim Clark
President of Emirates Airlines,
in Arabian Business op-ed
Milestones Starting in
March, the Dubai-based,
government-owned
Emirates—recently ranked
the world’s most valuable
airline—will operate direct
flights to Panama, which
officials say will boost
trade relations between
countries in the Middle
East and Central America.
At 17.5 hours, the flight will
be the world’s longest.
Challenges Amid growing
concern surrounding the
Zika virus, Emirates is
offering refunds to ticket
holders traveling to Latin
America through April.
Additionally, rivals in both
the U.S. and Europe are
pressuring regulators to
cut subsidies to Persian
Gulf carriers, claiming that
they are monopolizing
international travel.
Buzz
BAIDU
Milestones While Google
and the auto industry are
focused on driverless cars,
Baidu recently announced
plans to put AI–equipped
buses on the road by 2018.
If early tests go well, the
Chinese tech company
expects to mass-produce
the buses by 2020.
Challenges Tens of thou-
sands of Chinese users are
boycotting the company
following allegations that
Baidu-run illness-support
forums have become hubs
for companies looking to
advertise dicey medical
services and clinics.
Buzz
S PA C E X
The International
Space Station
Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images (McDonald’s); Joel Marklund/Bildbyran via ZUMA Wire (McMorris); NASA (ISS)
Milestones NASA renewed
its commercial resupply
contract with SpaceX,
ensuring that Elon Musk’s
orbital-transport venture
will continue to deliver
provisions to the Interna-
tional Space Station
through 2024.
Challenges Less than a
month after achieving
a vertical rocket landing,
SpaceX failed to land its
Falcon 9 rocket on a barge
during a January test,
resulting in a widely cov-
ered explosion. Meanwhile,
Jeff Bezos–owned Blue
Origin is proving to be
a worthy competitor.
Buzz
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Unique fashion,
low sales
FAST RETAILING CO.
Fast Retailing Co., the Japan-based
parent of basics clothing brand
Uniqlo, is one of the largest fash-
ion companies in the world. Still,
Uniqlo’s grand ambitions to conquer
the United States—in 2012, it hoped
to open up to 30 stores per year—
have stalled, the second time the
company has tried and struggled
to win over Americans.
In fact, while rivals Zara and
H&M have thrived in the U.S., Fast
"We aim to make
Uniqlo essential to every
American life.”
Justin Kerr
Chief merchandising officer, Uniqlo U.S.
16 FastCompany.com April 2016
Most Innovative Companies
Retailing has opened just 45 Uniqlo
American outposts and earlier this
year lowered its earning predictions
10% after an unseasonably warm
winter. (Uniqlo typically generates
millions annually from its innova-
tive line of heat-retaining textiles.)
To stanch the loss, the retailer plans
to push up the release of its spring
clothing line.
It won’t matter if Fast Retail-
ing stocks Uniqlo stores with new
clothing, though, if it can’t get more
customers in stores to buy it. To that
end, Uniqlo is opening flagships in
urban centers—like Chicago and
Denver—and recruiting managers
from its Asian stores, which are
thriving. In the meantime, the brand
might have to accept that becoming
a household name in the U.S. will be
a much more long-term endeavor.
Milestones In February, Uniqlo
brought a popular collection
of clothing designed for Muslim
women stateside.
Challenges Fast Retailing Co.'s
international unit, which includes
its U.S. stores, reported a 14.2%
drop in operating profit.
Buzz
A good fit
Could collabs,
like this one with
Lemaire, help
turn the tide?
Artist Ai Weiwei uses
Legos for portraits of other
political dissidents.
LEGO
Milestones Facing public
outcry after it refused to
sell Legos to Chinese artist
and dissident Ai Weiwei,
the world’s largest toy
maker announced that it
will no longer require buy-
ers to disclose why they’re
purchasing its bricks in
bulk. In the past, the com-
pany actively tried to cur-
tail political uses of Legos.
Challenges German regu-
lators levied a $145,000
fine against Lego after an
investigation found that
the company threatened
to stop selling to toy stores
that attempted to mark
down its products in 2012
and 2013.
Buzz
ZYNGA
Milestones In partnership
with the online ad firm
Rubicon Project, Zynga
recently announced plans
to develop political native
ads that will allow 2016
presidential candidates to
target voters within mobile
games like FarmVille and
Words With Friends.
Challenges The gaming
company reported a
$47 million loss in Q4 and
continues to hemorrhage
daily active users, report-
ing a 24% year-over-year
decline in players.
Buzz
G I LT G R O U P E
“Gilt
“ is cool. It’s got a real
millennial following.
Together we’ll create
this power couple.”
Jonathan Greller
President of Hudson's Bay Co.
Off-Price
Milestones In January,
flash-sale startup Gilt
Groupe was acquired by
Hudson’s Bay Co., the
owner of high-end retailer
Saks Fifth Avenue. Gilt will
be combined with Saks Off
5th, a discount spin-off,
to further boost Hudson’s
e-commerce offerings.
Challenges Once valued
at more than $1 billion, Gilt
Groupe was sold for just
$250 million in cash—less
than the total amount of
venture capital it raised.
Buzz
L I V E N AT I O N
Milestones The concert
giant will sell tickets for
and produce Rihanna’s
upcoming world tour in
support of her long-
delayed album, Anti. The
global megastar will play
67 shows in North America
and Europe through
August.
Challenges Live concert
Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times/Polaris (Ai Weiwei exhibit); Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for HBO (Rihanna)
tracker Songkick is suing
Live Nation (and its sub-
sidiary, Ticketmaster) for
allegedly monopolizing
the ticket-sales market.
Buzz
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Most Creative People

Kickstarting a
pro-social trend
YANCEY STRICKLER
Then
HEAD OF COMMUNITY, KICKSTARTER
Now
CEO, KICKSTARTER

Yancey Strickler has always want-

ed Kickstarter to make a positive
difference. But last fall, he took the
crowdsourcing company’s do-good
values a step further, reincorporat-
ing the business as a public-benefit
corporation—a legal designation
that lets shareholders know the
company has broader goals than
just making money. “That’s the
punk-rock way to go: Just go all the
way,” says Strickler, a former music
journalist. With 32 states now offer-
ing PBC incorporation and compa-
nies such as Etsy and Warby Parker
making the move, the CEO believes
the startup world is beginning to
embrace the public-benefit concept.
“I’m an eternal optimist,” he says.
“I believe it can get there.”
As part of the transition from
“Inc.” to “PBC,” the seven-year-old
company has established a new
charter that outlines rigorous ethi-
cal standards. For example, Kick-
starter will not take advantage of
tax loopholes, and at the end of each
fiscal year, it will donate 5% of post-
tax profit toward arts-education
programs and organizations fight-
ing inequality. The company will HOW HE STAYS
also report executive-to-employee PRODUCTIVE
pay ratios. “We know there’s a lot S O M E T H I N G H E ’S E XC I T E D A B O U T The video for Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.”
to be figured out, and there are
things we will have gotten wrong,”
“It’s so good. There are a lot of layers of emotions.” S O M E T H I N G H E
I S N ’ T Voice-recognition technology. “As someone who loves con-
“I don’t have social media on my
says Strickler, whose company has
versation and other human beings, I just hate it. It feels like another phone. The more time you spend
enabled creators to raise more than
$2.2 billion for Kickstarter proj-
little death for humanity and another outsourcing of our brain.” in the stream of other people’s
ects. “This means we’ll be held to a
W H O W O U L D B E O N H I S L I S T O F M O S T C R E AT I V E P E O P L E Kanye West. “He’s thoughts, the more impossible it
higher standard than other compa-
nies. That will create difficult days,
always seeking new ways of expression. There’s a very sincere
curiosity to him.” H I S FAVO R I T E K I C KSTA RT E R P R OJ E CT AT T H E M O M E N T Anom-
is for you to have your own.
but I have no doubt that ultimately alisa. “It’s a stop-motion-animation film made by Charlie Kaufman. You need space for yourself.”
it leads to a better organization.” Fans stepped up to fund this crazy script he had that’s about
—Nikita Richardson existential dread, with puppets. He is a legitimate creative hero.”

18 FastCompany.com April 2016 Photograph by Eric T. White

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 N
The audience
puzzle
As the television landscape
fractures, figuring out
who is watching what has
never been more difficult—
or important.
BY NICOLE LAPORTE
Photographs by Mauricio Alejo

E
When the CBS television series
Limitless premiered on a Tuesday
night last September, 9.9 million
people tuned in to check it out. In
today’s TV world, which is nothing
if not limitless—given the deluge
of programming on everything
from Netflix to cable to YouTube
and myriad ways to consume it—
10 million pairs of eyeballs for a
new show is impressive.
And that was only the beginning.
After factoring in about a month’s

X
worth of DVR playback and video-
on-demand viewing following the
show’s premiere, plus streaming
data from CBS’s website and app, the
network’s total Limitless audience
estimate jumped to 16 million.
“That’s a big difference,” says David
Poltrack, chief research officer for
CBS. “That’s the new way that televi-
sion programs become successful.
They don’t become successful just

T
April 2016 FastCompany.com 2 5

on network viewing, on live TV. They
don’t become successful just on the
Internet. It’s an accumulation of this
different distribution. You need to
measure everything.”
It sounds so simple. Just add up
all the numbers, right?
Hardly. The new math of TV rat-
ings and audience measurement
has never been more complicated.
As online video platforms prolifer-
ate—and audiences scatter across
smartphones, tablets, laptops, and
connected-TV devices, such as Apple
TV and Roku—getting an accurate
read on viewership has become a
Sisyphean task. There is no single,
authoritative provider of data;
networks have to cobble together
sometimes contradictory informa-
tion from an array of sources. What’s
at stake: Without a full picture of a
show’s audience, neither producers
nor advertisers know the true value
of what they’re selling and buying.
Nielsen, the ratings stalwart
whose weekly reports have been
deciding the life or death of TV
shows for six decades, wants to
ride to the digital rescue with a new
“total audience measurement” that
promises to account for viewing
across all platforms. This effort,
which has been rolling out for the
past few months, may seem im-
probable considering the company
has been claiming it could tame
“Every Tuesday you get a
rating for what happened
on Monday night—one
that only represents 60%
of the total audience.”
the digital chaos since at least 2007.
That’s when Nielsen introduced the
so-called C3 metric to factor in the
ascendance of DVRs; it calculates
the average viewership of ads dur-
ing a show within three days of
airing. Five years later, advertisers
and agencies started embracing
26 FastCompany.com April 2016
Next
Nielsen’s C7 rating, targeting a week’s
worth of views. But both figures are
quickly becoming less relevant, as
people watch shows weeks, even
months, after they air. What’s more,
Nielsen’s metrics have traditionally
not looked at which programs are
being watched over subscription
streaming services, such as Netflix
and Amazon. Since these platforms
are commercial-free, they have
no incentive to provide ratings—
leaving a black hole of information
on who is binge-watching Transpar-
ent or old episodes of Parenthood
(data that’s useful to content produc-
ers, if not advertisers).
Nielsen’s success with total
audience measurement would be
nothing short of a reinvention for
the company, which has become a
punching bag for media executives
who carp that its ratings systems
are antiquated. “The idea that every
Tuesday you get a rating for what
happened on Monday night—one
that only represents 60% of what
the total audience is going to end up
being—is a frustration for us,” says
CBS’s Poltrack. Linda Yaccarino,
head of ad sales for NBCUniversal,
went on a diatribe against Nielsen
at the Consumer Electronics Show
in January, dismissing the C3 rating
as “practically useless.”
These sorts of complaints—
which Nielsen doesn’t necessarily
disagree with—are what spurred
the company to action six years ago,
when total audience first went into
development. Nielsen, after all, is a
nearly $17 billion company, with
ratings accounting for a significant
part of its revenue. Steve Hasker,
Nielsen’s COO, calls total audience
“the biggest product development
project that Nielsen has ever un-
dertaken.” Scores of engineers have
been brought on to build plug-ins
for the multitude of devices that
Nielsen is now tracking and to
create a software developer kit for
media companies to install in their
apps and online video players.
So what’s included? Nielsen
says it can now measure all TV and
digital platforms—Netflix, Yahoo,
and YouTube among them. (Its
R AT ING S HIGH S
A ND LO W S
A look at Nielsen’s
six decades of
audience tracking
1950
The A.C. Nielsen company buys
Hooper’s national radio-and-
TV-ratings service and begins
measuring TV audiences. Texaco
Star Theatre, hosted by Milton
Berle, is the most-watched
series of the 1950–1951 season
and one of TV’s first hit shows.
1953
Forty-four million viewers (or
72% of all TV-owning households
in the U.S.) tune in to watch Lucy
Ricardo give birth to Little Ricky on
CBS’s I Love Lucy. The episode
drew 15 million more viewers than
the previous day’s big television
event: President Eisenhower’s
inauguration.
1966
The first
season of
Star Trek
attracts a
dedicated
fan base
but low
ratings.
NBC nearly cancels the series after
season 2, but the torrent of fan
letters it receives convinces the
network to keep it on air for another
season. The Star Trek franchise has
since earned more than $1 billion
for its films alone.
1970
The 42nd Academy Awards show
earns the highest market share of
any television broadcast: 78% of U.S.
households watch as Midnight
Cowboy becomes the first X-rated
film to win best picture.
1971
Newly armed
with both
total number
of viewers and
audience
demographics
for its shows,
CBS cancels
popular pro-
grams includ-
ing Beverly
Hillbillies,
Green Acres, and Hee Haw in an
effort to attract younger, urban
viewers—a move that comes to be
known as “the rural purge.”
1983
The final episode of MASH
draws 105.9 million viewers,
making it the most-watched series
finale in television history. The
runner-up: Cheers in 1993 with
93.9 million.
1994
Seventeen million people watch
Olympic ice-skating silver medalist
(and knee-clubbing survivor)
Nancy Kerrigan host Saturday
Night Live. The episode remains
the show’s highest rated—and
most awkward, some say.
2009
TV viewing hits its highest levels
ever as households watch for
nearly nine hours per day.
2012
Everett Collection (I Love Lucy, Star Trek, Green Acres); Lou Rocco/ABC (Good Morning America)
Good Morning America snaps
the Today show’s 852-week
winning streak. The triumph came
in the midst of Today’s tension-
filled Ann Curry era and on a week
that anchor Matt Lauer was away.
2015
Katy Perry’s Super Bowl
performance draws 118.5 million
viewers, making it the most-
watched halftime show ever. But
even more viewers tuned in for the
final 40 minutes of the game, when
the New England Patriots came
from behind to beat the Seattle
Seahawks.
 FIDELITY FIXED INCOME
STABILITY AND EXPERIENCE
IN EVER-CHANGING MARKETS
Stability, experience, and consistency are important criteria when choosing fixed income investments.
Fidelity is one of the most experienced fixed income investors in the industry, managing more than $860 billion
in fixed income assets,* with 200+ fixed income research professionals. We employ a team-based approach
to portfolio management that is focused on delivering consistent, risk-adjusted returns.

26
Fidelity fixed income
10
Fidelity fixed income funds
3 7 of
the

fixed income funds

funds are rated 4 or 5 stars have a GOLD Morningstar in Kiplinger’s 25 Favorite
by Morningstar.1 Analyst Rating™.2 No-Load Funds for 2015
are Fidelity funds.3

Consider these Fidelity funds whose portfolio managers average more than 23 years of experience between them.

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if available, a summary prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
ETFs are subject to market fluctuation and the risks of their underlying investments. ETFs are subject to management fees and other expenses. Unlike mutual funds, ETF shares are bought and sold at market price, which may be higher or
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In general, the bond market is volatile, and fixed income securities carry interest rate risk. (As interest rates rise, bond prices usually fall, and vice versa. This effect is usually more pronounced for longer-term securities.) Fixed income secu-
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quality of the issuer. Foreign investments involve greater risks than U.S. investments, and can decline significantly in response to adverse issuer, political, regulatory, market, and economic risks. Any fixed income security sold or redeemed
prior to maturity may be subject to loss.
* Data accurate as of 06/30/2015.
†
As of 12/31/2015, Fidelity Total Bond Fund earned 4 stars based on its risk-adjusted performance, compared to 947 share classes within its Morningstar Intermediate Term Bond category; Fidelity Intermediate Municipal Income Fund earned
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1
For each fund with at least a three-year history, Morningstar calculates a Morningstar Rating™ based on a Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return measure that accounts for variation in a fund’s monthly performance (including the effects of sales
charges, loads and redemption fees), placing more emphasis on downward variations and rewarding consistent performance. The top 10% of the funds in an investment category receive 5 stars, the next 22.5% receive 4 stars, the next 35%
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2
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3
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Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Member NYSE, SIPC. © 2016 FMR LLC. All rights reserved. 701416.7.0 Mobile

work-around for the tight-lipped
Netflix: track the audio fingerprints
of some 6,000 individual episodes.)
It can parse numbers for a show
into metrics that are comparable
across platforms, from views to
total time spent on a program to
average audience size. It can also
break down the numbers by device.
“Studios that sell to
Netflix will be able to
say, ‘What’s driving
your subscribers are my
shows, not yours.’”
And thanks to a partnership with
Facebook, it can deliver age and
gender demographics for online
video viewers, by correlating them
with Facebook’s anonymized user-
identification database of 157 mil-
lion people in the U.S. alone.
Many in the television industry
are rooting for Nielsen to succeed,
particularly if its results counter the
bleak refrain that TV ratings are on
a downward spiral. It would, says
Hasker, “explain to advertisers, to
agencies, and to Wall Street that the
viewership for my programming
has gone up, not down.” It also cre-
ates an opportunity for networks
to monetize all those “extra” digital
views that haven’t been counted.
The $70 billion advertising
question is how marketers will
respond once Nielsen’s numbers
finally place television and digital
audiences side by side and in a
comparable format. Nielsen’s tra-
ditional metrics track the average
audience size per minute of a show,
while online video metrics have
revolved around views. For a sense
of the distortion this creates, recall
the chest-thumping by Yahoo back
in October, when it reported there
were 33.6 million streams of an
NFL game between the Buffalo Bills
and the Jacksonville Jaguars. But
only half that number were unique
28 FastCompany.com April 2016
Next
viewers, and once you spread them
across an entire game, well, in TV
terms, you end up with an audience
of just 2.4 million.
Whether or not a perfect solution
emerges, Nielsen’s new total audience
measure seems most likely to suc-
ceed . . . in fanning the debate. “When
marketers think about marketing,
they’re not thinking about TV versus
online versus whatever,” says Brad
Smallwood, VP of measurement and
insights at Facebook, which last fall
introduced an ad-buying product
that provides Nielsen ratings for
digital ads. “They just want to know
how many people saw [their ad].”
Not all marketers agree. “To
some degree, the normalizing of
ratings across platforms makes
sense, because it helps advertisers
compare apples to apples,” says Bre
Rossetti, VP, director of strategy and
innovation at Havas Media. “But it
can also be dangerous.” Rossetti
argues that marketers instead need
to start “trading in attention,” or
how intently people engage with
their content. V IE W ING H A B I T S
One benefit of Nielsen’s effort is
A closer look at how we watch television today
that it could give television studios
added muscle in negotiations with
streaming services. “My theory,” says
Using its new total audience measurement tool, Nielsen broke down
one veteran TV executive, “is that
six ways people consumed a single episode of a network drama after
Netflix is driven by broadcast and it aired last September. It tracked viewers who watched live, as well
cable shows” more than original as those who used DVRs, video-on-demand services, connected
content. While Netflix itself has data TVs, and computers and mobile devices in the 35 days that followed.
that answers that question, it hasn’t Across all demographics, 45% of viewers caught the show live (see
opened itself to outside measure- chart, below). But when you look at different age groups, that figure
ment. (Though Netflix would not varies dramatically, with 15% of 25- to 34-year-olds watching the show
as it aired versus 64% of the 50-plus audience set. Surprisingly, the
comment for this story, CEO Reed youngest viewers (18 to 24) were more likely to watch the episode live
Hastings recently told investors: than digitally or via connected TV or VOD. Digital does have a hold on
“Our titles are watched on the go and one age group: 18% of people ages 25 to 34 watched on a computer or
at home on a wide range of devices, mobile device. They were the only age group with more digital than
making measurement of the viewing live viewers—for now.
of any given title difficult for third Total viewership of a single TV episode from September 2015:
parties.”) But if Nielsen’s data does
align with this exec’s theory, he con-
tends, “Studios that sell to Netflix Live 45% VOD 7%
(1 to 35 days)
will be able to say, ‘Hey, wait a second
here. What’s driving your subscrib- Digital 8%
(1 to 35 days)
ers are my shows, not yours. Your
shows are the perception of what
you are, but my shows are the real-
ity.’ ” That means the balance of
power in this new world order could Connected TV 6%
(1 to 35 days)
be disrupted—by one of the ultimate DVR 32% DVR 2%
symbols of the old one. (1 to 7 days after airing) (8 to 35 days)
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Next
The brand
builder
Alessandra Ghini helped Apple
and Starbucks stir consumers’
emotions—and win big.
BY MARK WILSON
Photograph by Justin Kaneps
When a music ad inspires
your sense of adventure or
a barista asks how you’ve
been, you’re likely experienc-
ing the type of interaction
designed by Alessandra
Ghini. A 20-year marketing
veteran, Ghini joined Apple
in 2001 and helped craft the
iPod’s debut, then spent
nearly a year constructing
a new brand strategy for
Starbucks. After eight years
consulting for companies
including Vans and Adobe,
she recently became chief
marketing officer of high-
tech tea startup Teforia.
Here’s her blueprint for tell-
ing a brand’s narrative.
32 FastCompany.com April 2016
Master Class
Lessons
learned
Ghini says
marketers should
see a product as
a story, not a list
of features.
Be nimble
At Starbucks, CEO Howard
Schultz and Ghini wanted
to emphasize “moments
of connection,” like when
a barista knows your
name. To create that con-
nection around cake pops
or scones, food had to be
its own attraction. Schultz
and his executives decided
to separate the food and
drink divisions—a change
that started to take effect
just 30 days later. Ghini’s
takeaway: Agility starts
with alignment at the top.
Ta p i n s i d e r e s o u r c e s
Part of Ghini’s brand strat-
egy for Starbucks included
revamping the mermaid-
centric logo. Before hiring an
outside agency, she asked
designers at the company
to take a first pass. After
weeks of experimentation,
two young employees pre-
sented a logo that’s almost
identical to the current
trademark. Seeing their
work was “a wow moment,”
Ghini says. “I thought, Of
course, release the siren.
Let her be a beacon for
bringing people together.”
Use your limitations
In 2002, Ghini was tasked
with marketing Apple’s
Final Cut Pro software—
without using familiar
resources such as fliers
and brochures. So her team
created videos that demon-
strated use cases of the
programs, landing on a
crowdsourcing strategy
that is still used in ads (and
Apple Stores) today. “Even-
tually, we were able to
stop telling customers to
believe us and instead start
showing what artists and
filmmakers were using it
to create,” she says.
Go for the heartstrings
Despite its popularity,
the iPod’s “1,000 songs in
your pocket” tagline failed
to take the product main-
stream. Ghini’s team found
the problem: Storage space
wasn’t the point. “We real-
ized machines were more
than just a tool,” Ghini says.
“Why do you enjoy the
iPod? [Music] brings up
so much emotion.” Apple
worked with an external
agency to produce a now-
ubiquitous campaign that
brought new verve to the
iPod with colorful, expres-
sive human silhouettes. “It
shows the joyful way music
releases your true self,”
Ghini says. “We took their
creative and ran with it.”
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Next Productivity

Surprising
work tips
How SNL, Frozen, and poker
can help you get more done
BY STEPHANIE VOZZA
Illustration by Karolin Schnoor

Charles Duhigg thought he

was on top of things. The
New York Times reporter
won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013,
and his first book, The
Power of Habit, was a best
seller. But looking at some
contemporaries, Duhigg
realized he wasn’t doing as
much as he could. New
Yorker writer Atul Gawande,
for example, is also a sur-
geon, medical researcher,
and author of four books.
“I felt like I was playing in
the kiddie pool,” says
Duhigg, “while Atul was
swimming in an Olympic.”
He decided to find out how
some people tackle so
much. The result is Smarter
Faster Better: The Secrets of
Being Productive in Life
and Business. Here are five
things Duhigg found that
could expand your view of
what you can do.

creativity, resulting in a them down into shorter-

Look at Saturday
Night Live
The best collaborative com-
munities cultivate what
Duhigg calls “psychological
safety”: a sense that team-
mates can trust one another
and have honest discus-
sions. Smarter Faster Better
looks at the example of SNL,
which developed a culture
where people felt secure
enough to create. Teams
that use this approach
become more productive,
Duhigg says, as members
share ideas and feel
empowered to take risks.
Be willing to
“ L e t I t G o”
Highly productive people
constantly hone their
approach. “They don’t
find one system and stick
to it,” says Duhigg. “They
think about productivity
all of the time and fre-
quently change their meth-
ods.” In his book, Duhigg
writes about how Disney
executives decided to
rethink Frozen midstream,
ditching the typical fairy-
tale story line and reinvent-
ing the characters. The
ensuing anxiety fueled
movie that became the top-
grossing animated film
of all time.
Stretch yourself
Just because something
seems impossible doesn’t
mean it is, and the more
ambitious you are, the
more you’ll do. Duhigg calls
this setting “stretch goals.”
“A stretch goal is a huge
ambition,” he says. “It
inspires our motivation
and dreams. But it can cre-
ate panic.” To avoid that,
Duhigg suggests breaking
term goals that will seem
more achievable.
Think like a Marine
How can you get excited
about a project? Duhigg
points to the U.S. Marine
Corps’s discovery that the
most engaged troops
are those who feel they
have influence over their
own lives. As a result, the
USMC redesigned its
boot camp to offer more
options and assigned tasks
without instructions for
completing them.
Bet on the future
Duhigg writes about poker
champion Annie Duke,
who, when placing a bet,
weighs the probability of
each outcome and
acknowledges what she
doesn’t know. If she bets
wrong, it’s experience from
which to draw later. “Most
of us are trained to think of
the future as one right
answer,” says Duhigg.
“Force yourself to think
about contradictory possi-
bilities: what is more likely
and why. You’ll make much
better decisions.”

34 FastCompany.com April 2016

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are solely responsible for servicing and claims, and pay the agency commission for policies sold. Prices, coverages, privacy policies and commission rates vary among these insurers.
Next World-Changing Idea

What the
doctor ordered
Kaiser Permanente’s Bernard
Tyson has a vision for the future
of American health care.
BY ADAM BLUESTEIN
Photograph by Nicholas Albrecht

The first thing you notice when

you step into the exam room at Kai-
ser Permanente’s new health center
in Manhattan Beach, California, is
the roomy leather exam chair. In-
stead of forcing patients to perch
awkwardly—as a standard, paper-
covered table does—it allows them
to sit eye-to-eye with their doctor,
who can summon x-rays, lab re-
sults, and even real-time specialist
consultations on a wall-mounted
touch screen, or send prescrip-
tions to an on-site pharmacy via a
tablet. Sitting smack in the center
of the room, the chair ensures that
everything literally revolves around
the patient.
That’s exactly the point. Accord-
ing to Kaiser chairman and CEO
Bernard J. Tyson, the question driv-
ing the redesign of the exam room

A good prognosis
“It’s all of our responsibility
to make health care
affordable,” says Kaiser
Permanente CEO Bernard
Tyson. “We’re getting
results, but I’m excited
about doing even better.”

36 FastCompany.com April 2016

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Next
was: “How do we create a holistic
experience where this organization
is showing you care, compassion,
and respect—and giving you all the
medical information that you need?”
The exam room is part of Kaiser’s
championing of a new human-
centered, design-driven approach
to medicine—and its vision for the
future of health care delivery. The
Oakland, California–based not-
for-profit, which provides both
insurance and health care ser-
vices through its own network of
doctors and hospitals to 10.3 mil-
lion members across eight states
and Washington, D.C., is rolling
out 10 new medical offices, called
“health hubs,” throughout South-
ern California over the next 18
months. Though Kaiser has long
been recognized for successfully
delivering affordable, high-quality
care—it brought in approximately
$60 billion in operating revenue in
2015—it’s facing growing demand
for services, along with increasing
“How do we create
an experience showing
you care, compassion,
and respect—and giving
you all the medical
information you need?”
competition from both big play-
ers and startups. The health hubs
represent a total overhaul of the
patient experience, from the check-
in process to the aesthetics of the
waiting area to the way doctors and
nurses interact with members and
one another.
Tyson describes the first of-
fices as pilots. He considers them
real-world laboratories to test and
38 FastCompany.com April 2016
World-Changing Idea
T HE M A K ING OF A MODERN CLINIC
Inside Kaiser Permanente’s plans for its new health hubs
Though specific finishes will
be customized to reflect each
location, Kaiser Permanente’s
medical buildings will share
many of the same elements.
(1)
Inspired by Apple’s Genius Bars,
the Thrive Bar will be staffed
with experts offering free
advice on issues like exercise
and nutrition.
1
(2)
Members can check in with
a receptionist or use a kiosk.
Several hubs will also have self-
2
3
serve vitals stations to measure
blood pressure and heart rate.
(3)
Public areas feature lounge-like 4
seating and common tables,
designed to foster interactions
among patients.
(4)
Every exam room contains both
a large, wall-mounted display
and the provider’s tablet.
Courtesy of Kaiser Permanente
(5)
The exam chair takes up less
room than a table. Kaiser is
working with manufacturers on 5
a next-gen model that will be
more luxurious, less clinical.
 Next
fine-tune the physical features and
work flow. The hope is to eventually
introduce aspects of the health hubs
in Kaiser clinics across the country.
Manhattan Beach is the first of these
hubs—and with 12 exam rooms
in 8,000 square feet, it’s also the
smallest. The largest, set to open
in L.A.’s Baldwin Hills–Crenshaw
neighborhood in June 2017, will be
more than 100,000 square feet and
include everything from conference
and event spaces to a garden with a
two-mile walking path.
The experience starts with the
waiting rooms, which take their
“The culture of health
care has been to get you
in and out. We’re inviting
you to linger. This is
more than a physician
visit; this is about your
total health.”
cues from retail and hospitality. At
the Manhattan Beach outpost, the
vibe is warm, West Coast modern-
ism: There’s lots of wood, natural
light, and inviting touches, such as
a living wall of green plants. A pair
of ATM–like kiosks near the front
door allow members to check them-
selves in if they prefer not to wait
for the tablet-wielding receptionist.
They receive a text alert when the
doctor is ready.
In larger facilities, the reception
area will be reimagined as a kind
of public square, where patients
can wander while they wait, get-
ting free information on nutrition
and exercise from staff at a counter
called the Thrive Bar. They can also
take part in yoga classes, cooking
demos, and the other programming
that Kaiser is incorporating into
40 FastCompany.com April 2016
World-Changing Idea
“community rooms,” which span
both indoor and outdoor space.
“The culture of health care has
been to get you in and out,” says Ty-
son. “We’re inviting you to linger. This
is more than a physician visit; this is
about your total health.” This em-
phasis on education and preventive
care is essential to Kaiser’s unique
structure. Since Kaiser providers
receive a fixed amount of money per
member, the system is engineered
toward keeping patients healthy
and out of the emergency rooms.
Kaiser’s new spaces are also
about keeping costs low: They are
designed to be more efficient at
serving patients. The first 10 hubs
are projected to boost the number
of face-to-face visits per exam room
by between 20% and 40% and to
deliver overall square-footage cost
savings of 10%, thanks to space-
conscious floor plans, redesigned
collaborative work flows, and in-
vestments in new technologies.
Kaiser has a strong record of
technological innovation. It was
among the first big health systems
to successfully implement elec-
tronic medical records, investing
$4 billion to get its KP HealthCon-
nect platform fully operational in
2010. In 2012, it launched a mobile
app to give patients 24/7 access to
their records, along with appoint-
ment scheduling and easy pre-
scription refills. Kaiser doctors now
conduct more than 20 million tele-
health appointments with members
annually and have access to an
integrated, enterprise-wide plat-
form that enables video consults.
As telemedicine appointments in-
crease, Tyson expects the new hubs
to become even more productive.
Just as important for Kaiser, the
hubs will serve as physical anchors
for a model of care that aims to
move health services, as much as
possible, out of hospitals and medi-
cal offices and into members’ com-
munities and homes. This means
ramping up telehealth and other
virtual services but also rethinking
Kaiser’s physical presence. Concept
development is under way on an
initiative called Blink, a network of
T HE Y ’ V E GO T
YOU COV ERED
Kaiser isn’t the only one
reimagining health care.
Here are three startups with
a new take on insurance.
Oscar
Founded 2012
Serves New York, New Jersey,
California, and Texas
An early entrant in the insurance-
exchange system created under
the ACA, Oscar focuses on member
benefits, including a rewards
program that offers gift cards
for regular exercise, and covers
the total cost of preventive care.
With Oscar’s mobile app, mem-
bers can access medical records
and set up appointments. So
far, 125,000 people have joined,
65% of them under the age of 45.
Zoom+
Founded 2015
(ZoomCare founded 2006)
Serves Washington and Oregon
Known for its 34 low-cost health
clinics throughout the Pacific
Northwest, ZoomCare began
offering insurance to patients in
Oregon last year. The new Zoom+
membership offers access to
clinics, along with free yoga and
parenting classes and mental
health services. Zoom+ now claims
“several thousand” members.
Clover Health
Founded 2014
Serves New Jersey
While most insurance companies
avoid high-risk patients, such as
the elderly and the chronically ill,
Clover Health works exclusively
with people on Medicare. Using
data generated by insurance
claims, the company determines
whether patients are keeping up
with prescriptions and scheduling
necessary tests. The goal? To help
members stay on top of their
medical needs.
small, urgent-care centers staffed by
nurses. Kaiser is working on another
program called Pivot, which will
offer members more community-
based services to address issues
such as drinking, smoking, and
weight loss. Last December, Kaiser
announced plans to open its own
medical school in Southern Califor-
nia in 2019, which will train doctors
in key aspects of its model: deliver-
ing care beyond traditional medical
settings and addressing the specific
needs of diverse communities.
Tyson’s ambitious brand expan-
sion comes at a time when many
traditional insurers and providers
are struggling to keep up with rising
costs and the preventive-services
requirements mandated by the
Affordable Care Act (ACA). This
has prompted aggressive moves
by traditional competitors (see An-
them’s merger with Cigna, awaiting
federal approval) and a flood of Sili-
con Valley investment into health-
insurance startups such as Oscar
and Clover Health (see sidebar), with
their promise to upend the industry.
But Kaiser is the rare legacy
organization that has figured out
how to make American health care
work. When it comes to clinical
outcomes, its providers nationwide
rank among the best in the coun-
try. In California (Kaiser’s biggest
market, by far), its 2016 plan premi-
ums are among the least expensive
on the nation’s health-insurance
exchange. Just as impressive: Kaiser
rose to the challenges presented by
the ACA and took on more than a
million new members nationwide
in 2014–2015 (with, yes, a slight
increase in premiums, which raised
some hackles).
Tyson isn’t threatened by the
new competition. In fact, he wel-
comes more conversation about
how to reprioritize medicine around
patients: “Most of the industry still
Illustration by Fabricio Rosa Marques
has a hard time thinking about pa-
tients as also consumers,” he says.
“We try to demonstrate the pos-
sibilities.” In doing so, Kaiser, the
old-school behemoth, might prove
to be the most relevant health care
innovator of them all.
 Next
“We don’t always
agree, but that would
be crazy if we did”
Broad City creators and
stars Abbi Jacobson and
Ilana Glazer talk about finding
a common voice—and
always pushing the limits.
INTERVIEW BY KC IFEANYI
Photographs by Ben Rayner
You two met as improv students
at the Upright Citizens Brigade’s
training center, created Broad
City as a web series in 2006, and
cranked out 34 episodes before
the show was picked up by Com-
edy Central. Is anything lost when
you transition from a personal
project to something bigger?
Ilana Glazer: We’re really lucky that
Comedy Central shared our vision
and nurtured our creativity. They
never put our balls in a vise. I think
other networks are catching on.
Abbi Jacobson: Yeah, they’re realiz-
ing that they need to trust [content
42 FastCompany.com April 2016
Creative Conversation
creators] more or else [shows]
get canceled. Stuff gets canceled
constantly because [networks] are
trying to fit something into a box
that they think [people] want, but
it doesn’t work—nobody watches it.
There are so many entertainers
on YouTube trying to get an ounce
of the fame you’ve both achieved.
How were you able to get noticed?
AJ: We took [the web series] so seri-
ously. I didn’t know what to do after
three or four years of day jobs and
trying to do comedy at night. So
when we started this, we both sort
of duct taped ourselves together.
Like, “We’re doing it!” We latched
onto it so hard.
IG: No matter what, if you focus
your energy on building momen-
tum, you will be rewarded in any-
thing: in a friendship, in a romantic
relationship, in volunteer work—
anything you do. That’s been the
most maturing experience, seeing
how time works: You put your time
and energy into something and it
comes out the other end.
AJ: You can’t just be funny—you
have to be strategic.
IG: And if you are just funny and
 Broad appeal
Abbi Jacobson
(left) and Ilana
Glazer keep their hit
Comedy Central show
both surprising
and consistent by
acting as each other’s
eyes and ears.
Next Creative Conversation
other people are using you as this
funny puppet, you end up being
less funny. The quality of your work
will truly decline if you’re not be-
hind the wheel.
Someone who’s helped you steer
is Amy Poehler, a UCB cofounder
who signed on as executive pro-
ducer of the show when it moved
to TV. What has she contributed?
AJ: Amy is really good at encourag-
ILANA GLAZER
ing us to make there be significant
moments—tender moments. I think
H o m e tow n
St. James, New York
that’s what she loves about the show.
IG: She has such great taste. There
Ed u c at io n was one episode that she said we
New York University should fully scrap, and she was
I n d e p e n d e nt right. We were using a plot device
projects that was too early in the series to
2015’s holiday film
The Night Before, with
use: origin story. We wanted to do
it in the first season, and it was so
Joseph Gordon-Levitt;
the 2013 indie How to painful because we loved that script.
Follow Strangers
Th o u g ht s
We didn’t think we were getting a
second season—she knew better.
o n B r o a d Cit y
30-SECOND BIOS
s e a so n 3
“We are five steps
more absurd and five
Each Broad City episode follows a
fairly traditional setup: an intro
steps more grounded
and real.”
scene and three acts building the
story. But you have introduced an
Be st ce l e b rit y “outro”—a fourth act—in which
impression
Nicki Minaj (The Late Abbi and Ilana process what’s just
Show With David Letter- happened. This reinforces the real
man, February 2015) heart of the show: Abbi and Ilana’s
friendship. How do you weigh that
heart against all the absurdity?
ABBI JACOBSON AJ: It’s a very delicate balance.
IG: We found that in season 2, that
H o m e tow n act 4 of us just hanging, not neces-
Wayne, Pennsylvania
sarily recapping but checking in
Ed u c at io n where we are now after the three
Maryland Institute acts of the story, was a useful tool.
College of Art I like how chill those moments are.
I n d e p e n d e nt If the broads are nuts together,
projects then the setting has to ground
The upcoming ensemble
drama Human People,
it—they’re being crazy within a
with Michael Cera and very real, grounded setting. If the
Tavi Gevinson; the com- setting is nuts, then the broads are
edy sequel Neighbors 2:
Sorority Rising like, “What the fuck is going on?”
So it’s about locating the absurdity
Th o u g ht s or the grounded thing and balanc-
o n B r o a d Cit y
s e a so n 3 ing it out.
“In 1 and 2, we didn’t
really have season arcs,
and this year we do.”
How are you two feeling about the
show now that it’s in season 3?
Be st ce l e b rit y AJ: This is like the Wednesday of the
impression
Drew Barrymore (season series. It’s like, we gotta get over it
2, episode 3) and then . . .
44 FastCompany.com April 2016
IG: . . . we’ll have more of a direction
of what it’s going to be.
There’s a long history of TV shows
based in New York. Has that
helped Broad City strike a chord?
IG: It always makes me think of Sex
and the City—[people] would be like,
“New York is the fifth character.”
But I feel like with Sex and the City,
New York was more of this delicious
backdrop, and it usually was beauti-
ful and upper class.
AJ: [That show was about] the
riches of New York. And ours is
finding the riches in the nonriches.
IG: Yeah, it’s like finding the rich-
ness in the filth.
AJ: Our show is about why you
would move to New York, why
people are so inspired by it.
IG: With Sex and the City, those char-
“No matter what, if you
acters were using New York as their
personal tool, and in Broad City we
are drowning in the city and just
trying to get some air and appreci-
ate stuff along the way. The show
is also about suburban-transplant
love, when you’re like, “Oh, my God!
Can you believe the piles of trash? I
love it!” Continuing to be charmed
by the muck—it’s very funny to me.
You’ve built Broad City from the
ground up as a duo. How do you
solve creative differences without
damaging your friendship?
AJ: [The show is] kind of the voice—
the in-between of our individual
voices. We don’t always agree, but
that would be crazy if we did. Some-
one not agreeing with someone’s
pitch sometimes leads us to “What
about this?” Sometimes in talking
it out and disagreeing we find the
actual thing.
IG: And it’s not always like, “We
met in the middle—love it, sister!”
Sometimes it’s like we did that
Abbi [idea], we did this Ilana one,
and that full moment felt “Broad
City” because we averaged out in
the middle. It does vary, but it ends
up being a pretty cohesive compro-
mise between our visions.
AJ: In the edit, we mostly agree on
things. A lot of times, if one of us
doesn’t like our own performance,
the other will be like, “I disagree.”
Sometimes it’s hard to look at your-
self from an unbiased point of view.
IG: The more I watch myself, the
harder it is to watch myself and
the more I find myself relying on
your eyes.
Your collective voice can turn out
some amazingly bawdy comedy,
which doesn’t always go down
well with the PC police. How do
you handle that criticism?
AJ: It’s very tricky. It’s doing it in a
way that isn’t offensive while you’re
still commenting on the offensive-
ness of the world we live in.
focus your energy
on building momentum,
you will be rewarded,”
Glazer says.
IG: We weren’t around before shit
was PC, and I’m like, thank God,
because I like this era.
AJ: I can’t imagine having a TV show
10 years ago. In this era, if someone
has a problem with something, they
write about it online, and people
talk about it. That’s kind of cool.
IG: Right, it’s just a point of discus-
Hair: Marcel Dagenais; Makeup: Sarah Egan
sion.
AJ: The “Is it okay?” conversation is
an interesting one to have.
IG: Feedback is so validating. I
don’t care if they’re like, “Didn’t love
this.” I’m like, I can’t even believe
you’re pressing SEND and publish-
ing this.
Watch the whole story at

slack.com/animals
A messaging app for amazing teams
of all shapes and species.
Next Five Ways

Total
1
Live events
Though most VR content is
prerecorded, live sports and

immersion entertainment broadcasts

are on the way. NextVR has
already tried it with the
Golden State Warriors’ NBA
opener last fall and the Day-
How virtual reality will tona 500. Universal and
reshape industries iHeartRadio are partnering
to live-stream a handful of
BY DANIEL TERDIMAN concerts this year.
Illustration by Koyoox
2
Rea l e state
With its proprietary cameras
and app, Silicon Valley–based
Matterport has helped real
estate companies such as
Redfin and Beverly Hills’ Alt-
man Brothers create interac-
tive 3-D models for thousands
of listings, offering buyers
an easy way to experience
open houses. Hotels are also
using Matterport’s technol-
ogy for virtual room tours.

3
Fa sh ion
New Zealand–based 8i is the
pioneer of volumetric VR,
which allows viewers to move
freely throughout a scene,
making it possible to see
people—and what they’re
wearing—from any direction.
The company’s not discuss-
ing its partners yet but has
been in talks with a number
of major fashion players.

4
Medicine

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images (woman); Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images (Martin); Getty Images (glove)
British startup Medical
Realities created its Virtual
Surgeon training tool to let
novice doctors experience
operations through the eyes
of a surgeon. VR HealthNet
is developing virtual-reality
modules for nurses and other
medical professionals aimed
at helping them internalize
certain procedures without
any risk to patients.

It’s rare that a consumer technology is a giant leap forward rather than the 5
next iterative step. Virtual reality represents just that kind of leap. With the Milita r y
spring launch of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, as well as the imminent re- Designing simulations and
lease of Sony’s PlayStation VR, high-end virtual reality has arrived. Add to that training for the armed forces
lower-end headsets like Samsung’s Gear VR, Google’s Cardboard, and many is a big business—as much as
$9.3 billion globally, accord-
other players and it’s clear that 2016 is the year the technology goes main- ing to the military contrac-
stream. While none of the hardware makers are promising to sell millions tor CAE. Britain’s Plextek is
of units this year, estimates peg the VR market—hardware and content—at developing VR training pro-
$30 billion by 2020. It’s not just gaming and entertainment that are poised grams for battlefield medics,
while Korea’s DoDAAM has
for transformation. Here are some of the most interesting—and potentially created a paratrooper trainer
lucrative—ways VR is being deployed. for the Rift.

46 FastCompany.com April 2016

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Next Passion Project

Pure energy
Renfrew is harnessing
Beautycounter’s network
of home-based sales reps
to advocate for legisla-
tive change.

A clean
slate
How Beautycounter
founder Gregg
Renfrew is ridding
cosmetics of toxins
BY LAUREN
SCHWARTZBERG
Photograph by Emily Berl

Gregg Renfrew, founder and CEO

of the Santa Monica, California–
based skin care company Beauty-
counter, set out for Washington,
D.C., last fall on a mission to push
for greater federal regulation of the
ingredients used in cosmetics. As
she spoke with senators and ex-
perts about the hidden dangers of
beauty products and urged passage
of a bill that would strengthen FDA
oversight of the industry, Renfrew
brought along some muscle: a dozen
of Beautycounter’s consultants—
home-based sellers who act as
something akin to the Avon ladies
of yore, introducing friends and
neighbors to the company’s toxin-
free products. According to Renfrew,
their passion was invaluable. She
recalls one meeting where a consul-
tant jokingly warned Senator Lind-
sey Graham that South Carolina
would feel like a very lonely place if

48 FastCompany.com April 2016

WHAT’S NEXT
With modern, striking lines, standard Bi-LED headlights and an
uncompromising sense of style, the 2016 Prius has an edge at
every angle. Sleek is what’s next.

toyota.com/prius
Prototype shown with options. Production model may vary. ©2015 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
Next
his constituents were to find out he
wasn’t voting for health-protective
laws. Renfrew’s base was ignited.
For Beautycounter employees
and consultants, selling products
is as important as delivering the
message of safe cosmetics. Renfrew
was inspired to found the company
after discovering that she could rid
her house of the toxic chemicals
hiding in everything from cleaning
products to mattresses—but doing
it for her shampoos, moisturizers,
and makeup was nearly impos-
sible. The certified B Corporation
launched in 2013 with a commit-
ment to bringing transparency to
the murky world of personal care.
It began with a handful of toxin-free
moisturizers and exfoliants and
now sells makeup, hair care, and
baby products; in August, Beauty-
counter will introduce a teen skin
care line. The company, which sold
500,000 products in 2014, moved
2 million products last year and ex-
pects to sell between 5 million and
6 million by the end of 2016.
Beautycounter’s impressive
growth has been driven by a multi-
pronged retail strategy that includes
its own website, an expanding
set of partners such as J.Crew and
Goop, and (starting this summer)
pop-up shops. But the engine of the
company remains its network of
more than 16,000 at-home salespeo-
ple, who account for 35% of its sales
and whose activism has become
Beautycounter’s crucial market-
ing strategy. According to a source
close to the company, Beautycounter
hopes to reach $150 million in sales
this year—just three years after
opening—without spending a penny
on traditional advertising. “Our con-
sultants are educators,” says Ren-
frew. “Yes, they’re selling a product,
but they’re also serving the larger
solution of getting safe products into
the hands of everyone by talking to
as many people as they can.”
The organic beauty sector has ex-
panded dramatically from a decade
ago, when pioneers such as Janet
Nudelman, director of the Cam-
paign for Safe Cosmetics, started
calling for regulation. Natural
50 FastCompany.com April 2016
Passion Project
CLOSER LOOK
Beautycounter’s all-
natural solutions to some
of the cosmetics industry’s
toxic challenges
Lip Sheer
Typical lipsticks frequently
have synthetic flavors
made up of any combination
of 3,000-plus chemical ingre-
dients, some of which contain
hormone disrupters and
allergens. Beautycounter
uses plant-based ingredients
such as jojoba esters and
real vanilla instead.
Tint Skin Foundation
Most foundations use poly-
ethylene glycol compounds,
which thicken and emulsify, but
sometimes contain 1,4-dioxane,
a carcinogen. Instead, Beauty-
counter employs hyaluronic
acid, a natural moisturizer that
reduces the appearance of
fine lines and wrinkles.
Color Outline
Eye Pencil
Cosmetics companies often
use parabens, a type of preser-
vative, to prevent bacteria
growth on eyeliner pencils
despite their link to hormone-
function disruption. Beauty-
counter uses rosemary extract,
a natural antimicrobial.
products will account for an estimated
$11 billion of the total $70 billion
global personal care industry this
year and are the fastest-growing
segment of the industry in the U.S.,
according to a recent study by Pack-
aged Facts. Corporations have taken
note. Clorox purchased Burt’s Bees
in 2007; Colgate-Palmolive acquired
Tom’s of Maine; and brands small
and large are introducing “safe” and
“natural” products.
But rare is the company that uses
genuine activism to push product.
With its consultants, Beautycounter
has injected the classic door-to-door
model with advocacy. Its consul-
tants’ regular “socials” are as much
mimosa-filled sales parties as they
are calls to action, complete with
letter-writing campaigns to local
lawmakers, and their social me-
dia feeds announce both product
sales and new research into the
health threats posed by household
products. When senators are back
home from D.C., Lindsay Dahl,
Beautycounter’s director of policy
and partnerships, helps consultants
schedule in-person meetings. The
result is an extraordinarily loyal
(and growing) consultant and cus-
tomer base. “[We] train consultants
to understand the facts of our broken
system and mobilize that big net-
“Our consultants are
work to raise our voices,” says Dahl.
Renfrew has a history of making
things happen. She sold her early
Internet startup, the Wedding List,
an online bridal registry, to Martha
Stewart in 2001 and was CEO of
Tommy Hilfiger’s children’s retail
group Best & Co. Noting the absence
of a system that verifies the safety
of cosmetics, she saw another op-
portunity. “In some ways,” she says,
“beauty is the last frontier.”
She entered an industry that is
“woefully underregulated” in the
United States, according to Nneka
Leiba, deputy director of research at
the Environmental Working Group
(EWG) and leader of its Skin Deep
database, which assesses cosmetic
safety. The FDA’s only guidelines
for intervention come from a 1938
bill that has remained virtually un-
changed. The agency has neither the
power to check ingredients before
they go to market nor the ability to
recall products that are believed to
be harmful. The European Union
has banned about 1,400 ingredients
from cosmetics. In America, that
number is 11. “It’s the Wild West,”
says Nudelman.
Using a guilty-until-proven-
innocent approach to ingredients,
Beautycounter has banned more
than 1,500 from its own products;
80% of those it does use are organic.
And it is uncompromising when
it comes to performance. Beauty-
counter is about to unveil its first
mascara, after three years of devel-
opment and finding work-arounds
to common ingredients, such as
parabens. That commitment, along
with sleek, minimalist packaging
and moderately aspirational prices
(moisturizers run from $43 to $75),
has attracted tree huggers and juice-
bar moms alike—many of whom be-
come consultants, making between
25% and 35% of each of their sales.
In May, 100 of Beautycounter’s
consultants—two from each state—
will join Renfrew and Dahl on a
educators. Yes, they’re
selling a product, but
they’re also talking to as
many people as they can.”
return trip to the Capitol to support
a new bipartisan bill that, if passed,
could expand the FDA’s authority
over the cosmetics industry. “His-
torically, the industry has fought
regulation,” says Christine Hill, the
EWG’s director of government af-
fairs. “Now companies are starting
to feel the pressure from consum-
ers.” The next step is to convince the
Senate. Renfrew is relying on her
consultants: “They are the voice of
change for us.” At the moment, they
are the sound of success as well.
Next
Pedal pushers
Two-wheel innovator Biomega has created
a new bike with secret powers.
BY DIANA BUDDS
Photograph by Stephanie Gonot
52 FastCompany.com April 2016
Wanted
For nearly 20 years,
Denmark-based bicycle
brand Biomega has worked
to export Scandinavia’s
alternative-transit culture
to the wider world, in part
by recruiting acclaimed
designers such as Apple’s
Marc Newson and Karim
Rashid to make bikes that
are just as covetable—and
recognizable—as luxury
automobiles. “If the bike
industry wants to compete
with cars,” says Biomega
cofounder Jens Skibsted, “it
needs to be able to assert
itself by creating brands.”
The company’s latest
product—an electric
bike dubbed the OKO —
was concocted by KiBiSi, a
design powerhouse led by
Skibsted, world-renowned
architect Bjarke Ingels,
and industrial designer
Lars Holme Larsen. The
high-end e-bike is geared
toward commuters who
are considering a switch
from four wheels to two.
Forged from carbon-fiber
material, the OKO cleverly
hides its machinery—
battery, motor, wiring—
within a seamless frame,
making it look like a
regular bike. The quiet,
350-watt motor helps you
pedal, boosting your own
efforts by as much as 20
miles an hour for up to
40 miles per charge.
Skibsted hopes the
OKO, which starts at $2,295,
will be especially appeal-
ing to design-conscious
urbanites. “Expressing life-
style via the objects you
surround yourself with is
very much accepted in
cities,” he says. “It’s impor-
tant that there are objects
for the self-aware urban
dweller who cares about
commuting in style and
in comfort.”
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 Behind the Brand

A new way to find

the next pop star
Online music hub ReverbNation is
discovering talented artists by mixing
big data with human curation.
BY JOHN PAUL TITLOW
Illustration by Harry Campbell

As an 11-year-old living in Ogden, Utah,

Sammy Brue wasn’t expecting much when
he uploaded some demos to ReverbNation, a
site that helps unsigned musicians showcase
their tunes on customized web pages, build an
audience, and submit music to radio stations
and record labels. But three years later, Brue’s
career is taking off: The singer-songwriter
has signed to prominent music-management
company Red Light and is being courted by big
labels—all directly due to ReverbNation’s new
data-driven incubation program, Connect.
When it launched in 2006, the site set
out to be a social network and do-it-yourself

54 FastCompany.com April 2016

Next
platform for musicians in the same
vein as Myspace, helping artists steer
their own careers. Now-famous
musicians such as Alabama Shakes,
Imagine Dragons, and Kacey Mus-
graves hosted music on the site
early in their careers. Though many
artists have since gravitated toward
newer sites such as Bandcamp and
SoundCloud to share their music,
ReverbNation remains a big player,
hosting pages for around 4 million
artists; some 200,000 new songs
are uploaded each month. That’s a
lot of noise, but it’s also a big asset.
Beneath ReverbNation’s interface
f lows a river of data on up-and-
coming artists that, the company
came to realize, could be highly
valuable—for musicians like Brue,
for ReverbNation, and for the belea-
guered music business.
With the artist-development
program Connect and other tools,
the company is using a proprietary
algorithm as part of a process that
identifies promising new talent and
connects those artists with manag-
ers, labels, and other insiders. “We
see ourselves as a partner to the
W HERE TO SH A R E
Three sites that are helping artists self-release their music—and run their business
SoundCloud
NOTABLE USERS:
Drake (above), Major Lazer,
Rihanna
Founded in 2007 as a free tool for
electronic musicians, SoundCloud
has grown into a key platform for
musicians of every size and genre.
In addition to uploading songs, art-
ists can use a simple Twitter-style
interface to connect with followers
and reshare other musicians’ songs.
56 FastCompany.com April 2016
Behind the Brand
music industry, not a replacement
for it,” says ReverbNation cofounder
and CEO Mike Doernberg. “The
economics have changed. [The in-
dustry] just can’t afford to invest the
same amount it used to [in new
artists] because the payoff isn’t as
big. You have to make more bets and
smaller bets.”
To help do that, ReverbNation
has created an algorithm that uses
show listings, email-open rates, and
other data points to sniff out distinc-
tive activity around an artist. If a
band is booked at a buzzworthy
venue, starts getting played on an
influential music blog, or is able to
attract fans who live far away from
the group’s home base, the system
notices. “We use a whole array of
different little signals,” says Simon
Perry, ReverbNation’s chief creative
officer and head of A&R. “The pat-
terns that those signals make tell us
something.” But it isn’t as easy as
just pushing a button and summon-
ing up a new superstar. “You can’t
get a load of data and say, ‘This band
with this data profile is going to be
the next Coldplay,’ ” says Perry. “But
Bandcamp
NOTABLE USERS:
Alex G, Car Seat Headrest, Courtney
Barnett (above)
The nine-year-old song-sharing plat-
form lets musicians create a store-
front for selling albums, T-shirts, and
other merch (the company takes a
10% cut). By providing a slick way for
bands to connect to fans, Bandcamp
has become the digital home for
hundreds of thousands of artists.
While ReverbNation is
confident in its data,
the human component
remains crucial.
you can say, ‘For this band with this
data profile, history teaches us that
we should do [certain] things.’ ”
After an artist is flagged by the
algorithm, the company’s curation
team—made up of former music
journalists, DJs, and other knowl-
edgeable insiders—gives a closer
listen. Using a custom-built dash-
board, they tag each artist to iden-
tify promising qualities and predict
potential career paths. Some might
write songs that seem best suited
ReverbNation
NOTABLE USERS:
Alabama Shakes (above), Imagine
Dragons, Kacey Musgraves
The free, basic tier helps bands build
pages to share music and promote
themselves. For a fee, the company
provides distribution to streaming
sites such as Spotify and also offers
other services. ReverbNation now
also connects handpicked artists with
labels, gigs, and similar opportunities.
for licensing to TV shows, movies,
or commercials. Others might be a
good fit for a particular event, such
as Summerfest in Milwaukee, or for
a certain record company. “A label
will call me and say, ‘Hey, I’m looking
for a rapper from the Midwest with
a really great story,’ ” says Perry. “I’m
like, ‘Try these three.’ ”
Connect, a talent-incubation pro-
gram that ReverbNation launched
in 2015, takes all this a step further.
Only the most elite artists—as deter-
mined by ReverbNation’s data and
curators—are asked to participate
in the program, which provides
one-on-one career advice from the
company’s experts and even-more-
granular data analysis of their
strengths and weaknesses from a
business perspective.
ReverbNation doesn’t charge
artists a fee for Connect or its other
curation tools (most of the com-
pany’s current revenue comes from
services like digital music distribu-
tion and web-hosting tools, which
it offers via premium accounts).
Instead, it takes a cut of any money
Daniel DeSlover/ZUMA Wire/Corbis (Drake); Erika Goldring/WireImage/Getty Images (Barnett); Mark Horton/WireImage/Getty Images (Howard)
earned through deals it brokers,
whether it’s publishing, licensing,
or a record contract. In the case of
Sammy Brue, ReverbNation is acting
as comanager with Red Light and
taking a percentage of overall in-
come that the company says is typi-
cal for an up-and-coming musician.
Though it’s too early to know
how well Connect’s initial batch of
artists (about 360 so far) will fare,
the program has already placed
songs on TV shows such as Grey’s
Anatomy and Shameless and scored
publishing and management deals
for musicians. Of course, Connect’s
success depends on one thing:
finding the right artists. And while
ReverbNation is confident in its
data, Perry believes the human com-
ponent remains crucial—because
ultimately that’s who’s listening.
“Humans interact with music on an
emotional level,” he says. “I know
that sounds so flowers and trees,
[but] the data is only helpful where
it tells us about emotions.”
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Next
Renaissance man
“We used to celebrate
people who were good
at many things,” says the
genre-defying Aslan.
Blurred lines
Religion scholar and
television host Reza Aslan
on not picking a lane
BY KAREN VALBY
Photograph by Elizabeth Weinberg
58 FastCompany.com April 2016
How I Get It Done
Though Hollywood draws
plenty of multihyphenates,
only a few can claim the
title “scholar-producer-host.”
Reza Aslan first landed in
the klieg lights as an aca-
demic with his 2013 best-
selling book, Zealot: The Life
and Times of Jesus of Naza-
reth, aided by a viral video
of his exchange with a Fox
News host who questioned
if a Muslim scholar could
credibly write about Jesus.
His next move? Step into
the interviewer’s chair. His
talk show, Rough Draft With
Reza Aslan, premiered on
Ovation in February, and
he’ll soon appear as host of
CNN’s six-episode Believer
series exploring world
religion. Through his Boom-
Gen Studios, he’s also the
executive producer of the
new ABC biblical drama Of
Kings and Prophets. “My
whole life people have been
telling me I have to choose,”
says Aslan, “but I never
wanted to do one thing.”
Here’s how he made the
transition into Hollywood.
Change up your pitch
Frustrated by the lack
of fully realized Middle
Eastern characters in pop
culture, Aslan launched
BoomGen Studios in 2008
to create and incubate
content about the region.
But he knew better than to
present it this way: “If you
walk into a meeting with
Disney or the Weinstein
Company and say, ‘You
should do this because it
will make Middle Eastern-
ers feel better,’ nobody
will listen.” Instead, Aslan
got investors to sign on by
reminding them that the
average median household
income for Muslim families
in America is higher than
for non-Muslim families.
Ke e p i t f u n
At heart, Aslan enjoys the
connective magic of story-
telling. He modeled Rough
Draft after the poetry read-
ings he and his wife used to
host in their home. On the
show, he goes deep with top
Hollywood writers, such as
Norman Lear and Transpar-
ent’s Jill Soloway, in a night-
clublike setting complete
with backing musical guests
and cocktails. Aslan and his
guests settle in like it’s one
of his old house parties.
Be a compar tmentalizer
Forget multitasking. Aslan’s
strategy is streamlined focus.
“When I’m a professor, I’m
only a professor,” he says.
“When I’m writing, I’m only
writing. People know not to
call me about other things
on those days.” And nobody
messes with his role as dad
to his 1-year-old son and
twin 4-year-old boys. “I insist
on being there when my kids
go to sleep and wake up.”
Project confidence
“I tell my students, ‘Always
say yes,’ even if you think
you can’t do it,” he says. “Say
yes and figure it out later.”
Aslan says he’s as plagued
by insecurity as the rest of
us. But when CNN asked him
to host Believer, he quickly
agreed—and saved the
anxiety about making the
transition from producer to
on-air talent for later.
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FOR THE FUTURE
W HE N G O O G L E B E CA M E A L P H A B E T, T HE
R AT ION A L E SEEMED SIMP L E: T H AT A COMPA N Y OF
C O M PA NIE S C A N INN O VAT E FA S T E R T H A N A S IN G L E
L A R G E B E A S T. B U T T H AT ’ S O N LY T HE S TA R T.
By Austin Carr, David Lidsky, J.J. McCorvey,
Harry McCracken, and Mark Wilson
Illustrations by Brian Stauffer
“I t’s k i n d o f
c o u n t e r i n t u i t i v e,”
Google cofounder
Larry Page re-
marked a couple of
y e a r s a g o. “N o r m a l l y
i n a b u s i n e s s,
y o u t h i n k a b o u t,
‘W h a t’s t h e a d j a c e n t
thing that I can
d o ?’ B u t m a y b e y o u
can actually do
more projects that
are less related
t o e a c h o t h e r.”
62 FastCompany.com April 2016
Back then, Page was explaining why his company—whose mission,
officially, is to organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful—had expanded to address everything from teach-
ing automobiles to drive to researching ways to extend the human life
span. At the time, the insight seemed classic Page, a heartfelt defense
of unconventional thinking. Today it feels like something more: a pre-
monition of perhaps the most radical, labyrinthine corporate restruc-
turing of the digital era.
Page released a letter last August announcing the reconfiguring of
Google into a conglomerate called Alphabet. It described Alphabet as a
new holding company that would be composed of independent operat-
ing units. The Google search engine and related businesses—including
Android, Gmail, and YouTube, to name a few—would be just one of them,
and although it wasn’t initially clear, Alphabet would be home to nine
other companies, including Calico (the health care company whose goal
is to lengthen life expectancy), Verily (the home of the company’s “smart”
contact lens), X (its R&D arm), DeepMind (artificial intelligence), and Ac-
cess (all of the company’s high-speed Internet initiatives). In February,
Alphabet added its 11th unit when it elevated the think tank/tech incu-
bator formerly known as Google Ideas into its own entity called Jigsaw.
So what holds these far-flung enterprises together? And why have
they been organized in this fashion? These are among the most critical
questions facing Techland, investors, and anyone who competes with
any piece of the company formerly known as Google—which includes
almost everyone.
Page has been typically reclusive since announcing Alphabet. (He was
not interviewed for this article.) But that does not mean we can’t make
sense of this newly arranged company. Page has never been content to
stand still, compelled by hyperambitious efforts that he calls moonshots.
Alphabet is itself a moonshot, hoping to overcome a raft of technological,
social, and financial challenges endemic to a world of increasing change.
To understand this larger imperative, we’ve focused in on six areas, each
epitomized by the experience of—or model established by—another lead-
ing company: Microsoft, Nike, GE, Apple, Facebook, and Google itself in
its earlier days. In deconstructing Alphabet’s opportunities and risks this
way, a nuanced understanding of what Page might be after emerges.
So far, Alphabet is off to a rousing start: Shortly after it announced its
first quarterly results in February, it briefly displaced Apple as the world’s
most valuable company by stock-market capitalization (a feat that the
IF ALPHABET WANTS TO DEVELOP A
“WHOLE WIDGET” STRATEGY LIKE
APPLE, ITS BEST OPTION MAY LIE IN
NEWER CATEGORIES OF CONSUMER
GOODS SUCH AS VIRTUAL REALITY.
April 2016 FastCompany.com 63
64 FastCompany.com April 2016
old Google never accomplished). As Page explained in his August letter,
“We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable
doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the tech-
nology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth
areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.” Here are the
revolutionary ABCs of Alphabet.
A. Avoiding the Microsof t malaise
In the 1980s, the mantra of Microsoft founders Bill Gates
and Paul Allen was “A computer on every desk and in ev-
ery home, all running Microsoft software.” At the time,
that goal was a moonshot. When the company achieved
it, Windows and Office—which eventually boasted 90%-plus shares of
their respective markets—yielded landslide results. Microsoft became the
most prolific profit machine in history, with margins on its core software
products that no other company could approach.
Until Google came along. Since then, Google’s search engine has become
the preeminent utility of the modern age, with an ad-revenue stream that
continues to spout enviable profit margins. But within that success lies the
seeds of trouble. And that is part of what Alphabet was created to combat.
As Microsoft learned the hard way, when you have a once-in-a-lifetime
business model, any other market you pursue pales in comparison. After
conquering the PC world, Microsoft widened the scope of its ambition. It
created the Xbox gaming system, moved into mobile, spent billions on the
Bing search engine. These efforts largely disappointed: Windows Phone’s
market share is now a rounding error, and Bing has never spent a year in the
black. Even a blockbuster like Xbox couldn’t match the enduring windfalls
generated by Windows and Office. Every dollar that Microsoft reaped on
new ventures had lower margins than its core operations. Investors began
to put a lower value on each dollar of Microsoft’s earnings; the stock stalled.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that Microsoft developed tunnel vision,
viewing every new technology wave as an opportunity to sell more Win-
dows licenses. That, after all, was the crown jewel. Yet when Microsoft
announced its first-ever dividend in January 2003, the move signaled
to Wall Street that the company didn’t know what else to do with the
$43 billion in cash that it had on hand. Microsoft’s status as a growth
business began to crumble.
Page’s Alphabet currently has $73 billion in cash on hand—a signal of
just how pertinent the Microsoft comparison is. In turning Google into
Alphabet, Page has made a clear statement to investors (and employees)
that he is still focused intently on growth: Unlike Microsoft, Alphabet
has plenty of areas in which to invest its cash. Even the streamlined
Google unit has its own portfolio of moonshots, from virtual reality to
machine learning. As Page noted in his letter, his company has done
many things that people thought odd over the years and “many of those
crazy things now have over a billion users, like Google Maps, YouTube,
Chrome, and Android.”
ONE WAY TO UNDERSTAND ALPHABET
IS AS A VEHICLE TO BUILD ESSENTIAL
PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE
REAL WORLD. WHAT IF YOU WERE TO
BUILD A NEXT-GENERATION GE TODAY?
What’s more, Page’s new structure has made it simple for investors to
value the dollars coming from Google as distinct from the performance of
the rest of Alphabet’s units. And Google looks stronger than ever. Revenue
grew 18% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2015, with full-year rev-
enue reaching $74.5 billion. Since more than $3 billion in costs have now
been shifted to other Alphabet units, Google’s profitability looks better too.
Of course, to be a long-term success, Alphabet needs to prevent
Google’s mammoth advertising business from becoming a crutch (or,
worse, an albatross). That’s where the entirety of Page’s new structure
comes in. By giving the Google operating unit more focus, the organiza-
tion can adapt more swiftly and become a better version of itself. The same
holds true for Alphabet’s other business units, which now have their own
autonomy—and expectations.
Becoming Nike . . . sor ta
B.
Hoverboards. Jet packs. Internet balloons. Agile (and
terrifying) humanoid robots. Teleportation technology.
We revere Alphabet for toying with these sci-fi pursuits.
What other company would consider developing space
elevators? Page has profound ambitions for these projects. Perhaps one
day they’ll better humanity or transform the company’s core business.
But for now, these “other bets” are splashing red ink on Alphabet’s in-
come statement: $3.6 billion in losses in 2015, an 83% increase from the
previous year. Many people view these gambits as Page and Alphabet’s pres-
ident Sergey Brin’s folly, a collection of extravagant, imprudent distractions.
Here’s another way to view the company’s costly moonshot habit: as
a marketing expense. If there’s anything the Mountain View, California–
based tech company effectively manufactures, it’s the mythology around
itself. These fantastical ideas create a glowing halo around the company,
fostering the perception that Alphabet is a place where magic happens,
where the most innovative minds, from iPod creator Tony Fadell to life
sciences’ chief Andy Conrad, come to tinker. In spite of Alphabet’s intent
to be a holding company and not a brand, with each headline-stealing
rumor of unrealized futuristic inventions within one of its divisions—X
kills more than 100 concepts per year but makes sure we know about
some of those too (including most recently an “automated vertical farm-
ing” system and a “lighter-than-air, variable buoyancy cargo ship”)—an
army of new fans gets minted.
No one has used this R&D–as-marketing framework to better effect
than Nike. Its sprawling headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, contain sev-
eral “not-so-secret” secret research labs, such as the Innovation Kitchen,
where top scientists and athletes invent the future of performance wear.
Hushed excitement for what takes place in these labs energizes employ-
ees and consumers alike. The labs create a fine mist that helps keep the
swoosh dewy and fresh, reinforcing the fact that Nike is special, differ-
ent, and synonymous with cutting-edge culture. Nike doesn’t enlist the
graffiti artist Futura 2000 or graphic designer Geoff McFetridge to create
limited-edition products because they will deliver huge earnings. Just
as with those secret labs, the collaborations animate Nike’s dream fac-
tory. Nike employees aren’t just making shoes and apparel; they’re part
of something bigger: a global cultural movement of empowerment and
fitness. That framing helps Nike with everything from brand value to
employee retention.
For Alphabet’s employees, the vast majority of whom work at Google,
perhaps it’s not always so special to toil on search-engine algorithms and
advertising optimization. Yet the big goals within Google, to connect more
users and advance machine learning, are noble and inspiring, and, thanks
to Alphabet’s moonshots, staffers are also engaged in a larger futuristic
vision, a place full of “Peter Pans with PhDs,” as X’s Astro Teller puts it,
where “you’ll find an aerospace engineer working alongside a fashion
designer and former military ops commanders brainstorming with laser
experts.” Connecting the quotidian digital advertising business to this
culture yields immeasurable benefits.
April 2016 FastCompany.com 65
 Let’s reconsider that $3.6 billion Alphabet lost last year on its moon-
shots. Apple and Microsoft invested roughly the same amount combined
on marketing, while Samsung spent nearly four times that. Many of Page’s
bets, such as Nest, the smart-home-products company, have significant
potential to benefit Alphabet’s business in the long term. And in the near
term they reinforce a distinctive culture. Which, by the way, may be the
best advertising of all.
Channeling GE
C.
Go to Alphabet’s website, abc.xyz, and you’ll see a pile of
wooden alphabet blocks. Unlike Google’s home page, there
is no blank white box and blinking cursor awaiting your
command. You can’t click on the blocks to learn more about
Alphabet’s companies; it’s just a photo! But in that picture is a wink: A single
block is turned on its side, revealing a bright blue G. Alphabet is, in essence,
a pile of blocks ready to build the Google of our physical world. Google
itself is our essential digital infrastructure: Search, email, navigation,
documents. One way to understand Alphabet, then, is as a vehicle to build
essential, modern, tech-powered physical infrastructure in the real world.
The analogy here is to General Electric, the original technology con-
glomerate (before technology required software). It’s not that Alphabet
plans to displace GE, rather that it seeks to develop GE–like businesses.
What if you were to build a next-generation GE today? Instead of
wind turbines and aircraft engines, you might try clean-energy kites and
self-driving cars. You’d develop contact lenses that measure blood sugar
(Verily), create hacks to our genetic code (Calico), and devote initiatives to
robots (Replicant) and drones (Project Wing). You’d design cities where the
physical environment is smart and reactive to human presence (Sidewalk
Labs). Nearly every department inside Alphabet is building real, physical
things, like burly arms to Google’s omniscient hive mind.
As it happens, GE is moving more into the virtual world just as
Alphabet moves toward the physical one. GE is using software to optimize
the deployment of airplanes, locomotives, mining operations, oil rigs,
wastewater treatment plants, wind turbines, and even city streetlights.
Its Predix cloud platform serving these industries is a $5 billion busi-
ness and growing; its energy-focused Industrial Internet of Things unit,
Current, has another $1 billion–plus in annual revenue. (By comparison,
all of the non-Google Alphabet companies combined generated just
$448 million in revenue in 2015, with most of it coming from Nest.)
GE is managing legacy infrastructure—just as Google is, in its way—at
the same time that it’s building businesses that position it well for the
future. Alphabet is Page’s bid to anchor his enterprise both in tangible,
useful products and in a future that is still evolving.
Dreaming of A pple
D.
If Microsoft is the company Alphabet fears becoming,
Apple, with its financial might and cultural heft, is the
company it aspires to be—though you’ll be hard-pressed
to find folks at the Googleplex who will admit it.
Apple has something that Alphabet doesn’t. From the beginning, when
Apple introduced the Apple I, in 1976, it offered consumers a cohesive ex-
perience. That’s because cofounder Steve Wozniak personally engineered
both the machine and its software from scratch. Four decades later, Apple
is still building what Steve Jobs liked to call “the whole widget”—hard-
ware, software, and services blended into a (mostly) seamless whole. It
even custom-designs processors for the iPhone and iPad. This profoundly
ambitious undertaking lets it create new experiences and control them,
not only wringing as much juice as possible out of its batteries but as
much profit as possible out of its products.
By contrast, there’s Android. When Google announced its smartphone
operating system in 2007, it made its platform free to hardware makers,
66 FastCompany.com April 2016
released the source code, and encouraged other companies to dig in and
tweak it to their liking. “We hope thousands of different phones will be
powered by Android,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s then–CEO.
If anything, Schmidt may have underestimated just how potent the
Android proposition would be. Today, more than 8 out of 10 smartphones
sold globally run the software, as well as tens of thousands of other de-
vices, including tablets, watches, TVs, video-streaming boxes, cameras,
and more, giving Google access to consumers on a scale that competi-
tors can only fantasize about. Yet as dazzling as the Android story is, it
doesn’t present a happy ending, because Google gave up two things to
achieve this ubiquity. The first is profit potential. According to Oracle’s
calculations in a lawsuit against Google, Android has lifetime revenue of
$31 billion and profits of $22 billion. In contrast, in just the last three
months of 2015, strong iPhone sales helped Apple score $75.9 billion in
revenue and $18.4 billion in profit.
In fact, Apple captures a staggering 94% of the smartphone industry’s
profits, according to research firm Canaccord Genuity. The Android market
has become highly commoditized, with many companies selling basic, me-
too phones at a razor-thin profit, if not a loss. The conventional wisdom
that Android’s massive market share would reduce the iPhone to near
irrelevancy—as Windows did to the Mac in the 1990s—hasn’t panned out.
Perhaps worse for Alphabet is its lack of control. Because Apple owns
its environment, it can get new features into consumers’ hands with
minimum friction. In September 2015, Apple and Google both updated
their smartphone operating systems. Four months later, Apple’s iOS 9
was installed on 75% of iPhones. Conversely, phone makers and wireless
carriers are notorious for holding up new releases of Android. Google’s
new version, the excellent Marshmallow, had reached a measly 1.2% of
Android users, leaving the remaining 98.8% running outmoded software.
Google can’t even depend on Android as a source of eyeballs to look at
its ads. Manufacturers are free to de-Googlize the Android experience—
and often do. Everyone from Amazon to Chinese phone giant Xiaomi sells
devices that replace preinstalled Google services with their own offerings.
“What have these manufacturers done?” technology industry analyst
and former Apple executive Michael Gartenberg envisions Google asking
itself. “They’ve taken our children and are dressing them funny. This just
isn’t the way things should be.”
Google has been trying to impose more of its authority on licensees to
keep the full suite of Google apps. A report last November on the tech news
site The Information stated that the company is toying with the idea of de-
signing its own chips, just as Apple has been doing for years. Still, having
offered up Android to the world as an open platform, Google can’t simply
say “never mind!” and reclaim it as a proprietary operating system à la iOS.
If Alphabet and Google want to develop a “whole widget” strategy, their
best option may lie in newer categories of consumer goods. That helps
explain why Page spent $3 billion acquiring smart-home innovator Nest,
now one of Alphabet’s autonomous operating units. And then there’s the
white space of virtual reality. Cardboard, the minimalist system that lets
consumers turn smartphones into bare-bones VR headsets using third-
ANOTHER WAY TO VIEW ALPHABET’S
MOONSHOTS IS AS MARKETING
EXPENSES. NO ONE HAS USED THIS
R&D–AS-MARKETING FRAMEWORK TO
BETTER EFFECT THAN NIKE.
April 2016 FastCompany.com 67
party gizmos that cost as little as $15, offers a fun, populist experience.
Although Cardboard is likely too rinky-dink to pose a serious threat to
technology platforms like Facebook’s Oculus Rift, in January, the Google
unit signaled that it was ramping up its VR aspirations by naming a long-
time company exec, Clay Bavor, as its first VP of virtual reality. A month
later, sources told the Wall Street Journal that Google was at work on a
much higher-end VR headset, with its own display, processor, sensors, and
cameras. That’s what Steve Jobs would have called the whole widget—and
a sharp break from Android’s let-a-thousand-gadgets-bloom approach.
Entering the Facebook zone
E.
During Google’s annual stockholder meeting last June—
the last it would have as “Google”—the company’s top
executives sat on stage as audience members lobbed
questions at them that ranged from fantastical to inane.
One attendee pestered chairman Eric Schmidt and Page about avoiding a
Matrix-like dystopian future. Finally, near the end, a pressing query: “How
do you see ad blockers affecting your revenue source?”
The question tapped into a prevailing concern about Google’s busi-
ness: While dominant on desktop, it risked being eclipsed on mobile,
particularly by Facebook and its growing hold on both consumers and
advertisers. According to the research group ComScore, 87% of mobile
usage is within apps, where ad blocking isn’t yet an issue and where Face-
book rules. Page, becoming animated, answered, “The industry needs to
get better at producing ads that are less annoying and that are quicker to
load. We’ve been kind of trying to pioneer that.”
Page’s response signaled two things: that mobile could be vitally im-
portant for Google and, more subtly, that Alphabet was not about to cede
the app universe to rivals like Facebook.
Since that meeting, Google has reported that mobile searches have
surpassed desktop ones worldwide and that it has developed several
initiatives to tailor its results and ads. “We are seeing a major shift in
consumer behavior toward micro moments,” recently elevated Google
CEO Sundar Pichai stated during Alphabet’s first earnings call three
months later. “These are moments of high intent when consumers are
looking to find, buy, or do something.” Google introduced a new product
that helps marketers reach existing customers via search. And as an ex-
ample of the types of things Google can now do for advertisers, last fall
Dunkin’ Donuts ran a mobile search campaign so that when people
searched for “coffee near me,” it assessed both walking distance and wait
times to steer people to the fastest cup of java.
In terms of the app-scape, Google has now indexed more than
100 billion links within third-party apps so that 40% of searches return
results from within an app in the top five. It also launched a clever feature
that lets users download or “stream” mobile apps directly from search,
providing that in-app info more quickly. Google credits all these advance-
ments with being the primary driver of its revenue growth in the last six
months of 2015 (although the company, unlike Facebook, does not break
out financials for its mobile business).
Overlooked in the sometimes simplistic analysis of Facebook being the
present and the future (mobile) and Google owning the past (browser) is
that Google, unlike Facebook, has strength in both areas. Notably, Google
has five of the seven most popular apps in the United States, with YouTube
at No. 2 and Google Search, Play, Maps, and Gmail in slots 4 through 7.
(Facebook and Facebook Messenger take positions 1 and 3.) Meanwhile,
Google has continued to deepen its dominance on the open web. In Feb-
ruary, Google launched what it calls Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an
open-source initiative that enables publishers to build clean, lightweight
versions of web pages, stripping out the glut of data-intensive back-end
technologies so that pages load almost instantaneously. Several ad for-
mats are restricted from AMP, and publishers are incentivized to comply:
Faster-loading sites can lead to a higher ranking in Google’s search index.
If this sounds somewhat like Facebook Instant Articles, you’re right,
68 FastCompany.com April 2016
except it’s for the whole Internet. Facebook wants to provide users with
a big, blue sanctuary from the awful mobile web lurking outside, while
Google is seeking to renovate the mobile web by blurring the lines be-
tween it and an app-like experience.
This is a classic Google gambit—refusing to accept an “either-or” when
it can transform it into an “and.” The same inclusive thinking is evident
in Google’s approach to attracting the next several billion users to adopt
its services. “We believe that someone in Indonesia should get the same
quality email service or search results as someone in New York,” Pichai
told investors, taking a light jab at Facebook and its controversial “Free
Basics” service that provides only limited access to the web. “From pro-
viding Internet access in India’s railway stations to making Chromebooks
available throughout the region, it reinforced what a huge opportunity we
have to help the next billion users come online and to have great experi-
ences with the whole Internet once they are there.”
Facebook and Google will continue to spar in their efforts to get more
than 5 billion people online and in their use of artificial intelligence and
machine learning to be more useful to those billions. Although Google
may no longer deliver Facebook’s current growth rates of more than 40%,
its steady stream of significant enhancements keeps the company poised
to deliver double-digit growth for the next several years. And as the analyst
Colin Sebastian with Robert W. Baird said, “Growth in the teens is still very
profitable, and that is what helps fund these other projects.”
Feeling Googl y, all over again
F.
One of the most renowned stories in Google’s history oc-
curred on a Friday in 2002, when Page grabbed a printout
of the ads that accompanied search results, wrote “these
ads suck” on it, and then posted it in the company kitchen.
He wasn’t trying to belittle anyone. He wanted someone to fix a problem
he’d discovered. By the following Monday, as then–CEO Eric Schmidt
recounts in his book How Google Works, engineers had a solution that
dramatically improved Google’s AdWords product.
Page, like most techno-futurists, would seem to be immune to bouts
of nostalgia. But recapturing that Friday-to-Monday problem solving of
Google’s halcyon days, when it was first turning on what would become
the greatest business model of all time, may be an exception. In the most
basic ways, Alphabet is an effort to re-create that lost weekend, at the scale
of Page’s ambitions today.
The new conglomerate is theoretically designed to make change hap-
pen faster. In his letter announcing Alphabet, Page delineated several
things that he is excited about in the transformation. One is “getting more
ambitious things done.” Another is “empowering great entrepreneurs and
companies to flourish.” His hope for the Google unit specifically is to get
“even better through greater focus.”
Page needs his company to remain competitive in the face of the
most significant threats it has ever faced—from Apple and Facebook but
also the likes of Amazon and Pinterest. And to do so, he needs tens of
thousands of employees to embrace the speed that epitomizes Google’s
search engine itself.
This is why Alphabet is more than just a spectacular corporate re-
engineering. Page picked the perfect time to reset his company—at the
very moment that analysts were heralding Peak Google. He knew that
traditional corporate structure limits innovation at the pace he wants and
needs. He broke his business into smaller pieces to make them simpler
and focused them more narrowly to discourage drift and distraction,
while trying to maintain the advantages of scale and resources and a
compelling culture to recruit talent. Page isn’t ready to settle for status
quo. He wants to make the world a better place—with electric cars and
smart cities and universal Internet access and no more disease—and also
find lucrative new businesses that keep the company part of the present
and future. He wants everything, from A to Z.
loop@fastcompany.com
 ANNOUNCING THE

CRE ATI V IT Y COUNTER-CONFERENCE

M AY 2 4–2 5
LOS ANGELES

F O R M O R E I N F O R M A T I O N , V I S I T:
f a s t c o m p a n y. c o m / f c l a
PEOPLE
CHANGING

FOOD
 A matter of taste
The signature chicken
sandwich featured at
David Chang’s growing
fast-food chain, Fuku,
is meticulously crafted,
a bit unexpected, and
completely delicious.

David Chang
is expanding
America’s palate
with his fast-growing
Momofuku empire.
Plus: 13 other
culinary leaders
who are bringing
something new
to the table.
By Rob Brunner
Photograph by
Herring & Herring

April 2016 FastCompany.com 71


IT WAS 9:30
ON A FRIDAY
MORNING, AND
DAVID CHANG
WAS ALREADY
FURIOUS.
The Momofuku Group founder was at one
of his dozen-plus restaurants, Má Pêche in Mid-
town Manhattan, for a meeting with chef de cui-
sine Ian Davis and three sous-chefs. But Chang
had arrived a bit early, and he decided to drop in
on the kitchen with Davis and the others. Within
a few moments, he was clocking mistake after
mistake—a cascade of small lapses that, in the
chef ’s mind, added up to an epic transgression.
The butter was too cold. A whipped-cream-
topped waffle sat melting under a warmer. The
breakfast-tray setup was all wrong, the salt-and-
pepper shakers had gone missing, and a server
was handling toast without wearing gloves.
Worst of all, a cook at the flat-top griddle was
overdoing the eggs. Eggs! Are you kidding me?
Chang thought. Whoosh: that familiar jolt of
72 FastCompany.com April 2016
PEOPLE
CHANGING
FOOD
rage. He slid his arm around Davis’s shoulder,
gripping hard to contain the fury.
There was a time when Chang would have
yelled, definitely at high volume and possibly
at great length. He would have dumped the
eggs in the trash, grabbed the spatula, and just
cooked the dish himself, yielding soft eggs, yes,
but also hard feelings. Chang would have made
a scene, embarrassed his crew, ruined everyone’s
morning and possibly the whole day, all without
actually addressing the problems that caused
the issues in the first place.
But that was the old Dave. That guy was a
superstar chef with a growing restaurant em-
pire who was as famous for his standards as
his intense flavors, and high-volume freakouts
were part of the mystique. New Dave is doing
everything he can to keep himself under control.
Because these days, Chang is reaching for some-
thing bigger: He wants to turn his boundary-
pushing restaurants into a global culinary
brand. As Momofuku continues to move beyond
its New York origins, it will further spread a dis-
tinctive aesthetic that has already seeped into
the American food scene in ways that diners
might not even realize. That tiny, undecorated,
no-reservation spot that just opened near you,
Previous spread: Styling: Alex Brannian. This spread: Styling: Lauren Machen
serving fancy versions of lowbrow dishes made
with top-quality ingredients and high-end
technique? You can probably thank Chang. Over
the past decade, he has helped transform food
culture—and especially a certain kind of gritty,
back-of-the-house chef sensibility—into a genu-
ine social phenomenon.
Already, Momofuku Group offers diners the
Chang experience at restaurants in New York,
Sydney, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. (The lat-
est, a high-end, Asian-Italian experiment called
Nishi, opened in New York in January.) It co-owns
seven outposts of Milk Bar, a popular bakery
that’s the vision of pastry chef Christina Tosi, and
Photograph by Stephanie Gonot
Christina’s world
Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi
is being strategic about her
quirky bakeshop’s expansion.
“The growth has to feel as
authentic as humanly possible,”
she says. “If it doesn’t feel like
me, if it doesn’t feel like Milk
Bar, what’s the point? We’re
not in it for the payday. If we
were, we would’ve sold out a
long time ago. We’re in it
because we really believe in
making something that’s
different and that people love.”
PEOPLE
CHANGING
FOOD

DAV ID CH A NG’S
HOLY R A MEN EMPIRE
The Momofuku founder is
conquering the food world on
several platforms.

Restaurants
In addition to outposts
in Washington, D.C.,
Toronto, and Sydney (1)—
plus one opening soon in
the Cosmopolitan in Las
Vegas, Chang oversees
New York favorites Momo-
fuku Noodle Bar, Ssäm Bar
(2), Ko, Nishi, and Má Pêche.
Meanwhile, fast-food con-
noisseurs are flocking to
Fuku (3), a fried-chicken-
sandwich spot with three
locations (and more on the
way).
Meal delivery
This spring in New York,
Chang plans to launch
Ando, a service that couri-
ers singular menu offerings
to homes and offices. He’s
also an investor in Maple
(4), another N.Y.C. delivery
service that’s quickly be-
come popular.
Grab-and-go
Dessert outlet Milk Bar (5),
the brainchild of Momo-
fuku pastry chef Christina
Tosi, sells unique treats
such as cereal-milk soft
serve, compost cookies,
and “crack pie” at seven
(and counting) locations.
Magazine
With editorial director
Peter Meehan, Chang
owns the provocative food
quarterly Lucky Peach (6).
1
Cookbooks
Chang and Meehan coau-
thored the best-selling 10
2009 book Momofuku (7).
Tosi has two of her own:
Momofuku Milk Bar (8) and
Milk Bar Life. Meanwhile,
Lucky Peach has published
a collection of Asian-food
recipes (9) and in April will
put out a book devoted to
the art of sausage, called 4
The Wurst of Lucky Peach.
Bar
The BDX Margarita (10)
is one of many cocktails
on offer at Chang’s New
York saloon, Booker and
Dax, which is run by drink
innovator Dave Arnold.
Packaged products
Chang’s signature spicy
Ssäm Sauce (11) is available
at his restaurants, select
retailers, and on the Mo-
mofuku website.
11

operates three locations of Fuku, Chang’s casual to get there.” And while Chang loves to jokingly just witnessed—not who was to blame, but what
fried-chicken-sandwich mecca, with more on compare himself to North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, caused them, how to avoid them next time, and,
the way. Chang is also an investor in New York’s he now believes that his business needs a leader, most of all, how to be a leader. “I was so mad, I

booming food-delivery service Maple, and he co-
owns (and regularly contributes to) the five-year-
old, award-winning food magazine Lucky Peach.
Chang announced in February that a Momofuku
restaurant and Milk Bar will open inside the
Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas late this year.
Soon, his bold flavors will tackle even more
platforms. In March, he revealed the latest Mo-
mofuku project: a meal-delivery service called
Ando, which is set to launch this spring in New
York and will give Maple lovers a whole new set
of desk-lunch options to obsess about. “Dave is
a competitive person,” says Lucky Peach edito-
rial director Peter Meehan, a longtime friend.
“And he has become enamored with business.
I think he wants to have a really big company. I
think he’s doing the things that need to be done
not a dictator. Someone who can motivate
people not the way a chef often does—through
fear—but like the best kind of CEO can: by ar-
ticulating big dreams and inspiring people to
help make them real.
After pulling himself away from the Má
Pêche kitchen disaster, Chang gathered the
chefs around a table for their scheduled meeting.
Dressed in dark jeans and a vintage-style Hous-
ton Astros T-shirt, with bedhead-spiked hair
and a smattering of beard, Chang took a sip of
Trader Joe’s green juice, pulled out his notes, and
launched into a prepared lecture (he describes
these sessions, which he holds regularly at his
restaurants, as “classes”). But Chang couldn’t
focus. He kept coming back to those screwups,
ditching the script to pick over the problems he’d
Alan Richardson (1); William Hereford (2, 10); Gabriele Stabile (3); Celine Grouard (4, 6, 7, 8, 9)
couldn’t contain myself,” he told the chefs. “But
I did. When you see something wrong, you want
to jump in and be the hero. Because you can do
it—you can save it! But it’s a short-term fix.” The
question, he said, is how to anticipate problems
and create better systems. “It’s like a puzzle: How
do we make this work? And then it’s on to the next
thing, and the next after that.”
Chang spoke evenly, with the slightly biting
tone of someone accustomed to being in charge;
for emphasis he often smacked the table with
his fingertips or the edge of his hand, karate-
chop-style. “It’s never-ending,” Chang told the
Má Pêche crew. “And if you don’t realize it by
now, you are in the wrong business. This is not
for sane people. Anyone who likes this shit is
not fucking normal.”

74 FastCompany.com April 2016


The previous afternoon, I had met with
Chang at Momofuku’s headquarters, which oc-
cupy the fifth floor of a prewar loft building near
New York’s Union Square. Though the 38-year-old
chef keeps a desk in one corner of the open-plan
room, he can more often be found in the kitchen
area or—as he was when I got there—making
calls in the glassed-in conference room. It was
just three weeks after the January opening of
Chang’s much-anticipated new restaurant Nishi,
and a whiteboard in the corner still displayed evi-
dence of menu-brainstorming sessions. Chang
finished his call, offered me a just-delivered Fuku
chicken sandwich, and settled in to explain his
vision for Momofuku’s future.
Chang’s empire had started modestly. Built
with a $100,000 loan from his father and a fam-
ily friend, along with $27,000 of his own savings,
Momofuku Noodle Bar, which opened in 2004,
was a tiny East Village space that eventually
7 8
earned a big reputation for its umami-rich takes
on Asian cuisine. Chang—then a 26-year-old
graduate of New York’s French Culinary Institute
who’d worked at Tom Colicchio’s Craft and spent
a year studying Japanese food in Tokyo—was an
irresistible character, mixing serious food skills
with a screw-you irreverent charm, blending the
elite culinary ambition of such chefs as Wylie
FO R C HAN G, TH E
G OAL O F ALL T H I S
G R O W T H I S S I M PLE:
”T O W I N.”
5
Dufresne with the sodium-soaked pleasures of
high-American junk food.
A second Momofuku restaurant, called Ssäm
Bar, opened in 2006. Funded in part with money
his dad raised by mortgaging his golf-supply
store in Northern Virginia, where Chang grew
up, the venture was risky. As was the menu—an
odd Asian-burrito concept (pork and kimchi
wrapped in a flour pancake, say) that wasn’t an
immediate success. Chang faced the possibility
of losing not only his restaurants, but also his
father’s business. “You just refuse to make it not
work,” said Chang, whose projects have often
struggled at the start. “It has to work. I just can’t
understand any other scenario. But it’s a hard
way of running a company. All I remember tell-
ing myself is, You can’t break. You can’t break,
you can’t break, you can’t break.”
Chang turned things around by concoct-
ing an inventive late-night menu that started
April 2016 FastCompany.com 75
PEOPLE
CHANGING
FOOD
attracting New York food connoisseurs. It meant
extreme hours for him and his staff, but cus-
tomers loved it. That success inspired Chang
to launch his first fine-dining establishment,
Momofuku Ko, which opened in 2008 with an
eight-course tasting menu and quickly became
one of New York’s most celebrated culinary
haunts. From there, the empire grew fast. “Dave
is always trying to push himself to do something
different,” said comedian Aziz Ansari, a big fan
of Chang’s food who has become a friend of the
chef ’s. “It’s very easy for someone that success-
ful to make boring, safe choices, and he never
does that. He always wants to take risks and do
something new and exciting.”
As Momofuku has grown, Chang has mostly
pursued a series of short-term goals rather than
some broader strategy—sometimes with sur-
prising results. Nishi, his recent collaboration
with Ko veteran Joshua Pinsky, was originally
set to be an expanded Fuku. At the last minute,
Chang and his team decided to try something
new, settling on a melding of Italian and Asian
cuisines. “I was like, you know what? Fuck it,”
Chang said. “Let’s do it. That’s our strategic vi-
sion: Let’s just fucking do it.”
Now Chang is looking to expand in a more
deliberate way, a process that’s being steered by
Momofuku Group president Andrew Salmon,
who Chang brought in as his business partner
in 2006 (“He didn’t want to do paperwork any-
more,” Salmon recalled. “The first conversation
we had, he said, ‘I hear you do paperwork?’ ”). In
Momofuku’s first decade, the company built new
restaurants mostly by reinvesting profits; in the
last two years it started soliciting investments—
from friends, family, and other relatively modest
backers. Salmon is currently looking to take on
even more investors, who he hopes will help
fund the company’s next big wave of growth.
Momofuku’s most valuable asset might
prove to be Fuku, the quick-serve chicken-
sandwich restaurants that are evolving into an
entity that will operate separately from the par-
ent company. Chang and Salmon hope to launch
several more by the end of the year—in New York
and beyond—including a new, larger version of
Fuku in Manhattan by the end of summer.
With its stripped-down decor and accessible
menu, Fuku is easy to imagine as a staple of
shopping malls and sports venues nationwide (a
Fuku recently opened inside New York’s Madison
Square Garden). Its signature product—a fried-
chicken sandwich that’s essentially a riff on
Chick-fil-A, pickles included—is classic Chang:
meticulously crafted, a bit unexpected, and com-
pletely delicious. It’s also typically irreverent; the
sandwich comes wrapped in foil that’s stamped
76 FastCompany.com April 2016
with the word dericious. (“We know that could
be offensive to some people,” says Chang, who
likes to poke at Asian-food stereotypes. “But it’s
literally how my mom says it.”) Chang and his
team are currently working to expand Fuku’s
sandwich offerings, possibly with a vegetarian
option and perhaps even something akin to Mc-
Donald’s Filet o’ Fish.
Meanwhile, Milk Bar, the Momofuku-backed
baked-goods chain that Christina Tosi owns and
operates, could grow from seven to as many as
14 locations this year. Its quirky desserts—with
names like crack pie and compost cookies—are
both playful and innovative, and their success
is earning Tosi a mounting public profile of
her own (she’s currently a judge on the popu-
lar Fox cooking competitions MasterChef and
MasterChef Junior).
Tosi, a fellow French Culinary Institute grad,
came to Momofuku in 2006 as a food-safety
consultant, but Chang soon discovered her other
talents and created a broader role for her. The
pair hatched Milk Bar after retail space became
available in Ssäm Bar’s building, and when it
opened in 2008 as a to-go dessert counter, cus-
tomers swarmed. Today, Tosi is working to define
Milk Bar, which she acknowledges has always
been “kind of the baby sister to Momofuku,” as
its own distinct brand. “You’ll start to see Milk
“I D O N’ T K N O W I F I’ M
TH E G U Y W H O CA N
TA K E [ M O M O F U K U]
F O R W A R D,” C H A N G
S A I D. “IT W O U L D B E
F O O L I S H TO T H I N K
TH AT W E’R E N OT AT
A C R O S S R O A D S.”
Bar become a bit more grown-up,” she said.
“It’ll still have the hand-built, homemade feel,
but I think it’s going be taken a little bit more
seriously.” In addition to opening more stores,
Tosi is also expanding her e-commerce and
retail offerings (sandwiches and other savory
fare are in the works) and is considering less-
conventional ideas such as Milk Bar–branded
vending machines.
For Chang, the goal of all this growth is
simple: “to win.” But his idea of victory is dif-
ferent from that of many other budding moguls.
Though he says he’s had lots of opportunities to
sell Momofuku, he is more interested in creating
something big and sustainable that can improve
not just his life, but that of all his employees. “I
derive pleasure and enjoyment by building a
place where a lot of people can benefit,” Chang
said. “And I mean that. My goal is a utopian work
environment where we can pay top dollar to our
cooks, to our servers, to our dishwashers, every-
one.” Chang likes to think about what happens
when Momofuku employees head out after their
shift. “When you have drinks with your friends,
particularly in this business, you talk shit about
your workplace,” he said. “I want this to be a
place where people aren’t talking shit. They’re
like, ‘Sorry, guys, I know you’re all unhappy with
your jobs, but I love mine.’ ”
As raw and critical as Chang can be, he is
ferociously loyal to the people who work for
him. “When I first joined this company, within a
month or so, Dave invited me to lunch,” said Sam
Gelman, who came to the company as a cook
at Ssäm Bar in 2007. “He said, ‘One of my com-
mitments to you is that you will never have to
find another job.’ ” Today, Gelman is Momofuku
Group’s culinary director. It’s the kind of story
you hear repeatedly when you talk to people
about Chang. “He’s got a knack for seeing talent,
seeing hunger in someone, and giving them the
opportunity to prove it,” said Tosi. “He wants
to know that you care every bit as much as he
does—that your care is so deep, it might be seen
as crazy. That’s when you’ve got him.”
Ravenous after the Má Pêche meeting,
Chang climbed into the back of an Uber car
and headed several blocks east, to an industrial
kitchen located in a Midtown Manhattan base-
ment. This unmarked space, tucked below a
Thai restaurant, is at the center of Chang’s latest
creation, a food-delivery service called Ando that
at the time was still a closely held secret. Inside,
chef J.J. Basil, who is overseeing Ando’s food, had
prepared a tasting of items that would likely end
up on the menu. Chang couldn’t wait to dig in.
Ando is named, like (Continued on page 104)
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PEOPLE
CHANGING
FOOD

FA S T
It’s no surprise that Lena Dunham, Jon Favreau,
and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti were spotted at the
January 18 opening of L.A.’s newest celebrity-
chef-helmed eatery. But when that restaurant
vibe. According to Choi, “Daniel’s the body, I’m
the face. Then both of us collide with no bound-
aries and merge to be one.”

FOOD ON A
is a fast-food joint in a poor neighborhood with
so few culinary options that it’s considered a
food desert, something unusual is going on. As
residents of Watts are discovering, Locol isn’t a
Keep it cheap
The partners wanted to compete directly with
chains like McDonald’s, but without turning to

MISSION
With Locol, superstar chefs
Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson
are bringing high-quality eats to
low-income neighborhoods.
typical burger spot. For one thing, the chefs be-
hind it are two of the country’s most celebrated:
Roy Choi, who kicked off the food-truck boom
with Kogi BBQ Taco in 2008, and Daniel Patter-
son, whose San Francisco dining temple Coi has
two Michelin stars. (A third partner, Hanson Li,
focuses on the business side.) Plus, Locol offers
very different fare from its combo-meal-slinging
competitors: food made from fresh ingredients
that still manages to be fast and affordable. With
locations planned in Oakland and San Francisco
(and more to come nationwide), the partners
explain how they’re bringing better food to un-
derserved communities.
Cook up enough funding
Opening the first Locol wasn’t cheap: In addition
to building the 2,900-square-foot space, outfit-
ting the kitchen, and designing the menu, the
founders chose to provide compensation above
minimum wage. In January 2015, they launched
an Indiegogo campaign that raised almost
$130,000 (and a lot of public awareness) thanks
to backers including Gwyneth Paltrow. The rest
of the reported $2 million budget came from in-
vestors in the worlds of tech and entertainment.
“Everyone who participated in the first round re-
ally believed in the social justice and food-access
aspects of Locol,” says Li.
Maximize collaboration
Though Choi and Patterson are both used to be-
ing in charge, they quickly figured out how to
work together—despite living in different cities.
“I’d fly up in the morning and we’d be in the
kitchen by 10 a.m.,” says Choi. “And we did a lot
over email.” They also divided the labor: Pat-
terson focused on the food while Choi tackled
restaurant design, branding, and the overall
industrial food processing. They use inexpensive
cuts of meat, incorporate lots of greens, and aug-
ment $4 burgers and sandwiches with fermented
grains, which are low-cost and add bulk to the
meat without sacrificing taste or texture. “We
looked at the ways people all over the world feed
themselves well and inexpensively,” Patterson
says. “We use umami ingredients, flavors of fer-
mentation, good acidity, and lots of herbs.” A
typical meal at Locol costs about $7.
Nurture local talent
In its first few weeks, Locol was already serving
about 700 meals a day. The team hired more than
50 staff members, all from the Watts commu-
nity. The technique- and labor-intensive recipes
meant workers had to be trained to really cook,
not just flip patties. Patterson developed their
skills and palettes the same way he trains his
team at Coi. “They need to taste the food, know
that it’s seasoned right,” he says. “As Locol grows,
we’ll bring some of the people we’re training in
Watts to help us open new locations.”
Concentrate on community
To Choi and Patterson, the restaurant’s Watts lo-
cation is key, and not just because it’s exactly the
sort of food-deprived neighborhood they’ll target
with future outlets. Choi says the “character and
hospitality of Watts defines some of the DNA of
Locol,” right down to the menu: The BBQ turkey
burger, for example, was suggested by store
employees. As the chain grows, offerings will be
customized for regional tastes. But in some ways,
wherever Locol goes, Watts will follow. “We got
very lucky to start in this place because of how
strong a community it is and how deep the roots
are,” says Patterson. “The soul of Watts is a funda-
mental aspect of our brand.” —Jonathan Ringen

78 FastCompany.com April 2016 Photograph by Stephanie Gonot

 Choi (right) and
Patterson say demand
at Locol has far
exceeded their
expectations.
 PEOPLE
CHANGING
FOOD

THE SOIL
Twelve years ago, Carman Ranch, a 3,100-acre
cattle-raising operation in Wallowa Valley, Ore-
gon, was struggling; the grass, fast receding,
barely supported the 300-animal herd. So Cory

S AVA N T
A radical new approach
to raising cattle helped fourth-
generation rancher Cory Carman
save her family’s land.
Carman convinced her family to turn to holistic
ranching, a risky approach that involved elimi-
nating chemical fertilizer, minimizing irrigation,
and moving cattle methodically—keeping them
in one place just long enough to munch the grass
tops and drop fertilizing waste.
Today, the grass on Carman Ranch grows
thick. It supports 67% more cattle, and Carman’s
organic beef sells at a 10% to 30% premium. Over
kitchen tables and at cattle conferences, Carman
educates other ranchers about the benefits of
holistic land management. “They’re giddy about
the potential,” she says. “It’s about getting more
nutrients into the soil and getting more out of
their ranches in return.” —Corie Brown

Cory Carman, seen

here with a few of
her Hereford cows,
left a career in
public policy to
focus on the family
business.

Photograph by Herring & Herring

 RE V I V ING
CHIP OT L E
Food-safety expert Mansour
Samadpour, president
of IEH Laboratories, is helping
the burrito chain recover
from a food-poisoning outbreak.

Is it okay to eat at Chipotle again?

It has been okay. When any food com-
pany has an outbreak, it ends. [At
Chipotle] we added a finished-product
testing program for all of the high- and
moderate-risk items, like raw produce.
Some items will be immersed in boil-
ing water for five seconds, which gives
a 99% to 99.9% reduction of microbes.
The idea is to have a net in place when
one safety measure fails.

Chipotle will now prep some

veggies in regional central
kitchens, an approach taken by
many fast-food chains. Does it
have to abandon its locally
sourced ethos to reduce risk?
It’s quite possible to work with local
producers and serve safe food. There’s
a commitment to bringing local pro-
ducers to the same level of food safety
as national producers.

Are there any current trends that

could impact food safety?
More companies are serving organic,
natural food, but that doesn’t make it
safe: Microbes are organic and natural.
It’s better to set up systems properly
in the beginning, rather than have to
deal with an outbreak. Food safety is a
moral obligation. —J.J. McCorvey

Illustrations by Michael Byers April 2016 FastCompany.com 81


THE END
OF TIPS?
Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square
Hospitality Group, decided to
nix gratuities. Here’s how it has
been working so far.
82 FastCompany.com April 2016
PEOPLE
CHANGING
FOOD
Restaurant tipping has always been awkward.
How much to leave? Do you include the tax? Did
your server ever actually bring that sriracha you
requested? It’s also not the fairest of compen-
sation models, benefiting front-of-the-house
staff rather than cooks, dishwashers, and other
by-the-hour workers. That’s why last October re-
nowned restaurateur Danny Meyer announced
that he would begin eliminating tipping from
his 13 New York restaurants, starting with fine-
dining destination the Modern. —J.J. McCorvey
D A N N Y M E Y E R CEO, Union Square Hospitalit y Group (USHG):
I guess I’ve never met a mountain I didn’t want
to climb. This is something I’ve been talking
about for 22 years. When you go to a restaurant,
you assume that the menu price pays the dish-
washer, the florist, the landlord. You pay for the
piece of fish, the wine. Then separately, you’re
asked to pay for the waiter. For hourly workers in
the kitchen, who can’t legally receive tips, it’s
impossible to build a sustainable career. I didn’t
know how to be the coach of a team where the
offense is thriving and the defense is hurting.
E R I N M O R A N C h i e f c u l t u r e o f f i c e r, U S H G : In 1995, the
minimum wage for tipped employees was $1.68,
compared to $7.50 today. But line cooks were
making $9 an hour in 1985, compared to [just]
$11 an hour today. That dining room server is
making significantly more than our team in the
kitchen preparing food. That doesn’t feel great.
M E Y E R : We weren’t able to attract enough quali-
fied cooks to our kitchens. When we started
hearing about the $15-an-hour minimum for
fast-food workers, cooks who trained at fine
culinary institutions were up in arms. Every
internal discussion came back to the inability to
share tips with our cooks. Finally, we said, who
wrote the rule that you have to [use] the tipping
system? Not us. Let’s [instead] charge a menu
price that accurately reflects the total cost to put
food on your table.
D I N O L A V O R I N I Direc t or of opera t ions, t he Modern: Our
goal was to end up with very little difference in
 CALL FOR ENTRIES

THE 2016
INNOVATION BY DESIGN AWARDS

Entries Accepted Until May 5th

fastcompany.com/ibd
PEOPLE
CHANGING
FOOD

what customers paid, assuming that in the past
they would have left, on average, a 20% gratuity.
M O R A N : We landed on a base hourly wage of $9
plus a weekly revenue-share program. With the
revenue share, we are mitigating some of the
volatility associated with a slow night.
In September, Meyer held a series of meetings at
the Modern for the entire USHG staff. The idea was
to get input on how to make the system work and
also to win over skeptics. Servers, in particular, were
worried about earning less.
B E N T H O M A S Ser ver, t he Modern: There were a lot of
questions. There was a lot of worry, doubt, and
fear. Money was a huge concern.
M E Y E R : We guaranteed that for at least the first
three months, you will not make a penny less
I’m making about 15% to 20% less. That is a con to
the whole thing. There are some positive things
that help weigh that out. A lot of us were working
overtime to make ends meet. A normal workweek
would be about 50 hours, but [now] a lot of servers
are working 40 to 45 hours at the most.
B E R H A N U : [With the new system], I’m making
maybe 33% more. It’s not a whirlwind of differ-
ence. But it does feel nice to do the things normal
people take for granted. You can buy a coffee in
the morning and you’re not like, Shit, I splurged
on coffee, I should reel it in. You can live. In the
past, a lot of us were working to survive.
The company is still tweaking the mechanics of the
program, and it’s possible the revenue-share per-
centage could increase. Meanwhile, another USHG
restaurant, Maialino, adopted the policy in February

than you would have made under the old system.
There have been weeks we subsidized the [serv-
ers’] pay and weeks we didn’t.
S A B A T O S A G A R I A C h i e f r e s t a u r a n t o f f i c e r, U S H G : We
MORE
with the new Union Square Café and others to follow.
H O P P L E : People still try to leave tips. We adjusted
our tasting menu for a gentleman who was pes-

want to create opportunities for servers and
kitchen staff to grow internally. There are [differ-
ent] levels for these positions. As you gain expe-
rience and contribute more to the team, you
WHO
catarian, and he left an extra $40. I said, “I know
you’re aware [of the no-tipping policy], but I
wanted to make sure that was your intention.” It’s
what he wanted to do. At that point, turning it

M AT T E R
progress to the next level and get more of the away just ruins the connection you made.
revenue share. This [clear path to advancement] J E N N I F E R R e c e n t l u n c h c u s t o m e r a t t h e M o d e r n : I work
puts our own employees in the driver’s seat. It’s nearby and come maybe three times a year. I didn’t
no longer just about outlasting your colleagues. notice a difference in service—it’s always great. It
K A P I B E R H A N U L ine cook , t he Modern: Under the old was nice to be able to [tip more] for the people I
system, you had to ask somebody for a raise, like, but it doesn’t matter much to me.
which is very uncomfortable in our industry. A B R A M B I S S E L L E xecutive chef, the Modern: We’ve seen Kara Goldin
Founder
Every day was kind of a test where you prove a 200% increase in [cook] applications since we HINT WATER
yourself. If you had a bad two days, that means, started. It’s been a huge change.
Oh, I don’t feel like I should ask for a raise. It’s not M E Y E R : A lot of guests are willing to pay a little As soda giants grapple with plung-
ing sales and consumers hunt
like an office job, where you do x, y, and z and you more for local produce, for responsibly raised
for healthier options, beverage
get promoted. As a cook, you’re kind of told, like, animals. Now we’re explaining, “Guess what: You companies like Hint Water are find-
this is what you make. need to pay a little more for how we take care of ing ways to juice up old-fashioned
people, not just plants and animals.” Tipping is H2O. Hint offers 23 varieties of
The system went into effect at the Modern on Novem- like a bad drug, and it’s really hard to kick the fruit-tinged drinks (crisp apple,
ber 19. New menus and wine lists were printed with a habit. But more restaurants are joining us. I be- blackberry, etc.) and uses only fruit
oils to add flavor—no sugar or arti-
prominent line explaining the no-tipping policy, and lieve this is something that our industry and our
ficial sweeteners. Starting Hint
checks now arrive without the customary line for a society will ultimately embrace. “was really a health initiative versus
gratuity. The company says response has been highly launching a beverage company,”
positive so far, but not everyone on staff is convinced. says Kara Goldin, who is beginning
to incorporate health-focused
M E Y E R : Our waiters have enjoyed this, because interactive videos and content into
they don’t have to serve you with this cloud Hint’s offerings. Customers are
gulping up her products: The com-
hanging over their head, where you’re wonder-

“T H E R E W A S A L O T O F
pany expects to become profitable
ing if the only reason they’re being nice is to help this year after hitting an estimated
themselves to some of your wallet at the end of $80 million in sales in 2015, which
the meal. That’s not why they do it.
J A S O N H O P P L E Senior ser ver, the Modern: Now we’re not W O R R Y, D O U B T , is nearly double its 2014 revenue.
The brand’s brightly colored pack-

AND FEAR. MONEY

always working those [busier] nights that are most aging is now a familiar presence at
Whole Foods and other major gro-
needed to pad our pay. You have the opportunity

W A S A H U G E C O N C E R N.”
cery chains, and a recent expan-
to work a lunch shift here and there, then go sion into caffeinated water has also
home and cook dinner or go out with your partner. helped drive sales (not to mention
T H O M A S : Compared to when I was making tips, Ben Thomas Server, the Modern buzz). —Sarah Lawson

84 FastCompany.com April 2016

 NO Make it
drool-worthy
Get their
hands dirty
Build a community

CHEESE,
At the museum,
“People think of veg- In 2002, Terry Terry hosts dinners
Nick Green and etarian and vegan founded b-healthy, designed to start
Gunnar Lovelace
Co–CEOs
THRIVE MARKET
PL E A SE! food as bland,” says
Terry. “I want to
prove that a meal
an after-school pro-
gram in New York
that taught kids how
conversations with
people of color about
“real-food” diets. “I’m
Ecommerce site Thrive Market sells How Bryant Terry, without meat can to grow and cook not saying everyone
high-end natural products at 25% chef in residence be amazingly satis- fresh food. “They should be vegan,” he
to 50% below market rates. Since at San Francisco’s fying.” His four were trying food they says. “But for health
it launched in 2014, it has raised Museum of the cookbooks, includ- wouldn’t have in any reasons, everyone
$58 million in funding and attracted African Diaspora, ing the 2014 hit Afro- other circumstances, should eat more from-
more than 195,000 members who is working to Vegan, have earned just because they scratch meals. A
pay a $60 annual fee. “People don’t lower disease rates a devoted following made it,” he says. plant-based diet is a
join just for low prices and home in food-insecure via recipes such as This spring, Terry will tool for addressing the
delivery,” says co–CEO Gunnar
communities creole-spiced plan- launch similar pro- public-health crisis
Lovelace, who runs the company
tain chips and grams in San Fran- around food.”
with Nick Green. “They trust the
quality of our products.” Thrive is tofu po’boys. cisco and Oakland. —Nikita Richardson
eager to spread its healthy-food
message—and not just among the
wealthy. For every new customer,
it donates a membership to a family
in need. —Claire Dodson

Megan Miller and

Leslie Ziegler
Founders
BITTY FOODS

When a United Nations report

heralded insects as the most sus-
tainable source of protein, Megan
Miller and Leslie Ziegler set out to
make crickets a palatable meat
alternative. Bitty Foods has devel-
oped everything from cricket flour
(a nutritious blend with 28 grams of
protein per cup) to Chiridos, which
are air-puffed chips made from
crickets, lentils, and spices. With
Chiridos due to land in U.S. stores
later this year, Ziegler hopes that
consumers are feeling adventurous.
“People just need to try it,” she says.
“Any hesitation is usually erased
after a taste.” —Kim Lightbody

Danielle Gould
Founder
FOOD + TECH CONNECT

In 2010, when many farmers and

chefs were still depending on
fax machines and handwritten
invoices, Danielle Gould founded
the networking platform Food +
Tech Connect. The goal: unite food
producers with digital creators
through meet-ups and weekend-
long hackathons. Thanks to connec-
tions made through F+TC, more
small-scale producers are selling via
online marketplaces and developers
are creating cloud-based systems
for restaurants. “We’re teaching
people to prototype solutions,”
says Gould. “It’s exposed everyone
to new ways of thinking.”
—Anya Hoffman

Photograph by Herring & Herring

Lyft has been
eating Uber’s dust
for years. Can a
series of smart
partnerships steer
the “nice” ride-
sharing startup
into its own lane?
By Rick Tetzeli
Illustrations
by Patrick Leger

April 2016 FastCompany.com 87

 Long before
there was Uber,
21-year-old
Logan Green
traveled
to Zimbabwe.
There, he
encountered
impromptu
fleets of vans
that shuttled
people around
Harare’s
chaotic streets.
Inspired, he
returned to the
United States

88 FastCompany.com April 2016 Photographs by Ian Allen

 “We are in the
first lap of a four-
lap race,” says Lyft
president John

who along with

CEO Logan Green Across America. The young execs have become
(left) pilots Lyft’s best friends, and Green was Zimmer’s best man.
strategy.
Together, they pivoted from Zimride to Lyft in
2012 and introduced innovation after innovation
into the ride-sharing business.
“We’ve never been closer,” Zimmer says of
his relationship with Green when I meet the
duo at Lyft’s San Francisco offices. (The company
stopped putting fuzzy pink mustaches on its
cars long ago, but the offices still boast a “Willy
Wonka” conference room that one enters by
climbing through a faux portrait of actor Gene
Wilder in character.) But the 33-year-old Zimmer,
who resembles the all-grown-up Fred Savage,
from The Wonder Years, could just as well be talk-
ing about Lyft’s prospects for success.
Uber’s headquarters are a nine-minute car
ride from where we are chatting, but its pres-
ence in the room is unmistakable. Today, Lyft is
still a distant No. 2 to Uber, its dominant rival.
Uber has many more drivers. It has many more
passengers. The company has raised $10.3 billion
from investors, at a valuation of $62.5 billion.
Lyft has raised $2 billion, at a valuation less than
one-tenth of that. Uber has launched its service
in 68 countries, developed its own R&D facility
to speed the arrival of autonomous cars, and is
expanding into services to deliver to-go meals,
groceries, and other goods. Lyft offers rides in
the United States, ferrying only people from
point A to point B.
When I ask Bill Gurley—the Benchmark
Capital partner who invested early and big in
Uber, sits on its board, and often serves as the
company’s de facto spokesman—to explain the
difference between Uber and Lyft, he says, “Here
are some differences I know of: Uber is 15 times
bigger. Uber is No. 18 in the App store, and Lyft
isn’t that.” (It was No. 122 when I checked later.)
“Uber’s strategy is to be the low-cost provider.
Similar to Amazon. A Bezosian strategy.”
The Amazon analogy is telling. There is a
prevailing view in Silicon Valley that technology-
and launched a company called Zimride in 2007. It used Facebook to connect riders and enabled marketplaces create winner-take-all
drivers for long-distance trips. competitions: think Amazon in e-commerce,
John Zimmer had nothing to do with the launch of Zimride, despite the fact that it Google in search, Facebook in social. The exam-
echoes his name, but when he heard about it, it resonated. Zimmer had become obsessed ples are powerful, the logic often deemed irrefut-
with the idea of ride sharing in 2006 after hearing one of his professors at Cornell give a able. Uber is clearly the leader in ride sharing; by
lecture on green cities. Can you imagine, Zimmer asked a schoolmate over beers, “this this calculus, Lyft must be the loser.
future where these pods would come to your doorstep, and they’d get people around, and Zimmer and Green never talk as if they’re
you wouldn’t have to drive?” playing for second place. In the past year, Green,
A friend introduced the two dreamers, and before long Zimmer quit his job as an the build-it CEO, and Zimmer, the market-it pres-
analyst at Lehman Brothers to join Zimride. Their journey has been deeply intertwined ident, have doggedly unearthed a strategy that
with their personal lives. Green used to hitch rides from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles may well be clever and powerful enough for the
to visit his future wife; one of the first things Zimmer did at Zimride was persuade the company to carve out a strong competitive posi-
woman who became his wife to join him on a cross-country trek he called Zimride tion. As Lyft worked throughout 2015 to achieve

April 2016 FastCompany.com 89

 WE’RE
LYFT
PEOPLE
Ten of the high-profile investors
and partners that have allied behind
the United States’ No. 2 ride-sharing
firm—to stop Uber
parity with Uber on critical service details like price and wait time, it also developed a
strategy to differentiate itself beyond being the “nice,” or quirky, ride-sharing service. “I
always had this idea that we should try to find a few partners with similar values whom
we could have long relationships with,” says Zimmer. Between July and January, they
put together three remarkable partnerships—with Starbucks; with an international co- Marc Andreessen
Cofounder and general
alition of leading ride-share companies, including China’s Didi Kuaidi; and with Detroit partner, Andreessen
behemoth General Motors. Together these deals create a distinct picture of how Lyft can Horowitz
compete with Uber. Lyft’s goal: establish itself as a distinctive, values-based alternative—
the Nordstrom to Uber’s Walmart, the Virgin to its rival’s United. The influential VC
made his $60 million
“We didn’t get into this to replace taxis,” says Zimmer. “That’s just a $12 billion mar- investment in Lyft
ket in the U.S. We want to create an alternative to car ownership, which is a $2.15 trillion after losing out on
market in the U.S. alone,” adding up the annual costs of buying, maintaining, and investing in Uber.
insuring vehicles. “It’s totally inefficient. The typical car is used for 4% of the day and
usually by one person. So that’s 1% utilization of the second-highest household expense
in the country.” Carmelo Anthony
Cofounder and partner,
It’s highly unlikely that a single company would reap all the rewards of disrupting a Melo7 Tech Partners
market such as this. “We really do expect more change in the next five years than we’ve
had in the last 50,” says GM president Dan Ammann, who brokered the deal with Lyft. The NBA star has
This isn’t a pure technology play but a case of software meeting an established and dubbed himself “the
new digital athlete,”
mighty industrial sector. Consider the range of competitors involved in this particular adding Lyft and a hand-
transformation—not only Uber and Lyft but also GM, Ford, Tesla, Toyota, BMW, Volks- ful of other startups
wagen, Apple, Nvidia, and Mobileye, among others—and the winner-take-all scenario to his portfolio within
a year of launching
becomes even harder to envision. his VC firm.
The ride-sharing services are at the forefront of the most significant change to car
transportation since Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. And Lyft isn’t about to
cede the track to Uber. “We’re like that line I saw on an episode of Silicon Valley,” adds Mary Barra
Green, also 33, his passion palpable despite his boyish, diffident demeanor. “ ‘I don’t CEO, General Motors
want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place than we do.’ ”
He’s joking, but Zimmer nods approvingly. After four years of preliminary heats, the GM’s $500 million bet
on Lyft makes it the
race is finally on. first car company to
partner with a ride
hailer. They plan to co-
FIGHTING POWER WITH COFFEE develop on-demand,
self-driving vehicles.
In the first half of 2015, Uber raised a billion dollars from investors, secured another
$1.6 billion in debt financing, lured some 50 engineers from Carnegie Mellon to launch
its own robotics facility, and acquired a digital mapping company. It was a dominant Prince al-Waleed
burst of activity from a ruthless competitor. bin Talal
Zimmer went to Starbucks. Chairman, Kingdom
Holding Group
Zimmer had long admired Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz for his management style
and values and wanted to meet him. But how to arrange the right entrée? A friend from The Saudi prince
Zimmer’s Wall Street days introduced him to Bill Bradley, the former New Jersey sena- participated in Lyft’s
tor and basketball star and current investment banker and Starbucks board member. latest funding round,
adding a $100 million
When he sat down with Bradley, he stressed that “the two things almost every person investment to a vast
needs in the morning are a cup of coffee and a ride to work.” Then he explained the ways portfolio that includes
in which he thought Lyft’s values, embodied by its “We treat you better” mantra, fit with Apple and Twitter.
those of Starbucks. Bradley, impressed, arranged a meeting with Schultz.
Zimmer and a couple of Lyft execs flew to Seattle on June 25 for a dinner at Wild Ginger,
a popular local Asian fusion restaurant. Nervous, Zimmer decided just before walking Carl Icahn
Founder, Icahn
in that he didn’t like the color of the shirt he was wearing. He ducked into the restroom Enterprises
of the ice-cream shop across the street to change into another.
Schultz recalls being less focused on Zimmer’s sartorial choices than his humanity. “I’m The activist investor
in the fortunate spot of getting to meet lots of young, aspiring entrepreneurs,” says the surprised the industry
with a $100 million
62-year-old CEO of Starbucks. “Every once in a while, one hits an emotional chord with me. investment in Lyft
I quickly came to see a lot in John that reminded me of me. His ambition to build a great last year, calling it a
company is obvious, but he wants to build one that can last and serve the public as well.” “tremendous bargain.”
“Howard started and ended the conversation with ‘What can you do for my baristas?’ ”

90 FastCompany.com April 2016

 Zimmer recalls. “It reaffirmed our focus on the drivers.” Schultz adds, “The equity of Lyft’s
brand is the driver, just as the equity of Starbucks’s brand is the barista.”
Jean Liu
President, Didi Kuaidi
A deal was announced just four weeks later. For now, the partnership is largely focused
around connecting Lyft with Starbucks’s rewards program and creating perks for driv-
Uber’s biggest rival ers: Lyft drivers automatically get Gold status in the Starbucks Rewards loyalty program,
invested $100 million while Lyft passengers earn points in the rewards program with each ride. Soon they will
in Lyft and created a
be able to buy a cup of coffee for their driver via a tab in the Lyft app. Starbucks baristas
strategic alliance last
year that lets the two can also get the occasional free ride to and from work via Lyft.
companies share riders Both Schultz and Zimmer say that this is only the first phase, with new developments
across borders. coming this summer. “We are having discussions about how we can design the best pos-
sible experience to get both your coffee and your ride,” Zimmer says. How might this
help Lyft in its competition with Uber? “They can’t possibly create something on their
Jack Ma own that has thousands of great locations that are almost bus stop–like,” Zimmer says,
Founder and executive
chairman, Alibaba “and they can’t invent the kind of ritual of coffee the way Starbucks has.” When Lyft first
launched its carpooling service, Lyft Line, it tested “hot spots” for pickup. Might the
A major backer of Didi concept reemerge at Starbucks’s 12,000-plus locations? Zimmer isn’t saying, but “there’s
Kuaidi, the Chinese
commerce giant has no other partner out there that can provide this kind of scale or future opportunity,” he
sought to expand its notes. “We see this as a better way to get a bigger part of the ultimate market.”
foothold in the U.S. via “John and Logan are building a long-term business,” says Schultz of Lyft’s dreamers,
strategic investments. “not something that’s just for today. Starbucks will do as much as we can to support them.”

Pony Ma A WORLD OF FRIENDS

Founder and CEO,
Tencent If the Starbucks deal offered Lyft access to an expanded base of like-minded, mostly
millennial customers (according to Lyft’s internal data, Starbucks is its passengers’ fa-
After forging an vorite coffee-shop destination), its next partnership took aim at Uber’s extensive (and
unlikely alliance with
rival Alibaba to merge expensive) international expansion. Rather than raise and then spend billions to attract
two Chinese ride- riders overseas—Uber CEO Travis Kalanick admitted in February that Uber is losing
hailing companies into $1 billion a year to compete in China—
Didi Kuaidi to blunt
Uber, Tencent then
Lyft took a restrained, tactical ap-
backed Lyft in a fund- proach. Eight weeks after announcing
ing round last year. the Starbucks arrangement, Zimmer
and Green unveiled an alliance with
Didi Kuaidi, China’s biggest ride-share
Howard Schultz company, which also agreed to invest
Chairman and CEO,
Starbucks $100 million in Lyft. Under the agree-
ment, Didi’s customers would be able
The progressive CEO to order Lyft rides via Didi’s app when
endorsed the ride- visiting the U.S. and vice versa. In early
sharing service last
year, orchestrating a December, the alliance expanded to
customer-loyalty part- include the leading ride-sharing ser-
nership with Starbucks
and declaring, “Lyft is
“John and Logan vices in Southeast Asia (Grab) and India
the company for us.” are building a long- (Ola). Suddenly, Lyft had the makings of
an enviable global footprint.
term business,” Both Zimmer and Green say they
says Schultz. have preferred the idea of partnering
Mike Shinoda
and Linkin Park “Starbucks will do ever since Alibaba signed on as an in-
Founders, Machine Shop as much as we can vestor in 2014. But only after the lead-
Ventures
to support them.” ing Chinese ride-sharing services Didi
The rock band opened Dache and Kuaidi Dache merged in Feb-
its VC firm last year to ruary 2015 was a deal a possibility (the
expand its brand and two were backed by rivals Tencent and Alibaba, respectively). A month later, in Lyft’s Willy
counted Lyft as one of
its initial investments,
Wonka conference room, Zimmer, Green, and Wang Gang, an Alibaba executive and Didi
along with Shyp and investor, sketched out on an oversize sheet the network effects that they believed would
Robinhood. expand their respective businesses. Connie Chan, a partner at Lyft investor Andreessen
Horowitz, translated when necessary. “Wang would go back (Continued on page 102)

April 2016 FastCompany.com 91

Just kids
Neumann credits his
wife and cofounder,
Rebekah, with bringing
a deeper soulfulness
to WeWork.

MEMBERS
ONLY
 WeWork CEO Adam Neumann has built a Starbucks-style home for creatives
to get #$%& done. All he has to do now is live up to his $10 billion–plus valuation, shush the haters,
and bend society to his idealistic worldview.

By Sarah Kessler
Photographs by Steven Klein
 A Beatles chorus bounces off the
bare concrete walls of what was
once J.P. Morgan’s headquarters.
“Come together, right now.” The
nearly 1,000 chattering WeWork
employees who fill the event
space look toward the stage,
expecting CEO Adam Neumann
to appear from the wings any
second now. Instead, he sprints
down the center aisle, and giddy
conversations evolve into a cheer.
When John Lennon trills “Over
me,” Neumann leaps onto the
stage, sticking the landing.
“Wow,” he begins, in his slight
Israeli accent, as he turns to sur-
vey the crowd, which has traveled
94 FastCompany.com April 2016
to New York from all over the world for We-
Work’s second annual employee summit this
past January. “There were only 250 people the
first time. If you’re one of those 250 people who
were here January of 2015, make some noise!”
Screaming and applause.
“Now, if you weren’t, raise your hands and
make some noise!”
Another wave of enthusiasm fills the cavern-
ous old bank.
“That’s the first lesson of teamwork,” Neu-
mann concludes. “Two-fifty can easily make
more noise than 900.”
Neumann, who’s wearing a gray T-shirt that
exclaims NEVER SETTLE, paces the stage, rhyth-
mically waving his arm as he urges the group
to reach for its full noisemaking potential. “I
just want to share with you guys what is hap-
pening around you,” he says. The 36-year-old
Styling: Christian Stroble; hair: Tomo Jidai at Streeters London; makeup: Regine Thorre; production: LOLA Production NYC
Neumann, with his shoulder-length dark hair,
six-foot-five frame, and proclivity for black
leather jackets, resembles a rock star. But the
atmosphere here, especially at 10 in the morn-
ing on a Friday, is more tent revival than rol-
licking concert. Employees participate with the
fervent obedience of true believers; there’s nary
an eye roll in sight.
“We have kids here from Seattle!” he
shouts, and a roar erupts from a corner of the
large room. Bursts of “Woo!” follow for “Brook-
lyn! San Francisco! Berkeley! We need more
energy, Berkeley! Los Angeles! Denver! Chicago!
Boston! Philadelphia! Atlanta!”
Only one person pipes up for Atlanta, where
WeWork will open in April, and Neumann
pauses to allow the crowd to finish laughing at
the contrast.
“D.C.! Miami! London! Now, Amsterdam! Tel
Aviv! Beersheba!”
“This company is 100%
going to succeed,”
Neumann says. “The
question is, in 10 years,
when we look back,
how much?”
 Neumann interrupts himself to share a quick
story. “When my designers came to me and said
we’re going to open a location in Beersheba, I
said, ‘Really, Beersheeba?’ They said, ‘Yes, it’s a
college town.’ And I said, ‘I was born there. It
used to be a dump.’ ” The crowd chuckles. “They
said, ‘No, it’s been a long time since you’ve been
there; it’s a college town.’ So, Be’er Sheva!” Neu-
mann shouts, using the Hebrew pronunciation.
“Ferona!—That’s more like Tel Aviv—Tel
Aviv, again! Shanghai! Mexico City! Toronto!
Montreal!”
Neumann has saved what he knows will be
the best for last, and he pauses for dramatic ef-
fect before spitting out, “New York!”
The majority of the room goes crazy.
“That is a city that has achieved scale,”
Neumann says, to more laughter. WeWork has
26 offices in New York. “All cities are going to
sound like that in the next two to three years.”
Neumann and his cofounder, Miguel
McKelvey, founded WeWork in 2010 with
a simple business model: The company
rents office space from landlords wholesale,
breaks it into smaller units, and subleases it
at a profit. WeWork, which now has 77 loca-
tions and more than 50,000 members, says
its ultimate potential is much bigger—and
investors agree. In February 2014, WeWork’s
backers valued the company at $1.5 billion;
by last summer, its valuation had jumped to
$10 billion, making WeWork, on paper, the
world’s 12th most valuable private startup.
Every modern generation has sought to re-
make the workplace, from the introduction of
the cubicle in the 1960s to the 1990s’ foosball
tables and flexible hours. Now members of the
generation that would rather make a job than
take a job are embracing coworking environ-
ments where they can operate independently
while still drawing support and networking
opportunities from peers. Neumann calls these
people the We Generation, which, he says,
“cares about the world, actually wants to do
cool things, and loves working.”
Critics look at WeWork’s business model of
trading spaces and shrug, That’s it? Its high
valuation has made it a staple of lists predicting
which unicorn startups will fail. “Their multiples
are more like a tech company than what a real
estate company would get,” says Charles Clin-
ton, who runs a real-estate-funding platform
called EquityMultiple. “There’s a feeling that
that doesn’t really make sense.” If the economy
96 FastCompany.com April 2016
wobbles, skeptics contend, WeWork’s customers any of these plans, WeWork needs to convince
will scurry back to cafés with free Wi-Fi. young, urban professionals to buy into its phi-
Neumann, who was envisioning WeWork losophy of living and working together. Which
with 100 buildings when he had only two, is why, in addition to square footage, WeWork
sees his company as an operating system that runs on something that doesn’t easily fit on a
brings real estate to life in the same way that term sheet. You can call it a mission, a vibe, or
Android is an operating system that makes a culture. Neumann calls it “energy.” If anyone
smartphone more than mere glass and metal. can create energy, it’s him. But is it enough to
As more spaces open and members join the power WeWorld?
network, WeWork will have increasing power
to offer such services as shipping, software, When Neumann moved into his sister
credit cards, travel, payroll, banking, and Adi’s New York apartment in 2001, fresh off his
training. Eventually, members might join for service in the Israeli military, what surprised
these benefits alone, without any physical him most was the silence of elevator rides.
access whatsoever. Neumann also envisions “Why is nobody talking to each other?” he re-
WeWork managing offices on behalf of cor- members asking her. “We’re in the same build-
porations (which are cutting down on square ing. How come you don’t know everybody?”
footage per employee). WeWork will connect In Israel, neighbors have almost the opposite
them all through an app-based network. “Real relationship. “If I’m in a neighborhood and I
estate,” according to Neumann, “is just a tool.” need some salt,” he says, “I don’t even need to
He isn’t content simply to remake the know the person. I knock on the door and I ask
modern office; he also wants to change how for some salt.”
millennials think about home. WeLive, his Neumann decided to turn making friends in
new “co-living” residences, is a bet that they’ll the building into a competition. “Let’s see which
value access over ownership. Just like they’re one of us can meet more people on every floor,”
choosing Uber or Lyft rather than buying a he told Adi, “so after a month, we can go to that
car or subscribing to Spotify rather than hav- person, knock on their door, and see if we can
ing a record collection, they will be happy hang out and have a cup of coffee.”
to share their living space, too. The first We- Though he lost the friend-making game, it
Live, which features common amenities with wasn’t because he was particularly unsuccess-
modest personal spaces, opened in New York ful. “She was a supermodel,” he notes with a
City in January. According to leaked financial smirk. By the end of the month, between the
documents, the company plans to open 68 two of them, they had a friend on every floor.
more in the next two years, the first step to- “The entire energy of the building changed,”
ward WeWork creating entire neighborhoods. Neumann says.
“It’s a when, not an if,” Neumann says of WeCities. Neumann had come to New York because he
Of course, in order to follow through on wanted to get rich, and everywhere he turned
“Rebekah said, ‘Stop. No more talking
about money,’ ” Adam remembers.
“We’re going to talk about wellness,
happiness, fulfillment, and if the money
is supposed to follow, it will.”
YOUR OFFICE, YOUR WAY
When WeWork enters a market, it goes deep. Like Starbucks, the more WeWorks there are, the higher the demand.
In Chicago, WeWork has leased more than 410,000 square feet of office space across three neighborhoods since 2013,
each offering potential members a distinct (and covetable) view of the Windy City.
RIVER NORTH
1. 111 W. Illinois Street
25,281 square feet
When not taking in
unrivaled views of the
Chicago River and the
iconic Merchandise
Mart—once the world’s
largest building—
members of this We-
Work can easily meet
up with like-minded
up-and-comers in
River North’s growing
tech scene.
Perfect for the
WeWorker who loves
cool hunting. River
North is home to more
art galleries and design
stores than any other
Chicago neighborhood.
2. 20 W. Kinzie Street
105,000 square feet
After Google moved
its regional office to
nearby Fulton Market,
WeWork snatched up
the tech giant’s former
digs, which boast a
rooftop garden, a
heated underground
parking garage, and an
on-site fitness center.
Perfect for the
WeWorker who loves
to shop. This WeWork
is only a few blocks
from the Magnificent
Mile, Chicago’s premier
retail district.
FULTON MARKET
3. 220 N. Green Street
75,000 square feet
Located in the heart
of Chicago’s West
Loop, this WeWork
houses 900 desks
across six floors in the
123-year-old Amity
Packing Building, a
former meatpacking
facility.
Illustration by Cecilia Ruiz
Perfect for the around the corner, 6. 100 S. State Street ing. As part of the deal, something members
WeWorker who loves members will find para- 43,200 square feet WeWork’s logo will be will love this WeWork
to bike to work. The gons of the Chicago prominently displayed for its proximity to
building is home to a School style, including In 2017, WeWork will on both facades. local universities and
state-of-the-art bike the 121-year-old Mar- take over more than the hip hangouts that
park, featuring secure, half the available space Perfect for the
quette Building and WeWorker who loves come with them.
indoor parking for up Burnham’s own Rook- in the five-story Amal- —Nikita Richardson
to 75 bicycles as well as gamated Bank build- the nightlife. Twenty-
ery building.
showers and lockers.
CHICAGO LOOP
4. 332 S. Michigan
Avenue
1
50,000 square feet
WeWork’s Grant Park
office inside the
106-year-old McCor-
mick Building lies along
Chicago’s Historic
Michigan Boulevard
District and offers sce- 2
nic views of Grant and
Millennium parks and
Lake Michigan.
Perfect for the
WeWorker who loves
high culture. Along
this short stretch of
South Michigan Ave-
nue, members will find
the Art Institute of
Chicago Museum, the
5
Chicago Symphony,
the Museum of Con-
temporary Photogra-
phy, and the Chicago
College of Performing 3
Arts.
5. 125 S. Clark Street
112,000 square feet 6
This new WeWork
office, which formerly
served as the head-
quarters for Chicago
Public Schools, is in a
building designed by 4
Daniel Burnham,
the master architect
behind the 1893
World’s Fair and some
of the city’s most
iconic structures.
Perfect for the
WeWorker who loves
architecture. Just
April 2016 FastCompany.com 97
he saw business ideas. (His first venture, which
failed, was making ladies’ shoes with collaps-
ible heels, inspired by watching his sister walk
to modeling auditions in flats and then change
into heels.) The friend-making game was no
exception. It inspired him to enter an idea for
community-structured real estate, which he
called “concept living,” into a business plan
competition at Baruch College. His was one
of the few proposals that did not advance to
the second round. “I didn’t even get a chance
to present it verbally,” Neumann remembers
complaining to the dean. “And [the dean] said,
‘There’s no 23-year-old, or any inexperienced
real estate person, who will ever be able to
raise enough money to do anything like ‘con-
cept living.’ ”
Still, the real estate bug stayed with him.
After launching yet another curious startup
for a single guy in his late twenties (baby
clothes), Neumann fell in love with a former
warehouse in his Brooklyn neighborhood, the
loft-friendly, rapidly gentrifying Dumbo. He
found the landlord, Joshua Guttman, and said,
“Give me the building,” Neumann recalls. “And
he would be like, ‘You’re in baby clothes. What
do you know about real estate?’ ” Neumann
shot right back: “Your building is empty. What
do you know about real estate?” Eventually,
Guttman, Neumann, and McKelvey cofounded
GreenDesk, an environmentally themed co-
working space.
Their timing couldn’t have been worse, or
so it seemed: It was the spring of 2008, and
the economy was starting to buckle. Guttman
lamented, as Neumann puts it, that “a real
estate downturn makes everything not work.”
The seeds of WeWork sprouted in Neumann’s
reply: “This is not real estate,” he said, “and it’s
actually gonna work better. People are gonna
wanna be next to other people; some people
are gonna get laid off; they’re gonna start new
businesses; some companies are gonna wanna
Even Neumann can’t isolate what,
precisely, it is about WeWork that is
so amazing. “It can’t exactly be
touched,” he says. “It’s a feeling.”
98 FastCompany.com April 2016
downsize.” He was right. GreenDesk filled up,
and Neumann now had grander aspirations.
Neumann’s trajectory from serial schlep-
per to startup success happened after he met
his future wife, Rebekah Paltrow. He admits
that he was a bit of a mess as a 28-year-old,
a struggling entrepreneur selling baby jeans
with protective kneepads. “He was really, really
thin, and he was shaking ’cause I think he was
smoking too many cigarettes,” Rebekah says,
sitting in Adam’s chair in his office at WeWork’s
Chelsea headquarters. Adam, hair dripping wet
from a shower after working the heavy bag near
his desk, sits next to her and sips green juice
from a straw. “And he walked in, and I saw that
he was my soul mate. It’s the truth.”
She did have some concerns. “You know
you’re a big talker,” she told him, “but you can’t
even afford lunch.” Like many couples, the
Neumanns have their early courtship down to
a routine, and Adam picks up the story on cue.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m an entrepreneur, and money
is tight right now; it’s all in inventory.’ She said
to me, ‘Well, maybe you’re in the wrong busi-
ness, because if you were doing the right thing,
you would be able to afford dinner.’ ” Suddenly,
the lights click off (they’re on an automatic
timer to save electricity), and the Neumanns
pause as we wave our arms to signal we’re still
in the room.
Adam continues where he left off. “[She
said,] ‘I’m not so sure that you should be walk-
ing around, dragging these two suitcases full
of baby clothes—’ ”
Rebekah jumps in, “—that were falling out
onto the sidewalk and also that didn’t actually
fit babies. The limbs were like . . . ” She turns in
her chair, her slender frame now facing Adam,
forcing him to acknowledge sheepishly, “We
had sizing issues.”
Rebekah had done a lot before meeting
Adam. She had traded stocks at Salomon Smith
Barney. A student of Buddhism, she had stayed
with the monks in Dharamsala and been to the
Dalai Lama’s birthday party. She was fluent in
three languages. She’d studied Jivamukti Yoga
and toured with the hip-hop fusion combo Mi-
chael Franti & Spearhead.
As she helped Adam quit smoking and
soda—the two ritually dumped the artifacts
of his bad habits down the garbage chute of
Rebekah’s East Village apartment—she also
introduced him to kabbalah and tempered
his obsession with lucre. “Rebekah said,
‘Stop. No more talking about money,’ ” Adam
remembers. “We’re going to talk about well-
ness, happiness, fulfillment, and if the money
is supposed to follow, it will. And if it doesn’t, it
doesn’t matter, because we will be happy and
fulfilled.” This would become the foundation
of WeWork’s mission.
Neumann came to WeWork with a sharp
business mind, a Navy-influenced leader-
ship style, and ceaseless hustle. But Rebekah
(and McKelvey) helped teach him about what
WeWork executives often refer to as the “soul”
side of the business. “My soul was attracted to
‘we,’ ” Adam says, “but it required some effort.”
Rebekah pitched in at GreenDesk, where she
helped McKelvey run tours and assist mem-
bers, while Adam got out of the baby clothes
business. At WeWork, she is a founding partner
and chief brand officer. “We don’t have a line
at all between work and life,” she says. “It’s not
even a blurred line. There is no line.”
Neumann now had a purpose (and a muse)
to go with his entrepreneurial drive, and for the
first time in his career, he started to see results.
In 2010, Neumann and McKelvey sold their
stake in GreenDesk and launched WeWork,
which they envisioned as a global network of
work spaces based on a brand that extended
further than “green.” The only problem? They
had no building. And only $300,000 to their
names. Worse, most landlords at the time
feared coworking, with its constant foot traf-
fic and unknown tenants, the same way many
also fear Airbnb. “We didn’t have credibility or
credit,” McKelvey says. “We had no business
taking out a 40,000-square-foot lease.” Neu-
mann adds, “[The landlord] needed more, and
I didn’t have more. All I had was my words.”
Neumann convinced the landlord to rent We-
Work one floor on a trial basis.
Even more than words, Neumann, who
is dyslexic, possesses chutzpah. He quickly
learned the real estate business—Rebekah tells
me his expertise “is like something from an-
other life”—and he wasn’t intimidated by the
powerful people with whom he wanted to do
 Accelerating
time to value
business. When he met Chicago Mayor Rahm
Emanuel, someone most people know not to
antagonize, Neumann inadvertently, and then
intentionally, insulted the mayor’s cowork-
ing project, and the two ended up cursing
each other in Hebrew. Quickly, though, they
partnered on a bike-parking station in one of
WeWork’s Chicago locations. As one former
employee tells me when I ask about Neumann,
“I hate him, but I still can’t help but love him.”
Neumann used the initial New York
WeWork as a showpiece to entice other land-
lords and investors. “We toured their Grand
Street location and absolutely loved the look
and vibe,” says David Zar, who granted WeWork
its second lease. To woo Benchmark Capital as
an investor, Neumann insisted Bruce Dunlevie,
one of the general partners, come to New York
to see WeWork for himself. “We all said, ‘Nah,
that doesn’t sound very interesting,’ ” Dunlevie
recalls, “because it’s just a real estate business,
and we don’t know anything about real estate.”
After he visited, though, Dunlevie changed his
assessment: “The unit economics at WeWork
were already interesting, and there were rea-
sons to think that they could get better.”
By 2014, WeWork had 200 employees,
1.5 million square feet of space, and 10,000
members. Its business model—with gross
margins of approximately 60%—made even
the most hardened, stodgy real estate devel-
opers doubly bubbly. At a party in May of that
year, celebrating the expansion of WeWork’s
headquarters, Stephen M. Ross, the septua-
genarian chairman and founder of developer
Related Companies, toasted Neumann under
a net full of white and black balloons. “Adam
always says, ‘No schmucks and no assholes,’ ”
Ross began. “But the definition of a schmuck is
someone who rents a property at .5x and then
that guy turns around and rents it at 1.5x.”
Neumann, laughing, corrected Ross by
holding up two fingers, to make clear that he
was charging two times the going rate, even
more than Ross thought.
“Then, the definition of an asshole,” Ross
continued. “Now, Adam is a nice guy, but every Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the number 1 company
time I see him, he always says, ‘You asshole.
You could have invested at [a] $200 million
in cloud infrastructure, is accelerating business outcomes
[valuation]. Now it’s $400 million.’ ” At the for companies around the world.
end of his speech, instead of lifting a glass,
Ross took his turn ringing a gong—more than
five feet in diameter—that Neumann had
imprinted with the WeWork logo. (Neumann
and company used to ring a smaller gong to
commemorate every deal but stopped when
“there were too many,” he says.) Two more of
New York City’s biggest landlords—Bill Rudin, hpe.com/value
whose family owns 15 million square feet of
© Copyright 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP.
Source: Synergy Research. Q3 2015 Data, Combined Cloud Infrastructure
Equipment, Software and Services revenue data.
New York City real estate, and Boston Proper-
ties CEO Owen D. Thomas—also took turns
with the gong. In one of the last industries in
which people still go to work in three-piece
suits, Neumann, an entrepreneur with no
money, who talked constantly of community
and dressed like a teenager, had inspired the
biggest players in real estate to buy into his
vision. “Ideas are a dime a dozen,” says Jared
Kushner of Kushner Properties, whose mas-
sive Dumbo office development includes a
WeWork. “But it’s really the jockey that makes
them work.”
Even Neumann can’t isolate what, precisely,
it is about WeWork that is so amazing. “It can’t
exactly be touched,” he says. “It’s a feeling.”
“It has to be the beer,” a coworker tells me,
believing that the secret to WeWork’s success
is the always-on-tap brew in its kitchens. But
the “hip,” “fun,” “millennial” things people
most often cite when they try to describe
WeWork are almost irrelevant, as I discover
while working from two New York locations
this winter. The room full of old arcade games
at the 222 Broadway location is empty all day,
and the controllers for a nearby Nintendo 64
sit in a neat line, wrapped tightly by their
cords in a way that suggests they’ve been
undisturbed for some time. At the end of the
day, I see only three people pull the famous
WeWork tap. Mostly people inside of WeWork
are just . . . working.
Beyond the showy perks, there are hun-
dreds of small design elements that help
create that feeling. If anyone can articulate
the secrets of this magic trick, it’s Neumann’s
chief creative officer McKelvey, an architect
and designer. When WeWork moved into its
current headquarters (its 10th in six years),
McKelvey was troubled by one particular open
area. Instead of hanging out in the common
space, members marched through it to their
offices. So he spent eight hours just watching
people interact in the space—and concluded
that there wasn’t enough furniture to invite
hanging out. The open space was too open.
Late one night, he moved in more tables and
chairs. “Literally, overnight change,” he says.
The couches were full. People were using the
standing table and sitting in the seats that
McKelvey had set up. “That was a really amaz-
ing validation,” he says.
“This might not seem like this makes a
big difference,” he says as he gestures toward
another detail, a large pane of glass that
separates the room we’re meeting in from the
hallway, “but it does. The wall system that we
use—it has a loose feeling. It’s not perfect. It’s a
100 FastCompany.com April 2016
difference of being dressed in a button-down square foot. The appeal for members: Their cost
shirt with your shirt tucked in or wearing a per office is cheaper (each member gets about
hoodie. That’s how you make vibe.” 50 square feet), plus access to common spaces.
People at WeWork feel comfortable taking Artie Minson, WeWork’s COO, keeps a run-
their shoes off. They sit on windowsills, and ning tally of new members on a large-screen
they don’t even ask if you mind before plop- monitor in his office. When we met in early
ping their MacBooks down next to yours at a February, the “this week” column was up to
café table. Startup teams sit in their tiny glass 838, which means that WeWork added some-
offices, whose transparency serves the dual thing like $7 million of revenue to its run rate
purpose of preventing claustrophobia and re- on office space alone. These numbers don’t
minding you that in this vast floor plan, even include any business services WeWork might
when huddled in your own personal hobbit sell those members—and it was only Thursday.
hole, you are never, ever alone.
Some members moan about long lines for WeWork raised $434 million in June 2015,
the elevator (apparently not understanding giving it that $10 billion valuation—and a tar-
that it’s an opportunity to play a friend-making get on its back. First, the union that represents
game), a loud work environment, and being cleaners in New York protested outside WeWork
crammed into a tiny office, even if its walls do locations, labeling Neumann and McKelvey
happen to be made out of glass. Others have greedy because most of their contracted non-
more specific complaints. “First, 98% of the union workers made just $10 an hour.
companies have moronic names,” explains Neumann tried to talk his way out—he ap-
a friend when I bring up her company’s We- proached the picketing cleaners, with a New
Work space. “Second, no, I can’t go have wings York Times reporter in tow, and talked to them
and beer on the fifth floor at 3:45. Third, it is a about his immigrant background and what
pain in the ass to print things. Fourth, I have they had in common—but he only ended up
to bring my ID sensor everywhere, even the making things worse. “The last thing I was go-
bathroom. It’s like the damn White House.” ing to do was work with the union,” Neumann
Even with these criticisms, the WeWork ef- tells me, “because I didn’t believe that it’s fair to
fect is more gym than coffee shop: It’s less about blackmail someone to do something.”
table space and Wi-Fi than about wanting to Then Neumann sat down with Héctor
be in an environment where other people are Figueroa, president of the 32BJ Service Em-
also working hard. “They bring great energy,” ployees International Union. “Rather than
Neumann says of WeWork members. “They talking about the issue itself,” Figueroa says,
turn the space on.” “he wanted to have a conversation about who
By packing people closer together, WeWork we are as people.” The two ultimately came
also makes much more money per square foot to an agreement where Neumann hired back
than it would with traditional offices. In Times some of the now unionized workers at $18.46
Square, for instance, one of the most expensive an hour with health benefits. At the end of
neighborhoods in the country, the company their negotiations, Figueroa gave Neumann
pays $58 per square foot; on average it’s able to a union jacket, only the second time in his 17
rent space to its members for around $160 per years as a union officer that he remembers
“You expect [Neumann] to be this
stubborn, strong-willed guy,” says
WeWork vice chair Michael Gross. “And
he’s the opposite. He will immediately
shift if he thinks he’s wrong and you
can prove it through logic.”
 Accelerating
protection
extending this gesture toward an employer.
“You expect [Neumann] to be this stubborn,
strong-willed guy, it’s my way or the highway,”
says Michael Gross, WeWork’s vice chairman.
“And he’s the opposite. He really takes it in. He
will immediately shift if he thinks he’s wrong
and you can prove it through logic.”
The union ordeal last summer coincided
with the struggles of a handful of highly valued
startups—Evernote, Dropbox, Instacart—to live
up to the promise their valuations ordained,
and the business media was quick to rope We-
Work into the trend. Perhaps WeWork’s biggest
sin was its aggressive projections: On track to
open 40 new work spaces in 2015, WeWork
planned to add a whopping 336 more by 2018,
according to an investor presentation that
leaked last August. Could the company really
sign up 260,000 new members, plus get 34,000
people to join WeLive, in just a few years?
(Critics also note that by banking its landlord
discounts up-front, the company makes its
current profitability look better.)
What WeWork is counting on is that a sort
of network effect kicks in as its membership
community grows. Minson, who joined We-
Work from Time Warner Cable, says he views
WeWork as “programming for real estate.”
That includes group discounts on back-office
services like health care, payroll, and shipping,
which WeWork has been steadily rolling out.
But it also means the connections that form
between fellow members—55% of whom end
up doing business with one another, the com-
pany claimed last year. As Neumann puts it,
when someone posts on WeWork’s member
app that she needs an iPhone charger, “15
people offer one immediately.” Part recruiting
network, part sales tool, part referral system,
WeWork sees itself as becoming the LinkedIn
you actually love.
The programming concept surfaces again
when I visit the first WeLive apartment build-
ing, in New York’s Financial District, in early
February. Still a “beta test,” occupying only three
floors of a planned 20-floor operation, the space
feels like Dorm Living 2.0. While hardly the Hewlett Packard Enterprise security products and solutions
$11 million townhouse that the Neumanns own,
it’s plenty cool for a twentysomething who’s
help protect 8 of the top 10 Fortune Global 500 companies.
moved to a major city after graduation—an af-
fordable version of the apartments you saw on
Friends, so long as you accept a small bedroom.
WeLive, like WeWork, doesn’t tie you down with
annual leases, and your expenses for furniture
and inspirational tchotchkes fall to zero. Com-
munity managers arrange taco parties in the
common space. The mail room doubles as a
bar, and the laundry room houses an arcade to
hpe.com/protection
facilitate making friends. A giant sticker covers
© Copyright 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP.
Source: Fortune Global 2015; HPE Customers 2013 Q3 - 2015 Q2.

WeWork
the entire ground floor exterior window remind-
ing everyone who enters the building that life is
“better together.”
Neumann, both of whose parents were doc-
tors, says he moved 13 times before he was 22,
making him a perpetual outsider. He was a con-
spicuous foreigner in his fourth- and fifth-grade
classes, when his family relocated from Israel to
Indianapolis. When they moved back a few years
later, they lived on a kibbutz, one of Israel’s experi-
ments in communal living. Neumann was the
only kid who hadn’t grown up there. “Penetrat-
ing that community was one of the most difficult
things,” he says, “but once I did, it was, as a child,
my best experience.”
In part because of their upbringings, Neumann
and McKelvey—who grew up in a commune of
mothers in Eugene, Oregon—are fluent in the
rhetoric of movements. Neumann has expanded
his We Generation philosophy to include what he
calls “Me plus We,” which encapsulates his height-
ened ambitions. “On one hand, you want to be
your own person, have your own goals,” he ex-
plains on stage at the WeWork Summit. “And on
the other hand, you understand that being part of
something greater than yourself is an amazing
opportunity and actually makes you stronger.”
WeWork’s inspirational mottoes—“Do what
you love,” “Thank God it’s Monday,” among
many others—its evangelical faithful, and gath-
erings like the summit all have religious echoes.
I can’t help but think about the utopias that have
popped up in America for more than 200 years.
“Start imagining it a bit bigger,” Neumann says
about WeLive, stoking his idyllic view, “an entire
building. And then instead of having just one
building doing it, five buildings doing it. Then
you’ll be able to imagine what a WeNeighbor-
hood or a WeStreet would be.”
In the history of America’s utopias, of course,
every single one has failed. A few days after the
summit, Neumann and I are in his SUV swerv-
ing through New York traffic on his way to pick
up his daughter at school when I bring this up. “I
think you’re making a very good point,” he says. “I
will help you with it a little bit. The reason most
people did not succeed in this idea [of commu-
nity living] before is that nobody was ever able
to write the check.”
What Neumann means is that without We-
Work’s business, its mission of helping people
find purpose in their life isn’t feasible. And
without WeWork’s energy, its soul, its vibe—in
other words, its brand—there’s no way to attract
customers to the business.
“A capitalistic kibbutz is not a bad idea,” he
says. “You need both.” He doesn’t lift his eyes
from the road.
skessler@fastcompany.com
102 FastCompany.com April 2016
Lyft
(Continued from page 91)
and forth in Chinese and English,” remembers
Zimmer, “but when he got really excited, it was
all in Chinese.”
In April, Zimmer made a last-minute trip
to visit Didi Kuaidi CEO Cheng Wei in Beijing.
(“My wife, Christina, and I had been on a trip
to Japan,” he tells me, “and she’d been acting
different, although I didn’t know why. So when
I decided to add on a trip to China, she went
home to San Francisco—and found out she was
pregnant.”) “They had built a great business
focusing just on China,” says Zimmer of Didi.
“This alliance is the right thing for our users,
who will get the very best coverage, and for our
investors, who don’t have to watch us spend
billions of dollars on businesses that might go
to zero.” The alliance, he adds, “allows us all to
focus our investment and capital on the market
where we can make the most profit, where we
have local expertise.”
While the nature of the partnership puts a
ceiling on the revenue Lyft could make in these
international markets, it allows Lyft to sidestep
the headaches of being an American company
trying to crack China, India, and Southeast Asia.
Anthony Tan, Grab’s Singapore-based CEO, ticks
off just a few of the local quirks he contends with:
language and dialect barriers; cash as the domi-
nant form of payment; the critical importance of
bike sharing along with car sharing; and govern-
ment regulations that would make any American
disrupter quake.
The global partners promise that by the end
of this year customers will be able to use their
native app to hail a ride in each of the four mar-
kets. As with the Starbucks deal, this is merely
a first step. Zimmer and Green say they are in
constant touch with their foreign counterparts
(via WeChat), and friendships have started to
develop. All the key players—Green, Zimmer, Tan,
and Didi Kuaidi president Jean Liu—are in their
thirties and share the camaraderie of peers. Or as
Zimmer says, “We give each other a lot of shit,”
as he tells me how he routinely makes fun of Tan
for wearing tight shirts and never taking off his
Beats earbuds, even when he’s making a speech.
“I’m like, ‘Why?’ But that’s our style at Lyft. The
first value here is be yourself.”
THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD
On November 17, 2015, Zimmer walked on stage at
the L.A. Auto Show to give a speech that he called,
subtly, “Ending Car Ownership As We Know It.”
After spending 13 minutes telling the world’s
automakers why their business was about to dis-
appear, he went off with Ammann, the president
of General Motors, to seal the most significant
partnership to date between an automaker and a
ride-sharing service.
The two had met a few weeks earlier at
Lyft’s offices, when Ammann was in town for a
Hewlett-Packard board meeting. Zimmer had
had low expectations; the two companies had
then been in discussions about how Lyft drivers
could get better financing on GM vehicles. (Uber
made such a deal with GM in 2013.) “We’ve had
conversations with other car companies and
they’ll talk about mobility [the academic term
for alternatives to car ownership] and press
announcements, but with Dan it was actually
meaningful,” Zimmer says. “I was surprised that
GM was so aligned with our vision.” Zimmer told
Ammann that if GM really wanted to work with
Lyft, it should invest in the company.
The get-together after Zimmer’s auto-show
speech lasted more than three hours. Ammann
agreed to lead Lyft’s next funding round, and GM
eventually put in $500 million. Again, the specif-
ics came together quickly, in just a few weeks,
with Zimmer weighing in via video-conference
rather than traveling to Detroit, because his wife
was about to give birth. (Zimmer’s wife, Chris-
tina, delivered their baby daughter, Penélope, on
December 20. As it happens, Green and his wife,
Eva, also had their first children last year, twins
named Jack and Luke.)
“Our customers are
demonstrating that
while they still want
the convenience
of a car, they don’t
want the hassle of
ownership,” says GM
president Ammann.
GM, the 108-year-old manufacturer that
was, for many years, the biggest corporation
on the planet, acknowledges that its basic way
of generating revenue is about to undergo a
monumental shift. “Our customers are demon-
strating to us through their actions that while
they still want the convenience of a car, they
don’t want the hassle of ownership, particularly
in urban environments,” explains Ammann, a
43-year-old New Zealander with a background
in investment banking. “We believe ride sharing
and car sharing will grow significantly, and the
first deployment of autonomous cars will be into
ride-sharing programs, not to individual custom-
ers.” That’s an astonishing quote, because in 2015
Detroit’s Big Three sold more cars than ever
before. If Ammann is right, history may view
2015 as it does 1920, when, as Barclays analyst
Brian Johnson has pointed out, horse ownership
peaked in the United States. The Lyft deal is a
savvy hedge against the glue factory.
 The alliance was announced in San Francisco Accelerating
analysis
on January 4. At first, the two companies will col-
laborate mostly on building a set of rental hubs
where drivers interested in working with Lyft will
be able to rent GM cars on the cheap. Ammann
promises that the first of these will open by the
end of March.
The headlines about the deal have focused on
the other aspect of the partnership: the two com-
panies establishing a network of autonomous
cars. The Chevy Bolt, GM’s 2017 200-mile-range
electric car, may fit well with that plan; perhaps
it will sell primarily into ride-sharing fleets rather
than to individuals. An adapted Bolt would work
especially well for intracity transportation, those
15-minute, 3.5-mile rides that represent the bulk
of Lyft’s and Uber’s jaunts. Zimmer and Green
believe that autonomous cars will start serving
this role in just three or four years, spurred in
part by urban millennials, who are not buying
cars at the same rate they used to. (According
to the University of Michigan’s Transportation
Research Institute, just 69% of 19-year-olds even
have driver’s licenses, down from 87% in 1993.)
Whether autonomous cars, the next wave of
transformation to hit the personal transportation
business, will arrive right on the heels of ride
sharing, or years later than Zimmer and Green
predict, is a matter of much debate. “This isn’t
just about some app,” one Lyft employee told me
over lunch. Safety is an issue, along with many
others: whether riders will pay by the mile, the
hour, or some combination of the two; whether
riders will subscribe to a car service, the way we
subscribe to Verizon or AT&T for cell service; or
how many people will continue to want to own
their own vehicle. There’s also the vexing prob-
lem of what happens to the drivers, who Lyft
says are the key to the community it is building
around its brand. Zimmer insists that Lyft will
still be guided by its priority of “treating people
well,” but in this case the inexorable efficiency
of technology may make that promise very dif-
ficult to keep.
10 of the Forbes 10 World’s Most Valuable Brands
Zimmer and Green have patched together a gain insights and create value with
strategy that fits their personality and ideals, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise big data solutions.
also sets Lyft up as a clear alternative. But the fu-
ture will be as challenging as the past three years,
“which have felt like 10,” says Zimmer. Green
adds, “It’s good that we have such a foundation
of working together. We’ve got that shorthand of
communication, and the trust.”
That word—trust—came up repeatedly in ex-
ploring Lyft’s partnerships, and it’s the answer to
the skepticism I heard about Lyft. As one VC asked
me, “Are these real deals, or just press releases?”
Zimmer and Green have explicitly sought out
like-minded souls, the same way they found
each other. “Logan’s been the best thing: having
a business partner that you trust completely with
everything,” Zimmer says in response to Green’s
compliment. That’s what they believe they now
have with Didi Kuaidi, GM, Grab, Ola, and Star-
bucks. That’s what they’ll need to survive. hpe.com/analysis
tetzeli@fastcompany.com
© Copyright 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. Source:
Forbes Most Valuable Brands 2015; HPE Customers 2013 Q3 - 2015 Q2.

David Chang
(Continued from page 76)
its parent company, after instant-ramen creator
Momofuku Ando. (It is also Spanish for “I walk”—
fitting for a delivery service. Momofuku itself is
Japanese for “lucky peach,” hence the name of the
magazine and also Má Pêche.) The business is a
joint venture with Expa, a San Francisco–based
startup lab built by Uber cofounder Garrett Camp.
Expa is designing the app and overseeing logis-
tics, while UberRush will tackle the actual food
drop-offs. “We have a pretty big vision for it,” said
Expa partner Hooman Radfar, Chang’s cofounder
on the project. “But our focus is very much deliv-
ery to delivery, meal to meal, neighborhood to
neighborhood, until we get it right. We want to
make this feel great—like Momofuku at home.”
Tosi is also heavily involved; she’s creating a line
of baked goods, Milk Bar Life, that will be ini-
tially sold exclusively through Ando. Products
will include cookie varieties such as salt and
pepper, Ritz Cracker, and what she describes as
“darn good, slap-your-mama chocolate chip.”
To Chang, Ando will be no different from any
other Momofuku restaurant—just with a slick
app serving as the front-of-the-house rather than
a packed dining room. As with every launch,
he had been obsessively focused on perfecting
the food: level of saltiness, degree of spiciness,
portion size, and so on. When Chang arrived at
the tasting, Basil had already laid out dishes in
recycled-cardboard boxes on a prep table. The
packaging was temporary; Chang was hoping to
serve it all in traditional Chinese-food containers
stamped with Momofuku’s peach logo.
Each item had an identifying white card
in front: TOFU GREEN BOWL, GRILLED CHICKEN
BOX, CHEESESTEAK. The descriptions were bor-
ing. The food was anything but. The gigantic
“cheesesteak,” a gut-stuffing combination of
chicken, house-made American cheese sauce,
and B&G pickled peppers, was Chang’s favorite.
“It’s maybe the most dangerous thing I’ve eaten
all year,” he said. “Last time I was complaining,
‘I’m so tired. It’s so heavy.’ J.J.’s like, ‘You dumbass:
You ate two of them.’ ”
Ando’s rollout will be complicated by the fact
that Chang remains an investor in Maple,
New York’s year-old meal-delivery service,
which currently drops off $12 lunches and
$15 dinners below 42nd Street, and is expand-
ing fast. Its black-helmeted bike deliverers are
now a lunchtime lobby staple, handing off
stacks of brown-and-yellow bags to quality-
starved office workers. No cash is exchanged;
tax and tip are included, à la Uber (Maple’s
couriers are paid $14 an hour plus a bonus per
delivery and are also offered health insurance
and other benefits).
One afternoon during the lunch rush, Maple
CEO Caleb Merkl, who founded the company
with Akshay Navle, gave me a tour of one of his
104 FastCompany.com April 2016
distribution centers, a gleaming, multiroom
space in Lower Manhattan with high-tech cook-
ing equipment and a clever food-making system
that Merkl asked me not to describe. Basic prep
work happens in a commissary in Brooklyn;
final assembly is done at spaces such as this
one, which are positioned around the city. The
company’s proprietary software keeps detailed
track of every order from the moment a customer
chooses a meal via Maple’s one-touch app. A
unique algorithm groups orders and determines
delivery routes, streamlining the process.
Maple’s food is less distinctive than Ando’s
will be, an ever-changing limited menu of sal-
ads, sandwiches, and entrées that’s overseen
by Le Bernardin veteran Soa Davies. With its
high-quality ingredients and careful prepara-
tions, it’s undoubtedly an improvement over
typical midday office fare (“sad salad lunches,”
as Merkl refers to them). And the whole interac-
tion—from the intuitive app to the carefully de-
signed packaging—feels thoughtful and elegant.
“We are going to serve meals to a huge number
of people,” Merkl said, “and they all need to have
good experiences.”
Chang and Merkl insist that there’s plenty
of room for both Maple and Ando—that nobody
orders lunch from the same place every single
day. They still talk on the phone several times a
week, sharing advice and ideas. “It’s a giant pie,”
Chang said. “I mean, Momofuku’s Noodle Bar and
Ssäm Bar are [close to each other]. I don’t view
them as competitors.”
After downing his cheesesteak and trying
the rest of Basil’s offerings, Chang moved onto
several varieties of fried chicken. He’s hoping to
offer a KFC–style chicken bucket as a secret Ando
menu item, which in-the-know customers would
be able to unlock in the app. “I’m so unhappy
right now,” he said, looking not at all unhappy
as he chased a bite of chicken with a swig of Diet
Coke. “It’s too much. It’s just fucking good.”
At Nishi one cold Saturday evening, a few
weeks after it opened, the wait for a table
stretched several hours. A tablet-wielding host-
ess guarded the front door, sharing the bad news
with the fans lining up on Eighth Avenue. The res-
taurant (which, like Danny Meyer’s the Modern,
has banished tipping; see page 82) would start
taking reservations several weeks later, but that
night, the only way to taste New York’s hottest
new restaurant was through extreme patience.
Inside, excited culinary adventurers squinted
at menus while perched on high, backless chairs
at communal tables. As servers talked up the bold
dishes—the restaurant’s fermented-chickpea
take on pasta classic cacio e pepe and anchovy-
and-mint-laced sweet potato earned instant
food-world fame—chef Pinsky managed the
kitchen, his prodigious black beard and heavily
inked forearms visible through an open doorway.
Chang had been spending a great deal of
time at Nishi since it opened—greeting custom-
ers, sampling dishes, and (gently!) correcting
errant staff members. It’s one of his great skills,
this fine-tuning of a new spot, but it does raise a
question: What will Chang’s role be at Momofuku
as it expands? He is now confronting the pos-
sibility that despite all his efforts to create New
Dave—after embracing meditation and poring
through business-management books and be-
friending the kinds of guys who, as Meehan puts
it, throw around words like valuation—there’s
a chance that he isn’t the best person to take
Momofuku where he knows it needs to go, and
that maybe it’s time to bring in a more seasoned
executive to run the company. “If someone can
do this better than me, fantastic,” said Chang.
“Because I am ill-suited for this position. Really!
I don’t know how to do half the shit that we’re
doing. I know how to run a kitchen; I know how
to develop food. I know how to work with chefs.
But the whole other side, of being a company
head? There’s a lot I don’t know. I’m at a point
where maybe I’ve given it the best that I’ve got,
and I don’t know if I’m the guy who can take it
forward. It would be foolish to think that we’re
not at a crossroads.”
Though Chang and Salmon have been talking
to candidates, it’s of course quite possible that
they’ll decide to leave things the way they are.
Whatever happens, Chang will remain vital to
the company he started. With culinary director
Gelman in place to oversee the sit-down restau-
rants, he plans to focus much of his attention on
growing Ando and Fuku, and there will always
be young chefs to mentor, crazy ideas to pursue,
endless new ways to spread the Momofuku
brand. Maybe Chang will write a follow-up to
his and Meehan’s 2009 best-selling cookbook,
Momofuku. Perhaps he’ll do a new TV show; he
and Meehan have been working on ideas—in-
cluding a Chang-ified version of an instructional
“dump-and-stir” cooking program—that they’re
currently discussing with producers. Or maybe
he’ll just keep doing what he’s always done, re-
lentlessly pressing everyone around him to get
better, to push harder, to care as much—almost
as much—as he does.
After those long nights at Nishi, Chang often
sent emails to the restaurant’s high-level staff,
offering critiques both major and minor. A trout
dish was excellent, he’d tell them, but a pasta
needed more sauce. The lamb was “really good,”
except for an issue with the seasoning: He didn’t
think the Maldon salt was quite working, be-
cause it dissolves; the salt structure of sel gris, an
ingredient that he generally doesn’t like, would
hold up better on the meat. This kind of (literally)
granular thinking is a big part of what’s made
Momofuku so successful. But to take the com-
pany forward, Chang realizes that he won’t be
able to control every minuscule detail the way
he always has before. “The old me would be like,
‘We’re going to put sel gris on this,’ ” he told me.
“But I’m not going to force them. I’m only sug-
gesting it. It’s a good dish.”
rbrunner@fastcompany.com
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 My Two Cents

But the uneven numbers don’t disappear upon

graduation. They spill over into the postcollege
dating market.
According to the Census Bureau, in 2012 there
were 5.5 million college-educated women in the
U.S. between the ages of 22 and 29 versus 4.1 mil-
lion men. Combine those numbers with college
grads’ preference for marrying fellow grads, and
you’ve got the makings of a demographic time
bomb for marriage-minded women.
Sex ratios do vary, however, from state to state
and city to city, and this is why grads may want
to include such data in their first-job checklists.
Say a female grad’s choice is between working
for Google in Santa Clara County, California, or
Goldman Sachs in Manhattan. Manhattan has
39% more women than men among college grads
age 22 to 29. Just ask single women in Manhattan
how this plays out.
Santa Clara County—a good geographic proxy
for Silicon Valley—has 12% more such men than
women. It’s arguably the best marriage market in
the country for heterosexual women, with 78% of
educated women in their thirties now married.
Nationally, that figure is 69%, and in Manhattan,

Let’s talk about sex ratios

it’s 41%. Santa Clara County’s marriages are more
stable too: Only 4% of women are divorced or
separated compared with 9% nationally.
Executive coach Elise Lelon says she sees
The city you choose to work in could firsthand how New York City’s gender imbalance
have far more impact on your future than affects the lives of unmarried female execs. “I had
whatever company you’d be joining. one client,” she says, “late twenties, a VC, smart,
beautiful, making enviable money—absolutely
BY JON BIRGER miserable.” The woman relocated to San Fran-
Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez
cisco. “From the moment she got off the plane, she
was flocked by men. One year later, she’s engaged.”
Lelon knows—as I do—that advising women
to worry about marriage in their twenties may
sound anachronistic, or worse. But she makes
This is the time of year when college seniors get deluged with no apologies. “Men can wake up at age 50 and
grown-up advice—and, like Dustin Hoffman’s character in The have families,” she says. “But because of biology,
Graduate, start running for cover. I had the misfortune of hav- women need to think more holistically. Engineer
ing a father who actually worked in plastics, which turned every a whole life, not just a professional one.”
family friend into a backyard comedian. (“Hey, Jon, I’ve got one Do I expect Northern California tech compa-
word for you.”) nies to start touting demographics in order to
Well, I have my own “one word” advice for this year’s gradu- solve their gender-diversity issues? Probably not.
ates, and mine is way more interesting than plastics. It’s sex—or But Amy Andersen, the founder of Linx Dating, a
sex ratios, to be precise. Okay, that’s two words. But hear me out Silicon Valley matchmaking service with lots of
on why young people should consider sex ratios before accept- nice-guy clients looking for Mrs. Right, wishes
ing their first job—and also why Silicon Valley recruiters should they would. “Facebook and Apple offer egg freez-
turn these ratios to their advantage. ing,” she says. “Why wouldn’t they also market
Women outnumber men when it comes to higher educa- the benefit of a more fruitful personal life outside
tion. In 2016, 33% more women than men will graduate from of work? Because when it comes to marriage, the
four-year colleges, which is four women for every three men. In odds here really are stacked in women’s favor.”
1971, it was four men for every three women. Few people go to
Jon Birger is a freelance writer. His book, Date-onomics:
college just to find a spouse, of course (and it’s important to note How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game, includes
that not every student is heterosexual or interested in dating). sex-ratio data on all 50 states plus most U.S. cities.

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 YOU CAN’T BUILD THE BUSINESS OF TOMORROW
ON THE NETWORK OF YESTERDAY.
It’s no secret: business has changed—in every way, for every
business. Modern technologies have brought new opportunities
and new challenges, like BYOD and a mobile workforce, that
old networks just weren’t built for. While demand on these
networks has increased exponentially, networking costs have
skyrocketed and IT budgets haven’t kept pace.
Comcast Business Enterprise Solutions is a new kind of network,
built for a new kind of business. With $4.5 billion invested in our
national IP backbone and a suite of managed solutions, Comcast
Business is committed to designing, building, implementing
and managing a communications network customized to the
needs of today’s large, widely distributed enterprise.

INTRODUCING COMCAST BUSINESS ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS

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