Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i Fast Company

Apple isn’t, at its core, a chip company, yet its silicon engineering group shipped four microprocessors in 2016, each paired to a new product, including the iPhone 7 and AirPods. Apple’s commitment to designing the very foundations of its hardware, rather than merely buying them off the shelf, gives it a sustaining advantage in creating the most compelling consumer-electronics experiences. “We pick the projects where we feel like we can make a difference—the big customerimpacting features,” says Anand Shimpi, who works on hardware technologies at Apple. So the stunning depth-of-field effect from the iPhone 7 camera? That’s directly enabled by the new A10 chip. “The actual production of the stored portrait image is because of things that we put into the [image signal processor],” Shimpi says. As Apple has expanded…

“When you turn on your TV,” says Chris Jaffe, VP of user-interface innovation at Netflix, “you’re used to things being loud and happening.” That’s what led Netflix to roll out a major UI upgrade in December, replacing static poster images with custom-created preview videos that automatically play when you scroll over a title card. The redesign encourages Netflix’s more than 93 million subscribers to serendipitously discover what to watch rather than tediously browse its catalog and wonder if something is worth sampling. The upgrade, a companywide effort that took nearly three years, demonstrates Netflix’s commitment to stand out from competitors such as Amazon for more than just content (though Netflix is planning to produce 1,000 hours of original shows in 2017 and plow $6 billion into its library, numbers that…

The leading music service has been plowing even further ahead, adding algorithmically smart play lists like Fresh Finds and Release Radar to its uncannily good Discover Weekly. Its 100 million users—40 million of whom subscribe—can also now integrate Spotify into matchmaking apps Bumble and Tinder. Meanwhile, listening patterns produce data the company can use to identify artists’ superfans and woo musicians to embrace Spotify as a promotional tool. “Artists want to put the fan first,” says Troy Carter, the superstar manager who leads Spotify’s creator services. “We can give them what they want.”…

Tasty, BuzzFeed’s collection of aerial-view, time-lapse cooking videos, has been the fiercest test of the company’s thesis that the future of media is in creating winning content for social media platforms. The addictive, cheeseand avocado-laden shorts, part of the company’s first vertical that doesn’t bear the BuzzFeed brand, have drawn nearly 40 billion views in less than two years on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Tasty’s own site. The channel has also attracted advertiser love because of how smoothly brands can be integrated. More than 1 million people shared Tasty’s jalapeño popper burger recipe cooked on Oster’s 7-Minute Grill, boosting the appliance-maker’s sales. The vertical has even led BuzzFeed into commerce: Tasty: The Cookbook, a hard-copy collec- tion that can be customized according to recipe type (from breakfast food to…

Last summer, Casper—the New York–based mattress company that aims, as its founders say, to become the Nike of sleep—introduced a surprising new product. It was only Casper’s fourth major launch, after its high-tech foam mattress (which debuted in 2014) and extra-breathable sheets and pillow (2015), but it differed from those products in a major way. This one, it turned out, wasn’t meant for humans. The Casper Dog Mattress, which sells for $125, promises “to create a sleep environment that caters to canines’ natural behaviors.” An R&D team spent 11 months conducting dog sleep studies, consulting with canine psychologists and churning through more than 100 prototypes. “Which is a crazy idea,” admits Neil Parikh, one of Casper’s five cofounders and its COO. “It’s a dog bed!” The mattress (“Designed for top…

Resy uses technology to enhance the restaurant experience. Eaters book via a slick reservations app, and restaurateurs use Resy software to reduce no-shows and help staff deliver personalized service. Last year, that combo helped the startup reach 1 million registered users and colonize 1,000 restaurants across 50 cities, each paying up to $899 a month for a subscription. Unlike its reservations-centric rivals, “we’re thinking past the host stand,” says cofounder Ben Leventhal. 1 Easy communication Resy notifies users when tables open up at exclusive spots. Guests can text if they’re running late or bringing extra people. A new partnership with Airbnb will soon allow travelers to book dining with their rooms. 2 Streamlined customer service Managers can use Resy to track what Leventhal calls “microevents”— small interactions that create memorable…

With more than 500,000 subscribers paying an average of roughly $100 a year, meditation aid Headspace has built a real business out of the ethereal realm of mindfulness. The app-based service, which is consistently among the most downloaded health-and-fitness offerings in the Apple App Store, removes the intimidation factor for beginners with an easy-to-use interface, inviting animations, and how-tos about dealing with everything from panic attacks to relationship problems. “It’s our job to get people excited about meditation,” says cofounder Andy Puddicombe, whose relaxed British accent pilots users through Headspace courses. “It’s about putting meditation in places where people wouldn’t expect to find it.” Last year, the company created a surprising ad campaign targeting exercise aficionados; it even ran spots during NFL and NBA games (teams such as the L.A.…

At its best, Google marries awesome computing resources with algorithmic intelligence to create popular services that no one else can match: Search, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube have been massive hits because they centralize content and make it easy to find what you want. With an estimated 1 trillion–plus images now taken annually, storing and presenting photos has become Google’s next big project—and a powerful way to pull users even further into its orbit. “We thought we could apply machine intelligence in an impactful way around photos and videos to make it easier [for users] to enjoy what they create,” says VP of Google Photos Anil Subharwal. Launched in May 2015, Google Photos coalesces a user’s images across hard drives and devices, as well as closet shoeboxes, thanks to the PhotoScan…

In October, Steven Spielberg, the highest-grossing film director of all time, traveled to Beijing for a meeting with Jack Ma, China’s second-richest man and the cofounder of Alibaba, one of the most valuable internet companies in the world’s second-largest economy. Together, they inked a deal that gives Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment production company the financial backing of the e-commerce giant, along with its marketing savvy and substantial distribution power—the elusive keys, in other words, to making a truly global blockbuster. Ma, a film buff who reportedly loves The Godfather and calls Forrest Gump his hero, had circled Hollywood for some years, and even committed $1.5 billion to a film fund that helped bankroll and market Star Trek Beyond and Mission: ImpossibleÑRogue Nation, but this was his first direct alliance. At a…

In an era when email leaks influenced a presidential election and fears of government surveillance are on the rise, even laypeople are starting to take precautions. Open Whisper Systems has no marketing budget and has never placed an ad, but its constantly evolving Signal messaging app, which keeps transmissions secret from all but their recipients, has become so attractive to the general public that it’s got millions of users, and its underlying algorithm has been incorporated into apps used by more than 2 billion people. “We’re just the weirdos who are interested in doing this, so that’s what we’re doing,” says founder Moxie Marlinspike, an iconoclastic privacy advocate who runs Open Whisper as an open-source project funded by grants and donations, with just a handful of full-time staff and contributions…

“We’re taking what’s very complicated and simplifying it for the consumer,” says Vivint Smart Home cofounder and CEO Todd Pedersen. The Provo, Utah–based company solves the most common problems with intelligent appliances—namely that they’re often difficult to set up and don’t play nice with any other internet-connected devices—by approaching smart-home technology as a subscription-based service. A lot of companies develop a single product, Pedersen says, “but if you try to add additional services and products to your home, they’re completely uncoordinated.” Instead, Vivint’s 1.2 million customers sign up for packages that include the installation of hardware (both its own and that of other companies, such as Nest); 24/7 tech support; repair services; and the seamless coordination of everything—from doorbell cameras to thermostats —via the Vivint app. Last year, this strategy…

Last summer, torrential rains dumped 7 trillion gallons of water on Louisiana, sparking flash floods and setting homes adrift. As images of devastation looped across the nightly news, on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe there were flickers of hope—in the form of digital payments. Moses Wells, a commercial fisherman in Edgewater, Maryland, started a GoFundMe campaign to deliver emergency supplies. “I’m raising money and donations to make multiple trips in a large box truck,” he announced, and $2,381 poured in. In Boston, Louisiana State University fans raised $3,829 to help their bayou-based Tigers. In Texas, a Louisiana native organized an effort on behalf of his hometown: “Please help us as we are just Humans Helping Humans!” Donors responded with $12,403. By the end of the year, funding efforts for Louisiana flood…

Minecraft is one of those fiendishly clever games with an educational value so baked in that kids (and adults) don’t realize they might be learning something. Microsoft, which acquired the game in 2014 and sold an average of 53,000 licenses every day last year, is now unlocking Minecraft’s book smarts by adapting it to make classroom learning interactive and fun. Minecraft: Education Edition, which launched in November, helps educators apply the game’s world-building approach to topics ranging from art history to math. In the 10,000 classrooms that experimented with the beta, teachers had students assembling human bodies to understand biology; exploring medieval villages to enliven history; and creating roller coasters for a physics lesson. The educational version, which costs between $1 and $5 per student, includes a few tweaks for teachers,…

Independent farmers face a serious silo problem. It’s hard to know which seeds grow best (or even what to pay for them—same with fertilizer and chemicals) when you’re the only operation for miles. So the three-year-old Farmers Business Network empowers growers to harvest each other’s information. Big Ag may be consolidating, but FBN “is reinventing the farm economy” to fight back, says cofounder Charles Baron. The service aggregates and anonymizes data—everything from seed and soil types to elevation and weather patterns— to create a crowdsourced database that eliminates guesswork. “We democratize the information,” says Baron, “for farmers to share with each other and use for their own benefit.” For between $500 and $600 a year, members of the collective can access performance data for more than 25 crops across 2,500…

ASHOPPABLE PLAYHOUS Casper’s new showrooms are designed like two-dimensional houses, with furniture, windows, and other homey details painted on the walls. The only thing in 3-D? The mattresses. MOBILE NAPS The company decked out an RV with nap pods and visited more than 20 cities on a countrywide tour last year. People at events like Pride Festival in Portland, Oregon, and Chicago’s Ribfest were invited to pop in for a snooze, complete with a prerecorded bedtime story. SOCIAL OUT REACH Last fall Casper created a pop-culture-savvy text bot, Insomnobot3000, for users to message when they can’t sleep. And on its Snapchat channel, it posts weekly waffle reviews— because breakfast is important too. PILLOW TALK Casper is no longer simply sponsoring other people’s podcasts. For the company’s recent eight-episode series, In…

When Marriott completed its acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts in September, it became the world’s largest hospitality company, with more than 6,000 hotels across 120-plus countries. Just as important: It created the industry’s most formidable loyalty program. Overnight, Marriott began allowing the 87 million combined members of the Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest programs to transfer points and book rooms across 29 brands of the megacompany, including the luxury properties of St. Regis and Ritz-Carlton. This rapid integration is part of a broader effort by Marriott to prioritize customer relationships, which has included offering members a slew of new benefits such as free Wi-Fi, exclusive room rates, and the ability to use points to pay for ex- periences like private wine tastings, museum tours, and even Super Bowl…

Amy Lesnick is looking for the next Uber—to commit 1% of its equity, product, profit, or time to charity. As the CEO of the nonprofit Pledge 1%, Lesnick thinks like an angel investor, identifying promising startups. But rather than trying to buy a piece of the action, she encourages young brands to nurture a culture of giving and to maximize the potential for philanthropic contributions as they scale. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff pioneered what he calls an integrated philanthropic model in his company’s early days, giving away equity and goods, and enabling 1.5 million volunteer hours from employees. After evangelizing for others to follow his model, Benioff spun off the initiative three years ago as Pledge 1%. In 2016, the nonprofit added 700 pledges (more than double its 2015 tally,…

Like an Airbnb for cell-phone data, this Malaysia-based service has created a marketplace for people to buy and sell excess megabytes from their monthly plans. Simplify connects users through its encrypted Android app: Sellers set their own prices and buyers pay through PayPal, enabling them to piggyback on other people’s internet access. Simplify, which launched in August, has been adding 1,000 users a day across the globe, with a focus on international travelers. “These [mobile] networks were designed in the 1980s,” says CEO Yen Pei Tay. “To liberate the market, something has to change.”…

Picture your ideal neighborhood. What does it look like? Is it manicured, with buildings set in a pattern so that everything flows together, designed for perfection? Or is it gritty and spontaneous, the kind of place where a restaurant might move into the space that used to house a dry cleaner? Boxes bearing the Amazon logo can arrive at doorsteps in either of these environments, of course, but Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, prefers the second type. “I think neighborhoods, cities, and towns that have evolved are more interesting and delightful than ones that have been carefully top-down planned,” he tells me when I meet him at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters in November. “There’s just something very human” about them, he says. It’s a surprising answer from a man known…

While experts debated whether self-driving cars would be commercially available in 5 or 10 years, Uber raced ahead and put vehicles on the road. Last August, it launched a program in Pittsburgh that allowed people to summon a self-driving car from their phones. At the same time, Uber acquired autonomous-trucking startup Otto. Together, these moves put the company, valued at $68 billion, at the forefront of transportation’s next wave. “The biggest asset and advantage [of our self-driving efforts] is being part of the larger Uber network,” says Raffi Krikorian, engineering director at the company’s Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh. 1 A smart pilot Uber deliberately chose Pittsburgh for its first fleet because of the city’s erratic weather and winding roads. “If we can drive in Pittsburgh, we [know we] have…

Greek yogurt giant Chobani may sell a smooth product, but it isn’t afraid to play rough. Last year, it poked its rivals General Mills and Dannon with an ad campaign suggesting their yogurts contain unappetizing additives. And its Mezé Dips serve as a direct counter to PepsiCo’s Sabra hummus brand (the soda giant tried to buy a major stake in Chobani early last year). Chobani’s aggressiveness extends to its product development: The company has been expanding to win a greater share in the overall yogurt category, where it generates more than $1.5 billion in revenue annually. In 2016, it launched a new line of yogurt drinks, more variations on its Flip mix-in product, additional yogurt flavors, and a concept café inside a Target in Manhattan. The drizzle of honey on…

The company that lured travelers from hotels to homes is now getting them off tour buses and into the real world. “What’s wrong with much of travel is that it’s so mass-produced and transactional,” says Joe Zadeh, VP of product for Airbnb. In November, CEO Brian Chesky introduced Experiences, local adventures that extend Airbnb’s host-based hospitality into tours and multiday itineraries. The service creates a potentially lucrative revenue stream and marks the next hop in Airbnb’s journey to reimagine travel. 1 Specialized tours Experiences taps Airbnb’s community to offer the kinds of highly curated adventures that were once the exclusive domain of premium travel agents, such as a three-night sake tasting in Tokyo led by a sommelier ($177) and a dip into Paris’s African fashion culture ($60). 2 Armchair inspiration…

What do you get when you pair a latchkey terrier mutt with a hucksterish koala trying to put on a show? A doubleblockbuster year for Illumination Entertainment, the animation studio behind 2016’s The Secret Life of Pets (which grossed more than $875 million worldwide) and Sing ($360 million in its first three weeks), as well as the Despicable Me franchise. Its hits, each produced for about half the average film budget of rival Disney-Pixar, confirm Illumination’s status as an entertainment company for the digital age, where interstitial ads and smartphone games have to be as compelling as the movies themselves. “Nothing we do is ancillary,” says founder and CEO Chris Meledandri. “Every interaction the audience has with our characters is equally important to us.” Thanks to a dedicated creative unit…

The 33,000 corporate teams using the popular workplace messaging app have seen its capabilities explode: Last year, Slack introduced video calling and made the platform more interactive, allowing users to browse flights, approve budgets, and evaluate job candidates—all within the app. It also redoubled its efforts to become a more perceptive office assistant, debuting tools for developers to create AI-based chatbots and investing in startups building Slack-specific apps. “We want to get the annoying, friction-filled stuff out of [your] workday,” says VP of product April Underwood. Slack reached 1.25 million paying users last year, positioning the company to pull in $100 million in annual revenue.…

COMMUNITY ACTION When South Carolina teacher Katie Blomquist launched an effort to buy bikes for kids at her elementary school, GoFundMe pushed the story to local papers. Good Morning America and other national outlets picked it up. “Riding a bike symbolizes childhood joy,” says Blomquist, who ultimately raised $78,000. ANIMAL RESCUE Pets tend to do well,” says GoFundMe’s Dan Pfeiffer. “It’s the internet, and people love cats.” Thousands of users have created pages to pay for veterinary bills, but an effort to save a Calgary, Alberta, animal-rescue organization dwarfed them all, generating more than $100,000 in donations. CRISIS RESPONSE After 49 people died and 53 were injured in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub shooting last June, advocacy group Equality Florida responded by saying, “We must honor them with action.” Its GoFundMe campaign…

Four years after Adobe announced that it was converting its buy-once, use-forever products to web-based services, the controversial decision has proven to be both a financial and creative success. “All technology has a shelf life,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Using cloud-based intelligence to its advantage, Adobe’s Premiere Pro can now recommend movie edits, and Photoshop can reconstruct missing parts of images— product improvements that are delivered straight to users via cloud-based updates. In turn, Adobe’s 2016 revenue leapt 22%, to $5.85 billion. Beating desktop-software sales with cloud subscriptions? That’s “among [our] biggest milestones,” says Narayen.…

“I really believe we can change culture,” says Thinx cofounder and CEO Miki Agrawal. That may seem like a lot to ask of a line of stylish underwear designed to prevent menstrual leaks, but Agrawal brings the wit and provocation of a performance artist to marketing products that have historically been associated with shame—and she’s catalyzed a movement along the way. Agrawal first grabbed everyone’s attention with a New York subway ad campaign featuring a series of refined, innuendo-filled images of peeled grapefruit and runny eggs. Last September, in lieu of a traditional New York Fashion Week runway show, she staged an event where models in Thinx (including a trans man in the company’s boy shorts) delivered monologues about oppression. As Thinx expands, Agrawal brings the same approach—a mixture of…

The $100 billion medical device maker Medtronic announced in September that it had received FDA approval for a new diabetes management system called the Mini Med 670G. Developed initially for patients with type 1 diabetes, a condition typically diagnosed in children and young adults, the MiniMed consists of a wirelessly connected pump and glucose monitor that continuously track a user’s blood sugar levels and deliver insulin, reducing the need for finger pricks (users still have to recalibrate the device with a traditional finger-stick reading every 12 hours). “We try to do the menial work on the behalf of patients,” says Michael Hill, Medtronic’s VP of R&D. The company took the unusual step of working closely with the FDA to design clinical trials—an effort that resulted in a rapid, 104-day approval…

In 2016, the Home Depot delivered an estimated $90 billion in annual revenue—and it did it without opening a new U.S. big-box store in the past three years. “Our economic engine used to be driven by new square footage,” admits CFO Carol Tomé. Her orangeaproned crew shifted away from that model by integrating digital and in-store shopping, paying particular attention to products that tend to be unfriendly for e-commerce. Customers who crave in-person advice can now order via the website but pick up at a retail location, or select items in-store and buy online from smartphone-wielding sales associates. “We had to invest in the experience that our customers wanted,” Tomé says.…

Celmatix CEO Piraye Yurttas Beim says the “wake-up call” to develop her company’s fertility-prediction software, Polaris, came after she was diagnosed with diminished ovarian reserve at the age of 32. She learned that the nearly 7 million U.S. women struggling to conceive— and the doctors counseling them—were still relying on only the most basic information, such as age, to inform decisions on how to start a family. In an era of big data, she thought, these women should be relying on each other. Polaris, which broke out of trials in mid-2015, is now being used in more than a dozen of the nation’s largest fertility clinics, which serve some 7% of U.S. fertility patients. It allows specialists to compare a woman’s profile to hundreds of thousands of others and calculate…

If it looks, cooks, and tastes like a burger, then why shouldn’t a plant-based beef alternative be sold alongside real meat? Especially if it “bleeds” (beet juice). That’s the argument that Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown successfully made to Whole Foods after releasing his company’s ready-to-cook Beyond Burger last spring, a radical leap forward for mainstreaming more sustainable alternatives to animal farming. “The consumer needs to be able to make the decision about plant versus animal [protein] in the meat case itself,” Brown says. The Beyond Burger, now sold at Whole Foods nationwide, is the company’s fourth new meat alternative in as many years. That’s a remarkable pace given the R&D such products require. Brown’s mandate to his chef and science teams: Be first to market and then refine the…

PRISMA For making masterpieces out of snapsots The most exciting development in photo sharing in years, Prisma uses artificial intelligence to turn smartphone images into Picasso-style works of art. Unlike other photo-editing apps, the company doesn’t rely on traditional filters; Prisma’s final product is an all-new composition crafted by the Russian startup’s neural networks in the manner of famous artists. Until late last year, Prisma was mostly a tool for creating stylized photos to share on social networks. In a bid to persuade users to spend more time in the app, Prisma announced the Feed, its own locationbased social feature that allows users to view and interact with each other’s works. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AFRICA 1. Andela For nurturing firstclass coders 2. MFS Africa For facilitating cross-currency payments 3. Gro Intelligence…