Campign

This is an installment of Startup Year One, a special series of interviews with founders about the major lessons they have learned in the immediate aftermath of their businesses’ first year of operation.

While pregnant with her first son and working full-time at the United Nations as a strategist for partnerships, business development, and stakeholder management in 2019, Elle Wang had no luck finding professional maternity wear that was long-lasting, sustainable, and comfortable. She soon realized that many professional women were facing this same dilemma. So, at seven months pregnant, she decided to take things into her own hands and create her own maternity and postpartum clothing brand, catering to expecting and new moms at all stages.
 
Thus, Emilia George launched in 2019 with the goal to redefine the traditional concept of maternity wear by providing mothers-to-be with professional silhouettes in sustainable eco-fabrics—such as bamboo, cupro, and Tencel-Luxe—from niche … Read more

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Most of the time when we hear about cybersecurity crimes, we hear from the leading players, companies like Crowdstrike that nailed the Russians for stealing DNC emails in 2016. Or Microsoft warning that the Russians were trying to hack 2018 election campaigns. Or FireEye disclosing last month that it was itself penetrated by nation-state hackers (who turned out to be Russians).

But, as we are learning from that last incident, we can’t ensure cybersecurity just by relying on the big names.

FireEye had uncovered the tip of what is now considered the largest and most damaging hack in the history of cybersecurity, one that breached the computer networks of hundreds of major companies and government agencies including the U.S. Treasury, the State Department, … Read more

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Of course it did.

Just about every single late-stage company in private markets at the moment has been contacted by a blank-check company looking for a deal.

Kicking off the day, office-sharing startup WeWork has reportedly engaged in talks to combine with a special-purpose acquisition company, per the Wall Street Journal, in a deal that could take the business public and value it around $10 billion. The SPAC in question is Bow Capital Management, run by the owner of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings, Vivek Ranadivé.

If a deal were to be struck, it would be a surprisingly fast return to the public markets for WeWork, whose disastrous attempt at going public in 2019 left its valuation slashed to a fraction of … Read more

Good afternoon, readers.

Today marks the beginning of a health care blitz by the nascent Biden administration.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden began long-expected moves to undo several health care policies and administrative directives enacted by the Trump administration. While these steps are cloaked in the fog of the COVID pandemic, they also show a lens into Biden’s thinking on health policy at large and the direction he wants to take it.

On the COVID front, the administration is set to reopen the Affordable Care Act’s individual insurance marketplaces, which provide subsidized coverage for people who don’t have insurance through an employer or other public program like Medicare.

With millions of Americans losing their jobs over the course of the pandemic, this would give people another three months to enroll during a special enrollment period. Typically, you can only sign up for insurance during a set period of … Read more

In the race against the spread of more difficult to control coronavirus variants, the U.S. is making steady progress in its nationwide vaccine rollout. Through Tuesday, Jan. 26, 24.7 million people, or about 6{429fc2506e610357e12b2a5665db82631200a2e00b3a1d8839077d76f18e2e8b} of the U.S. population had received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; that number is up from 15.2 million Americans a week ago. Another 3.8 million people, or 1.1{429fc2506e610357e12b2a5665db82631200a2e00b3a1d8839077d76f18e2e8b} of the population, have now received both doses.

Progress with the vaccine drive is increasingly varied across the states, with the percent of population vaccinated ranging from 4.5{429fc2506e610357e12b2a5665db82631200a2e00b3a1d8839077d76f18e2e8b} in Idaho and Missouri to 11.4{429fc2506e610357e12b2a5665db82631200a2e00b3a1d8839077d76f18e2e8b} in Alaska, America’s largest and least dense state. West Virginia, which has outpaced others in administering shots for weeks, is the only other state to have vaccinated more than 9{429fc2506e610357e12b2a5665db82631200a2e00b3a1d8839077d76f18e2e8b} of its population.

2.9 million doses have been given at … Read more