Its been a tumultuous year for the legacy retailer, shaped by new tariffs, shifting consumer habits, and the constant flip between wartime and peacetime leadership. Macys Inc. Chairman and CEO Tony Spring shares why his team is now on version twenty-seven of the plan, and what it really means to court the next generation of shoppers.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Responsefeatures candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
The Thanksgiving Day Parade, the sprint to Christmas, it’s like your Super Bowl. What’s waw distinctive about 2025? I mean, the economic and shopping environment has been pretty chaotic.
I think the news certainly makes things more complicated. I think people are confused. We had a terrific second quarter. We talked about the back-to-school business being pretty healthy, and yet we all see potential storm clouds on the horizon. So we’re trying to be cautiously optimistic You could stay up all night worrying But in reality, our job is to make sure we create a better shopping experience for the customer. There’s plenty of things that are out of our control that we could obsess about, but it really doesn’t satisfy anything or make you feel any better.
And for the parade, how do you keep it fresh?
Making sure every year the parade has, again, newness: We have partnerships with Disney, Pokemon, Pop Mart, Labubus We want to make sure that whatever is popular and whatever’s interesting weaves its way, not only into our merchandise strategy, but also into an iconic event like the Thanksgiving Day Parade. 32 million people approximately are going to watch it on TV, and we have several million more that come live in person in New York City on that day.
Macy’s has an iconic place in American culture, although obviously it hasn’t been immune to the challenges in retail. You launched what you call a bold new chapter after becoming CEO in 2024. It’s showing traction in your financial results, but you’re still sort of in the midst of it. What’s working, what’s not?
Well, let me break it into the three parts: The first was strengthening and reimagining Macy’s, and that included closing underproductive stores and betting on our future state stores, so putting more colleagues into the stores, putting new merchandise into the stores.
We also improved our digital platform and doubled down on our luxury businesses, which include Bloomingdale’s and Blue Mercury.
And then the final part of the strategy is end-to-end operations, and that’s making sure we’re utilizing automation and robotics and AI, and making sure the complexity that might exist in our business doesn’t affect the consumer.
Your stores face pressure from everywhere, fast fashion and e-commerce and social shopping and live shopping. How do you think about in-person, human interaction, versus digital commerce?
I talk to our team all the time about the word balance, and I don’t think the word gets enough volume or credit There’s some reports out now that the next generation is longing for socialization, and in-person shopping is a big part of what they’re doing together. There is a place, I think, for all these types of businesses, as long as we pay attention to what the consumer wants. Almost 70% of our business still remains in physical retail, which is very consistent with the industry averages. That doesn’t mean we don’t love our digital business. If we were selling paper towels, who wants to go shopping for paper towels? I’d like to have those delivered to my house right before I run out of them. But I think there are other things that are fun to do in person.
And by the way, when we have a DJ on a Saturday, when we do bottle engraving, when we, people show how to do flower arranging, you can get people to turn out to the stores because it becomes an extension of what they want to do for the weekend. I think a big part of our bold new chapter is stepping up to the fact that a good retail experience, people are looking for. A bad or mediocre retail experience. People, people can do digital. They don’t need to exhaust themselves with that experience.
I want to ask you about planning and decision-making in 2025. One CEO I talked to recently told me that things change so fast that he’s been forced to update his plans as often as weekly. You get new data constantly. I’m curious what you look at and how fluid you have to be with your plans?
You have to be very fluid. I mean, to be candid, in the age of tariffs and in the uncertainty of supply chains, plans are the guardrails, and the longer the plan, the less accurate it is. So you do deal with a rolling operating forecast, which is something that we update on a weekly and monthly basis, and that kind of gives us a greater visibility into how to allocate inventory, how to plan our staffing, how to change our marketing, so that we’re doing it in real time, not based on some plan that we developed three or six months ago, which may at this point be somewhat outdated. I think we’re on version number 27 of our forecast and plan, because of the interesting environment that we’re operating in 2025.
There’s an analogy that people sometimes use, that sometimes you need a wartime leader and sometimes you need a peacetime leader, and there’s a different strategy for each one of them. And I’m curious whether you feel like for Macy’s, is today wartime or peacetime? And how would you cast yourself in that?
I’d like to say it depends on the day of the week you ask me, and I think the challenge for our business is, on Tuesdays, I might have to be a peacetime leader, and on the first day of November, you may need to be a wartime leader. And in the environment we’re operating with, with unexpected tariffs by the middle of the year that didn’t exist at the beginning of the year, there is a lot of wartime philosophy. The same time, we are in a business for the long term. We are not trying to just have a great third quarter. We’re trying to have a great business that lasts decades, if not more. What matters tomorrow is going to be different than what mattered yesterday. I use a phrase, graciousness and kindness don’t cost money. So, how do we make sure that we imbue and express those things on a regular basis?
What’s your role when it comes to the Thanksgiving Day Parade itself?
Stay out of the way.
Twenty years ago, not too long after Youtube itself launched, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla started uploading videos to the platform. What started as two teenagers trying to make each other laugh turned into the biggest channel on YouTube. It was the first ever to reach 10 million subscribers. Eventually Smosh was acquired by a company called Defy Media. The company would expand rapidlymore videos, more cast members, even a moviebut then came turmoil and uncertainty for Smosh.
Padilla left the company in 2017, largely due to creative differences with Smoshs parent company. He returned to the business in 2023, when he and Hecox purchased Smosh from YouTuber-led media company Mythical (which acquired the brand in 2019 following Defy Medias abrupt collapse).
From left: Ian Hecox, Anthony Padilla, Ale Catanese [Photos: Brennan Iketani (Catanese)/courtesy Smosh]
Alongside the purchase, Hecox and Padilla hired Alessandra Catanesean executive with over a decade’s experience in digital mediaas CEO. In the ensuing two years, the company has steadily expanded its content offering while picking up new subscribers across five YouTube channels. With more content in development than ever, and more than twice as many employees as it had in 2023, Smosh is moving into a 32,000-sq.-ft. Los Angeles studio thats roughly twice the size of its current headquarters.
[Rendering: courtesy Smosh]
Hecox, Padilla and Catanese joined me on the Most Innovative Companies podcast to talk about the companys growth, its new space, and how they approached designing a space for the next generation of the company.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Smosh is making a big move in 2026. Can you tell me why now is the right time to expand?
Alessandra Catanese: We physically just could not launch another show or take on a new project, no matter how much we loved it. So in this new building, it’s both going to allow us to expand what we’re doing, and more appropriately house the employees that we have and create a little bit more of a structured environment.
Its really important to us to balance the structure with the startup vibe that we still feel we have today. We don’t feel this need to elevate ourselves to this corporate structure where there’s a lot more red tape and there’s a lot more rules. We do have a lot of guidelines, but we love that a lot of the things we have and processes we have in place here are very fluid. They have a sandbox in which they play in.
And on the business side, I stay out of the creative decisions they do know to bring me things. So yeah, so we want to honor that. And then this building allows us to create more space and communal areas where we can celebrate what we do, but also be professional and feel a little bit more polished.
[Image: courtesy Smosh]
What will the new space help achieve for Smosh?
Ian Hecox: I think one of the major focuses for this is just working out a better flow for production and talent, getting talent to the stages, production knowing exactly where the talent is.
I mean, we love our cast, but sometimes it is herding cats. Creating a space for them to feel comfortable in and to congregate in I think was really important. And then we have, we’ll have a private room. If there’s maybe a celebrity coming in that wants a little more privacy, we can have a room specifically for
AC: A proper green room with a closing door.
Anthony Padilla: Not a weird little makeshift curtain.
We wanted to level up the space and bring a level of professionality, but also we want it to feel fun and embody that element of creativity and working together as a team. Right now, a lot of our lights are big, fluorescent overhead lights and we wanted a lot more soft lighting and stuff that feels more comfortable. You’re hanging out with your friends, not at someone’s house, but you’re hanging out with your friends in a professional environment.
[Rendering: courtesy Smosh Studios]
Since the pandemic,office design has been moving towards a more living room, or lounge, feel. It sounds like you are embracing that as well.
IH: I think we want it to be somewhere comfortable, but I also don’t want people falling asleep because I’ve seen some of these production companies and everything looks very calm. So I think it was striking a balance between comfortable, but also you’re going to stay awake, but also not hitting people with Nickelodeon greens.
AC: We want it to feel grown up and mature, but in a way that still honors the comedy, the internet of it all. So I think we brought color in very intentionally. And Studio Keya obviously did an excellent job.
[Rendering: courtesy Smosh]
It’s amazing to be able to intentionally design a space for where you are now. Its been two and a half years since buying back Smosh, does this move feel like a completion of that transition or like you are officially making a home in the newest iteration of the company?
IH: I don’t think we would’ve expected to be here this quickly. I think this was more of a five-year plan or a 10-year plan. We feel very grateful. We’re still doing this within our scope. We don’t have a giant backer. We’re trying to do everything in a sustainable way.
AP: I think it’s really about continuing to hone in on what we do best. The comedy rooted in friendship element. You’ll probably start to see more faces on camera. There’ll be more people working behind the scenes. Really, we want to create an environment where people either in front of camera or behind camera get to live out some of those dreams that Ian and I got to experience in the early days.
Smosh at VidCon 2024 [Photo: Smosh]
Shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) rose on Thursday after Bloomberg reported the technology company was planning to cut spending across its division by 10%, with as much as 30% cuts to its virtual reality group, which includes the so-called metaverse.
These cuts could potentially include layoffs, which could come as early as January, and are part of the company’s 2026 budget, according to the article.
Metathe owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsAppdevelops metaverse technologies, such as the Horizon Worlds platform, its flagship virtual-reality game.
Fast Company has reached out to Meta for comment.
Meta stock rose 5.7% in early trading Thursday, before settling up a few percentage points. At the time of this writing on Thursday afternoon, Meta’s stock price was up by about just under 4%.
Bloomberg cited anonymous sources and said Wall Street investors reportedly sees the division “as a drain on resources,” while internet watchers have concerns about VR’s ability to safeguard children.
The news is significant because the metaverse is widely considered a pet project of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had previously identified it as the future of Meta, even changing Facebook’s name to Meta for that very reason. Zuckerberg has also reportedly spent billions and employed thousands to make this dream come to fruition, according to The New York Times.
Ultimately, however, it seems critics and young consumers have not embraced the metaverse and Horizon Worlds as the company had hoped.
Meta financials
Meta’s third-quarter earnings for 2025 beat analyst sales estimates, but it also reported a one-time $15.93 billion tax charge.
The company’s revenue grew 26.2% year-over-year to $51.24 billion, beating the estimated $49.41 billion, with earnings per share coming in at $7.25 adjusted, beating analyst expectations of $6.69.
In the earnings report, Meta said the company plans to spend up to $72 billion on artificial intelligence in 2025.
The numbers are in for Spotify Wrapped: After the streaming music app dropped its popular year-in-review recap for 2025, the company said it has already seen a huge increase in user engagement, hitting 200 million users just 24 hours after the recap’s release, a 19% increase year-over-year (YOY).
Compare that with last year, when it took 62 hours to hit that same number.
Why the uptick in user engagement?
One reason could be because the platform is growing. A look at the numbers shows Spotify’s monthly active users grew 11% YOY to 713 million in Q3 of 2025, according to the company’s third quarter earnings report.
Spotify Wrapped is for sharing
Sharing is caring, and this year’s Spotify Wrapped sharing features seem to be working.
According to the company, 500 million users shared their stories all over social media in the first 24 hours, an overall increase of 41% YOY from 2024 (I was, of course, one of them). Those shares included screenshots of different features, such as top songs (for me, it was “Promises, Promises”), top artist (“The Psychedelic Furs”), top albums (“The Life of a Showgirl”), top genres (“New Wave”), and listening minutes (“11,721”).
While the numbers increased across the board globally, India, Indonesia, Japan, Colombia, Thailand and the U.S. saw the most growth.
This year, we pushed to make Wrapped bigger, bolder, and rooted in human creativity and connection,” Marc Hazan, senior vice president of marketing and partnerships at Spotify said. “That spirit drove the record numbers were celebrating. Spotify is where people proudly express who they are through the music, podcasts and books they love most.”
Age is just a number
One complaint, albeit a funny one, is that Spotify Wrapped’s “listening age” feature, which predicts your age based on your listening data, is making people older than they are.
On Bluesky, people are posting screenshots of their Spotify “age,” which for some millennials and Gen Xers, is hitting upwards of 82. (At 61, it looks like I am in good company!)
U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell to their lowest level in more than three years during Thanksgiving week, potentially complicating the Federal Reserves upcoming decision on interest rates.
The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the week ending Nov. 29 fell to 191,000 from the previous weeks 218,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Thats the lowest level since September 24, 2022, when claims came in at 189,000. Analysts surveyed by the data provider FactSet had forecast initial claims of 221,000.
Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, said that unemployment benefit filings are often distorted by the Thanksgiving holiday, which can cause some people who may have lost jobs to delay filing claims.
Still, the low claims figure also suggests that overall layoffs remain muted, despite the high-profile announcements. Hiring is also sluggish, which makes finding a job for those out of work challenging.
The labor market is kind of frozen, Bostjancic said. Companies are in wait-and-see mode.
Applications for unemployment aid are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The job cuts announced recently by large companies such as UPS, General Motors, Amazon, and Verizon typically take weeks or months to fully implement and may not be reflected in Thursdays data.
For now, the U.S. job market appears stuck in a low-hire, low-fire state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low.
On Wednesday, private payroll data firm ADP estimated U.S. job losses of 32,000 in November. The surprisingly weak report may be discouraging for people looking for jobs, but it bolstered expectations that the Fed will cut its main interest rate next week.
Its not clear how much weight this weeks layoff figures will carry with the Fed as the numbers can be volatile and prone to revisions.
Complicating the Feds upcoming decision is inflation, which remains above the central banks 2% target. The Feds preferred measure of inflation will be released in a government report on Friday and will also be factored into its rate call on Wednesday.
Two weeks ago, the government said that hiring picked up a bit in September, when employers added 119,000 new jobs. That mixed report, which also showed employers had shed jobs in August, was delayed due to the government shutdown. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level in four years.
Novembers comprehensive jobs data has been delayed for release until later this month, after the Feds meeting, also due to the government shutdown.
The government also recently reported that retail sales slowed in September after three months of healthy increases.
Consumer confidence has plunged to its second-lowest level in five years, while wholesale inflation eased a bit.
The data suggests that both the economy and inflation are slowing, which has boosted financial markets expectations that the Federal Reserve will reduce its key interest rate at its meeting next week. If the Fed does reduce its benchmark rate next week, it would be the third cut of the year as it attempts to support a job market that has been slowing for months.
Thursday’s report from Labor also showed that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 9,500 to 214,750.
The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the previous week ending Nov. 22 dipped by 4,000 to 1.94 million, the government said.
Matt Ott, AP business writer
AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.
As the rest of the world speeds ahead toward an electrified future, the U.S. is doubling down on gas-powered cars.
President Trump announced a proposal this week to slash stricter fuel economy standards put in place during the Biden administration. By reversing the standards, the White House further aligns itself with the oil and gas industry, with some automakers happily going along for the ride.
“We’re officially terminating Joe Biden’s ridiculously burdensome, horrible actually, CAFE standards that impose expensive restrictions,” Trump said, referencing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules. “And all sorts of problems all sorts of problems for automakers.”
The president was joined by Ford CEO Jim Farley, Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa and a representative from General Motors for the announcement, which took place at the White House on Wednesday. Today is a victory for common sense and affordability, Farley said at the event. We believe that people should be able to make a choice, as you said, Mr. President, and we will invest more in affordable vehicles.
Regulations put in place during the Biden administration would require new cars sold in the U.S. to average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2031. That rule, designed to push automakers to reorient their business around EVs, will drop to 34.5 miles per gallon under Trumps proposal. The president also reiterated his plans to end a set of EPA rules that limit tailpipe pollution, a change that the oil and gas industry pushed for.
Fuel rules tend to shift between presidential administrations, with Democrats pushing for environmentally-minded standards and Republicans stripping away regulations. The White House characterized the changes, designed to slow the U.S. shift toward electric vehicles, as a cost-saving measure for consumers.
The Biden standards would have compelled widespread shifts to EVs that American consumers did not ask for, accompanied by significant cost-of-living increases, the administration wrote in a fact sheet on the changes.
In 2025, high car prices are one part of a puzzle for Americans trying to make ends meet. High interest rates, persistent inflation and Trumps own tariffs on imported cars and car parts have created a perfect storm of unaffordability for car buyers.
The high cost of driving
Cars are really expensive right now. The average price for a new vehicle inched above $50,000 for the first time in September, according to a report from Kelley Blue Book. That average rose by almost $2,000 compared to 2024. The average price of EVs, which cost more up front and save drivers cash in the long run, was $8,000 higher during the same time frame.
The $20,000-vehicle is now mostly extinct, and many price-conscious buyers are sidelined or cruising in the used-vehicle market, Cox Automotive Executive Analyst Erin Keating said in the report, which also noted the impact of cost pressure from tariffs. Today’s auto market is being driven by wealthier households who have access to capital, good loan rates and are propping up the higher end of the market.
While auto makers secured some relief from the presidents flurry of tariffs, car makers didnt make it through the year unscathed. In a mid-year earnings call, Ford estimated its tariff costs to total up to $2 billion for the year.
The fuel economy changes are just the Trump administrations latest effort to unravel signature climate-friendly policies from the Biden years. Trumps Big Beautiful Bill, passed earlier this year, stripped away Biden era tax credits that lowered the price tag of eligible EVs by as much as $7,500. The death of those tax credits prompted a major short term boost in EV sales this summer, as buyers rushed to make their purchases in time to secure more affordable electric cars before the end of September.
President Donald Trump plans to travel to Pennsylvania on Tuesday to highlight his efforts to reduce inflation even as fears mount about a worsening job market and amid signs that Americans are still feeling squeezed by high prices.
A White House official said Trump would be making the trip to discuss ending the inflation crisis that he says was inherited from his predecessor, Joe Biden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the trip has not been formally announced. It was not immediately clear where in Pennsylvania Trump would be visiting.
Last month’s off-year elections showed a shift away from Republicans as public concerns about affordability persist. White House officials said afterward that Trump who has done relatively few events domestically would put a greater emphasis on talking directly to the public about his economic policies.
The president has said that any affordability worries are part of a Democratic hoax and that people simply need to hear his perspective to change their minds an approach also embraced by Biden, who in early 2024 went to the Pennsylvania borough of Emmaus to take credit for economic improvements after inflation spiked in 2022.
The trip hints at the dilemma faced by Trump. He wants to take credit for rewiring the U.S. economy with his large tariff hikes and extension of income tax cuts, but he also continues to blame Biden for the increase nationwide in inflation rates that occurred this year during his own presidency. Overall, inflation is tracking at 3% annually, up from 2.3% in April when Trump rolled out a sweeping set of import taxes.
We fixed inflation, and we fixed almost everything, Trump said at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. He called affordability a hoax that was started by the Democrats who caused the problem of pricing.
Trump won Pennsylvania narrowly last year with 50.4%, besting Democrat Kamala Harris by roughly 120,000 votes. The win was part of a broader sweep in battleground states that helped return him to the White House after his 2020 loss.
AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of voters in the 2024 election, found that 7 in 10 Pennsylvania voters were very concerned about the cost of food and groceries. Roughly half expressed the same degree of worry over health care costs and the price of gasoline.
While Trump can point to a decline in gasoline prices, hes now facing inflationary pressures on utilities and a massive increase in insurance premiums for people who get their health care through the Affordable Care Act.
Pennsylvanians who buy their own health insurance coverage are likely to see their costs increase on average by 21.5% because of the expiration of tax credits tied to the Affordable Care Act, the state said in October.
Pennsylvania has yet to see the boom that Trump promised would instantly happen with his return to the White House.
The state has largely preserved its Biden era job growth under Trump, but its unemployment rate has risen to 4% from 3.6% over the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There has been an increase of roughly 24,000 people who say theyre unemployed.
Annual inflation in the Philadelphia area is 3.3%, roughly the same as last year.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserves Beige Book in November documented an economy in decline, saying that hiring has flattened, warehouse workers are getting fewer hours on the job, inflationary pressures are coming from tariffs and sales of existing homes are decreasing. Separately, the regional Fed branchs manufacturing survey last month showed that factory activity weakened.
The news outlet Axios first reported Trump’s plans to travel to Pennsylvania.
Josh Boak, Associated Press
Only about 10 percent of venture funds ever make it to a fourth vintage. Of those, just 5 to 10 percent are led by women. Im one of them.
When I started Female Founders Fund in 2014, I believed that solid returns and conviction would speak for themselves. Strong performance would unlock capital and the industry would reward the achievement, especially from those breaking new groundor so I thought. What Ive come to learn is that venture capital isnt a pure meritocracy. Its a network-driven ecosystem where who you know often matters just as much as what you build.
Cultural and political changes, and a tight market environment, are making it especially difficult for fund managers to maintain momentum. Now is the time for the industry to reflect on how to ensure that these funds, especially those led by diverse managers, can weather these forces and continue to support diverse founders with brilliant ideas.
Investing in women isn’t charity. By yielding powerful, durable returns, it has proven to be smart business. As risk tolerance declines, it could be tempting for institutions to retreat to the familiar. Instead, they should pay attention to the data.
A shorter runway for women
Over the years, a few lessons have become clear. They arent the ones you find in your LPA, but theyre the realities that quietly shape who gets funded, who gets backed again, and who quietly fades away.
Returns are just one part of the picture. While performance is important, other forcesinstitutional change, personal networks, and internal politicsoften drive how capital gets distributed. Once an institution commits to a fund, that relationship can extend across multiple vintages. The incentive to change managers is low.
Check writers want proximity to the next generation of Tier 1 talent striking out on their own. That bias works in favor of spinoutsformer Sequoia, a16z, or Benchmark investors taking the entrepreneurial leap. But for managers without that institutional pedigree, the path looks very different. And for women, who remain significantly underrepresented in those firms partnership ranks, the path is even narrower.Your first fund is often cobbled together from founders, friends, and family offices willing to take an early bet. By Fund II or III, however, the bar shifts. Institutions want scale, systems, and years of realized returns, all of which take time to build. For emerging managers, thats the hardest leap: breaking through a system designed to reward familiarity over conviction.
Venture is a relationship business. It prides itself on data and rigor, but in practice it runs on trust. The capital that fuels our industry still moves through networks built over decades. Who you know, how long youve known them, and what you have to offer, determines access.
This is why new or diverse fund managers often find it easier to raise their first fund on promise than their second on proof. Convincing someone to take the initial bet on someone new can be easier than asking them to break a pattern with subsequent fundsbecause the pattern is still overwhelmingly male.
We must also look at money. Wealth isnt optionalits the price of entry. For example, all new fund managers are expected to invest a GP commit, which equates to roughly 1 percent of their total fund size. On a $50 million fund, thats $500,000 in cash, upfront.
Imagine asking an entrepreneur to invest half a million dollars in their own Series B to show commitment. For many, especially women and first-time fund managers, that barrier is insurmountable without preexisting, generational, or spousal wealth. It is one of the quietest but most enduring structural filters in venture, and it uniquely disadvantages women, who, on average, hold less personal and intergenerational wealth.
Having a financial cushion is also vital to play the long game that venture requires. To stay in the business, particularly through downturns, you need a financial cushion. Big payouts dont happen often. Selling some of the investment early can help a little, but small fund managers cant always afford to take a lower price without making it harder to raise money later.
Its not just about resilience and grit; its about runway. And because women more frequently enter the industry later, without the safety nets that have historically supported male peers, their runway is often meaningfully shorter. Staying in the game long enough to see your conviction validated is, in itself, a form of privilege.
Another challenge that has played out over the years is that while several well-intentioned institutions and corporations have stepped in to support and capitalize diverse managers, the purpose behind many of these checks has been to provide start-up capital designed to help new funds get off the ground, with the expectation that larger institutional investors would take over from there.
That handoff, however, has proven difficult. Even as the tide has turned culturally and politically, theres a real opportunity to rethink how we sustain diverse managers beyond the first fund, widening the base of long-term support so they can weather market cycles and build lasting franchises. The current system still assumes women will somehow graduate into institutional support structures that were never designed with them in mind.
Shaping the next frontier
I started Female Founders Fund as an entrepreneur who spotted alpha in the marketa clear gap between the caliber of women building companies and the capital available to back them. Twelve years later, that thesis has proven right again and again.
At Female Founders Fund, weve seen it firsthand. Maven Clinic became the first unicorn in womens health, defining an entirely new category of care. Billie reimagined modern personal care before its acquisition by Edgewell. BentoBox transformed hospitality tech, leading to a successful exit. Tala, now valued at nearly $1 billion, continues to scale globally, expanding access to financial services in emerging markets. Wagmo created a new category of employee benefits around pet care, while Violette_FR built the first artist-led French beauty brand in decades.
These companies touch millions of end customers and have built products, tools, and services that have scaled across industries proving that female-led innovation drives real enterprise and consumer value. These founders are category creatorspairing big visions with world-class execution.
These outcomes arent outliers. Theyre evidence that backing female founders is a wise investment strategy that generates meaningful returns. We cannot let this moment in time with its tighter markets and shifting market and social priorities create negative momentum.
Women are now leading in industries once thought impossible to break into: Space DOTS, founded by a NASA-trained astronautical engineer; Beyond Aero, reimagining flight through hydrogen-electric propulsion; Amini AI, building Africas environmental data backbone; Waabi, redefining autonomous trucking; and Dacora, making history as the first female-founded automotive company.
From aerospace to AI, from climate to transportation, women are shaping the next frontier and the best is yet to come.
In order to keep seeing new role models of success especially for those living outside the traditional Silicon Valley ecosystem, we need to keep capital flowing. Thats how the next generation of women and underrepresented founders will see themselves in the leaders building toay.
In a moment when the world feels increasingly divided, doubling down on progress isnt just good businessits good stewardship. Because the hardest part isnt raising a fund, its building one that endures. And the longer I stay in this business, the clearer it becomes: investing in women isnt a risk, its a return.
Its a great week to have a disposable income and act like you know how to ski.
North Face x Skims today launches its second winter outerwear capsule, again channeling ski culture with a campaign shot on the powder-coated Chilean mountains. (Skis and airfare not included.)
The 2025 drop expands on its collection from last year with even more silhouettes, like the wrap puffer coat, and a thoughtfully cropped, hooded puffer jacket with drop shoulder that brings some fashion to the line, which is aesthetically more oriented toward sport. It also includes mens and kids styles for the first time (prices range from $55 to $800).
[Photo: The North Face]
Even considering the new styles, the overall brand ID will look very familiar to Skims fans, with creative direction thats nearly identical to last years North Face collaboration. It has a styling and color system approach thats similar to the recent Skims x Nike collab, with muted color tones such as bone, kyanite, gunmetal, phoenix, and onyx, this time inspired by winter color palette.
[Photo: The North Face]
The campaign creative direction again utilizes gradiated layouts and product imagery, featuring models in geometric groupings organized by garment colorway. (Laura Obermeyer and Jackie Nickerson shot this years campaign; the first iteration last year was 2 campaigns, one shot by Vanessa Beecroft and the other shot by Donna Trope.) Part of what makes the Skims marketing such a home run is how it plays with its brand for a distinct visual approach to each of its various campaigns for core product drops. It appears to be less flexible with collaborations.
[Photo: Nike]
A big week for ski fashion
But its not the first to drop a winter collection this week. Nike and Jacquemus expanded their long-running partnership into the winter season by earlier this week announcing their first ever ski collection (some styles are online now). The Nike x Jacquemus’ collab plays into cold weather glamour and offers shapes that are driven less by spandex body shaping and more by a classic, retro aprés style.
The style lines and pattern of the clothes create their own shape on the body, such as in the ful skirt featured on the first campaign image, or the hourglass shape emphasized by the bell sleeve and tailored waist of the ski jacket. Its Audrey Hepburn in Chalet with the functionality of Gore Tex. Prices range from $110 to $700 for whats currently available online, which is half of the total 18 expected styles to be released.
[Photo: Nike]
These drops are an entry point for fashion brands to get in on outerwear sales by tapping into the expertise of brands already in the space (North Face and NIke, respectively). They are also a way for winter sport amateurs to tap into ski styles, without having to spend big on a vacation or premium-level gear they dont really need. I live at sea level, and Id still buy that Nike x Jacquemus jacket, if it wasnt sold out. And though all the North Face x Skims styles have yet to be released, the comments section on the brand announcement posts is already piping.
[Photo: Nike]
This quick sequence of drops is another indication theres appeal in prestige signalling through pieces that have prppy, sophisticated, and stylistic design elements you might see walking around Kemo Sabe in Aspen or a premium St. Moritz chalet.
Its almost as if tennis core and gorpcore had a winter romance (does that give us chaletcore?). North Face x Skims and Jacquemus x Nike have distinct pespectives on this, but one thing is clear: this winter, skiing is a state of mind.
[Photo: The North Face]
Russian authorities said Thursday they have imposed restrictions on Apple’s video calling service FaceTime, the latest step in an effort to tighten control over the internet and communications online.
State internet regulator Roskomnadzor alleged in a statement that the service is being used to organize and conduct terrorist activities on the territory of the country, to recruit perpetrators (and) commit fraud and other crimes against our citizens. Apple did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The Russian regulator also announced that it has blocked Snapchat, a messaging app for sharing photos, videos and text messages, citing the same grounds it gave for restricting FaceTime. It said that it took the action Oct. 10, even though it only reported the move on Thursday.
Under President Vladimir Putin, authorities have engaged in deliberate and multipronged efforts to rein in the internet. They have adopted restrictive laws and banned websites and platforms that don’t comply. Technology has also been perfected to monitor and manipulate online traffic.
After Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government blocked major social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Access to YouTube was disrupted last year in what experts called deliberate throttling of the widely popular site by the authorities. The Kremlin blamed YouTube owner Google for not properly maintaining its hardware in Russia.
While its still possible to circumvent some of the restrictions by using virtual private network services, those are routinely blocked, too.
Authorities further restricted internet access this summer with widespread shutdowns of cellphone internet connections. Officials have insisted the measure was needed to thwart Ukrainian drone attacks, but experts argued it was another step to tighten internet control. In dozens of regions, white lists of government-approved sites and services that are supposed to function despite a shutdown have been introduced.
The government has also acted against popular messaging platforms. Encrypted messenger Signal and another popular app, Viber, were blocked in 2024. This year, the authorities banned calls via WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in Russia, and Telegram, a close second. Roskomnadzor justified the measure by saying the two apps were being used for criminal activities.
At the same time, authorities actively promoted a national messenger app called MAX, which critics see as a surveillance tool. The platform, touted by developers and officials as a one-stop shop for messaging, online government services, making payments, and more, openly declares it will share user data with authorities upon request. Experts also say it doesnt use end-to-end encryption.
Earlier this week, the government also said it was blocking Roblox, a popular online game platform, saying the step aimed at protecting children from illicit content and pedophiles who meet minors directly in the games chats and then move on to real life.
Stanislav Seleznev, cyber security expert and lawyer with the Net Freedom rights group, told The Associated Press that Russian law views any platform where users can message each other as organizers of dissemination of information.
This label mandates that platforms have an account with Roskomnadzor so that it could communicate its demands, and give Russia’s security service, the FSB, access to accounts of their users for monitoring; those failing to comply are in violation and can get blocked, Seleznev said.
He suggested that these regulations could have been applied to both Roblox and FaceTime.
Roblox in October was the second most popular game platform in Russia, with nearly 8 million monthly users, according to media monitoring group Mediascope.
Seleznev estimated that possibly tens of millions of Russians have been using FaceTime, especially after calls were banned on WhatsApp and Telegram. He called the restrictions against the service predictable and warned that other sites failing to cooperate with Roskomnadzor “will be blocked, thats obvious.
Dasha Litvinova, Associated Press
