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6 effective leadership styles we can learn from 'Star Trek'

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Star Trek Captain James Kirk Tribble

In order to boldly go where no one has gone before, you've got to be a pretty awesome leader.

Over the last 50 years, the "Star Trek" franchise has given us many characters who've acted as inspirational, pioneering leaders.

Throughout the franchise, these captains and commanders have had very different approaches at times. In his book "Primal Leadership," Daniel Goleman (along with coauthors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee) revealed that people tend to fall into one of six key leadership categories.

Here are these six emotional leadership styles, as exemplified by different "Star Trek" commanders. If you can effectively master one of these styles, you'll be setting yourself up to live long and prosper:

SEE ALSO: Lucille Ball is the reason we have 'Star Trek' — here's what happened

The visionary leader

Captain Jean-Luc Picard always promotes a clear vision of what Starfleet is all about. He motivates his crew members to be the best they can be can empowers them with the knowledge they need to get out there and make it so.

Picard is leading at a time when Federation ideologies and practices have matured. In dealing with threats like the Borg and complex relationships with traditional enemies like the Klingons and Romulans, he provides excellent insight. Visionary leaders are great for times when a new direction is needed.



The coaching leader

Captain Jonathan Archer is definitely a coaching leader. He's got to be, as the captain in command of the first Starfleet starship. Archer helps his crew members recognize their strengths and weaknesses. He also forms close connections with his team, even coming to an understanding with his Vulcan first officer T'Pol, whom he initially had a contentious relationship with.

Like some coaching leaders, his style can come across as micromanagement sometimes — chronologically, Archer is the first captain to start accompanying landing crews on potentially dangerous missions. Still, all in all, his methods help lay the groundwork for Starfleet's long-term capabilities.



The affiliative leader

Captain Kathryn Janeway is a classic affiliative leader. She's all about creating harmony within her organization and healing rifts between different groups.

She demonstrates this by bringing together her crew and the rebel Maquis faction at the start of the series. Janeway even leads her Voyager team to band together with adversaries such as the Borg and Species 8472.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The little guys are winning on Wall Street

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Ken Moelis

It doesn't take a position at a big investment bank to land a role on a big deal.

Smaller independent and boutique advisory firms have made a splash on the biggest mergers and acquisitions of 2016, working in seven on the top 10 deals in the first six months of the year, according to Dealogic.

They've hired some of the biggest names in the business, while also putting plans in place to develop their own talent.

And they're also great places to work, according to Vault's annual ranking of the best banks to work for. Smaller firms took five of the top nine places in the rankings.

Centerview Partners — founded in July 2006 by Blair Effron, Stephen Crawford, and Rob Pruzan — placed third in the ranking and took the top spot in 10 of the 19 quality-of-life categories that Vault ranks.

"Centerview Partners continues to land some of the largest and most high-profile deals on the Street and has quickly become one of the most prestigious firms for professionals to have on their resume," said Derek Loosvelt, Vault's senior finance editor.

Here's how the boutique firms stacked up:

SEE ALSO: These are the 9 best banks to work for on Wall Street

8. Peter J. Solomon Company

Peter J. Solomon Company was No. 13 on Vault's list and snagged the top spots for both the best banking firm for firm culture and best banking firm for hours.

Pros

  • "Great culture that values work/life balance"
  • "Working with intelligent and respectful coworkers, including top senior people"
  • "Compensation—better pay than the Street average"

Cons

  • "Vacation policy"
  • "No 401(k) match"
  • "Sometimes long hours"

The buzz

  • "Recently lost that one big partner"



7. Houlihan Lokey

Houlihan Lokey was No. 12 on Vault's list and was ranked second in client interaction and third in the ability to challenge.

Pros

  • "Great culture and great, smart colleagues"
  • "Challenging, interesting work and a lot of client exposure"
  • "High quality deal flow"
  • "Good work/life balance"

Cons

  • "Unpredictable hours sometimes"
  • "Learning curve is quite steep"
  • "Sometimes the expectations are nearly impossible to meet"

The buzz

  • "Best restructuring banker"
  • "Great in restructuring, not so great in other areas"
  • "Well-positioned for energy downturn"
  • "Not well known"


6. PJT Partners

PJT Partners, which spun off from Blackstone Group last October, was No. 10 on Vault's list. It was rated the best banking firm for client interaction and the third best banking firm for relationship with managers.

Pros

  • "Extremely bright and motivated people with integrity; senior bankers are intent on helping juniors learn the business"
  • "Tons of great client experience and exciting deal flow"
  • "Excellent exit opportunities"

Cons

  • "Hours can be tough and unpredictable"
  • "Name not yet established and definitely some growing pains with the transition from Blackstone"
  • "Fewer resources than universal banks"

The buzz

  • "Excellent, elite boutique"
  • "TBD after Blackstone spin-off — very new, but should be good"
  • "Great management"
  • "A bit of a Frankenbank right now — unclear if its plan will come together"


See the rest of the story at Business Insider

GUNDLACH: 'It's time to be defensive on bonds' (SPY, SPX, DJI, IXIC, IWIM, TLT, TLO, DXY, USD)

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jeff gundlach

DoubleLine Funds CEO Jeff Gundlach says it's time to be defensive on bonds.

On Thursday, Gundlach gave his quarterly webcast on markets and the economy titled "Turning Points."

He believes that interest rates have bottomed. And while he declined to give a specific forecast for the 10-year yield at the end of 2016, he said it would likely be higher. 

On corporate bonds, Gundlach said they are "highly overvalued," recession and default risks make them an unattractive asset class. An investor looking to take credit risk would be better off in emerging markets, he said. 

Here are highlights of the presentation:

SEE ALSO: Here's how (almost) everything you can buy is doing so far this year and since Brexit

As usual, the photo on the title slide means something.

The idea here, Gundlach said, is that like the sunset, the regime people are taking for granted — that we are forever in a quantitative-easing and negative-interest-rate world — is getting very old. 

 



The proportion of global GDP governed by central banks with negative interest rates has recently exploded.



Gundlach says negative rates are not doing their job.

To be sure, rates are still positive in the US.

But for all the "crazy experiments" from central banks, it's interesting that global GDP has been either very stable or steadily declining in recent years, he said. 



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

20 female high school athletes who are the definition of girl power

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mone davis little league world series

Whether they're competing at the Olympics, the Paralympics, or small-town high schools, these teen phenoms epitomize girl power in every competition. 

Meet some of the country's best and brightest female sports stars.

In 2014, Mo'ne Davis became the first girl to pitch a shutout in a Little league World Series Game — but her favorite sport is basketball.

Davis, now 15, plays varsity at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Pennsylvania.

Source: ESPNW



Sydney McLaughlin, 17, ran for Team USA in Rio. She didn't medal, but she had the honor of being the youngest US track and field Olympian since 1972.

She's now a senior at Union Catholic Regional High School in New Jersey.

Source: Team USA



With three X Games gold medals already under her belt, 16-year-old Chloe Kim has been dubbed "the future of women's snowboarding."

Kim also plays guitar and speaks English, Korean, and French fluently. She's a student at Mammoth High School in California. 

Source: USA Snowboarding



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Meet the mysterious retail guru who just surpassed Bill Gates to become the world's richest man

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Amancio Ortega

Zara's mysterious founder, Amancio Ortega, just surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest man in the world. 

Shares of the Spanish retailer's parent company, Inditex, rose 2.5%. That boosted Ortega's fortune to $79.5 billion, according to Forbes

Bill Gates' net worth is $78.5 billion. 

Despite Ortega's impressive net worth, many people have never heard of him.

The 80-year-old Spaniard fiercely guards his privacy and gives few interviews to the press.

Ortega founded fast-fashion giant Zara with his then-wife Rosalia in 1975. Today, his retail company Inditex SA — which owns Zara, Massimo Dutti, and Pull&Bear — has over 6,600 outposts around the world. 

Amancio Ortega is the richest man in the world, with a net worth estimated at $79.5 billion.

Source: Bloomberg



This is his second wife, Flora. The couple has been married since 2001.

Source: Bloomberg



In August 2013, his ex-wife and Zara cofounder, Rosalia Mera, died at 69. She was Spain's richest woman.

Source: Associated Press



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

I tried OfferUp, the $1 billion startup that wants to dethrone Craigslist as the go-to for selling your stuff

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OfferUp Nick Huzar Arean Van Veleen

OfferUp is making waves as a mobile-only hybrid between Craigslist and eBay — and so far, users are loving it. 

The company is said to have surpassed the early days of eBay in terms of sales volume, and its users are spending the same amount of time on OfferUp in a day as they do on Snapchat or Instagram.

On Thursday, it raised a fresh $119 million round of venture capital, bringing its valuation to $1 billion. 

As someone addicted to Snapchat with some extra furniture pieces lying around, I decided to try the new hip version of Craigslist to see if it lives up to the hype.

Here's why I won't be going back to Craigslist after trying the app:

SEE ALSO: 15 brilliant or just plain crazy quotes from eccentric billionaire Elon Musk

When I first saw this chart I didn't believe it. OfferUp users spend 25 minutes on a day on the app on average — the same as Snapchat and Instagram.



All the time spent on the app means OfferUp is growing faster than eBay's earliest years — and rapidly too.



It's crazy growth for a company founded in 2011 by Nick Huzar and Arean Van Veelen. The pair was struggling to get rid of extra items in their homes and thought there had to be a better way. If you haven't heard of them though, it's because they didn't do any press interviews or announce their fundraising until November 2015. As of September 2016, its valuation has ballooned to $1 billion.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The 17 best colleges for startup founders

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Stanford University students

While Peter Thiel is famous for paying wanna-be entrepreneurs not to go to college, there are still thousands of founders who do go to college and go on to form well-funded companies. 

But there are some schools who tend to churn out more venture-backed founders than others. 

In its 2016 report, PitchBook analyzed 10 years of startup data to determine which schools produce the most startup founders who go on to raise money from investors. 

The data only takes into account whether the entrepreneur attended a school — so college drop outs are included in the count. (After all, it's a popular Silicon Valley thing to do).

Here are the 17 schools that spawned the most VC-backed founders over the last decade, ranked:

SEE ALSO: Meet the power players who really run $69 billion Uber

17. Carnegie Mellon University

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Entrepreneur count: 378

Company count: 324

Capital raised: $4.6 billion



16. Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Location: Haifa, Israel

Entrepreneur count: 379

Company count: 323

Capital raised: $4.8 billion



15. University of Southern California (USC)

Location: Los Angeles, California

Entrepreneur count: 381

Company count: 341

Capital raised: $3.5 billion



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

23 teachers share the weirdest thing they've ever experienced on the job

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mr clarke and kids in gym stranger things

Ask just about any educator and they'll tell you: There are many joys that come with teaching.

From witnessing students finally understand something they were struggling with, to seeing how unique every child is, teachers get to share in some pretty special moments.

Dig a little deeper, and these teachers will also tell you that not all "special moments" are conventional — inevitably, there are some oddities that come with molding the future generation.

We asked teachers everywhere to share some of the stranger things they've experienced on the job, and, well, we were overwhelmed by all the weirdness. As one teacher said, "Every day something weird happens. Your students will say and do the weirdest things, and you will laugh every day."

Here are some of the most interesting things teachers said they've encountered. (We decided to make these responses anonymous to keep the awkwardness to a minimum.)

SEE ALSO: 19 things teachers say parents should do at home to help their kids succeed

The darndest things

"A student (and then later a teacher) suggested that I hurt the teacher I had been replacing so that I could stay."

"Students notice absolutely everything. I had a student once who remembered every bag I own (like 10 of them) and most of my outfits. At the end of the year she told me all of her favorite one of my looks."

"I was once asked what my real job was."

"I had a student who would call me 'mom.' He lived with his mother and loved her dearly, but when he got to school he would call me 'mom' as well."



Teachers and administration acting up

"There are some teachers who are mean and don't enjoy children but somehow still teach and have a job."

"My first year of teaching showed me how much a crazy, incompetent administration can ruin a school. After a new principal came in, every teacher left, except for three who remained — three teachers out of dozens for an entire high school! The principal had three different investigations running against her for harassment, forging documents, and physically abusing students, and nothing happened to her! Crazy."

"Another teacher stole from me."

"I've seen administration, who get paid tens of thousands more than the highest paid teachers, acting inappropriately and unprofessionally — and then those are the people who evaluate us."



Love, sex, and loneliness

"There have been multiple marriages from within my department."

"I once saw performance art depicting the phallic symbolism of 'Moby-Dick.'"

"I found a sex toy in a two-year-old’s backpack. Holy awkward phone conversation!"

"A student brought me in a list of dating websites for Valentine's Day."

"I have dealt with weird issues with kids I never thought I would, like the time a kid asked me to deliver a note to their friend that contained information about the friend's girlfriend cheating on them. You just never know when you work with teenagers."



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

A 35-year-old guy who has spent 10 years traveling the world reveals the 5 things you should do before taking a big trip

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tourist

Matt Kepnes, creator of popular travel blog Nomadic Matt and author of New York Times bestseller "How to Travel the World on $50 a Day," often finds that the biggest obstacle faced by people who want to travel isn't money, but mindset. 

Many see globe-trotting adventures as a luxury for people who can afford them, rather than the attainable result of taking small steps to save and spend wisely. 

Kepnes is full of ideas for how to stop making excuses and start exploring. Here's his advice for building confidence in your ability to see the world.

Research — a lot.

"Once you pick a destination, start researching where you want to go," he said. "The more knowledge you have, the more confident you'll be!"



Take local trips to nearby cities or states on your own.

Work your way up to bigger, longer trips by starting small, and visiting places that aren't a long haul flight away.

"Stay overnight and explore it in a way a traveler does," Kepnes said.



Take a short weekend trip out of the country.

Once you've mastered local areas, aim for somewhere a little further away.

"Small trips can be a good gateway to bigger ones," he said.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

'Turning Points': Here's Jeff Gundlach's latest presentation on the US economy, Presidential election, and gold

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motorcycle racing turn corner

The bond king, Jeff Gundlach, is back with a new presentation on the markets and economy.

The presentation, entitled "Turning Points," outlined the CEO of DoubleLine Fund's views on everything in the markets and economy.

Gundlach believes that the federal government is under-spending, but believes that no matter which presidential candidate wins the election in November that will change. 

Additionally, Gundlach said that the bond market and gold prices are noticing that inflation is slowly picking up in the economy.

We've got all of the slides from "Turning Points" and you can also check out an abbreviated round-up with commentary from Business Insider's Akin Oyedele here.

Check out the presentation below.







See the rest of the story at Business Insider

14 free things to do in Paris

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Jardin du Luxembourg Paris France

Paris is one of the most popular – and most expensive – European destinations.

Luckily, like most big cities, you’ll never find yourself short of free things to do. Here are just some of the Parisian experiences that can be gained without a single euro being spent.

1. Take advantage of free days

While some museums and art galleries are free all year round, many – including some of the city’s most famous attractions – are not. Time your trip with the first Sunday of the month, though, and you’ll be able to get into many of the city’s most popular (and pricey) museums, monuments and art galleries for free, from the Louvre to the Musee d’Orsay. Information on which museums are free when can be found here.



2. Watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle

Every night at sunset, the world’s most famous landmark lights up like a Christmas tree. Get there while there’s still daylight enough to take the obligatory tourist photos, treat yourself to a €2 bottle of wine and some picnic food if you feel like splashing out, then sit back and enjoy the festival atmosphere that overtakes the gardens as evening falls.



3. Take in the views from Montmartre

Forget about paying to go up the Eiffel Tower; instead, climb up to Montmartre. Perched atop the capital’s highest hill, Montmartre’s cobbled streets and dimly lit streets have a twee, village-y charm, and gleaming white Sacre Coeur has stunning views out across the city. Pop into the church during the day, then sit on the steps as the sun begins to set and soak up the atmosphere.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Warren Buffett's top 3 investing tips in an expensive market

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Warren Buffett, Chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway takes part in interviews before a fundraising luncheon for the nonprofit Glide Foundation in New York September 8, 2015.  REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

The stock market is hovering just below record highs, so it's only natural for investors to wonder if it's still a good time to buy stocks, or if all of the good opportunities have passed. However, by applying some time-tested investment wisdom from the greatest investor of all time, you can set yourself up for success no matter which direction the market heads next.

Here are three lessons from Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett that every investor should remember when the market looks frothy.

SEE ALSO: Here are the 9 best Wall Street banks to work for

1. Invest with forever in mind

One piece of advice Buffett has given Berkshire Hathaway's own investors can be applied universally when the market seems expensive. In his 2014 letter to shareholders, Buffett wrote: "Since I know of no way to reliably predict market movements, I recommend that you purchase Berkshire shares only if you expect them to hold them for at least five years. Those who seek short-term profits should look elsewhere."

In other words, trying to time the market is a losing battle. Sure, the major market indexes are close to record highs right now, but the Dow Jones could continue to skyrocket to 20,000 just as easily as it could fall back to 17,000. We just don't know what will come next.

Because of this, while there is no guarantee of profit in the stock market, the best way to position yourself to make money is to hold the stocks you buy for a long period of time. I would even go so far as to recommend a minimum 10-year investment time frame. There have been very few instances throughout history where the overall stock market hasn't increased over any given 10-year period, and there have been no 15-year periods in which the overall market has declined.

In short, the most surefire way to make money in the stock market is to buy rock-solid companies and hold on -- the longer, the better.



2. Focus on "wonderful business at a fair price"

Here's one of my all-time favorite Warren Buffett quotes: "It is far better to buy a wonderful business at a fair price than a fair business at a wonderful price."

This is especially true when the market is expensive and the bargain bin is all but empty. A rising market has never stopped Buffett and his stock pickers from finding good values in the market. Most notably, Berkshire bought a substantial amount of Apple stock in the first quarter of 2016. It then added to that position in the second quarter after the stock dipped nearly 20% on declining revenue and tepid third-quarter guidance. Apple is one of the world's most valuable brand names, it has a dominant presence in its core markets, and it trades for just 12.5 times TTM earnings. Berkshire's stock pickers likely felt that Apple's long-term prospects far outweighed these short-term challenges.

Phillips 66 is another example of a stock Berkshire has been loading up on recently. If you compare it with other oil stocks, Phillips 66 isn't the cheapest. However, the company has a diverse revenue stream (some parts of the company actually do better with low oil prices), a solid balance sheet, great management, and a fair valuation.

The point here is not that you should follow Berkshire into Apple or Phillips 66. Rather, it's that you will rarely go wrong by purchasing stock in a rock-solid, industry-leading business when it looks fairly (not cheaply) valued.



3. Build your positions over time

Dollar-cost averaging, a favorite practice of Buffett's mentor Benjamin Graham, means investing a set dollar amount in the same investment at fixed intervals over time. Basically, this leads you to buy more shares when prices are low and fewer while prices are high. Buffett has said many times that the best way for the majority of people to invest is to dollar-cost average into a low-cost S&P 500 mutual fund. While I prefer buying individual stocks, dollar-cost averaging works no matter what type of investment you're looking at.

Consider this basic example. Let's say you have $20,000 to invest in a stock you like, which currently trades for $100 per share. Instead of spending all your available cash on shares right now, you spread it out over a year, purchasing $5,000 worth of shares each quarter. Here's how it pans out:

Quarter

Purchase Price

Q1

$100

Q2

$105

Q3

$80

Q4

$85

In Q1, your $5,000 would have gotten you 50 shares, but in Q3, you would have bagged 62 shares for the same amount, lowering your average purchase price. This is a simplified example, because dollar-cost averaging typically involves spending a smaller amount of money on a monthly basis over a period of years or decades. But the same principle applies: Through simple math, dollar-cost averaging guarantees your average cost per share will be lower than the average market price of the stock at the times when you bought it.

As Graham once said, "Such a policy will pay off ultimately, regardless of when it is begun,provided that it is adhered to conscientiously and courageously under all intervening conditions." In other words, if the market looks expensive, you still have to make your scheduled investment. The same goes for when markets are crashing. To illustrate how this works, see another article in which I show how someone who had averaged into Bank of America over the past 10 years would be sitting on a profit today, even though the stock itself has fallen by nearly 70%.

From a long-term perspective, the stock market is still attractive.

For all of the reasons mentioned here, the stock market is still an attractive place to invest. Sure, the fire-sale bargains of 2008 and 2009 aren't there anymore, but from a long-term perspective, that doesn't matter too much. Stick to a smart and consistent investment strategy no matter what the market is doing, and you'll end up a winner over time.

 



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

12 things to ask for when you check into your hotel room

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hotel lobbyIf the question of asking for an upgrade is the only thing running through your head at check-in time then you’re losing out. Hotels have plenty of extra amenities that might make your stay more comfortable, but the average visitor often doesn’t ask about them. Even if you've already booked and paid for your stay, there are still perks and privileges left to uncover upon arrival. To make the most of your hotel experience (and get the most bang-for-your-buck), here are a dozen things you should ask for when you check in that you didn't think about before.

1. Late check out.

If you’re stuck with a late return flight and could do with some extra time in your room, then asking for a late check out right when you first check in is one of the most important things to do upon arrival. Ask politely, talk up your loyalty to the hotel, and don’t be shy to tip the concierge for the favor. And if you need to know more, here’s a more in depth guide to getting a free late check-out



2. A room with a view.

While a crumby view from your hotel window due to unforeseen building works isn’t necessarily the hotel’s fault, it’s in their best interests to keep guests happy. If the view from your window is important -- let’s face it, sometimes it’s the reason you booked -- then make sure to confirm you’re getting the room with a view that you requested. And even if you didn't plan ahead, it's worth asking for a room with a view upon check in; you just might snag an upgrade for free!



3. A list of hidden extras.

Hidden fees, city taxes, and extra VAT can all add up to an annoying surprise when you come to pay your bill. Make sure you know what to expect in terms of added extras and whether the likes of Wi-Fi, parking, newspapers, breakfast, and in-room entertainment are free. Here are seven more shocking hidden hotel fees to watch out for.   



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

This woman calls the shots on every name Google uses — except the one time Larry Page thought a name was 'icky' (GOOG, GOOGL)

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ACPetereson

Amanda Peterson's job is a combination of professional brainstorming, air-traffic control, and linguistic ballet. 

She's the Head of Naming at Google, which means that the appellation of every product that flies out the company's doors needs to pass her inspection first. Her exact role on every project depends on the team working on it:

Sometimes people will want her to guide them through full-on strategy sessions, while in other instances she'll simply verify that a proposed name won't run into trademark issues, tread on an existing Google product, or mean something dirty in Swahili. 

"I work with every character in Alphabet who needs help with names," she tells Business Insider. "It's this niche skill-set that's a resource for everybody." 

Name dropping

Not every name needs to feel like a real name.

If the goal is just to help people find and use a product, the process is straightforward. For example, a cool plug-in or feature for an existing tool, like Gmail, might just be a widget with a purely descriptive label.

But when something needs a name that tells a story, captures a certain personality, or fits into a larger brand, the process can require extensive discussion.  

Amanda PetersonEach christening also requires a dance between linguistics and legal. 

"Every brainstorm that I've ever hosted in my entire professional career, if you say, 'We're going to name something around "fast," I bet you I know the first 100 names that everybody is going to come up with," Peterson says. "And 99 of those are probably already a startup." 

Creative names can require digging deep. Peterson has more than 350 reference books scattered around her desk, including ones for common names of animals, slang from the 20s, and the rules for "Dungeon and Dragons."

"You don't know where you're gonna get inspired," she says.

For example, the company's beacon technology, Eddystone, got its name from an old lighthouse that has been rebuilt and reengineered a bunch of times. It stuck because it had meaning on multiple levels (lighthouse = a beacon, this particular lighthouse was long-lasting and innovative), and because it had a techy-but-approachable feel that the team was going for (what's less intimidating than a dude named Eddy?).

Aside from her affection for 'Eddystone,' Peterson is frustratingly tight-lipped when asked for what she considers to be the best names to come out of her two-year stint at Google, insisting that she simultaneously loves them all and doesn't want to take too much credit. 

"I’m definitely the doula in this process, not the parent," she says. "I'm helping the teams articulate what they want to say. It's really theirs. It's about taking what they have and helping inspire them a little more."

Plus, she adds, you can't really separate how you feel about the name of a product from the product it describes. 

No rank-pull, unless you're Larry Page

Before coming to Google, Peterson worked on branding and names at small agencies, large agencies, and in-house at tech companies Logitech and HP. But one thing that really sets Google apart she says is how un-hierarchical the process is. She's working with product people to decide on names, not looping in high-level execs. 

At least, most of the time. 

Larry PageOne of her most memorable sessions came less than a year after she joined Google, when she wound up presenting a name to CEO Larry Page. 

"I ended up having this really personable conversation with Larry about a name he thought was 'icky,'" she laughs. When she explained the strategy behind the name he still thought it sounded "gross." What she had imagined would be a 20-minute meeting went on for about an hour.

"He went through every name that I had on my back-up sheet that we had looked at. Instead of glazing over he looked at every single one. And gave us notes on each." 

There were more than 200 names on that particular list, about average and significantly smaller than her Google-record of 9,000 back-up ideas. Page's attention to detail, deep passion for words, and casual friendliness impressed Peterson. She didn't feel like she was talking to a mega-rich CEO — just someone who really cared about a product (though she insisted that she wasn't allowed to tell us which one). 

But on the flip side to those considered ruminations, Page isn't immune to snap judgments. Once, Peterson's team had had a name locked down for months, and one week before Google's giant I/O tech conference he heard another suggestion, liked it better, and decreed the swap.  

Amanda PetersonLots of tools, few scrabble skills

Besides the flatness of the process, Peterson's favorite thing about being a "namer" at Google is how many tools she has at her fingertips.

Google has a huge linguistics team working on natural language process that can hook her up with automated sentiment analysis that's leagues quicker and clearer than her resources at other jobs. 

"For the first time in my career I'm innovating what a naming process looks like," she says. "There are a lot of people who do professional naming, but I think something that makes me unique is I can look at a huge data set and find patterns in it."

She nailed her interview because she came prepared with a huge architecture tree of every product that Google had publicly announced. She explained how she thought the brand hierarchy worked and even asked about the naming conventions behind a specific algorithm update that her interviewers didn't even know about. Being on the inside now though, she admits that she definitely reverse-engineered some naming strategies and relationships that didn't actually exist. Google has a lot of different, unconnected brands, making it notorious for having several products that all do basically the same thing.

Keeping them all straight is no easy task, which is why, on the naming side, the company needs someone like Peterson to have a master list.  

My job is so cool.

A photo posted by Amanda C. Peterson (@gucked) on Jun 2, 2016 at 4:33pm PDT on

Besides knowing the proper nomenclature of every Google product ever, Peterson's role as a professional namer means she has some special skills, like being a human thesaurus and killing it with weird random pub trivia questions (she's comparatively terrible at Scrabble because she's always spotting interesting fake words among her letters). 

Oh, and she's an expert at getting people excited about their ideas. 

"With every product, I'm like that is the best name ever. And then for the next product, I'm like no that is the best name ever. I think 9/10 of my job is being paid by enthusiasm," she says. "Really, choosing a name, at the end, no matter how great the name is, no matter how much research you have on it, it takes a leap."

Here's the rationale behind — or what Peterson loves about — some of Google's names:

SEE ALSO: Larry Page's grand plan for Google looks more like a mess than a success

"Nougat"— the dessert-themed name of Google's latest operating system

Google always names its latest edition of its Android operating system after sweet treats, but this one was a little confusing since people in the US generally say "new-gut," while people in the UK say "noo-gah." (Listen to the difference here.)

What's up with that? 

Peterson describes her involvement in that name as "very light," but she justifies the choice:

"Our operating systems — as much as we make a big deal about them, and have statues about them — they're pet names," she says. "Most people see them in writing. The pronunciation difficulty there never gets in the way of understanding."

Most people will just call it "N" anyway. Plus ... 

"For people in the US, a 'nougat' is a bit more foreign, but it's a really common dessert in Europe," she adds. "I think sometimes people look at Google through a US lens without realizing what a big deal it is to make sure that we choose something most people who use our operating system will have had experiences with."



Allo — Google's soon-to-be-released, AI-infused messaging app

"Allo is a fun, quick way to communicate so we needed a fun, quick name just in its style," she says. "It sounds like 'hello' — not just in American English, so it's got a bit of a global nod. But because Allo is a new thing — it's got pieces of chat, of a digital assistant, of a platform for doing stuff that doesn't already have a term that people know — it couldn't just be something straightforward like 'Google Chat.' That doesn't capture everything this could be in the future."

 



Plus, "Allo" sounds good with "Duo."

"My favorite part about the Allo name is that the team thought ahead to name Allo and Duo together from the start," she says. (Duo is Google's Facetime-like video chat app.) "They're different products that solve different problems, they do live harmoniously together. So the names fit what they each do individually well, but they also sound nice together due to the end rhyme on the O."



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

This new startup lets you try out furniture before you buy it — and it changed the way I see my home

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I live in a San Francisco apartment, words synonymous with having "character" of a 100-year-old building and paying thousands for no air conditioning, heat, laundry, parking, or dishwasher. 

My living room is not only a space for my couch and TV, but it's also my dining room, my office, and my closet all rolled into one. After a recent trip to IKEA to try to get more seating for friends to come over, the only thing they said was how "crowded" my living room was with the addition of one more chair. 

To put it plainly, redecorating — no matter what size your space — is frustrating. 

That's what motivated Shanna Tellerman to start her own company, Modsy, a startup that lets you try out furniture in your own virtual house before you buy it. 

Early in her career as an intern, Tellerman had worked on the game "The Sims 2" where you can build virtual houses and arrange furniture as easy as dropping it in a room.

"I got really obsessed with seeing the world in 3D," Tellerman said. 

Her first startup, though, wasn't about designing, but taking a 3D game platform. It eventually sold to Autodesk, but Tellerman only stayed for a few years as the entrepreneurial bug caught up to her again. She joined Google Ventures as a venture capitalist, but her idea for Modsy was always nagging at her and distracting her from pitches. When she moved into a new house, she found herself in all-too familiar situation of wanting to re-do a room but having no idea how furniture would fit in the space. 

"This is a really big emotion purchase and there is no way try it on," Tellerman said. "Then furniture is such a pain to return."

For the last year-and-a-half, Tellerman has been working on her solution, Modsy. The company is launching to the public on Friday, but it gave Business Insider an inside look at how its technology works — and changed how I see my house.

My living room is best described as a multi-purpose mess. Here you can see my "dining room" (aka two-person table), "library" (built-in bookcases), "office" (computer on a table that's straddling a non-functioning heater), and my couch. We love the apartment's charm, but our furniture assembled over the years doesn't really complement it.



Like Tellerman, I've spent hours browsing Pinterest and Houzz for designs for my space — but it's hard to turn those pretty pictures into something that really reflects the quirks of my apartment or fits my needs. That's where Modsy steps in. It starts with an easy style quiz where I just choose the rooms that appeal to me.



Based on the rooms I chose, I could then say whether I liked certain items from that style. Thankfully I could rule out a high-backed chair, although I did like some of the pottery pieces.



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People do some truly crazy stuff when they encounter Google's driverless cars (googl)

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When people see Google's driverless cars, things get weird.

Each month, Google releases a monthly report detailing its autonomous cars progress. In a recent report, the company detailed how many truly strange scenarios self-driving cars face everyday. Like, preparing for a massive group of leap froggers:

google driverless car view

"We can try to come up with lots of wacky situations for our cars to handle, but the real world can defy even our wildest imaginations," Google wrote in the report.

The scenarios highlight how the robot cars must be smart enough to handle situations that are so weird programmers wouldn't think to address them in a hypothetical sense in advance.

Chris Urmson, who was director of Google's self-driving car project at the time of the report, put into perspective just how crazy things can get at the "South by Southwest" music festival in Austin, Texas. Here are some examples:

SEE ALSO: The 13 craziest Google patents

Here we see a woman in an electric wheelchair chasing a duck with a broom in the middle of the road. You read that correctly.

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As you can see, that ridiculous scenario actually happened. Urmson said there is a team at Google whose main purpose is to dream up crazy scenarios like this one and program how the car should respond. They missed dreaming up a duck-chasing lady, though.



But when there is a scenario the car can't handle, like a group of leap froggers, something called anomaly detection kicks in.

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This is when Google cars generalize what they have seen, and come up with their own solution to address the problem. That typically means slowing down, letting whatever weird thing is happening play out, and then going once it's over. 



That can be difficult when what it's seeing defies all logic, like three cars in a row going the wrong way on an intersection.

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What Donald Trump, Jennifer Lawrence, and other highly successful people were doing at age 25

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Jennifer Lawrence

Everyone's path to success is different.

For some, it's mostly linear. Others encounter more twists, turns, and bumps along the way.

While some like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson were already dominating the business world at 25, others like Larry Ellison and Mark Cuban took a little longer to hit their stride and saw their mid-20s as transformative years.

To illustrate how no two paths to success are alike, we've highlighted what 26 highly successful people were doing at age 25.

Vivian Giang and Max Nisen contributed to earlier versions of this post.

SEE ALSO: Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, and 28 other successful people share their best career advice for people in their 20s

DON'T MISS: 16 things successful 20-somethings do in their spare time

Donald Trump took over his father's real-estate-development company

Trump, a billionaire real-estate mogul, and animated TV personality, grew up wealthy. But as he told Forbes, his father wanted him to learn the value of money.

As a kid, his dad would take him to construction sites and have him and his brother pick up empty soda bottles to redeem for cash. He says that he didn't make much, but it taught him to work for his money.

At 25, the young real-estate developer was given control of his father's company, Elizabeth Trump & Son, which he later renamed the Trump Organization, according to Bio. He soon became involved in large, profitable building projects in Manhattan.



Jennifer Lawrence was an Oscar-winner raking in millions

At just 26 years old, Lawrence is Hollywood's highest-paid actress, raking $46 million pretax over 12 months this year, and closer to $52 million last year, according to Forbes.

By the time she was 25, Lawrence had starred in the box-office-hit "Hunger Games" trilogy and worked alongside a star-studded cast in the X-Men series.

At 22, she became the second-youngest winner of the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in "Silver Linings Playbook," and she has won many more awards for her work.

 



Steve Jobs took his company public and became a millionaire

By the end of its first day of trading in December 1980, Apple Computer had a market value of $1.2 billion, making its cofounders very rich men. Jobs, one of the three cofounders, was 25.

He later told biographer Walter Isaacson that he made a pledge at that time to never let money ruin his life.



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Amazon is doubling down on retail stores with plans to have up to 100 pop-up stores in US shopping malls (AMZN)

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Amazon is aggressively expanding its presence in the real-world retail market, with a plan to open dozens of new pop-up stores in US shopping malls over the next year, a source familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

The miniature retail storefronts are a separate effort from the physical bookstore that Amazon opened in Seattle last year and are primarily designed to showcase and sell the company's hardware devices, particularly its Echo home speakers.

The pop-up stores, which are spearheaded by Amazon's head of devices and services, reflect the company's growing drive to reach consumers directly through a variety of access points including retail storefronts, home delivery, and innovative devices.

Just as Apple changed its relationship with customers through its sleek retail stores, Amazon is building out its vision for a new class retail business that weaves together a powerful assortment of online and physical components.

Pop-up stores, typically 300- to 500-square-foot locations in the middle of shopping malls, carry an assortment of Amazon hardware — including the Kindle e-readers, Fire TV, and the Echo speakers — as well as accessories. But the broader goal is to drive more traffic to Amazon's online store, as these devices make it easier to purchase items there.

As of August, Amazon had 16 pop-up stores in the US — nearly three times as many as the six it had at the end of last year, according to the source. That number is expected to exceed 30 this year and could go up to as many as 100 by next year, as new stores are popping up almost every week in shopping malls across the country, this person said.

In fact, Amazon quietly launched a new site dedicated to its pop-up stores; it shows 21 now. The stores are spread across 12 states, including New York and Texas, with California owning the most (six).

End of the test phase

Amazon is hiring a number of positions for "Amazon device pop-up stores" in multiple locations that have yet to be announced, including Miami, Florida, and West Hartford, Connecticut, according to job listings.

In one of the job posts, Amazon says pop-up stores "have emerged from the test phase with a goal to expand and grow."

Business Insider's source said Amazon seems to be putting a lot more resources in its pop-up store expansion and that it could potentially evolve into other forms as well, such as a brick-and-mortar space similar to an Apple Store. Amazon has tested things like pop-up trucks, but those haven't really materialized into any meaningful sales channels.

Amazon pop up store

Amazon never officially announced pop-up store launches, although it did confirm the 2014 opening of its San Francisco one in the upscale Westfield Mall. And The Wall Street Journal's Greg Bensinger discovered a smaller pop-up store in the mall a year before that.

Amazon still hasn't closed its Westfield Mall location, despite the short-term nature of pop-up stores.

The pop-up stores come with hefty fixed costs, including leases in shopping malls and full-time employees to staff the storefronts. But they offer a new way for the company to boost its brand awareness and to drive sales, both at the stores and on its website.

Given Amazon's obsession with data, the decision to expand the network of stores may indicate that the company has seen an uptick in online sales in the regions where it already has pop-up stores.

The pop-ups also serve a strategic purpose by providing Amazon with its own physical sales channel — something that has become especially important after big-box retailers such as Target and Walmart stopped selling Amazon devices in 2012. (Target plans to bring Amazon products back this year.)

Amazon declined to comment on its roadmap for the stores but provided this statement: "We offer pop-up kiosks so that customers can try out all our new devices and learn about our services like Prime and unique content like Amazon Originals."

The Echo effect

Amazon SVP of Device Dave Limp

One interesting part about Amazon's pop-up stores is that they're run by the devices team, not the retail team that opened Amazon's bookstore last year. The initiative is led by Senior Vice President of Devices and Services Dave Limp, who oversees everything from the Kindle to the Echo.

That means the push for more pop-up stores coincides with the success of the Echo, which is widely considered to be the next big hit product for Amazon. The Echo's success has prompted rivals such as Google and, reportedly, Apple to develop competing versions.

According to multiple sources, Amazon is increasingly putting more resources to developing the Echo and its voice technology platform, Alexa — and the pop-up stores provide an important way to raise brand awareness for both products.

Another source said Amazon played with the pop-up store concept while the Echo was being developed in 2013, as it's a way to let people play, hands-on, with its devices, especially the unusual ones like the Echo.

"Lowering the barriers to trial and letting people feel how things actually work is a great way to start," this person said.

It's unclear why Amazon's taking such a low-key approach to its pop-up store expansion. But it's not too uncommon for Amazon to do things quietly when it's clear that it has bigger ambitions. Amazon's fashion team, for example, launched seven private labels over the past year — and it's expected to overtake Macy's as the top apparel retailer in the US by 2017.

SEE ALSO: The inside story of how Amazon created Echo, the next billion-dollar business no one saw coming

Here's what the pop-up store in San Francisco's Westfield Mall looks like.



The view from the other side.



It's located right in front of the entrance to Bloomingdale's, so lots of foot traffic.



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The 7 most freakishly accurate ways science fiction predicted the future

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Science fiction authors imagine the future as a site for escapist adventures, speculation, or incisive commentaries on the state of the world.

The goal — of good science fiction at least — isn't to make the most accurate prediction possible.

But the technologies and cultural trends sci-fi authors describe often anticipate or inspire real changes in the way we live. Sometimes, you can see how they made their accurate guesses. Other times it's more difficult.

Here are some of the most bizarrely accurate predictions science fiction writers ever made.

In 1998, Octavia Butler predicted Donald Trump.

Octavia Butler, one of the greatest science fiction authors of the second half of the twentieth century, died in 2006, just two years after the first episode of "The Apprentice."

But in her 1998 novel "Parable of the Talents," Butler imagined a 2032 presidential campaign with some striking similarities to Trump's.

In the novel, as Fusion writer Kashmir Hill first spotted, Texas Senator and presidential candidate Andrew Steele Jarret runs on a platform of tough action against a US neighbor (Canada though, not Mexico) and controversial statements about Muslims (along with other religious groups.) But most striking is his slogan: "Make America Great Again."



In 1911, Hugo Gernsback predicted Skype.

The early science fiction novel "Ralph 124C 41+" by Hugo Gernsback made a number of stunning predictions, including solar power, radar, and television. But most stunning for a novel written in the silent film era was his vision of a two-way visual communication system using cameras and screens — one that looks a lot like Skype, Facetime, and other video conference systems.



In the 1960s, Star Trek predicted the smartphone.

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If there's a single gadget that defines the modern era, it's the smartphone — part computer, part navigator, part communications device, and small enough to fit in your pocket.

The first true cell phones hit the market in the 1980s, early Blackberry smartphones in the late '90s, and the iPhone in 2010. But the original "Star Trek" series introduced the communicator — essentially a powerful smartphone without a screen — back in 1966. And Martin Cooper, who helped invent the mobile phone at Motorola, credits the fictional device with inspiring the innovation.

It even flips!



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Here's the income you need to comfortably pay rent on a 2-bedroom apartment in 15 of the largest US cities

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City life isn't cheap.

According to the personal-finance site SmartAsset, you have to earn over $150,000 a year to afford rent on a two-bedroom apartment in New York City.

In its new report, the site looked at the average fair market rent (the average cost of renting an available apartment in 2016) for two-bedroom apartments in the 300 largest US cities, then focused on the main cities within the 15 largest metro areas.

To calculate the gross income required, SmartAsset set the rent-to-income ratio at 28% — that percentage is based off of government standards, which say that housing is affordable if you don't have to spend over 30% of your income on housing-related expenses.

Read on to see how much you would have to make (before taxes) to afford rent in 15 major US cities.

SEE ALSO: Here's how much it costs for a family to live in 20 major US cities

15. Detroit

Fair market rent for a two-bedroom: $886 a month

Income required: $37,971



14. Phoenix

Fair market rent for a two-bedroom: $1,162 a month

Income required: $49,800



13. Riverside, California

Fair market rent for a two-bedroom: $1,239 a month

Income required: $53,100



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