Peter Fisk

Ctrip CEO Jane Sun talked with Forbes magazine and China’s travel boom, and how Ctrip sees its future:

Jane Sun joined small online travel service company Ctrip as CFO in 2005 with the belief she was getting in early on a boom in China travel. The then six-year-old business had managed to list on the Nasdaq in 2003; when Sun joined two years later, its market capitalization was only about $500 million.

Today, Sun leads an industry heavyweight with 33,000 staff. Ctrip’s market valuation of $25 billion exceeds better-known U.S. rival Expedia ($17 billion). Sales grew by 75% in the third quarter as it consolidated revenue with Qunar, the pesky domestic competitor it merged with last year.

Even before that hook-up, growth and momentum had already been rapid owing in part to the expansion and alliances that Sun has helped to engineer and that led Ctrip to name her CEO in November. In the past 12 months alone, Ctrip acquired Skyscanner Holdings, a United Kingdom travel search site for 1.4 billion pounds; earlier last year, it bought two U.S. tour operators that specialize in serving Chinese travelers. And in January 2016, Ctrip invested $180 million for 15% of India’s MakeMyTrip, the country’s biggest online travel company.   All in all, says an upbeat Sun, “Ctrip still has lots of room to grow.”

One of Sun’s biggest fans is Liang, Ctrip’s outgoing CEO and a co-founder. When Sun was hired in 2005, “I knew from friends that Jane was a very driven and capable individual. I’ve discovered many other good qualities. Even though she is very nice and sensitive to employees and partners, she is also decisive in action.” Among other things, Liang also respects her passion and confidence about the future: She’s hardly sold any shares since she started at Ctrip. (Sun currently holds a 1.6% stake worth $300 million.) All of that success helped Sun rank No. 15 on the 2017 Forbes China list of outstanding businesswomen in the country unveiled this week.

Shanghai-born Sun’s keen spirit of ambition is long-standing. The high achiever started her university education at Peking University, but gave it up after she won a scholarship to the University of Florida.   Afterward, she worked as an audit manager for accounting firm KPMG in Silicon Valley for more than five years, followed by another eight as the head of the SEC and external reporting division of Santa Clara-headquartered semiconductor equipment supplier Applied Materials.   Along the way, Sun through friends on a trip to Yosemite National Park, met another smart Shanghainese who also found success in America: John Wu, an engineer who was an early employee at Yahoo. The two went on to marry and have two daughters.

When Wu returned to China to accept a job at then fledging Alibaba Group as chief technology officer in 2000, the couple were in the difficult position of a marriage where Wu would only come home to California once a month. In 2005, Ctrip needed to replace co-founder Neil Shen as CFO after he left to start up Sequoia China.   Sun’s global experience helped her land the job.

Early on at Ctrip, Sun focused on normal CFO duties: Talking to shareholders and analysts, building a team, and looking for ways to improve efficiency. ”If our staff can use 10 words to finish a sentence, we will not use 12 words to finish a sentence. Why?  If every staff uses two extra words, the customers will waste a lot of time, and every minute has a cost associated with it,” she said.

Yet also behind Sun’s climb was also a willingness to push beyond her CFO role. “In addition to the normal CFO job, I would reach out to the operations team. If no one had taken care of a problem, I would reach out and fix them.” So by 2012, Sun was promoted to COO. Soon after, she was also leading the international business and international negotiation for partnerships.

By 2015, Ctrip was ready to make Sun CEO. “James talked to me and said you are ready to take on the CEO position. I talked to him and said, ‘I would be very honored,’” she recalled. But instead of jumping on the offer, she asked for time to better shape her team. Responsible for the bottom line since Nov. 16, Sun as CEO says she expects new customers at home to continue to help drive Ctrip’s future growth. “Domestically, Ctrip has a lot of room to penetrate into the second and third tier cities. The majority of people in these cities are still using traditional travel agencies to conduct their travel business.”

International business – now accounting for 20% of the company’s revenue – is also going to be critical. “A lot of Chinese people are making more money, so they can afford going abroad more. Also, visa restrictions for many Chinese travelers are being lifted, and that offers many new opportunities” for Ctrip, Sun says.

The three overseas recent investments made by Ctrip that were led by Sun indicate the widening breadth of Shanghai-based Ctrip’s interests. It bought tour operators in Las Angeles and Las Vegas that cater to Chinese to better serve the growing numbers of Chinese customers traveling to the U.S.; Ctrip also invested into Nasdaq-traded MakeMyTrip as a channel into a unique market. “We believe India has a heavy population growth and they are at the stage where China was 15 years ago,” Sun said. “Although GDP per capital is still quite low, they have the potential to grow their GDP per capita and travelers will increase.  We believe that market is very unique, so we invested. “

U.K.-headquartered Skyscanner, however, may be the most telling: it puts Ctrip in the middle of a non-Chinese market in a relatively big way. “It has a price comparison model but doesn’t do any booking,” allowing Ctrip to share its experience in the air ticketing business, Sun said. “If they can make a reservation for their customers after they do price comparison, then customer satisfaction will increase. There will be a lot of synergy between Skyscanner and Ctrip.”

Those new initiatives come after a financial turbulent year that most analysts say isn’t likely to repeat in 2017. The company’s profit and its share price fell after it acquired Qunar; both improved by year-end.  Longer term, Ctrip’s strengths as a brand leader will also likely help it fend off from newer, pesky rivals in China, says Deutschebank, which does business with Ctrip.

Yet it’s not entirely business and family that drive Sun and Ctrip. The company has taken an unusually high-profile role in talking about China’s ageing problem, seeing it as a threat to China’s long-term economic prospects.   “We want to become a role model, and say that in order to have a healthy birthrate for the country, enterprises need to do a lot to support our working employees,” Sun says. “The government also needs to do quite a lot, for example, providing tax breaks to encourage couples to have children. And individuals also have to work on it, because China’s population birthrate is only 1.5.  To stabilize the population in the country, every family has to have 2.1 children.   China is way below (that),” she says. “We want to be sure that Ctrip establishes a good role model as a good corporate citizen.”  Yet Ctrip isn’t entirely without a business stake in that outcome because more than half of its employees are women; more than a third of its VPs are, too.

To address the problem, Ctrip has focused how to increase childbirth among staff and create incentives to stick with the company. Among its programs: It gives an 8,000 yuan “gift” whenever a female employee has a child. It also offers free taxi rides to work for female staff that are pregnant. For mothers with preschool kids, it also runs a “summer camp” in its headquarters and an onsite nursery. If you are from outside of Shanghai and wish to return to your inland hometown to have children there, Ctrip will also let you work at home.

Sun believes having a female CEO like herself adds a further layer of good communication between female and male workers. “With me, they open their heart. When they talk to James, he’ll say, ‘This is right or wrong,’ and it’s a short conversation,” Sun laughs. “When they come to my office, they will burst out laughing or crying, they feel very natural.”

One long-termer at Ctrip is Yan Li, employee No. 16. The mother of two manages 5,000 of Ctrip’s employees that work at call centers. “The business grew fast early on, and you could get promoted because you understood the customer,” says Yan, whose responsibilities started with hotels, and moved onto to air tickets and now international reservations.  A good point about working at Ctrip: “You don’t have to give up your family to advance,” she said. On the other hand, “It’s a tense work environment and you have to do a good job,” she adds.

Ctrip’s efforts, while socially noble, are nevertheless part of a larger, deepening market-driven alignment between China’s private-sector businesses and the government owing to the declining numbers of work-age citizens in the country. “The need for women to work has to be emphasized, and public policy should encourage women to work,” says Mu Guangzong, author of “The Graying of China: From the Universal Two-Child Policy to Successful Ageing.” “Companies and the government aren’t at odds with each other.”

Sun says the economics of being a good employer for women justify Ctrip’s spending and aggressive programs. “The return is very good. Because our employee retention is higher, the company’s training expenses are lower than they would otherwise be,” she says, underscoring a larger formula for her own staying power and success both in the business world of Ctrip and in life: combining passion with a broader purpose.

To identify the many ways that a doctor’s office can be improved, One Medical founder and CEO Tom X. Lee, an internist, spent the company’s early days serving in a variety of roles, from physician to accountant.

He hit on a membership model that adds tech-enabled services to a high-tech foundation—allowing him to cut the administrative costs of traditional care by two-thirds, he says.

One Medical now has 54 offices around the U.S., a 46% bump over 2015, and its model offers a template for a health care system in flux. “We’re doing more for less,” says Lee, “and always reengineering our processes.”

Business Insider describes a recent visit:

Going to the doctor’s office can be a logistical nightmare. A physician’s busy schedule doesn’t always allow you to stop in when you’re feeling worst. When you do finally get there, you wait in a fluorescent-lit, white-walled room among screaming babies and sneezing patients for what seems like an eternity.

One Medical Group, a concierge medical practice that promises high-quality care at an affordable rate, reimagines this experience.

The company oversees a networkof 250-plus primary care specialists in 40 US cities, enabling patients to book last-minute appointments on their phones, get certain prescriptions via the One Medical app, and access health records online.

The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2007, added 80,000 new patients in 2015 and brought in a number of enterprise clients.

I was one of those new patients, and it didn’t take long for me to become obsessed. Here’s what it’s like inside one of One Medical’s swanky doctor’s offices in San Francisco.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0_DeBB774

Amber Venz Box just wanted to make more money as a fashion blogger when she and her husband started RewardStyle in 2011.

The Dallas-based company quickly grew to be the premier platform for retailers to reach social media influencers and their audiences, and for those influencers to increase their earnings through affiliate links. ShopBop, Neiman Marcus, and Net-a-Porter were among the first retailers to work with RewardStyle. By 2016, more than 4,000 stores were working with the company to reach 11,000 social influencers posting original content about 30,000 pieces each day.

RewardStyle’s most well known product is LiketoKnow.it, an online content management system that allows influencers on Instagram to determine what products sell best with their followers, and track those sales and the resulting commissions. RewardStyle vets influencers before releasing its suite of tools to them—more than 100,000 have applied to work with the company, according to Venz Box. The company negotiates commissions on their behalf and provides tools to help them track the impact of their posts. In that way, she’s an advocate for the nascent influencer industry.

RewardStyle’s footprint is growing beyond the influencer community. When Google launched its Shop the Look functionality in September 2016, it used LiketoKnow.it to surface the content and affiliate links. In 2016, RewardStyle drove more than $700 million in sales. Up next for the company: refining its digital offerings to help retailers more accurately target their ideal customers, and launching a style-centric search engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKT7nY5aAnM

TechCrunch takes up the story in this extract from 2016:

These days, you can’t swing a bag of cats around without hitting some sort of social influencer. But how do these people make money from their content?

RewardStyle is a Dallas-based startup, provides a platform for influencers and bloggers to get paid for all the sales they inspire out of consumers. Though the company has been operating under the radar, it has grown to generate more than $1 billion in sales for its 4,000 retailers and 575,000 brands worldwide since launching in 2011.

It all started when founder Amber Venz Box, personal shopper and jewelry maker, was running her own style blog. She started seeing loads of sales going through from her content but wasn’t getting any payout from the retailers. Effectively, she had cut herself out of her own business.

She decided to build something, with the help of her boyfriend (now husband) Baxter Box, that eventually turned into RewardStyle.

Here’s how it works:

Bloggers can create clickable links from their content (pictures, text, etc.) that lead directly to retailers and brands. When a reader clicks through and makes a purchase, both the blogger and the retailer can track that purchase and send a commission to the blogger for the lead.

For a long while, this system worked out just fine, and RewardStyle continued to grow in both influencers and retailers. Then Instagram came along.

As Instagram picked up steam as a major platform for influencers, RewardStyle was left with the challenge of connecting sales from influencers to retailers without the ability to track links — as you know, Instagram doesn’t allow links on pictures.

To overcome this obstacle, RewardStyle launched LikeToKnowIt, a platform built specifically for Instagram. Bloggers signed on to the LikeToKnowIt platform have a specific link for their profile (the only link allowed on Instagram) that takes their followers to a unique web page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUmuou_5x_s

This page lists each item that appears in every image of the influencer’s Instagram feed, complete with shoppable, trackable links so that the influencer gets paid out.

LikeToKnowIt also lets users sign up for a newsletter, which pushes every photo they like on Instagram directly to their inbox.

In the past two years since launch, LikeToKnowIt has generated more than $100 million in revenue, with 1.5 million users subscribed to the system and more than 1,000 LTKI posts created every day.

With the fashion space relatively conquered, RewardStyle has now launched other verticals, partnering with home decor influencers and retailers like West Elm.

Best known for its ubiquitous Wanda Plazas—elaborate shopping malls with movie theaters, apartments, and office buildings—Dalian Wanda made its fortune on real estate but is now rapidly diversifying to become a major player in entertainment.

As the Chinese box office gallops to become the world’s largest, Wanda is hungry for high-quality content and IP to push through its global movie theater chains and theme parks. In 2016 it spent billions on Legendary Entertainment and Dick Clark Productions, and made a deal to co-finance and market Sony films in China.

But founder Wang Jianlin’s ambitions extend beyond just partnering with Americans. He’s intent on building his own version of Hollywood in Qingdao, where Wanda will soon open an $8 billion movie production facility.

Wang is also taking on Disney and has announced 15 new theme parks that he likens to a “pack of wolves” in comparison to the “tiger” that is Shanghai Disneyland.

In this extract from a 2016 article, Fortune magazine describes how Wang Jianlin is reinventing Dalian Wanda:

The first thing you should know about China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, is that he’s not afraid to go big.

When his Dalian Wanda Group conglomerate opened its first “theme park city” this May, in the small Chinese city of Nanchang, it stretched across two square kilometers, doubling as China’s largest new tourist trap and ammo for Wang’s outsized ambitions for taking on Disney.

“The frenzy of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the era of blindly following them have passed,” Wang told China’s CCTV the week before the Nanchang unveiling, in words that were brash even by the outspoken billionaire’s standards. Disney’s new Shanghai park was set to open the following month, but Wang said his park—along with 15 to 20 more that he plans to build—would keep it unprofitable for the next decade. Of Disney (DIS, -0.21%), he added, “They shouldn’t have entered China.”

Not that Wang himself has any trouble crossing borders. Two months later, in mid-July, Wanda was reported to be in the running for a 49% stake in Paramount Pictures, the Hollywood studio controlled by Viacom (VIAB, -1.35%) that dates back more than 100 years. The studio’s total valuation might run as high as $8 billion to $10 billion. If Wang were to win the bidding, it would be Asia’s biggest deal in Hollywood since Sony bought Columbia Pictures in the 1980s. And it would top Wang’s last Hollywood deal, which happened just six months ago. In January Wanda spent $3.5 billion on the movie production house Legendary Entertainment, the producer behind Jurassic World and the Hangover trilogy.

Even aside from its Hollywood and theme park aspirations, Wanda has been growing—and growing abroad—so fast that the world outside China has begun to pay attention. In 2015 alone, Wanda bought race organizer World Triathlon Corp.; Infront Sports & Media, which is selling Asian broadcasting rights to the next two soccer World Cups; and a stake in Spanish soccer club Atletico Madrid, for a total of $5 billion in overseas spending during the year. Back home, its sprawling web of malls and real estate generated enough cash for Wanda to make the Fortune Global 500 list for the first time this year. Wanda ranks No. 385 on the global list, with $27.4 billion in sales and $2.4 billion in profits in 2015, up 18.8% from $23 billion in 2014. If Wanda were an American company, it would rank just above Macy’s (M, +1.82%) in sales and not far behind entertainment giant Time Warner (TWX, +0.60%).

Wanda’s route to the list, however, has been anything but ordinary.

By Wanda’s own count, it is on its fourth company-wide transformation in less than three decades, having started as a small, state-owned real estate developer in the northeast coastal city of Dalian. Its ongoing rise reflects the growing clout of Wang, who has proven himself to be both an inventive businessman and a favored government friend in an economy where such ties are important. Now, he and Wanda are helping China spread its soft power abroad, through everything from stakes in foreign companies to constructions projects along the Thames in London and in downtown Chicago.

Wang, 61, was born to a father who served in Chairman Mao’s revolutionary army. Wang himself joined the People’s Liberation Army at the age of 15. But at 32, after tiring of his own officer track, he left for a government job. Wang eventually joined the Xigang Development Company, a residential developer in Dalian, a port city and trading hub near China’s border with North Korea.

Wang revived the failing state-owned builder after getting an army buddy’s help securing a loan. He changed the firm’s name from the lifeless Xigang to Wanda (which means “everything being accomplished”) after soliciting names through a newspaper contest. As China tested its first market reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wanda became one of the country’s first companies to issue shares; it privatized over the following years, with Wang becoming its largest shareholder.

Wanda expanded beyond Dalian and went national in the early 1990s, completing what became its first transformation. It then branched into commercial properties beginning in 2000, when the company’s shopping malls—called Wanda Plazas—began dotting the country. That was its second transformation; a third came as the company branched into tourist projects in the late 2000s. Wang, meanwhile, became a public figure whose slender-cut Western suits and widow’s peak gave the appearance of a leader straight from an executive MBA program, belying his relatively humble origins.

Wanda’s fourth transformation started last year, as the company began spreading its money around the world. Wang plans to flip Wanda’s focus from real estate to a few key domestic services sectors. By 2018, Wanda expects two-thirds of its sales to come from consumer services, up from about 40% last year, with an emphasis on tourism, entertainment and sports.

Those three sectors happen to be three main drivers of China’s transition into a consumer-led economy, and the government has declared that expanding them is a priority. The ruling State Council released a goal last October to nearly double the value of sports as a percentage of China’s GDP (currently 0.63%), which would make it a $775 billion sector by 2025.

“If you can leverage favorable policies, it’s good,” says Wang Xin, president of Greater China for consultancy Frost and Sullivan, of Wanda’s strategy. “In the long haul it’s not about leveraging policies alone, it’s about understanding future trends.”

Wang doesn’t hide the fact that Wanda chases government-sponsored trends. “Wanda’s transformation is consistent with China’s economic strategy,” he said in a 2015 speech in China. The State Council released guidelines several years ago encouraging private companies to expand globally: “It can be said that Wanda answered that call,” Wang told Harvard Business School students last October.

Wanda Group did not make Wang available for an interview. But Liu Mingsheng, a spokesman, said of the company’s strategy, “The entire Chinese economy is going through transitions. The main objective is to achieve a state of economic growth that is based on domestic consumption. Wanda’s transition is consistent with China’s economic strategy.”

Wang’s rise accelerated in 2007, around the time that investors related to top government officials began taking stakes in his private firm. Until then, Wanda had only one other outside shareholder. Wanda was little known, and Wang not yet a billionaire. By last year he had passed Alibaba’s Jack Ma as China’s richest man, worth $34 billion, according to the Hurun Rich List, an annual ranking of China’s wealthiest individuals.

According to a 2015 investigation by Michael Forsythe in the New York Times, stakes in Wanda were offered to business partners and relatives of two then-members of the ruling Politburo, and later to the sister of China’s now president, Xi Jinping. In one example, an investor’s stakes multiplied from the $500,000 and $200,000 they paid to more than $900 million.

There is nothing illegal about the deals, and Wang has emphasized Wanda does not pay bribes. Wang also appears to have come through Xi’s anti-corruption drive unscathed. Wang responded to the Times report in the speech at Harvard last October, saying Xi’s sister and her husband, Deng Jiagui, sold their shares in the Dalian Commercial Properties unit before it went public in 2014. “Deng sold all the shares held by his investment company and fully exited at a low price point,” Wang said.

Still, the financial interactions underscore Wanda’s closeness to Chinese leaders and state institutions and leave the impression of Wang as a favored son. When Wanda bought the U.S. theater chain AMC in 2012, beginning a string of overseas acquisitions, a group of state banks including the government’s State Export-Import Bank helped finance the $2.6 billion deal, offering aid that private-sector companies seldom get.

“China still has a long way to go to build its own soft power,” wrote state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times earlier this year. “Companies like Wanda are pioneers on the road of China’s modernization and they deserve more encouragement.”

Wanda’s latest transition into consumer services brings it even closer to the government. As part of its move, Wanda wants to reduce the need to invest huge piles of its own money in real estate development. Although it plans to expand the number Wanda Plazas—it will open 55 this year, it says, for a total of around 180—more than 20 of those will be funded by outside investors who hold the land, usually governments or government-affiliated companies. Wanda will share the rental income, but will save its capital for projects like the Nanchang theme park, overseas acquisitions, and a movie studio Wanda is building in coastal Qingdao to rival those in Hollywood.

Earlier this year, Wang laid out Wanda’s goals for the next five years. By the end of 2020, he says, the company will reach $100 billion in sales and $10 billion in profits, and overseas sales will bring in 30% of the total. The company treats the figures almost as military orders. Managers head to daily management meetings and see numbers changing from green to yellow to red on their computers, depending on their progress toward these goals.

These are audacious figures, not least because Wanda’s sales are expected to fall this year amid a real estate slowdown that has forced many department stores in its malls to close. Wanda says overall sales will fall by 12% in 2016. Unless it goes on a hyperbolic growth streak starting in 2017, expanding sales more than 25% a year, the $100 billion goal looks out of reach.

But $100 billion by 2020 is probably not Wanda’s ultimate goal, anymore than keeping Shanghai Disneyland unprofitable for a decade is a real strategic objective.

Instead, Wang wants Wanda to become an international brand, with the same name recognition as Microsoft, Apple, and Walmart. “That’s my dream,” he said at Harvard. That aligns very closely with the Chinese government’s goal: a strong Chinese private-sector presence on the world’s corporate stage, where the country now is represented only by a handful of state-owned banks and energy giants, and a couple of tech companies.

Wang is a natural spokesman for a newly assertive China: he’s savvy, sanguine, and brash. At Harvard, he opined on how long it might take for Wanda to become a real international brand. “Speaking of when I could achieve it, maybe in 4 or 5 years the fastest,” he said. “Or 7 to 8 years in a slower pace.” If Wang does reach that goal, it will be both Wanda and China sharing the international stage.

Download: The Wanda Way by Jianlin Wang

London to New York in under 3 hours at business-class prices. I remember doing that, even managing the brand, back in the late eighties when I started out in the airline industry.

Concorde was magical, the thrill of boarding, straight up into the stratosphere, thrown back in your seat as the engine boosters kick in, and then sitting back to champagne and caviar. Manhattan is soon in view, and you dive down into JFK at the last moment, arriving 2 hours  before you set off (because of the time changes). But then a french crash, unsustainable costs and old technology spelt the end of the 20th century dream, and Concorde was gone.

But now, supersonic travel is back. Though the plane won’t likely debut until the early 2020s, Boom unveiled a scale model in 2016. It has signed on with the Virgin Group as its likely initial customer; Richard Branson’s company has options on the first ten planes.

CEO Blake Scholl has assembled a staff of 25 with deep experience across the aviation industry, and on the strength of that expertise, it has already booked $5 billion worth of business—though it has yet to get its hands on that money. Boom cites a market study that suggests there is potential global carrier demand for around 1,300 of its planes. What makes Boom’s supersonic plane economically feasible is that it has just 45 seats, all of which will be business class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdE9wHkgfbA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJkM-ykKRxg

“I have long been passionate about aerospace innovation and the development of high-speed commercial flights,” Branson said. “As an innovator in the space, Virgin Galactic’s decision to work with Boom was an easy one.”

At the same time, Boom is touting the results of an evaluation of its business prospects by aviation analysts at Boyd Group International (BGI)that suggests if the production plane can deliver on its expected price and ticket costs, there’s likely to be worldwide demand for at least 1,300 of the $200 million planes. There were never more than 14 Concordes in operation.

“In key business class markets–such as trans-Atlantic–it is projected that the new airliner will have enormous airline demand,” BGI wrote in its report. “It is not a further evolution of existing aircraft. Instead, it offers [an] entirely new set of air travel metrics, and a new product offering for major international airlines.”

Finally, Scholl asserts he’s confident that the people he’s assembled from some of the world’s most accomplished aviation stalwarts have the expertise to pull off what’s never been done before—make supersonic travel affordable, and profitable, at a global scale.

Update, 23 March 2017: 

There was once a day when supersonic travel was one of the most romantic notions in aviation. The iconic Concorde was beautiful and entirely distinctive (and tickets were insanely expensive). Then, it was no more, and the concept vanished in thin air. But if you always wanted to fly faster than the speed of sound,  Boom Supersonic, with 45-seat planes that can make the run from New York to London in three and a quarter hours (rather than today’s seven) for business class prices.

Today, Boom said it has raised $33 million in VC funding, bringing its total to $41 million, and that Y Combinator president Sam Altman has joined its board. It will use the money to finish building XB-1, a one-third-size demonstrator of its full-scale plane. Boom has already signed up Virgin Atlantic as a probable launch customer, as well as the blessing of a leading aviation industry analyst who suggests that if Boom’s cutting-edge technology can deliver on its expected price and ticket costs, airlines are likely to want at least 1,300 of the $200 million planes. Boom is hoping to start test-flying the XB-1 by year’s end and flying passengers aboard the full-scale plane in the early 2020s.

Kelechi Anyadiegwu launched e-commerce site Zuvaa with $500 and the simple idea that there was an unmet demand among people living outside Africa for authentic African styles. She’s been proven right.

Sourcing from a growing list of designers in North America and in Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa, Zuvaa has become the Amazon/Etsy of vibrant Ankara or Kente fabrics and cutting-edge clothing as seen on the streets of Lagos, Accra, and Johannesburg.

Launched in May 2014, Zuvaa currently features some 75 designers from Africa and North America, and rang up $2.3 million in sales of clothing and accessories in 2016. The company is stepping up marketing with a newsletter delivering daily African fashion news, and has a U.S. pop-up tour planned for 2017.

In her own words:

I started Zuvaa because I wanted to see change in the fashion industry. As an African-American Woman of Nigerian Heritage I grew up with African textiles, they were always an integral part of my culture. Growing up, I often found it difficult to find modern and trendy African Inspired pieces.  I created Zuvaa to fill this void.

At Zuvaa, we’re shining a light on African Fashion. The Zuvaa Marketplace is a premier online destination to find unique and one of kind African Inspired pieces. We work directly with emerging designers around the world to bring you the best selection of high quality, one of kind African Inspired pieces the industry has to offer.

Our mission is to empower designers worldwide with the tools to enter a global market and to make woman around the world feel bold and beautiful in vibrant and eccentric African inspired designs. Through this we are not only shining a light on African Fashion, but we are also shining a light on Africa. We are changing perceptions of Africa and Africans through fashion.

As the African Fashion industry becomes globalized, we want to make sure those who are taking advantage of this global industry are the ones who truly understand and appreciate the beauty and cultural significance of African textiles and aesthetics. Our grassroots approach to merchandising allows us to truly tap talent of designers on the African continent and in the diaspora. These are the designers who should be shaping the African Fashion industry and we are giving them a platform to tell their stories.

Zuvaa is not just an online store, we are a community, we are a movement. We are fashion lovers worldwide who not only seek to support ethically manufactured and produced pieces, but look to make a statement. We are all about making Bold Statements in Bold Prints. Zuvaa, inspired by the Shona language of Zimbabwe word ‘Zuva’ meaning sunshine, represents the vibrancy and radiance of African culture and how our customers’ personal light shines through African aesthetics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt8wSZJo5YM

Interview in TheEveryGirl.com blog:

Kelechi Anyadiegwu is certainly not your average graduate student. While most grad students are all consumed by coursework demands, Kelechi decided to take on another extracurricular activity: launching a fashion marketplace.

While in the midst of earning her graduate degree, she saw an opportunity to combine her talents and passions and jumped immediately into a full-scale business. In 2013 she began Zuvaa (which means “sunshine” in the Shona language from Zimbabwe) when she saw an unmet demand in the market for African textile prints and fashion. Rather than waiting until she finished her master’s program, she immediately decided to turn this demand into an opportunity, combining her talents and passions.

Kelechi has done much in two years and has much to be proud of—including being named on a the Forbes 30 under 30 list for retail and ecommerce—but she still remains humble. Our favorite part of her interview? When we asked about her proudest moment so far, she didn’t name a prestigious award she’s won. Instead, she spoke about jobs she’s helped create on the African continent through a growing global demand for African fashion. With passion like that it’s safe to say this is only the beginning of big things yet to come for Kelechi.

Tell us a little about how you started this business. What inspired you to create Zuvaa?
I’m originally from Nigeria but grew up in the U.S. I’ve always looked for ways to integrate my love and pride for African culture into my wardrobe. I love wearing print and African textiles and when I would wear them people would constantly ask me where I found those pieces. I realized there was really a demand for this product so I used my experience in online marketing, web design, and user experience to create a platform to connect the talented designers around the world with consumers who were looking for these beautiful products

You didn’t have any retail experience before you started Zuvaa. Were you at all hesitant before starting?
No, I really just jumped in! I remember having the idea one day and the next day I had the domain and started working on the social media. I just went as fast as I could and learned as I went. I didn’t really have any hesitations—maybe I should have—but I kind of just jumped right in.

Explain a little bit about how Zuvaa works. How do you bring on new designers and vendors?
Zuvaa is a true marketplace. In order to be a part of Zuvaa, designers must apply and send us samples of their products so we can touch, feel, and see the quality. Once approved, a vendor will upload their items and have complete control of imagery, aesthetic, and pricing. Customers are able to shop through Zuvaa and find pieces and designers they wouldn’t have had access to before. We try to support our vendors any way that they need. We have vendors all over the world and some of them need help with things like logistics and shipping. We’ll give them the information and support the need so they’re able to be successful on Zuvaa.

Once you had the idea for Zuvaa, how did you find your first designers?
They actually found us! We were growing such a large and engaged social media following that vendors started to take notice quickly. They wanted to be a part of and get in front of our growing community so we didn’t have a problem finding designers and vendors who wanted to sell through our platform at the very beginning.

How many designers are you currently working with?
We started with 20 designers and have about 75 designers right now. It’s amazing to see the growth.

Have you always known that you wanted to start a business?
Not really. I remember three or four years ago when I started graduate school I tweeted that I wished I could find a job that would merge my love for user experience, fashion, and Africa. Then when I started Zuvaa a couple of years later I saw this as the ultimate example of putting out into the universe what I wanted in life. This is what I was meant to do.

You’ve been doing pop up shops as a way to engage with your online community, offline. How are these going?
They’ve done so well! Our last one was in Houston and we had about 2,000 people attend. It’s so much fun to see things in person and not just do everything from behind the computer. I get to see our customers experience the clothes in person (as opposed to just shopping online) and meet the designers. We definitely want to continue to have pop up shops in more cities.

You are in your last semester of your master’s program. What’s the plan when you graduate?
I started Zuvaa in the middle of graduate school and once I graduate I’m excited to be able to focus on it completely and work on scaling it as quickly as possible to realize our vision. Our vision for Zuvaa is to be a well-known platform for anything African inspired. Whether it be fashion, art, or housewares, if you’re looking for anything beautiful and handmade I want you to think of Zuvaa. I want Africa to be seen as something beyond what the media portrays—it’s a place that does have a lot of happiness, vibrancy, and color and that’s not what is currently being seen. I want to change that. I want the happy, positive, and vibrant story for Africa to be told, and I want Zuvaa to have a part in telling that story.

What has been one of your proudest moments in business so far?
Being able to create more jobs on the African continent through global demand. It’s been amazing to see designers grow so much from the marketplace. When most of them first start on they site, they are personally hand making everything. From selling through our marketplace, I’ve seen many of them grow to a point where they need to begin outsourcing the creation of their products. They’ve been able to create jobs on the African continent and create generational wealth for their family.

What does your team look like? Tell us a little bit more about who is working behind the scenes at Zuvaa.
It’s just me! I do have some help with customer service and design work, but day-to-day it’s really just me. That’s my goal for the next year: to find the right people who can help take Zuvaa to the next level.

What are some challenges you’ve experienced with growing Zuvaa so far?
I’ve had to learn you can’t do everything yourself. I haven’t found a good balance with this business yet and I work all the time. I know I need to learn how to let go and trust people, give good directions, and build a really solid team.

What advice would you give your 23-year-old self?
Be super lean in regards to business and personal spending.

If you could have lunch with any woman who would it be and why?
Sofia Amarusso—I’d love to hear more about how she grew Nasty Gal so quickly.

What does a typical day look like?
I wake up with my computer by my side and I check my email and check for new orders while in bed. After that I lay in bed for another hour decompressing from the day before and getting ready for the day ahead. Then I start grinding and hustling again for the next 12+ hours until I go back to bed and start it over again the next day.

Favorite place to travel?
Probably somewhere I haven’t been yet. I love going to different countries on the African continent and I love seeing how the different cultures live.

I wish I knew how to…
Code!

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain-based platform that enables smart contracts using an asset called ether. Anyone can create programs on the network, and for that reason, the ecosystem has garnered attention from Microsoft, Imogen Heap, and Deloitte. In 2016, Microsoft launched the Ethereum Consortium Blockchain Network on Azure to allow companies on the platform to set up their own private blockchain. But that wasn’t the only activity on Ethereum in 2016. One of the most prominent apps developed on the network was the DAO, which  crowdfunded a $150 million investment fund. That investment was dogged by a hacker, causing the platform to split multiple times in an effort to limit the bad actor’s ability to steal funds.

While the DAO failure caused concern among users, Ethereum is still poised for interesting growth in 2017. In December 2016, Ethereum-based company Consensys was selected by the UAE Future Accelerators Fund to participate in a 12-week program and eventually to work on a pilot project for the city of Dubai. It’s still very early days for the Ethereum blockchain, but there seems to be a lot of potential for corporate adoption.

If, like me, you are still getting to grips with blockchain, here is a useful extract from Blockgeek’s beginners guide:

Although commonly associated with Bitcoin, blockchain technology has many other applications that go way beyond digital currencies. In fact, Bitcoin is only one of several hundred applications that use blockchain technology today.

“[Blockchain] is to Bitcoin, what the internet is to email. A big electronic system, on top of which you can build applications. Currency is just one.” FT

Until relatively recently, building blockchain applications has required a complex background in coding, cryptography, mathematics as well as significant resources. But times have changed. Previously unimagined applications, from electronic voting & digitally recorded property assets to regulatory compliance & trading are now actively being developed and deployed faster than ever before. By providing developers with the tools to build decentralized applications, Ethereum is making all of this possible.

What is Ethereum?

At its simplest, Ethereum is an open software platform based on blockchain technology that enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications.

Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is a distributed public blockchain network. Although there are some significant technical differences between the two, the most important distinction to note is that Bitcoin and Ethereum differ substantially in purpose and capability. Bitcoin offers one particular application of blockchain technology, a peer to peer electronic cash system that enables online Bitcoin payments. While the bitcoin blockchain is used to track ownership of digital currency (bitcoins), the Ethereum blockchain focuses on running the programming code of any decentralized application.

In the Ethereum blockchain, instead of mining for bitcoin, miners work to earn Ether, a type of crypto token that fuels the network. Beyond a tradeable cryptocurrency, Ether is also used by application developers to pay for transaction fees and services on the Ethereum network.

What is a smart contract?

Smart contract is just a phrase used to describe computer code that can facilitate the exchange of money, content, property, shares, or anything of value. When run on the blockchain a smart contract becomes like a self-operating computer program that automatically executes when specific conditions are met. Because smart contracts run on the blockchain, they run exactly as programmed without any possibility of censorship, downtime, fraud or third party interference.

While all blockchains have the ability to process code, most are severely limited. Ethereum is different. Rather than giving a set of limited operations, Ethereum allows developers to create whatever operations they want. This means developers can build thousands of different applications that go way beyond anything we have seen before.

“ [Ethereum] blockchain has some extraordinary capabilities. One of them is that you can build smart contracts. It’s kind of what it sounds like. It’s a contract that self executes, and the contract handles the enforcement, the management, performance and payment” says Don Tapscott

What can it be used for?

Ethereum enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications. A decentralized application or Dapp serves some particular purpose to its users. Bitcoin, for example, is a Dapp that provides its users with a peer to peer electronic cash system that enables online Bitcoin payments. Because decentralized applications are made up of code that runs on a blockchain network, they are not controlled by any individual or central entity.

Any services that are centralized can be decentralized using Ethereum. Think about all the intermediary services that exist across hundreds of different industries. From obvious services like loans provided by banks to intermediary services rarely thought about by most people like title registries, voting systems, regulatory compliance and much more.

Ethereum can also be used to build Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO). A DAO is fully autonomous, decentralized organization with no single leader. DAO’s are run by programming code, on a collection of smart contracts written on the Ethereum blockchain. The code is designed to replace the rules and structure of a traditional organization, eliminating the need for people and centralized control. A DAO is owned by everyone who purchases tokens, but instead of each token equating to equity shares & ownership, tokens act as contributions that give people voting rights.

Wired Magazine describes it as the world’s hottest (and most secretive) startup. Forbes goes further, calling  it the hottest thing in technology.  Arriving at the South Florida business park, an unspectacular location, you would not think so. Inside, it’s a very different story. A different reality, in fact. Humanoid robots walk down the halls, and green reptilian monsters hang out in the lounge. Cartoon fairies turn the lights on and off. Giants patrol the parking lot.

Ava Winery founders Mardonn Chua and Alex Lee claim they can “turn water into wine” in just 15 minutes, without using grapes. The San Francisco startup aims to disrupt high-end wines by offering bottles of chemically identical wine cheaper and more sustainably (lab-grown wine uses 50 to 100 times less water than traditional).

Chua and his team used specialized techniques to analyze the chemical compositions of different wines, including Chardonnay, champagne, and Pinot Noir. These techniques, which included gas chromatography mass spectrometry, identified the amounts of amino acids, sugars, and flavor and odor compounds found within each drink, and allowed Chua to include them in his synthetic wine.

Lee argues that most of the compounds in wine have no perceptible impact on the flavor or aroma. Both, he says, are due to compounds that make up just 0.1% of the total — they include molecules that come from the wine grapes’ skins, which change as the wine ages. Meanwhile, the microbes that ferment the wine also create some of the compounds. Not all the compounds will significantly impact the flavor of the wine, but all of them contribute to its complexity.

Currently, Ava Winery’s website lists its replica of a 1992 Dom Pérignon Champagne for $50. A deal, considering the real thing sells for more than $150. However, wine lovers may turn their noses up at the fact that none of these replicas will have the word “wine” on their labels — a term that can only be used if grapes or other fruits are used in the fermenting process.

Ava Winery’s first public taste test didn’t exactly go well. Two reporters on camera at New Scientist compared the biotech startup’s artificial wine with a glass of the Moscato D’Asti that it was based on. They complained that the fake wine had too little color, too little viscosity, and an unpleasant plastic smell.

But that was May, and this is September, and Ava is already bragging about making huge improvements in its product, to the point where it is all but indistinguishable from fermented grape juice, and looking ahead to how it’s going to change the world. “What we have done since then is leaps and bounds beyond what they were able to taste back in May,” co-founder Alec Lee says. “Now we’re at the point where about 90% of people fail our blind taste test.”

Ava is about to get a lot of new tech, too, after closing a $2.7 million seed round led by Horizon Ventures in August. Lee says this will help them perfect their product and soon. “There will be a step-wise progression as soon as that equipment comes in,” Lee says. “It will get a lot better very quickly.”

Ava has promised to release 499 bottles modeled on a 1992 Dom Perignon champagne later this summer, with plans to go to market in the next six-to-12 months. The goal is to sell high quality wine for much cheaper than you’d get with traditional methods, while also making a more sustainable and customizable product.

But first, they’ve got to convince people that artificial wine tastes good.

Ava co-founder Mardonn Chua was inspired to create wine in a lab after seeing a bottle of a ’73 Chateau Montelena behind a glass case and wishing more people could taste what it’s like. He thought “I have access to a lab, I have this biotech background, I’ve done analytical chemistry: surely, wine is nothing more than a collection of molecules,” says Lee.

Chua and Lee, both graduates fror a biotech program at the University of British Columbia who had previously founded a stem cell company (which “may wind down”), launched Ava Winery in 2015. They brought on fellow UBC graduate and certified sommelier Josh Decolongon as a co-founder.

Chua’s early efforts at reverse-engineering wine were gleefully fast and loose. “Has anyone tried to make wine by simply mixing the raw compounds and ingredients together (ie. sugars, alcohol, organic volatiles, and flavonoids)? Would it be possible to make a great tasting wine this way?” he posted in March. “I might actually try this tonight.”

Chia described on Medium how he mixed “tartaric acid, malic acid, tannin powder, vegetable glycerin, ethanol, sucrose … ethyl hexanoate (smells like pineapple), butanoate (strong scent of grape juice), limonene (citrus/lime), and acetoin (rich butter smell—like popcorn at the movies). I spent the whole weekend making ~15 different formulations, and I’m not much closer to the taste of chardonnay or any other wine (though I’m not discouraged). It’s not a good wine yet, but it was acceptable enough to drink,” Chua wrote.

Ava has gotten a lot more high-tech since then, using gas chromatography, liquid chromatography, and other techniques to identify exactly what’s in different samples of wine. For the past few months, they’ve been outsourcing this testing, but now they plan to bring the tools in house.

Wine is about 85% water, 13% ethanol. Then there are several hundred compounds in small quantities that give it flavor, aroma, color, and other characteristics. Some of these matter, others don’t. “We can identify the compounds that are there, but the big challenge is in quantifying them,” Lee says. A gas chromatograph shows different compounds in a sample:

Ava insists its wine is rapidly getting better. Eight months ago, Lee says, 80% of people could identify the two glasses of artificial wine in a sample of five: today, only 10% can. “The product is really there in terms of fooling people, but that’s not really good enough for us,” Lee says.

The team says its two biggest challenges going forward are regulation and marketing. “We want to get the classification as wine and that’s one of the hurdles that we’re up against is convincing the [Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB)] that there’s good justification for why we should be able to call this wine,” Lee says.

TTB spokesman Tom Hogue confirmed that the bureau is aware of Ava and said it had reached out to remind them their drink would be a taxable commodity. He declined to comment on whether it would be classified as wine.

As for marketing, Ava hasn’t decided whether its initial selection of wine will all be designed to replicate other bottles or include some originals. Ava also hasn’t figured out its price point, though it claims to be much cheaper than the traditional way of making wine. The hardest part, of course, is convincing people to ditch traditional wine, and all the romantic connotations we have for that, in favor of something made in a lab.

“We need to first demonstrate the quality of this process,” Lee says. “Once we’ve done that, then we have an opportunity to digitally optimize the flavors of wine. To make wines that have never been tasted before and that are in many ways arguably better than anything that’s been tasted before. We can identify the things that make great wines great and combine those into something that’s never been tasted before or that no one could even grow.”

Synthetic wine may also have the nice perk of not going bad as fast as regular wine, since it’s made of sterilized components, while normal wine is filled with organic compounds that start growing when exposed to oxygen.

If Ava can figure out wine, then there’s no reason they couldn’t move into other products, too. “Where are unsustainable food production practices happening or where is there limited food production capacity in general, especially in the luxury food  market, and how can we disrupt that and produce in a way that is more sustainable, more ethical, and, of course, cheaper?” Lee asks. “Could this be done with coffee, for example, or chocolate?”

But first the big question: does Ava’s wine actually taste good? Ava was not yet ready to share a bottle with Business Insider, so we can’t say for ourselves. Scientists at Replica Wine, a less-radical wine disruptor that uses science to make grape blends that taste like more expensive bottles, said Ava’s approach seemed viable.

“The concept of adding all kinds of chemicals together to create something else: is it feasible? Probably. Does it have the same appeal to consumers who are looking to have some kind of greater connection to wine? Maybe not,” said Ellipse Analytics president Jaclyn Bowen, who works with Replica. Food scientist Steven Witherly, president of Technical Products Inc., was more skeptical: “I wish them luck but wine is way too complex for them; they really don’t stand much of a chance.”

Decanter World Wine Awards judge Matt Walls told Decanter: “The concept is mind-blowing, and I’d love to try the finished article. It reminds me of the drinks machine in ‘Star Trek’ that dispenses anything you ask for. But do I believe they’ll produce an exact replica of a legendary wine? Not in a million light years.”

Ava’s team, at least, seems confident. “I think the product will pretty easily be ready to go in the next six months,” Lee says. Even today it gets the endorsement of Ava’s in-house sommelier. “It’s definitely not bad,” says Decolongon, who also runs a wine blog. “I can tell [the difference between Ava and traditional wine], but it’s getting closer and closer to being unidentifiable every day.”

There are beauty brands that consider social media when they develop marketing campaigns. And then there’s Glossier, the cult favorite skincare company that designs its products hoping – knowing, even – that young women will want to post their purchases on Instagram.

Take Glossier’s $22 face masks, the two-year-old brand’s highest-rated product in terms of customer reviews. Its pastel-hued jars were conceived with smartphone photography in mind.

“We spent an enormous amount of time with an illustrator designing a really ornate, colorful illustration and sticker for the top of the product,” said Emily Weiss, the company’s founder and CEO. “You’re so excited to see that and take it out and take a picture of it, like you would food — the perspective of holding your iPhone over a plate of food.”

Glossier’s tightly edited product line, all of which retails below $30, includes go-to items like a priming moisturizer, easy-to-apply skin tint and a cleanser that was formulated based on consumer feedback from Emily’s “Into the Gloss” blog. The brand’s chic pink-and-white packaging was designed with the visually obsessed Instagram set in mind and can be seen in many an influencer’s feed.

Have a look at the #Glossier hashtag on Instagram and it’s clear Weiss had the right idea. The brand’s millennial fan base is so devoted that its products regularly have waiting list in the tends of thousands. They buy $60 sweatshirts with the company’s name across the chest. Traditional luxury beauty brands can only dream of inspiring that sort of loyalty.

The Into The Gloss blog started as a side project in 2010 when Weiss was a fashion assistant at Vogue. She’d work on Into The Gloss between 4am and 7am every morning, doing photo shoots on weekends.

“There was a full year between the launch of Into The Gloss and when I quit my day job,” she said. “I think that’s important in an era when there are a lot of inspirational quotes on Instagram telling you to follow your dreams and seize the day.”

How it started

Weiss has spent the past four years snooping in the medicine cabinets and makeup cases of some of the world’s most successful and stylish women. The 29-year-old started her beauty website Into The Gloss in 2010, setting aside the hours of 4am through 8am to write up interviews for her side project then heading to her job at Vogue as a fashion assistant.

A few months in, it was clear Into The Gloss — profitable from day one thanks to advertising — had become Weiss’ full-time job. She left Condé Nast after seven years to run what has become a must-read for beauty buffs, with some 10 million page views a month and a loyal following (Weiss says 60% of Into The Gloss readers return “almost every day”).

It’s the site’s Top Shelf feature in particular that’s been responsible for both Into The Gloss’ success and, now, Weiss’ move from beauty editor to makeup entrepreneur.

She’s looked inside the bathrooms and vanity drawers of women like supermodel Amber Valletta, Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon and Jenna Lyons, J. Crew’s president and creative director and the style-crush of many a millennial. She reports back on their go-to moisturizers and lipstick shades as well as divulging their tips and tricks, from hiding dark eye circles to keeping skin hydrated on an airplane.

In her four years growing Into The Gloss, Weiss has learned not just what sorts of products these influencers swear by, but also what they’re missing — what they wish existed, and what gaps need filling in this quarter of a trillion dollar industry that is, after all, still led by staid French giant L’Oreal and its American counterpart Estée Lauder.

“It hasn’t changed in years,” said Weiss of the beauty sector. “Rather than cutting through the noise of all the brands out there, let’s create a brand that reflects what women want right now.”

After raising $2 million in venture capital funding 2013 to grow her team, Weiss set out to create a line of must-have beauty products, working closely with a California-based chemist.

In October, after months of quiet sourcing and testing, Weiss and her team launched Glossier, a beauty brand for the Instagram generation: chic without being complicated, and with an aspirational but cool social media presence.

For now, Glossier is sold exclusively on its own e-commerce platform, although Weiss set up a pop-up shop on New York’s hip Lafayette Street in Soho for the launch of the company’s first capsule collection, four skincare essentials sold as a set for a relatively inexpensive $80.

While the packaging is unadorned, each batch comes with a set of stickers, that look suspiciously like the Japanese emoji characters so beloved of the iPhone crowd. “We’re not creating a frivolous product,” she said. “You’ll use it every single day.”

“I’m thinking, what would I like as a 29-year-old, as a beauty consumer?” Weiss said. “I’m a woman. We have a lot of female employees. We really support women, and this is for girls. Glossier girls want to have fun, we want to work hard. We want to build useful things.”