What You Need to Know Today: March 11
Good afternoon, Early Risers!
Here’s what you need to know
TECH
How suitable are absurd tech startup offices for business? This is what New York-based writer Chappell Ellison wanted to know — she answered her own question with a string of these hilarious tweets.
The future of VR isn’t video games or movies — it’s medicine. Most of what you read in the news about virtual reality is about the entertainment possibilities: VR video games, VR movies, VR roller coasters, even VR porn. However, the possibilities of VR reach far beyond entertainment. As part of Fusion’s Real Future video-series, the team met with two health professionals who are using virtual reality as a medical tool. Check this out.
CAREER
5 reasons you should stop reading this newsletter. (1) you already consume too much news (2) time spent reading this newsletter = time lost taking action on your dreams (3) the jokes are bad (4) theSkimm gives away free t-shirts (5) Gen-Z news is starting to make millennial news look irrelevant. Adam Grant, a professor of management at Wharton who wrote the new book Originals, says there’s a counterintuitive strategy entrepreneurs should use to get what they want. The strategy: be less enthusiastic. Grant cites Rufus Griscom, cofounder of the parenting blog Babble, as an example. “When Griscom pitched the site to Disney, he listed five reasons Disney should not buy his company. Disney wound up buying Babble for $40 million.”
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How to build a billion-dollar business. “There are people who do things by the book and go far; there are far fewer who truly go their own way and make it big.” Leslie Blodgett is the latter. “She created a beauty empire around a single product: A makeup powder made of ground-up, good-for-your-skin minerals. It didn’t catch on at first, so she went on QVC to sell the stuff — when no one in the fancy-beauty-product space had even heard of QVC — declined to do any media training, and yet connected so powerfully with women watching that her line, bareMinerals, skyrocketed into a multi-million-dollar phenomenon.” In 2010, Blodgett sold her company to a Japanese beauty conglomerate for $1.7 billion. She managed to accomplish all this while staying happily married and raising a son. Her story is inspiring and instructive. Here are 8 secrets to her success.
+ The most defensible thing you can do for your career is… build an audience.
LIFESTYLE
Why women should make the first move. Good news, ladies. A new study finds that women who make the first move on dating apps are 2.5x more likely to get a response than a man who sends the first message. Plus, this woman-forward approach led to women locking down hotter guys. Cue the Bumble downloads.
Challenging the belly-fat hypothesis. High-Glycemic-Index foods are not all created equal and more.
+ Weekend LOL — Labradoodle or fried chicken?
#NOWYOUKNOW
SXSW Survival Guide
South by Southwest kicks off today. If you’re going to the festival, check out this survival guide courtesy of Fuse.tv. It covers everything you need to know from getting there, where to stay, what to wear, what to pack, and how to have the most fun.
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