The Information Weekend

Fear the Birdie: Can an Ear-Splitting Device Make Women Feel Safer?

Designed by a pair of sister inventors, and surpassing more than 2 million units in sales, She’s Birdie gives Gen Z its own Life Alert.

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Roadie Revolution: The Stunning New Tech on Silicon Valley Bikes

As a technology, the bicycle hasn’t changed much since 1885, when designer J.K. Starley decided to use a chain to drive the rear wheel. Nearly 140 years later, a foot still turns a crank that pulls...

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Tim Stevens

Social Studies

How Chess.com Became ‘the Wild West of the Streaming World’

When Michael Brancato began working with Chess.com in late 2017, it wasn’t particularly popular. A product manager at Twitch, Brancato was tapped to spearhead a two-year partnership between the...

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Jessica Lucas

Photography by Katie Thompson for The Information

The Big Read

Search Has Its Goliath. Could Richard Socher Be Its David?

As Google and Microsoft retrofit their search engines with AI assistants, the CEO of You.com thinks he can do better.

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Arielle Pardes

Show Us Everything

At Home With the Health Commandos

This is “Show Us Everything,” a new feature from The Information Weekend, in which company founders share intimate glimpses of their everyday lives. Clayton Kim first bonded with his boss, Fount...

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Annie Goldsmith

Left: Fount CEO Andrew Herr watches chief technology officer Clayton Kim dangle in Kim’s Marina Del Rey, Calif. apartment, which doubles as the startup’s office. Right: A sample Fount morning supplement pack. Photographs by Christopher Brown for The Information.

Founders' Keepers

Ancient Swords, Stylus Pens and Other Things CEOs Can’t Work Without

As the saying goes, “You can tell a lot about a person by the type of sword they keep near their desk.” That’s certainly true for company founders like Jason Kingsley of the gaming studio Rebellion...

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Paul Armstrong

Market Research

The Full-Body Scanners Will See You Now

In late September 2022, Ryan Crownholm, a 46-year-old entrepreneur from Los Angeles, donned a pair of plush surgical scrubs and hopped onto a stainless-steel MRI table at Prenuvo, a fast-growing...

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Zara Stone

From left, investors Charles Hudson, David Krane (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg), Alexa von Tobel, David Blumberg, Ben Horowitz (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg), Josh Kushner, Sarah Kunst (Ashley Batz), Arielle Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Pejman Nozad, Om Malik and Brit Morin. Photo composite by Clark Miller

Caffeinated Capitalists

Venture Capital’s 25 Favorite Cafes

The most advantageous spots for sipping, eavesdropping, and deal-making, according to tech investors in the Bay Area, New York and Los Angeles.

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Annie Goldsmith

The 1:1

An AI Researcher Tries to Build Good AI While Burning Down the Bad

In the hours after Margaret Mitchell was fired by Google over email in February 2021, she ran to the bathroom and threw up. “I was just so terrified that I was never going to get a job in tech...

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Margaux MacColl

Market Research

The Skin-Tech Devices Helping Execs Beautify in a Hurry

I’m always 29 at heart,” said Liyia Wu, CEO of ShopShops, a livestream shopping app for fashion, beauty and lifestyle products. But now that she’s actually over 40, Wu is searching for her fountain...

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Aja Mangum

Surreal Estate

Silicon Valley’s Realtors, Like Its Bankers, Are Having a Tough Month

In early March, Ken DeLeon, founder of DeLeon Realty, a Silicon Valley–based brokerage that sold more than $1 billion in homes in 2021, called one of his venture capitalist clients to discuss the...

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Zara Stone

The Big Read

The Instant Oral History of the Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

Two dozen bank insiders, startup founders, and venture investors reconstruct 96 hours that everyone in tech will remember, even if they’d like to forget.

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First Look

Boom Times in San Francisco’s AI Underground

Not even a banking crisis could chill the fever sweeping San Francisco. Last Wednesday, as the tech industry recoiled from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a party was scheduled at the offices...

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Arielle Pardes

Sarah Nagy gives a demo of her startup, Seek.ai, at an AI event at the San Francisco Wine Society in January. Photography by Laura Morton for The Information

Notes from a Meltdown

Five Years in Five Days: How I Panicked, Pivoted and Ultimately Survived as My Bank Melted Down

It started with a text from a tech investor last Wednesday afternoon. Shares in Silicon Valley Bank were tanking following the announcement of an emergency stock sale, the person told me. The bank...

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Jessica E. Lessin