Fortuneの December 2023/January 2024 の目次

ONE OF MY GOALS for Fortune is to shine a light on some of the most important industry players through deeply reported profiles. Who are the transformative minds propelling the world’s largest companies forward? Who are the up-and-coming innovators? Some will go on to achieve big things. Others will flame out. All of them will change their industries and shape our futures. One of the most intriguing young leaders I’ve come across in 15 years of covering tech is a relatively low-profile investor, Joshua Kushner. He founded what’s now a $5.3 billion venture firm, Thrive Capital, and has invested in top-performing start-ups including Instagram, Slack, Stripe, Spotify, and OpenAI. I met Kushner in 2009, when he was running a social gaming startup. Since then, he has quietly amassed an…

“You can’t wait for a macro trend to improve your business. You have to make it happen.”LAURA ALBER, CEO, WILLIAMS SONOMA LAURA ALBER loves Williams Sonoma. Like, really loves it. Sure, many Fortune 500 CEOs would say the same of their companies. But Alber’s devotion to the $8.7-billion-inrevenue home furnishings retailer—from growing its global business to studying French porcelain—borders on fanaticism. “It’s my heart,” she says. In fact, she likens it to a spouse. When asked if she would ever consider another CEO job, she quickly answers no. “I’m not looking for a different husband either,” she said to laughs at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in October. In fact, Alber’s 13-year tenure as Williams Sonoma CEO has outlasted many marriages. She’s now the longest-serving female chief executive…

AS DAWN BROKE on Oct. 7, air-raid sirens blasted out across Tel Aviv, sending Michael Matias and his girlfriend catapulting out of bed and down to the bomb shelter in their apartment building. Inside, the messages on their cell phones revealed the horror that had set off the alarm: Hamas gunmen were waging mass slaughter on Israelis and seizing hundreds of hostages, less than an hour’s drive from where they huddled in safety. In his stunned aftershock, Matias was struck by the implications for his tech startup. Late last year he had launched Clarity, an artificial intelligence company focused on detecting deepfakes in election campaigns; he believed such disinformation was an urgent threat to democracies. But with about 1,200 Israelis dead on Oct. 7 and the country at war,…

THANKS, CHATGPT! Our top performer was Microsoft, returning 41%. Excitement about generative AI was a huge tailwind: Microsoft is the main investor in and partner of OpenAI, the maker of chatbot ChatGPT. Its Azure cloud and Copilot productivity tools, both of which are AI-powered, enjoyed huge revenue gains. We’re betting the ride continues. PAYING DIVIDENDS Dividend payouts helped some picks post impressive numbers. Investors in retailer TJX (up 14%) and waste management firm Republic Services (up 12.5%) got a meaningful boost from dividends. And Procter & Gamble (up 8%) trailed the broader market on share price appreciation—but beat the S&P 500 overall thanks to its hefty yield. SPOILED FOOD Two food-related picks gave us indigestion. Inflation squeezed food distributor Sysco, by increasing its costs and hurting business for its…

Investors sometimes advise scrappy entrepreneurs to “hire your smartest friends.” Josh Kushner (Harvard class of ’08; Harvard Business School 2011) took that advice to heart and found many of his most important partners without leaving campus, metaphorically speaking. CURRENT AND FORMER THRIVERS CHRIS PAIK HARVARD ’09: Thrive’s first hire and early partner. Left in 2019 to launch his own firm, Pace Capital. KAREEM ZAKI HARVARD ’11: Thrive partner since 2014. Co-leads Thrive’s investing team with Kushner. WILL GAYBRICK HARVARD ’07: Early Thrive partner; now president, product and business, Stripe. (Married to Emily Weiss, founder of Glossier, a Thrive portfolio company.) NITIN NOHRIA HBS DEAN, 2010–2020: Joined Thrive as executive chairman in 2022. NABIL MALLICK HBS ‘11: Joined Thrive in 2015, now head of portfolio impact. KEY FOUNDERS RYAN WILLIAMS…

Since becoming SEC Chairman in April 2021, Gary Gensler has proposed a flurry of rules at a pace that far exceeds that of his recent predecessors. Some of these proposals have already been implemented, including those concerning mutual fund fees and cybersecurity disclosures. But the majority have not—and some of Gensler’s biggest swings risk being bogged down or wiped out in court. CLIMATE CHANGE Gensler’s most high-profile initiative would require companies to file detailed and wide-ranging disclosures about their environmental emissions. That mandate dovetails with the Biden administration’s push to address climate change, but it has sparked a furious pushback from industries that claim such a rule would be onerous and unconstitutional. While Gensler did pass a rule cracking down on corporate “greenwashing,” the fate of the much larger…

Since he took the helm of the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery last year, the headlines about CEO David Zaslav have been relentlessly cringeworthy: He has been booed while giving a commencement speech, criticized for his massive salary, and mocked for seemingly out-of-touch business decisions. During strikes by actors and writers, his smooth visage became the face of corporate fat-cat indifference to the demands of Hollywood’s creative class. But of all this year’s public relations snafus, perhaps the most revealing is a relatively low-profile fracas that happened in June. That’s when Warner Bros. Discovery announced that the entire executive leadership team of Turner Classic Movies was leaving the cable channel. The outcry was swift and brutal (“$100 million worth of bad press,” the marketing consultant Terry Press told the…

Koh Samui What despicable shenanigans will the entitled White Lotus guests get up to next? Little is known about season three of the soapy HBO show, set in an ultraluxury fictional hotel chain. But we do know its setting: Thailand. The new season is unlikely to be released before 2025, so now is the time to book a trip, before the wild tourism boom unleashed upon Sicily (the location of season two) visits the Southeast Asian nation. A stunning beachside Four Seasons resort has stood in for the White Lotus hotel in each of the first two seasons, and the company boasts several luxurious properties in Thailand. But our money is on the Four Seasons Koh Samui, on a lush, mountainous island in the Gulf of Thailand whose waterfalllaced,…

MUCH OF JAPAN’S GREATEST BUSINESS ACHIEVEMENTS HAVE been in seemingly glamorous industries, featuring shiny new cars, high-tech televisions, and console gaming systems that have changed the world. A slightly less glitzy sector, yet even more vital to the nation’s economic performance, has always been the infrastructure field. Roads and bridges, as well as transport and delivery logistics, are some of the most important elements that don’t just keep the economy literally moving, but are also driving Japan forward in terms of innovation and sustainability. At the heart of every infrastructure business is the same relentless pursuit of excellence and quality standards that gave the world game-changing hybrid cars and consoles, and these aspects are enjoying a significant upward trajectory. Despite the disruption caused by the pandemic and lockdown restrictions,…

“Our strength is the respect we have for each other.” “We are one firm, one community.” “We stand united against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and acts of hatred in any form.” These days, such run-of-the-mill corporate nods to diversity, equity, and inclusion might elicit an eye roll from a cynical employee. They can read like a kind of throat-clearing, a prelude to a bland memo that manages to be both verbose and grandiloquent—while saying nothing at all. But when Citigroup’s CEO Jane Fraser and her team described her company’s values this way in a statement on Oct. 22, it was not a run-of-the-mill situation. It had been just two weeks since the Hamas incursion into Israel—the brutal murder of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 240. The violence was multiplying, and by…

GLOBAL ADVERTISING SPEND WILL SURPASS $1 trillion next year for the first time ever, according to the World Advertising Research Center. But in the face of market uncertainty, says Jeff Green, CEO and founder of The Trade Desk, many companies are leaning away from traditional advertising methods and toward programmatic media buying—or the use of automated technology to buy ad space—to improve the speed and agility of their marketing tactics. The Trade Desk is well poised to meet this demand. The digital media-buying platform was founded in 2009, went public in 2016 at a valuation of $1.1 billion, and has been profitable ever since. Today, it has a market cap of $37 billion, with 25% revenue growth year-over-year in Q3. “We have gained more market share than in any…

A GLOBAL LEADER IN THREAD MANUFACTURING and structural components for apparel, footwear, and performance materials, Coats Group has a history that’s endured for 270 years. Its roots can be traced back to Paisley, Scotland, in the mid-18th century, when the company introduced its 3-ply sewing thread as a cheaper and more readily available alternative to existing material. This pioneering spirit still remains in Coats’ DNA today as it leads the development of new sustainable products and processes based on recycled and renewable materials, as well as the digital transformation of its industry. “An important part of our culture is innovation,” says CEO Rajiv Sharma. “We are constantly striving to find new ways to support our customers and meet industry demands for speed, personalization, cost, quality, reliability, and sustainability.” While…

Thrive Capital’s venture funds have grown sharply along with Kushner’s reputation. Early bets on winners like Instagram and Slack helped attract new limited partners (LPs); some have reinvested with Thrive multiple times. Here are some of the firm’s most notable investments, along with backers it has gained along the way. $5 M FUND 1—2009 NOTABLE INVESTMENTS: GroupMe, MakerBot, Kickstarter, Paperless Post NOTABLE BACKERS: General Catalyst (lead), Seryl & Charlie Kushner, Michael Ovitz $40 M FUND 2—2011 Instagram, Warby Parker, Oscar Health, Harry’s NEW BACKERS: Princeton, Wellcome Trust, Peter Thiel $150 M FUND 3—2012 Twitch, Spotify, Reddit NEW BACKER: Yale $400 M FUND 4—2014 Slack, Stripe, GitHub, Instacart, Jet, Glossier, Benchling NEW BACKER: Stanford $700 M FUND 5—2016 Affirm, Airtable, Robinhood, Nubank, Zoom $1 B FUND 6—2018 Skims, Scale AI,…

ECONOMIC VOLATILITY and geopolitical uncertainty have roiled the markets all year. The causes are many, as new crises have continued to unfold: the war in Ukraine, with ensuing inflation and recession fears; the “tech crash” and the rising interest rates that fueled it; rising tensions between the U.S. and China; and the recent horrors in the Middle East. Crises can be extraordinary opportunities for businesses to lay the foundations for robust growth. Gaining perspective on their impact, however, has become harder than ever. Will business leaders shift their focus from long-term growth toward short-term profitability? Will the tech sector continue to be a growth engine? Will China’s economy rebound? And how will all this interplay with longer-reaching issues like climate change? To help investors cut through this kind of…

THE AVERAGE INTEREST RATE on a 30-year fixed mortgage, at around 7.5%, is almost three times as high as it was in December 2020, and a construction shortfall in the U.S. has eroded the supply of single-family homes. As a result, the cost of buying a home relative to renting has reached unprecedented highs. Nationwide, the average new-home mortgage payment is now 52% higher than the average monthly rent. And for many buyers, even that figure is misleadingly low, since it reflects lower prices in rural areas and small towns. In the major metro areas where business is concentrated, the premium attached to buying is far higher. In this graphic, the taller a city’s name, the higher the relative cost of ownership: It’s an apt metaphor for an investment…

AMERICA’S population is graying, as they say. And the retirement home industry is booming as a result, expected to grow nearly 70% by 2030. Meanwhile, nearly a fifth of Americans provide care for an adult, according to the AARP. And more than half of adults ages 50 to 80 provide care for someone 65 or older, according to the University of Michigan’s 2022 National Poll on Healthy Aging. For many adult caregivers—especially working ones—something will eventually have to give. Psychologist Allison Applebaum, Ph.D., knows this all too well. The author of the forthcoming book Stand by Me, Applebaum cared for her aging father—legendary composer Stanley Applebaum, whose many memorable musical feats included arranging strings on the 1961 Ben E. King hit “Stand by Me.” She is also the director…

SOMETIMES THERE’S A CLEAR economic narrative that can help steer investors through the stock-picking process. In 2021 the guiding story was the stimulus-infused post-COVID rebound. In 2022 it was an inflationary hangover that brought back memories of the 1980s. As for 2023, well, let’s just say it has stumped the storytellers. A year ago there was near consensus that the Federal Reserve’s inflation-fighting interest rate hikes would spark a recession in the U.S., but it didn’t turn out that way—or at least it hasn’t yet. After that head fake, Wall Street’s top minds are unusually divided about what’s coming for the economy, and by extension the stock market. The uncertain impact of higher-for-longer interest rates, the AI boom, and rising geopolitical tensions has led to some wildly divergent outlooks…

THE TWO-MINUTE VIDEO CLIP has a low-budget, jittery feel. Quick, clumsy transitions tee up self-consciously cheesy reenactments. The vibe is high school AV club—except for the clip’s narrator. He looks like a stock photo of a bureaucrat, in a dark gray suit jacket and blue dress shirt. His wide-set eyes never look away from the camera; his hands never stop gesticulating. The man is the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and as elevator music swells, a title screen reveals this to be another edition of “Office Hours With Gary Gensler.” Normally, these short videos are upbeat explainers on topics from SPACs to offshore shell companies. But this is a special edition about the perils of celebrity-sponsored investment products. (Short summary: Be careful!) Gensler shared the episode with…