Inc. Magazine Winter 2018/2019

For more than a year, Amazon teased and tantalized us by holding a very public contest to determine where the e-commerce titan would locate its second headquarters. More than 230 cities in North America applied, with Amazon promising $5 billion-plus in construction investment and as many as 50,000 jobs to the winner. State and local leaders jockeyed for position, sometimes jesting, sometimes in earnest, sometimes both. In November, New York’s governor offered, “I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes.” Last year, Stonecrest, Georgia, offered to relinquish more than 300 acres and create a town called Amazon in exchange for HQ2. (Amazon has decided that the Long Island City neighborhood in New York City’s borough of Queens will share HQ2 with Crystal City, Virginia, which is…

Certain intervals of time we accept as givens. The earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours; seven days make a week; a half-hour sitcom is really 22 minutes plus commercials; Apple does a big-deal iPhone launch every other year. You know: the fundamentals. In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore identified one of these intervals in a way we still associate with his name. Thanks to miniaturization, he observed, the number of transistors that could fit onto a single microchip was doubling every year, making computers exponentially more powerful, energy-efficient, and inexpensive. In 1975, he revised Moore’s law, as it was by then known, to set the period of doubling at 24 months, where it has remained ever since. Until recently. In the past few years, one chipmaker after another has…

Paper straws are now a thing—and founder Christina Ramirez is taking on plastic toothbrushes, with her six-year-old company Plus Ultra, which makes toothbrushes from biodegradable bamboo. Plus Ultra debuted at 33 Whole Foods locations in December 2012. It’s now in more than 300 stores across the U.S., revenue is expected to top $2 million this year—and Ramirez is working on a bamboo head for electric toothbrushes. The idea came to Ramirez, who’s 33, in 2006, when she was attending the University of California. Her class, she says, was told “to create a company that addressed a global problem.” She wrote a business plan for a bamboo-toothbrush company—people throw out billions of plastic toothbrushes every year—but shelved it “to get a job in marketing, something with a 401(k).” But the idea kept nagging…

INSTAGRAMIFICATION • noun “Making sure millennials and Gen Zers have a reason to come into … stores—with state-of-the-art interior design as a backdrop to artsy Instagram posts.” Persuading them to buy is step two. Source: Axios SHUANGJU • noun China’s binge watching of Story of Yanxi Palace, which netted more than 15 billion views in less than three months. The term derives from shuangwen, which means “binge read,” and is therefore practically obsolete. Source: China Film Insider ORTHOSOMNIA • noun “Self-diagnosed sleep disturbances” suffered by sleep-tracker-data obsessives. Wait until heath insurers make you wear a Fitbit to bed. Source: Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine INVISIBLE MARKETING • noun “Marketing, without it being perceived as marketing,” such as “a blog written with the goal of getting the reader to take action and/or purchase a product.” In other words:…

STARTUP NEIGHBORHOODS Most residents never thought they’d see the day, but downtown Durham is now a cultural and entrepreneurial hotbed. American Tobacco Campus, once a crime-ridden stretch of abandoned cigarette factories, is now a sprawling expanse of outdoor cafés, green space, and startup offices. Sports-scheduling app maker Team-works is around the corner from the massive American Underground co-working space, which houses more than 80 companies, including fintech startup LoanWell. Raleigh’s Warehouse District, another recently revitalized precinct, is home to Videri Chocolate Factory, as well as HQ Raleigh’s 20,000-square-foot flagship co-working space. Lunchgoers hit the original Happy + Hale 1 for ahi poke bowls and cold-pressed juices. The Downtown Chapel Hill area, located at the north-west corner of the UNC campus, is home to a Google outpost and a handful of co-working spaces. WHO TO…

Applications to two-year full-time business schools have declined for the past three years. Yet some of today’s best-known startups—Rent the Runway, Birchbox—were launched at B-school. What’s an MBA good for? We spoke to Dave Gilboa, who co-founded his business with fellow students at Wharton, and Amanda Hesser, whose company has made the Inc. 5000 three times—sans a founder with an MBA. ADVANTAGES→HESSER According to Financial Times survey data from 2017, fewer than 20 percent of 2014 business school alums in the U.S. had started a company, and the rate of entrepreneurship for grads has dropped at many top B-schools in the past year. No. 2 DIAL IT BACK. See that guy? The one who, Hitchcock says, is "wearing black suits, the hair's all spiked up. He's got the big sunglasses on, several…