Crypto criminals cant hide
The single largest cryptocurrency heist in history took place one day in late February, when hackers exploited system vulnerabilities in Bybit, a Dubai-based crypto exchange, siphoning off a whopping $1.5 billion in digital assets within minutes.
Bybits security team immediately launched an investigation that would eventually involve the FBI and several blockchain intelligence companies. Among those involved from the beginning were the experts at TRM Labs, a San Francisco-based company of around 300 that analyzes the blockchain networks which power cryptocurrency transactions to investigateand preventfraud and financial crimes.
“Literally from the first minutes, we were involved,” says Ari Redbord, the companys global head of policy, “working with Bybit and law enforcement partners like the FBI to track and trace funds.”
The attack was soon attributed to a North Korean state-sponsored hacker organization commonly known as Lazarus Group. Lazarus has been blamed for a series of high-profile cybercrimes in recent years, including the 2014 hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, the 2016 digital heist from the Bangladeshi central bank and, more recently, billions of dollars in digital currency thefts. TRM was among the first to attribute the Bybit attack after detecting an overlap between the blockchain resources used here and those used in Lazaruss previous thefts. Since then, the company has harnessed its expertise in tracking crypto to keep law enforcement abreast of where the stolen funds are headed, following them from blockchain to blockchain and through clever concealment mechanisms. “We were very much built for an investigation like this,” Redbord says.
Today, TRM’s investigators probe cryptocurrency thefts, ransomware attacks, and phishing scams. They help investigate other crimes that involve digital currencies, from child pornography to drug trafficking. The companys free, public platform Chainabuse, launched in 2022, helps people report fraud, hacking, blackmail, and other crypto-related crimes. Clients in the cryptocurrency and finance industries harness the company’s software and data about blockchain transactions to identify funds associated with criminal activity and to flag suspicious transactions. Law enforcement agencies around the world enlist TRMs toolsand sometimes even the company’s own investigators.
Demand for such investigators is growing. TRMwhich stands for Token Relationship Managementhas raised about $150 million in total funding to date, from notable backers that include the venture arms of PayPal, American Express, and Citi, as well as Goldman Sachs. The investment bank led TRMs most recent, late-stage funding round, which closed in January for an undisclosed amount, according to the research firm PitchBook.
Meanwhile, the crypto ecosystem is likely to experience positive growth throughout 2025, according to a recent analysis by PitchBook. So too will crypto crimes: Illicit operations took $40 billion worth of crypto last year, according to Chainalysis, another blockchain security companyfar more than the roughly $10 billion in venture capital funding that flowed into the above-board crypto sector in the same span, and more even than cryptos 2022 VC funding peak of $29.8 billion.
Roles like TRMs will become more urgent if the government continues to abdicate its regulatory duties. Last month, the Trump administration shuttered a Justice Department unit that targeted crypto-related crimes. Yet crypto sits at the nexus of so many of the presidents domestic interestsfentanyl, counterterrorism, border security, and fraud. For TRM and rivals like Chainalysis and Elliptic, all of which have already won millions of dollars in federal contracts, the future is bright.
From NFTs to crypto fraud
One paradox of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrency systems is that while they’re widely thought to provide anonymity, with users exchanging funds based not on real names and physical addresses, but on so-called digital addressesunique and lengthy strings of alphanumeric characters that serve as a given accounts sole identifierthe records of those transactions are still public. A common ledger logs every payment, tying each transaction to those that came before, all the way back to the tokens minting.
And once information becomes known about one transaction and the people or organizations behind the addresses involved, it becomes possible to trace those funds back and forth through time and from address to address. That allows clever observers to follow the money and deduce where funds came from, who other counterparties may be, and which transactions likely involved some of the same parties, like how investigators might piece together who used an anonymous burner phone based on the numbers they called.
It’s a limitation to anonymity that Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto alluded to in the groundbreaking paper describing cryptocurrency’s underpinnings. And it’s one that computer scientist Sarah Meiklejohn and colleagues at the University of California San Diego showed to be a reality in a widely cited 2013 paper that demonstrated concretely how Bitcoins could be grouped by likely common ownerand how those owners could sometimes be identified from a database of known addresses. And that database, Meiklejohn and colleagues showed, could be assembled by a determined researcher simply doing ordinary business on the blockchain and recording the addresses used by the various vendors, exchanges, and other parties they transact with.
While not the first company to run with Meiklejohn’s ideas on tracking the transfer of cryptocurrenciesrival Chainalysis, for one, launched in 2014TRM offered the first-ever platform compatible with the Ethereum blockchain, widely used both for its own currency and assets like non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. At the time, “all of these blockchain intelligence companies had built their entire data architecture on the Bitcoin blockchain, Redbord says, because Bitcoin was entirely synonymous with cryptocurrency, and vice versa.”
TRM began in 2018 as CEO Esteban Castao and CTO Rahul Rainas effort to capitalize on NFTs trendiness. After demoing an easy-to-use analytics tool theyd built to help understand NFT market movement to a friend with his own blockchain-based startup, Castao and Raina decided to pivot. Their creation could be its own product with wide appealthe same blockchains which track NFTs also manage cryptocurrenciesCastao says that while nobody had ever gotten excited about any of the other NFT applications we were building,” this was different. Describing their friend and his employees reactions, he says, it was the first time theyd seen on-chain activity visualized in a way they could understand.”
Talking to potential customers soon revealed a critical use cae beyond basic customer analytics: understanding the flow of funds on the blockchain to avoid unwittingly participating in money laundering. A now-pivoted TRM publicly launched in 2019 with a tool it planned to sell to blockchain businesses looking to comply with anti-money-laundering regulations. But a more proactive use case soon arose that suggested even bigger opportunities.
A friend reached out to say hed fallen victim to a cryptocurrency hack and wanted to know if TRM could help find the missing money. With the companys tool, “we could see in clear daylight where the money was,” Castao says. “So we got in touch with the Secret Service, we got in touch with the FBI, and that was the initial pull into that market.”
By the time TRM Labs emerged from Y Combinator, in 2019, fighting and preventing fraud and other crime had become its primary focus.
Theyre threat hunters
Many TRM senior leaders and investigators honed their expertise over years in law enforcement, working at police agencies across the world. Redbord, the global policy head, served for more than a decade as a U.S. federal prosecutor and spent two years working on money laundering and national security at the Treasury Department before joining the company. Chris Janczewski, head of global investigations, previously served as a special agent at IRS Criminal Investigations, where he was instrumental in recovering cryptocurrency stolen in the infamous 2016 hack on the Bitfinex exchange; in the time between theft and recovery, the digital coins value had ballooned to $3.6 billion, making it the largest federal government seizure in history. The laptop Janczewski used in the investigation is now in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection.
“They’re threat hunters,” Redbord says of TRMs investigators. “Our terror financing expert is out there communicating on password-protected Telegram channels with mujahideen, who will send him a crypto address. He’ll take that address and label it terror financing, and then we use AI and machine learning to build on that attribution.”
With investigators around the globe, the company is able to track illicit funds around the clock. “Things like Bybit, you can’t have just one investigator doing that,” says TRM senior investigator Jonno Newman.
Being based in Australia, in a time zone close to that of North Korea, made it easy for Newman to help out in the early days of the still-ongoing Bybit investigation. It also helped that he had previously led TRM’s investigation into an earlier hack attributed to North Korea, in 2023, where more than $100 million in cryptocurrency was reported stolen from thousands of blockchain addresses on the digital coin storage tool Atomic Wallet.
Then, Newman says, the hackers began obfuscating the stolen funds origins and ultimate destination, shuffling their plunder between different virtual addresses and cryptocurrencies. They relied on so-called mixers, which hold and combine coins from multiple sources before disbursing them to new addresses, and cross-chain bridges, which let users convert funds from one cryptocurrency to another. Hackers would later use a similar playbook in moving the Bybit funds.
As a result of TRMs automated fund tracker across bridges, a service it has offered since 2022an industry first, CEO Castao saysinvestigators were able to closely monitor where the Atomic Wallet funds headed, tipping off law enforcement as needed about opportunities to freeze or seize them. “It was early mornings and late nights trying to keep up with the laundering process.” says Newman of the investigation. The former head of South Australia Police’s cybercrime training and prevention unit and author of a recent children’s book about the crypto world, he says “it becomes this almost cat-and-mouse game about where they are going to go next.”
TRMs products at least make the game playable. “When you’re following the money, it used to be that you would reach a dead end when the money went to a different blockchain,” Castao says. “But with TRM, tracing across blockchains is seamless.”
Cautious optimism for blockchain security
Not everyone believes TRMs tech can fully deliver on its promise, at least from a legal perspective. J.W. Verret, an associate professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School who has testified as an expert witness in crypto-related matters, cautions that most testimony based on blockchain forensics tools should be viewed as potentially fallible, “They are useful for developing leads at the start of an investigation,” he says, but can be overly relied on like the long history of junk forensic sciencehandwriting analysis, bitemark analysis, stuff that’s all kind of later proven to be unreliable.” For its part, Verret says, TRM Labs offers tools that are less prone than some of its competitors to false positives because the company is more careful about how it establishes associations between blockchain addresses and criminal activity.
Meanwhile, last September, TRM announced the creation of the T3 Financial Crime Unit, a partnership with the organizations behind the Tron blockchain and Tether stablecoins to combat the use of those technologies for money laundering. By January, TRM said the partnership had helped freeze more than $100 million in USDTTether’s stablecoin pegged in value to the U.S. dollarfound to be tied to criminal activity. That figure has since more than doubled, with the total now including nearly $9 million linked to the massive Bybit heist.
“In the seven months since launch, T3 has worked with law enforcement to freeze over $200 million linked to illicit activity ranging from terror financing to money laundering to fraud,” Castao says. “And when you think about how much crime is financially motivated, adding a $200 million expense to criminals’ balance sheet is a huge win for deterring crime.”
But even as TRM jockeys for pole position in a competitive industry, cybercriminals continue to develop new methods of stealing and hiding funds through complex blockchain machinations, often by taking advantage of crypto efficiency gains that make it easier to move more money faster. That will only continue as criminals deploy AI to automate scams and potentially even money launderingand investigators use new AI and machine learning techniques, along with ever-growing lockchain datasets, to track them more efficiently and coordinate with law enforcement to stop them and seize their funds.
And since blockchain ledgers last forever, crypto criminals are risking more than perhaps they realize, according to Castao. “You’re betting not only that TRM and law enforcement won’t be able to identify your illicit activity today, but that we won’t be able to do it in the future, he says. Because the record is permanent.” And thats the most powerful advantage investigators possess.
In September 2024, Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings took a brief interlude from taping one of Americas most iconic game shows to film another series: a YouTube show about the history of public transit, set in his local county of Snohomish, Washington.
The show, called The Transit Effect, is a seven-part series that examines why public transit matters, diving into everything from infrastructure and economic growth to access to work, school, and healthcare. Its the brainchild of Community Transit, a public transportation agency in Washingtons Snohomish County, just north of Seattle. The shows first episode is now available on YouTube and on Community Transits website, with the remaining installments slated to drop over the coming months and into 2026.
Starting with the electric streetcars of the 1920s, The Transit Effect maps how American communities have been shaped by public transitand, amid todays notoriously car-centric American infrastructure, it presents a thesis for investing in more sustainable transportation options. The show is especially timely, given the Trump administration’s current crackdown on renewable energy and support for various fossil fuel industry projects.
We hope viewers come away with a deeper appreciation for how much public transit shapes daily lifeeven if they never set foot on a bus, says Community Transit public information officer Monica Spain. If this series sparks someone to think, I had no idea transit did all that, or nudges them to take a ride instead of drive, thats a win.
How Snohomish Countys ‘Community Transit’ snagged Ken Jennings
Rory Graves is a senior marketing copywriter at Community Transit who helped develop and write The Transit Effect. She says that, when the idea for the show first came about, the team knew the series would need to be anchored by a host who was both familiar and trustworthy to a wide range of audiences.
It wasn’t a new challenge for the agency: In 2024, Community Transit partnered with American travel writer Rick Steveswho has lived in Edmonds, Washington (a city inside Snohomish County) since 1967on another educational transit series. For The Transit Effect, Graves thought Jennings, another longtime Edmonds resident, could be the perfect fit.
We wanted to find someone who was a trusted source of information to do that storytelling. Who better than Ken Jennings? Graves says. In 2004, Jennings won 74 consecutive games of Jeopardy!, the longest winning streak in the show’s history, before becoming its host in 2021.
Beyond his impressive credentials, Jennings also has a personal connection to Community Transit: As a college student, Jennings frequently rode the agencys buses between his familys home in Edmonds and the University of Washington. Today, he lives in Seattle. After Community Transit reached out to him over email, Jennings readily agreed to host The Transit Effect.
But there was a small catch. Given Jennings tight schedule, the entire seven-part series had to be filmed in just four hoursa feat that required extensive preparation and multiple dry runs to test every piece of equipment, walk through the setup, and build in redundancies, Graves says. We dont have a huge budget like Amazon or Coca-Cola for our campaigns, but Ken was happy to collaborate with us, and were thankful for that.
[Image: courtesy Community Transit]
Exploring how public transit shaped America as we know it
To give viewers a peek behind the curtain at the history of public transit, The Transit Effect is organized into sub-10-minute episodes by themes. Episode 1, for example, details how ’20s era streetcars, electric trolleys, and subway systems determined how major American cities expanded; episode 3 dives into the environmental impact of public transit compared to travel by car; and episode 6 explains how public transit can serve as a vital lever of accessibility for kids, the elderly, those with disabilities, and those without access to a vehicle.
Throughout the series, Jennings refers to local examples to help illustrate this historylike in episode 1, which notes how the expansion of the Link light rail, a train system in the Seattle area that opened in 2009, has roots that extend back by more than 100 years.
Everyones talking about Link light rail expansion, but did you know our region had electric mass transit more than a century ago? Graves says. The old Interurban Trolley once ran along the same route we now know as the Interurban Trail. We often treat electric transit like its brand new, but its actually part of our history. Whats fascinating is how long cleaner, electric options have existedand how car-centric planning pushed them aside.
Another surprising tidbit explored in the show is how public transit shaped the musical world. The series highlights how New York Citys subway system helped make Harlem a cultural epicenter for Black Americans in the ’20s and ’30s, attracting the musicians that would ultimately bring the Harlem Renaissance to life.
Its wild to think that something as everyday as a transit system could set off a domino effect that helped launch the careers of artists whose legacies have helped define modern music, Graves says.
Through these stories, Spain says, Community Transit hopes to help viewers understand how public transportation shapes communities and removes barriers to opportunity, and to encourage community members to invest in their local public transit systems.
More than anything, we want people to see transit not just as a service, but as a powerful force for good in our region, Spain says.
Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture.
Donald Trump has added a fresh punching bag to his ever-widening rotation of opponents: Apple. The president has, as hes put it, a little problem with CEO Tim Cook. For Cook, this actually looks like a big problemwith no easy fix.
Trump has been intermittently critical of Apple before, but this has always seemed to be adroitly smoothed over by Cook, who for years was one of Mr. Trumps most beloved chief executives, and techs leading Trump whisperer, per The New York Times. It presumably helped that he was among those who donated $1 million to Trumps second inauguration.
But the presidents recent complaints about the tech giants overseas production have not only been harsher in tone than in the past, they have come with the ultimate marker of negative presidential scrutinya threatened tariff of 25% on iPhones. (Later Trump clarified that the tariff would also apply to smartphone from Samsung or any other brand made anywhere outside the U.S.)
Apple doesnt disclose iPhone sales by country, but worldwide they accounted for about 55% of its total revenue in the first quarter of its current fiscal year; iPhones make up about 53% of U.S. smartphone sales, according to research firm Backlinko. Revenue for its most recent quarter was around $95 billion (up 5% over last year), with earnings of about $25 billion.
Remarkably, it had only been a matter of weeks since Cook was credited with scoring Apple an exemption on a then-planned 145% tariff on iPhones assembled in China for the U.S. market. Among other things, Apple announced it would invest $500 billion in AI servers in the U.S. Meanwhile various analysts began crunching numbers on what pure-U.S. production would do to iPhone prices, and soon the hypothetical $3,000 smartphone seemed like a new third rail of American politics.
But as he has done with any number of prior third rails, Trump has now evidently shrugged off alleged risk. The immediate spark may have been at least partly personal: Cook reportedly declined an invitation to join the presidents recent swing through the Middle East. (Nvidias Jensen Huang and Sam Altman of OpenAI were among the CEOs who did put in an appearance.) Trump not only publicly noted Cooks absence, but openly mused about that little problem. Specifically, he said did not like reports that Apple and its suppliers are building all over India, apparently including iPhone factories, essentially to escape China-focused tariffs while keeping production overseas. I dont want you building in India, Trump said he told Cook.
Days later Trump reiterated on social media: I expect [Apple iPhones] that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else.
Thus the squarely Apple-targeted tariffand Cooks dilemma. Up to now, he and Apple generally have tended not to return fire when the Trump administration pokes at the brand or its business practices, and has avoided tangling with the administration on hot-button issues where their priorities diverge (such as diversity). That anti-confrontational strategy might actually make Apple more attractive as a target for Trump: Pinning the make-it-in-America attack to the iPhone generates maximum exposure for the administrations priorities, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo argued recently. In short, Trump may figure the specter of a $3,000 iPhone is a bigger problem for Apple than for his policy priorities. (Apple did not respond to a request for comment.)
This also comes in whats been a tough year or so for Apple generally: It lost an appeal related to its App Store pricing, saw its virtual reality headset draw a tepid response, and has been perceived to lag on AI integration. While the future of tariffs is still up in the air after a federal court ruled against them, Trump has lately become aware of the Wall Street slang TACOTrump Always Chickens Outindicating his threats tend to be empty, making it that much more likely that this time hell be stubborn.
Simply capitulating does not appear to be an option for Apple: Actually moving iPhone production to the U.S. would take years and involve prohibitive costs, not to mention a sizable work force that America doesnt currently have. And who can say whether some new device or alternative technology will supplant the iPhone while this huge undertaking plays out?
One plausible strategy thats been floated is for Apple to cook up a short-term assembled in America option that would involve some percentage of iPhones to be manufactured in a hybrid scenario involving some overseas production and final assembly at a U.S. facility. Similarly, analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush called an American-made iPhone “fairy tale,” but speculated Apple could propose some token percentage of production moved to the U.S. over a period of years as a bargaining tactic. These tactics might still push the phones cost upward, but it wouldnt triple it as a full-on shift to U.S. production mightand Trump could declare another victory in his campaign to de facto manage U.S. business.
That said, speculating about Apple stumbling one way or another has been a popular pastime for yearsyears during which Apples market cap has climbed to above $3 trillion. While shares are down 17.5% this year, it remains the worlds third most valuable company. Its wildly popular, as a brand, and as a stock. (We dont want to harm Apple, Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, assured CNBC.) Of course Apple doesnt want to be one of Trumps many targets, let alone his favorite. But it can certainly take a punch.
Some days, the idea of going to work can feel like a heavy weight you have to carry. If you wake up yearning for something more, youre not alone. Many professionals reach a point where they question whether their career aligns with their values, passions, and goals. They ask themselves whether theyre living the life they imagined, and if theyre doing fulfilling work.
It makes sense that we ask ourselves these questions at different stages of our lives. Your career goals at 40 shouldnt be the same as when you were 20. Something needs to change.
As two executive coaches who help people discover their purpose and achieve success, weve noticed that this challenge is on the rise. The good news is, you can take steps to mitigate this feeling of purgatory when youre so comfortable doing what you are doing and craving a challenge.
The problem: feeling stuck
Take Susan, for example. Every morning, she had to peel herself out of bed to face a job she could do in her sleep. There was no challenge, no spark, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Susan had reached the top of what she could achieve in her organization. As a loyal employee who spent 18 years at the organization, she struggled to imagine leaving the company she had grown up with over the years. But deep down, she knew it was time to explore a new challenge.
Susans story isnt unique. A recent 2024 study revealed that nearly half of the workforce feels burned out or dissatisfied with their current job. The reasons vary, but the outcome is the same: a gnawing sense that theres something more for you out there.
The solution: Ten steps to take action
Moving forward when you dont know your next career stepbut knowing that you want more and something needs to shiftcan be a very uncomfortable crossroads. It can evoke feelings of overwhelm. Thats why weve created a road map to help you navigate the uncertainty and move toward clarity and action.
Step 1: Admit youre ready for change
The first step is acknowledging that its time to make a move. Susans inflection point came when she admitted to herself that her current role no longer served her growth or happiness. Naming the problem is the first step toward solving it.
Step 2: Find a guide
Hire a career coach or find a mentor to help guide you through the process. They can provide clarity, accountability, and a structured path forward. A good coach can help you break down what feels overwhelming into actionable steps.
Step 3: Tap into what energizes you
Pay attention to the moments when time flies, and youre in a state of flow. What work energizes you? Keep a journal or use the notes app on your phone to track these moments. Over time, patterns will emerge, revealing what excites you most.
Step 4: Do a passion audit
Evaluate your passions and interests to identify what lights you up. Use tools like Ruths Passion Audit framework to assess where you draw your motivation, excitement, and where you can best spend your energy. What kind of work makes you feel alive and fulfilled? The Passion Audit helps differentiate between work youre good at, enjoy, would give up, or would do for free. It offers clarity on what work you should keep and what responsibilities you should shed.
Step 5: Create a target list using the 3 Ps
Build a target list of potential companies or roles by focusing on the 3 Ps: Prospects, Pivots, and Passions, like Marys MVP 360 Degree Pivot Program This 10-step program uses a proven approach to ensure alignment between your values, your passions, your purpose, and your needs at this stage in your life, including your future career goals.
Step 6: Assess your skills and build a learning plan
Evaluate your current skills and identify gaps that you need to address. Start developing those skills through courses, certifications, or hands-on experience. Platforms like LinkedIn Learning and Udemy are great resources for building new capabilities and even have AI tools to help craft your learning plan based on skills you want to learn.
Step 7: Network before youre ready
Begin exploratory conversations with your trusted network even before youre fully ready to make a move. Networking creates momentum and opens doors to opportunities you might not have considered.
Step 8: Look within
Sometimes, the best opportunities are closer than you think. Are there roles within your current company that could reignite your passion? By showing initiative and a desire for growth, you might be surprised at the doors leadership is willing to open for you. Marys client, Adam, explored external opportunities but ultimately decided to stay at his company. His initiative paid off: he was promoted twice and now finds fulfillment in his work.
Step 9: Update your résumé and LinkedIn profile
Polish your résumé and LinkedIn profile to reflect your most relevant achievements and skills. Reconnect with your extended network and make it easy for others to find and engage with you. Your online presence should showcase the value you bring to the table. AI can help you here too.
Step 10: Create clarity around your next steps
As you refine your search, focus on roles that align with your values, passions, and skills. Having a clear vision for whats next will help you recognize the right opportunity when it comes your way.
Navigating career uncertainty is challenging, but its also an opportunity to reassess what truly matters to you. By following these steps, youll not only gain clarity but also set yourself on a path toward work that excites and fulfills you.
For lovers of vintage Apple devices or anyone who grew up in the ’80s, a retro tech company just designed the ultimate throwback gadget: a working replica of the original 1984 Apple Macintosh that stands at just 62 millimeters tall.
The device, called the pico-mac-nano, was created by retro tech enthusiast Nick Gillard for his website, 1-bit rainbow, which specializes in sourcing vintage Apple components. The mini computer is about half the size of a Coke can, comes in an ultra-detailed 3D-printed case, and has a single USB port that can be used for power and to connect a keyboard or mouse. Currently, its available online for backorder at just over $63, though Gillard has also compiled a detailed breakdown of all the components he used for any intrepid DIYers at home.
In a blog post on the pico-mac-nano, Gillard explains that he was inspired by the early days of computers, like the first Macintosh, when pioneers achieved remarkable things within the technological limitations of the day. His version of the computer is a testament to just how much those technological limitations have evolved in the last 40 years.
[Photo: 1-Bit Rainbow]
Rebooting the first-ever Macintosh design
Gillard, who is now 59, says his interest in vintage Apple products began when personal computers first started appearing during his school days.
“My school had a Commodore PET, and I bought an Acorn Atom, so Ive lived through this revolution and Im pretty nostalgic about those early days of computing,” Gillard says.
In 2006, Gillard started his own Apple parts company, The Bookyard Ltd., which sold modern Apple components for 15 years. After selling the company in 2021, Gillard started 1-bit rainbow this past November as an offshoot that focuses on Apple tech 25 years or oldera specialty that led him to conceptualizing the tiny 1984 Macintosh.
[Photo: 1-Bit Rainbow]
According to Gillards blog post, the idea to build a pico-mac-nano came from fellow retro tech enthusiast Matt Evans. In 2024, Evans created a system he called the Pico MicroMac, which could emulate the capabilities of the earliest Macintosh 128K (including applications like MacPaint, MacDraw, and MacWrite) on a modern desktop computer. Gillard followed Evans explanation of the revived Macintosh to build his own version at home.
Needless to say, I set about building a pico-mac and am not ashamed (slightly ashamed) to say I giggled like a little girl when that black & white, 512 x 342 pixel Macintosh desktop appeared on my VGA monitor and I launched Lode Runner, Gillard wrote in a blog post.
Still, he said, the experience had him thinking: How much cooler would it be if pico-mac could drive a small LCD panel in a miniature replica Macintosh case? The concept of building a scaled-down version of the design seemed possible, given that Evans Macintosh emulator was powered by Raspberry Pis RP2040 chipa tiny microcontroller measuring just 7 by 7 millimeters.
“As soon as I had it working and connected to a VGA monitor, it just screamed to be put in a little Macintosh case with an LCD,” Gillard says.
[Photo: 1-Bit Rainbow]
Designing the pico Mac nano, a 2″ computer
To build his pico-mac-nano, Gillard started by searching for a mini LCD display screen that could load an approximation of the original Macintosh screen buffer, which featured a resolution of just 512 x 342 pixels (todays 13-inch MacBook Air, by comparison, boasts a resolution of 2560 x 1664 pixels.) After some trial and error, Gillard ended up with a two-inch screen featuring a slightly less accurate resolution of 480 x 342 pixels, with the trade-off being that this option also allowed him to make the whole Macintosh even smaller.
[Photo: 1-Bit Rainbow]
With the LCD display as a touchpoint for scale, Gillard then used a 3D printer to make a 62 millimeter-tall plastic casing based on the structure of the original Macintosh, down to the ridges on top of the computer and the floppy disk slot on its front panel. On the inside of the rear case, Gillard added an embossed 1-bit rainbow logo where the original Macintosh teams signatures wouldve been.
The finished pico-mac-nano comes with a micro-SD card slot for memory storage and a single USB port, which, using a special splitter cable (also available at 1-bit rainbow), can both charge the device and make it compatible with a keyboard at the same time. Gillard has also designed a separate battery power module specifically for the device, so you can whip it out of your pocket and wow your friends at parties. The computer even comes packaged in a tiny version of the instantly recognizable Picasso box that the original Macintosh 128K shipped in.
For those interested in purchasing the pico-mac-nano, Gillard warns in his blog that the device was designed as a proof-of-concept, not a finished product, and that its not necessarily guaranteed to run all early Macintosh software.
Even so, chances are the pico-mac-nano is destined to become the ultimate collectors item. In an era when iPods have become a popular example of “vintage tech,” the world’s tiniest workable Macintosh is a concept in a league of its own.
Pharmacies are more than just stores. Theyre vital links between people and their healthcare.
One of us, Patrick, witnessed this firsthand in 2003 while working as a pharmacy technician at Walgreens in a midsize West Texas town. Each day involved handling hundreds of prescriptions as they moved through the systemmeticulously counting pills, deciphering doctors handwriting, and sorting out confusing insurance issues. The experience revealed that how pharmacies are owned and managed is as much a public health issue as it is a financial one.
Fast-forward to today, and Walgreensone of the worlds largest pharmacy chains, which filled nearly 800 million U.S. prescriptions in 2024is at a turning point. In March, the company announced it would be acquired by private equity firm Sycamore Partners for $10 billion, just 10% of its peak market value. That deal takes the storied pharmacy chain off the public market for the first time in nearly 100 years.
Were professors who study the intersection of medicine and business, and we think this deal offers a window into the future of pharmacy care. It matters not just to pharmacists but also to the tens of millions of Americans who rely on outlets like Walgreens to meet their everyday health needs.
The rise and struggles of Walgreens
A lot has changed in the pharmacy industry since 1901, when Charles R. Walgreen Sr. purchased the Chicago drugstore where he served as a pharmacist. The company went public in 1927, expanded rapidly throughout the 20th century and grew to 8,000 stores by 2013. By 2014, a merger with the European pharmacy chain Alliance Boots made Walgreens one of the largest pharmacy chains in the world.
More recently, however, the picture for the pharmacy industry hasnt been so rosy. Labor costs have risen. Front-end retail sales (things like snacks, greeting cards, and cosmetics) have fallen. And financial pressures from pharmacy benefit managersthose third-party groups that manage the cost of prescription drug benefits on the behalf of insurershave grown.
All of these things have significantly constrained revenues across the industry, leading stores to shutter. Some estimates suggest that as many as one-third of U.S. retail pharmacies have closed since 2010.
Against that backdrop, Sycamore Partners March acquisition of Walgreens raises big questions. What does Sycamore see in this investment, and what might their strategies imply about the future of American pharmacy care?
Framing the private equity bet
Private equity firms typically buy companies, streamline their operations, and seek to sell them for a profit within five to seven years of the acquisition.
This growing movement of private equity into the global economy is by no means limited to healthcare. In 2020, private equity firms employed 11.7 million U.S. workers, or about 7% of the countrys total workforce. The total assets under management by such investors have grown by over 11% annually over the past two decades, a trend thats expected to continue.
In looking at Walgreens, Sycamore, like many of these businesses, likely sees an opportunity to buy low, cut costs and improve profitability. One survey of private equity investors found that the most common self-reported sources of value creation in these deals for companies of Sycamores size were changing the product and marketing it more robustly to drive demand, changing incentives for those within the business, and facilitating a high-value exit.
While private owners may have more patience than public markets, critics argue that private equity firms tend to have a short-term focus, looking for quick, predictable services of margin improvementlike, for example, cutting jobs.
Theres some evidence in favor of that claim. One study found that employment often drops in the years following a private equity buyout. And if the focus shifts to repaying debt or prepping for resale, long-term projects, such as investing in future innovation, can get deprioritized.
The history of privatized public companies offers a mix of successes and failures. Dell Technologies and hotel chain Hilton are two prominent examples of companies that went private, restructured successfully, and came back stronger. In those cases, going private helped management focus without the constant pressure of quarterly earnings reports.
On the other hand, companies such as Toys R Us, which was taken private in 2005 and filed for bankruptcy in 2018, show how high debt and missed innovation can lead to collapse.
Whats next for Walgreens
So, where does this leave Walgreensand the investors involved in the deal?
If part of the returns will be driven by buying low (the easiest indicator of potential future success to measure as of today) Sycamore started well: Its purchase price represents a mere 8% premium over the market trading value on the day of the announcement, significantly less than the 46% seen across industries in 2023. That said, Sycamore financed 83.4% of the purchase with debt, a number on the high end for these kinds of transctions. Healthcare groups have pointed to this number while raising concerns that innovation-focused investments may take a back seat to debt obligations.
As the dust settles on the purchase, Sycamore has indicated an interest in splitting Walgreens into three business units: one focused on U.S. pharmacies, one on U.K. pharmacies, and one on U.S. primary healthcare through its VillageMD subsidiary.
Thats not unusual: Sycamore has used a similar approach before with its investment in the office supply retailer Staples, a strategy that has garnered strong financial returns but been called into question for its long-term sustainability.
Given the significant financial challenges VillageMD has faced since its acquisition by Walgreens, this represents an opportunity to separately evaluate and optimize its performance. Meanwhile, Sycamores historic focus on retail and customer-focused businesses might help it modernize the in-store experience or optimize staffing.
For more than a century, Walgreens has survived and adapted to sweeping changes in retail. Now, its entering a new chapterone that could reshape not just its own future but the role of pharmacies in American life.
Will Sycamore help Walgreens thrive, using its resources to strengthen services and deliver more value to customers? Or will pressure to generate quick returns create problems? Either way, the answer mattersnot just for investors but for anyone whos ever relied on their neighborhood pharmacy to stay healthy.
Patrick Aguilar is a professor of practice of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis.
Peter Boumgarden is a professor of family enterprise at Washington University in St. Louis.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Imagine an interface where you can quickly shift between talking, typing, clicking, and even drawing to instruct software, like moving around a whiteboard in a dynamic conversation, Carl Rivera tells me. An experience in which users are not presented with a barrage of nested menus, but with a blank canvas that invites creativity aided by an artificial intelligence that knows everything there is to know about online and brick-and-mortar retail and marketing. A fluid interface that adapts and anticipates your needs, automating tasks and recommending actions like the most brilliant partner you could dream of.Thats a dream in itself, but it isnt a fantasy; its Riveras future vision for Shopify. Rivera is the companys new Chief Design Officer and he believes that, in the very near future, the e-commerce platforms user experience is going to feel like sci-fi. Rivera joined Shopify through the 2018 acquisition of his startup TicTail. Right after that, he was key to launching Shop, the companys consumer-facing business. His new position directly responds to industry skepticism about designs relevance in an AI-driven landscape. In this time in which everyone is shifting to AI but almost nobody has a clear idea why, it makes sense that Shopifys founder Tobi Lutke thought he needed someone like Rivera helming that leading position.Were entering a new technological paradigm with AI, Rivera says, emphasizing that now, more than ever, it is strategic for Shopify to have a clear design vision about how to implement artificial intelligence in a truly empowering way for every company, from small retail shops to corporate giants. The company wants to reimagine its user experience, transforming it into a powerful tool for designers and business people that is easier to use and saves more time than ever before. Half of the people are talking about design being dead because the programs can design for you, he says. We take quite the opposite point of view at Shopify.Rivera believes that designs importance has only intensified with AI. He recalls how in strategic meetings participants, despite active discussion about the future, agreed but had different pictures in their head, different images of what that future they all discussed together looks like. This lack of shared visualization, Rivera explains, is precisely where designs power lies. Put a designer into that conversation and start prototyping live as the conversation goes by, you start visualizing these different points of your imagination. This process, he elaborates, enables participants to align and start to kind of come on to the same version of the future. He argues that when a designer begins to sketch ideas or build quick prototypes in real-time, abstract verbal agreements translate into concrete visual representations, forcing participants to confront and reconcile their differing mental models. [Image: Shopify]A Shopify UX revolution is brewingFor all of Shopifys history, merchants confronted your typical dashboard: nested menus, a labyrinth of left-hand navigation bars spanning orders, products, customers, and analytics, and module-specific toolbars for inventory or marketing features. This hierarchical menu systems approach has defined the digital age, from Word to Photoshop. It requires users to memorize pathways. The entire navigation of Shopify is revealed right when you come in, Rivera says, because thats how we have learned to navigate software.As Shopifys capabilities expandedadding banking services, global tax compliance, or AI analyticsthis static approach strained usability. It doesnt at all seem to me that that is how you must be navigating software in the future, Rivera says. Instead, he envisions interfaces where AI-driven progressive disclosure would surface tools contextually. Imagine a merchant discussing a winter campaign with Sidekick, he tells me, which prompts Shopify to generate just the relevant email templates and ad budget controlsbypassing the marketing modules full menu structure. The user experience will morph and adapt to the needs of the user at any given time, a sci-fi dream come true. Riveras redesigned point-of-sale interface previews this philosophy: visuals stripped of clutter respond to retail workers needing full proficiency within 15 minutes of the first day, as Rivera explains it. Future iterations could reduce that to seconds. Very, very complex software will look extremely easy, Rivera insists, because capabilities materialize only when essentialnavigation bars dissolving into contextual prompts, settings menus summoned by voice, dashboards generated from conversations. The blank canvas replaces the control panel.[Image: courtesy Shopify]His vision for this simplified interaction centers on Sidekick, Shopifys AI assistant. Previously, merchants might have asked Sidekick isolated questions like Whats my best selling product in Germany? Now, the system handles complex, multi-step requests. A merchant can prompt, Hey Sidekick, Im thinking about a campaign for next winter, I want to target my top markets and I want to be selling my top products and I think it should be email and social media. Sidekick then shows its chain of thoughts by pulling together disparate pieces of information and creating a linked series of tasks that the user can observe in real time.For instance, Sidekick would analyze sales data to identify top markets and top products, then leverage its understanding of marketing best practices to draft initial email copy and social media posts tailored to those products and regions. It might even suggest an optimal budget allocation based on historical campaign data, demonstrating why Rivera says its becoming this really capable and active business partner. Last year, Lutke described Sidekick as a Robin to merchants Batmansomething thats right there with you kind of working through the tasks. It aims to become what everyone calls today agentic AI but focused exclusively on your business and your industry.[Image: courtesy Shopify]Though agentic AI still has a long way to go before its truly useful, Rivera says Sidekicks strength is that it operates as an agentic AI constrained to the context of Shopify. Unlike a general purpose model, Sidekick performs actions within the Shopify admin on behalf of the merchant, and its context comes from Shopifys proprietary data, not the open internet. And thats a lot of data: an internal dataset, derived from millions of merchants. It allows Shopify to come up with the best business strategy to cater to each individual one of them and offer a marketing strategy. We understand more. We have a better output of how businesses run their companies than any other company in the world. For instance, a generic AI might offer general marketing advice, but Shopifys AI can tailor recommendations based on actual e-commerce success patterns within its specific ecosystem, understanding granular details like how certain sneaker designs sell when it rains in Berlin, for example.[Image: courtesy Shopify]Rivera also talked to me about Shopifys recently redesigned point-of-sale (POS) system as a proof of concept for this design philosophy. The overhaul focused on making the interface intuitive for hourly workers, who need to understand entire software and how it works, you know, within 15 minutes of the first day at the job. This presented a distinct design challenge compared to designing for the Shopify admin, where users are typically more accustomed to complex software. The solution involved simplifying complexity while maintaining the extensibility and specific configurations required for various retail environments. He points to the common complexities of a POS systemmanaging inventory, applying discounts, handling returns, processing multiple payment typesand how the new design strips away extraneous elements to make these operations intuitive for a novice user. It looks gorgeous, Rivera says enthusiastically. The future of Shopifys designersThe future of design work within Shopify, Rivera explains, will see designers shift from crafting individual interfaces to building foundational systems. He predicts that engineers will be able to vibe code interfaces by describing them. This means an engineer or product manager could generate a draft UI by simply putting it into words, for example: I want to create an analytics page that shows me my email campaigns for Germany over this time period. The AI would then generate an initial experience that looks pretty good. Designers, he clarifies, will then spend their efforts perfecting these reusable components by focusing on building great design systems that that that AI can pull from. [Image: courtesy Shopify]He tells me that they will spend much more time honing the details. If you create a perfect form, if you create a perfect animation from one page to the next, its going to be able to be reused over and over and over again for every consumer thats vibe coding a Shopify app or creating a Shopify experience in our team or amongst our partners, he says. This demands meticulous system building, as Rivera emphasizes that to create really great AI outputs, you need really amazing AI inputs. This approach means designers will spend more time on fewer things, and dedicate their expertise to high-impact foundational elements that AI can then propagate across millions of stores.[Image: courtesy Shopify]The roadmap for this evolution will unfold through incremental updates. Sidekicks current capabilities will expand into multimodal interactions. He envisions an interface where users can effortlessly shift between modalities. Its not just point and click. Its not just chat. Its not just voice. Its all of them at once. He suggests an environment similar to a meeting with a whiteboard, where one can explain this to you using voice, then draw a rectangle and have an arrow, and then pull up my computer and show you something that is there on that side or whatever. This means a fluid, open canvas where users can chat, talk, click, or draw to instruct the software. Rivera anticipates a notable level of AI personalization in just a year. Drawing a parallel to hiring a business partner, Rivera envisions a future where merchants can participate in a hiring process and choose which business partner you want to put into your admin and call it Sidekick. This implies distinct AI agents with varying approaches, akin to how different human partners bring unique qualities to a business, perhaps a data-driven analyst persona or a more creative marketer persona. But while that seems sudden, Rivera tells me that the revolution wont come all at once. Progress will be cumulative. I like the expression overnight success, 10 years in the making,' he says. He believes the change already started a year ago, when Shopify first launched Sidekick, and will continue with updaes like a voice version. Eventually, he predicts, it will feel like the sudden market dominance of the iPhone, transforming silly apps that like cant do anything into an intelligent interconnected system. By the end of this year, well have made a ton more progress, he says. And by the end of next year, well be pretty science fiction-like.
Recently, I was telling a friend about a marketing pitch Id received that ended with a hard sell. I mentioned to my friend that I was still thinking about the pitch, which promised to generate leads for my freelancing business.
How do you know its not a scam? she asked me.
That stopped me in my tracks. Id recognized the hard sell as soon as it startedand had even anticipated it. I scheduled the call before another appointment so Id have a good reason to hang up. But Id still been tempted.
After a moments thought, I was able to articulate how I knew I wasnt being scammed. This company is offering to do something real that I could certainly do myselfidentify and contact potential clients. The company isnt scamming me; theyre just using high-pressure sales techniques.
But my friends question was an excellent reminder of how easy it is to fall victim to investment scams, whether youre investing in your business or your nest egg. Thats why its so important to understand what investment scams look like and how to recognize them.
Nothing new under the sun
While the methods scammers use to reach their targets are constantly changing and evolving, the actual scams have remained basically the same since the first prehistoric cave dweller received an email from a deposed Nigerian prince.
Even new investment scams, like Sam Bankman-Frieds cryptocurrency fraud and whatever the hell NFTs claimed to do, prey on reliable human frailties that dont changelike assuming we dont need to understand an investment to profit from it. Thats why most investment fraud is just repackaged versions of the same old scams.
These might include:
Ponzi schemes
A century ago, Boston con artist Charles Ponzi promised investors a 50% return within 45 days on an investment in international mail coupons. At the heart of every Ponzi scheme is the promise of high returns with little to no risk.
Of course, there wasnt really an investment. Instead, Ponzi continued to gather new investors, using their money to pay the returns to the original investors. This is the other hallmark of a Ponzi schemethe scammer must constantly bring on new investors to satisfy the older investors.
Ponzis international mail coupon scheme fell apart when postal inspectors grew suspicious and his investors cashed out in large numbers. Ponzi schemes are inherently unstable and will inevitably disintegrate, either when investors cash out or when the scammer can no longer bring in new investors. But they continue to crop up, as Bernie Madoff reminded the world in 2008.
You can generally recognize a Ponzi scheme when it seems too good to be true, when the returns are too consistent, and when those returns arrive nearly overnight. Those all feel great, which is how Ponzi schemes override your logic. This is why its always a good idea to embrace your financial paranoia.
Pump-and-dump schemes
The aim of a pump-and-dump scheme is to manipulate the price of a stock in order to profit. Under this scheme, scammers purchase shares of a company at a low price, then start aggressively promoting the stockpumping itto encourage investors to buy in.
This inflates the price of the stock. At that point, the scammers sell off their sharesdumping the stockprofiting off the unnaturally high price. This leaves the investors holding stocks they paid too much money for.
Typically, pump-and-dump schemes work with penny stocks on little-known exchanges and the scammers engage in high-pressure tactics to get you to invest now. If youve never heard of the stock or the exchange its traded on, and the sales pitch veers from buttering you up (A smart person like you wouldnt leave this opportunity behind!) to a hostage negotiation (Come on, do the right thing!), then you may be facing a pump-and-dump scheme.
Even if you have to do the Zoom-call equivalent of locking yourself in the bathroom and escaping out the window, get out of that meeting.
Pre-IPO investment scams
We all like to imagine where our bank account would be if wed been one of the initial investors in Apple, which is why its easy to fall victim to a pre-IPO investment scam.
These fraudulent offers give you the opportunity to purchase a stake in an emerging company before its initial public offering, or IPO, and they will often compare this startup to an established company so youll get dollar signs in your eyes. Who wouldnt want to get in on the ground floor of the next Amazon?
Like pump-and-dump schemes, pre-IPO scams commonly include high-pressure sales tactics. The fraudsters want your money as quickly as possible and they dont want you to have time to think more deeply about their offer.
The other red flag for pre-IPO scams is how you are contacted. These scammers often rely on cold-calling potential investors and social media solicitations (because thats really how the biggest companies in the world raised their capital, right?). Taking a moment to think through the weirdness of getting contacted out of the blue for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! can help you resist the temptation to invest.
Affinity scams
Scammers know that youre likely to lower your guard among your community, so the bastards exploit that. Affinity scams target members of affiliated groups, such as religious communities, military members, or other tight-knit circles.
The fraudster either is a member of the group or poses as one. By earning the trust of a respected leader, who spreads the word about the investment scheme, the scammer is able to convince the group to invest.
These scams can be some of the most difficult to identify, since the scammer is exploiting the groups social capital for their own gain, especially if they have hoodwinked a well-regarded leader.
The best way to fight affinity scams is to ask a lot of questions. Legitimate investment professionals are happy to field questions and help you understand where your money is going. Scammers will pressure you to shut upand will use group dynamics to enforce your silence. And that faux-friendly insistence on slence after youve asked questions is the best indicator of an affinity scam.
Know the signs of a scam
Knowing what scams exist doesnt make you immune to them. Madoffs victim list included a number of brilliant minds and tough cookieswhich just proves that fraud can happen to anyone. Understanding the specific psychological tools scammers use can help you give yourself enough room to think before you act.
Urgency: There is no legitimate investment that cant wait 24 hours. You can feel confident about walking away from anyone who pressures you to make an immediate investment decision.
Ambiguity: Even if you are an investment noob, you need to understand what your money will be used for. If youre more confused after getting a string of smart-sounding gobbledygook or if youve been told not to worry your pretty little head, dont invest.
Guarantees: There are no guarantees in investing. Give the hairy eyeball to anyone who tells you differently.
Reaching out to you: Cold-calling is the last refuge of the desperate. (So says the writer who sometimes needs to find people to interview.) If someone is reaching out to you with an exciting opportunity, you need to wonder why.
Not today, scammer
Remembering that scamming techniques dont really change over time can help you protect yourself. Thats because all scams, from Ponzi schemes to pump-and-dumps to pre-IPO investments to affinity scams, aim to get your emotion to override your logic.
Of course, it can be difficult to recognize when your lizard brain is driving. Thats why you can train yourself to look for the classic signs of an investment scam, including urgency, ambiguity, guarantees, and cold-calling.
Before you sign on to any investment, do some basic research, starting with a simple Google search of the opportunity. The Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission provide information on common and emerging trends in investment scams, and scam victims will often share details of their experiences online. Just searching online for the investment may be enough to identify it as a scam.
If youre still not sure, consider whether youre feeling pressured to invest. Take at least 24 hours (but consider taking longer) to do more digging into the investment and talking with knowledgeable friends and colleagues before deciding.
And throughout your decision-making process, keep my friends savvy question at the top of your mind: How do you know its not a scam?
Potential buyers in California have seen the daunting challenge of owning a home become even more difficult. Due to higher mortgage rates and increased home values, a recent report from the California Association of Realtors found that buyers needed an income of $218,000 to afford a median home, a figure thats jumped 82% since 2019.
A Canadian startup seeks to make those figures a little more favorable, especially for working class and first-time buyers.
Zown, which opened for operations in California in the fall, offers buyers what it calls down payment assistance. The model works like this: By using automation and salaried showing agents to help facilitate deals, it can reduce commissions that usually account for 2.5% or more of a homes purchase price to about 1%, offering the difference as a rebate to buyers to use toward a down payment or to cover closing costs.
Zown was launched by Canadian entrepreneur Rishard Rameez, who documented his own struggles with housing affordability on a viral Reddit thread. He found the process laborious and expensive and, in 2021, started working on a way to simplify the transaction. He developed a model that uses automation and a team of salaried brokers to cut commission fees and pass those savings along to buyers. He said Zown is able to give back roughly $10,000 to $15,000 per buyer for down payment assistance, an amount that equaled what an average person could save in a year or two.
Since launching the product in Toronto in 2024, Zown has helped more than 250 buyers purchase homes, and offered more than $3 million toward down payments. That assistance can often mean the difference between potential buyers who can comfortably make a purchase or ones who are stretching substantially to buy their home.
Michelle Boyd is chief strategy officer for the Terner Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and studies housing startups and fintech innovations. She says the Zown model makes sense for first-time buyers and those doing more straightforward deals. (But those buying older homes or fixer-uppers would perhaps benefit from an experienced agents help.)
I think there is a real opportunity to take some of that value that real estate agent is providing and give that back to the home, or that person who’s trying to purchase it, she said. Its maybe not going to totally change someone’s ability to buy a home, but its not nothing.
Downpayment assistance programs, many run by cities and localities to help buyers in their area achieve homeownership, have been rising sharply in recent years due to the nations worsening housing crisis. Down Payment Resources, a group tracking this trend, found that more than 2,500 such programs exist across the country, providing an average of $18,000 in benefits to buyers. The number of programs has increased 55% year over year.
Zowns salary model can also offer more stability in a profession that depends on irregular sales and commissions. The national average take-home pay for a realtor is just under $59,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The buyer-first model
Lisa Touney has been running the California expansion of Zown in 2024, and has closed three deals in Corona and Newport Beach; one deal saved a buyer $30,000. A broker-owner with three decades of experience, Touney worked with one of the Zown co-owners and decided to help them launch in California. Touney has a license to work in multiple states, and the Golden State offers a great proving ground, due to its significant affordability crisis.
Touney likes the salary-based model of Zown, which takes away the pressure of making sales, and offers an attractive, innovative way to help lower the cost of housing. Currently, Touney is working with two other agents, and says they can expect to make over a six-figure income with the Zown model. (The firm said a full-time Zown agent in California can expect to earn solid mid-to-high five figures annually under Zowns productivity-based pay model.”) Rameez hopes Zown can facilitate 1,000 sales in its first full year in California.
Diana Zaya, an expert on real estate brokerage models, says she doesn’t find the Zown model as innovative as is being touted: realtors have long sacrificed some of their commission to make a deal pencil out. In this case, its more systematized. She believes the push to lower costs is good and can really make a difference for buyers, but also worries, long-term, that taking away commissions could lead to a devaluing of realtor pay and a reduction in quality, since she believes the model relies on low margins.
Rameez added that, This isn’t a race to the bottom; it’s a modern, trustfirst model where real value is measured by service and lasting relationships, not by a flat percentage.
Zown is the latest in a number of startups seeking to make homebuying more accessible. Boyd said a number of such startups have gone under in recent years, as the combination of lower price appreciation and a higher interest rate spike hurt their plan to profit off of rising values.
CosMcs, the glimmering, retro, space-agey concept restaurant from McDonalds, is no more.
In 2023, McDonalds announced the spin-offbilled as the next frontier for the fast-food chain to test its most otherworldly specialty beverage ideasto a deluge of marketing fanfare. CosMcs was a drive-through-only concept with a pared-down menu of neon-colored drinks and a few snack items. The first CosMcs restaurants opened with lines around the block before the sun was even up. Now, less than two years later, McDonalds is jettisoning the stores back into the ether.
According to a press release published late last week, McDonalds plans to shut down all five of its CosMcs locations (one in Illinois and four in Texas) in late June, as well as delete the restaurants associated app. In the coming months, CosMcs-inspired flavors will be landing in hundreds of U.S. McDonalds locations as part of a wider beverage test. The announcement comes in the wake of McDonalds first-quarter 2025 financial report on May 1, which revealed that the chains sales dropped at the beginning of the year, marking its second consecutive quarter of declines.
Experts say there are a few main reasons why CosMcs didnt work out as a stand-alone conceptbut that doesnt necessarily mean the spin-off was a failure for McDonalds.
[Photo: Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images]
Bubble tea, energy drinks, functional soda, oh my!
From the beginning, it was fairly clear what McDonalds hoped to gain from CosMcs: an entry point into the speciality beverage category (dominated by players like Starbucks, Dutch Bros., and Dunkin) thats been on the rise in recent years.
As Gen Z has become increasingly interested in beverages like bubble tea, functional soda, and colorful energy drinks, other quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have moved to catch up. In 2024, Starbucks experimented with adding bubble tea to its menu; Dunkin introduced an energy drink lineup; and even Taco Bell opened its own beverage-only spin-off called Live Más Café. Meanwhile, McDonalds beverage offerings have remained largely limited to its soda machines and McCafé coffee menu (which, interestingly, also originated as an Australian spin-off concept).
CosMcs was McDonalds answer to this gap in its offeringsa space to, as the restaurant put it at the time, perform a limited test of otherworldly beverage creations at a safe distance from its main restaurants. Within CosMcs blue-and-yellow beverage test kitchen, the chain was free to trial-run concepts like Tropical Spiceade and Island Pick-Me-Up Punch to a smaller audience of consumers. On the companys first-quarter 2025 earnings report, CEO Chris Kempczinski called this strategy quarantining the complexity in a stand-alone concept.
[Photo: Matt Schwerin for The Washington Post/Getty Images]
According to Matt Michaluk, executive creative director at the branding agency JKR, CosMcs made sense as a viable innovation for McDonalds.
With an increasing share of occasions within QSR now solely drinks-only missions, and the diversification of menus by the big coffee chains, this should be a competitive yet fertile ground for growth, Michaluk says.
In spite of that promise, he says, there are three reasons CosMcs fizzled out as a stand-alone: brand contradiction, absence of experience, and decline of hype. To start, Michaluk notes, CosMcs was shaped around a pseudo-nostalgic play on historic McDonalds brand characters, like the oft-forgotten 80s alien CosMc. But the spin-offs menu failed to align with that conceit. Further, the pilot format’s focus on drive-through architecture takes away from the overall brand experience, leaving consumers overwhelmingly underwhelmed.
And, to cap it off, he says, Innovations and pilots work best when theyre new, exciting, and highly salient. McDonalds seemingly didnt invest in sufficient marketing efforts to support CosMcs. Hence, the hype died far too quickly. Within weeks of launch, there was nothing more to talk aboutnothing new, nothing to get people to come back.
[Photo: Matt Schwerin for The Washington Post/Getty Images]
Why CosMcs hasn’t failed yet
Michaluks assessment might seem like a fairly bleak one, but Danny Klein, editorial director of the trade publication QSR, says the failure of CosMcs as a stand-alone doesnt necessarily equate to a failure for McDonalds business.
From its inception, Klein says, McDonalds likely viewed CosMcs as more of a test run for a potential beverage expansion on its main store menus than a restaurant in its own right. Now that CosMcs recipes are rolling out across stores in the U.S., it appears that the initial experiment was a success.
Hundreds of locations are going to start testing [CosMcs beverages], and I think from the general McDonald’s system standpoint, a beverage extension is what they all wanted, Klein says. I don’t think its a failure. People are going to say that because it was such a big deal, and then it just flamed out into the universe. But in my opinion, it was always a marketing test with the potential to be something else, and that just didn’t materialize.
In addition to broadening the availability of CosMcs beverages, McDonalds also announced last week that it would create a new beverage category team dedicated to gaining share in the space. As Kempczinski told investors in early May, There’s a lot of growth that we see in beverages, and the profitability of beverages is very attractive, adding, frankly, we think there’s more that we can be doing to capture our fair share of that.
Ultimately, Klein says, the true test of CosMcs will be whether the average McDonalds customer is interested in supplementing their Big Mac and fries with a Sour Cherry Energy Burstor if they choose to stick with a plain old Coke.
