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Jon Armstrong never intended to create the booming live-commerce platform Stacked Golf. All he wanted was to join the local golf club, but his wife, Ashley, gave him an ultimatum: Yes, he could join, but only if he could find a way to pay for it himself. His solution? Start a YouTube channel reviewing golf balls. The problem was that he didnt even have the money to buy balls to review, so he scoured the woods at his Daytona Beach golf club for lost balls and started making videos comparing the Titleist Pro V1 balls he plays to whatever he found in the rough. Zero budget. Zero business plan. Just a guy with a phone and a hunch that people might search for golf ball reviews. That was in 2019. Within two months, his channel garnered enough traffic to monetize. Within six months, it became the Armstrongs full-time income. Today, the Stacked Golf YouTube channel has 325,000 subscribers, and earlier this year, the Armstrongs launched a multi-seller marketplace by the same name, which generates $150,000 in weekly sales and is approaching $3 million in total sales after just six months. With a community of 26,000 members and more than 1,000 active sellers, the Armstrongs have accidentally built a case study for the booming live shopping economya market projected to explode from $128 billion in 2024 to $2.5 trillion by 2033. “We got super lucky, Armstrong says. With everything we were doingfilming the golf ball reviews and thrifting golf clubswe were basically filming ourselves making money. American Pickers, but for golf The channel’s real trajectory shift came when Armstrong’s wife, Ashley, added her passion and expertise in thrifting to the equation. What emerged, by their own description, was “American Pickers, but for golf clubs,” which entails them driving for hours through Central Florida hoping to find a $400 putter sitting in a Goodwill for $3. The polished videos hide an unglamorous reality. “For every one thrift store we show you in a video, we’ve probably been to like 15,” Armstrong admits. “There were a lot of days where we wore the same clothes back to back to try and figure out how to fill out one 10-minute video.” They occasionally sold items on eBay and other platforms, but tired quickly of the tedious product-by-product selling process and fees that ate into profits. Mostly, they hoarded inventory, waiting for a better solution. Meanwhile, over the next three years, their community grew organically. “We really wanted to create a platform where we make buying golf clubs online as exciting as it is in our videos,” Armstrong explains. “It’s kind of a soulless transaction when you’re buying from eBay. The thrill of the hunt didn’t really exist.” A million-dollar tech shortcut The technical breakthrough came throughof all thingsa golf game. Armstrong played a round with Commonwealth Picker, another YouTuber who had built a marketplace on District, a platform that provides the infrastructure for custom shopping platforms with livestreaming and multi-seller marketplaces. Armstrong, who previously ran an app development company, recognized the value of District immediately. “The technology stack that they give you is millions of dollars,” he says. “So it was kind of a no-brainer. They handle support, they handle the whole tech side, and all we have to do is focus on growing the user base and selling as much as possible. Founded in 2022 by three former Snapchat product builders (and backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Kindred Ventures, and Greylock Partners), the Los Angelesbased company has 12 employees, a lean operation compared to competitor and live-shopping giant Whatnot. The Armstrongs timing couldn’t have been better. While Whatnot has reached an $11.5 billion valuation, proving massive investor appetite for the category, District is democratizing access. Where Whatnot built a centralized marketplace, District enables creators to build their own branded ecosystems. By using District, Stacked Golf isn’t selling on someone else’s platform, such as eBay or Craigslist: Its more like theyre building their own golf-focused, mini-eBay right on District. They control their own marketplace, set their own rules, and earn commission fees from their 1,000-plus sellers. Stacked Golf’s Timed auctions Here’s how it works: Sellers schedule livestreams that generally last anywhere from 45 minutes to four hours, or longer. They hold up a productsay, a Nike Method Core puttergive a brief pitch, and start the countdown timer, which is typically 10 seconds. Last person to bid wins. It’s simple, fast-paced, and wildly effective. Stacked Golf also features standard marketplace and buy-it-now listings, as well as seven-day auctions, but 98% of sales come from livestreams, with clubs selling from $5 to several hundred dollars. One seller recently hosted a marathon nine-and-a-half-hour livestream, which generated nearly $20,000 in sales, according to Armstrong. Some of the biggest sellers on Stacked Golf ae golf stores, like Play It Again Sports which recently made $17,000 in two hours, more than that seller normally does in a week of non-livestream selling. The format taps into why live commerce conversion rates run up to 10 times higher than conventional e-commerce: urgency, entertainment, and real-time interaction that traditional online shopping lacks. But Armstrong’s secret weapon isn’t the format. It’s curation. Community over commerce Stacked Golf preapproves every seller, verifies product legitimacy, and rejects gambling gimmicks and NSFW content that plague some live-selling competitors. “We really wanted to create an atmosphere where people want to buy and sell on our platform just because it’s the best place to do it,” Armstrong says. The philosophy extends to seller selection. Armstrong prefers passionate collectors over spreadsheet arbitrageurs. “The ones that have the most people in their chats are the ones that know what they’re selling because they like it,” he says, citing sellers who specialize in Nike golf clubsdiscontinued since 2016 but beloved by collectors. The strategy is working. Since launching earlier this year, the marketplace grew from zero to 15,000 members in just three months and has since reached 26,000 after six months. Multiple individual sellers have generated more than $150,000 in personal sales on the platform. The business itself now employs three full-time staff and operates from a 2,500-square-foot Ocala, Florida, warehouse, which it has already outgrown. It has also attracted brand partnerships with golf apparel company Pins & Aces and hosts sellers who have relationships with Adidas North America, Titleist, and Mizuno, among others. But Armstrong is cautious about diluting the community with corporate sellers. “We wanted to create a marketplace that we would both want to buy and sell on and not feel ashamed of marketing it,” he says. “As soon as you start getting too corporate in terms of the sellers on there, you kind of kill the vibe.” Right idea, right time In the U.S., the live commerce market accounts for approximately 5% of e-commerce salesfar less than China’s 60%suggesting an enormous runway for companies like Stacked Golf as American consumers embrace the format. The U.S. market is expected to grow at 37.2% annually through 2033, fueled by platforms like TikTok Shop and stand-alone marketplaces like Whatnot. TikTok Shopwhich blends livestream shopping with traditional product listingshosted over eight million hours of live sessions in the U.S. in 2024. Whatnot, focused on collectibles and resale, recently surpassed $2 billion in annual livestream sales, while Amazon Live and eBay Live are expanding their live commerce offerings. The trend is driven by the urgency and entertainment that Armstrong has built into Stacked Golf’s model. District’s infrastructure democratizes this opportunity. Where building live commerce tech might require millions in investment, creators can now launch sophisticated marketplaces overnight and focus on what, according to Armstrong, matters most: building authentic communities. “It’s still kind of surreal, he says. Just thinking about how we started with finding golf balls in the woods, and now we’re here. The business he built with his wife”the CEO of everything,” as he calls herdemonstrates something fundamental about modern commerce: Authentic community-building trumps traditional business planning. They didn’t start with a pitch deck. They started with a bet, a phone, and a genuine love for the hunt. And that authenticity might be the companys most valuable asset. “It just grew naturally, which I think people appreciated,” Armstrong says. “Even to this day, it’s kind of clear that it ain’t all about the money.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Sometimes, a simple summary is all you need. Me? Im a man of many words. (Understatement of the century, I know.) I appreciate interesting writing, where language matters and a persons personality shines through in the prose. But lets be real: 99% of the articles you encounter on this musty ol web of ours arent exactly awe-inspiring. Theyre a means to an end. The same is true for most videos, too. And in any such scenario, you arent in it for the pleasure of reading or viewing and being entertained. You just want to get the gist of whats happening without wasting any time wading your way through unimaginative drivel. The next time you find yourself facing that predicament, todays Cool Tools discovery will be exactly the advantage you never knew you needed. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! Simple summaries, served up swiftly So, first things first: In this day and age, theres no shortage of supposedly smart AI-powered systems offering to summarize stuff for you. Such systems are built into almost every browser at this point, not to mention most AI chatbots and an awful lot of regular ol apps as well. But a free stand-alone service called Kagi Summarize is a cut above the rest in some pretty significant ways, both practical and philosophical. And youll need less than a minute to get it going. Choose your own adventure: On any device, you can simply head over to the Kagi Summarize websiteand then paste any article or YouTube link (or even a block of plain text!) into the box on that page. Note that you will need to sign in with an email address or a Google, Microsoft, Apple, or GitHub account in order to use this web versionbut its completely free once you do, and the service never spams you or sells your info. Better yet: On a phone or tablet, you can install the free Kagi Summarize Android app or Kagi Summarize iOS appand then save yourself a step by sharing any article or video there directly from another app, using the standard system-level sharing option. This is also free and doesnt require any kind of sign-in or account to use. Summoning Kagi Summarize is as simple as sharing anything into the app, on mobile. Either way you go, youll end up with a quick n simple bulleted breakdown of your items key points for easy skimming. Kagi Summarize can give you bulleted breakdowns for easy skimmingand that’s just the start. And thats just the tip of the iceberg. On the desktop front, you can switch between that default Key Moments view and a more narrative Summary option, and you can use a Discuss Further command to interactively ask specific questions about the material and get instant answers. And on mobile, you can move between those same setups along with a super-simplified Explain Like Im 5 approachand you can change the length of your summaries to get more or less detail. You’ve got all sorts of options for how your summaries turn out. Kagi Summarizes mobile version also has some interesting options for customizing the appearance of your summaries to make em easier on the eyes, in whatever style you prefer. You can even control the appearance of your summaries to make ’em as pleasant as possible for your personal preferences. So why is this better than other summarizing tools, you might be wondering? Id point to three specific reasons: It works with anything, anywherewithout tethering you down to one specific browser or program you have to use to access it. It offers some genuinely nice extras in the way of customization and control, which makes the summaries much more useful in returnsince you can experience em in whatever form, length, and visual appearance you find most appealing. And its focused fiercely on privacy. The underlying organization, if you arent familiar, is a Google search alternative thats all about (a) quality of experience and (b) avoiding any collection of any personal info. Kagi Summarize follows that same philosophy and promises to keep all your activity anonymous. The mobile apps dont even ask for a single permissionwhich is pretty darn rare in this day and age. Privacy is a key part of the Kagi Summarize setup. To summarize: Its useful, its customizable, its free, and it doesnt do anything with your data. If you think youll ever find a scenario where itd be helpful to have something summarized, this one is well worth keeping around. Kagi Summarize is available on the web as well as in a more fully featured Android app and iOS app, for mobile use. Its completely free to use. And its creator is adamant about the fact that it doesnt collect or share any significant data. The desktop site requires you to sign in, while the mobile apps dontbut neither requires any privacy compromises. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
Category:
E-Commerce
Camps are finally emerging in the big fight over whether and how to regulate AI. President Donald Trump earlier this week declared that he would block local officials who try to regulate the technology; according to a draft executive order leaked on Wednesday, the administration will punish states that try. State lawmakers and members of Congressincluding Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greeneare now pushing back. This has been a long time coming. Members of Congress have put out myriad proposals for regulating artificial intelligence, but no significant legislative package has come through. The Biden administration issued a major executive order on the technology, but the Trump administration has spent significant capital attacking it, ultimately rescinding much of the measure. The federal government has not taken even the minimal actions despite quite broad bipartisan support, for example, about managing the risks and harms to kids. If there’s one thing we can all agree on, that’s it, Arati Prabhakar, former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) during the Obama administration and head of the Office of Technology and Science Policy during the Biden administration, tells Fast Company. To say that the states shouldn’t do anything because the federal government should do itand then yet to oppose every action at the federal leveljust makes no sense whatsoever. Fast Company senior writer Rebeccah Heilweil spoke with Prabhakarwho has also filed a major brief defending Congresss ability to support science research amid federal funding squeezesabout where we stand with AI regulation today, and what the technologys continuing rise could mean for the future of American democracy, governance, and well-being. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. The administration has made clear that it doesnt think there should be state-level AI regulation, and is continuing to route this toward the federal government to regulate. Thats obviously in the interest of some AI companies. What do you think about that? States have been very active. Every state has considered, often, multiple bills. Yet, when you look in aggregate, most of what’s been enacted are transparency measures. That’s a start, but it’s a pretty small start. I think we’re very far from wrangling this technology and putting it on the right course. Pretending that the federal government is going to achieve that without the states is ludicrous. The Trump administration rescinded the big Biden executive order on AI. Whats been the impact of that? (Editors note: The Biden executive order on AI, which was signed in October 2023, gave federal agencies a range of new responsibilities related to the tech, as well as guidance on how to use it.) The actions that this administration has taken on many fronts are deeply concerning. They’ve put the country into a national crisis. The AI front is one in which it hasn’t been as dramatic. It’s positioned as this big, dramatic shift, but a lot of the implementation of the executive order under President Biden had already happened. I’ve even seen cases where they’re taking credit for things that departments and agencies were doing better because of their good use of AI. The bigger issue really is that this administration is not stepping up to the two things we need to be doing as a country to get AI fully on the right track. The market is doing all the experimentation to figure out where the business productivity applications are, but there are two public roles that aren’t really being addressed right now in this administration. One is managing risks and harms, and the other is just actively going after AI for public purposes. That’s where we are falling short. In a time when the most powerful technology of our time is just surging, this government is not stepping up. How concerned are you about people developing highly psychologicaleven highly romantic or even sexualrelationships with chatbots? To me, it’s part of this distortion of reality that started in the social media erawhich, by the way, was AI as well, right? It was AI behind the scenes that determined what was being fed to you. Now it’s being exacerbated by AI that’s right in your face with chatbots or image generators. I think it’s very concerning. It’s a whole spectrumfrom the polarization that has been driven by mis- and disinformation, all the way to these parasocial relationships. There have been some really tragic cases, even suicides that were the result of a dialogue that sent someone who was in a really dangerous, fragile state to a terrible end. AI evokes conversations about cognitive offloading. We often cite the calculator, where, yeah, were not as good as doing math in our heads. But in general, automating calculating has been a net good for our overall intelligence. But a lot of people are freaked out by the prospect of outsourcing thinking to these platforms. I think about the calculator example a lot. There’s a difference between relying on a calculator to do calculationswhich all of us doand not understanding what a fraction means. You need to understand what a fraction means to just deal with the world. I think that’s the sorting out that needs to happen with large language models. I saw Gallup did some polling where they included talking to students about their attitudes about AI. I was really surprised to find out how anxious high schoolers, for example, are about AI. Part of their anxiety is a lack of clarity about when they can and can’t use it in school. But part of their anxiety is also their concern about their critical thinking skills. I love the fact that they had good enough critical thinking skills to be worried about that. Is there a risk that focusing too much on the AI race with China is going to prevent us from coming up with better regulations for the technology domestically in the United States? That argument is being used to avoid regulation. But I think we need to be really clear that what’s happening right now is that every country around the world is racing to use AI as a tool to build a future that reflects their values. I do not want to live in a future defined by this Chinese authoritarian government’s values. If you look at their human rights abuses, the way they have used AI to create a deep surveillance state . . . if you look at their military aggression and the potential for using AI in aggressive ways in the military context . . . that’s not a world that I think most people want to live in. It’s certainly not one that reflects long-held American values. Of course, its very concerning that we see some of those tactics being adopted here by our Department of Homeland Security. That’s a huge red flag about what’s happening with this authoritarian push in our government. But, again, the core question is: How do we bring AI to life to serve people and to build the kind of future that reflects the values we havecentered on people and their creaivity and our ability to chart a course for ourselves, rather than letting that be driven by a king or a dictator? That’s what I want to be using AI for. It strikes me that the Biden administration and the Trump administration both at least said they really care about government use of artificial intelligence. But at the same time, you’re saying there are concerns about that being used by the federal government to inch more toward authoritarian approaches. It’s all about how you use it. In the Biden administration, the Department of Homeland Security rolled up its sleeves and did the work, for example, to use facial recognition at TSA PreCheck or for Global Entry. These are places where there’s a very narrowly defined function, and you’re comparing a fresh camera image with a database that you have a legitimate reason to have. And if you’ve gone through TSA PreCheck or Global Entry, you can see how that has sped up and made those processes much better by using technology appropriately and respectfully. This is in stark contrast to the horror stories of police forces around the country who were using off-the-shelf facial recognition technology that purported to make matches from grainy video, for example, in a convenience store that had been held up. Really poor, completely inappropriate use of flawed facial recognition technology led to wrongful arrests of Black menin one case for a crime committed in a state that this man had never stepped foot in. That’s completely unacceptable. So the difference between using these technologies wisely and appropriately and with respect for our core values, and then just using it flagrantly without really thinking through what it means for the society that we want to live inthat’s all the difference in the world. I’m wondering what you make of the rise of firms like Anduril and Palantir that are really interested in selling AI and automated platforms for use on the battlefield and for defense purposes. How should we be thinking about that? I want to broaden your question to say it’s not just on a battlefield. These are technologies that are being deployed against Americans here at home. So it’s an incredibly important question. And the core issues are: Do we have democratic control over how the technology is used? These technologies, again, if misused, can violate Americans privacy in dangerous and horrific ways. We’re seeing that right now with some of the things that are happening. And that’s just unacceptable. And the companies tend to take the position of I’m just providing the technology. But the implementations that they are doing are contributing to this really dangerous misuse. That’s one example of a loss of democratic control over these very powerful new capabilities. We hear a lot about the AI race. I think about the space race. There was the race to get someone into space. Then there was the race to get someone into orbit. And then there was the race to get someone to the moon. And now it’s to have people live on the moon. When will the AI race be over? When we say we need to be first in the AI race, Im wondering: First to what? That is the whole ball gamefirst to what? What I keep thinking about, and what I really think we have to get focused on, is what AI can do for the things that fundamentally change people’s lives. We ran a conference called “AI Aspirations” in 2024, when I was still at the White House, and we highlighted seven different huge ambitions for AI. They ranged from closing educational gaps for our kids to getting better drugs faster, to better weather forecasts, to new materials for the advanced generations of semiconductor technology, to changing transportation infrastructure, to making it much more safe. Right now, the conversation about AI is really just about LLMs and maybe image generators. But what we’re talking about is the more general power of training AI models on very different kinds of data. We live in such a data-rich world, so it’s not just language. It’s sensor data, scientific data, it’s administrative data, financial data. It’s already every bit of data you generate when you’re clicking or navigating around on the web. The other key point to me is that it won’t simply happen by companies commercializing products. There’s deep research that’s required. There are datasets that are required to build the weather models or the transportation models that we need. Those are public responsibilities. Ultimately, we need regulatory advances so that we don’t just invent things faster, but our regulatory process can sort out what is safe and effectivefor example, for drugs. We’re at a point where this powerful technology is breaking loose. There’s no more important time for our federal government to be stepping up. And instead, it’s pulling back from so many other things that will determine who really succeeds at AI.
Category:
E-Commerce
Last week, the Financial Times reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook may step down next year. This news seemed to have little impact on Apples stock price, but it certainly sparked conversations among Apple fans and armchair tech pundits. Some people have long criticized Cook as a bean counter and ops guy, believing he was not the right person to helm the 21st centurys leading consumer technology company, especially one previously guided by a product visionary like Steve Jobs. Many of these same people are now hoping that Apples next CEO will be Apples current senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus. They see Ternus as a product guy like Jobs. Or, probably more accurately, they see Ternus as a product guy unlike Cook. But I think that this does Cook a disservice. And for the good of the company, I hope whoever ends up taking the reins is as much like Cook as they are like Jobs. Because while Steve Jobs may have been a visionary, Tim Cook pulled off the impossible. Tim Cook, the product guy Let me first address the false idea that Cook isnt a product guy. Just look at the groundbreaking new productshardware, software, and servicesApple has released under Cooks leadership since 2011. In 2014, Apple released Apple Pay, which brought contactless mobile payments to the masses for the first time. A year later, in 2015, the company redefined the smartwatch with the Apple Watch. Also in 2015, Apple officially became a streaming services company, with the launch of Apple Music, giving the world its first competent alternative to Spotify. The launch of the AirPods in 2016 upended the headphone industry and changed the way we listen to audio. In 2017, the iPhone X eliminated the iPhones dated Home button in favor of an all-screen design and Face IDa consumer biometric authentication system that is still unmatched to this day. [Photo: Apple] From 2019 to 2020, Apple expanded its services footprint with the launch of Apple Card, Apple TV, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, and Apple News+. That same year, Apple took its biggest risk in decades by switching its Macs from Intel chips to Apple Silicona move that has reinvigorated Mac sales and enabled stunning new Mac designs. And most recently, in 2024, Cook swung for the fences with the Apple Vision Pro, a product that was personally important to him. So far, that product hasnt performed well commercially, but it has more innovation packed inside it than the iPod or iPhone did when Jobs shepherded those devices to the masses. It also exemplifies that Cook, like Jobs, is not afraid of trying new things. Sure, Cook isnt an engineer, and he didnt personally invent these products. But Jobs didnt hunch over a workbench with a soldering iron to assemble the first prototype of an MP3 player with a clickwheel, or a phone with a touchscreen. Instead, both men oversaw the organizationand, more importantly, trusted its visionary engineers and designersin order to bring these gadgets, which so many of us couldnt imagine living without today, to market. At the time of Jobs passing, Apple had only four main products: the Mac, the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone. Under Cooks leadership, Apple has added the AirPods, Apple Watch, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro to that lineup, while constantly improving the iPhone and Mac experience in significant ways. Im not sure how a CEO who shepherded all that cant be considered a product guy. Cook had the hardest act in business history But shepherding so many beloved products during his time as CEO isnt why I say Tim Cook has done the impossible. I say this precisely because he had to undertake the hardest act in business history: following in the footsteps of Steve Jobs. And Cook succeeded wildly. It would have been easy to fumble the reins at Apple after Jobs’ passing, especially considering that for many people, including Apples employees, Jobs was Apple. Its not difficult to imagine that morale was at an all-time low and uncertainty at an all-time high within the company after Jobs’ untimely death. There are plenty of leaders who would have been unable to pull together an organization of Apples size and successfully steer it down the path of not just continuing, but outpacing Jobs legacy. Its easy to imagine that if Jobs could strap the latest Apple Watch to his wrist, put the latest AirPods in his ears, and look through the display of the Apple Vision Pro, he would say Wow! and be proud that the company he built is still creating industry-defining products. Of course, if you need more proof of Cooks success in steering Apple, just look at the companys financials. In 2010, Apple had an annual revenue of around $65 billion. By the end of fiscal 2025, the figure exceeded $416 billion. And Apple’s stock price has reflected the company’s growth under Cook. Apple recently reached a valuation of $4 trillion. It was valued at just around $350 billion when Jobs passed. [Photo: Apple] This success is all the more astonishing considering that Cook has faced challenges Jobs likely never even would have conceived. Technology role in society, government, and politics has changed significantly over the past decade, and todays tech giant CEOs need to be not only chiefs of their companies but also quasi-diplomats as they interact more regularly with governments and their leaders. The geopolitical changes of the last decade have necessitated this, and its not something everyone could pull offperhaps including Jobs, who was known for his anger and arrogance. But over the last decade, Cook has carefully threaded the needle in dealing with increasingly challenging individuals and landscapes. As Teslas recent $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk shows, many people believe that there are companies with futures inextricably linked to their CEOs’ continued involvement. Many people thought that about Apple in the early 2000s, too. Unfortunately, Apple didnt get the choice to keep Jobs around. It needed to find a replacement. Fortunately for the company, that replacement was Tim Cook. Now comes the second hardest act in business history As successful as Cook’s reign at Apple has been, he wont be leading the company forever. And, if the FTs report is correct, Cook could step down in 2026. Ive cautioned before that it’s dangerous to deify tech CEOsand that goes for Cook, as well. Like Jobs, Cook has made choices that havent always panned out well for Apple. But Cook has proved he can steer the company through its most tumultuous timesand take Apple farther than it’s ever gone before. Those are big shoes to fill. Whether or not John Ternus will indeed be the one stepping into them is uncertain. The company has other leadership options available. Yet one thing is certain: whoever ultimately becomes Apples new CEO will have to pull off the second hardest act in business history: following in Tim Cooks footsteps.
Category:
E-Commerce
As Sesame Streets 56th season gets underway, Elmo, Big Bird, and the Sesame organization are navigating a volatile chapter in the shows historymarked by government funding cuts, evolving new media habits, and AIs impact on education. Sherrie Westin, CEO of Sesame Workshop, discusses balancing risk-taking with brand trust, partnering with Netflix, and why emotional well-being and kindness are the skills that matter most in todays world. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. Sesame Streets new season appears on Netflix on the same day as it goes live on PBS Kids. Last year at this time you were on HBO or Max or whatever they were calling it at that point. Right. At that time, yes. HBO dropped the show. Netflix came in. It’s a head-spinning situation. Was this all by design on your end? Well, listen, I mean it all worked out really well. . . . We announced it as a public-private partnership between Netflix and PBS because it was so important that we not only got the incredible reach that Netflix offers, but also that we were still available for all children across the U.S. on PBS. And it’s fantastic that it’s the same time, day, and date, but that part was by design, for sure. And listen, we had a long partnership with HBO. We still have a library deal so that there are still some seasons on HBO Max, but HBO Max was clear that children’s was not their priority. So we don’t take it personally, and we still have a great relationship, but Netflix is such a great place for us to be. As of today, we are reaching children in 190 countries. That’s 330 million households in over 30 languages, and it’s the first time in 56 years that we’re reaching this many children all over the world. So that is something to celebrate. And so even though Netflix, as I understand this, maybe paying you a little less than that HBO deal. Yes. It’s a good trade-off because your reach is so much broader? Well, listen, most people don’t understand that we’re a nonprofit mission-driven organization, so while we desperately need the funding, at the same time the most important thing is our reach because we have to reach to teach. Did you consider moving everything to Netflix? I mean, I imagine you might get a more lucrative deal from Netflix if it was exclusive and the financing being what it is. No . . . Netflix was great. They understood how important it was for us to be on PBS, to reach all children across the country, whether or not they can afford a streaming platform. So that’s just part of our mission and our DNA. You mentioned your long relationship with PBS. It’s been a wild year, this wave of government funding cuts. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, you had to lay off 20% of your staff. How hard has it become this year? I don’t ever remember a more difficult, more challenging year than this past year. There were some really difficult decisions and periods. No one ever wants to have to lay off 20% of their staff. That’s one of the hardest things. Any organization, whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit. And again, a lot of organizations have had to deal with downsizing, or rightsizing, if you will. But it has been a really challenging year. I’ve talked to someone about this, how, in some ways, public media has just become media because the support from the public sector isn’t quite there anymore. At the same time, there was that Congressional hearing back in the spring with PBS with this title, like, Anti-American Airwaves. I mean, I’m curious how you address that mood, that climate, with your team when your partner is being, I don’t know, politicized in that way? (Safian is referring to the House subcommittee on government efficiency hearing in March titled Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable, chaired by Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.) The hardest thing is there is such value in public broadcasting, and we find it so painful to have lost the CPB. I think the biggest tragedy is to see some children no longer have access to public broadcasting or the quality early education that PBS has always brought, of course including Sesame Street. You don’t feel like any of this has hampered Sesame Streets own brand by its relationship with these [Congressional hearings]? No. I think, if anything, that it’s clear that the need for Sesame is greater than ever. And it’s true that we are part and parcel public broadcasting. So if you’re attacking PBS, you’re attacking Sesame Street. It’s true. But at the same time, I think that if there’s one silver lining to some of the negative press we’ve had throughout the year, it’s that so many people have stepped up to say, “We love Sesame.” We’ve actually gotten a wonderful outpouring of support from new donors and from people who just want to see Sesame Street remain. Think about what we teach. Our mission is to help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. And that may sound like a clever tagline, but it’s not. It’s a whole child curriculum that’s baked into everything we do. Smarter: ABCs and 123s, the academic basics. Stronger: resilience, health. Kinder: empathy, understanding. . . . Our whole new season is about building community. It’s about kindness. If you use the vernacular of child development, it would be called a compassionate mindset. And that means helping children see themselves and others with kindness, with understanding, with non-judgment. So quite frankly, I think we are rising to meet the needs of the day. I mean, Sesames never been shy about addressing tough topics, from diversity in the early days, the first HIV positive puppet, to Big Bird getting vaccinated during COVID. But things have become so polarized now, especially in the U.S. What kind of conversations do you have about where you can and can’t go and how you decide? Well, we are a nonpartisan organization, but you are correct that there are an awful lot of issues today that one would never have thought of as being political that are political. And while we would never weigh in on very specific partisan politics, we have to stay true to our values. And are some things more controversial? Yes. But if you look at what we all have in common, it’s so interesting because we just did a road tour through the summer and the fall to visit children and families all across the country. But during this road trip, in all these various states, we had a couple f researchers on the ground. And after the events, with everything from state fairs to Minor League Baseball, farm corn mazes, we would have staff saying, “Hello, I’m with Sesame Street. I’m asking parents of young children, would you be willing to talk to us a little bit about your children, about Sesame Street, about who do you trust most? What do you want for your children?” And one of the things I just love about this is regardless of where we were, there was such a clear commonality. What do parents want for their children? They want them to be safe, healthy, and they want them to be kind and get along with others. I mean, that was so consistent. It came up again and again. To me, it’s hopeful and reassuring because when it does feel more divided than ever, you do realize that the one thing that unifies us is hope for our children and what we want for our children. And that’s where, I think, Sesame can play a powerful role. There has been this decline in trust across everything. Absolutely. Media, public officials, business. Sesame remains still pretty well trusted. We are still, if you do brand surveys, we are the No. 1 trusted brand in children’s properties. And that’s something we really cherish. I mean that’s very important to us. Everything we do is based on research. We are always listening to parents and experts. We have a whole team of child development experts, but any project we do, we’re also bringing in advisers and learning from the community. We did an incredible amount of work around parental addiction because of the opioid crisis, working with partners on the ground to distribute those resources. Our emotional well-being work, again, we partner with organizations that are serving children and families, and often it’s the only content you’ll have that looks at those tough issues through the lens of a young child. And that’s something, again, that I think sets Sesame apart.
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