David Lidsky's Blog, page 2743

How The Boardlist Plans To Get More Women Onto Startup Boards

Karla Martin remembers the phone calls. A recruiter would be putting together a slate of board candidates for a company and would reach out to see if she was interested. The hitch: She would have only until the next day to decide. Martin, a former director of global business strategy at Google with more than 20 years of experience advising companies on how to drive growth, was certainly qualified to sit on a board. But her mentors warned her to be wary of becoming the token female and African-American candidate: If recruiters were seriously considering her for the position, they would have reached out earlier. "I'm sure there's a good number of women and people of color who respond, and they do get the board seat," Martin says. "But my experience has been roughly what my mentors expected."

When Facebook went public in 2012, its directors included venture capitalists and tech and media executives—but not a single woman until chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg was added to the list a month later. Twitter went public the following year with no female directors (it has since added two). And it continues. Fitbit's high-profile IPO last year was conducted without a woman on its board. Which raises the question: How can otherwise forward-thinking companies have such retrograde boards?

"You may not know her, but that doesn't mean [the right candidate] doesn't exist," says the Boardlist's Sukhinder Singh Cassidy.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, a serial entrepreneur and former Google executive, wants to change that dynamic. Currently the CEO of the shopping site Joyus, she has plenty of board experience herself: TripAdvisor, Ericsson, and formerly J.Crew. But a few years ago, she started paying more attention to the overwhelming maleness of Silicon Valley boards. She saw how it could hamstring female colleagues, who miss out on invaluable opportunities to raise their profiles, meet other high-level executives, and learn important management skills. Just as important: A lack of gender parity can affect businesses. Companies with diverse boards mirror their customers' demographics and have been shown to function better—a recent meta-analysis published in the Academy of Management Journal found that female representation is associated with increased board-level monitoring and strategy.

[image error]Raise your hand: It took Salesforce CMO Lynn Vojvodich a year and a half to land a board seat that fit her criteria.

"Make it known that this is something you want to do. I got a lot of executive recruiters saying, 'Hey, we've got this marketing position.' I would always say, 'I'm happy where I am at right now. I love Salesforce. But if you have any public board seats, here are my criteria.' "

"Beth Comstock of GE, who is on the board of Nike, told me that given the reality of our jobs, you can only take one public board seat with the time commitment and demands of our current careers. So I wanted to be sure it was the right fit."

"I knew I wanted a seat with a company that is passionate about transforming their relationship with customers. Second, I wanted a great CEO and board members who were supportive of transformation. And third: a strong global brand. I based these criteria on what I wanted to learn and what I could offer to them. At the end, I was very crisp with what I wanted, but it's really a process of discovery."

"Do your research and get that background info. The Priceline team put together a rigorous program for me to get up to speed on the business. I spent half a day with each of their brands so that when I attended the first meeting I was ready."

When Singh Cassidy recently polled male founders and CEOs for an explanation, she kept getting the same answer: Finding great female directors takes too long and is too hard. Singh Cassidy suspects that most people simply aren't considering the right women. "You may not know her, but that doesn't mean she doesn't exist," she says. In February, she launched the Boardlist, a searchable, for-profit database of female candidates, nominated largely by Silicon Valley businesspeople. The site, which operates as a benefit corporation, offers a fast and simple solution to the problem of locating qualified women for boards. But, as Singh Cassidy is discovering, the issue may not be so easy to address.

The standard board appointment process for tech startups—candidates advertise themselves, founders ask around—has been largely informal. And given the demographics of Silicon Valley's elite, it has favored white men. Singh Cassidy's insight in creating the Boardlist was to take that back-channel process and replicate it more formally online. (Though the Boardlist isn't the only database of female candidates—see "Shattered Glass"—it is the most Silicon Valley–centric.) The site allows a curated group of executives and investors (including, yes, many men from Sand Hill Road) to nominate women for inclusion on the list. The site's staffers create profiles for each candidate, populating them with information such as whether the nominator believes a woman is best suited for an early-stage startup or a company that is further along. Women, crucially, are not allowed to nominate themselves (they can only submit a request for consideration), though they may edit their profiles once they have been created.

There are now more than a thousand women on the list. CEOs can search for potential board members for free, while frequent users such as venture-capital firms and recruitment companies pay a fee. If a board is interested in someone, the Boardlist's staffers contact her to gauge interest and make introductions. The idea is not only to introduce founders to more women, but to make the process less frustrating for the candidates themselves.

A few months after the Boardlist launched, following a beta period, it touted more than five dozen active searches and one early success: The site facilitated Martin's appointment to the board of Challenged, an app that promotes social media challenges along the lines of the ALS ice-bucket phenomenon. But no other appointments had followed. "It's going slow," Singh Cassidy admits. One issue has been that Singh Cassidy and her colleagues had to play executive recruiters—phoning Boardlist members to persuade them to take interviews, advising CEOs about attainable candidates. They hope this time-consuming process will eventually become more automated. But Singh Cassidy has also learned that boards' gender imbalance isn't just about supply, as people often claimed. At least as often, it's about demand.

"We thought it would be enough to build a self-service website," Singh Cassidy says. "We actually have to 'make' the market."

The root of the problem lies in the way startup boards are often constructed. Most of a typical company's seats are filled by its founders and funders—who, in Silicon Valley, are disproportionately white men. The remaining, independent seat frequently goes to someone with CEO or founder experience (again, usually a man). The result: Only about 22% to 25% of private tech boards include any women, compared with 97% among S&P 500 companies. What's more, when the Boardlist, with the analytics firm Qualtrics, surveyed CEOs and founders about their boards, 39% said their independent seat—the best hope of getting a woman appointed—was still unfilled. These habits stand in contrast to those of big public companies, which fill seats as soon as they're vacated and seek people with specialized expertise (auditing finances, compliance issues), creating opportunities for female candidates who may not have CEO–level experience.

[image error]Photo: Flickr user Highways England

Nonprofit research organi­zation providing insights on women in the work­-place; the organization's Corporate Board Services includes a directory of CEO–recommended female candidates, available to member companies.

Worldwide community championing female leadership and good governance. The foundation, which maintains a job board of open director positions, facilitates introductions between CEOs and executive recruiters and members.

Offers tools, advice, and networking opportunities throughout the U.S. to prepare women for director positions. VIP membership (from $900 a year) comes with notifications for open board seats and access to the organization's "matchmaking" program.

National organization with a mission to grow the proportion of female board members at public companies from 19% to 30%. The coalition encourages institutional investors, in particular, to pressure companies for more gender diversity.

Clara Shih, who sits on the board of Starbucks and is the cofounder and CEO of the social media management startup Hearsay Social, has experienced both sides of the gender challenge. She joined the Starbucks board after Sheryl Sandberg stepped down and recommended Shih as a digital expert. While Shih is one of three female Starbucks directors, she's the only woman on her own four-person startup board. Shih would like to fill a fifth seat, the independent one, with a woman—someone with a tech background who has been a founder and CEO. "I want to bring in someone who's been through it," Shih explains. That's difficult to do. But Shih isn't in a rush. As the CEO of a small, fast-growing startup, she has higher priorities. And so the seat remains vacant.

Similar stories have taught Singh Cassidy that the Boardlist can't just focus on supplying female candidates. She also has to convince founders to fill their seats. "We thought it would be enough to build a self-service website," she explains. "We actually have to make the market." Today, Singh Cassidy makes a point of counseling founders on the importance of that independent board seat. She tells them that having an independent member mitigates their investors' control, delivers an outside perspective, and adds a tie-breaking fifth vote to four-member boards. And since female board candidates with CEO and founder experience are relatively scarce in Silicon Valley, she encourages startups to consider lower-level executives who nonetheless have overseen growth—a group that includes far more women. Someone who runs a big division of Facebook, she argues, may be just as knowledgeable as a higher-level executive elsewhere.

On the Boardlist, CEOs can look for candidates by skill—an approach that may encourage some boards to broaden their searches. Lynzi Ziegenhagen, the CEO of the ed-tech startup Schoolzilla, is searching for an independent director. She wants a woman and, like Shih, prefers founder-CEOs of high-growth tech businesses. But when Ziegenhagen recently searched the Boardlist, she found, along with three impressive CEOs, two non–CEOs who had relevant experience. She's considering them.

Ziegenhagen's board, however, is already atypical in that two of its three existing members are female. That's because its CEO and an important investor (Shauntel Poulson of Reach Capital) are both women. "If you solve the investor problem and the founder problem," Ziegenhagen notes, "this issue [of all-male boards] would go away." It's an important point and one that exposes a limitation of the Boardlist's approach: No matter how many female directors they help place, Silicon Valley boards won't get anywhere near gender parity until more women create and invest in startups. And that kind of systemic transformation is going to require a much bigger investment than Singh Cassidy's fast and simple solution.

Apple, Facebook, Google, And Alibaba Take Hollywood

The Imperial Hotel has been a fixture on Park City, Utah's Main Street since it opened in 1904. Originally a spot for weary miners,it captured the imagination of Hollywood when an independent film festival came to town and its central location helped make it a hub for 10 days each January. It's reputedly home to Park City's most famous ghost, Lizzy, a prostitute who was killed by her husband. Legend has it that Lizzy still flirts with men there. During this year's Sundance Film Festival, though, the Imperial was haunted by a different spectral presence: Apple.

While other tech companies craved visibility at the annual indie-cinema jamboree—Samsung set up a virtual-reality storytelling village, Airbnb staged a painstakingly curated artist's retreat called Airbnb Haus, and Uber offered helicopter rides from Salt Lake City—Apple slipped into Sundance practically unnoticed. It set up shop in the Imperial, which was recently converted into a condo-slash–event space. Behind the now unmarked door at 221 Main, Apple hosted private, invitation-only events. On one evening, a group of young filmmakers were treated to cocktails and a farm-to-table dinner put on by the chefs from Eveleigh, one of Los Angeles's hottest restaurants. The space was as sleek and understated as an iPhone 6S; one attendee described the decor to me as "very beige." Unlike most Sundance brand-sponsored events, there were no press releases. There were no party pictures. There wasn't any swag. The iTunes Lounge, as it was known to invitees, was as real to most festivalgoers as Lizzy. Says one guest who was in attendance, "They were definitely talking to the talent."

The iTunes Lounge was in fact part of a stealth effort by Apple to establish a new, more active role in delivering entertainment. In the weeks that followed, Apple execs were in Los Angeles hearing pitches for original TV series that it plans to launch on an "exclusives" app on Apple TV and within iTunes. Apple wants to work with "triple A-list" talent, according to a source, and build up a roster of must-see shows available only on its platform. Naturally, the talks have been veiled in the utmost secrecy. Producers who have met with Apple will refer to it only as the United Fruit Company.

Apple isn't the only tech giant zeroing in on the entertainment industry. In recent months, three of the company's largest rivals—Google, Facebook, and Alibaba—have also amped up investment in Hollywood content, each in different ways and with somewhat different goals. Google's YouTube has launched a new "originals" division that is pairing its homegrown talent with mainstream TV producers and filmmakers as a way to upgrade its typical fare. Facebook is urging—and even compensating—celebrities to live-stream video on its platform. And the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba is licensing, cofinancing, and developing feature films.

The tech world's most important players have suddenly embraced Hollywood for two reasons. First, they can no longer ignore the massive success that Netflix and Amazon have enjoyed by producing exclusive, high-quality programming. Since transforming from a DVD–by-mail service into a purveyor of buzzy series like Jessica Jones and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Netflix has morphed into a $40 billion business, amassed 75 million subscribers, and won Golden Globes and Emmys. Amazon's forays into original video have helped Amazon Prime add tens of millions of new customers, according to analyst estimates, and awards of its own. This has stoked the competitive landscape. "They are in awe of the clout Netflix carries with both consumers and media companies," says Blair Westlake, the former chairman of Universal Television and head of media and entertainment for Microsoft. "None of the tech companies have anything that even comes close."

Second, they see a growing opportunity. The slow but inevitable fraying of the cable TV bundle has sparked a newly intense battle to win over audiences who have never been more in play. "If I stop paying $200 a month for cable and I'm willing to parse out my $200 a month in a more à la carte fashion, is Verizon going to get some of that? Is YouTube Red?" says Jeremy Zimmer, cofounder and CEO of United Talent Agency. "Who's gonna get it?"

Alibaba, Apple, Facebook, and Google each want a piece of that action. They are among the richest companies in the world, with a combined market cap of $1.5 trillion, almost four times the size of the five largest media conglomerates. Apple alone, with its $216 billion in cash, could acquire Net­flix, Paramount Pictures, HBO, and Warner Bros. (all of which observers have suggested CEO Tim Cook actually purchase) and still have plenty left over. But so far, none of the tech firms seem interested in buying their way into Hollywood. Instead, they want to establish their own presence. "The goal isn't: 'We're going to build Netflix,' " says Michael Yanover, CAA's head of business development. "It's: 'We're going to build our own thing, based on our own strengths.' "

At Sundance, Amazon and Netflix, which rely on subscriber growth rather than advertising or individual sales to drive profitability, waved around their checkbooks, buying more films at higher prices than the usual players, according to Variety. They stoked bidding wars for festival darlings such as Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea (which Amazon purchased for a rumored $10 million) and The Birth of a Nation, a slavery drama (which Fox Searchlight bought for $17.5 million, a Sundance record, even after Netflix reportedly bid $20 million). As four of the biggest companies on earth join the competition in an effort to cement their hold on their audiences of more than a billion people each, Hollywood may never be the same. Here's how their tactics are shaping up—and the implications for the entertainment industry, the tech world, and consumers around the globe.

Apple has been in the entertainment business for a long time—even if the public hasn't realized it. Eddy Cue, the amiable Apple lifer who oversees the company's Internet software and services, is a well-known face in Hollywood: He's been negotiating licensing deals with the studios and networks since the birth of iTunes in the early 2000s, gaining access to content for Apple customers.

In Apple's 2015 annual report, the company revealed $19.9 billion in revenue for its services business, which includes sales from the iTunes Store (as well as the App Store, Apple Music, AppleCare, and Apple Pay). Company executives have signaled that it sees these services—notably "apps, movies, and TV shows"—as an important part of the company's growth strategy moving forward. CFO Luca Maestri explained why during Apple's quarterly earnings call in January, saying that they're "tied to our installed base of devices, rather than to current quarter sales." Translation: Stop obsessing over new iPhone sales and look at how much quarterly revenue Apple can get out of its more than 1 billion users. The company went on to share that sales of these services are growing at a healthy 24%.

Moving into original content, then, is a logical next step for Apple. Two weeks after Apple's earnings call, The Hollywood Reporter ran with an exclusive: DR. DRE FILMING APPLE'S FIRST SCRIPTED TELEVISION SERIES. The story described a raunchy, six-episode program called Vital Signs, created by and starring the rapper turned entrepreneur, who sold his company Beats Electronics to Apple for $3 billion in 2014.

According to five different sources who have been briefed on Apple's plans or spoken directly to Apple executives, the company is still a bit "disorganized," and these Hollywood principals complain that Apple hasn't presented a coherent strategy. That said, Apple appears to be taking a "two-lane approach" to original programming. The first, which Vital Signs falls under, is a slate of short films, music videos, and documentaries that will be built around musicians and friends of Dr. Dre and his Beats partner, Jimmy Iovine, a former record executive. The idea is to use this content (such as the two-hour Taylor Swift concert movie that Apple released last December and the Vice documentary The Score in late March) to promote Apple Music, the subscription streaming service that launched last year. These originals are seen as essential in goosing Apple Music's subscriber totals. Apple says it's happy with the 13 million people it's attracted thus far, but industry analyst Horace Dediu notes, "They have 860 million iTunes accounts. Thirteen million out of 860 million is not a big number. They still have some way to go."

The second lane—which for now is more deeply undercover—is an effort to do what Amazon and Netflix have done for their tens of millions of users: offer its own original TV-style entertainment. Apple being Apple, though, it not only wants to find its own House of Cards, but it wants several of them at once.

This daunting effort is being led by Robert Kondrk, Apple's VP of iTunes content and Cue's lieutenant. Kondrk, who looks like a buttoned-up Moby, is a low-profile Apple veteran who has mostly been associated with overseeing music on iTunes. (In Hollywood, Kondrk's name can elicit the response, "Who?") Among Kondrk's challenges is how to square Apple's aspiration—for several massive hits at once—with the risk required. Whereas Amazon made a $250 million deal for a new series with the Top Gear stars and HBO scooped up the popular sports-and-culture maven Bill Simmons, who could have helped Apple with both original series and podcasts, Apple is "definitely more cautious," says Eric Jackson, managing director of SpringOwl Asset Management. "They probably see that as a strength, but I think it could hurt them if they end up being too slow. By all accounts, [Amazon and Netflix] are going to keep pressing on the gas in terms of making investments in this space."

Another concern, asserts industry analyst Dediu, is "the way Apple operates; they're very closed." Dediu explains: "If they work on media, they will want to have control over every aspect of it." In Hollywood, people from various fields come together on a project basis and then separate, but Dediu notes, "Apple doesn't work that way. They are more in line with the old-fashioned studio system. How do you cross over?" For projects like the Dr. Dre series, that closed approach may be more realistic, but even then, word leaked out and infuriated Apple executives.

"People are gonna do it anyway, because it's Apple," says one manager, batting down unresolved questions about its original-content strategy. "Who wouldn't want to take that flier?"

In late March, Eddy Cue quietly announced Apple's first original, an unscripted documentary series celebrating apps and starring Will.i.am (curiously, Apple chose not to make it part of its new product announcement event a few days earlier). "This doesn't mean that we are going into a huge amount of movie production or TV production or anything like that," Cue told The New York Times, but then reportedly left open the possibility that Apple would look for more exclusives. Hollywood sources believe Cue is merely tamping down expectations, an instance of Apple's caution limiting the splash it wants and perhaps needs to make.

As Apple moves forward into originals, it has leverage that neither Netflix nor Amazon had when they began making original shows: a strong, positive reputation among creators. Years of cultivating celebrities to be brand ambassadors has established Apple as an artist-friendly shop. Indeed, word that Apple is buying content has spawned a frenzy of interest among Hollywood cognoscenti. Some creators are so excited by the possibility of working with Apple, one agent tells me, "people are throwing shit against the wall with them, to every extent possible."

Although there are plenty of unresolved questions—Will Apple use its massive resources to finance shows or build its own team of development executives to shepherd projects? What's the business model for making money from the content?—no one is too bothered by the lack of specifics. Why? "Because it's Apple," one manager says. "Who wouldn't want to take that flier? Especially artists, on a creative level, are saying, 'Yeah! Let's stick it on Apple!' "

One afternoon in early February, Jim Berkus, the chairman of United Talent Agency, sent out a company-wide email. Berkus had just listened to Susanne Daniels, the former programming chief at MTV who decamped to YouTube last July, talk to a group of UTA agents about YouTube Red Originals. Daniels laid out her vision for the video giant's lineup of exclusive TV shows, movies, and music available only through YouTube Red, its new $9.99-a-month, ad-free subscription service.

[image error]Susanne Daniels, global head of original content for YouTube, wants to pair homegrown stars with Hollywood talent for the video giant's Red subscription service.Photos: Emily Berl

"It felt like a new day in Hollywood, and [YouTube] is a big part of our future," Berkus wrote. "We always ask, 'When will Google buy into Hollywood and acquire a studio or network?' The answer is they already have by their ambitious plans for YouTube."

Berkus was worked up, in part because Daniels is arguably the most impressive TV executive to segue to digital in this era. Her career spans stints at MTV, the WB, and Lifetime. (Her husband, Greg Daniels, is part of the Hollywood in-crowd as well, as the cocreator of the American version of The Office, Parks and Recreation, and King of the Hill.) Coming from her, the message that YouTube is serious about high-quality professional content resonated in a way that Google had struggled to convey to the Hollywood establishment in the past.

Though one of Red's first efforts was Scare PewDiePie, a scripted series built around YouTube's biggest star, Daniels's ambition goes far beyond short videos of Swedish millennials playing video games. She says that, as with her previous network jobs, she's working with talent to "arc out and develop characters over a season" and understand the "art of showrunning." For now, she's starting with YouTubers. But beginning in 2017, Daniels plans to "sprinkle in a couple more high-profile shows with more high-profile industry talent."

YouTube's new originals strategy is in part a bid to fend off Facebook. As one source says, Facebook is "internally, the biggest existential threat at YouTube."

Does this mean that YouTube, which has more than 1 billion monthly users, would eventually produce shows that had no YouTuber affiliation whatsoever? "Maybe," she says. "As we grow and we find our brand and our niche . . . I wouldn't say no."

Talent wranglers are excited because Daniels and YouTube are offering real money, a stark contrast from smaller digital players that "pay you $10,000 a script," as one manager gripes. "YouTube has absolutely stepped up their price point to where they can more closely compete with TV," says Chris Jacquemin, partner and head of digital content at WME. "They're not necessarily going after Game of Thrones–level budgets. But they're very competitive, certainly with the basic-cable tier."

The money may help Daniels overcome YouTube's long-standing perception among traditional creators. "In the past, they've looked at [YouTube] as a pretty effective marketing tool," says Jonathan Perelman, a former Google and BuzzFeed executive who's now head of digital at ICM Partners, "but not necessarily the place to go when you want to create something." While one agent predicts that some film and TV directors may resist the idea of collaborating with You­Tube stars, whom they consider "schlocky," Perelman contends that "there's a real opportunity to get talent to look at YouTube in a different way."

YouTube's new strategy is in part a bid to fend off Facebook, which over the past year has seen exploding video use and now boasts 8 billion video views a day. (As one source tells me, Facebook is "internally, the biggest existential threat at YouTube.") It is also a defense against Netflix, which has poached homegrown YouTube star Miranda Sings to create an original series. Perhaps most important, though, it is an effort to diversify YouTube's revenue stream—to add consumer revenue to the advertising base—in hopes of improving its reportedly break-even financial performance. Daniels won't reveal how YouTube Red has done in the first four months since it was launched except to say that it is "meeting goals that were ambitious." YouTube is also exploring other ways to boost profitability. According to a source with knowledge of the plans, it has been quietly developing a direct-to-consumer streaming platform that it has been shopping to media companies, much like the MLB Advanced Media technology that powers HBO Now. (YouTube declined to comment.)

Daniels says that ever since she arrived at YouTube 10 months ago, she's been thinking a lot about the simultaneous power and fragility of YouTube's brand. "Our core audience sees YouTube as a really positive force," she says. "They see influencers as having social capital and themselves as having social capital for being associated with these influencers. It's an essential, positive community." She'll be programming Red with those principles guiding her.

"So we're on our way to the Oscars," Whoopi Goldberg says, speaking directly to the camera. "My daughter and I, between us, have on 40 pounds of Spanx. Sixty-five, like, corsets. And we couldn't . . . we had to have help getting in the car. Who knows what's going to happen when we get out of the car!"

Goldberg isn't delivering this monologue during the red-carpet proceedings or the morning after on The View. She's live-streaming video on Facebook from the comfort of her limo on the afternoon of last February's Academy Awards. The video received more than 2 million views, as part of a behind-the-scenes Oscars diary series that made use of Facebook's new Live product, which allows users to create video streams that upload directly to the platform. Unlike Snapchat Stories, they don't disappear after 24 hours but remain on people's news feeds.

The next morning, Facebook's head of entertainment partnerships, Sibyl Goldman—a gregarious entertainment junkie who's done stints at Ryan Seacrest Productions and Yahoo—was pleased with the star's efforts. Goldman says that Goldberg, whose post-limo experience, as it turned out, involved being misidentified by a fashion website as Oprah Winfrey, gave "this really nice, well-rounded view of what's happening at an event like that."

[image error]Sibyl Goldman, Facebook's head of entertainment partnerships, is seeking edgy celebrities willing to riff with their fans live.Photos: Emily Berl

Facebook is giving live video a huge push. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly "obsessed" with it, and the company has been rapidly finessing its rollout. The company is also in talks with the NFL (update: in early April, Twitter signed a deal with the NFL to stream Thursday night games) and is negotiating with TV programmers about streaming live shows. Already E! is shooting a live gossip show exclusively for Facebook. Live video suggests the kind of urgency and engagement that advertisers love. And Facebook is eagerly enlisting professional entertainers to deliver it.

After the Oscars, Facebook deployed COO Sheryl Sandberg to pay a visit to all the major Hollywood talent agencies. Her mission was to urge agents to get their clients using Live, with an added bonus: Facebook would pay a select number of them. In particular, the company is after young, edgy stars—a distinction from Goldberg, Vin Diesel, and its other early adopters—who are "comfortable being unscripted and unfiltered," Goldman tells me when we chat after news of Sandberg's visit leaked. "People who like to riff really enjoy Live."

Whether it's comedians, chefs, athletes, musicians, politicians, or journalists, Facebook hopes to turn them into Live "stars" akin to YouTube celebs and will pay them based on how many times a week they broadcast. (In late March, reports surfaced that YouTube was creating its own live-streaming product called Connect.) Eventually, this could evolve into a revenue-sharing model based on ads that are served within the stream. Goldman stresses that everything is still very much in testing mode. "We're trying to encourage partners to experiment with this new format," she says. "Part of that is working with some partners to offer some short-term financial support."

Like YouTube Red Originals, Live is Facebook's latest significant push to get A-listers, and Hollywood in general, to view the platform as more than just a promotional tool. Because of its unparalleled reach, data, analytics, and targeting capabilities, Facebook has been hugely successful in getting studios and networks to make it a launch pad for trailers, sneak-peek content for event movies such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and even entire episodes of shows, such as Showtime's Billions last January (though the nonexclusive deal meant YouTube and others also had the pilot). Now, though, as Facebook turns to original content created exclusively for its 1.6 billion monthly users, that very success has spawned a challenge: The entertainment industry doesn't generally see the social network as a creative venue. The unevolved financial model doesn't help: "The conversations that I have with our content creators is, 'Yeah, I can do something. I can put that content on Facebook and get huge numbers,' " one agent says. " 'But what's the monetization going to be?' "

Another challenge is endemic to how Facebook works. The feed, an algorithmically derived stream of content customized to each user, remains a confusing concept for programmers still getting used to the idea of releasing an entire season of a show at once. "It's not a destination," says one source. "YouTube made a deliberate decision five years ago to be channel based. There's a reason for that. The [Facebook] feed is very transient. It's tough." In early April, the company added new updates to Live to make it more user-friendly and fun (filters, real-time emoticons), and added a Live destination page—one way it is trying to address this concern.

When I ask Goldman about this, she talks about how more than half of Facebook content is shared friend-to-friend, meaning that not only is stuff on the site highly trafficked, it travels with the valuable imprimatur of someone you know. Nowhere is this more true than in the entertainment category, she says, "whether it's this movie trailer or this funny post." Facebook is betting that deep engagement can help draw creators, in the same way it has drawn both audiences and advertisers.

Last September, Tom Cruise stood onstage at the Shanghai Film Center with Jack Ma, chairman of the Alibaba Group, at the gala for the Chinese premiere of Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation. Alibaba had invested in the film and promoted it across its digital properties. "How can a man be that handsome?" asked Ma as he looked affectionately at the movie star. Ma, who is worth $22 billion, was dressed simply, in a white button-down and black pants. "You know, I'm considered the most ugly and unique-looking man in China. That's why when I meet a handsome man, I'm always jealous." With Alibaba behind the film, M:I 5 chalked up a dashing $86 million opening weekend in China, the biggest ever for both Cruise and the Mission: Impossible franchise.

A self-described film buff who cites Forrest Gump as his favorite movie, Ma has said that he wants Alibaba to become "the world's biggest entertainment company." Since raising $25 billion in a record-setting U.S. IPO in the fall of 2014 and with China galloping to surpass the North American box office next year, Ma has been looking to expand into entertainment and is hungry for Hollywood-quality content to drive purchases on Alibaba's variety of e-commerce platforms, including Taobao Movies, its film-ticketing service.

Unlike the other tech CEOs, Ma has created his own movie production arm. Alibaba Pictures recently set up a 22,000-square-foot office in an art deco–style building in Pasadena, California, and Ma installed Zhang Wei as his Hollywood liaison and president. An elegant, Harvard MBA who started out as a TV talk-show host and once said she wanted to be China's Oprah Winfrey, Zhang, along with Ma and other Alibaba delegates, has been very active in courting studios about producing, coproducing, and acquiring movies for Alibaba. (In October 2014, fresh off his U.S. IPO, Ma even scored that most coveted of Hollywood experiences, attending a Lakers game with WME co–CEOs Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell, along with the actor Jet Li.) Alibaba has made deals with Lionsgate and Disney to bring their shows and movies to China via Alibaba's subscription streaming services.

[image error]Zhang Wei, president of Alibaba Pictures, intends to use data to find movies that can be huge in China and around the world.Photo: Jasper James

As of mid-March, Alibaba Pictures has yet to release its first project. While Wanda Group, the Chinese real estate conglomerate, bought the AMC theater chain in 2012 and recently acquired Thomas Tull's Legendary Pictures for $3.5 billion, Alibaba is currently more interested in being involved in individual films. That hasn't prevented Hollywood wags from including Alibaba in its rumor mill. After Viacom stated that it would be interested in selling a minority stake in Paramount, which released M:I 5, Alibaba has been mentioned as a likely acquirer. "Huayi Brothers has put money into STX Entertainment and other companies. Hunan TV is putting money into Lionsgate," says Janet Yang, the Joy Luck Club producer who is working on a feature film about Ma, citing two other Chinese entertainment firms that have bought into Hollywood. "[Alibaba] wants to feel like they can effect change."

Alibaba's ideas about how to disrupt entertainment production may prove highly unpopular. Last fall, a company executive said that it would not hire screenwriters, choosing instead to find movie ideas from fan-fiction authors. Alibaba then expected them to cobble together scripts in an online forum. The Chinese creative community was outraged, and the company quickly walked back the comments. Coincidentally, the gambit was reminiscent of Amazon's initial efforts to enter Hollywood via a crowdsourced script platform before it got serious and started writing big checks.

Ultimately, Alibaba may end up acting more like Netflix, which relies on a combination of algorithms and personal taste when it comes to green-lighting projects. At the outset, Alibaba's emphasis is more on data than anyone's golden gut. All of the information that it has amassed about its customers' buying habits and entertainment choices will inform which movies it'll make. "[Alibaba's] vision of what they are going to do quite precisely calibrates to what they know will also perform well in China," says one person who has met with Alibaba Pictures executives. "They're very focused on fanboy, a lot of fantasy, children-related content and not a lot of other stuff."

Ma is very much an Old Hollywood–style showman. He throws group weddings for Alibaba employees and has serenaded his company with a rendition of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" while wearing a long, white wig and red-and-black leather biker jacket. As Ma finds his way in the entertainment business, "Give 'em what they want" may become more than just the mantra of a quant jock but also the populist cry of someone whose prime interest is keeping his customers happy.

Before Ma attains movie moguldom, though, his company has to overcome cultural hurdles as it tries to negotiate film deals. Unaccustomed to Hollywood's highly specific way of packaging projects, Alibaba has frustrated some of its potential partners. "They don't really get it yet," says one. "They'll draw a line in the sand on something that they shouldn't. Then they will be very flexible on something they shouldn't be. It's a little backward, but they're learning."

As with the other tech outsiders acclimating to the entertainment industry, the question of how well that process goes may come down to how badly Hollywood feels they need Alibaba. The company represents access to the fastest-growing movie market. While the U.S. box office is seeing modest single-digit improvement, China's is thriving with a 50% increase in 2015. The Chinese film business is notoriously unfriendly to foreigners given its censorship laws, not to mention marketing challenges (trailers do not usually play before movies in theaters there) and the fact that studios have no control over release dates. By partnering with Alibaba, American studios would have a trusted partner with e-commerce and social media prowess.

"People want muscle in China," says Schuyler Moore, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, who worked on a $500 million deal between China's Perfect World Pictures and Universal to fund a slate of films. "Alibaba certainly provides it."

As the tech titans bring their rivalry from commerce and community to original content, their attempts to best one another mean that the unintended beneficiary is anyone who can create or package entertainment. Not only does the industry get even more serious buyers—in addition to Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Alibaba, Facebook, and Google, don't forget about Verizon, AT&T, Snapchat, and Twitter—but it also has a surprising set of new collaborators.

For decades, the tech and entertainment industries have not trusted each other, insisting that the other offered far lesser value. While Hollywood hollered, "Content is king," Silicon Valley countered with "Platform rules." Now the two worlds are more cooperative. "Fresno's the halfway point between Silicon Valley and Hollywood," says ICM's Perelman. "And while neither I nor anyone else in this business is looking to move to Fresno, conceptually there's this understanding, like, you need us and we need you; let's find the best ways to work together."

This Company Protects A Threatened African Cow By Turning Its Horn Into Housewares

As a member of Uganda's Bahima tribe, Olivia Byanyima carries a deep reverence for the African An­­kole cow. "Our culture revolves around this animal," she says. But in recent years the number of purebred Ankoles—known for their majestic horns and commanding presence—has dropped as farmers cross Ankoles with breeds that produce more milk. Researchers have predicted that Ankoles could be extinct by the middle of the century.

Byanyima, who moved to the U.S. in 2003, saw a chance to help. In 2014, she and social entrepreneur Shanley Knox founded Olivia Knox to create a luxury market for the horn, incentivizing farmers to raise more purebred Ankoles. "Now the farmer is not just raising it for meat and milk. It's for the entirety," Byanyima says. The pair works with the local beef industry to source the horns (which are usually discarded) and hires skilled Ugandan artisans to turn them into striking jewelry, accessories, and housewares.

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Today, Olivia Knox products can be purchased through Anthropologie and Bloomingdale's, among other retailers. Byanyima projects $1 million in sales by 2017, partly due to new deals with eyewear makers Lindberg and Hoffman. As more businesses around the world find uses for the horns, Byanyima hopes the significance of the material travels with it. "Companies should educate customers on the importance of their products. You should know the value you add to the world by buying this product.

Starter Auction House: Paddle8 Guides Affluent Millennials Into The World Of Fine Art

Fashion entrepreneur Andy Spade is known for bringing a retro-chic sensibility to the clients he advises through his Partners & Spade branding studio. But fans got a rare look at his personal style and decorating choices this winter when he consigned dozens of artworks and collectibles from his recently sold Long Island home through the virtual auction house Paddle8. By the time the sale closed in early February, the startup had sold everything from a Jean-Michel Basquiat drawing (valued at $50,000) to a six-foot-tall stuffed giraffe ($200 to $300).

"We're big believers that people can learn to collect through the eyes of great collectors."

The sale was a triumph for Paddle8 cofounder Alexander Gilkes, who first floated the idea when he ran into Spade at a dinner at Tory Burch's New York apartment. Gilkes, a former Phillips auctioneer and Old Etonian with a penchant for tweed jackets, launched the auction house in 2011 with cofounders Osman Khan and Aditya Julka. Their audience: the rising tide of affluent millennials just beginning to build art collections. While have-not millennials living at home and paying off student loans capture headlines, research firm FutureCast reports that there are 6.2 million millennial households in the U.S. earning $100,000 or more each year. "Today you're buying a $1,000 print," says Khan. "Over the next few years, hopefully you grow with us and you're the purchaser of a million-dollar work."

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Gold motorcycle helmet

Giovanni Bucchi, $200–$300*

Stuffed giraffe

Hansa, $200–$300

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After the Party screen print

Andy Warhol, $10,000–$15,000

Early Morning Dream print

Patti Smith, $1,000–$1,500

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Lounge chair

Ed Merat, $1,000–$1,500

Italian industrial worktable, 1790s

Artist unknown, $3,500–$4,500

* Estimated value throughout

Photos: Courtesy of Paddle8. Giovanni Bucchi, Gold motorcycle helmet, 2008. Matte gold leaf, silver leaf, gesso, and clay on football helmet 1979. Screen print in colors; Ed Merat, lounge chair, 1950s. Fiberglass and steel

The key to unlocking the potential of these customers: providing them with inspiration and guidance to start their own collections. In addition to hosting theme-based sales, Paddle8 courts novice buyers by asking prominent figures in the worlds of art, entertainment, and fashion to curate auctions. Some of these tastemakers, including Spade and the writer–bon vivant Bob Colacello, list pieces from their own collections. Others coordinate with Paddle8 specialists to source work by their favorite artists. Such was the case when Vogue's Grace Coddington curated an auction of prints—all nudes—by photographers such as Mario Testino and Annie Leibovitz. Ellen DeGeneres opted for items from her collection, as well as pieces that inspired her line of home decor. "We're big believers that people can learn to collect through the eyes of great collectors," Gilkes says.

This strategy helped Paddle8 sell about $70 million worth of art last year—double its 2014 total. That puts its 2015 revenue in the ballpark of $20 million, based on the commission fees it charges the buyer (20%) and the seller (8%). The momentum persuaded investors, including artist Damien Hirst and gallerist David Zwirner, to pour $34 million into the company last year. "Our gutsy view of the world is that with time, there will be three auction houses: two serving the upper end of the market and Paddle8, serving the middle market," says Gilkes, in a nod to auction giants Christie's and Sotheby's.

That may be optimistic, considering the established auction houses are increasingly entering Paddle8's medium of online sales—and, with it, that coveted middle ground. "The things you could buy at Sotheby's are surprisingly accessible," says David Goodman, Sotheby's head of digital development and marketing. After joining the company last summer, he spearheaded a series of online-only sales hosted by eBay. The sold-out auction of Star Wars memorabilia (which included hundreds of action figurines and a 42-inch-tall Chewbacca toy) attracted 400 new bidders. Christie's, for its part, has Christie's Live, a platform for participating virtually in a live auction, and expects to host more than 80 online-only sales this year.

One difference between buying a Luke Skywalker figurine from Sotheby's and, say, the Darth Vader Companion by KAWS on Paddle8 is how the items are verified and shipped. Paddle8 uses photographs and documentation to verify items remotely, then ships directly from consignor to buyer. Specialists at Sotheby's and Christie's, even for online sales, confirm the authenticity of all works in person. "That's what differentiates us, that peace of mind," says John Auerbach, managing director for e-commerce at Christie's.

Gilkes stands by the Paddle8 model, which he says enables lower fees. The company employs specialists to virtually authenticate every item; if records are missing or concerns remain, Paddle8 arranges for an in-person inspection. Once the company owns the rights to sell a piece, it can execute the transaction in a matter of weeks. "There are fewer pain points: We're not printing a catalog or setting up an exhibition, so we're able to move more nimbly," says Kate Brambilla, a Christie's veteran who now manages Paddle8's collector-driven auctions.

"I think there's a deep-seated interest to see how people live with art and objects, to see how somebody pairs a contemporary work of art with an antique desk accessory," she says. "There's an appetite for that—not only seeing into these collectors' personal lives but also how you can bring it into your own home." Ikea shelving optional.

Why Netflix Is Binging On "Chelsea"

"This place is so vast!" says Chelsea Handler, nearly breaking into a Mary Tyler Moore–like twirl inside an empty soundstage on the Sony lot.

"There's so much room to maneuver!" In a few weeks, carpenters will begin construction on the set of her upcoming Netflix talk show, scheduled to begin streaming in 190 nations on May 11. But for now, on a warm February afternoon in Culver City, as Handler takes in the 16,000-square-foot space for the first time, all she has is her imagination.

Girls Behaving Badly

Oxygen

2002–2005

Handler appeared as a practical joke–playing cast member on the all-female show, positioned by the network as Sex and the City mixed with Candid Camera. Her first TV opportunity, Girls Be­having Badly, helped rescue a flailing Oxygen and quickly gained the baw­dy Handler a fan base that would propel sales of her first book, My Hori­zontal Life: A Collec­tion of One-Night Stands, in 2005.

The Chelsea Handler Show

E!

2006

The half-hour variety program marked the debut of Handler as herself and further introduced audiences to her blunt comedic style.

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Chelsea Lately

E!

2007–2013

The second woman ever to host a late-night talk show (after 1986's The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers), Handler infused each half hour with irreverent humor and raucous celebrity interviews and turned the show into a surprise hit, drawing close to a million viewers per episode.

After Lately

E!

2011–2013

The semi-scripted behind-the-scenes mockumentary aired weekly and followed Handler (the show's creator and executive producer) and her staff during the making of Chelsea Lately episodes, parodying the petty and ridiculous sides of show business.

2002–2015

Handler has guest-starred on numerous programs, including Reno 911!, This Means War, Web Therapy, In the Motherhood, The Bernie Mac Show, and My Wife and Kids. In 2015, on an episode of ABC's The Muppets ti­tled "Too Hot to Handler," she was asked out on a date by Scooter.

Borderline Amazing Productions

2009–present

In addition to most of Handler's own programs, Handler's production company created and produced Love You, Mean It with Whitney Cummings, a short-lived reality show called Pretty Wild (featuring the members of the Bling Ring celebrity-home-raiding posse), Are You There, Chelsea? (based on Handler's 2008 memoir Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea and starring Orange Is the New Black's Laura Prepon), and CMT's first late-night program, The Josh Wolf Show.

A Chelsea Handler Production

2015–present

In Handler's follow-up to Borderline Amazing, the company produced her four-part Netflix docuseries Chelsea Does and is also creating her talk show.

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My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

2005

Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

2008

Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang

2010

Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me

2011

Uganda Be Kidding Me

2014

Handler's essay collections, five in less than 10 years, have sold more than 2 million copies combined—and were all New York Times best sellers, with four reaching the No. 1 spot. The confessional writings explore similar themes of sex, alcohol, and the embarrassments of her youth in New Jersey. Her comedy tours, which accompanied the books' releases, have grossed $30 million.

Uganda Be Kidding Me Live

Netflix

2014

To promote her most recent book, Uganda Be Kidding Me, Hand­ler performed a live comedy show in Chicago produced by Borderline Amazing that was recorded and released exclusively on Netflix.

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Chelsea Does

Netflix

2016

The four-part docu­series, with each one-hour episode devoted to a single topic (marriage, racism, drugs, and Silicon Valley), served as a teaser for her upcoming three-times-a-week talk show, which will debut on the stream­­ing service in May.

—Claire Dodson

"I've never actually been in here before," she says. "I've only seen where the green room and the guest rooms are going to be. And"—she pauses for effect—"where they'll be putting the bar."

If all goes according to plan—and things usually do in Handler's world, even if she insists she never has a plan—the 41-year-old stand-up comedian turned E! network star turned streaming pioneer will be spending a large chunk of the next several years inside this soundstage. The exact contours of the show are still being worked out by Handler's staff of 50 producers, writers, editors, and researchers. What's certain is that the program, called Chelsea, will stream three nights a week—Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays—and feature interviews with a variety of guests about often touchy topics: "abortion, parenthood, the electoral college . . ." she says, by way of examples, plus a regular dose of Handler's bawdy, transgressive humor. It will feature taped field reports—mini versions of the four hour-plus Chelsea Does documentaries that debuted on Netflix back in January. There will be a live audience and lots of wild-card elements; earlier in the day, Handler held auditions for a child correspondent ("I'm looking for a 10-year-old with attitude," she says). All of this will be packed into a running time of 30 minutes, more or less. In the world of streaming video, nobody is watching the clock too closely.

Right now, she's in the middle of a series of creative meetings. "People come and pitch me ideas," she says, gesturing vaguely toward where a lazy Susan–style stage she's proposed might go ("There'll be a section if I'm interviewing three or four people, the way Dick Cavett sometimes did, and another if I'm interviewing one of the show's correspondents," she explains). "That's how I've always worked. Give me options. I'll tell you what I like and don't like. I know what the show is. I just can't put it in words. But it won't be regimented. You're not going to turn it on three nights a week and have an opening monologue, a guest, and a band. It'll be completely different."

In one respect, it already is: It's on Netflix.

Talk shows on broadcast airwaves have censors, commercial breaks, and nightly ratings. Talk shows on basic cable—such as Samantha Bee's Full Frontal, on TBS—get away with racier conversations but still have to cut to ads (and deal with jittery advertisers). Even pay-cable talk shows, like John Oliver's, on HBO, follow relatively traditional formats—a guy behind a desk—and exist within an old-fashioned corporate bureaucracy. But a talk show that runs on a streaming service—especially one that prides itself on giving talent virtually unlimited creative freedom, that is intent on rewiring the viewing habits of the whole world, and that has a $6 billion budget with which to do all of this—can be pretty much whatever its host wants it to be. On Netflix, there are no ads, no ratings (the company has never revealed how many people watch its shows, much to the annoyance of its competition), and no network notes, at least none that Handler can recall. The company "is amazing," she says.

Netflix's laissez-faire attitude toward talent has resulted in some groundbreaking programs, including Beau Willimon's presidential soap opera, House of Cards, and Jenji Kohan's women's prison dramedy, Orange Is the New Black (as well as a few stinkers, like the recent Full House reboot, Fuller House). Even so, Handler's show will mark a major departure. For one thing, the company that popularized binge viewing will be releasing episodes in a radically old-fashioned way: one at a time. Each will go live at 12:01 a.m. and remain on servers indefinitely, for subscribers to stream as they please—but it's as close as Netflix has ever come to traditional appointment television.

What's even more unusual for Netflix is that the show will be covering current events in some degree of real time. This is a move that CEO Reed Hastings and chief content officer Ted Sarandos had hinted at during an earnings call last October. "On the news side, we are definitely being more adventurous," Sarandos told reporters, somewhat cryptically. When Hastings responded by asking Sarandos, "What's the likelihood that we compete with Vice in the next two years?" Sarandos answered, "Probably high." The Internet immediately lit up with talk of Netflix's grand new plan to expand into news, and the streaming service quickly backpedaled. In a follow-up email, a corporate spokesperson attempted to clarify these remarks by telling reporters, "We'll leave the news business to folks like yourself."

Handler, of course, isn't a newsperson. But talk shows are by nature tethered to the stories of the day, and having her on the air discussing them marks a shift for Netflix, transforming the media company from a simple streaming service, such as Hulu or Amazon Prime Video, into a living, breathing part of the news cycle. "It doesn't have to be ripped from the headlines every episode," Sarandos says of the show's content, backpedaling a little bit more. "If Chelsea is picking the right topics, the conversation is going to be around for a few weeks. But, yes, it's definitely more topical and timely than what we usually do."

There are risks for Netflix. After all, the company is putting its money and reputation (and 90 minutes a week of bandwidth) behind a button-pushing, controversy-prone comedian who once dressed a little person as Adolf Hitler to celebrate Germany's World Cup win, whose sharp tongue has made enemies of everyone from Angelina Jolie to Nick Cannon, and who has posted more topless photos of herself than Vladimir Putin (which may explain some of her 5.8 million Twitter followers and 2.1 million Instagram followers). Talk-show hosts function as brand identifiers: Jimmy Fallon is in many ways the face of NBC, just as Jon Stewart was for Comedy Central. Placing an unpredictable force like Handler behind a talk-show desk (even if she doesn't end up having a desk) could put Netflix in awkward situations.

At the moment, though, Handler is just looking for a place to sit down. After winding through hallways and taking some stray turns ("Is this an office?" she asks after opening a door into what looks like a closet), Handler finally finds the only part of the soundstage with furniture—a large backstage lounge with a couple of old sofas presumably left behind by a previous tenant. As the star settles into a couch, the production assistant asks if he can fetch her a bottle of water.

"No," she says, deadpan. "Just bring us a condom."

Ted Sarandos was chatting with his wife at the Vanity Fair Oscar party in February 2014 when Handler crashed their conversation. "She asked me if I was the Netflix guy," recalls the exec, who'd never met the comedian before. "She asked a lot of questions. She was really tenacious about it. She wanted to know how things worked, how Netflix was different. It was a real deep dive. It was almost as if she was on a fact-finding mission."

Which, in fact, she was.

At the time, Handler was in the middle of her seventh year hosting Chelsea Lately, the entertainment-news channel E!'s popular five-day-a-week, late-night talk show in which she engaged in gossipy banter with Hollywood celebs and poked fun at her little-person sidekick, Chuy. The gig had made her rich (the network reportedly paid her between $8 million and $12 million a year) and famous (each episode drew upward of a million viewers) and even something of a groundbreaker: the first female comic to succeed at late-night-TV hosting, something not even Joan Rivers was able to do. Reruns of her show aired so many times a day that it sometimes seemed like the only thing on the network. There was even a spin-off, After Lately, a semi-fictitious reality series in which the cast and crew of Chelsea Lately was shown bickering and engaging in other backstage shenanigans. That drew a million viewers per night as well.

But after taping more than 1,000 episodes (and interviewing almost as many Kardashians), Handler was miserable and ready for a change. She was tired of celebrity gossip, appalled at the audience's hunger for it, and, most of all, fed up with being on the network that produced programs like Leave It to Lamas and Bridalplasty. "It was incredibly frustrating," she says. "You're a reflection of the company you keep, and I wasn't impressed with anybody. The people I was working with on the network side, they never could think big. I just wanted to leave, to be somewhere else."

"I never really have epiphanies," Handler says. "I just have thoughts and act on them. I'm impulsive."

Handler has trusted her instincts ever since she was a kid in suburban New Jersey. "I never really have epiphanies," she says, "I just have thoughts and act on them. I'm impulsive." Her dad was a used-car salesman and Jewish; her mom, a German-born homemaker, was Mormon. ("We celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah, but I consider myself Jewish," she says.) The youngest of six children, she was raised without much supervision, and it clearly left her with an independent streak. After about "10 minutes" of community college, Handler says she left for L.A. to become an actress, moving in with relatives who had nine children, three dogs, and a parrot. Living in what she calls a "disgusting" environment, she waited tables between auditions for commercials and sitcom parts, growing more and more restless. "I just wanted my life to begin," she says. "I wanted everything to start. I wanted my break."

It came soon, in the unlikely form of a DUI conviction. On the eve of her 21st birthday, while driving home from a bar with an equally sloshed friend—"midway through [singing] the second chorus of Whitney Houston's 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody,' " as Handler describes the incident in her 2008 best-selling memoir (the second of five), Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea—she was pulled over by the police. After a night in jail, she was sentenced to DUI classes, and it was there, while regaling fellow offenders with the details of her arrest (like how she called the white cops who busted her "racists" and drunkenly complained about being "racially profiled"), that she realized her calling. "You ought to do stand-up," her DUI classmates told her.

"Stand-up was my entrée into the entertainment world," she says. "I didn't have to act out somebody else's words. I could just stand there with a microphone and nobody would interrupt me. It's the most narcissistic thing you could probably do."

[image error]Next act: After leaving E!, Handler was drawn to Netflix by the freedom to explore.

Within about six years, she had landed development deals with Paramount and NBC. She scored her first regular role, on an Oxygen network sketch-comedy program called Girls Behaving Badly (sort of an estrogen-infused Punk'd), and started getting invitations to appear on the E! network's "countdown" reports, in which various comedians riff on news and celebrity gossip.

Ted Harbert, who was then the head of the Comcast-owned network, spotted her and saw potential. In 2005, he offered Handler her own sketch-comedy program, The Chelsea Handler Show, which tanked. A year later, he tried again, giving her Chelsea Lately. Around this time, Handler began a relationship with Harbert (now chairman of NBC Broadcasting) that had E! employees gossiping around watercoolers for four years, until they broke up. "Now that I look back on it, it was very odd," she admits. "It was tricky. But my mom had just died. And he was the president of the network. He was this older guy who thought I was the greatest thing in the world. So I returned the favor."

As she says: She has thoughts and acts on them.

Handler did so again in March 2014, a month after chatting up Sarandos at that Oscar after-party, when she decided to leave E! and broke the news to her bosses in a way that only Handler might think was a good idea—by all but announcing it on The Howard Stern Show. "E! has just become a sad, sad place to live," she said on the air. "They don't know what they're doing, they have no ideas . . . everything they do just is a failure." Handler says she was surprised when E! execs assumed it was a ploy for a fatter contract. "Because I felt unhappy, I just assumed that they knew," she explains. "But they thought I was negotiating. I told them, 'You don't have to give me more money. It's not about that. I don't care. I don't want to be on this network anymore.' " An E! spokesperson says, "Chelsea called E! home for seven years, and it's disappointing that she continues to criticize the network that launched her career."

[image error]Working blue: Handler looks forward to being free from traditional network restrictions.

Handler's next move became a subject of intense speculation in the TV world. That spring, the late-night airwaves were in flux. At CBS, Letterman had announced his retirement from Late Show, and Craig Ferguson's contract with The Late Late Show was about to expire. Once Handler left E!, rumors began to circulate that she was after one of those jobs. An Instagram photo that she posted showing a packet of papers with the CBS logo on them and a caption reading "business meeting" didn't do a lot to dispel this talk. But Handler was merely stirring the pot. "Those were just meetings that people wanted to take," she says. "I was offered several jobs. I was offered syndication late-night shows. But they were all conversations that didn't get far, because there was no point. I was never interested. I didn't want to step into somebody else's shoes. I didn't want to be on some other late-night show doing the same shit again."

"She asked me if I was the Netflix guy," Sarandos recalls. "She asked a lot of questions. She was really tenacious about it."

What she was interested in—and why she sought out Sarandos at that party—was Netflix. "House of Cards was on, and I just thought it was cool," she says. "I thought they were smart, that they knew what they're doing, and that I could do something different there. I thought, I want to work at that table."

She asked her manager, Irving Azoff, to set up a meeting with "the Netflix guy" at the streaming service's Beverly Hills headquarters. (Azoff did nothing to dissuade her. "He never tells me what to do—he knows better," she says.) Sarandos, who attended the meeting, along with Netflix's VP of content acquisition, Lisa Nishimura, and VP of original content, Cindy Holland, was "stunned that Chelsea hadn't signed with one of the CBS shows," he says. "But it wasn't like we were looking to make a talk show. It wasn't like, 'Let's find a host.' She came in, and we met, and it was more like one of those we-don't-know-if-we-should-do this-because-we've-never-done-anything-like-this-before kind of things." Turns out those are Netflix's favorite types of meetings. "We're all about experimenting," says Nishimura. "And the timing was terrific."

Although Netflix didn't do any formal crunching of Handler's numbers—there were no focus groups or analyses of her ratings on E!—the company had detected signs that the streaming audience was receptive to a Netflix talk show. "Anecdotally, if you look at what's happening in late night, increasingly people want consumer control," says Nishimura. "Whether it's digital clips of Fallon's celebrity lip sync or [James] Corden's singing with celebrities in cars, you're starting to find that consumers aren't watching late night as appointment TV." Though Netflix is a closed system, it plans to share video clips via YouTube and its social channels to drive viewers to the show.

"Near-live," is what BTIG Research analyst Rich Greenfield calls this new form of entertainment consumption. "People love the late-night conversation, but they want to watch it on their own terms. And Netflix wants to be a part of that." Near-live programming, he explains, fits with the company's push to keep people paying $7.99 a month. "That's the most important thing for Netflix. They don't care about nightly ratings—they care about subscribers coming back. And with Chelsea Handler, they see a talent with a passionate fan base and a person who knows how to use social media to drive awareness." When Handler isn't posting risqué photos of herself ("I think nudity is funny, especially when it's inappropriate," she says), she's tweeting out a cascade of zingers, put-downs, and comedic observations. "I found a piece of pretzel in my underwear this morning," she tweeted recently. "Conclusion: I was intoxicated, unsupervised, and abstinent."

Surprisingly, Handler says social media doesn't come naturally to her. "Would I do these things if I wasn't famous?" she ponders. "No. If I didn't have something to promote, I wouldn't. It's just something you have to do right now. But once I got the hang of it, it has been fun to interact with fans. As silly as it sounds, it feels good to do it." It also makes smart business sense, undoubtedly providing leverage in negotiating with, say, major streaming companies. In June 2014, Handler and Netflix signed a deal reportedly valued at $10 million—or five times what John Oliver is said to be paid by HBO—for the show, the docuseries, and a stand-up special for Netflix (Uganda Be Kidding Me Live, released in October 2015). Then she acted on impulse again, announcing that she'd be taking a break. She didn't come back for 18 months.

Handler is lounging poolside at her Bel Air home, getting high. And then doing leg squats.

She's filming one of her talk show's field reports, this one focusing on a personal trainer who believes that inhaling marijuana before a workout enhances the exercise experience. He's brought complicated-looking vaporizing devices, which Handler needs help operating—"I'm more of a drinker," she says apologetically, after coughing up a lungful of cannabis—as well as some brutal-looking sports equipment. A camera crew is capturing it all, as Handler's two furry mutts, Chunk and Tammy, watch with weary detachment from the other side of the pool.

[image error]House of CardsPhoto: David Giesbrecht, courtesy of Netflix

Netflix currently has a programming budget of $6 billion in cash, making it the second-biggest content spend­­er after ESPN. The money is going toward original fare, such as Master of None and Orange Is the New Black, and licensed TV shows and movies, like Parenthood and Breaking Bad.

. . . to more than 600 hours. That means that each week this year, more than one new TV series, movie, documentary, stand-up special, or kids' show will begin streaming, including Baz Luhrmann's hip-hop drama, The Get Down, and Brad Pitt's satirical military film, War Machine.

. . . such as the recent Fuller House reunion show and an upcoming revival of Gilmore Girls. Family shows and '80s movies are popular on the site, and users, via surveys, have expressed a demand for younger-skewing fare.

Execs at Netflix understand the value of YouTube cele­brities' enormous, built-in fan bases and digital marketing savvy. In January, it ordered a scripted series based on the YouTube character Miranda Sings, and it streams all the episodes of Freddie Wong's YouTube show, Video Game High School.

Netflix is looking to jump-start its nascent original-movie business and nab some Oscars. At Sundance in January, the company spent lavishly on seven films, including Tallulah, starring Ellen Page and Allison Janney, and the Paul Rudd road movie The Fundamentals of Caring. The company also made a $20 million bid for Nate Parker's Birth of a Nation but lost out to Fox Searchlight.

The streaming service is quickly expanding its global reach and is now live in more than 190 countries, including Russia and India. The only major nation missing is China, due to government regulations. CEO Reed Hastings has said he is not giving up and will be "patient" with that market.

Through its Netflix Recommended TV initiative, the company gives a Good Housekeeping–like seal of approval to television devices that meet certain performance and functionality criteria.

Netflix added five new comedy series last year, plus high-profile docs such as the true-crime thriller Making a Murderer, which sparked a national dialogue about systemic flaws in the justice system.

—Nicole LaPorte

Handler has shot a number of these mini docs, not all of them in the comfort of her tastefully decorated home—which happens to be Esther Williams's old mansion, remodeled with ultramodern conveniences, including a guest bathroom with an electronic toilet control panel so high-tech you need a degree in physics just to flush. Last week, she had flown to Moscow ("a horrible place," she notes, making a face) to do a segment on young girls in the Russian figure-skating program. Next week, she'll hop over to Las Vegas to watch a hypercompetitive youth baseball tournament. There will also be segments on a vocal coach who teaches trans women how to sound more feminine and a visit to the home of a polygamist family. Judging from what's going on around her pool—Handler, high as a kite, swinging a kettle bell so clumsily it's a wonder she doesn't accidentally propel herself into the pool—these taped segments will be pretty hilarious.

But like her four heavily promoted Chelsea Does docs, which premiered on Netflix in January, they'll aim to be more than merely amusing. One reason Handler was drawn to Netflix was that she could express a smarter, more intellectually curious side of her personality. "When we were on the network, I can't tell you how many times we had to take jokes out because of advertisers," she says. "It was constant bickering back and forth. You can't do this, you can't do that. There was no creative license." But with Netflix, if she wants to get high and do push-ups, it's not a problem. If she wants to spend 30 minutes discussing presidential politics, that's cool too. If she wants to take an epic hiatus before starting the show—traveling the world, buying a house in Spain, and having a brief fling with a crew member aboard a ship—nobody is going to complain.

"I sat down at Netflix and told them I want to take [time] off, and then I could come back and do some documentaries, if they would hook me up with some of [the filmmakers] they had access to," she recalls. "And they were like, 'Great!' "

The Chelsea Does docs—about racism, marriage, drugs, and Silicon Valley—were Handler's idea, but from Netflix's point of view they were a savvy segue into a talk show, a tone test for a new sort of Chelsea. They're not exactly Ken Burns–level productions, but they are certainly more intelligent and thought-provoking than anything Handler ever did on E!. In the Silicon Valley episode, she ventures to the tech capital to "talk to them about their algorithms—and find out what an algorithm is." She rides a hoverboard, interviews an AI robot ("Are you trying to annoy me?" it asks her), and pitches her own app, an iPhone program that fakes an incoming call or text so that you can sneak out of meetings (Gotta Go! went on sale on iTunes the week the doc was released).

"The docs gave us the opportunity to try a new format," says Sarandos. "The interview style, the roundtables, the outside segments—all of those are things that will be in the talk show." As Handler puts it, they "served as a great bridge. I wanted to show people that I'm taking a real big jump into something new, that I was reinventing myself."

To continue that evolution on the talk show, Handler has enlisted Bill Wolff, the producer who, in 2005, discovered an obscure Air America Radio host named Rachel Maddow and turned her into MSNBC's No. 1 star (he left in 2014 to help launch Vice for HBO). "Chelsea and Rachel are actually similar people," Wolff says, "smart, funny, hard-working, and transparent. When you meet Chelsea or Rachel, they're just as they appear on TV."

Handler spoke with several potential producers before connecting with Wolff. ("We met at a hotel bar for one drink—and that became 10 drinks," she says.) Wolff for his part, appreciated Handler's creative instinct. "The vision was essentially in place," he remembers. "She told me that she wanted to put together a show in her voice, but that was about the broader world."

The process of creating a talk show is always the same, Wolff says, whether the host is a wonky Rhodes Scholar with an Elvis-like 'do or a community college dropout (who says she reads 75 books a year and who has written five best sellers of her own). "You spend a lot of time together," he explains. "You find out what she's interested in, what she likes to do, the things she finds funny. And over the course of weeks and months, you piece together a proper form for her self-expression. You try to exploit the things that make that person special."

What's tricky about Handler is that the very things that make her unique—an instinct to push buttons and a fearlessness about offending—aren't traits typically associated with talk-show schmoozers. Netflix has content deals with other stars—Adam Sandler, the Duplass Brothers, Brad Pitt—but the person the company has chosen to beam into subscribers' bedrooms, night after night, in 190 countries, happens to be the one capable of insulting entire nation-states with a single zinger (she still hasn't apologized to Serbia after an offhand remark about that country being a "disappointment" sparked a nationwide boycott of her E! show).

Still, Chelsea—and Chelsea—may be a gamble worth taking. "Neflix is about reaching all four quadrants," explains analyst Greenfield. "Fuller House is very different from House of Cards, which is very different from Orange Is the New Black. And Chelsea is different, as well, which is what Netflix wants. If you think about what a video bundler does," he goes on, "it provides a little bit of food programming on a food channel, a little comedy on a comedy channel, a little drama, a little bit of everything. And that's what Netflix is doing with Chelsea Handler—it's providing a totally different type of content. Because, remember, Netflix doesn't really want to be a network, it wants to be a video packager. Its goal is not to replace HBO. It wants to replace Comcast."

That stoned woman by the pool, lurching around with a kettle bell? She is merely its latest secret weapon.

What It's Like To Attend A $3,400 Public-Speaking Coaching Session

The command was simple: Create an intro to any story beginning with the word "imagine." The leader gave us all a topic to talk about: energy conservation. I had 10 seconds to prepare. After a pause, I theatrically pointed at my head and said, "Imagine." I then tried to fill in the blanks, talking about a future where open fields were filled with wind turbines. But my thoughts became jumbled and terror filled my face. I tried to set the scene of a utopic future where there was neither an energy crisis nor global warming, but the sentences didn't link, and all that escaped my mouth was gobbledygook.

The woman beside me, my partner for the time being, was kind. "The beginning was good," said the PR executive, 40. But it was clear I had bombed.

We were attending a two-day conference: me, this woman, and about 90 other people all together in a large auditorium. The event—hosted by the company Own The Room—dubbed itself a retreat where "executives from different industries come to learn to communicate more effectively and have a great time in the process." The price tag was indeed C-Level at $3,400, but it did boast Sheryl Sandberg's endorsement.

"Tell a story," repeated one presenter. Another coach's mantra: "Get over yourself."

The room was filled with many people who occupied spots near the top of their org charts. The people attending were separated into about nine different groups. My enclave included a VP from Johnson & Johnson, someone from PepsiCo, and a few CEOs and founders. I surveyed the room and found other groups contained similar rankings. I even spotted the brother of a well-known politician in our midst.

Most of the people I talked to generally had the same goal in mind: They frequently gave presentations—be it to a small group of employees or to hundreds of people—and wanted to improve their performance. Some had issues with engaging people, others just wanted to be more dynamic. One woman sitting beside me—a health care company executive—was filling in for a colleague of hers, but had heard about it from numerous other people. While people were happy to chat about why they were attending, nearly everyone declined to be named, as they were all there on their companies' dime.

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As for me, I've always considered myself an okay public speaker. I know how to tell a good joke, and audiences generally react well enough. But I've never focused on the exact things that I say, or the way that I relate to an audience. Comparatively, most other people in the room seemed to have led more than a few important meetings. I was probably the least experienced public speaker in that room.

The day was segmented into large and small group activities. The first hour, we just worked on introducing ourselves. We learned the tricks of drawing in an audience. "Tell a story," the coach told us. Never begin with your name. The very first exercise was learning how to master this seemingly simple task. We were partnered with someone else, and then told to introduce ourselves in an engaging way—without leading with our name.

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This led to some intriguing, if not necessarily business appropriate intros. One person, a 40-year-old man who worked for a company that helps people with substance abuse, opened, "I am a recovering alcoholic." A dark-haired man in his thirties said, "I know more about breasts than you," and then went on to talk about his lactation-focused business. It's true, if these people had merely stated their names, I probably wouldn't be as interested in what they do. I simply opened with, "I like to tell a good story."

Another key "trick" was learning to hone language. One coach explained that most language spoken day to day is "weak"—that is, the "uhs," "ums," "yeahs," etc. We spent the rest of the day trying to pry these vocal tics from our repertoire. A participant—another corporate VP—and I were asked to deliver an engaging 15-second presentation about where we see ourselves in 10 years. The catch: Every time we uttered those weak, bad words, we had to drink a sip of watered-down Coke (it was a "drinking game," get it?). I went first and had to drink four times. My partner went second and didn't drink once. "It's easier going second," he conceded.

A dark-haired man in his thirties said, "I know more about breasts than you," and then went on to talk about his lactation-focused business.

If you've ever been to a session about how to present, these exercises and tricks aren't necessarily new. Own The Room fits squarely in an industry that's been around for decades: executive coaching and education. Since boardrooms have been ground zero for presentations, employees have worked to enhance their ability to communicate and engage.

The market is quite big, too. One report from 2014 put the global corporate training market at over $130 billion. And another 2015 report saw that same market growing from 2015-2019 at compound annual growth rate of 8%. Everyone I talked with agreed that they saw this as an opportunity to have a few days off and practice these skills. A few had been to other Own The Room events, and simply liked attending because it gave them the ability to work further on honing the craft.

Of course, there have always been people claiming to have the secrets for good group communication, much like business and personal gurus have long claimed to know the "secrets to success." The cult of entrepreneurship bleeds into Own The Room's pitch. There are zen-like secrets for mastering a good business presentation, as well as allusions that the greatest executives are the most persuasive and masterful of language. Every mini session had one, if not many, catchphrases that were both helpful and grandiose. "Tell a story," repeated one presenter. Another coach's mantra: "Get over yourself." A session I attended was simply titled, "Connect First."

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With all of these tools, the ultimate goal is for the participants to be able to have a more commanding presence over an audience. The event culminated with each person giving their own two-minute presentation about whatever they choose. Hopefully they would take these tools back home and lead a great meeting, or deliver a perfect pitch, or give the best presentation.

But as Own The Room CEO Jack Harvey told me later on in the day, the executive coaching space is fractured. There are dozens of individual coaches out there—each with their own specialties—and a few companies offering events like this. But the offerings are still all over the place and there's no one leader.

One company, Reboot, is similarly positioned. It calls itself a coaching company that helps "entrepreneurs and their teams deal with the internal ups and downs of entrepreneurship." Like Own The Room, it hosts bootcamps and coaching sessions. But Reboot is tailored more for the startup environment and the growing and learning entrepreneur. And there are big names—especially in Silicon Valley—known as guru coaches including Bill Campbell (who worked at both Apple and Intuit and has reportedly coached numerous tech giants) and Ron Conway (a well-known angel investor who's been known to pitch in for the companies in his network).

[image error]Jack Harvey

Own The Room appears to want to court both entrepreneurial upstarts, as well as be used in Fortune 500 boardrooms around the world. According to Harvey, in the last year his program has been used by about 100 companies (including Facebook and LinkedIn) in 27 countries. He adds that bigger corporations with upwards of 300,000 employees have begun to bring the Own The Room program into their offices.

Harvey sees this as proof that there's a market opening for a big name in the executive coaching industry. More importantly, he doesn't consider Own The Room a one-off coaching session provider. Instead, it's a "communication methodology." Like the coaches under him, Harvey uses big ideas to underscore what his company can do. It's not just showing people how to present in public, he assured me, it's something more: "How do they release their full potential?"

This is the kind of language you hear at both an executive training session and a new agey self-realization retreat. And to the untrained eye, the two are quite similar. Harvey—along with all the other coaches—would, of course, balk at this comparison. He reminds me that no Own The Room employee ever lectures while giving a coaching session. Also, the presenters never talk about themselves. "You will not find a bombast," he says. And he is right—the sessions I attended were neither self-reflexive nor philosophy laden. And they were very interactive.

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The grandiose sense is perhaps just the name of the game at these events. If you're paying the hefty price, then you might as well feel like you're in a special club of highfalutin gesticulations and potential professional realization. And everyone I talked with seemed okay with this. One HR executive saw a dual sense at the event. While the coaches seemed like they were teaching life tips, she didn't quite get that. "I feel like I'm acting," she said. "I want to feel more authentic." The coach assured her that would come with practice.

In the end, I did learn some good public speaking tips that I'll likely use in the future. But I'm probably still not qualified to stand in for your next executive conference. My full potential has yet to be realized.

This Group Is Most Likely To Have A Work BFF (And It's Not Who You Think)

Most working adults spend a large part of their day in the company of colleagues. What staffers say and how they act makes a difference because we know behavior—good or bad—is contagious. But those who have colleagues that are there to celebrate wins and lend an ear for grievances might actually end up with more power in the workplace.

The results of a new study from the O.C. Tanner Institute reveal:

81% of employees who have a best friend at work are satisfied with their life overall, compared to 73% who said they don't have a best friend at work.
75% of employees who have a best friend at work say they feel they're able to take anything on, compared to 58% of those who don't.
72% of employees who have a best friend at work are satisfied with their jobs, compared to only 54% of those who don't.

These findings were part of a larger health and well-being Study of 2,363 employees in multiple countries. The online survey targeted adults working full-time at companies with more than 500 employees across industries and with a variety of job titles. Respondents were asked about different aspects of their personal life, their current work benefits and perks, how they work, and what skills they use.

The researchers were attempting to measure overall well-being, which they say is more than just physical wellness. "It is a measure of a person's perception of how her life is going—whether it is fulfilling and satisfying, whether she feels her best every day, and where her life is headed in the future," the study's authors write.

This is especially important now, according to the study, because employees rate their life at work today lower than their life at home, as well as their future. "On average, employees rate their life inside work today at 5.24 on the 10-point scale," they note. This is regardless of industry, how big their company is, what job they hold, how educated they are, or even how much they earn.

"Good mental wellness has the largest impact of any individual wellness dimension on overall well-being," they observe. And that is due, in part, to having a good friend at work.

Who's most likely to have a close friend in the office? The answer is surprising. Sure, millennials are most likely to call a colleague their bestie. Indeed, another study found that those between 18 and 24 were more likely to give each other relationship advice or text a manager on a non-work-related issue after hours.

But executives are actually the group with the highest percentage of employees who have a work best friend. This, the researchers say, is evidence that "there are additional benefits to moving up the ranks beyond just higher pay." The study found that having a spouse also actually boosts the likelihood of having a close buddy. "Those in long-term relationships seem to have the most luck at turning watercooler chitchat into a meaningful friendship," the authors write.

Friends impact employees' overall well-being, which in turn affects productivity. We know that there is no shortage of corporate wellness programs, in part because multiple studies have shown that staff who are healthy cost their companies less money to insure, take fewer sick days, and are less likely to need workers' compensation or disability.

This study found additional boosts to the bottom line in terms of productivity. When asked to rate their current output, for example, those with lower scores on overall well-being reported, on average, that they are only working at 64% of their maximum output. They also viewed their immediate work teams more negatively, estimating that their team was only producing, on average, 61% of their maximum output. The irony is that other studies have shown that one of the reasons for not making friends at work is because we think it's going to slow down our productivity.

Giving two-thirds, or less effort can seriously ding the company's balance sheet. On the flip side, the researchers say, "Employees who are holistically well deliver a difference for their teams and departments. In fact, as employee well-being increases, its positive effects resonate throughout the organization and teams become more productive, more collaborative, and prepared to innovate."

Why Women Job Hop More Than Men

Just how much are people job hopping? New LinkedIn data says workers who graduated between 2006 and 2010 have about 2.85 jobs each in the five years after college. Based on data pulled from 3 million U.S. member profiles, LinkedIn found:

The rate of job hopping in the five years after college has nearly doubled over the last 20 years.
Job hopping is most common in the media and entertainment, professional services, and government/education/nonprofit industries and least common in the oil and energy, manufacturing, and aero/auto/transport industries.
Women job hop more than men, and the gap is widening.

Whether you blame job hopping on startup culture or the end of job security, young people who job hop isn't a new thing. But LinkedIn's data interestingly shows that women have steadily job hopped at a higher rate than men since 1986. In the five years following graduation for those who completed college between 2006 and 2010, women held three jobs compared to men's 2.71 jobs. For those who graduated between 1986 and 1990, women held 1.64 jobs in the five years after college, compared to men's 1.57 jobs.

Women have steadily job hopped at a higher rate than men since 1986.

So why are women more prone to job hopping?

LinkedIn's in-house economist, Guy Berger, tells Fast Company that more research is needed to answer that question, but it probably isn't because women are trying to balance work-life, as LinkedIn's data examined recent grads who likely aren't thinking about balancing a family life yet. Berger did say that more women tend to work in industries that experience the highest job hopping.

That in itself is the paradox. Are women switching jobs frequently, leading to specific industries having higher turnover, or are specific industries contributing to women's increasing need to switch jobs?

Interestingly, looking back on history, women have always seemed comfortable jumping from job to job. According to a 1982 paper from Stanford titled "The Importance of Lifetime Jobs in the U.S. Economy," one-quarter of women over 30 were employed in jobs that will last longer than 20 years, whereas half of men over 30 were in near-lifetime jobs.

A common premise is that many working women will change jobs to something with more flexible hours when they decide to have a family—even if that means changing multiple times in order to find the flexible one that works. One recent study by Bain & Company and Chief Executive Women found that a flexible schedule helped women advance their careers, but in turn, jeopardized men's careers.

As women continue the fight for gender equality in the workplace, job hopping doesn't seem like a bad strategy if it gets you to where you want to be professionally.

Aside from the popular balancing family and career theory, job hopping has been said by some to be a good thing for careers. As women continue the fight for gender equality in the workplace, job hopping doesn't seem like a bad strategy if it gets you to where you want to be professionally. Patty McCord, former chief talent officer for Netflix, told Fast Company that job hoppers achieve more—especially if they switch jobs every three to four years when their learning curve flattens. According to Penelope Trunk, serial entrepreneur and author, frequent job hopping is actually "more stable" today than being a "lifer." She told Fast Company:

In terms of managing your own career, if you don't change jobs every three years, you don't develop the skills of getting a job quickly, so then you don't have any career stability. You're just completely dependent on the place that you work as if it's 1950, and you're going to get a gold watch at the end of a 50-year term at your company.

If what Trunk says is the case, women are creating more stable careers for themselves by jumping around. If job hopping helped Silicon Valley thrive, as this Vox article relays, can't it do the same for individuals, especially women who might need to think outside the box to level the gender playing field?

Berger says LinkedIn's data team plan to more closely examine why women are job hopping in the near future.

These Are The Ages When We Do Our Best Work

On a trip to Spain when he was about 31, Julius Caesar came across a statue of Alexander the Great—and started to cry.

This was shortly after the death of Caesar's wife, many years before he would transform the Roman Empire. A low-level public auditor at the time, Caesar purportedly told his companions, "Do you think I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?"

From time to time I can't help but hear the voice of the drummer in my college band announce in my head that the good times are over.

I'm 31 myself, and sympathize with Caesar every time I hear a goddamn Justin Bieber song on the radio. It hasn't been long since I realized that many of the writers and musicians and scientists I admire (not to mention Olympic snowboarders) are younger than me. And while I feel more in my element than ever, from time to time I can't help but hear the voice of the drummer in my college band announce in my head that the good times are over.

Perhaps the human zeal for drama explains why magazines print "30 Under 30" issues celebrating youthful overachievers. We admire the fast movers, game changers, and unexpected successes of all stripes. It's clear to any sports fan that gymnasts and football players peak early. But we've got lots of examples of brainy achievers peaking young, too: Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking developed their most groundbreaking work in physics in their 20s. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone at 29. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composing symphonies in his teens. Jesus kicked off a global movement by 33.

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In a world where actresses over 40 get suddenly swapped for 20-year-old models and Silicon Valley programmers get Botox to avoid being pegged as less innovative, we are perpetually obsessed with perpetual youth—and worse still, in often deeply sexist ways. But are we altogether wrong to peg youth to success? Does our appetite for such stories paint an accurate picture of the relationship between youth and achievement, or just feed into a wrongheaded fantasy?

If you're looking for anecdotes of "past-prime" successes, you'll find them in almost every category. Peyton Manning just won the Super Bowl at age 40, and Olympians have won medals well into their 50s (and 60s, if you count archery and curling). Quantum physicist Freeman Dyson discovered a groundbreaking solution to the oldest problem in game theory, The Prisoner's Dilemma, at age 88.

So which one is the outlier: Einstein or Manning? F-Dyson or T-Swift? Are 20-year-old actors actually preferable to more seasoned ones? Is a 40-year-old programmer actually going to be less clever on average than a recent grad? Are the good times for a middle-aged working person indeed over, or are they yet to come?

I took a look at the data on some of today's most successful people to find the answers:

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Data show that (big surprise) athletes indeed tend to peak young, while thinkers like economists and doctors do their best work later in life. In between, we see entertainers and leaders excel in their middle age.

These are all awards and "best-of-the-best"-type achievements, so they're not exactly indicative of what a regular person's personal best will be. And they also rely to various degrees on public accolades, so the untold numbers of brilliant people who toil in obscurity, and get recognized late or not at all, aren't captured here. Still, it's interesting to note that from science to art to business to politics, people do tend to reach their apogees during, well, a pretty "average" age for their given fields.

Some, like professional athletes and CEOS, tend to cluster especially tightly around certain age ranges (because of constraints like physical prowess and work experience, respectively). However, in each of these fields, people tend to do great work at all sorts of ages. Though Adele pulled the Grammy Album of the Year down from an average of around 40 by winning at age 23, Ray Charles yanked it up by winning his Grammy at 74.

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To get an ever-better picture of the age striation of people at the top of their games, here's a look at the ages of the nominees for Best Actor and Best Actress in the Oscars over the last 85 years.

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After this year especially, the Academy's biases are pretty well-known (I've written more about that here), but we nevertheless see a similarly broad spread. It's true that more women in their 20s have been nominated for Best Actress than women in their 50s, but that data show plenty of actors regardless of gender scoring top honors at every stage of their careers.

In his book Old Masters and Young Geniuses, author David Galenson mapped the ages in which "genius" artists in history did their best work and found two patterns: The first he called "experimental innovators," those whose work was exploratory and filled with trial and error and decades of accumulated wisdom and feeling. Those who fit the "experimental" pattern included Virginia Woolf, Jackson Pollock, and Alfred Hitchcock, and they did their best work later in life.

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Shane Snow is cofounder of Contently and author of Smartcuts .

Galenson called the other type of artist a "conceptual innovator," or people who break through with radical new ideas. These types of innovation often come from naïveté or recklessness—people who don't know what they don't know and therefore inadvertently employ more lateral thinking in their work—and tend to peak at young ages, like Orson Welles, Sylvia Plath, and Pablo Picasso.

Notably, renowned artists in both categories produced great work—and high volumes of creative work (good and bad)— throughout their whole lives, as Adam Grant points out in his wonderful new book Originals. The one thing they all truly had in common was that they didn't quit creating, whether they were young or old, happy or depressed.

The potential for high-functioning brain activity peaks in our 50s but remains high until our 90s.

Personally anyhow, it's been comforting to see that many of the writers who've given a younger me a healthy sense of professional jealousy have addressed this question as well. Malcolm Gladwell has written about late bloomers, and Sam Tanenhaus has explored young writers' advantage in the New York Times. And they're both right. The data are clear that we all have the potential to do our best or most creative work at any age. It may be easier to execute a touchdown at 21 and a big-budget film at 51, but that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't try.

In a 2008 article in the Journal of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, researchers charted the range of cognition—or how well our brains can function—at various ages. What we find is that the potential for high-functioning brain activity peaks in our 50s but remains high until our 90s and functional into the 100s; however, the average person peaks at 30 and declines to a nonfunctioning state by his or her late 80s.

[image error]From the Journal of Psychological Science in the Public Interest : "Depiction of the zone of possible cognitive development across adult life for a given individual. The blue dots indicate a general developmental trend for the individual under typical circumstances. The upper and lower curves indicate optimal and suboptimal boundaries that define the zone of possibility (shaded gray area). Upward and downward movements at a given age (arrows) are influenced by biological, behavioral, and environmental influences. The functional threshold indicates a point at which goal-directed cognition in the ecology will be compromised."

In other words, while many people do their best work at average ages given what it is that they do, we have the capacity to excel at any age.

Truth is, we go through stages in our lives, and there are opportunities to do our best at various periods. What's more, the differences in the way we view accomplishments at different ages can be extremely valuable to society collectively—especially when people work together. The innovation potential at the intersection between "young genius" and "old master," for instance, is huge, especially when both parties are open to listening to and learning from one another.

No one wins Best Actress or Actor without the work of a director and a supporting cast. Pulitzer and Hugo winners would go prizeless but for their editors; Grammy winners have producers and songwriters; and Nobel Prizes are often won, to borrow a line from Isaac Newton, by "standing on the shoulders of giants."

The best world is one where we collaborate across ages and disciplines.

In other words, the best world is one where we collaborate across ages and disciplines rather than treating life like an Olympic solo event.

That's the realization I had when I re-analyzed the data on U.S. presidents. Neither age nor speed of political climb was correlated with the success as a president. Instead, the best presidents were the most adaptable and open-minded. They were the ones who collaborated best with their cabinets, engaged with their allies and rivals, and used debate and disagreements as fuel for finding the right way to do things, rather than justification for the way they initially wanted to do them. (In fact, this became the basis for the first chapter in my book and this Fast Company story about leadership traits.) But age, it turns out, had nothing to do with it.

Julius Caesar's story with the Alexander the Great statue was all about motivation. He saw someone who had become his best self and decided that he could, too. And Caesar went on to conquer his corner of the world. It didn't matter that he did it in his 50s and not his 20s. What matters is that he did it.

Great Storytelling In VR Celebrated With Contest Winners

Virtual reality is very much in the hype phase right now, what with the recent launches of two of the most highly anticipated hardware systems, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. But as those systems arrive in consumers' hands, most of the attention paid to VR content has gone to games. One startup wants to shine the spotlight on the independent storytelling created for the technology.

Today, Oakland, California-based Kaleidoscope announced the winners of its 2016 world tour, which brought together virtual reality filmmakers and artists in Paris, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and other cities.

Kaleidoscope World Tour 2016

Kaleidoscope plans on giving out more than $50,000 worth of prizes—products, services, and software donated by sponsors—to the winners of a number of categories.

Those winners are:

Mike Tucker's Tana Pura , which won Kaleidoscope's grand prize for excellence in cinematic VR. The project is an "audio-visual exploration of the moments following death and the soul's transformation into the afterlife."

James George's and Jonathan Minard's Clouds , which won best documentary for its "portrait of a community of digital pioneers, explored through the lens of code."

Director Pierre Friquet scored Kaleidoscope's award for best live action experience with Jet Lag , a film that tells the story of two lovers ripped apart by visa politics in India.

Tyler Hurd won the award for best animated experience with his film Old Friend , a Yellow Submarine-like music video featuring music by Future Islands.

Kaleidoscope handed out its prize for best interactive experience to La Peri , from Balthazar Auxietre, a "visually stunning pas de deux between two dancers, one played by the viewer."

A favorite at the recent Sundance Film Festival, Notes on Blindness from Arnaud Colinart, Amaury La Burthe, Peter Middleton, and James Spinney examines what John Hull went through when he began to lose his sight in 1983.