That was Square’s valuation after a round of fundraising last fall. CEO Jack Dorsey started the payment venture with another multi-billion-dollar company under his belt: a little micro-blogging service called Twitter. We chatted with Dorsey about what he’s learned since starting Twitter at 29, how Square came together and much more. Listen to the extended interview here.
Speaking of billion-dollar-start-ups, that’s how many so-called “unicorns” have sprung up so far this year. Venture capital analyst CB Insights predicts we’ll see another 47 before the end of the year, which puts 2015 on track to double the number of companies that raised $1 billion in 2014.
That’s Adidas’ share of the athletic shoe market, and it’s shrinking. Nike, on the other hand, has about half. The former got a big boost when it signed musician Kanye West away from Nike, and West’s “Yeezy Season 1” line debuted in February to much fanfare. But fashion and lifestyle are a much smaller part of the Adidas Group, which is still behind in sports. This puts the company at a crossroads, Fortune reported.
That’s how many grocery stores are left in the city limits of Flint, Michigan, which has a population of 100,000 people. Three grocery stores in Flint have closed just within the last eight months. And with many residents without cars, access to fresh groceries has become even more difficult.
That’s how many people take cruises every year. The more than 300 ocean liners that make port in the U.S. come with a host of unique hazards and regulations borne from essentially being floating cities. ProPublica has put together a comprehensive guide to cruise safety, running down just about everything that can go wrong (and how often it does) as well as searchable safety records for hundreds of vessels.
That’s the amount of time that will be added on June 30th to the world’s clocks. Meant to correct the discord between the earth’s rotation and the clocks we humans use, that extra second is also a headache for world markets. May 22 is the deadline for U.S.-based markets to turn in a plan of action to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. One of the biggest hurdles is that different markets are adding the second in different ways: some all at once, some spread out over a period of time.
As part of the Future Library Project, Margaret Atwood will place a newly written book in a time capsule to be opened in 100 years. The closest any of us will come to knowing what’s inside that book (aside from cryogenically freezing ourselves) will be a live periscope viewing of the event that will take place next week.
Correction: A previous version of this post misstated the rate grocery stores have been closing in Flint, Michigan. The city lost three stores in the past eight months. The text has been corrected.
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