Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Fewer CEOs are serving on outside boards. That’s good (and bad) - TechCrunch
It used to be a heavily traveled two-way street in corporate America: CEOs joined other companies’ boards to broaden their experiences, expand their influence, or simply because it felt good. Boards sought out CEOs because of the knowledge they bring and their unique ability to interact with the company CEO as an equal.
But the number of sitting CEOs on outside boards keeps shrinking. As the CEO role has become more difficult and demanding, greater numbers of chief executives are shying away from external board roles and many boards now limit their own CEOs’ board assignments as well.
The pandemic accelerated the trend, according to a report by management consulting firm Korn Ferry, citing “evidence that the unprecedented demands posed by the pandemic led many CEO directors to resign from outside boards to focus on their own organizations.” Fewer than half of CEOs now serve on an outside board, the report said.
One good thing about the drop in CEO board assignments is more opportunity for non-CEOs and other traditionally underrepresented groups to join corporate boards.
At the same time, many corporations are feeling pressure to bring more gender and racial diversity to their boards and are making membership available to a broader array of candidates than in the past.
Is the decrease in CEO board participation a positive or negative? Interestingly, it’s both.
Here are four benefits of CEOs serving on boards:
Advising another company can make for a better CEO. CEOs who opt out of corporate board directorships out of fear of overextending themselves — and boards who restrict their own CEOs’ board assignments for the same reason — miss a key point: Time on a board usually makes them a better leader.
I’m on two outside boards. An inside view of another company’s challenges and opportunities, its peaks and valleys, what strategies worked and didn’t, has revealed insights I’ve ended up applying at my own company. Being on the other side of the table has even helped me better understand how to communicate with my company’s board.
Serving on a board can prevent myopia. Because of digital disruption, businesses must move at an unprecedented pace to stay competitive. Job No. 1 for all CEOs is to act on this reality every day inside their companies. But drawing exclusively from their own company’s experience can blind a leader to broader perspectives in the outside world. A board stint is a great way to ensure they’re getting those.
Board memberships can make CEOs more empathetic. There’s a lot of talk these days about the need for heightened empathy in the C-suite, and with good reason: The global health crisis, racial injustice and other extraordinary stressors demand that senior executives possess what McKinsey described as four qualities “to manage in crisis and shepherd their organization into a post-crisis next normal” — awareness, vulnerability, empathy and compassion.
In these times, it’s critically important for a CEO to cultivate as wide a frame of reference as possible, and involvement with another company through a board directorship accomplishes that.
Helping another company does broader good. If a CEO has the wherewithal beyond their own company responsibilities to bring value to another firm’s board, that’s a positive for the world at large. A rising tide lifts all boats, after all.
For example, I’m a board member at a company that once was strictly a manufacturer of home standby generators. It’s now digital savvy, with Wi-Fi-equipped generators providing a number of services on users’ smartphones. This means they also needs a strong cybersecurity strategy, my area of expertise. I take satisfaction in believing my guidance is benefiting the company, its shareholders and its customers.
So what’s good about the drop in CEO board assignments? That’s easy: more opportunity for non-CEOs and other traditionally underrepresented groups, including women and people of color, to join corporate boards.
“In a little-noticed but remarkable shift, many firms are skipping the corner suite and looking elsewhere for directors,” Korn Ferry reported. “Recent data shows that nearly two-thirds of the more than 400 director seats filled last year were taken by someone other than a CEO. Experts say since both the pandemic and the racial-equality protests of last year, companies are determined to create boards with more diverse faces and more specific skill sets.”
Equilar’s most recent Gender Diversity Index found that at the end of Q1 2021, 24.3% of all board seats in the Russell 3000 were occupied by women, up from 15% at the end of 2016. “The path toward equal representation of men and women in public company boardrooms seemed to go nowhere for decades, but there has been a significant clearing in recent years,” the report said. (Nevertheless, Equilar cautions that boards won’t hit gender parity until 2032.)
And many of these non-CEO board members are doing an excellent job. According to a survey by Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, 79% of board members feel that, in practice, active CEOs are no better than non-CEO board members. A CEO may bring cachet to the board, but many non-CEOs contribute real work as a director, the study said.
Increased diversity on boards isn’t just an excellent development by itself; board experience positions members well for future leadership roles and thus can act as a proxy to get more women and people of color into corner offices.
Making board membership accessible to a wider range of candidates beyond typically white male CEOs — they still account for almost 90% of Fortune 500 CEOs — offers hope that diversity in the business leader ranks will keep rising.
All things considered, I think this potential outweighs the negatives of more CEOs staying out of outside companies’ board rooms.
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This Ashton-Kutcher Backed Startup Is Helping The Self-Employed Get Organized - Forbes
It’s hard to juggle creative freelance work with managing the back-office tasks that support it—like accounting and completing legal documents.
Collective, a startup that caters to “creators and builders” in one-person businesses, is building an all-in-one platform for services like these. “You have to do a bunch of things you didn’t do as an employee,” says Hooman Radfar, CEO of the San Francisco-based startup, who co-founded it with CPO Ugur Kaner and CTO Bugra Akcay, both serial entrepreneurs.
Business registrations in the U.S. have been skyrocketing since the pandemic. There were 500,219 applications in May 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau—up from 296,594 the same month last year. With more employers calling workers back into the office, but many workers still preferring the work-from-home lifestyle that COVID-19 ushered in, this trend is likely to continue.
Investors are paying attention. Collective, launched in September 2020, raised a $20 million Series A round of funding last month, with backers including Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s venture capital fund Sound Ventures. It has raised a total of $28.65 million, including an earlier seed round.
Investors in Collective include a number of high-profile entrepreneurs active in the “passion” and gig economies, among them Steve Chen (Founder YouTube), Hamish McKenzie (Founder Substack), Aaron Levie (founder Box), Kevin Lin (founder Twitch), Sam Yam (founder Patreon), Li Jin (Atelier Ventures), Shadiah Sigala (founder HoneyBook), Adrian Aoun (founder Forward), Holly Liu (founder Kabam), Andrew Dudum (founder Hims) and Edward Hartman (founder LegalZoom). The venture firm General Catalyst joined the round.
"We're proud to be supporting a company that's making it easier for creators to focus on what they do best by taking care of the back-office work that creates so much friction for so many early entrepreneurs,” said Ashton Kutcher, co-founder of Sound Ventures, in a statement. “I would have loved something like this when I was getting started, so our team is excited to back this vision for all the future creators out there."
Collective plans to offer financial services customized to the self-employed market and a network of trusted advisors with expertise in accounting, bookkeeping, tax and business formation.
“Collective is serving the $1.2 trillion business-of-one industry by building the first back-office platform that saves individuals significant time and money, while providing them with the appropriate tools and resources they need to help them succeed,” said Niko Bonatsos, Managing Director of General Catalyst, in a statement. “We’re excited to support Collective as they expand their team and build an exceptional service for the business-of-one community.”
So far, the startup has gotten a strong response from the marketplace. When I spoke with Radfar in May, 20,000 people had been wait listed for membership.
In the future, Radfar says Collective hopes to explore options for offering healthcare and benefits. Both can be expensive for the self-employed, and it is hard to purchase the same-quality benefits as employees of companies that can buy as a large group. “It’s around the corner for us,” says Radfar.
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Ro buys Kit, a 17-month-old startup that offers at-home health testing - TechCrunch
Ro, a direct-to-consumer virtual care company, has scooped up Kit, an at-home diagnostics company with an array of customizable products, from finger prick blood tests to weight measurement tools. The price was undisclosed.
Ro co-founder Zachariah Reitano said that he first approached Kit as a potential customer, hoping to integrate its quality testing into its platform. Him and Kit’s co-founders, Philip Fung and Erik Salazar, bonded over shared missions to become a vertically-integrated primary care platform, as well as the current issues that stop consumers from accessing care. The synergy eventually drove Ro to scoop up the 17-month old business.
Kit partners with health insurers, clinical trials, self-insured employers and telehealth platforms to create customizable at-home diagnostic tests. It essentially serves as a white-label solution for physicians, giving them an ordering portal for them to request and tweak the tests that can eventually be delivered to consumers. The company’s in-network approach comes as a contrast to Ro’s vision of direct-to-consumer healthcare, so it will be key to see how Kit customers are impacted by the transaction and if You can bring down prices to hit consumer-friendly benchmarks.
Reitano stressed Kit’s consumer-friendly UX. Consumers will receive a Kit box on their doorstep, with steps to download the Kit app so they can get step-by-step guidance on how to self-administer their test. There’s other bits within the box, such as a hand warmer to increase blood flow or a piece of foam to practice on (instead of skin).
Image Credits: Ro/Kit
“When I first used Kit, I genuinely felt like I was living in the future,” Reitano said. “And that doesn’t happen very frequently.” He declined to name specific competitors, but said that other at-home diagnostic companies have “processes that feel very antiquated” with pamphlets and confusing instructions. Two of the leading players in the at-home testing space are Everlywell and LetsGetChecked, which both have raised hundreds of millions in venture capital. Kit raised only a $3.3 million seed round before getting acquired, with investments from Expa, Sherpalo Ventures, South Park Commons, Slow Ventures and Village Global, per Crunchbase.
“There’s a fragmentation of care, fragmentation of data and providers aren’t kept in the loop,” Reitano said. “And we have so much work to do, but Kit is such an important and essential piece in that infrastructure to again bring more and more of a patient’s care under the same roof.”
As part of the acquisition, Ro has added its first lab to its brand. It will now have access to Kit’s CLIA-certified and CAP-accredited lab, which it owns and operates in San Francisco, CA.
Ro’s acquisition of Kit is its third acquisition in the past 12 months. In December 2020, it acquired Workpath, an in-home care API that allows it to send professionals to a patient’s home or conduct diagnostic tests – which will eventually be broadened by Kit’s product. In May 2021, Ro bought Modern Fertility for north of $225 million, which will help it add fertility testing and proactive, reproductive health services to its women’s health offerings. Modern Fertility offers a $129 hormone test for consumers to take at home, a product that will jive with Kit’s host of services.
Becoming a mass consolidator in the digital health space was a hope, not an expectation, says Reitano. From a technical perspective, Ro is now juggling the integration of three startups into its service -with perhaps even more acquisitions on the way. Naturally, the company could face friction when trying to integrate new and existing customers without breaking service – and it could similarly find that lowering costs of high quality, high touch products like diagnostics may not be as possible as generic drugs.
Still, Reitano thinks that the big opportunity for any company that joins his company is that Ro has scale, with millions of patients across 50 states. Scale can reduce costs, and in this case, supercharge an 16-month old company into a brand that is most recently valued at $5 billion.
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What’s causing the drought in the West — and why it’s so bad - PBS NewsHour
Several Western states, including Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and parts of Oregon and Colorado, are in the grips of a historic drought that has depleted key water sources to a frightening level as temperatures rise and wildfire risk increases. Many scientists are ringing alarm bells that it could mark a tipping point in the water crisis that threatens life in the West as we know it, particularly agriculture.
“The word drought just doesn’t do it anymore,” said John Fleck, a professor in water policy at the University of New Mexico. “Drought implies a dry spell that ends with a wet spell. And climate change is fundamentally changing things… The landscape is drying out, the headwaters are drying out. It’s just a different world now with less water and warmer temperatures.”
The conditions seen across much of the West this summer are part of what some scientists have called a “megadrought” that started in the year 2000, with some years drier than others. Other experts say it’s one of a number of more severe droughts punctuating a two-decade-long dry spell. Whatever you call it, it’s bad.
“It’s one of the longest droughts that we’ve had in 100 years. The longest and the most severe,” said Brian Richter, chief scientist for the Global Water Program of The Nature Conservancy. “It would have been bad even without climate change, but climate warming is accentuating it, it’s making it worse.”
How drought happens
Three main factors contribute to the natural phenomenon of drought: snowpack, soil moisture and temperatures.
The Western states depend on snowpack for a good portion of their water supply. Essentially, snow falls on the peaks of mountains in the winter, and spring temperatures melt the snow, which travels down the mountain into reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
But soil gets the first drink of water from the snowmelt as it makes its journey. The drier the soil, the more it drinks and less water will be captured in the reservoirs. And right now, the soil across the region is exceptionally dry. In Arizona, for example, 2020 was a typical year for snowpack, but the soil was so dry that not enough water entered the reservoirs, said Ted Cooke, general manager of the Central Arizona Project.
Then there’s the heat. The region is smashing temperature records, with Northern California and the Pacific Northwest experiencing Southwestern-like triple-digit weather for the first time.
With higher temperatures, there is less snow and the snowpack melts earlier. Water also evaporates quicker when temperatures are high, which contributes to drier soil and receding water levels in reservoirs.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which provide water to over 25 million people in Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Mexico, are at their lowest water levels in history: 36 and 34 percent capacity, respectively.
Saving water for the future
Governments and water managers are in a crisis mode trying to figure out how to conserve water while ensuring people still have access to it in the long-term. While most people will not feel the effects of any water cuts, farmers are among the first to feel the brunt of shortages. Agriculture uses about 80% of the water from the Colorado River which feeds Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Mexico. In Arizona, some farmers will have their water allotments reduced in 2022, said Cooke. He added that the shortage will likely require further water reductions as soon as 2023.
Looking at a future of drier and drier conditions, some farmers are adapting to more water-efficient technologies and crops, but not all are able to make these changes because of financial or logistical constraints, said Felicia Marcus, former chairwoman of the California Water Resources Control Board. She said incentives for farmers to switch to more water-efficient strategies could help conserve water in the long-run. For those who can’t farm efficiently enough to justify their water needs, incentives could help them retire or change careers.
While the situation is dire, water isn’t going to run out any time soon. But think of the water supply as a bank account. The West has been overdrawing the account for years, and now it’s time to catch up with overdraft fees.
Many cities get water from local reservoirs and manmade lakes that fill up faster and serve smaller populations. Cities and governments have efficient ways to store water underground that could sustain populations for 100 years or more.
How people use water will have to change to ensure adequate supplies further into the future. People in the West have to adapt to the reality of living drier, said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy. This could mean letting lawns turn brown in the summer, using more efficient appliances and for corporations to better reuse water and wastewater.
Conserving water will not solve the water shortage, but it helps give municipal water managers more flexibility as they work to figure out solutions, said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department for Water Resources. It also can help postpone curtailment, which would cut off and reduce water supplies.
Droughts are natural events in the West, and this particular one will not be the last. Preparing for these periods of dryness is essential in order to continue living in these regions — and in the meantime, hoping for rain won’t hurt.
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How bad was umpire Angel Hernandez in Giants' loss to Dodgers? - Yahoo Sports
How bad was Angel Hernandez in Giants' loss to Dodgers? originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
Log onto Twitter. See Angel Hernandez is trending. Log off of Twitter.
That's usually how it goes for baseball fans and media, and the order of operations struck again Monday night in the Giants' 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was evident after just the third batter of the game that we could be in for a long night with Hernandez calling balls and strikes.
Buster Posey struck out looking on a Trevor Bauer curveball that was nowhere near the strike zone with one on and one out in the top of the first inning. The usually calm and collected Posey couldn't believe it. Even for Hernandez, this one was bad.
Real bad.
"It just really messes with hitters' heads," NBC Sports Bay Area's Alex Pavlovic said on Giants Postgame Live. "You mentioned he's trending on Twitter. He's trending on Twitter a lot. This is not just tonight. He's trending on Twitter once every couple weeks. And it's one of those things where you don't even have to ask why.
"I don't understand why they don't do something about it. I think eventually we're going to have robot umpires, and they're gonna be really upset about it and it's gonna be because guys like this. You just can't trust it. They're gonna get better umpires in there. If they can't replace guys like this, they're gonna replace them with robots."
How bad was Hernandez in the Giants' loss? It's a bit complicated.
His umpire scorecard shows he actually was better than expected, but he certainly didn't do the Giants any favors. He finished the night with a 95 percent overall accuracy, which is better than the 94 percent MLB average. However, his 94 percent overall consistency was below the 96 percent average.
Hernandez called 139 of 146 taken pitches correctly. That's seven missed calls. Here's where it gets bad for the Giants. Hernandez's calls were in favor of the Dodgers by plus-0.63 runs. He was against the Giants by minus-0.53 runs.
And his three worst missed calls in terms of change in run expectancy were all against the Giants.
The called strike three against Posey easily was Hernandez's worst missed call of the night for more than one reason. It first and foremost just wasn't near the strike zone. Not even close.
What makes matters worse, though, is the fact that he took the bat out of the hands of the Giants' best hitter. After Monday night's loss, Posey now is batting .231 with 21 strikeouts on 1-2 counts. But he's hitting .289 with 16 strikeouts on 2-2 counts, which is what he should have been in had Hernandez called a ball.
Alex Dickerson followed Posey with a groundout to end the top of the first inning. The Dodgers then started off the bottom of the first with back-to-back homers, giving them an early lead. All could have been different if Posey were to see at least one more pitch.
Hernandez's second-worst missed call came in the top of the third to LaMonte Wade Jr. The missed call was near the top of the zone and again way off the plate on a 2-0 count. This time, the Giants made Bauer pay. Wade homered on the next pitch he saw, making Hernandez's error less costly.
But No. 3 on this list again badly cost the Giants.
Mike Yastrzemski was the Giants' leadoff hitter in the fifth inning, with San Francisco down 3-1. He struck out on a 93.2 mph sinker that was well above the zone. The red dot with "4" on it is the pitch Hernandez called strike three on Yaz.
MLB.com
Posey lined out after Yastrzemski's strikeout, and Dickerson ended the innning with a pop out to catcher Will Smith.
RELATED: Giants' trademark depth goes missing in loss to Dodgers
The numbers show Hernandez might not have been as terrible as it seemed. His misses also hurt the Giants more than the Dodgers, and some in critical moments. Let's not pretend the three listed above were isolated incidents, too. There were more where that came from.
This again was another night Hernandez was trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons. It won't be the last, and it might have been one more push for baseball to take another human element out of the game.
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On The Aces, “Bad Love,” and Feeling Defiantly Queer - Teen Vogue
Queerness and fantasy have long been inextricably tied. When you’re discovering who you are and don’t see an outlet for expressing your gender or sexuality, you imagine it — you craft elaborate scenarios where you can feel fully yourself. Fantasies, of course, come with soundtracks. To celebrate Pride Month, four writers paid homage to the songs that invite curiosity, discovery, and fantasy in their lives. In this essay, entertainment writer Iyana Jones honors The Aces’ “Bad Love.”
My first thought upon arriving at Bowery Ballroom is, “Isn’t it too early for the floors to be this sticky?” And then, “Wow, I think I never want to leave this place.” I scan the crowd, a sea of pierced faces and tattooed hands gripping cold drinks, hair dyed electric colors, in search of my friend. The time is 9:42 p.m., and The Aces will be on soon. I wipe a drop of sweat from my forehead and reach for my phone right as it begins to buzz: “A couple of minutes away! Make friends!”
I laugh and look around once again. I spot tiny rainbow flag buttons pinned onto denim jackets, and couples of all kinds mingling, holding hands. A girl with a blue mullet, also alone in the moment, locks eyes with me and smiles. I smile back.
It’s 2018 and I’m a newly minted graduate, suitcases still unpacked in my room, my degree’s ink barely dried. The summer after graduation, I work a temp job, leaving me adequately paid and with an abundance of time to spend with my friends before entering Real Life. At this moment, it feels good, in a way my life hasn’t felt in a long time.
But there is a niggling feeling, one that’s perhaps always been there, but at this moment in time feels louder, more pronounced. I’d felt it in high school when girls on the cheerleading team introduced us to their girlfriends for the first time. I’d felt it one hot day in Prague when my friend and I felt like the only people in the world; her hand in mine the entire day, eliciting stares from peers, but we were too caught up in our glee to care. I’d felt it in kindergarten when I got the prettiest girl in class for Secret Santa and felt excited to get her the best, most perfect gift — a collector’s set of books by her favorite author — I possibly could (I did and she loved it). It was something I’d finally started to acknowledge, giving voice to in small whispers with friends, attempting to label. Queer, or maybe bisexual, or maybe pansexual. It was a winding and confusing path, one that felt lonely until I found The Aces.
Discovered while listening to a Fierce Femmes Spotify playlist, When My Heart Felt Volcanic was an album I played every single day. A comfort album. The one I turned to when these niggling feelings crawled their way to the forefront of my brain and reminded me how lonesome becoming my true self could be. Their music about a genderless love made me feel understood when I didn’t quite understand myself. I admired this all-female band, with its members open and kind, their lyrics nebulous and romantic and lively. It felt like I was a smaller piece of metal in their giant magnetic pull.
Of all the songs, I played “Bad Love” the most. The punchy song questions how others could look down on a love, even call it bad, when it feels so good to them. On the surface, it seems to be about having a secret relationship because others can’t grasp how you work together. But to me, when I hear it, the niggling perceives it in a different way. Perhaps, when Crystal sings that “they don’t really need to know our business”, she means that the gender and/or sexuality of who she wants to date, isn't anyone’s concern but theirs. When she sings, “Got you touching on me all in secret/ Want you lovin on me all four seasons,” maybe she means she’s grown tired of hiding a love because it makes society uncomfortable, and wants the freedom to be with them all the time. “How could they call this bad love when all I want is more?” she asks, recognizing that they could never understand the way that we feel.
I know now that I wasn’t the only one who interpreted “Bad Love” this way. That many queer folks heard the lyrics the way I did, as an anthem for longer caring about being misunderstood or judged for who we want to be with. I imagined time and time again the way this song would feel in person. The way the lights would beam down on Katie and McKenna right before the song began, giving each other a nod to signal the start of the song. Alissa’s hands twisting her drumsticks as she geared up to play, knowing what was coming next. Crystal’s eyes scanning the audience, spotting a PRIDE flag and smiling down at the couple holding it. Then they’d begin, and we’d be singing this song at the top of our lungs, a room full of us, a background choir to Crystal’s voice as we screamed our defiance. Our collective joy in sharing this experience together, a chosen family under the Ace name. I dreamed that in that room, we’d know who’d understood this song, who it was meant for.
But I am not dreaming. I am here right now, and my friend still hasn’t arrived, but that’s okay because the girl with the dyed mullet has come over with her friends to say hello. The lights lower, the crowd explodes into applause, the anticipation is heavy. I let go of a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Check out the other essays in this series:
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EXPLAINER: How bad is the pandemic in North Korea - WKMG News 6 & ClickOrlando
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SEOUL – After saying for months that it kept the coronavirus at bay, North Korea on Wednesday came closest to admitting that its anti-virus campaign has been less than perfect.
Kim Jong Un’s mention of a “great crisis” created by a “crucial” failure in national pandemic measures during a ruling party meeting has triggered outside speculation about how bad the situation in North Korea really is.
A look at some of the clues:
___
EXPERTS DIVIDED OVER EPIDEMIC
Du Hyeogn Cha, an analyst at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the North could be dealing with a huge COVID-19 outbreak that has spread beyond border towns and rural areas and is now reaching urban centers, possibly including capital Pyongyang.
While North Korea has told the World Health Organization it has not found a single coronavirus infection after testing more than 30,000 people, experts widely doubt its claim considering its poor health infrastructure. Cha said North Korea has no other way to deal with outbreaks than quarantining people and locking down entire areas until transmissions subside.
Other experts, including Park Won Gon, a professor of North Korea studies at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University, said the large Politburo meeting attended by party officials from across the country would have been planned in advance and may have not taken place if the virus was circulating aggressively.
In case of large outbreaks, the North would deploy extreme measures to seal off affected regions, something outside monitoring groups haven't detected, said Ahn Kyung-su, the head of the Seoul-based Research Center of DPRK Health and Welfare.
___
IS IT ABOUT POWER SHAKEUP?
Most analysts agree that Kim’s remarks indicate a development that’s significant enough to warrant a shakeup of Pyongyang’s leadership.
The North’s state media said Kim berated senior party and government officials for neglecting “important decisions of the party on taking organizational, institutional, material, scientific and technological measures as required by the prolonged state emergency epidemic prevention campaign.”
The report also said that the party during the meeting recalled an unidentified member of the Politburo’s powerful Presidium, which consists of Kim and four other top officials. It's possible that Kim could be sacking his Cabinet Premier Kim Tok Hun, his top economic official, or Jo Yong Won, a secretary of the party’s Central Committee who had been seen as a fast-riser in Pyongyang’s power circle.
___
CALL FOR OUTSIDE HELP?
Even if it was dealing with an alarming rise in infections, it’s highly unlikely that the North would admit it. Still, Kim’s decision to publicly address a major setback in the fight against the pandemic could also be an appeal for outside help.
Cha said the North could request stronger assistance from China, its main ally and economic lifeline, as they approach the 60th anniversary of their friendship treaty next month.
Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University, said Kim's efforts to find the scapegoats for the outbreak could also be in preparation for accepting vaccines from abroad.
COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to distribute vaccines worldwide, said in February that the North could receive 1.9 million doses in the first half of the year. But the plans have been delayed due to global shortages.
Kim Sin-gon, a professor at Seoul’s Korea University College of Medicine, said that Kim Jong Un likely aimed to raise international awareness of the North’s pandemic-related difficulties.
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Cyber update: DataTribe invests $2.5M into Denver startup preventing key compromise - Technical.ly
Fulton, Maryland-based cyber foundry DataTribe is adding a new portfolio company, as it invests $2.5 million in seed funding into Denver, Colorado-based Ntrinsec.
Along with the investment, Ntrinsec will receive mentorship, resources and access to the network of DataTribe, which works alongside the companies in its portfolio to make it an “unfair fight” as the company enters the market, as DataTribe Chief Innovation Officer Leo Scott put it.
DataTribe seeks to invest in startups building next-generation cybersecurity or data science tools. In the case of Ntrinsec, the focus is around the area of “secrets management” within enterprise companies, which is how organizations ensure security of authentication credentials like usernames, passwords and keys used to help machines communicate in digital environments. Attackers often seek to exploit these keys as they are looking to infliltrate a company’s systems and steal data, so they need to be protected. Ntrinsec aims to prevent what’s known in data security circles as key compromise.
“What they have is an over-the-horizon solution,” Scott said.
The keys are proliferating, as software development teams building the digital systems that power a company increasingly use microservices and DevOps tools, where the architecture is broken up into a lot of pieces and distributed into many cloud environments. This requires more credentials so that can talk to each other. But the process to protect these keys are typically done manually, and security teams can’t keep up, Scott said.
Ntrinsec works with companies to help identify the keys in a company’s systems, and automates the changing of these keys on a regular basis, so they can continue to be protected.
“It takes a complex, not-well-managed process for many organizations today and makes it much easier to have a well-managed process, which significantly increases your key hygiene,” Scott said.
As with many early-stage investors, DataTribe saw the team as an important factor in its decision to work with the company, alongside its tech. CEO Cam Williams and other members of Ntrinsec’s eight-member team have prior experience building a startup. They grew another cybersecurity startup in the identity and secrets management space, called OverWatchID, to its 2019 acquisition by SailPoint. Now, they are adapting what they learned to a different solution within that area of security.
“The potential for Ntrinsec is very large,” Scott said. “They have a relatively straightforward solution for a problem that is an across-the-board problem for every enterprise. That makes for a large market. It also makes for a business that can really scale.”
Ntrinsec will continue to be based in Denver, with more in-person interaction between the Maryland and Denver teams likely over the next year as more regular business travel resumes.
DataTribe has previously worked with companies that progressed to growth and acquisition, such as industrial cybersecurity company Dragos, homomorphic encryption company Enveil and IoT security company ReFirm Labs, which was recently acquired by Microsoft.
Over the last year, it has also added D.C.-based SightGain and Orlando-based BlackCloak to its portfolio.
###
In other enterprise security news, Frederick-based Fugue released a new version of Regula, its open source tool for infrastructure as code security.
Version 1.0 expands the open source policy engine, providing support for the infrastructure as code software tools Terraform and AWS CloudFormation. It also has libraries with policies that help to validate security of resources from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud that are used on those tools, as well as new developer tooling.
As Fugue CEO Josh Stella told us when Regula first launched in January 2020, infrastructure as code describes the process that allows operations teams to manage and monitor data center resources that are available over the internet via the cloud. Rather than manual processes, developers write code to tell the machines what to do, similar to software. Regula is designed to ensure the cloud environments developers create are secure, and in compliance with regulations. The company decided to create an open source tool that could be built for and with the dev community, which operates separately from its SaaS platform.
“These new Regula capabilities and policies make it easier than ever for cloud teams to secure their IaC and apply policy consistently,” Stella said in a statement Tuesday.
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Cyber update: DataTribe invests $2.5M into Denver startup preventing key compromise - Technical.ly
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In-Q-Tel is investing in this DC cybersecurity startup to help companies manage threat alerts - Technical.ly DC
Cybersecurity company GreyNoise Intelligence announced a seven-figure investment partnership Tuesday with In-Q-Tel, the strategic intelligence investor supported by the CIA.
Andrew Morris, founder and CEO of the D.C. company, said it helps make security operation centers more efficient by telling teams which alerts that they’re investigating and responding to, as well as triaging those that don’t matter or are “background noise.” This lets security teams focus on threats that are more concerning. The company does this by collecting packets from IPs through its sensor network, while also monitoring common internet business services. Morris estimates that about 20-30% of alerts teams receive are irrelevant or non-threatening. Of the three million IP addresses GreyNoise scanned over the past 90 days, only 10,000 were identified as malicious.
Morris said that the partnership with Arlington, Virginia-based In-Q-Tel will help GreyNoise meet its product goals faster, given the additional information from the firm. He added that many of the improvements GreyNoise will be making for In-Q-Tel will be available for users beyond the intelligence community.
“With the intelligence community, it’s a lot harder because a lot of what they do is super secret and it’s all very classified and so you can’t really get that feedback,” Morris said. “So this relationship with In-Q-Tel is something that helps us get feedback for how we are going to build a more delightful product for our intelligence community customers.”
The three-year-old startup has seen strong growth over the past year, extending to over 11,000 accounts and over 1,000 daily users on the free version of its service. Morris said that the company has roughly 75 enterprise customers and is on track to add a few hundred users weekly. In 2020, the company also announced a $4.8 million raise in seed funding led by Charles River Ventures with participation from Paladin Capital Group, among other investors.
The growth is expected to continue following the partnership. Morris said the staff at GreyNoise grew from five to 24 over the past year and he anticipates adding another 15 or 20 before the end of the year, although he clarified that the employee growth is not necessarily related to the partnership.
“We don’t really have any competitors right now and we’re kind of the first to market in what we’re doing, so our number one focus is to get to as many free users and enterprise customers as humanly possible to dominate the market as fast as we possibly can,” Morris said.
Following the partnership, Morris said GreyNoise will be releasing additional open source tools later this year, and the features and updates from the In-Q-Tel partnership will be available in the next six to nine months.
“The security industry is growing up in a really big way and we’re realizing that data is actually a really, really big part of how to make smart security decisions,” Morris said. “So, I think, honestly, there’s going to be a renewed interest in securing data in ways that are giving security teams the ability to make better decisions more quickly.”
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Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Indian tech startup exposed Byju’s student data - TechCrunch
India-based technology startup Salesken.ai has secured an exposed server that was spilling private and sensitive data on one of its customers, Byju’s, an education technology giant and India’s most valuable startup.
The server was left unprotected since at least June 14, according to historical data provided by Shodan, a search engine for exposed devices and databases. Because the server was without a password, anyone could access the data inside. Security researcher Anurag Sen found the exposed server, and asked TechCrunch for help in reporting it to the company.
The server was pulled offline a short time after we contacted Salesken.ai on Tuesday.
Salesken.ai provides customer relationship technology to companies like Byju’s to engage better with customers. The Bengaluru-based startup raised $8 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital India in 2020, two years after the company was founded.
Much of the data contained on the exposed server pertained to WhiteHat Jr., an online coding school for students in India and the U.S., which Byju’s bought for $300 million in 2020. Byju’s is currently valued at more than $16 billion after raising $1.5 billion earlier this year.
The server contained the names and classes taken by students and email addresses and phone numbers of parents and teachers. The server also contained other data related to students, such as chat logs between parents — identified by their phone number — and WhiteHat Jr. staff, as well as comments recorded by teachers about their students.
The server also contained copies of emails containing codes to reset user accounts and other internal Salesken.ai data.
Surga Thilakan, co-founder and chief executive at Salesken.ai, told TechCrunch the startup was “evaluating” the security incident but did not dispute what kind of data was found on the exposed server..
“Our assessment suggests the exposed device appears to be a non-production, staging instance of one of our integration services having access to less than 1% of India based end-of-life sales logs for a fortnight,” said Thilakan. “Salesken.ai follows stringent data security norms and is certified under the highest standards of global security and safety. We have, in an abundance of caution, immediately severed access to the cloud device.”
Thilakan did not respond to a follow-up email from TechCrunch asking why real user data was stored in what the company claims is a “non-production, staging” server. The company also would not say if it has logs or any evidence to determine if data was accessed or downloaded as a result of the security lapse.
WhiteHat Jr. spokesperson Sameer Bajaj said the company is “currently communicating with Salesken.ai about the incident and will take appropriate action in accordance with our rigorous security policies.”
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Sequoia Capital India unveils fifth group of startups for Surge - TechCrunch
Sequoia Capital India has selected 23 early-stage startups for its fifth cohort of Surge, its accelerator program for India and Southeast Asia, at a time when dealflow activity is at its peak in the region.
The new cohort, Surge’s largest to date, have collectively raised $55 million, the storied investment firm said Wednesday. The group also includes 10 women founders, another record for the accelerator program which started its journey in March 2019.
The Surge program has enabled Sequoia Capital India — which has always backed early-stage startups but historically focused more on cutting checks in Series A and beyond rounds — to more aggressively identify promising startups while they are too young and increase the probability of broadening its portfolio with more winners, investors in the industry said.
And those odds have gotten much better in recent months. As Tiger Global and Falcon Edge begin to chase early-stage deals in India, both the firms have picked several Surge startups.
Sequoia India said nearly 50% of startups from its first three cohorts have grown to raise their Series A financing rounds.
The Surge program, for which Sequoia India raised an additional $195 million earlier this year, is now “tried, tested and proven to support founders through strategic mentorship from some of the world’s best startups and business minds, hands-on company building support, and a community of founder-to-founder support,” said the investment firm, which employs over 30 people in advisory roles in the region.
Some investors also said Sequoia India, which offers very aggressive terms and a plethora of resources (App Annie subscription, for instance) to startups in Surge, that the accelerator program has diminished the significance of Y Combinator in India. (Rajan Anandan, who spearheads Surge, told me earlier this year that he doesn’t see Y Combinator and Surge as rivals.)
The new cohort, several names of which TechCrunch scooped early this month, includes 13 startups that are building services in fintech, payments, communications, logistics, and SaaS sectors, Surge said.
“We are incredibly proud of all 23 companies who have joined Surge 05 and the founders who have forged their businesses in sectors that have seen tremendous tailwinds. These leaders have displayed grit, exceptional talent, and relentless purpose in shaping the world,” said Anandan, who prior to joining Sequoia Capital India as MD led Google’s business in India and Southeast Asia.
“At this inflection point of global regrowth, we are excited to be part of the journey of our founders and their companies, many of which we believe will grow into large, enduring businesses,” he added.
The new cohort features the following startups as well as one that is operating in stealth mode.
- Absolute is building a plant bioscience and AI-driven adaptive platform for precision agriculture that helps horticulture growers radically transform yields, grade and nutritional value of produce. The startup has also received an investment from Lets Venture.
- ADPList is attempting to “democratise” mentorship and make it accessible for everyone through a community platform where people can find, book and meet mentors around the world.
- ApnaKlub is an agent-led business-to-business wholesale platform for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). The startup aims to encourage and empower people to set up their own hyper-local micro-distribution businesses by providing them with better profit margins, access to a large assortment of brands and SKUs, and supply consistency.
- Belora produces clean, high-performance, vegan makeup — free from toxins and harmful ingredients. The startup, which has also secured investment from DSG Consumer Partners, says it wants to create makeup that doubles up as skincare, so that women can wear products that are not only dermatologically tested, but also good for their skin.
- Durianpay is building an integrated and comprehensive payments stack that enables businesses to grow and scale.
- Dyte is a developer-friendly real time audio and video calling software development kit (SDK). The startup, which has also secured investments from Nexus Venture Partners and Y Combinator, allows developers to integrate live video into their apps in interesting and innovative ways. The SDK is simple, offers integrations within hours, and has a large number of plug-ins and configurations. These configurations provide developers with a quick and efficient way to embed audio and video calling, AI video augmentation, and collaboration features.
- Gumlet provides a new-age media delivery infrastructure that provides low code or no-code integration plugins, which automates the entire media publishing pipeline. Developers all over the world use Gumlet to automatically provide the lowest size images and videos with the best resolution and performance.
- Locad is making multi-channel e-commerce fulfilment easier than ever by offering a distributed warehousing network, which reduces shipping time and costs by storing products closer to customers. The startup has also secured investments from Antler and others.
- Mailmodo is an email marketing platform that helps marketers create app-like experiences within emails and increase conversions.
- Mesh is a new-age people management platform that makes it easy for employees to manage goals, get timely feedback, and grow faster. Y Combinator Continuity fund and RTP Global have also invested in Mesh.
- Multiplier is a new-age employer of record that simplifies international hiring. It counts Golden Gate Ventures, MS&AD Ventures, Picus Capital among its investors.
- OneCode is an app that connects companies with sales agents, giving these agents access to sell the products and services to less tech-savvy buyers. The startup’s mission is to digitise 50 million sales agents across India, and bridge the gap between brands and potential buyers who may need in-person interactions and physical touch points before committing to a purchase. Nexus Venture Partners and WaterBridge Ventures have also invested in the startup.
- Powerplay is a mobile-first, vernacular construction site management app that enables project managers and workers to communicate and collaborate more effectively. The startup, also backed by Accel, helps them track their progress, deliverables, and payments across projects.
- Pankhuri is a social community platform where women can network, learn and shop online through live streaming, chat, and micro courses.
- RaRa Delivery is attempting to reimagine instant delivery for e-commerce in Indonesia through data driven logistics. It also counts 500 Startups among its investors.
- Revery is using game thinking to revolutionise wellness, and the team is on a mission to make wellness affordable and accessible to anyone with a mobile phone. The startup has also secured funds from GGV Capital and Pascal Capital.
- TWID (That’s What I Do) is a rewards-based payment network that enables customer reward or loyalty points to be used as a payment instrument. (Beenext is a co-investor.)
- Vah Vah! is a live, online vocational training platform that offers professional beauty courses.
- Vara is an easy-to-use and lightweight staff management platform for SMEs across Southeast Asia. It enables small companies to effortlessly manage their attendance and payroll. The startup counts RTP Global and a number of other firms among its investors.
- Veera Health is on a mission to help women lead healthier lives. Veera’s first offering is a digital therapeutics platform that helps women identify and navigate Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), with a comprehensive offering of therapy, coaching and specialist support. Global Founders Capital, Harvard University, and Y Combinator have also backed Veera.
- Virtual Internships are redesigning internships for the 21st century workforce, mirroring the future of work.
- WATI helps companies have personalised conversations with customers at scale with an easy-to-use customer engagement software that’s built on WhatApp’s Business API.
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New York GM Brian Cashman blunt about state of struggling Yankees - ESPN
NEW YORK -- Yankees general manager Brian Cashman isn't beating around the bush about the performance of the Bronx Bombers.
"We suck right now," Cashman said ahead of Tuesday's game against the Los Angeles Angels at Yankee Stadium. "As bad as we can be."
However, for the third time this season, Cashman offered support behind manager Aaron Boone and the coaching staff.
"This is not an Aaron Boone problem," Cashman said. "This is not a coaching staff problem."
Cashman shifted the blame away from Boone toward himself.
"It's easy from my chair to say, 'Let me throw something overboard to just satisfy the masses.' It's harder to actually stick with what you've got because you believe in it," he said. "These people care. They're working their ass off. They're really good at what they do. We're not getting the results. I'm the head of baseball operations. That's more on me than them."
The Yankees are coming off their fourth straight loss, including a three-game sweep by the Boston Red Sox and Monday night's loss to the Angels. The 40-38 Yankees are in fourth place in the American League East, 7 1/2 games behind the first-place Red Sox. Cashman said the team could be a seller rather than a buyer at the trade deadline if its performance fails to turn around.
Owner Hal Steinbrenner has not been happy with the team's struggles so far this year, Cashman said. The Yankees currently boast the second-largest payroll in the sport at $142,556,795 behind the top-spending Los Angeles Dodgers at $215,958,616.
"Everybody is frustrated by this," Cashman said. "Anybody who cares about this franchise, no one cares bigger than the owner because they've invested in it. It's a legacy, and he's not getting what he deserves and what he paid for. So he's frustrated as well."
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New York GM Brian Cashman blunt about state of struggling Yankees - ESPN
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How bad was Angel Hernandez in Giants' loss to Dodgers? - NBC Sports Bay Area
Log onto Twitter. See Angel Hernandez is trending. Log off of Twitter.
That's usually how it goes for baseball fans and media, and the order of operations struck again Monday night in the Giants' 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was evident after just the third batter of the game that we could be in for a long night with Hernandez calling balls and strikes.
Buster Posey struck out looking on a Trevor Bauer curveball that was nowhere near the strike zone with one on and one out in the top of the first inning. The usually calm and collected Posey couldn't believe it. Even for Hernandez, this one was bad.
Real bad.
"It just really messes with hitters' heads," NBC Sports Bay Area's Alex Pavlovic said on Giants Postgame Live. "You mentioned he's trending on Twitter. He's trending on Twitter a lot. This is not just tonight. He's trending on Twitter once every couple weeks. And it's one of those things where you don't even have to ask why.
"I don't understand why they don't do something about it. I think eventually we're going to have robot umpires, and they're gonna be really upset about it and it's gonna be because guys like this. You just can't trust it. They're gonna get better umpires in there. If they can't replace guys like this, they're gonna replace them with robots."
How bad was Hernandez in the Giants' loss? It's a bit complicated.
His umpire scorecard shows he actually was better than expected, but he certainly didn't do the Giants any favors. He finished the night with a 95 percent overall accuracy, which is better than the 94 percent MLB average. However, his 94 percent overall consistency was below the 96 percent average.
Hernandez called 139 of 146 taken pitches correctly. That's seven missed calls. Here's where it gets bad for the Giants. Hernandez's calls were in favor of the Dodgers by plus-0.63 runs. He was against the Giants by minus-0.53 runs.
And his three worst missed calls in terms of change in run expectancy were all against the Giants.
The called strike three against Posey easily was Hernandez's worst missed call of the night for more than one reason. It first and foremost just wasn't near the strike zone. Not even close.
What makes matters worse, though, is the fact that he took the bat out of the hands of the Giants' best hitter. After Monday night's loss, Posey now is batting .231 with 21 strikeouts on 1-2 counts. But he's hitting .289 with 16 strikeouts on 2-2 counts, which is what he should have been in had Hernandez called a ball.
Alex Dickerson followed Posey with a groundout to end the top of the first inning. The Dodgers then started off the bottom of the first with back-to-back homers, giving them an early lead. All could have been different if Posey were to see at least one more pitch.
Bauer's second-worst missed call came in the top of the third to LaMonte Wade Jr. The missed call was near the top of the zone and again way off the plate on a 2-0 count. This time, the Giants made Bauer pay. Wade homered on the next pitch he saw, making Hernandez's error less costly.
But No. 3 on this list again badly cost the Giants.
Mike Yastrzemski was the Giants' leadoff hitter in the fifth inning, with San Francisco down 3-1. He struck out on a 93.2 mph sinker that was well above the zone. The red dot with "4" on it is the pitch Hernandez called strike three on Yaz.
Posey lined out after Yastrzemski's strikeout, and Dickerson ended the innning with a pop out to catcher Will Smith.
RELATED: Giants' trademark depth goes missing in loss to Dodgers
The numbers show Hernandez might not have been as terrible as it seemed. His misses also hurt the Giants more than the Dodgers, and some in critical moments. Let's not pretend the three listed above were isolated incidents, too. There were more where that came from.
This again was another night Hernandez was trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons. It won't be the last, and it might have been one more push for baseball to take another human element out of the game.
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How bad was Angel Hernandez in Giants' loss to Dodgers? - NBC Sports Bay Area
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CISA Starts Cataloging Bad Practices in Cybersecurity - Nextgov
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CISA Starts Cataloging Bad Practices in Cybersecurity - Nextgov
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Phillies bullpen has been historically bad again in 2021: 'It's extremely frustrating' - CBS Sports
The good news is the Philadelphia Phillies bullpen is not as bad as it was during the shortened 2020 season, when it was one of the worst bullpens in baseball history. The bad news is the Phillies bullpen is still among the least-reliable units in baseball, and that has been especially true the last few days.
Monday night against the Reds (CIN 12, PHI 4), Neftalí Feliz (yes, that Neftalí Feliz) and Enyel De Los Santos flushed a 4-2 lead down the drain in the seventh inning. Feliz, who was pitching in his first MLB game since 2017, got two outs and was charged with three runs. De Los Santos wore it in the eighth inning and was charged with six runs (two earned) in two-thirds of an inning.
"I've said all along that this team is pretty good about bouncing back the next day," Phillies manager Joe Girardi told reporters, including MLB.com's Todd Zolecki, following the game. "But it's extremely frustrating. I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's really frustrating."
Monday's meltdown happened after a weekend series in which Philadelphia's bullpen blew multiple leads against the Mets, and even allowed runs in the games they closed out. The Phillies have blown seven saves in their last six games, and they've blown 21 saves overall. John Clark of NBC Sports Philadelphia notes that is the most blown saves through 76 games in history.
Here are a few more numbers on the bullpen's futility:
- Win probability added: minus-4.00 (29th in MLB)
- Shutdowns: 64 (14th fewest in MLB)
- Meltdowns: 53 (tied for most in MLB)
Shutdowns are relief appearances that improve the team's win probability at least six percent, and meltdowns are the opposite. They are relief appearances that decrease the team's win probability at least six percent. No team has more meltdowns than the Phillies, and only the Orioles, Reds, Astros, and Diamondbacks have a worse shutdown/meltdown ratio.
If we limit our look to relievers pitching in the sixth inning and later (to avoid "bulk" pitchers behind openers), the Phillies bullpen owns the fifth-worst ERA (4.75) and the eighth-highest WHIP (1.37) in baseball. They also have the eighth highest opponent's batting average (.247) and fifth highest opponent's slugging percentage (.422). It's bad. Real bad.
The blame starts with the players, obviously, though Girardi shouldn't escape criticism. On Saturday, for example, Girardi pulled starter Zach Eflin after only 82 pitches, and he used one of his most reliable relievers (Connor Brogdon) to get one out. Ranger Suárez and Hector Neris, who was replaced as closer last week, would combine to blow the game.
Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski overhauled his bullpen with trades (José Alvarado and Sam Coonrod) and free-agent signings (Archie Bradley and Brandon Kintzler) over the winter, though they haven't made much of a difference. Alvarado has 24 walks in 29 innings, Bradley has allowed 11 runs in 17 innings, and Coonrod and Kintzler are hurt.
At 36-40, the Phillies are in fourth place in the NL East, five games behind the first-place Mets and nine games behind the Padres for the second wild card spot. The Phillies have not been to the postseason since 2011, and if they're going to end the drought this year, they'll have to win the division. The NL West is too strong to count on a wild card spot as a fallback.
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Phillies bullpen has been historically bad again in 2021: 'It's extremely frustrating' - CBS Sports
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Bad Weather – Another Concern For A Stressed Global Supply Chain - Forbes
Global supply chains are stressed right now with an increased demand for goods, Covid-related labor shortages, and a scarcity of raw materials to name a few among many factors. All of this is placing a significant demand on supply chains, impacting both international shipping and domestic transportation systems. Starting with bottlenecks at international shipping terminals, the issues reverberate through the supply chain, all the way down to warehouses and distribution centers. Given these overwhelmed systems, any extreme weather event—or even a weather anomaly—could have significant impact further contributing to supply chain congestion.
Hurricanes are one major weather event that pose potential supply chain issues. For example, as hurricane season ramps up, Atlantic storms in particular are being closely watched because of the possible disruption to key markets that support, or rely on, transportation, including energy, insurance and agriculture markets. The Gulf of Mexico is a frequent target for tropical storms and is home to about 16 percent of the nation’s crude oil production, 2 percent of its gas output. The coastal areas along the Gulf are home to almost half of U.S. fuel refineries and are major agricultural hubs as well. For example, Florida is the world’s second-largest source of orange juice and North Carolina is the leading producer of sweet potatoes, crops that are easily threatened by Atlantic storms.
While this hurricane season isn’t expected to be as active as last year, it takes just one powerful hurricane to have a huge impact on the supply chain. Whether it’s gas and oil, or orange juice, no organization is ever exempt from the potential aftermath of a disaster and should have plans for managing a storm’s potential impact. Businesses that use private weather companies will have the advantage of working with a professional meteorologist for evaluating and advising on potential severe weather impact particular to their operations, as well as input and information leading up and during the storm. Using advanced weather modeling and forecasts in business planning, a storm’s impact on the supply chain can be minimized.
Advanced weather modeling and forecasts can inform supply chain decisions in other ways as well. Weather insights contribute to more efficient shipping and transportation choices, particularly as it relates to route optimization and fuel purchasing. With the Port of Los Angeles logging its busiest month in history, handling more than a million shipping containers in May, trans-Pacific Ocean traffic has increased and route-optimization is a tool that could help vessels best navigate the increased traffic and weather. Using weather to inform ship routing, a route can be established prior to voyage but, most importantly, weather insights allow the routing to be a dynamic process. If there is bad weather ahead, sophisticated algorithms using information about the ship and its capabilities can provide one or more alternatives for the mariner to optimize a route. Knowing that there are bottlenecks at ports, ships could adjust their speed and route, instead sitting idle in the harbor, which would ultimately save time and fuel.
Weather-informed route optimization can be used for trucking and ground transportation as well. Software that notifies drivers which routes are open or have minimal traffic flow saves time and money. Optimizing routes for drivers also makes them more likely to deliver goods on time, saving on fuel costs as well. Other weather impacts on trucking and ground transportation can impact fuel prices. According to Brian Milne, energy editor at DTN Progressive Farmer, fuel supply logistics have been in focus with the start of the summer driving season, accentuating a chronic shortage of drivers as the collision of growing gasoline demand and driver retirements during the pandemic threatens timely deliveries from wholesale terminals to retail outlets. With all these factors stressing the transportation system, weather insights can also contribute to fuel-buying efficiencies, helping companies best manage fuel prices in a time when there is so much uncertainty.
The modern economy has made supply chains more interconnected than ever, and the last year has shown how much we rely on a consistent delivery of good and services. Weather can either help or hurt an already overburdened supply chain. While we can’t change the occurrence of bad weather, we can use the insights driven by weather analytics to strengthen the logistics system and lessen the impact.
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June 29, 2021 at 08:00PM
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Bad Weather – Another Concern For A Stressed Global Supply Chain - Forbes
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