Day: November 16, 2025

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Do you have a little over $520 to spare? That’s enough to buy one plain white T-shirt from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s luxury brand, The Row. (And that’s one of its most affordable items!) BI’s Madeline Berg dives into why The Row’s white tee costs so much.

On the agenda today:

• Trump is scrambling to prove he really, really cares about affordability.
• Retail traders despise short-sellers — except for Michael Burry.
• Hedge funds cultivated mercenaries. Now they want to buy loyalty.
• Tesla’s AI boss told his teams they’re in for a 2026 at breakneck speed.

But first: Who pays the price?

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This week’s dispatch

No vacancy

I walked by a Sonder property the other night and saw the infamous “notice of closure” sign hanging in the window.

“We sincerely apologize for the disruption and thank you for understanding,” the four-sentence notice concluded in what is, let’s be honest, some of the most bland and generic corporate speak you’ll see.

In reality, the abrupt Marriott-Sonder breakup has been far more dramatic and unfortunate for the many customers caught in the middle of it.

As a quick refresher: It’s been a week since Marriott suddenly ended its licensing agreement with Sonder, a short-term rental firm and onetime Airbnb rival.

Guests staying in Sonder properties were directed to vacate the buildings with very little notice. Many scrambled for new accommodations and pleaded with their credit card companies for refunds. (Here’s what one expert is advising people to do.)

Business Insider reporter Aditi Bharade, who led our coverage on this story, spoke to several guests who described travel chaos, employee mismanagement, and financial fallout from the fiasco.

• A single mom, who was taking her two kids to Europe for the first time, described how the Marriott-Sonder debacle derailed their dream vacation.

• One guy described being kicked out of a Sonder in Montreal the morning after he proposed to his partner.

• A retired tech executive visiting New York City said he had to spend “several thousand dollars more” to rebook at a new property. He said it was “very, very disruptive. They treated us so poorly.”

Sonder employees also described being left in the dark, with some telling BI that they learned of the split from guests and had to deal with panicked customers while they worried about their own jobs. Sonder, which operated 140 properties and about 7,700 apartments, filed for bankruptcy on Friday.

The breakup serves as a reminder that customers often bear the brunt of corporate deals gone bad.

Sonder cofounder Francis Davidson, who stepped down as CEO earlier this year, lamented the news of the past week.

“I’ve poured my heart and soul into building this company, starting as a college student in 2014 and through the pandemic,” Davidson told BI’s Natalie Musumeci in an interview Thursday.

He added: “We all felt good about the positive momentum we were seeing in June when I left, and so to then see that the business has now run into a brick wall, it’s just shocking to me.”

Oops! Still expensive

Trump’s message on inflation during the first few months of his second term was, essentially, deal with it. That message isn’t landing with Americans.

People are tired of the constant sticker shock, and plenty of them blame the guy in the Oval Office. The Trump administration is learning a hard lesson the same way Biden did: You can’t insist your way to a good economy.

Can Trump fix it?

Michael Burry’s rizz

Short-sellers like Andrew Left and Gabe Plotkin have long been despised by retail investors. The two crowds are often on opposing sides — with retail traders taking bullish positions on the stocks short-sellers are betting will fall.

“The Big Short” investor is an exception, though. Burry stuck it to the big banks in 2008 when he successfully predicted the market crash. That elevated him to hero status.

Why he’s the exception.

Also read:

• Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ fame deregisters hedge fund, teasing ‘much better things’ ahead
• Like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, Michael Burry and Alex Karp are feuding over AI

When a hedge fund wants you

The world’s biggest hedge funds are in the midst of a hiring crunch, but this time, employees are the beneficiaries. Firms are dangling swanky pay packages in an effort to either keep top performers or poach talent.

The billionaires in charge of these firms want something beyond just returns from their traders, and it’s the opposite of many other big companies right now: loyalty.

The new rules of hiring.

Tesla’s brutal year ahead

AI teams at Tesla heard it straight from the boss: Next year will be the “hardest year” of their lives.

Ashok Elluswamy, the company’s VP of AI software, delivered the message at an all-hands for Autopilot and Optimus employees. He told staffers they should expect to work more intensely than ever to meet ambitious AI project goals.

Ramping up.

This week’s quote:

“I very much believe in the in-person working culture. We’ve been defragmenting our culture and trying to concentrate.”

— Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI CEO, on why he wants his employees back in the office and working at open desks.

Miners risk their lives in one of the world’s saltiest lakes

Lake Retba is a driving force of Senegal’s economy, but extracting salt from the hypersaline lake brings its fair share of risks for local miners.

More of this week’s top reads:

• Donald Trump says he’s ordering DOJ probes into JPMorgan Chase and business leaders’ ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
• Sam Altman’s eye-scanning Orb startup wants to hit a billion users. It’s less than 2% of the way there.
• Exclusive: Amazon plans to absorb Whole Foods’ entire workforce as part of “Project Cremini.”

• Warren Buffett says he’ll keep writing a yearly letter — and plans to “step up” his charitable giving.

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  The BI Today team: Steve Russolillo, chief news editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.

• Noura Sakkijha and Majed Masad cofounded jewelry brand Mejuri in 2013. They’re also married.
• They said their partnership thrives on trust, clear roles, and open communication.
• Masad said when it comes to disagreements, they use Jeff Bezos’ famous “disagree and commit” strategy.

Noura Sakkijha and Majed Masad met in 2009 through mutual friends, and they were instantly drawn to each other’s entrepreneurial drive.

They got married two years later, and launched jewelery company Mejuri together in 2013. Sakkijha is the CEO, while Masad, the cofounder and president, oversees marketing, data, retail, merchandising, and real estate.

Being married cofounders can present some unique challenges.

“We’ve had many instances where we’re like, ‘should we be doing this together?'” Masad said.

But their relationship has also been an asset in building the company, both told Business Insider.

‘Crazy trust’

Both Sakkijha and Masad said that their greatest strength is their trust in each other.

“I have blind, crazy, crazy trust that he’s got what he’s working on,” Sakkijha said, adding that they’re both “in it to win it.”

Masad said one advantage of working together is their ability to be direct. That level of openness helps the business move more quickly, he said.

Both said that working together also brings out their individual strengths. Masad said he sees himself as detail-oriented, data-driven, and passionate about problem-solving and strategy, while Sakkijha thrives in communication, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. That “divide and conquer” approach has been key to growing the business — as well as managing responsibilities at home with their twins.

“We balance each other out, even in the boardroom,” Masad said. “Sometimes we’ll be like, I’d be going sideways, and Noura’s course correcting, or vice versa.”

‘Disagree and commit’

While the couple’s different strengths help create balance, they can make decision-making more complicated. Masad said he tends to evaluate choices through a commercial lens, while Sakkijha focuses more on design and product vision.

Sakkijha said they see eye-to-eye about 95% of the time. When they reach a disagreement, Masad explained, they’ve learned to defer to the person who’s closest to the issue to make the final call.

Masad said he applies Jeff Bezos’ management philosophy of “disagree and commit,” as described by the Amazon founder in a 2016 shareholder letter.

“If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, ‘Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?'” Bezos wrote in the letter.

Masad noted that while some of their decisions revolve around “two-way doors” — which Bezos describes as decisions that can be reversed — there are also tougher “one-way door” choices, which are more permanent and involve more back-and-forth. In those moments, he said, it’s crucial to trust that the person handling the decision has thought it through carefully.

“I’m not gonna say it’s always pretty and it’s always easy. There are situations where we’re like, ‘come on, that’s not the right call,'” Masad said.

Masad said the early days of the business were the most challenging, as the couple was still newly married and learning each other’s working styles while trying to build a company from the ground up. Then came the pandemic and twins.

He said the two have worked hard to separate their home life from work, but it’s an ongoing effort.

“Noura’s problems are my problems; my problems are Noura’s problems,” Masad said.

Masad said that the two have learned to tell each other when they’d rather not discuss work. To keep business conversations away from the dinner table, the couple also schedules one-on-one meetings to discuss business matters and resolve disagreements.

• My daughter brought home a school project, and I treated it as if it were my own assignment.
• I felt satisfied with it — until another mom reminded me that kids should do their own work.
• I wish I hadn’t hijacked her project and that she’d learned more autonomy.

Last year, my first-grade daughter was assigned a diorama for a school project. She and I built a coyote habitat from magazine clippings and cardboard. She cast her artistic direction and took the lead. It turned out nice — cotton clouds strung up on string and paper-pointed mountains — what you’d expect from a first grader.

Then we got to school and viewed the others. Parents had clearly poured hours (and money) into creating professional-level displays: jungle trees made of plaster, clear plastic streams, and papier-mâché cacti.

My daughter caught on, too. “Mom,” she said on the way home, “did you see those other ones? They were way better than mine.”

I assured her she’d done a fine job, but it had obviously been a parental showcase, even though that wasn’t anyone’s intention.

This year, we upped our game

Now, when she brings home a school project, I feel as if I, too, have just received homework. How lucky. My daughter brought home her most recent assignment, which required her to decorate a pumpkin like a favorite character from a book; she read the sheet and waved it in my face.

“Mom, this time can we do something better?” I could hear the anxiety in her voice — she wanted her project to measure up.

Instead of scrounging supplies around the house, we scrolled through Pinterest-perfect examples. Then we headed for the craft store with our vision and $20 in hand.

I mixed the perfect flesh color for Ludwig Bemelman’s Madeline, cut out her pinafore from felt, and commissioned my 12-year-old son to construct her hat and paint her face.

My daughter and I spent a comically long time cutting and gluing individual strands of yarn to make Madeline’s hair and fringe bangs.

At some point, my daughter drifted away, frustrated.

“We’re almost done,” I said, urging patience.

But it wasn’t we anymore; it was me. I had hijacked her project, and it wasn’t fun anymore.

Still, I felt satisfied we wouldn’t be “showed up” this year — our pumpkin looked very homemade and wouldn’t be the best, but our effort showed.

My daughter’s pumpkin did fit in — with the other parent-assisted projects

On presentation day, our imperfect Madeline was a far cry from the best. There were character faces too perfect to be the work of a child. Yarn was placed and glued without a stray hair. Animal ears constructed from symmetrical foam pieces.

A handful of endearingly childish ones stood out like sore thumbs.

“Which one’s yours?” I joked to one of the other moms.

“The Hungry Caterpillar.”

This sweet little pumpkin, painted with smudgy flowers and fruit and a blobby caterpillar, was one of the few clearly crafted by a second grader.

“Oh, so your child actually did it by herself,” I blurted.

The mom wasn’t offended. “Yep, she did it on her own. Don’t get me started on these projects.”

I laughed uneasily, thinking how much I’d helped my daughter on hers.

My good intentions — wanting to help, to do something together — morphed into performance

My daughter wanted my help so hers would turn out a little more polished and presentable. But in hindsight, that means she lost the chance to feel capable, to gain autonomy.

Next time, I want to step back, to let her create something a little more lopsided, streaky, or uneven. To teach her that effort matters more than polish. And that we don’t have to give in to perfection and pressure.

But this will require me to put aside my pride — to cheer her on and encourage her visions without getting too involved. And when she shows up at school disappointed that hers doesn’t measure up to the other parent-led work, to remind her that she did it all on her own and should be proud.

Because it’s her project, not mine.

• Glen Powell made his “Saturday Night Live” hosting debut this weekend.
• The “Top Gun: Maverick” star made sure a special guest was in attendance: his UPS driver.
• “He thought it was a scam, but he still came,” Powell said in his opening monologue.

Glen Powell’s dream of hosting “Saturday Night Live” finally came true this weekend, and it was made even sweeter by the presence of one special guest — a UPS driver named Mitch.

The actor, 37, told the audience in his opening monologue that he had initially been scheduled to host an episode of the show four years ago to coincide with the original release date of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

“When I got the call, I was on a porch with my family. We just all lost our minds. We were jumping up and down celebrating, and a UPS driver happened to be delivering a package at that exact same moment,” he said.

“So we all took a selfie with him” to “mark the occasion,” he added.

But the COVID-19 pandemic meant the movie’s premiere was pushed back to 2022, and Powell’s chance of hosting “SNL” seemingly vanished.

“‘Top Gun’ got delayed because of COVID, so ‘SNL’ had to take their offer back. Lorne Michaels literally called me and said: ‘Without ‘Top Gun,'” and these are his words, “no one will know who the f you are.”

For Powell, though, the more pressing concern seemed to be that out there somewhere was a UPS driver who thought he had made it all up.

“So now, I’m here hosting, it feels amazing,” he continued. “But what feels even better is proving to this UPS driver that I am not crazy.”

Powell said his sisters had managed to track down the driver and that he had flown him out to New York for the show.

“He thought it was a scam, but he still came,” Powell said, before inviting Mitch up to the Studio 8H stage to reenact their selfie.

“I had to wait my entire life, plus four years, to be here. But if I have learned anything, it is that the best things in life don’t happen overnight,” Powell said. “And no one knows that better than UPS.”

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sunny Jiang, the 41-year-old CEO and president of EyeBuyDirect, based in New York. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in Anhui Province, China, and earned my bachelor’s degree in finance and economics. I joined EyeBuyDirect in 2007, starting in an entry-level role in the finance department. After eight years of working full time, I did my master’s in Shanghai.

I was drawn to EyeBuyDirect‘s mission and digital-first model, and I saw a unique opportunity to grow with a brand. Over time, I assumed additional responsibilities in operations, product development, marketing, and general management, and developed leadership skills through hands-on experience.

Two years ago, my husband, our two children, and I moved to New York for my current role. It wasn’t a total leap into the unknown: we’d traveled frequently to the US before, so the transition felt natural.

I oversee EyeBuyDirect’s business across the US, UK, and beyond, managing close to 500 employees worldwide. As a female CEO, people often ask about balancing career and family. For me, it’s not about putting work over family or family over work. They make each other stronger.

Along the way, I’ve learned how to prioritize my well-being — because when I’m healthy in body and mind, I can give my best to both my family and my work.

Here’s what a day in my life is like.

5 a.m. — early start

I inherited my parents’ early-bird DNA. Most mornings, I wake up naturally around 4:45 a.m., lie in bed for a few minutes, and start my day at 5 a.m. If I’m not traveling, the day doesn’t begin until after I’ve worked out.

When the gym opens at 6 am, I’m there for half an hour of fast walking and slow running, followed by 20 minutes of weightlifting.

This routine has been a game changer for me, especially on long Mondays that can include more than 12 hours of meetings.

After that, I rush back home to shower and be ready for breakfast with my family while the kids are still waking up.

7 a.m. — breakfast and family time

I’m a big egg person, but our family breakfast is often Chinese style: soup, small dishes, and pancakes. My children, 7 and 10, sometimes ask for sandwiches or something more American, so we mix it up.

My husband left his role at an Italian car company when we moved to New York. Now he runs the household, keeps our family organized, and pursues his own passions, particularly in the fields of AI and innovation.

7:30 a.m. — calls begin

Because I work with teams around the world, I often have meetings back-to-back from early morning until late evening.

Mondays are especially intense — I might start at 7:30 a.m., and not finish until 9 p.m.

8:30 a.m. — meditation

Meditation is an important daily ritual.

In the mornings, and sometimes again in the afternoon if my schedule allows, I sit quietly with music or a guided meditation track for at least 20 minutes.

It helps me clear out the information overload of running a global business.

9 a.m. — getting to the office

I live 20 minutes from the office and take the subway. I’ve always believed it’s important to live near where you work. I can’t imagine losing one or two hours a day in traffic.

We split our schedule between home and office — two to three days a week in person, the rest remote. All employees are working in hybrid mode.

When I’m in the office, afternoons are quieter, with fewer cross-time-zone calls. That gives me space for one-on-one meetings, reading, or even a second gym session if needed.

12:30 p.m. — light lunch

My lunch is typically a salad with grains, beans, and a small amount of seafood. I don’t want to feel tired afterward, so I avoid heavy meals.

I always make time to step away from my desk and take a genuine break. I’m definitely a coffee drinker. A good Americano — no milk — gives me the energy and mood boost I need to power through the day.

1 pm — managing meetings

I’m not a big fan of unnecessary meetings. If I don’t feel I can contribute, I prefer to delegate to the team.

I don’t see hierarchy as boss versus manager versus intern — everyone has their strengths. I trust my team to handle what they can do better than I can.

For big topics, I ask people to come prepared. If everyone does their homework first, our discussions are shorter and far more productive.

3 p.m. — table tennis

Sometimes, my husband and I also squeeze in a game of table tennis in our building. We’ve been playing since school, and it’s one of my favorite sports.

Just five minutes of intense focus can get my heart rate to 140. It’s fun, energizing, and much more effective than a jog.

5 p.m. — wrapping up

Ideally, I’d finish work at 6. In reality, if I’m in the office, I often leave around 7:30 and get home after 8.

That’s because afternoons are when I get precious in-person time with our US-based team.

8:30 p.m. — dinner and winding down

Since I usually go to bed by 9:30 p.m. or 10 p.m., I often skip dinner or just have something light, such as soup. I don’t like going to bed on a heavy stomach. But first, my favorite way to relax is by playing piano.

I only started learning 10 years ago, when my daughter did. She stopped, but I kept going. I play Western and Chinese pieces, and it’s purely for myself.

For 30 minutes, or even just five, I forget everything else and focus only on the music.

9:30 p.m. — rest and reset

By 9:30 p.m., I’m ready for bed. If I’m not traveling, my routine is strict — I rise early and rest early. Fridays and weekends are the exception.

I try to keep weekends lighter

If I’m not traveling, I pick up my kids from school on Friday afternoons. We’ll usually have dinner together to start the weekend.

I make sure I keep one day free, where we play video games, go to the park, or visit a museum. I want that day to be fully dedicated to them.