As protests over the murder of George Floyd erupted in Minneapolis — and then spread at lightning speed to cities and towns across America — downloads of the Citizen app exploded to over 150,000 per day. Founded in New York City in 2016, Citizen provides advanced filtering of police scanners to give users a real-time map of crime and police activity near them. The explosion in usage was driven by protesters, who realized quickly that they could use Citizen to coordinate with other protesters and monitor the locations of riot police.

Over the past few weeks the U.S. has passed the most comprehensive stimulus package since the Great Recession, and the largest-ever relief bill — with more likely on the way. This stimulus package represents Covid-19’s expansive impact on businesses, beyond revenue and hiring: substantial regulatory shifts looming, and the changing context in which startups and other entrepreneurial firms operate. These shifts both present tremendous opportunities for companies that can be responsive to the needs emerging from recent events, but also risks that are flat-footed in their response.

Are startups even regulated? (Yes.)

I distinctly remember a period of sleepless nights in late 2008 and early…

For two years, a rising drumbeat in Washington has called for increasingly dramatic action to weaken the power of big companies in pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and especially technology. This week, the Federal Trade Commission acted, but with a surprising target — Big Razor.

In a lawsuit Monday, the FTC sued to stop Edgewell, the company that owns Schick, from buying Harry’s, a mostly direct-to-consumer e-commerce razor company that in just a few years has helped to upend the multibillion-dollar shaving industry. It’s a massive blow to both the seven-year-old startup, co-founded by one of the Warby Parker co-founders, and the consumer…

In January 1933, Ferdinand Pecora, a “soft-spoken son of Italian immigrants,” assembled a committee to investigate what in the hell led to the 1929 stock market crash. There were, of course, many fathers of the Great Depression, but a 2011 Smithsonian article lays out one of the basic underpinnings of the longest and deepest financial calamity in American history:

“The ‘Pecora commission’ [made] front-page news when he called Charles Mitchell, the head of the largest bank in America, National City Bank (now Citibank), as his first witness. ‘Sunshine Charley’ strode into the hearings with a good deal of contempt for…

My son was happy when our elf-on-the-shelf left after Christmas. Following a day of particularly poor behavior, the elf delivered an official citation with a warning lump of coal, and they’ve had a strained relationship ever since.

Looking back on it, including the subsequent breakdown, the elf may have overplayed that hand. Live and learn, I suppose.

So, when our elf went back to the North Pole to relax and do whatever it is elves do for the next 11 months, my son was not sad to see him go.

“But won’t you miss finding him each day? Won’t you…

If you’ve recently played any mobile game — particularly the “free to play” — you’ve probably seen more full-screen interstitial ads for other mobile games than you could ever possibly want. The reason is simple: A North American mobile interstitial ad can earn a solid $5 CPM. Translated: Each viewed video is worth more than listening to one stream on Spotify. Today, you can reliably earn more by spamming the App Store with slot machine games than by recording an album.

In this particular flavor of predatory advertising, free games earn money by showing ads for other free games, bouncing…