When Lauren Wyman felt crushed under the weight of her corporate finance career in 2019, she found solace in launching a small goth clothing and fashion company.

She initially created accounts on Facebook and Instagram for her store, Dark mother’s clothes, but only made $5,000 to $6,000 in sales in the first year. Wyman, 32, joined TikTok at the start of the pandemic, launching new products and posting a few videos that went viral. In 2022, it made $217,000.

“Part of what the people on this app have done is create their own slice of the American Dream that has been heralded so much,” said Wyman, who is based in Arizona, whether it’s opening a small business or people no longer facing homelessness, people who are able to retire, and creators who are now allowed to pursue their creative endeavors.”

now, Creators are worried The platform may be taken from them. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew Testified before the legislators Thursday, trying to convince them that TikTok is not a threat to national security. But it was largely unsuccessful in proving that TikTok was beyond the reach of Chinese influence, observers say.

The Biden administration recently increased its efforts to force the sale of TikTok by its owner, ByteDance, which is Chinese company subject to Chinese law — the same thing Trump sought to do in 2020 with the TikTok ban that was banned by federal courts. On March 15, it was reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ByteDance has given an ultimatumSell ​​TikTok or face a ban in the US.

A recent bill has been introduced in the Senate that would enable the Biden administration to ban TikTok Bipartisan support.

An outright ban on the app would be a devastating blow to the many small businesses that have turned to TikTok to reach potential customers rather than resort to traditional and expensive forms of marketing.

Facebook and Instagram are “pay-to-play” platforms and don’t offer a significant amount of return on investment, said Kelis Landrum, co-founder of Los Angeles-based marketing agency True North Social.

“TikTok offers the broadest organic reach of any of the channels right now,” Landrum said. “If you’re very successful on TikTok, that’s probably what you focus on most because [as] Small business, you can’t afford to attack marketing on a bunch of different fronts at the same time.”

Elise Burns, who runs stationery and household goods design company Launched in college in 2015, she said she saw a direct correlation between her TikTok videos and sales. After posting a video showing a shipment of daytime planners that garnered 2.9 million views in June 2022, it sold over 2,000 daytime planners in two days.

“I can look at my sales and see like that month, I had TikTok going viral,” Burns said.

Last year, it generated $1 million in sales through its website, which gets traffic from TikTok and Instagram. She devotes four hours a day to these two platforms but has since expanded into wholesale and unlocking Interface shop in Durham, North Carolina, to diversify its revenue. With her business, which she now runs full time, she’s been able to pay off most of her student loans and buy a home.

Kristina Ha experienced a similar phenomenon with New York’s Cat Café and rescue organization, Meow salon. In late 2020, she began posting videos of her retired parents interacting with some of her kittens.

When she posted a video of her parents sewing cat beds to support the rescue business, her fans demanded they be purchased. Raised $20,000 in one week.

“It was crazy and kind of unexpected,” Ha said. “When I look at the video, it probably wasn’t my best work.”

Christina Ha, center, with her father, Jaeshin Ha, and mother, Youngsuk Ha, managed to raise $20,000 in a week for her cat rescue organization, Meow Parlor, after a video showing her parents went viral.

(Katherine Ha)

Advertisement

A video she posted this month of “A Day in the Life of My 76-Year-Old Dad” has 10.2 million views — and another $30,000 worth of cat bed sales. She’s also taken in a flurry of visitors to Meow Parlor who have signed up to foster and adopt the kittens and become a monthly donor to the nonprofit.

“TikTok is very, very amazing. The community is very supportive in a way that I haven’t found on other social media platforms,” Ha said.

Even business like Cleaning trash cans Carpet repair has found fans on TikTok.

Josh Nolan, who directs The guys fix the carpet In the San Francisco Bay Area, he said he joined TikTok after nearly two decades of carpet repair after a technician told him he needed to get into social media. The results were amazing.

Josh Nolan, who runs Carpet Repair Guys in the San Francisco Bay Area, says TikTok has given him customers and the opportunity to be a content creator.

(Josh Nolan)

Nolan said that when he started moving content he posted on Instagram and Facebook over to TikTok, they were “going through the roof in numbers.”

Nolan still uses Yelp and Google AdWords to bring in business, but he hears from customers all the time that they watch TikTok or YouTube videos of him fixing carpets, he said. He now has more than 850k followers on the app and is making some extra income through brand sponsorships.

“I’m not off the truck yet. I’m still at work and I’m on my knees doing carpet repair, but that’s been good side money,” Nolan said. As a social media content creator. I’m just a blue collar contractor. But with that you have this resource here at your disposal.”

Last fall, TikTok partnered with American Express #ShopSmall Accelerator To help small businesses during the holiday shopping season. A week after a Senate bill was introduced to give the federal government the power to ban the app, TikTok has been introduced Launched initiative Small business spotlight Entrepreneurs who have achieved tremendous success on the platform, allowing many to quit their day jobs.

Lauren Wyman, 32, runs her alternative and gothic goods store out of her garage in Arizona. TikTok has driven its sales in a way you don’t see when you post to Instagram.

(Lauren Wyman)

That’s what Wyman hopes to do, but the uncertainty of TikTok is making her pause for now.

“Wanting to take the leap but also feeling afraid, that you might step out of…having over 125,000 followers [TikTok and Instagram combined] Down to just 17,000 [on Instagram]”It’s too risky,” she said.

As part of the company’s campaign to change lawmakers’ minds, TikTok payment For a group of TikTokers to travel to Washington ahead of Chew’s testimony to protest a potential ban of their beloved app. Chew the same Post TikTok Appeal to the masses a few days before his testimony.

“I can tell you without a doubt that the next generation of black business owners will come from the TikTok platform,” said Pedri Nicol, a bakery owner from Columbus, Ohio, who was part of the press conference organized by TikTok. “If you ban TikTok, you risk capping the ambitions of an entire generation of wealth makers.”

Without access to TikTok, small business owners say they may be focusing their efforts on Instagram, where they already post content from TikTok. But many people are lukewarm about the Meta-owned platform.

“Instagram hasn’t really done much for me as a creator or small business,” Wyman said. “I’ve used their tools, I’ve tried their advertising. … The platforms are nowhere alike in terms of their audience and engagement.”

After 20 years of what seemed like unstoppable growth, the US tech industry has spent the past year The rest of the economy is underperforming. Product failures in new industries like virtual reality and cryptocurrency, layoffs across the board, plummeting stock prices, and the Silicon Valley bank failure create a teachable moment to talk about the culture and direction of the tech industry.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, the technology industry embarked on 50 years of innovation, entrepreneurship, empowerment, and transformation. It provided new industries and huge productivity gains for the rest of the economy. Americans have become accustomed to new technology, embracing each new generation, confident that it will make their lives better.

To an increasing degree over the past ten years, the tech industry has harnessed the confidence of consumers and policymakers to change the game. Instead of empowering users, many new technologies have exploited human weakness. They have used data and application design to manipulate the choices and sometimes behavior of users, undermining their autonomy. Instead of creating new industries, technology has exploited data, low-cost capital, and a lack of regulation to extract value from existing consumers and industries. Technology has become a zero-sum industry.

Despite press coverage of the harms caused by online platforms — including political and social polarization — of questionable cryptocurrency business practices and flaws in artificial intelligence systems, policymakers have failed to regulate or legislate. And just as importantly, consumers have chosen to trust even the most trustworthy tech companies. We know that something is wrong, but we have not yet insisted on changing.

The recent Silicon Valley bank collapse illustrates a tech industry culture that time and again prioritizes profit over the public interest. SVB was a community bank. It claimed that half of all startups have accounts there, as well as a large percentage of venture capitalists and CEOs. For decades, SVB has embraced the culture of Silicon Valley, providing unique services to its community. And until very recently, Silicon Valley has been loyal to its bank.

The explosive growth in the start-up world after the 2008 financial crisis translated into explosive growth in deposits that stalled a year ago when the Federal Reserve announced its plan to raise interest rates to stem inflation.

Four factors contributed to the collapse of the SVB. Had the Fed not raised interest rates by 4.75% over the past year, the SVB would not have failed. Had Congress not passed a law in 2018 easing regulation of banks like SVB, SVB would not have failed. Had SVB used good risk management, it wouldn’t have failed. Had bank regulators done their job during a period of rapidly rising interest rates, the SVB would not have failed. But even with all four failures, SVB shouldn’t fail.

SVB failed because the community it had supported since its inception abandoned it at a critical moment. A group of venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, sounded an alarm about SVB and encouraged their portfolio companies to withdraw the money immediately — $24 billion walked out the door in little more than a day.

Some in the tech industry would have you believe that the collapse of SVB – as with other tech failures – is unrelated to the culture and business practices of Silicon Valley. This is nonsense, and there are lessons to be learned.

One lesson is that easing regulations on large sectors — such as rolling back Dodd-Frank fiscal reforms in 2018 — rarely ends well. One might reasonably conclude that government regulations, such as those relating to vaccines, play an essential role in consumer safety that becomes less clear the longer they are effective.

The vast majority of the major players in technology weren’t in business now when the deregulation boom began in 1981, but no industry has exploited laissez-faire government policies more effectively than technology. Industry leaders have been shifting the burden of harm from their products from themselves to those affected by their products.

Another lesson is that technological progress is not inevitable. Historian Melvin Kranzberg once noted that “technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.” Technology is the work of humans and reflects their priorities, motivations and values. If we want technology to be a force for good, we need to make sure that the priorities, motivations, and values ​​of the people who create it are aligned with the national interest. We haven’t done that in at least 20 years.

The third lesson is that rising interest rates and increasing geopolitical tensions may not support the strategies that startups have adopted over the past decade. This may be a blessing in disguise.

Industry will always argue that more regulation would slow innovation. The counterargument is that a lot of the innovations of the past 10 years have caused great social harm.

Consider all the tech startups since the 2008 financial crisis and ask yourself how we should calculate the damage to society. Some of the most prominent sectors of technology have caused massive harm to consumers, including cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, facial recognition, deepfakes, and social platforms capable of violating your privacy and tracking your every move. Most startups have done something good, but many use the good as bait to enable business practices that lead to harm. They do this because of skewed priorities, incentives, and values.

This brings us back to Silicon Valley Banking. The people whose calls to withdraw money put the bank into operation are successful, wealthy, and sloppy. If leaders in Silicon Valley are unwilling to support an SVB, a partner of their own and a partner of unique value in their ecosystem, it is safe to assume that their business goals will not consider, let alone act for, the common good.

Why entrust the leadership of a central industry of our economy to people who have no stake in the public interest? The Silicon Valley bank story also suggests that they don’t understand the banking system, a system that plays a central role in their success. What else do not understand?

The solution to this damaged culture is regulation in three areas: public safety, individual privacy and choice, and competition. Congress has a long history of legislating in all three areas. Engineers do their best when they encounter limitations – and it’s time to give them some.

Roger McNamee is co-founder of Elevation Partners and author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe.

Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel and creator of Moore’s Law – the mantra of boundless technological development that came to define the digital age – has died at the age of 94.

Moore died Friday at his home in Hawaii, according to the company and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

From humble roots as the son of the mayor of Pescadero, California, Moore went on to create Intel, one of the greatest technological powers of the 20th century.

Moore, who was trained as a chemist, was an early pioneer in the creation of integrated circuits, the silicon chips that came to form the backbone of modern technology.

He was among a small group of engineers and scientists, including Nobel laureate William Shockley, one of the co-inventors of the transistor, and Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the integrated circuit, who put silicon into Silicon Valley.

But what set Moore apart from many of his legendary peers was that he also possessed a combination of skills that extended far beyond mere technique.

As Intel’s chairman, Moore has guided the company with the demeanor of a local and the spirit of a Las Vegas gambler.

Taking the risky path came naturally to him, though he always maintained that his risks were obvious choices to be made.

“This is a fast-moving business,” he once said in an interview. “Unless you are willing to take technical and financial risks, you are doomed. Things change so quickly, if you don’t, you die.”

Moore described himself as an “accidental entrepreneur”, although the success of Intel—and Moore’s status as one of the richest men in the country due to his Intel holdings—belied his modest assessment.

Although Moore’s co-founding of the microprocessor giant in 1968 cemented his place in the history of modern technology, he may be best known for what has come to be known as Moore’s Law.

In 1965, Moore made the simple observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit seemed to double every year.

The integrated circuit was invented just seven years ago, and the most anyone could etch on the thin silicon wafers that would fuel the growth of the electronics industry was about 50 transistors.

Looking at a graph of chip development, Moore stretched the line forward 10 years and predicted that by 1975 there would be 65,000 transistors on a single silicon chip. It seemed an oddly high number at the time, but Moore was right on target.

Moore modified his prediction several times during his life, eventually settling on the prediction that the number of transistors would double every 18 to 24 months rather than every year.

But even though the exact formula for Moore’s Law has changed, the spirit of rapid technological progress has remained constant. It became the dogma of the electronic world and a mantra for the Deguerati eagerly awaiting the next great thing.

Moore wrote in 1965: “Integrated circuits will do wonders as home computers – or at least terminals connected to a mainframe, automatic controllers for cars, and portable personal communications equipment.”

The descendants of the first raw chips Moore designed went on to power personal computers, cars, cell phones and even watches.

“It’s funny how Moore’s Law is what he’s best known for,” he said in a 1997 interview with Business Week. “It was just a relatively minor observation.”

The accuracy of Moore’s Law has become the cornerstone of business planning in the electronics industry.

Gordon Earl Moore almost fits the image of a prophet of the digital age. He was quiet and down-to-earth, an unassuming, slightly balding scholar who kept a little bit of his small-town roots in the midst of the pace of Silicon Valley.

Moore was born in San Francisco on January 3, 1929, to Walter and Florence Moore. The family eventually settled in Pescadero, about 30 miles south, where his father was the district’s deputy chief of police.

Moore seemed destined for an academic career after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, with a BA in Chemistry in 1950 and a PhD in Chemistry and Physics from Caltech in 1954.

After a short stint at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore, he went to work in 1956 for Shockley, who had formed his own company, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, to develop the transistor. Shockley was a heavy-handed, moody and volatile manager. After working for only a year, Moore and most of Shockley’s top scientists revolted.

The “Traitorous Eight,” as Shockley called them, split off and started Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. The creation of Fairchild was one of the crucial turning points in the history of electronics, allowing Moore and others to pursue research that helped their partner, Robert Noyce, to devise a commercially viable process for miniaturizing circuits Complete on a silicon chip – integrated circuit.

Moore and Noyce left Fairchild in 1966 and two years later set up their own company to exploit integrated circuit development. They named their company Integrated Electronics but later shortened it to Intel.

With the help of Arthur Rock, Silicon Valley’s first horde of venture capitalists, Noyce and Moore easily raised $2.3 million and got in on the act. Noyce served as CEO of the new company with Rock as President and Moore as Executive Vice President.

Intel began manufacturing memory chips and rising to profitability by embracing the company’s strategy of innovating at a rapid pace so that it could command a premium for its products.

Moore took over as CEO of Intel in 1975, a few years before his company began being affected by the influx of cheap memory chips from Japanese manufacturers that had commoditized Intel’s flagship product.

Intel started losing money and laying off workers. By the mid-1980s, Intel was beginning to lag behind the very industry that had created it.

By 1985, even Moore was starting to look bleak. Moore told shareholders at the time that the economic downturn was “probably the greatest in the history of the semiconductor industry.”

“We’re taking the excesses out of the red-hot electronics industry,” he said. “What happened? Lady Fortune frowned. Intel should be well up and ready when Dame Fortune smiles again.”

In 1984 and 1985, Intel was still spending more than $1 billion on chip manufacturing equipment and facilities. It was all part of Moore’s belief that staying ahead of the curve was key to success and the company would eventually bounce back.

Moore and the company’s president, Andrew S. Grove, set about refocusing Intel away from cheap memory chips to high-margin microprocessors—the brains of the computer.

In 1987, Moore stepped down as CEO of Grove, though he remained active in directing the company as president.

Moore has also served himself as a member of the Caltech Board of Trustees and as a patriarch of the electronics industry.

In 1950, Moore married Betty Irene Whitaker, who survived him. Moore was also survived by sons Kenneth and Stephen and four grandchildren.