 |
|
|
|||||
President Donald Trump plans to travel to Pennsylvania on Tuesday to highlight his efforts to reduce inflation even as fears mount about a worsening job market and amid signs that Americans are still feeling squeezed by high prices. A White House official said Trump would be making the trip to discuss ending the inflation crisis that he says was inherited from his predecessor, Joe Biden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the trip has not been formally announced. It was not immediately clear where in Pennsylvania Trump would be visiting. Last month’s off-year elections showed a shift away from Republicans as public concerns about affordability persist. White House officials said afterward that Trump who has done relatively few events domestically would put a greater emphasis on talking directly to the public about his economic policies. The president has said that any affordability worries are part of a Democratic hoax and that people simply need to hear his perspective to change their minds an approach also embraced by Biden, who in early 2024 went to the Pennsylvania borough of Emmaus to take credit for economic improvements after inflation spiked in 2022. The trip hints at the dilemma faced by Trump. He wants to take credit for rewiring the U.S. economy with his large tariff hikes and extension of income tax cuts, but he also continues to blame Biden for the increase nationwide in inflation rates that occurred this year during his own presidency. Overall, inflation is tracking at 3% annually, up from 2.3% in April when Trump rolled out a sweeping set of import taxes. We fixed inflation, and we fixed almost everything, Trump said at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. He called affordability a hoax that was started by the Democrats who caused the problem of pricing. Trump won Pennsylvania narrowly last year with 50.4%, besting Democrat Kamala Harris by roughly 120,000 votes. The win was part of a broader sweep in battleground states that helped return him to the White House after his 2020 loss. AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of voters in the 2024 election, found that 7 in 10 Pennsylvania voters were very concerned about the cost of food and groceries. Roughly half expressed the same degree of worry over health care costs and the price of gasoline. While Trump can point to a decline in gasoline prices, hes now facing inflationary pressures on utilities and a massive increase in insurance premiums for people who get their health care through the Affordable Care Act. Pennsylvanians who buy their own health insurance coverage are likely to see their costs increase on average by 21.5% because of the expiration of tax credits tied to the Affordable Care Act, the state said in October. Pennsylvania has yet to see the boom that Trump promised would instantly happen with his return to the White House. The state has largely preserved its Biden era job growth under Trump, but its unemployment rate has risen to 4% from 3.6% over the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There has been an increase of roughly 24,000 people who say theyre unemployed. Annual inflation in the Philadelphia area is 3.3%, roughly the same as last year. The Philadelphia Federal Reserves Beige Book in November documented an economy in decline, saying that hiring has flattened, warehouse workers are getting fewer hours on the job, inflationary pressures are coming from tariffs and sales of existing homes are decreasing. Separately, the regional Fed branchs manufacturing survey last month showed that factory activity weakened. The news outlet Axios first reported Trump’s plans to travel to Pennsylvania. Josh Boak, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Only about 10 percent of venture funds ever make it to a fourth vintage. Of those, just 5 to 10 percent are led by women. Im one of them. When I started Female Founders Fund in 2014, I believed that solid returns and conviction would speak for themselves. Strong performance would unlock capital and the industry would reward the achievement, especially from those breaking new groundor so I thought. What Ive come to learn is that venture capital isnt a pure meritocracy. Its a network-driven ecosystem where who you know often matters just as much as what you build. Cultural and political changes, and a tight market environment, are making it especially difficult for fund managers to maintain momentum. Now is the time for the industry to reflect on how to ensure that these funds, especially those led by diverse managers, can weather these forces and continue to support diverse founders with brilliant ideas. Investing in women isn’t charity. By yielding powerful, durable returns, it has proven to be smart business. As risk tolerance declines, it could be tempting for institutions to retreat to the familiar. Instead, they should pay attention to the data. A shorter runway for women Over the years, a few lessons have become clear. They arent the ones you find in your LPA, but theyre the realities that quietly shape who gets funded, who gets backed again, and who quietly fades away. Returns are just one part of the picture. While performance is important, other forcesinstitutional change, personal networks, and internal politicsoften drive how capital gets distributed. Once an institution commits to a fund, that relationship can extend across multiple vintages. The incentive to change managers is low. Check writers want proximity to the next generation of Tier 1 talent striking out on their own. That bias works in favor of spinoutsformer Sequoia, a16z, or Benchmark investors taking the entrepreneurial leap. But for managers without that institutional pedigree, the path looks very different. And for women, who remain significantly underrepresented in those firms partnership ranks, the path is even narrower.Your first fund is often cobbled together from founders, friends, and family offices willing to take an early bet. By Fund II or III, however, the bar shifts. Institutions want scale, systems, and years of realized returns, all of which take time to build. For emerging managers, thats the hardest leap: breaking through a system designed to reward familiarity over conviction. Venture is a relationship business. It prides itself on data and rigor, but in practice it runs on trust. The capital that fuels our industry still moves through networks built over decades. Who you know, how long youve known them, and what you have to offer, determines access. This is why new or diverse fund managers often find it easier to raise their first fund on promise than their second on proof. Convincing someone to take the initial bet on someone new can be easier than asking them to break a pattern with subsequent fundsbecause the pattern is still overwhelmingly male. We must also look at money. Wealth isnt optionalits the price of entry. For example, all new fund managers are expected to invest a GP commit, which equates to roughly 1 percent of their total fund size. On a $50 million fund, thats $500,000 in cash, upfront. Imagine asking an entrepreneur to invest half a million dollars in their own Series B to show commitment. For many, especially women and first-time fund managers, that barrier is insurmountable without preexisting, generational, or spousal wealth. It is one of the quietest but most enduring structural filters in venture, and it uniquely disadvantages women, who, on average, hold less personal and intergenerational wealth. Having a financial cushion is also vital to play the long game that venture requires. To stay in the business, particularly through downturns, you need a financial cushion. Big payouts dont happen often. Selling some of the investment early can help a little, but small fund managers cant always afford to take a lower price without making it harder to raise money later. Its not just about resilience and grit; its about runway. And because women more frequently enter the industry later, without the safety nets that have historically supported male peers, their runway is often meaningfully shorter. Staying in the game long enough to see your conviction validated is, in itself, a form of privilege. Another challenge that has played out over the years is that while several well-intentioned institutions and corporations have stepped in to support and capitalize diverse managers, the purpose behind many of these checks has been to provide start-up capital designed to help new funds get off the ground, with the expectation that larger institutional investors would take over from there. That handoff, however, has proven difficult. Even as the tide has turned culturally and politically, theres a real opportunity to rethink how we sustain diverse managers beyond the first fund, widening the base of long-term support so they can weather market cycles and build lasting franchises. The current system still assumes women will somehow graduate into institutional support structures that were never designed with them in mind. Shaping the next frontier I started Female Founders Fund as an entrepreneur who spotted alpha in the marketa clear gap between the caliber of women building companies and the capital available to back them. Twelve years later, that thesis has proven right again and again. At Female Founders Fund, weve seen it firsthand. Maven Clinic became the first unicorn in womens health, defining an entirely new category of care. Billie reimagined modern personal care before its acquisition by Edgewell. BentoBox transformed hospitality tech, leading to a successful exit. Tala, now valued at nearly $1 billion, continues to scale globally, expanding access to financial services in emerging markets. Wagmo created a new category of employee benefits around pet care, while Violette_FR built the first artist-led French beauty brand in decades. These companies touch millions of end customers and have built products, tools, and services that have scaled across industries proving that female-led innovation drives real enterprise and consumer value. These founders are category creatorspairing big visions with world-class execution. These outcomes arent outliers. Theyre evidence that backing female founders is a wise investment strategy that generates meaningful returns. We cannot let this moment in time with its tighter markets and shifting market and social priorities create negative momentum. Women are now leading in industries once thought impossible to break into: Space DOTS, founded by a NASA-trained astronautical engineer; Beyond Aero, reimagining flight through hydrogen-electric propulsion; Amini AI, building Africas environmental data backbone; Waabi, redefining autonomous trucking; and Dacora, making history as the first female-founded automotive company. From aerospace to AI, from climate to transportation, women are shaping the next frontier and the best is yet to come. In order to keep seeing new role models of success especially for those living outside the traditional Silicon Valley ecosystem, we need to keep capital flowing. Thats how the next generation of women and underrepresented founders will see themselves in the leaders building toay. In a moment when the world feels increasingly divided, doubling down on progress isnt just good businessits good stewardship. Because the hardest part isnt raising a fund, its building one that endures. And the longer I stay in this business, the clearer it becomes: investing in women isnt a risk, its a return.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its a great week to have a disposable income and act like you know how to ski. North Face x Skims today launches its second winter outerwear capsule, again channeling ski culture with a campaign shot on the powder-coated Chilean mountains. (Skis and airfare not included.) The 2025 drop expands on its collection from last year with even more silhouettes, like the wrap puffer coat, and a thoughtfully cropped, hooded puffer jacket with drop shoulder that brings some fashion to the line, which is aesthetically more oriented toward sport. It also includes mens and kids styles for the first time (prices range from $55 to $800). [Photo: The North Face] Even considering the new styles, the overall brand ID will look very familiar to Skims fans, with creative direction thats nearly identical to last years North Face collaboration. It has a styling and color system approach thats similar to the recent Skims x Nike collab, with muted color tones such as bone, kyanite, gunmetal, phoenix, and onyx, this time inspired by winter color palette. [Photo: The North Face] The campaign creative direction again utilizes gradiated layouts and product imagery, featuring models in geometric groupings organized by garment colorway. (Laura Obermeyer and Jackie Nickerson shot this years campaign; the first iteration last year was 2 campaigns, one shot by Vanessa Beecroft and the other shot by Donna Trope.) Part of what makes the Skims marketing such a home run is how it plays with its brand for a distinct visual approach to each of its various campaigns for core product drops. It appears to be less flexible with collaborations. [Photo: Nike] A big week for ski fashion But its not the first to drop a winter collection this week. Nike and Jacquemus expanded their long-running partnership into the winter season by earlier this week announcing their first ever ski collection (some styles are online now). The Nike x Jacquemus’ collab plays into cold weather glamour and offers shapes that are driven less by spandex body shaping and more by a classic, retro aprés style. The style lines and pattern of the clothes create their own shape on the body, such as in the ful skirt featured on the first campaign image, or the hourglass shape emphasized by the bell sleeve and tailored waist of the ski jacket. Its Audrey Hepburn in Chalet with the functionality of Gore Tex. Prices range from $110 to $700 for whats currently available online, which is half of the total 18 expected styles to be released. [Photo: Nike] These drops are an entry point for fashion brands to get in on outerwear sales by tapping into the expertise of brands already in the space (North Face and NIke, respectively). They are also a way for winter sport amateurs to tap into ski styles, without having to spend big on a vacation or premium-level gear they dont really need. I live at sea level, and Id still buy that Nike x Jacquemus jacket, if it wasnt sold out. And though all the North Face x Skims styles have yet to be released, the comments section on the brand announcement posts is already piping. [Photo: Nike] This quick sequence of drops is another indication theres appeal in prestige signalling through pieces that have prppy, sophisticated, and stylistic design elements you might see walking around Kemo Sabe in Aspen or a premium St. Moritz chalet. Its almost as if tennis core and gorpcore had a winter romance (does that give us chaletcore?). North Face x Skims and Jacquemus x Nike have distinct pespectives on this, but one thing is clear: this winter, skiing is a state of mind. [Photo: The North Face]
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||