Pure-play private funders Stuart Grant of Bench Walk Advisors. Bench Walk Advisors Bench Walk Advisors was cofounded in 2018 by
Stuart Grant, a former lawyer at Skadden who also cofounded Grant & Eisenhofer, a top firm for shareholders litigation. Grant said in an interview with Reuters that he shifted focus to litigation finance after a few adverse court rulings because I don t like losing. His litigation-funding shop claimed a 93% win rate as of the end of last year. It says it s invested more than $300 million. Brandon Baer of Contingency Capital. Contingency Capital Contingency Capital was launched in November by
Brandon Baer, an experienced lender who co-led the legal-assets group at Fortress. While the firm is still new and not much about its activities are known, it s minority-owned by TF
This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.
In 2017, Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, was preparing to speak at a local TEDx event. His talk was about the then rare practice of working from home, which most people at the time associated with slackers and the occasional 20-something freelancing from a beach café in Thailand. He had led a study several years back that showed the surprising productivity benefits of the arrangement.
After a dry run, a conference organizer gave Bloom the typical TED advice. You ve got to be exciting for TEDx, Bloom remembered her saying. You re too much of an academic. You ve got to make it so it s pathbreaking. Compare it to something really important.
Blueland cofounder and CEO Sarah Paiji Yoo Blueland
As e-commerce boomed throughout the pandemic, the cleaning-supplies company Blueland pivoted its focus to its online business and launched a subscription offering to make it easier for customers to refill their cleaning products, with certain starter sets starting at under $20.
The brand s Instagram audience also more than doubled and is now at more than 267,000 followers. Cleaning and sanitizing is now a fundamentally different set of behaviors amid the pandemic, and more people are prioritizing the importance of human health, the Blueland cofounder and CEO Sarah Paiji Yoo told Insider.
The business impact: Blueland saw a surge in site traffic and orders throughout 2020. At the start of the pandemic, demand for Blueland cleaning products soared by more than 300%. Blueland has shipped more than 8 million units of its refill
The world s largest vaccine business has been on the sidelines of the pandemic response.
GSK is facing an exodus of US vaccine scientists, with several dozen leaving in the past year.
Former GSK employees expressed frustration with the company s bureaucracy and pandemic response.
On a mild day in December 2016, GlaxoSmithKline executives snipped an orange ribbon, ushering in what they hoped would be a new chapter for the pharmaceutical giant.
GSK had just helped the world respond to the viral scares of H1N1 and Ebola, and its leaders envisioned growing their swanky vaccine-research center in suburban Rockville, Maryland, into a biopreparedness powerhouse, equipped with the research talent and manufacturing might to stop pandemics in their tracks.
, he didn t dash off to buy a van full of cleaning equipment and supplies.
He went to the web.
Using his digital-marketing and web-design skills, Suellentrop assembled an online profile for American Cleaning Enterprises (ACE) and added his business to Google Maps in Greenville, North Carolina.
Only after he had landed his first service contract did he invest in tangible equipment like a commercial-grade vacuum, cleaning chemicals, cloths, a mop, and a bucket.
A few years before the 24-year-old Suellentrop was born, Bill Gates famously said, If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.