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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. Are you tuning into the Oscars tonight? For prediction market bettors, tens of millions of dollars are on the line. Here’s who’s most likely to win in each of the 24 categories, according to the odds on Kalshi and Polymarket.
The Big Mac pricing experiment
While variable pricing makes sense in certain situations, everyone should usually be paying what the price tag says. That’s not where the economy appears to be heading, though.
Businesses have gotten very good at leveraging technology to move prices around and extract more money from us. That will likely seem wrong to a lot of people — but how would they know this is happening? BI’s Peter Kafka and Emily Stewart convinced their bosses to expense their McDonald’s lunch.
Surveillance tech is meant to aid police departments, but it doesn’t come without controversy. Flock Safety is a $7.5 billion startup that operates license plate cameras and other technologies in partnership with over 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the US.
But in a dozen instances reviewed by BI, misreads by Flock’s automated license plate readers, or a lack of verification by officers, sometimes resulted in people who hadn’t committed crimes being stopped at gunpoint or sent to jail. “We have the utmost sympathy for any victim of harm — and that is why we are committed to the work we do to solve and deter serious crimes and provide security for communities,” a Flock spokesperson said.
One of the ‘Finest Boys in Finance’ is no longer at PwC
Demarre Johnson, 23, whose splashy magazine spread last week was the talk of Wall Street, is no longer with his firm. In a statement to Business Insider, PwC confirmed that the former associate is “no longer an employee and left the firm in mid-February.”
A person familiar with the matter said Johnson’s departure was not related to his magazine appearance.
Match Group’s megamanager era
In the past few years, the ranks of middle managers have been shrinking, and many of those who remain are now overseeing larger teams.
Match Group, owner of more than 20 dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge, and OKCupid, is no exception. Chine Mmegwa, a manager at the company, said she used to manage three people. Now, that number is at 24. Decisions move faster, Mmegwa said, but nearly every minute is spoken for.
More of this week’s top reads:
Curated by Steve Russolillo and edited by Dan DeFrancesco, Grace Lett, and Amanda Yen.
This is a shorter version of our flagship newsletter, which brings you in-depth analysis and summaries of the top stories from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
