Becoming a first-time parent is one of those transformative life experiences that fundamentally reshapes your perspective. As a CEO and a new father, my world recently flipped upside down, in the best possible way. Fatherhood brings immense joy, but it also introduces a whole new set of challenges around balancing motivation, delegation, mental fitness, opportunity pursuit and time management.

For leaders accustomed to full-throttle work, the transition to parenthood can seem daunting. Yet, if navigated thoughtfully, it can strengthen your leadership capabilities, sharpen your strategic thinking and enhance your personal growth.

Related: 5 Ways Becoming a New Dad Has Made Me a Better Leader

Finding motivation in new priorities

One immediate impact of parenthood is an evolution in what motivates you. Prior to becoming a father, my drive was predominantly professional — launching products, hitting revenue targets, scaling teams. But fatherhood quickly reshapes priorities, anchoring your motivations around family stability, long-term security and creating a legacy that extends beyond the boardroom.

Take Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, who openly shares how becoming a parent changed his outlook. After the birth of his daughters, Zuckerberg notably increased his commitment to philanthropy, dedicating significant resources toward initiatives aimed at improving education, health and community well-being. Parenthood encouraged him to think deeply about the broader societal impact of his work, showing that new motivations born from family can profoundly enhance leadership.

Mastering the art of delegation

As a first-time parent, your available time shrinks drastically. Suddenly, the hours you could freely dedicate to your startup narrow significantly, requiring a greater reliance on delegation. This constraint, though initially frustrating, is actually a hidden gift, forcing you to become a better, more efficient leader.

Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, openly discusses his approach to delegating critical tasks after becoming a father to multiple children. Musk stresses the importance of building strong, capable teams to whom you can confidently delegate substantial responsibilities. As a CEO, the necessity to delegate effectively is heightened by parenthood, compelling you to empower your team more intentionally and thus accelerating organizational growth.

Related: How I Started a Business and Had a Baby in One Year Without Going (Completely) Insane

Staying mentally fit and sharp

Balancing the demands of parenthood and leadership requires impeccable mental fitness. Sleep deprivation, emotional stress and shifting priorities can test your mental resilience. However, by establishing routines that prioritize mental health, you not only become a better parent but also a more effective CEO.

Meditation, regular exercise and deliberate rest become non-negotiables rather than luxuries. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, has often spoken about how mindful practices such as meditation became integral to his routine after significant life shifts. These routines sharpen decision-making capabilities, increase emotional intelligence and foster resilience, all critical to both effective parenting and leadership.

Aggressively pursuing opportunities with new constraints

While parenthood introduces constraints, it also teaches efficiency in pursuing opportunities. With limited hours, every minute of work becomes more strategic, targeted and intentional. Parenthood can clarify what truly matters, pushing you to aggressively chase the right opportunities rather than simply every opportunity.

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and father to Olympia, has been vocal about how parenthood refined his perspective on work and investments. His advocacy for parental leave and family-friendly policies also opened new professional avenues aligned with his personal values, demonstrating that parenthood can help clarify and focus your professional pursuits.

Balancing work, life and legacy

Ultimately, balancing parenthood and CEO responsibilities isn’t about compartmentalizing your life into work and family boxes. It’s about creating harmony and recognizing how each role enriches the other. Parenthood expands your empathy, enhances your strategic thinking and deepens your understanding of long-term planning.

Jeff Bezos famously prioritizes family breakfasts, maintaining that quality time with family sets a positive tone for his professional engagements. These habits create an integrated, sustainable approach to balancing responsibilities, ensuring that neither your business nor your family suffers at the expense of the other.

Related: What Entrepreneurship and Parenthood Taught Me About Empathy

Looking forward

Becoming a first-time parent as a CEO is undeniably challenging. It demands significant adjustments in how you delegate, prioritize, maintain your mental health and pursue opportunities. Yet, this life-changing experience is not just a personal milestone but an extraordinary professional advantage. Parenthood shapes you into a leader who is more focused, empathetic, strategic and resilient.

To fellow CEOs entering parenthood for the first time: Embrace the challenge. Recognize that your experiences as a parent don’t detract from your role as a CEO; they elevate it. By thoughtfully integrating parenthood into your leadership style, you can achieve greater professional success while nurturing a fulfilling, meaningful family life.

Substack recently made a bold move in the battle for creator loyalty by launching a $20 million creator fund aimed at attracting and retaining users.

Since its launch in 2017, the platform has consistently emphasized creator independence by allowing writers to own their mailing lists and charge subscribers for access to their content. This model was aimed at providing a sustainable income for independent creators without relying on advertisers or algorithms.

Substack’s new creator fund is its latest move at positioning itself as the stable, creator-first alternative where owning their audience is a core part of the user experience. It’s an enticing appeal to creators who are tired of platform whiplash and ready to take back control of their content, their income and ultimately their online presence.

This announcement underlines a broader trend in the industry. Creators are looking for consistency and control over their work, especially as many social media platforms become less predictable. TikTok is facing potential regulatory challenges. Instagram’s algorithm continues to shift and X remains in a constant state of change. In this environment, creators are rethinking their digital strategies.

In fact, some have spoken openly about the way algorithm changes on platforms have directly impacted their businesses, illustrating how disruptive these sudden changes can be to their brand, followers, reach, engagement and more. Now, they’re looking for long-term, sustainable ways to build and maintain their audiences online.

That’s where platforms like Substack resonate with creators. Just look at success stories on the platform like Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, or Lenny Rachitsky’s Lenny’s Newsletter — both built loyal, paying audiences on their own terms. They reflect a growing realization in the creator space that independence and control matter.

Related: How to Start a Business Newsletter on Substack

Independence is in demand

Frequent platform shifts are more than just an annoyance for creators. They force creators into a constant cycle of adaptation, from navigating new algorithms and reconfiguring content to having to reintroduce themselves to their audiences. This can lead to burnout, frustration and also chip away at audience loyalty and visibility. When creators are always starting over, trust erodes, consistency suffers and the momentum that fuels their growth slows significantly.

These disruptions can also have real financial consequences for creators. Sudden drops in engagement, algorithmic demotions or going quiet on certain platforms can mean lost income, fewer brand deals and a fractured audience that’s hard to piece back together.

This is why creator independence centered around ownership is becoming more of a necessity. Diversifying where content is distributed is a smart strategy, but anchoring a digital presence in a place that is fully owned is critical.

The platforms that understand this and empower creators to build and own their own content and digital identities will be the ones that win long-term loyalty. They also help foster a healthier creator ecosystem.

Related: How I Made $250000 in One Year as a Content Creator

Domains’ growing role in creator independence

That said, even the most creator-friendly platform is still…a platform, within which terms can change, fees can shift and features can evolve. While Substack and others are taking a big step forward in this regard, the smartest creators are realizing a hard truth: right now, if they build their brand on someone else’s platform, ultimately the creator doesn’t own it — the platform does.

Creators know they deserve control over their brand and audience without dependency on third-party platforms. Discovery should serve creators, not someone else’s platform. This is why personalized domain names managed by the user are becoming an essential part of the creator journey.

A personalized domain name gives creators a permanent home that isn’t subject to algorithm changes, content policies or other pivots. They provide a direct, unfiltered line to an audience. If a platform changes its policies or disappears entirely, a creator’s domain becomes the place where followers know to return. It remains one of the most reliable and sustainable ways to establish and maintain a lasting brand presence, allowing creators to control how they present themselves online, without interference from third-party platforms.

A memorable domain name also helps creators rise above the noise. It strengthens their brand and helps new followers find them more easily through search, word-of-mouth and direct engagement.

Related: After a 12-Year-Old’s Side Hustle Made Over $4,000 in 1 Day, He and His Dad Grew the Business to Nearly $50,000 a Month: ‘It Takes Commitment’

A brighter future for creators

While social and content platforms will still play an important role for creators, they should not be the ultimate destination for their audiences and digital identities. At the end of the day, platforms like Substack help creators get noticed and build an online presence, but a personalized domain name that the creator manages helps ensure audiences remain engaged.

This concept will become increasingly vital as the creator economy continues to evolve. We’ll see the creator industry led by those who’ve built sustainable digital ecosystems on their own terms. So, creators, as platforms continue to compete for your attention, remember this: your domain name isn’t just a website. It’s the most powerful tool to unlock your digital independence and build a brand that lasts.

Over the years, I’ve worked with organizations chasing aggressive growth targets, streamlining operations after billion-dollar mergers and squeezing margins across every corner of the business. But there’s a conversation that’s long overdue for boardrooms beyond Earth Day: Without the planet, there is no profit.

For decades, companies have focused relentlessly on the “profit” pillar. More recently, the “people” pillar, which includes advancing shared prosperity, workforce well-being and community impact, has gained rightful prominence. But it’s time to fully commit to the third pillar: planet. Not as a charitable side note, but as a core business imperative. The idea that environmental responsibility and economic success are at odds isn’t just outdated — it’s dangerous.

The cost of ignoring the planet

When ecosystems thrive, so do economies. Productivity rises. Health improves. Stability holds. In contrast, resource scarcity, toxic air and environmental collapse fuel inflation, conflict and destruction. Most wars, both historic and current, are rooted in battles over land, water or energy.

The reality is clear: Polluted environments increase illness, reduce morale and disrupt business at every level. Droughts and floods drive up costs. Extreme weather severs supply chains. In the U.S. alone, extreme weather events cost businesses over $165 billion in 2022, disrupting logistics, damaging infrastructure and stalling operations, according to a report from The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. The World Bank attributes a 5% reduction of global GDP, due to health impacts, lost productivity and reduced life expectancy caused by air pollution alone. There is no shortcut; the economy lives downstream from the environment.

Sustainability isn’t about sacrifice. It’s about survival — economic, biological and social. Yet many leaders still treat it like a luxury, something to consider after the next earnings call or expansion milestone. Worse, some merely greenwash by feigning commitment instead of embodying it.

But a shift is happening. Forward-looking leaders are embracing sustainability as strategy. They design for circularity, invest in regeneration and build climate resilience — not just to reduce risk, but to drive growth. Customers, employees and investors increasingly expect nothing less.

Case studies

The Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative, spearheaded by the African Union and supported by the World Bank, aims to combat desertification across the Sahel region by restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. In countries like Senegal, the project has led to the planting of millions of drought-resistant trees, revitalizing ecosystems, improving soil fertility and enhancing agricultural productivity. These environmental improvements have bolstered food security, created jobs and stimulated local economies, demonstrating how large-scale ecological restoration can drive sustainable development and commerce in vulnerable regions.

Organizations like the World Forum for Ethics in Business, co-founded by humanitarian and spiritual leader Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, are helping lead this evolution. By integrating ethics, environmental care and human dignity, they champion a more conscious capitalism — one that measures success not just in returns, but in renewal.

The Art of Living Foundation is turning that vision into measurable action: planting over 100 million saplings worldwide, rejuvenating over 70 rivers in India and restoring tens of thousands of acres of degraded farmland through natural farming and water conservation.

In drought-prone Maharashtra, the Foundation’s River Rejuvenation Projects have revived rivers like the Kumudvati and Vedavathi, increasing groundwater levels and bringing drinking water back to hundreds of villages. In Tamil Nadu, the restoration of the Naganadhi river brought year-round irrigation back to once-parched farmlands, boosting crop yields and reducing farmer distress.

Meanwhile, large-scale tree plantation drives in areas like Latur and Ahmednagar have not only combated desertification but also created green corridors that improve rainfall patterns and local biodiversity. And through training in natural farming methods, tens of thousands of farmers have transitioned to chemical-free agriculture, leading to improved soil health, reduced input costs and better incomes.

These aren’t symbolic efforts; they’re community-led, scalable solutions that deliver tangible economic and health benefits. When businesses support or align with such initiatives, they aren’t just improving optics; they’re contributing to clean water, flourishing ecosystems and resilient local economies. When communities thrive, so does commerce.

When I was a panelist at the 2018 World Environment Day, Unesco-IAHV event, I joined other leaders on stage to discuss the essential connection between biodiversity, water conservation and human survival. Since then, it has been great to watch global efforts make a dent, like seeing that the EPA’s data shows that from 2013 to 2022, total releases of TRI chemicals into U.S. water systems decreased by 21%. However, clean water availability continues to be both a humanitarian crisis and a business risk.

Businesses must continue investing in systemic restoration efforts that are both people-centered and grounded in science. And consumers should demand what forward-thinking companies are already realizing: Protecting biodiversity and water safeguards every industry that relies on them.

This isn’t a once-a-year issue. It’s the only path forward. Business ethics that ignore the environment are incomplete. And profits gained at the planet’s expense are ultimately unsustainable.

The future belongs to leaders who can build in balance: people, planet and profit in sync. It’s not just good ethics. It’s smart business. And it’s the only kind that will last.

I don’t especially like being vulnerable. It’s not a trait you often see in high-performing leaders, and it makes me feel like I’m letting people down and appearing weak at the same time. But this is something I’m working on at the moment — trying to change my mindset about vulnerability as a strength instead of a deficit.

Why? Because I’ve learned that vulnerability actually opens more doors than it closes. It’s soft, it’s relatable, it makes me more human and less robotic, which also greatly diminishes the toxic boss vibes employers (okay, me) can sometimes give off.

As I’ve been traveling down this path toward allowing myself to be more vulnerable, I’ve discovered that two personality traits in particular have contributed to blocking that path: my perfectionism and my need for control.

Now, I’ll admit that both of these attributes have played a large part in the success of my PR firm, but I now realize that they’ve also been key ingredients in a leadership style that has led to some of my team members feeling disempowered. That’s the exact opposite of what I’ve been going for.

Related: Are You the Bottleneck? 3 Ways to Overcome Founder’s Syndrome

Replacing disempowerment with empowerment

Yep, unbeknownst to me, the control tendencies that I thought were responsible for my company’s steady growth over the past 15 years were actually limiting the growth and stymying the creativity of my staff. It took a lot of tough conversations with a variety of people for me to arrive at this realization, but once I did, I knew I had to do something to remedy the situation. Because when people feel like their wings are being clipped in their roles, they’ll fly away.

If I wanted to continue to scale my business to the ever-changing landscape of public relations, I needed to share some control of my company with other capable hands and, in the process, share the wins and replace a “me” with a “we” mentality. Most of all, I needed to develop trust in my team’s amazing skills and insights. The steps I took to do that — steps I’m still in the middle of taking — have allowed me to expand my vision as an entrepreneur and become a better, more forward-looking and more grounded leader.

Here are three ways to develop trust in your team.

1. Hire incredible people

When I first went out on my own, I’d hire everybody and anybody who struck my fancy. I’d stand in line at a bakery, get to talking with a lady with a great personality, and suddenly I was asking her if she wanted to write my pitches. At a craft store framing my daughter’s latest certificate, I’d meet a clerk who shared his love of photography. Before I knew it, I was offering him a gig at my next scheduled photo shoot.

This approach may have carried a lot of good intentions and may have generated a lot of goodwill, but it ultimately translated to me working with people who just didn’t have sufficient experience to meet the requirements of the job on their own. Needless to say, this didn’t lead to independence on either side, so I needed to rethink my hiring model.

Nowadays, I look for exceptional skills from the get-go. You don’t have to have years upon years of targeted experience for every position on my staff — I’m a big proponent of giving beginners a chance and nurturing burgeoning talent — but I do have to see tremendous potential and sense tremendous drive.

With my background in crisis comms for well-known figures, I think of my staff as “A-listers.” Every single one of them currently under my employ shines in their area of expertise and excels in their field. Because of this, I feel entirely comfortable handing off tasks to them that I used to insist on doing myself.

Related: Are You Running Your Business — or Is It Running You? How to Escape ‘Founder Mode’ and Learn to Let Go

2. Step away from the inbox and Zoom screen

Not so long ago, I had thousands of emails in my inbox every day. I am not exaggerating: thousands. That’s because I had every member of my staff cc me on everything. I am not exaggerating: everything.

Over time, this wasn’t just unmanageable; it became obvious that it was unnecessary. Did I really need to see a note asking a client if they preferred using or not using their middle initial? More than the sheer volume of words I was scanning every day (and every night and every weekend), an internal company evaluation I commissioned revealed to me that my staff really did not like my “cc policy” at all. They felt spied on, scrutinized and, of course, totally untrusted.

For both practical and people-driven reasons, I ended my reign as the cc queen, and everyone is much happier for it. Not only was including myself in all written exchanges inviting everyone in that exchange to barrage me with follow-up questions and seek my direct approval before making the next smallest move, but it was severely restricting their decision-making capacity, their belief in themselves and their desire to go above and beyond.

I no longer see every email that goes out to my clientele, and I no longer demand to be on all client Zoom calls. (Caveat: I do still have junior staff include me in their communication threads, but for more seasoned pros, after their initial trial period has passed, I lay off the gas and let them drive their own messages and videoconferences.) This has been a huge time-saver, but far more importantly, it’s been a huge lesson in the value of letting go: My business didn’t fall apart, we’re still standing stronger than ever, no one needed my 24-hour surveillance in the first place.

3. Bring on a project manager

Okay, so I know this step will cost you some money, but it’ll be worth every penny. Here’s why: When you’re free from all the nitty-gritty operations of your business — when you’re no longer making the agendas, populating the databases, answering HR queries, fielding requests for time off, booking travel arrangements, restocking the soap and toilet paper — guess what? You’re actually free to concentrate on the future of your business.

You can pursue new clients, develop new products or services, and dream new dreams. And here’s the best part: This person does not have to be an expert in your field! If you make gutter guards, this person does not have to be a home improvement pro. If you’re a restaurateur, this person does not have to be a culinary school graduate. All this person needs to do and do extremely well is manage, organize, keep things rolling and keep things on track.

I call my project manager the “fairy godmother” of my business because what I count on her to do is fly over my operations with an aerial view and wave her magic wand where she spots potential trouble. Her role is to unclog stoppages in the workflow, nudge team members to meet their deadlines and hold us all accountable for our responsibilities.

This person does not have to be on-site; they can definitely work remotely, like my project manager does. But having added this position to my staff has eased my compulsion to micromanage, which was the biggest symptom of my now-waning control freakdom.

Related: How Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Project Managers

Conclusion

I guess what most of this amounts to is the word “delegation.” If you’re an extremely busy business owner like me, with lots of other obligations and activities outside of work as well, I seriously doubt your business can thrive and your team can soar without learning to delegate. You’ve got to try it on for size. You’ve got to experiment with its elasticity. You’ve got to decide what you do and do not want to relinquish.

But never underestimate the power of delegation. When you let go and just let your staff do what you hired them to do, you’ll be amazed at the results they’ll produce. They’ll still look to you for leadership and guidance, but they won’t slam on the brakes and stall progress waiting for you to give them the green light at every turn.

You don’t have to do it right out of the gate and you don’t have to do it all at once, but when you loosen your grip on the daily details and entrust the professionals you’ve brought on to do an utterly professional job for you, I promise you, you will not fall. Instead, you’ll all catch each other.

The colors of Jell-O might look different on store shelves in three years as Kraft Heinz makes a sweeping change to remove artificial dyes from its products.

Kraft Heinz announced on Tuesday that it will discontinue using artificial dyes in the formulation of its products by the end of 2027. In addition to Jell-O, Kraft Heinz is removing artificial colors from its Crystal Light, Kool-Aid, flavored water MiO, and marshmallow Jet-Puffed products. The company said the change would only affect about 10% of its products by net sales.

“The vast majority of our products use natural or no colors,” Pedro Navio, North America president at Kraft Heinz, stated in a press release. He mentioned, for example, that Heinz tomato ketchup has never had artificial dyes; the red color comes from tomatoes.

Related: Walmart’s Biggest Food Brand Launch in 20 Years Introduces a Private Label With ‘Unique,’ Spicy Options

Kraft Heinz has assembled a team to remove artificial colors where they are not needed, replace artificial dyes with natural colors, or formulate new natural colors if natural replacements are unavailable.

The company will also not launch any new products with artificial dyes, effective Tuesday.

Kraft Heinz is the first major food manufacturer to commit to stop using artificial dyes, per The New York Times. In 2016, Kraft replaced the bright orange dye in its Kraft Mac & Cheese with color derived from a mix of natural spices like turmeric, annatto, and paprika.

Kraft’s shift away from artificial dyes arrives after the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., met with Kraft Heinz CEO Carlos Abrams-Rivera and other food industry leaders in March. Kennedy said at a news conference the following month that he had reached “an understanding” with food manufacturers to remove artificial food colorings from products within the next few years.

Related: This Walgreens Product Is Flying Off Shelves, Thanks to TikTok: ‘We Sold Through Nearly All of the Product’

Regulators have also moved to ban artificial dyes. In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a ban on the artificial food coloring Red No. 3, currently found in everything from cold medicine to candy, due to its link to cancer. The dye will no longer be allowed in food starting in 2027. The FDA is also eliminating other petroleum-based dyes by the end of 2026, including yellow dye 5 and blue dye 1.

Kraft Heinz is the fifth-largest food and beverage manufacturer in the world, with revenues of $26 billion in 2022. The company sells brands like Cool Whip and Philadelphia.

Hitting “unsubscribe” from an email list seems simple enough. Except, rarely does it ever fully work — we all know we’ll be unsubscribing from that same list in a year.

Too bad that’s no longer the biggest worry. Hitting the leave-me-alone box is now a security risk. Hackers are using the “unsubscribe” button as a means to get you to click and capture your personal information.

Related: ‘Juice Jacking’: TSA Warns Air Travelers to Protect Themselves from This Growing Security Scam

TK Keanini, chief technology officer at DNSFilter, told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that clicking the unsubscribe link can lead to phishing scams and security issues. In fact, DNSFilter estimates that one out of every 644 unsubscribe clicks leads to a “potentially malicious website.”

There are several ways this can affect an unsuspecting email user. The lowest risk is that hackers now know you are an active email with a person behind it. This will most likely lead to scammers building a file on you to make you are future target for ransomware attacks, getting you to shop on fake websites, or sending you malware.

Worst case, the unsubscribe link exposes your device to malware immediately, but one expert told The Journal that it is not the best tactic, fortunately. Too many things would need to align, they said, including that the browser has a vulnerabilty.

Related: Instagram’s CEO Says He ‘Experienced a Sophisticated Phishing Attack’ With Google This Week

Still, the best way to fight back, experts told The Journal, is to use Apple’s “Hide My Email” feature, if you are an Apple customer, or send the emails to spam without hitting unsubscribe.

You can also set up a free Gmail or other email account specifically for shopping, newsletters, and spam.

Alexandr Wang is leaving Scale AI, the startup he founded in 2016 — that made him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire — to join Meta.

Wang, 28, broke the news to employees in a memo that he posted on X on Thursday. Meta is investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI as part of the deal, in exchange for a 49% stake in the startup and access to fresh talent, including Wang. Scale AI’s valuation more than doubled from $14 billion to $29 billion due to the investment.

“Opportunities of this magnitude often come at a cost,” Wang wrote in the memo. “In this instance, that cost is my departure.”

^{Alexandr Wang. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Wang will join Meta in a top leadership role in a new division that Meta is calling its Superintelligence lab, and transition from being Scale’s CEO to serving as a director on its board, according to The New York Times. Jason Droege, who formerly started and led the Uber Eats business at Uber, will step in as Scale AI’s interim CEO.

Related: Meta Is Reportedly Offering Up to Nine-Figure Pay for Researchers on Its New Superintelligence AI Team

Who Is Alexandr Wang?

Wang was born in New Mexico in 1997 to Chinese immigrant parents who were both employed as physicists for the U.S. Air Force and the military.

“My parents were brilliant scientists in Los Alamos who accomplished a lot in advancing their field,” Wang said in an April 2022 TED talk. “I wanted to work on something as impactful or even more impactful than that. That’s why I decided to become a programmer — I wanted to make a difference in this world.”

As a child, Wang excelled at math and began competing in national math and coding competitions in sixth grade, per Forbes. He has been playing violin since the age of nine and taught himself how to code, according to Leader Biography.

Related: Goldman Sachs CIO Says Coders Should Take Philosophy Classes — Here’s Why

Wang attended Los Alamos High School and graduated a year early. Wang was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and intended to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science, according to his LinkedIn page.

What Is Scale AI?

However, before starting at MIT, Wang took a gap year between high school and college and moved to Silicon Valley, and landed a job as an engineer at Q&A site Quora. It was at Quora that Wang met Lucy Guo, a product designer who would go on to be his Scale AI co-founder.

The idea for Scale AI came to Wang when he was still an MIT student, he told El País. He wanted to figure out which of his roommates was stealing his food from the shared refrigerator by installing a fridge camera and developing an AI that could process camera footage. Wang was never able to figure out who was stealing his food, simply because of the sheer volume of video footage, but the experiment taught him the importance of data in unlocking AI insights.

Related: How to Be a Billionaire By 25, According to a College Dropout Turned CEO Worth $1.6 Billion

He started Scale AI with Guo in 2016 at age 19, the summer after his freshman year at MIT, to label and manage data that companies use to train AI models.

“To power AI, you need powerful data, which was especially hard to come by at that time, in 2016, when I was at MIT,” Wang said in the TED Talk.

The team was admitted to the summer 2016 batch of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator that has launched companies like Airbnb and Dropbox. Wang became Scale AI’s CEO and Guo led its operations and product design teams. Wang dropped out of MIT that summer to pursue the startup, according to VNExpress. In 2018, Guo left Scale AI due to differences in vision with Wang.

What’s Next for Scale AI and Meta?

Wang became a billionaire at age 24 in 2021 thanks to Scale’s growth and is now still the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at age 28, with a net worth of $3.6 billion.

Scale AI now works with the likes of OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft, according to its site. Scale generated about $870 million in revenue in 2024, per Bloomberg.

With the Meta investment, the company now plans to “accelerate innovation and strengthen strategic partnerships with customers,” according to a press release. Scale will also distribute a portion of the investment to shareholders, with the payout based on how much of the company each investor owns.

For business owners who rely on Microsoft Office but are tired of paying for a Microsoft 365 subscription year after year, there’s a way to get the full suite of Office apps without the ongoing expense. Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows offers lifetime access for a one-time payment, giving you the same core tools without the monthly or annual fees, and it’s only $49.97 right now (reg. $219.99).

Replace your Microsoft 365 subscription

The package includes everything most businesses need to run smoothly. You get Word for reports and documentation, Excel for financial tracking and data analysis, PowerPoint for building polished presentations, and Outlook for handling email and calendars. Publisher and Access add desktop publishing and database tools, while OneNote helps organize notes and project details. Teams is also included with basic features for internal communication.

Business owners who are already familiar with Microsoft’s layout will find the ribbon-based interface easy to navigate. Tools for formatting, design, and customization are all right where you expect them, making it simple to create professional documents without wasting time.

Instead of managing another subscription, you get permanent access to these tools after a single purchase. The license covers one Windows PC and includes instant delivery of your download link and license key.

Cut costs where it counts.

Get a Microsoft Office Pro 2021 Lifetime License for $49.97.

Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License

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