Author: openjargon

• The F-35s that participated in the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities flew deep into its airspace.
• The fighter jets escorted the B-2 stealth bombers and were the last to leave Iranian airspace.
• Commanders involved in Operation Midnight Hammer said the mission validated the F-35's capabilities.

The American F-35 stealth fighters that participated in the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iran flew hundreds of miles deep into its airspace and were the last ones out, US military commanders revealed this week.

F-35A Lightning II aircraft assigned to the Utah-based 388th Fighter Wing escorted the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers that dropped over a dozen heavy bunker-buster bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities in late June.

The F-35s suppressed Iran's air defenses and cleared the way for other combat aircraft, including the seven B-2s, during the complex nighttime operation.

"We flew hundreds of miles into Iran, escorting the B-2s the entire way," Lt. Col. Aaron Osborne, commander of the 34th Fighter Squadron, shared in a US Air Force story. "We employed weapons to great effect against multiple surface-to-air missile sites."

After the B-2s dropped a total of 14 bunker-buster bombs — 30,000-pound munitions called GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators — on Iranian nuclear facilities, the F-35s protected their exit from the attack zone.

The advanced US fighter jets were the last ones out of Iranian airspace, the 388th Fighter Wing said on Monday, sharing new details on the operation. US officials said Tehran did not fire at any American aircraft during Midnight Hammer.

The airmen of the 388th Fighter Wing, located at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, train nearly every day for suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD) missions, the military said.

The F-35 pilots can use the jet's stealth, radar, targeting systems, and advanced sensors to detect surface-to-air missile threats, as they did in Iran.

The F-35 fighter, built by US defense giant Lockheed Martin, has been battle-tested against a wide range of threats in a mix of engagements since its first flight nearly 20 years ago — from Middle East wars to penetrating Israeli strikes inside Iran to the downing of Russian drones over NATO territory. The jet is flown by militaries around the world, including many NATO allies.

While the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is considered a top fifth-generation fighter jet, it is also the world's most expensive weapons program, with a lifetime cost of $2 trillion, and has faced sustainability and maintenance challenges in recent years, leading several Trump allies to publicly criticize the aircraft and its capabilities.

And tensions earlier this year between the Trump administration and some European allies have also raised questions about and even appeared to threaten future sales of the stealth jet.

However, Midnight Hammer commanders praised the F-35 and said that its participation in the operation highlights its combat prowess.

"The effectiveness of this strike validated all of the capabilities of the F-35 we've been talking about for years — stealth, lethality, sensor-fusion, being a force multiplier," said Col. Charles Fallon, 388th Fighter Wing commander.

He said the operation relied on the F-35 pilots and their aircraft to perform, "and both proved more than capable."

US forces struck three Iranian nuclear facilities — specifically Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — with 75 precision weapons during Operation Midnight Hammer, which came amid a broader war between Iran and Israel. American officials said that the munitions included the bunker-busters and dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Beyond the F-35s and B-2s, American F-22 fighter jets, as well as F-15s and F-16s, and dozens of aerial refueling tankers participated in the surprise operation, along with a US Navy missile submarine.

• Lamia Scott and her young son moved into her mother's home after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
• The third grader frequently helps keep his grandmother, 75, calm during her periods of agitation.
• Scott said caregiving is tough, but she is bolstered by the support of other people in her position.

This story is based on a conversation with Lamia Scott, 43, a flight attendant from Dallas, Texas. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I've always considered my mom, Marvia, my best friend because of her love, kindness, and intelligence.

We were so close that my son, Braxton, now 9, and I lived in an apartment complex right across the street from her home. We were in and out of each other's places, and she often babysat.

As a single mom, I was particularly grateful for the support. She doted on her grandson, and the feeling was mutual.

Mom began to get forgetful

She is a former softball coach who has always prioritized her health. But three years ago, she started to act out of character. She began to experience forgetfulness and become easily irritated.

There were a few times when she'd say, "Why don't you bring Braxton over? I want to see him." When I did, she'd ask, "What are y'all doing here?"

We'd go out to eat, and she'd get angry with the wait staff for no reason. Then she'd start crying out of the blue. She'd never behaved that way before.

I began to worry about her safety after smelling gas in her home. I'd come in through the garage, and it would hit me, but she was unaware that she'd accidentally put the stove on.

It wasn't easy persuading her to see the doctor because she insisted nothing was wrong. But she was referred to a neurologist who diagnosed her with Alzheimer's — later classified as Alzheimer's with agitation — in December 2023.

We moved in with Mom because it made sense

Mom was in denial, but the news confirmed my fears. My maternal grandmother had suffered from the disease, and Mom was her primary caregiver for 12 years while she lived with our family. I knew what that road looked like.

My son and I left our rental apartment and moved in with my mom just three weeks after her diagnosis. She was my priority, and it made sense for us all to be under the same roof.

Braxton was in heaven because he loved being around his nana. But he noticed the difference too, and would comment on how much she repeated herself. He'd also wonder why she sometimes yelled at him when she'd been so understanding before.

"Why does Nana hate me?" he would say. I had to educate him about Alzheimer's and explain about the agitation it caused. I told him that we were there to help. It made him proud to feel a part of her care team.

Braxton is good at redirecting his beloved nana

There have been times when I've gotten frustrated and said to Mom, "You said the same thing five seconds ago," when she repeats herself.

But Braxton will redirect her and say, "Nana, it's OK, you can ask me again, and let's try to figure it out." I'm really impressed with his grace.

One of the greatest challenges was managing Mom's tendency to wander. I'd come home to find her not there, and I'd call her cellphone. Then I could hear it ringing somewhere in the house because she'd forgotten it.

She'd get in the car and drive for miles without knowing where she was. We've now got a tracker app on her phone and a Ring camera, which helps us monitor her whereabouts.

I know I'm not alone in this situation

They say it takes a village, and our neighbors have been great. If they see her out and about and can't persuade her to return, they'll text or call. I also find support through the organization, Alzheimer's Agitation, which gives advice and connects me with other people in the same position, so I know I'm not alone.

Still, it's hard for me not to feel overwhelmed when I try to juggle caregiving, single motherhood, and my job. We use a care service when I'm working for an extended period, and I may occasionally take family leave through FMLA.

I'll sometimes feel guilty when I think about how Mom coped with the stress of caring for my grandmother with dementia without complaint. But I think I'm doing the best I can for the woman I love so much.

• My family of four spent 46 hours traveling from Chicago to Seattle in two Amtrak roomettes.
• The roomettes were small but comfortable, and we got to see lots of gorgeous views along the way.
• The rail trip was nice, but it ended up costing more than our first-class flights home.

I've always been a fan of trains. As a child, my favorite book was "The Little Engine that Could," and I've seen the Hitchcock classic "North by Northwest" at least a half dozen times.

So, when I saw that Amtrak offered cross-country train travel, I was immediately intrigued.

I'd taken a five-hour train ride from Detroit to Chicago before, but I'd never been on a longer journey by rail. It seemed like a unique way to kick off our annual family vacation.

We chose the Empire Builder, which travels from Chicago to Seattle over the span of 46 hours. Here's what the experience was like.

We booked roomettes, which also came with a few special perks

I did a lot of research before booking tickets for our group of four adults and settled on two roomettes directly across the hall from each other for $2,988. It felt like the best value.

On the day of our trip, we arrived at Chicago's Union Station about an hour before our train was scheduled to depart. Sleeper-car guests get complimentary access to a lounge, where we enjoyed comfortable seating and a buffet of snacks.

Our ticket also included priority boarding. When it was time to get on board, an employee escorted us through the terminal and to our railcar.

Before we left the station, our dedicated attendant stopped by to introduce himself, point out the restrooms and coffee station, explain the dining policies, and let us know how to reach him if we had any questions or concerns.

The roomettes felt small but comfortable

When we entered our roomettes, I was immediately thankful I'd done my research.

Some online reviews I saw had noted that the space was small — measuring 3 feet by 6 feet wide and 6 feet by 6 feet long — and didn't offer much room to store luggage.

We each only brought a small backpack into the space with us and were able to store our larger luggage on a rack near the door.

Although the quarters felt tight, I thought they easily accommodated two people.

During the day, the roomette had two seats that faced each other. At night, they slid together to make a bed with a portable mattress cushion. I slept here and thought it was surprisingly comfortable.

The upper bunk lowered from the ceiling, and carpeted nooks served as a ladder. My sons used those beds and thought they were uncomfortable, mainly because train travel is bumpy and the mattress felt thin.

When reached for comment, an Amtrak representative said that "depending on the size of the person in the upper bunk, adding a second mattress is a possibility."

Knowing this, I'd consider requesting another mattress if we were to book these rooms again.

Unlike Amtrak's bedroom car option, though, which would've cost about $1,000 more per room, the roomettes don't include private bathrooms.

Instead, each railcar has three shared facilities similar to airplane restrooms and one separate shower room.

However, I made an adventure out of it and decided that walking down the hall in my pajamas in the middle of the night to use the communal restroom would be like being in my freshman college dorm again.

There were a few downsides to the sleeper car

For me, the biggest downside of the roomette was that it only had one outlet, which made charging two devices inconvenient. Next time, I'd definitely bring an adaptor with me.

Plus, the walls seemed pretty thin. On the first night, we were laughing and got shushed by the man in the next cabin.

We also realized way too late into the trip that the PA system in our railcar didn't seem to be working properly.

Since we couldn't clearly hear station and stop announcements from our roomettes, figuring out when we could get off the train was a bit tricky.

We didn't notice this issue until our trip was just about over — otherwise, we would've alerted a staff member.

Several meals were included in the cost of our trip

As sleeper-car passengers, we each had two dinners, two breakfasts, and one lunch included in the price of our tickets.

Each afternoon, the dining manager visited our room to book our dining-car dinner reservations.

Unfortunately, by the time he got to us each day, the only time slots available were the first and last. Luckily, we prefer dining late, so this wasn't an issue.

Plus, the food in the dining car was surprisingly good. We chose omelets for breakfast, and burgers and salads for lunch.

For dinner, my daughter-in-law and I liked the pan-roasted chicken best, while my sons enjoyed the Amtrak signature flat-iron steak.

Entrées came with an appetizer or salad, side dishes like vegetables and rustic mashed potatoes, and dessert. The options were varied enough that everyone found something they liked.

However, we all agreed the best thing we ate was the chocolate cake.

One of the best parts about the trip was how many beautiful views we got to take in

On the first night, we drifted off to sleep while passing the St. Paul-Minneapolis skyline, and woke in North Dakota with open plains as far as the eye could see. Once we crossed into Montana's "Big Sky" country later that afternoon, rolling hills cut into the landscape.

Our favorite scenery was passing through Glacier National Park during dinner on the second night. Seeing the Rocky Mountains backlit by a beautiful sunset was breathtaking.

On our final day, we awoke to a view of Washington's thick forests and winding rivers, ending up in downtown Seattle a few hours after breakfast.

Overall, we had a nice experience, but probably wouldn't do it again

For my family, extended train travel is probably a one-and-done experience.

Although we had a nice trip and the views along the way were nice, I'd find it hard to pay more for a longer (and slower) travel experience again.

After all, our eight-hour one-way, first-class flights back totaled $2,118, which was less than what I paid for the Amtrak roomettes.

Sure, we could've saved money on train fare by booking standard coach tickets, which I've seen listed for between $560 and $2,060 for four adults on this route. However, we wouldn't have had access to actual beds.

That said, I'd definitely consider a solo journey on a different route, because an Amtak sleeper car is a pretty great spot to unplug, read, and write.

• Elon Musk said it's "crazy" that none of Tesla's rivals want to pay for its self-driving tech.
• Tesla has been talking about licensing its Full Self-Driving tech for years.
• FSD has faced scrutiny, with regulators launching a probe after reports of Teslas running red lights.

Elon Musk can't understand why Tesla's rivals don't want to pay for its self-driving tech.

The Tesla CEO said on Tuesday that other automakers aren't interested in licensing the company's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, despite his warnings that they risk dying out without it.

"I've tried to warn them and even offered to license Tesla FSD, but they don't want it! Crazy…" wrote Musk in a post on X.

"When legacy auto does occasionally reach out, they tepidly discuss implementing FSD for a tiny program in 5 years with unworkable requirements for Tesla, so pointless," he added, following up with two dinosaur emojis.

Tesla's Full Self-Driving technology enables the car to handle most tasks autonomously, but it still requires human supervision. Licensing it to other automakers has long been floated as a way for Tesla to monetize its autonomous vehicle push.

Musk told investors in April 2024 that Tesla was in discussion with one major automaker over a deal, and in January said the EV giant had seen "significant interest" in paying for FSD.

"I think the interest level from other manufacturers to license FSD will be extremely high once it is obvious that unless you have FSD, you're dead," the billionaire said on a January earnings call.

Musk's latest comments suggest that Tesla won't be striking deals anytime soon.

FSD speedbumps

FSD and its predecessor, Autopilot, have faced significant regulatory scrutiny over the past few years.

Last month, the US auto regulator launched an investigation into reports that Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD were running red lights and driving the wrong way down the road. It followed another probe covering 2.4 million FSD-equipped Teslas last year.

Tesla has also faced numerous lawsuits over FSD and Autopilot. In August, Tesla was found partially liable for a deadly crash involving Autopilot and ordered to pay $242 million in damages. The company said it intends to appeal.

None of this has stopped Tesla from going all in on self-driving. The company is racing to meet Musk's ambitious goal of expanding its robotaxi service to eight to 10 metro areas by the end of the year, and has recently cleared crucial regulatory hurdles in Nevada and Arizona.

How long it will take for Tesla to cash in on its self-driving push is unclear, however. In the company's latest earnings, executives said around 12% of drivers are paying for FSD, with quarterly revenue from the technology falling compared to the same period last year.

Meanwhile, several of the company's rivals have struck their own self-driving deals.

Toyota announced a partnership with robotaxi firm Waymo in April to bring self-driving tech to "personally owned vehicles," while Lucid is teaming up with Uber and autonomous vehicle startup Nuro to launch robotaxis in San Francisco next year.

• Russian infiltration teams are sneaking past Ukrainian lines under the cover of inclement weather.
• A senior Ukrainian defense official said these conditions make Russian incursion tactics more successful.
• Ukrainian soldiers have described the Russian tactics as increasingly problematic.

Small Russian infiltration teams are exploiting bad weather to sneak past Ukrainian lines and cause major problems for Kyiv's forces, a senior defense official told Business Insider.

Lt. Col. Yurii Myronenko, Ukraine's deputy minister of defense for innovation, said that drones are responsible for strikes on roughly 90% of all targets struck on the battlefield and have made large-scale armor assaults extremely challenging.

But drones alone are not enough to hold the line and stop the enemy from breaking through, he said. Dense fog and other inclement weather provide ideal cover for Russian infiltration tactics.

"Infiltration by small groups, sometimes just one person with a rifle and grenades, whose task is to hide in a basement or dugout, is difficult to counter," the former drone unit commander said.

While drones have provided front-line units with constant battlefield surveillance in Ukraine, they are constrained by limited visibility in bad weather, which appears to have presented Russian forces with an opportunity.

Ukrainian soldiers have described the infiltration tactics to Business Insider as a growing problem that is happening more often now than it was earlier in the war, especially in the eastern regions.

Russia's infiltration teams often consist of just a few soldiers who are sent on a range of missions, including seizing key positions and holding them until reinforcements arrive, disrupting Ukraine's drone operations, and planting mines near troops' locations.

The Ukrainian soldiers said that once the Russian infiltrators slip past the defensive lines, they start stirring up trouble, forcing Kyiv to divert much-needed troops from other areas to deal with the incursion. These are high-risk missions for Russia, and many soldiers have been killed executing them.

Even with good weather, the front line stretches some 800 miles across Ukraine. Drones can't monitor every single inch of the sprawling battlefield, and Kyiv is also facing a serious manpower crisis — factors that create space for surprise infiltrations.

Russia's defense ministry and its US embassy did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on these tactics.

Earlier this month, Russian forces used bad weather as cover to push deeper into Pokrovsk, a war-torn city in the eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region that has become the site of some of the conflict's most intense fighting.

Thick fog allowed Russian soldiers to advance on foot, by motorbike, and in cars, shielding them from Ukrainian drones and cameras that struggled to operate in the low visibility.

Meanwhile, despite the limits of drone tech in bad weather, Myronenko said uncrewed systems continue to expand the "gray zone" between Ukraine and Russia.

Ukrainian soldiers previously described the gray zone to Business Insider as an area of the front line where there is no true line of contact and key positions on both sides have been moved back beyond the reach of shorter-range drones.

"Autonomous drones can make the kill zone large enough for the situation to resemble World War I, when the Western front remained static for years due to the lack of breakthrough technological superiority on either side," Myronenko said.

• Mark Cuban says Big Tech's AI race mirrors the 1990s engine search wars, and could end the same way.
• He warns that major players, such as Google and OpenAI, are overspending in a winner-takes-all race.
• The investor says an AI bubble could burst soon, leaving one giant standing and everyone else broke.

Mark Cuban says the race to build the world's most powerful AI model looks eerily similar to the 1990s search-engine boom — and could end the same way: with one dominant player and everyone else left behind.

"You've got five, six, whatever it is, companies that are trying to create the ultimate foundational model that we all depend on," Cuban said on the "Pioneers of AI" podcast.

"It's almost like in the '90s when all the search engines were competing pre-Google… There were all these different [ones] and you didn't know if it was going to be a winner-take-all, or a top five."

"Now, we know with search engines it's Google, and then there's Bing, as, like, 1 or 2% and DuckDuckGo has got a half a percent. So it's effectively a winner-take-all," he added. "And that's going to be really scary because there will come a time where they have to live up to the economics."

Inside the AI arms race

Cuban said the major AI players — including Google, Meta, and OpenAI — are "spending everything, consuming every resource that they can just in case it's winner take all."

But he warned that this race to build the most powerful model could create its own kind of bubble — a view shared to varying extents by many tech and business leaders, including Sam Altman, Bill Gates, and Ray Dalio.

"They may be overspending," he said. "And if they overspend or get too caught up, the bubble is in the competition between all those models because that could pop just like that with any new technology."

The billionaire investor said he's also concerned about the infrastructure behind AI — particularly the vast and expensive data centers now being built to power large models.

"I just can't imagine over a 10-year period that we aren't going to improve the technology enough that if you overspend on today's technology," he said. "It just doesn't feel right to me."

Cuban believes the real disruption won't come from incremental improvements but from something "incredible" that no one sees coming.

"Somebody's going to come up with some incredible shit, right? If I knew what it was, I'd do it," he said.

He's seen this movie before

Cuban has lived through this kind of moment before. The former Shark Tank star made his fortune during the dot-com boom and said he recognizes the same combination of excitement, hype, and overspending now playing out in AI.

"They anticipate for at least another decade spending every penny they have," he said of the major model developers.

"I mean, if that's not ripe for disruption to come up with better ways, I don't know what is."

For Cuban, the outcome of the AI wars will depend not just on who builds the biggest model, but on who builds the smartest one.

And, he warned, history suggests most players won't survive long enough to find out.

• Two AI startup founders said that they initially pretended to be AI to validate their product idea.
• Their viral LinkedIn post sparked debate over startup practices in Silicon Valley.
• "You can't fake it till you make it forever," said Krish Ramineni, CEO of Fieflies.ai.

Sam Udotong said he and Fireflies.ai cofounder Krish Ramineni manually took notes for over 100 meetings while pretending to be an AI bot called Fred.

The AI startup's story, posted to LinkedIn by Udotong, raised eyebrows over its "fake it till you make it" approach.

Udotong, CTO of Fireflies.ai, which built a product to automate note-taking for online meetings, wrote that the company's first batch of customers in 2017 were getting a human-run Fred.

The post soon went viral on LinkedIn, with nearly 3,000 reactions and hundreds of comments. While some applauded the founders for their approach, others raised questions.

Fireflies.ai is now valued at $1 billion, largely thanks to the rise of virtual meetings during the pandemic.

When Ramineni and Udotong came up with the concept of a meeting notetaker AI, their backs were "against the wall," Ramineni told Business Insider.

"So we said, we're down to our last bit of money, let's figure something out, but this time, before we write a line of code, let's make sure that we can actually validate it," said Ramineni, the CEO of Fireflies.ai. "And we had to pay rent, and SF is really expensive."

Ramineni was living off savings after a brief stint with Microsoft, and Udotong had never had a full time job. To validate their idea, Ramineni said, they reached out to some friends in the tech space and asked them if they would be willing to pay $100 a month for their meeting notes to be fully taken care of in 2017.

Ramineni said that he told those friends that there would be some human involvement and oversight, but did not specify that the process was actually entirely manual. Posing as an AI bot called Fred, the two founders said they joined meetings and took notes by hand, and they usually delivered the notes within a day.

"We had just enough money to pay for the rent where Sam was staying, and we found incredible demand," Ramineni told Business Insider.

Unlike an AI bot, the founders are humans who could not be omnipresent, and Ramineni said it took about a hundred such sessions for them to grow weary of back-to-back meetings and feel the constant stress about being double-booked.

Ramineni said that Fireflies.ai had not approached any investors until they were already working on the fully automated product, and there was no overlap between investment and the founders pretending to be AI.

By late 2018, the product development was full steam ahead, and they had stopped manually taking notes for customers. Ramineni said they were kept afloat by small checks from angel investors. At the end of 2019, Fireflies.ai was able to beta test its product and do live demos for institutional investors, allowing them to raise a seed fund of more than $4 million.

"We told them, actually, for the first couple of users, we sat down, took notes for them, and it helped us realize and understand what it means to do good notes," said Ramineni of the investors. "And then they were impressed with how we validated the problem first, and then we went and built the product."

The 'fake it till you make it' approach

Tim Weiss, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Imperial College London, told Business Insider that Fireflies.ai's approach sounds like "pretotyping," which is a very common but "questionable" practice.

"Basically, you pretend you have a product to learn about how people engage with it before you build it," said Weiss. "This is something that is done at the very early stages of a startup to validate an idea, but of course not later on."

In other words, Fireflies.ai may have simply said the quiet part out loud.

The startup may have skimped on details with early customers, but it did not approach institutional investors until the company had a functioning product to show, the founders said.

Kevin Werbach, professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of Business, told Business Insider that, despite the risks, "fake it till you make it" is a "hallowed element" of tech startup culture.

"When done right, it's Steve Jobs' 'reality distortion field' and countless entrepreneurs that fudged on details to get the time or resources needed to make those claims real," said Werbach. "When done wrong, it's Elizabeth Holmes going to jail."

"Most situations are in the middle," Werbach added.

The "reality distortion field" is a term coined by Steve Jobs, the cofounder of Apple, referring to his ability to convince himself and others that seemingly impossible tasks are achievable through the force of will.

According to the "Internet History Podcast," a show that documents the rise of technology that may seem commonplace right now, the iPhone was frequently failing when Jobs made a sleek demonstration of it back in 2007. Engineers determined a specific order of demo actions for Jobs to perform to prevent the phone from crashing, and hard-coded all the demo units to display five bars of cell strength.

Facebook's stand-alone personal assistant, called "M," which was shut down in 2018, was also powered by humans to answer the most complex queries, according to The Verge. The goal was that those humans would help train the AI. The product never made it past its private beta stage, The Verge reported.

Ramineni said that as of today, the AI in Fireflies has done over 2 billion meeting minutes and has taken notes for 20 million people, which would be about 4,000 years of meetings if calculated by an eight-hour workday.

"It's fair to have a lot of skepticism around AI, and I definitely do believe that you have to be transparent in that if you're raising funds, talking to investors, building the product," said Ramineni. "You can't fake it till you make it forever — that's not how it works."

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amelia Christie-Miller, the 32-year-old founder and CEO of Bold Bean Co. She is from the UK and based in Barcelona. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

When I founded Bold Bean Co. in 2021, I was working at a sustainability company in London and had become obsessed with the idea that beans could solve many of the world's problems.

I juggled my job and Bold Bean Co. for about a year before I went full-time with my business that fall.

Beans are so fundamental to soil health and our journey toward net zero, and from a diet perspective, they've just been completely overlooked in the West. Everyone's talking about gut health, fiber, and protein, and beans score highly in all three categories.

My mission was to make people obsessed with beans by giving them a really good quality bean.

I have 20 employees, and we're a remote-first business. I'm based in Barcelona, but I often go back to London, where I started the business (our products are only available in the UK). I have colleagues in Valencia and Edinburgh because I think people should be able to live wherever makes them happiest and most productive.

I work from home, unless I'm meeting one of my four team members who are also based in Barcelona. Here's what a day in my life is like.

I wake up starving at 7:45 a.m.

There's this expectation that founders are super high-performing individuals who drink lemon water and exercise all before 6 a.m., but I'm so far from that. I'm not a morning person. I really need my sleep.

At the moment, because I'm pregnant, I wake up starving. I eat as soon as I can and I'm currently trying to get in a lot of protein, so I usually have eggs. I definitely need my coffee, and I love having it freshly ground. It's a really lovely ritual.

Sometimes my partner and I will have a moment together in bed with our coffee and do NYT Connections or a crossword, to have a moment of pause before the day starts.

I may go for a little walk to get some sun on my face, but often I go straight to my desk if I'm not meeting anyone from the team.

My workday starts at around 9 a.m.

My mornings just whizz by, because that's when I'm really productive and have a lot of meetings. More often, I get derailed in the afternoons through fatigue or brain fog. I think it's really important not to just push on through in those instances and to take a break, go for a walk, or do a meditation, and then come back to it.

When I want a change of scene, I love going to a café. I write a lot, mainly articles for the media and for my LinkedIn profile, and because I'm away from the two big monitors on my desk, I find it useful for shifting into a more creative mindset.

As the business has grown, I spend more time managing people and firefighting, making it harder and harder to focus on strategic, forward-looking stuff, which I did a lot of at the beginning.

I recently started maternity leave, and I see this as a turning point for the business. For example, I've just hired a marketing director. I'm hoping that this time out will mean that I actually let go of some responsibilities and let the team run itself, so I can focus on where I can add the most value. I think that'll be as a campaigner, advocating for beans in general, to help unlock opportunities in retail.

I break for lunch at around 12:30 p.m.

I always try to cook something for lunch. I find taking that pause really positive for my well-being.

I wish I took longer, but my break is probably 20 to 40 minutes because I prefer to finish my working day earlier.

I love the creativity of seeing what we have in the fridge and going from there. The other day, I whipped up some hummus with our chickpeas, chopped up some tomatoes, onions, cucumber, and loads of herbs, cooked some chicken, and had a kind of hummus bowl.

I've always loved cooking and learned mostly by experimenting at home, reading lots of cookbooks, and working alongside chefs in my previous role. I took a monthlong cooking course when I was 18, and after that, I worked as a private chef for a bit.

If I'm having one of those days where I really don't have time, I heat up a jar of our baked beans, which are white beans in tomato sauce, and eat them on toast.

I'm on flex-time before the baby comes

Before the baby comes, I'm on flex-time. I'm off Slack, email, and team calls, and I'm not taking on any new projects, but wrapping up conversations with financial partners and things like that.

Once I've given birth, I will be fully out for probably at least two months, after which I will work on special projects that don't involve the team for a few months, so my schedule is more flexible.

One of the biggest strengths a founder can have is finding a way for the business to exist without them, so I'm feeling positive.

My team is predominantly made up of women who don't have kids, and they want me to be a role model, showing that taking time away won't affect your career.

I stop working at 6 p.m.

My brain is usually frazzled by 6 p.m. I need that step change — like that walk to the shops or cooking —so my brain isn't whirring before I go to bed.

If I'm in the flow, I might keep going, but then it's at the expense of doing yoga or having a nice dinner, and often it's not worth it.

I never have a TV dinner because I think it's so important to connect with the person you're with, my husband in my case. I do often have beans for dinner, but not always.

I really try to switch off in the evenings, and yoga and meditation are big forms of relaxation for me. I often go to yoga classes and sound baths after work. My favorite class, which I can't do at the moment because I'm too pregnant, is on the beach on Sunday morning. I go for a swim after, and it's just this incredible weekly reset.

I have a bath every night and fall asleep by 10 p.m.

About a year and a half ago, I got an app called Opal that locks me out of Instagram, email, LinkedIn, and anything like that after 9:30 p.m. It has been game-changing.

At the moment, I'm obsessed with having a bath every night. It's quite woo-woo, but I add magnesium salts and a cocktail of essential oils with different properties, whether calming or energizing. Putting that in the bath feels like you're caring for yourself.

Afterward, my husband and I get into bed and read. My favorite books are about how people exist in the modern day. It's very cliché, but probably a Sally Rooney book. I read until I fall asleep at probably 9:30 or 10 p.m., and that's my ideal evening. It probably was a bit later before I got pregnant.

On the weekends, I usually have a slow breakfast with my husband, go on a long walk, and do some kind of cooking project. Plus yoga or a swim if I can squeeze it in.

• Legal tech ❤️ NYC.
• To win the market, startups say they need to be where the law firms and corporate legal chiefs are.
• Legora and Harvey are expanding their footprints in New York, as Clio hunts for office space.

When Logan Brown left Cooley to start a legal tech firm this spring, she moved to New York City. She has begun recruiting lawyers to her venture.

"It's not that hard of a sell," Brown, 30, said on a phone call from her apartment in the Financial District. More junior lawyers want to help build the future, not watch it pass them by. For them, New York is the obvious place to be.

Legal tech skyrocketed this year as corporate clients pushed law firms to use tools that can lower costs and improve results. The change is playing out floor by floor in Manhattan office towers — a big reason why legal tech startups are increasingly based in the city.

Legora, a Swedish-born legal tech unicorn, said Tuesday it signed a two-floor lease at 838 Broadway, a newly renovated building just south of Union Square. The company, which sells enterprise software to Big Law firms including Goodwin and Cleary Gottlieb, is expanding after a recent funding round valued it at $1.8 billion.

Founded in 2023, Legora has been trading office rentals all year, starting in a coworking space and relocating twice as its need for desks increased. Its employees must be in the office five days a week.

The strategy is simple: To woo elite law firms and corporate legal chiefs, Legora needs to be where they are.

In 2024, the American Bar Association counted 187,656 lawyers in New York, the most of any state and just ahead of California's 175,883. Seven of the 20 largest US law firms are headquartered in New York City, and all of the rest maintain offices there.

"New York is the legal services capital of the world," Patrick Forquer, Legora's senior vice president of global revenue, said over Zoom. "If you want to win this market, you have to win this city."

Legal tech's office land grab

Harvey, one of Silicon Valley's hottest legal tech companies, said in October it secured a 10-year lease at One Madison Avenue in Midtown. The deal triples its New York office footprint to 97,000 square feet. Legora's new lease covers 27,238 square feet and lasts five years.

Fresh off a $500 million funding round, Vancouver legal-tech giant Clio has begun searching for office space in New York, according to a spokesperson. Spellbook, which sells tools for contract review to small and midsize law firms and corporates, is also looking for a New York pad, says CEO Scott Stevenson.

Crosby and Covenant, both newish startups that sell legal services directly, not software, are based in New York. So is Hebbia, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup serving investors and lawyers. It has 130 employees across its global offices, including a new site in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.

George Sivulka, Hebbia's cofounder and CEO, said in an email that launching the company from New York was "the only option." The proximity means "buyers make decisions faster and feedback comes quicker," Sivulka wrote.

Being steps from clients is convenient; Legora's Forquer said he rides Citi Bike to pitch meetings. The other main draw is talent. New York puts legal tech founders within reach of the lawyers they need to help build and sell their products.

For lawyers, by lawyers

Jen Berrent built her legal career in New York, first as a corporate lawyer, then as WeWork's chief legal officer. Her startup, Covenant, reviews fund documents for private market investors, work they'd typically farm out to a law firm.

Covenant isn't training its own large language models. If it were, Berrent would be in San Francisco for the engineering talent. Instead, she has built a scrappy team of Big Law attorneys who use Covenant's software, built on top of models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, to turn legal work around faster.

"If you believe that the way you're going to win in a vertical is with the expertise, then the expertise is here," Berrent said. Covenant occupies a Midtown WeWork, of course.

As investors funnel money into legal tech, hiring is picking up. Suddenly, junior lawyers have more offers than ever to trade billable hours for a shot at shaping their industry's future.

For associates running on fumes, the startup route has perks, including stock options. Harvey, which opened its first New York office in 2023, offers free daily lunch, is rolling out wellness and fertility benefits in 2026, and grants a four-week paid leave after four years of tenure.

John Nay is also vying for candidates. His company, Norm Ai, builds no-code tools for compliance and legal teams to do their work. Last week, it announced the launch of an independent law firm that will provide services directly to clients, including Blackstone.

While other startups jostle for attention with billboards and conference booths, Nay's company is taking a different tack. It recently began hosting networking events at New York City bars, as part of a recruiting push into Big Law.

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