• Fei-Fei Li, founder of World Labs, says degrees matter far less now than AI expertise.
• The Stanford computer science professor says she hires for AI tool fluency and adaptability.
• Silicon Valley companies are increasingly hiring candidates based on their AI skills.

Don't count on a college degree to land your dream job in Silicon Valley.

Increasingly, founders and tech companies are judging talent by how quickly someone can learn, adapt, and build — not on how long they spent in a lecture hall — reshaping traditional pathways into the workforce.

Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford computer science professor widely known as the "Godmother of AI," is one example of this.

In an interview on "The Tim Ferriss Show" this week, she spoke about the value of a degree when it comes to hiring for her AI startup, World Labs.

"When we interview a software engineer, I personally feel the degree they have matters less to us now," Li said.

"Now, it's more about what have you learned, what tools do you use, how quickly can you superpower yourself in using these tools — and a lot of these are AI tools," she said. "What's your mindset toward using these tools matter more to me."

Her hiring bar has become even clearer: she won't hire software engineers who resist AI.

"At this point in 2025 — hiring at World Labs — I would not hire any software engineer who does not embrace AI collaborative software tools," Li said.

It's not about automating humans out of the equation, she added — it's about identifying people who can grow as fast as the technology around them.

"If you're able to use these tools, you're able to learn. You can superpower yourself better," she said.

AI is rewriting the rules

Li's stance is part of a broader shift playing out across Silicon Valley, where more founders and even major tech firms are openly questioning the value of higher education.

Palantir's CEO, Alex Karp, has openly challenged the value of a college education, urging young entrepreneurs to skip the lecture hall and learn by doing instead — a view echoed by LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, who has said that adaptability and AI fluency now matter far more than the "fanciest degrees."

"AI makes skill sets based on years of education irrelevant," Dan Rhoton, CEO of Hopeworks, told Business Insider. Hopeworks is a tech-training nonprofit that prepares underrepresented talent for AI-enabled jobs.

After 13 years of preparing unemployed young adults ages 17 to 26 in Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia for tech careers, Rhoton said he has watched firsthand how AI is upending the value of a college degree.

"We're seeing more and more employers coming to us, saying, 'We used to require a bachelor's degree in this, but we don't understand why.'"

Instead, he said, employers now want a "value proposition," which he said any job seeker can achieve by showing an AI-generated solution to a company's specific problems.

"This is the age of: I'm someone who's going to deliver business value," Rhoton said. "Not: I have the right degree."

• Included Health has rolled out an AI-powered personal health assistant, Business Insider learned.
• The startup could be competing with tech heavyweights like Google and OpenAI.
• Included is betting it can beat ChatGPT with deeper health data and a network of human clinicians.

Included Health is rolling out a new AI tool that could pit it against Big Tech's latest health bets.

The healthcare startup has launched an AI-powered personal health assistant, Business Insider has learned exclusively. The tech draws on patients' medical claims, benefits information, and other data to offer on-demand answers to health-related questions.

Included Health is tapping into a hot area in healthcare AI, where it's competing against other health startups as well as tech heavyweights. Alphabet's Verily released its own AI-powered app in October that allows patients to connect their medical records and ask a chatbot their health-related questions. OpenAI wants to win in consumer health tech, too, and is considering building tools such as its own personal health assistant, Business Insider reported in November.

Included Health has been scaling on the premise of personalizing how patients interact with their healthcare for over a decade. The company, which sells tech to about 300 employers and health plans to help patients better navigate their health benefits, tested its AI assistant for about 18 months to ensure its accuracy in smaller pilots before making it available to its entire employer base, CEO Owen Tripp said.

"This can't be ChatGPT level of probability. It has to be precise," he said.

Tripp is optimistic about patients receiving general health guidance from LLMs like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude. Those AI tools can help patients learn more about their conditions and prepare for doctor's visits, he said. But he emphasized that Included's tech takes that guidance a step further.

"When it gets down to the business of actually taking care of oneself or taking care of somebody else, you're going to need a lot of very secure, specific data and a whole context to go solve problems, including the exact medical history of that patient," Tripp said.

Patient-facing healthcare AI sometimes walks a regulatory tightrope, especially if the tech provides personalized advice that effectively replaces the work clinicians are licensed to do. Tripp said he doubts that most large tech companies attempting to delve into medical records aggregation will want to grapple with that complexity.

"I predict, like many before them, they will pull back. It's just hard, and the juice is often not worth the squeeze for these high-profile companies," he said.

Health AI with humans in the loop

Included Health's personal health assistant, called Dot, has become its members' front door and the foundation for Included's new products, said COO Nupur Srivastava.

Included recently put Dot in front of members during open enrollment to help answer their benefits questions, Srivastava said. The AI agent can also help patients prepare for doctor's visits and send the clinician a summary of patients' past visits ahead of time.

Included Health still employs plenty of its own clinicians and care advocates that members can talk to if they prefer. Srivastava also noted that if a patient mentions the term 'suicide' in a conversation with Dot, "within a minute, someone will call you."

When asked about Big Tech and AI startups' ambitions to build personalized health AI, Tripp said that Included Health is in talks with multiple potential partners to help them achieve those goals. He didn't specify which companies it's talking to, but he suggested some AI companies are focused on acquiring personalized health data that they can anonymize and use to train models.

"But when it comes to actually delivering patient care, we're pretty confident that companies that are going to succeed will be the ones that have well-trained physicians licensed in all 50 states, delivering on a real-time platform, across mind, body, and wallet," he said.

Included's IPO delay

Included Health was supposed to go public in 2022. The startup had hired banks for an IPO push, but pulled out of its planned investor meetings when the market started to tank, Tripp told Business Insider in January.

Tripp declined to share specifics about Included's exit strategy as of November. But Included is profitable, so the company doesn't need to raise money through a public listing, he said. Included hasn't publicly fundraised since it was formed from the 2021 merger of Grand Rounds and Doctor on Demand, and the company hasn't shared its valuation.

The public markets haven't been forgiving to healthcare startups. Only two digital health companies went public this year, Hinge Health and Omada Health. And while Hinge and Omada have fared far better than most companies that listed during digital health's 2021 IPO wave, healthcare IPO hopefuls still face high standards to going public and significant volatility risks once they begin trading.

"The last few years in our space haven't been a great commercial for being a public company," Tripp said.

With so many developments in healthcare AI, however, Tripp does recognize that an IPO could create opportunities for Included Health to acquire other companies.

"I do think this is a time where there are going to be some interesting capabilities and technologies available in the market that allow us to provide even more service to our members," he said. "I do have my eyes very open to how I would use capital to execute on some of those M&A events. That part is more important to me."

• A woman gave birth in a robotaxi in San Francisco earlier this week, Waymo confirmed.
• Waymo told local media that the robotaxi safely delivered its passengers to the hospital.
• It's not the first birth recorded in a Waymo, and with the company expanding rapidly, it may not be the last.

One San Francisco robotaxi arrived at its destination with an unexpected extra passenger on Monday.

A woman in labor gave birth in the back seat of a Waymo robotaxi while traveling to the hospital, the company confirmed in a blog post on Wednesday.

"Some people just can't wait for their first Waymo ride," the company said.

A spokesperson for the Google-backed robotaxi firm told The San Francisco Standard, which first reported the news, that Waymo's remote monitoring team detected "unusual activity" in the backseat of the driverless vehicle.

Employees called 911 once they realised what was happening. But the robotaxi delivered its passengers to the hospital without needing assistance, and was subsequently removed from Waymo's fleet for cleaning.

Apparently, it's not the first time someone has given birth in a Waymo, with the company confirming to The San Francisco Standard that a similar incident previously occurred in Phoenix.

Waymo is growing up fast

Waymo has had a big year, with the company's robotaxis becoming a regular sight on San Francisco's streets, alongside expansions into new markets in Austin and Atlanta.

On Wednesday, Waymo said it had served over 14 million trips so far this year, and expected to hit 1 million rides a week by the end of 2025.

It hasn't all been smooth sailing. Last month, Waymo issued a software update to 3,067 robotaxis after reports that its vehicles were driving past stopped school buses, according to a regulatory report filed on Thursday.

Waymo is planning a major expansion next year as it faces competition from Tesla's nascent robotaxi service, which launched in Austin in June.

The robotaxi company plans to open its driverless ride-hailing service to the public in a host of new cities in 2026, including Miami and Washington, DC.

• Warren Buffett hired Todd Combs to eventually succeed him as Berkshire Hathaway's stock picker.
• Combs, one of Buffett's two investment managers and Geico's CEO, has quit to join JPMorgan.
• After years of praising Combs, Buffett's farewell announcement for him was muted.

Warren Buffett hired Todd Combs in 2010 to help, and ultimately succeed, him and Charlie Munger in managing Berkshire Hathaway's vast investment portfolio.

But their handpicked heir to the stockpickers' throne has quit to join JPMorgan. The announcement comes just as Buffett is preparing to step down as CEO after six decades in charge.

Lawrence Cunningham, the director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center and the author of several books about Berkshire, told Business Insider that Combs' exit was "certainly striking."

"My impression is that this was not an easy decision for anyone concerned," Cunningham added.

Business Insider spoke to longtime Berkshire watchers for their read on Combs' unexpected departure. We also dug through more than 10 years of Berkshire annual letters to see how Buffett's descriptions of Combs have changed over the years.

Combs and Berkshire did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

'We hit the jackpot'

Buffett has heaped praise on Combs and his other investment manager, Ted Weschler, since hiring the two hedge fund managers around 15 years ago.

Combs and Weschler had "proved to be smart, models of integrity, helpful to Berkshire in many ways beyond portfolio management, and a perfect cultural fit," Buffett wrote in his 2012 shareholder letter, two years after hiring Combs. "We hit the jackpot with these two."

"Their contributions are just beginning: Both men have Berkshire blood in their veins," he wrote the following year.

In his 2015 letter, Buffett gave a "personal thank you" to Combs for bringing Precision Castparts to his attention, paving the way for Berkshire to acquire the manufacturing giant for more than $30 billion.

Buffett also entrusted Combs and Weschler with a bigger piece of Berkshire's portfolio over time. They started off managing about $2 billion of assets each, but were jointly overseeing $34 billion by the end of 2021. Buffett hasn't provided an update on the size of their portfolios since then.

In 2020, Combs took over as CEO of Berkshire-owned Geico and successfully engineered a turnaround. Buffett shouted him out in this year's letter, saying he had "reshaped Geico in a major way" and "worked tirelessly in getting the job done," resulting in a "spectacular improvement" last year.

Steven Check, the founder and chief investor of Check Capital Management, told Business Insider that Combs' departure surprised him as he'd been "handpicked" by Buffett and had taken on the "huge responsibility" of revitalizing Geico and delivered.

A muted farewell

Buffett struck a more formal tone in the press release on Monday that broke the news of Combs' departure and other leadership changes.

He referred to his colleague of 15 years, who he once envisioned becoming Berkshire's chief investor, as "Todd A. Combs" — a sharp contrast to his use of "Marc" for Berkshire's outgoing finance chief, Marc Hamburg.

Buffett said JPMorgan had "made a good decision" in hiring Combs, but he didn't mention his personal traits, investing prowess, or other contributions to Berkshire. Buffett only praised Combs for his "many great hires at Geico and broadening its horizons."

"The rather cool sendoff in the press release implies Warren wasn't too happy about the departure," Check, a longtime Buffett watcher, said.

Greater expectations

Before taking over at Geico, Combs played a key role in setting up Haven, a healthcare joint venture between Berkshire, JPMorgan, and Amazon that was launched in 2018 but ended three years later.

He represented Berkshire on Haven's board and has sat on JPMorgan's board for the past nine years. He resigned from that post on Sunday ahead of taking up his new role at the bank in January.

Chris Bloomstran, the president of Semper Augustus Investments and a Berkshire shareholder for the past 25 years, told Business Insider that Combs' roles at Haven, JPMorgan, and Geico suggested he had a "diminished role" in managing Berkshire's portfolio.

Bloomstran also pointed out that in May, Buffett said Abel would be responsible for Berkshire's capital allocation, including its stock investments.

"Todd may have aspired to managing more or all of the portfolio, which wasn't going to happen," Bloomstran said.

He added that Combs didn't seem like a "realistic candidate" to succeed Ajit Jain as Berkshire's insurance chief, given his lack of reinsurance experience.

Abel having "final say" on how Berkshire invests its cash "may have been the impetus for Todd Combs to consider other career options," John Longo, a finance professor at Rutgers Business School and the author of "Buffett's Tips," told Business Insider.

He added that he's not concerned about Combs leaving, as Weschler is "very capable of managing the equity portfolio."

Do you work for Berkshire Hathaway and have a story to share? Get in touch with this reporter by emailing tmohamed@insider.com or messaging theron.36 on Signal

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn't the only one borrowing inspiration from his grocery list.
• Meta has reportedly codenamed its future AI frontier model "avocado."
• Between avocado, garlic, and nano banana, here are some of the best AI codenames.

It may sound like a trip through the produce aisle, but leading AI companies have something much more important on their lists.

Meta, OpenAI, and Google have all relied on food-related names for their sometimes secretive plans for future AI models. Thinking with your stomach is nothing new for Silicon Valley, just look at the assortment of desserts Android assembled over the years before Google had its fill.

Here is a look at the mouthwatering and just plain goofy names AI and tech companies are using

Meta: Avocado

Meta has codenamed its future AI frontier model "avocado," per a CNBC report. Guac usually costs extra, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's AI pivot has not come cheap. Meta plans to spend more than $70 billion this year on AI infrastructure, which is on top of $14 billion investment Meta made in Scale AI and to poach its founder, Alexandr Wang.

OpenAI: Garlic

OpenAI has hit a rough patch, feeling the heat from Google's advances and stumbling with a series of missteps. So perhaps it was time to spice things up. The ChatGPT maker has codenamed its new large language model "garlic," according to The Information. Garlic is separate from another LLM OpenAI is developing, codenamed "Shallotpeat."

Google: Nano Banana

Google appears to have loved a codename so much that it made it public. Google's AI image generator in Gemini is named Nano Banana Pro, which it released on November 20. Before then, Google had internally called the model nano-banana, though they had not publicly disclosed their zany choice.

Past codenames

The clearance section offers a wide selection of great names. OpenAI might have one of the best all-time codenames with "strawberry," which it used to refer to its o1 model. The name was likely a play on the viral struggle of AI models to correctly identify the number of Rs in the fruit. Before Strawberry, OpenAI had a secretive project named Q*.

Earlier this year, Elon Musk's xAI had a sweet tooth when it codenamed an early testing version of Grok-3 "chocolate."

Mistral AI, the France-based startup, went in a completely opposite direction with "Jaguar," its codename for a testing model.

And Anthropic named its family of models Opus, Sonnett, and Hakiu, a trio of three different types of compositions.

• Employers are increasingly using technology to monitor workers' activity — and even their location.
• Bosses have more power than a few years ago, so workers might have a harder time pushing back.
• Advances in workplace surveillance tech raise privacy and ethical concerns for workers.

Your boss has never had more ways to peer over your shoulder.

It's not new for bosses to watch workers, of course — especially on corporate devices. But technology updates that let employers better monitor whether you're in the office, or view texts on employer-owned devices, are giving employers even more control.

Employer surveillance has grown because of the rise of remote work, and because of a proliferation of tools that allow for monitoring, a recent report from the US Government Accountability Office found.

Now, not only has tech improved, say workplace observers, so has the power of many employers over their workers.

Discussions over worker monitoring are "one of the pieces on the chessboard" in negotiations between employers and employees, said Ben Zhao, a computer science professor at the University of Chicago.

It's a reversal of a pandemic-era power shift that briefly favored workers on issues such as more flexible hours or remote work. As the job market cools, bosses monitoring workers' logins more closely, for example, is a way to "get some of that power back," he said.

Zhao, who has focused on information security and privacy issues for several decades, said employers also realize that workers have many ways to go outside a company's walls — from unsanctioned AI tools to online chat platforms — to find and share information. That can create security and legal headaches.

Some back-and-forth between workers and employers over what information bosses have access to is normal, he said, but there's a risk when it's not disclosed.

What employers can track

New technology can give employers more opportunities to monitor employee activities, if they so choose. A recent update at Google, for instance, adds to the capabilities that companies have for archiving text messages on employer-owned Android phones.

At Microsoft, a coming change to its Teams messaging tool will automatically update your work location when you connect to your employer's WiFi.

With both features, employers would have to switch on those options.

A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that the Android update is an optional feature for work phones in "regulated industries" where employers spell out that they're required to archive communications.

"This update simply allows organizations to support modern messaging — giving employees messaging benefits like high-quality media sharing and typing indicators — while maintaining the same compliance standards that already apply to SMS messaging," the spokesperson wrote.

The forthcoming Microsoft feature, which allows Teams to identify which company building workers are in based on their WiFi connection, is "intended to help employees coordinate in-person work more smoothly with their teams," a spokesperson said in an email to Business Insider.

"It is not a monitoring tool and we do not support employee surveillance in any way," the spokesperson wrote.

Companies are stepping up monitoring

According to the US Government Accountability Office, workers tend to be in favor of monitoring if it's intended to protect their safety, and often are opposed if it's intended to track productivity.

Earlier this year, AT&T reduced the use of an attendance-tracking system that had frustrated some employees due to inaccuracies in tallying when people were in the office.

The shift highlights tensions that can emerge in the workplace over tracking efforts.

"Any workplace surveillance should have strict limitations on its use," said William Budington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group advocating for digital rights. That might include not using the technology outside the workplace or beyond work hours, he said.

Another risk, Budington said, is that workers can easily forget they're carrying a company-issued device. Workers might text a friend, check medical information, or go on social media — even though employers could have full access to communications and location data.

It's not, Budington said, "a scary ankle monitor that you are forced to wear." Yet it can amount to the same thing if workers carry their company phone with them outside the office, he said.

When it's your device

The most legally and ethically fraught issue isn't what employers can do with the phones and laptops they hand workers; it's what bosses might extract from personal equipment that workers use for their jobs.

One benefit of improved technology is that IT departments can often remove work-related information from a worker's personal phone without wiping the entire device as they might have been forced to in the past, said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, VP of HR services and associate general counsel at Engage PEO, which provides HR services.

She said that while employers often have policies for devices that access their networks, intercepting workers' personal information can cause hassles for employers.

"A lot of companies want to do the right thing," Matsis-McCready said. "They don't want to know all this information either, because if they have it, then they have to keep it safe."

With company-owned devices, employers have access to any personal information you put into them, she said.

Where it gets tricky, Matsis-McCready said, is when an employer is tracking a personal device and a worker might be talking with a headhunter, going on a personal trip, or heading to a doctor's appointment.

Ultimately, she said, workers who have questions about what their employers might be monitoring should ask.

"I don't think a person should ever feel powerless," Matsis-McCready said.

Do you have a story to share about your workplace? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.

• Jillian Bowman, 52, stopped dyeing her gray hair while searching for a full-time job.
• Bowman said a recruiter told her she reminded her of her mom, and another said she was too mature for a role.
• She said companies should value experience and adaptability in candidates with gray hair.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jillian Bowman, a 52-year-old living outside Toronto. Her identity has been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I started dyeing my hair when I went gray at the age of 17.

Then the pandemic happened and I did what everybody did: I let my hair go gray. It was a big scary thing, but I was so proud to have done the work — not the hair maintenance work — but the actual self-work to be brave enough to do it.

I thought when I had to go back in public again, I would go to the hairdresser and get it done. But I loved the way it looked, so I just let it go.

Overnight, though, I noticed a change in how I was treated.

As soon as I started showing up with gray hair, people were kinder to me — like, old-lady kinder. Even when I go out in public or go shopping, people are nicer to me.

But in an interview, people were dismissive. I don't get asked the questions that someone would ask if they were seriously looking to hire someone. I found myself slowing down in interviews to keep pace because they asked questions about things from 10 years ago, rather than asking about AI architecture and agents.

My background is eclectic, but it's always followed the same thread of marketing, business growth, and change management. I've been doing contract work since 2014, and I've enjoyed working for myself. However, over the last three years, I've been seeking a more stable, full-time position.

After I stopped dyeing my hair, I pretty much gave up trying to get a job from other people. I would love to have a full-time job, but I don't want to dye my hair just to get through the interview process.

I've been told I'm too 'mature'

Around 2021, I did my first video interview after starting to gray.

It was for a CMO role, and the initial intake interview was done by a junior recruiter. She didn't ask me anything about marketing, just about the brands on my résumé from 10 years ago. As she was winding down the interview, I asked her, "Why didn't you ask me any questions about digital marketing or anything that would be relevant to the job?"

She said, "You remind me a lot of my mom, and she can't even use her cellphone. I didn't want to ask you a question that you couldn't answer and embarrass you."

Usually someone in a recruiter position isn't going to say that, but I've received a lot of hair color-adjacent comments from friends, like have you considered using a photo on your LinkedIn from a few years ago? I've also faced other feedback from recruiters that carries a similar tone.

I was once told that my maturity wasn't a fit for the team that I would be working with. It was for a CMO role. Maybe there's an assumption that I wouldn't be able to work for someone younger than me, but I have zero problems with that.

Recently, I had an interview where they told me I ticked all of their boxes. Then they said someone on the team wanted to have a quick chat to go over the client I'd be working with. He came on the video and decided he didn't need to go over any of the details, but started talking me out of the opportunity.

The call was over in five minutes, and I got a message the next day saying they went with another candidate.

I knew gray hair would be a roadblock

I'm not blaming the fact that I don't have a job on ageism, but I am saying that I have been met with ageism a very large percentage of the time that I've thrown my hat in the ring.

I knew that gray hair would be a roadblock. It's why I initially hesitated to change my LinkedIn profile picture. Still, to think that showing up as myself is what's holding me back is a very rude awakening.

A lot of companies need the sort of leadership and mentorship that comes with decades of going through cycles of change, and adapting to digital advancement. As a Gen X, my career started before email. I remember when the fax machine was out.

People shouldn't look at Gen X and think that they can't adapt to new tech. Trust me, we can do new tech developments.

• Walmart has maintained its stance on avoiding NFC-based payments, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• Other major retailers have increasingly accepted the tech as the norm.
• Walmart, meanwhile, offers its own contactless payment options that give it some key advantages.

You can find almost anything in a Walmart Supercenter, but there's one thing you won't see: a tap-to-pay option at checkout.

The retail giant has maintained its longstanding position of avoiding NFC-based payments, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, as well as certain contactless credit cards, despite other major retailers increasingly accepting the technology.

But that's not to say there aren't any contactless payment options for shoppers to use.

Walmart has previously pointed to its Walmart Pay app, its own touchless payment option, as well as the Scan and Go feature within its app that lets Walmart Plus and Sam's Club members skip the checkout lane, as convenient alternatives to NFC payments.

The strategy has left no shortage of customers confused over the years when they've tried to whip out their iPhone to pay at checkout — even YouTuber MrBeast was flummoxed by the lack of a tap option.

"Younger consumers in particular are so used to using Apple Pay and tap-to-pay with their phones that they're coming to expect it," EMARKETER principal retail analyst Sky Canaves told Business Insider. (EMARKETER is owned by Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company.)

More and more, shoppers are frustrated when a retailer doesn't have a digital payment option for situations when they've left their cash or cards behind, she said.

However, social media reactions aside, there are a few reasons this approach aligns with Walmart's broader retail strategy.

For one thing, while tap-to-pay doesn't incur additional fees beyond the standard processing charges, there is a cost to upgrading the hardware to accept NFC-based transactions. That can add up fast when a company has more than 5,200 clubs and stores in the US, with dozens of payment terminals per location.

GlobalData retail analyst Neil Saunders also said Walmart doesn't typically do things that add cost without delivering a significant benefit for customers.

If the company is providing a good contactless alternative through its own apps, it doesn't really need to offer NFC-based payments, Saunders said.

But Canaves said that what may have started as a cost-savings decision has since evolved into a revenue-driving opportunity.

For instance, digital devices like Apple Pay often anonymize credit card numbers in a way that can make it harder for retailers to link purchases with a particular shopper.

That means there's a larger advantage for Walmart to prefer its own tools: data.

When Walmart shoppers use its in-house apps and credit cards to complete purchases, it helps the company build a more detailed picture of their habits and trends than it would otherwise have.

That's not unique to Walmart, of course — Amazon, Target, Costco, and almost every other retailer are gathering intel about their shoppers through apps, credit cards, and memberships as well.

It's possible that Walmart could change its mind in the future, but for now, the company seems to be doing just fine by bucking the trend.

• Damilola Olaleye began building an Amazon reselling business during her maternity leave in 2023.
• She scaled up using data-driven strategies and generated $560,000 in revenue in 2024.
• Olaleye now diversifies sales across other platforms and is on track for a seven-figure revenue year.

In August 2023, I was on maternity leave with my second child and dreading returning to my software engineering job at a large tech company. I knew other people were burning out, too, but it still surprised me when it happened to me.

I had spent years building my career, yet I couldn't ignore the burnout. I wanted a different rhythm to my days, and a path that didn't put a ceiling on my earnings.

My parents flew in from Nigeria to help with the baby. That gift of time gave me enough mental bandwidth to explore plan B.

My husband and I owned short-, mid-, and long-term rentals, but the post-COVID-19 interest rate environment had squeezed our cash flow. I needed a business with healthier margins, fast turns, and room to scale.

I was targeting a replacement for my $120,000 W-2 income, not a cute little side hustle.

The nudge that changed everything

Opeoluwa Fatunmbi, a senior business analytics engineer in Nigeria and a business mentor of mine, told me about Amazon's Fulfilled by Amazon program, also called FBA, which he'd heard about and thought could be a good fit for me.

It checked every box in my head: scalable operations, the ability to start lean, and a marketplace where data matters as much as hustle.

The first $200 and the power of Q4

I started small while still on maternity leave. My first shipment to FBA was just 12 bottles of sunscreen, worth about $200. I started in late summer, just ahead of the retail industry's busiest stretch.

If you sell on Amazon, the fourth quarter puts your systems to the test and rewards good decisions. I registered an LLC, opened a business checking account, and spent mornings sourcing products from Nike Factory Stores, Walmart, Ross, Ollie's, and T.J. Maxx. This is retail arbitrage in practice: find discounted products, verify that Amazon allows you to sell them, run the numbers, and ship them in.

My phone was my best employee. Using the Amazon Seller app, I scanned items to confirm brand and category approvals, then checked the expected selling price and fees. As my account gained history, Amazon unlocked more categories and brands. Those quiet unlocks felt like promotions.

Fueling growth without draining savings

Within the first five months, I did $60,000 in sales on roughly $20,000 of my own capital. Since my software engineering job was fully remote, it provided me with some flexibility. For a little over a year, I juggled that full-time role and my Amazon business on the side.

I woke up around 4 a.m. to scout online arbitrage deals and prepped FBM orders so my husband could drop them off at the UPS store on his way to work. In the evenings, I either made discount purchases online or went in-store to do retail arbitrage. I used 0% APR business credit cards tied to my new business account.

Since I still had a well-paying W-2 job, I easily got approved to open four accounts, with a combined limit of about $60,000. That buffer allowed me to buy deeper on winners and build consistent in-stock positions.

Build the machine early

I contracted with a prep center that was familiar with Amazon's packaging and labeling rules and could ship directly to Amazon's fulfillment centers. That removed a bottleneck without hiring a full warehouse team.

I also hired a full-time virtual assistant overseas to perform tasks similar to those I handled in stores, but online. He wasn't guessing. He had a sourcing checklist, a margin target, and a daily cadence.

Later, I added a second full-time VA to chase brand-direct opportunities for exclusivity and to reduce exposure to intellectual property flags. We routed most online purchases to a prep center in Delaware, which helped our margins by avoiding sales tax.

The layoff that pushed me all in

A curveball arrived in November 2024 when my team was laid off. I hadn't planned to leave tech yet, but the layoff forced me to make the decision. I had a five-month severance package, and the timing coincided perfectly with Black Friday and the holiday season.

I leaned into it and bought aggressively on the best discounts I had seen all year. By the end of 2024, my Amazon store generated about $560,000 in sales with a 20% average profit margin. Those numbers felt both surreal and completely earned.

I expanded my product offerings

I started out with beauty products, then moved into apparel and shoes from brands like Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and Under Armour because the heavy outlet and clearance discounts gave me much higher profit margins and faster sales.

At one point, shoes and clothing accounted for about 70% of my revenue, but the high return rates and the risk that Amazon could suddenly restrict those brands prompted me to diversify. Now, most of my sales come from toys, board and card games, shelf-stable groceries, and everyday beauty staples, such as body wash, body oil, shampoo, and supplements.

I've diversified channels, adding Walmart, TikTok Shop, and eBay. Amazon still accounts for roughly 90% of my revenue, but the other channels protect my pipeline and sharpen my pricing instincts.

Tools that turn guesswork into decisions

Amazon is emotional if you let it be. I do my best to keep it analytical.

I rely on Seller Central for approvals and profitability estimates, but I always go deeper with Keepa to study historical price trends, the number of competing sellers, and the buy box behavior over time.

I use Aura (GoAura) as my repricer, so my listings adjust automatically to stay buy-box competitive without breaking my minimum margins.

I use Sellerboard for P&L, fee visibility, and error catching. It provides me with the numbers I need for tax season and day-to-day decision-making.

Returns happen. Sometimes the buyer damages the item and sends it back anyway. Early on, that used to rattle me. Now I treat it like the weather.

What I would tell my earlier self

If I could talk to the August 2023 version of me holding that first $200 shipment, I would say three things.

1. First, start lean but act like a real business from day one. The LLC, business banking, a business website, and a clear operating rhythm let you scale without chaos. A clean foundation also matters when you interact with banks, vendors, and, eventually, brands for direct relationships.
2. Second, buy your time back quickly. A great prep center and a reliable VA are force multipliers. They protect your energy and give you the capacity to think, plan, and negotiate.
3. Third, respect the data. Great products often have boring charts. Keepa, your repricer, and your P&L tools will keep you honest. If the data indicates that a product is noisy or marginally profitable, let it go.

The road to seven figures

I pay myself $3,200 a month, about half of my old net paycheck, while reinvesting the rest to scale. Now, in the fourth quarter of 2025, I'm pacing to reach $1 million in sales by the end of the year.

The growth is not magic. It's the product of constant, small improvements and a willingness to pull the right levers at the right time.

This is the best job I've ever had

People ask if I miss my old title. The honest answer is no. I miss some colleagues and the rhythm of shipping software, but I don't miss asking permission to grow.

This business has given me flexibility, upside, and a sense of direct cause and effect. When I make a good decision, I can see it in my dashboard the very next week. When I make a mistake, I can fix it just as quickly.

I would make the same choice again.

• Australia's social media ban for children under 16 took effect this week.
• Australian lawmakers say the ban will help protect young children from harm on social media.
• A group of US lawmakers introduced a similar bill earlier this year.

A law in Australia banning children under 16 from creating social media accounts took effect this week. It was the latest move in a growing global effort to protect young people from the harmful effects of social media.

A group of American senators is hoping the US will do the same.

"Australia is stepping up to protect kids from the addictive and harmful content being constantly fed to them on social media. It's now time for Congress to do the same and pass the Kids Off Social Media Act," Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a Democrat, said in a statement to Business Insider.

Australia's ban, which was first approved in 2024, requires social media apps like TikTok, Instagram, X, Snapchat, YouTube, and others to find ways to prevent young Australian children and teenagers from opening accounts.

"The onus will be on social media companies to ensure no child under 16 is on their platforms. If they have not taken reasonable steps to remove them, they will have broken Australian law and be subject to substantial fines," Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote in an op-ed in a local newspaper on Sunday. "Social media companies have a social responsibility. That responsibility starts with the protection of Australian children."

Lawmakers in Norway and Denmark have also proposed laws that would bar social media platforms from offering services to children under 15. In Malaysia, a ban on children under 16 creating social media accounts will take effect in 2026.

These kinds of preventive measures come on the heels of recent research showing social media can negatively impact a child's mental health, resulting in depression, anxiety, addiction, or other concerning behaviors.

The World Health Organization surveyed nearly 280,000 young teens across 44 countries in 2024 and reported that 11% of respondents showed "signs of problematic social media behaviour, struggling to control their use and experiencing negative consequences." That same year, former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy compared the addictiveness of social media to cigarettes and argued the apps should come with a warning to combat a mental health "emergency."

Albanese said the ban in Australia will help parents have conversations with their children about the realities of using social media and combat peer pressure. "This will be one of the ­biggest social and cultural changes our nation has faced," he wrote in the op-ed.

The US Senate introduces the Kids Off Social Media Act

The US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee introduced the Kids Off Social Media Act earlier this year. A version of the bill was first introduced in 2024, but it did not advance.

The bill, sponsored by a bipartisan group of senators, would bar social media platforms from allowing children under 13 years old to create or maintain accounts. It would also prohibit companies from using algorithms to target children under 17.

Schatz, along with his Senate colleagues Ted Cruz of Texas, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and Katie Britt of Alabama, authored the bill.

"Legislation like the Kids Off Social Media Act takes tangible steps to rein in Big Tech and help save children's lives," Britt told Business Insider in a statement. "The grip these companies have on Congress and our lack of action is inexcusable."

The bill will be debated before a vote in the Senate. If it passes, the bill will also have to go through the House of Representatives and ultimately be signed by the president.

In the meantime, American legislators have also taken legal action against social media companies, including Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. In 2023, 33 US states filed a lawsuit accusing the company of knowingly creating addictive social media features that can be harmful to children.

This October, New York City filed a lawsuit against Meta, Alphabet, Snap, and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, accusing the companies of creating a "youth mental health crisis."

"Social media use by teens has recently been implicated in alarming increases in dangerous and even deadly off-campus activity in New York City," the lawsuit says.

Almost 20 states have also enacted "bell-to-bell" cellphone bans for children in school. And some US states now require age verification and parental consent for teens to open a social media account.

In his statement to Business Insider, Schatz said there's "no good reason for an 8- or 9-year-old to be on Instagram or TikTok. And until companies are mandated by law to enforce some basic rules and stop profiting off of children, they will continue padding their bottom lines."