Technology

Twitter has brought on its first-ever global director of culture and community, God-is Rivera. As global director of culture and community, Rivera will report to GlobalHead of Culture, Engagement and ExperientialNola Weinstein. Rivera previously led internal diversity and inclusion efforts at VMLY-R, a digital and creative agency.

&As a black woman who has worked in industries in which I have been underrepresented, I feel a great responsibility to amplify and support diverse communities, and they exist in full force on Twitter,& Rivera said in a statement. &The team has shown a passion to serve and spotlight their most active users and I am honored to step into this new role as a part of that commitment.&

For context, 26 percent of U.S. adults who identify as black use Twitter, while 24 percent of white-identified adults and 20 percent of Latinx-identified adults in the U.S. use Twitter,according to a March 2018 survey from Pew Research Center.

At Twitter, the plan is for Rivera to &better serve and engage communities& on Twitter through the companybrand marketing, campaigns, events and other experiences. Internally, Rivera will be tasked with ensuring Twittercampaigns and programs are inclusive and &reflective of the communities we serve,& according to Twitterpress release. Externally, Rivera will be responsible for developing relationships and programs with content creators, community leaders, brands and more — similar to the one with HBOInsecure.

Herethe internal note Weinstein sent to Twitter employees earlier today:

Team,

I am so excited to welcome @GodisRivera to the team as Twitternew Global Director of Culture - Community. She captivated us at #OneTeam with her enlightening presentation on #BlackTwitter and we are thrilled that she will now be bringing her passion and perspective inside.

In this newly created role, God-is will help lead our efforts to better serve and engage the powerful voices and global communities who take to Twitter to share, discover and discuss what matters to them. This will come to life through Twitterbrand efforts, campaigns, events and experiences. She will help ensure that our programs are connective, inclusive and reflective of the communities we serve. You can imagine more efforts that engage and excite our communities like #HereWeAre, #NBATwitter, thoughtful tweetups, etc.

God-is& deep expertise in marketing and social strategy, cultural understanding and ability to elevate and connect communities makes for a rare and incredibly powerful combination. She was previously Director, Inclusion and Cultural Resonance at VMLY-R, where she led internal diversity efforts to fuse the importance of internal culture and representation to creative work outputs. In 2018, God-is was named an Ad Age &Woman to Watch& and Adweek &Disruptor& for continuing to fight for representation and equity in the advertising industry. She currently resides in New York, NY with her husband and daughter.

On a personal note, I have had the pleasure of spending time with God-is at #HereWeAre, #Influence, and #OneTeam and her energy, passion and positivity are infectious. I know her presence will make a difference and am excited by all that the culture - experiential team will create together.

God-is will start on November 12th and will be based in NYC reporting to me.

Please join me in welcoming her to the flock!

Tesla said Friday in a regulatory filing that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice are investigating projections made last year about Model 3 production rates. The SEC has issued subpoenas for information related to Model 3 production estimates. The DOJ, which is running a separate investigation over Model 3 production targets, has stopped short of taking that action.

The information contained in Tesla10Q filing backs up an October 26 article by The Wall Street Journal that reported the FBI was investigating whether the company misstated information about Model 3 production and misled investors. The FBI is the investigating arm of the DOJ.

Tesla issued a statement at the time of the article, acknowledging that it hadreceived a voluntary request for documents from the Department of Justice about its public guidance for the Model 3 ramp. &We were cooperative in responding to it,& the statement issued last week said. &We have not received a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process, and there have been no additional document requests about this from the Department of Justice for months.&

This latest filing provides further confirmation and clarifies the extent of the investigations. Italso the first time Tesla has said that the SEC has issued subpoenas to the company for information about the Model 3 production.

Herethe whole nugget in the SEC filing:

We receive requests for information from regulators and governmental authorities, such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the SEC, the Department of Justice (&DOJ&) and various state agencies. We routinely cooperate with such regulatory and governmental requests.

In particular, the SEC has issued subpoenas to Tesla in connection with (a) Mr. Muskprior statement that he was considering taking Tesla private and (b) certain projections that we made for Model 3 production rates during 2017 and other public statements relating to Model 3 production. The DOJ has also asked us to voluntarily provide it with information about each of these matters and is investigating. Aside from the settlement with the SEC relating to Mr. Muskstatement that he was considering taking Tesla private, there have not been any developments in these matters that we deem to be material, and to our knowledge no government agency in any ongoing investigation has concluded that any wrongdoing occurred. As is our normal practice, we have been cooperating and will continue to cooperate with government authorities. We cannot predict the outcome or impact of any ongoing matters. Should the government decide to pursue an enforcement action, there exists the possibility of a material adverse impact on our business, results of operation, prospects, cash flows, and financial position.

We are also subject to various other legal proceedings and claims that arise from the normal course of business activities. If an unfavorable ruling or development were to occur, there exists the possibility of a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, prospects, cash flows, financial position and brand.

This didn&t stop CEO Elon Musk from blasting the WSJ for the report during a lengthy podcast interview released Friday with RecodeKara Swisher.

&The amount of untruthful stuff that is written is unbelievable. Takethat Wall Street Journal front-page articleabout, like, ‘The FBI is closing in.& That is utterly false. Thatabsurd. To print such a falsehood on the front page of a major newspaper is outrageous. Like, why are they even journalists They&re terrible. Terrible people.&

Tesla recently reached a settlement with the SEC, which began with a now infamous &funding secured& tweet by Musk about taking the electric automaker private.A federal judge approved October 16Musksettlementwith the SEC over securities fraud allegations.The SEC alleged in a complaint filed in September that Musklied when he tweeted on August 7 that he had &funding secured& for a private takeover of the company at $420 per share.

As an MBA student at the University of ChicagoBooth school, Kathleen Wilson was struck with an idea while looking at businesses that provided daily housekeeping in one of her classes. Given the density and physical structure of many apartment buildings, she wondered why a housekeeper couldn&t similarly push a cart down the hall and spend an hour or less in each unit.

To test out her theory, Wilson and a classmate started cleaning the apartments of friends, spending 30 minutes to an hour at a time and trying to establish a reasonable price point for the work. Armed with enough data, Wilson then landed at a local real estate tech accelerator, formed her company, and locked down her first property management company client, Waterton —and her efforts have been gaining momentum since.

In fact, her 20-month-old startup,The Minte, which now employs roughly 60 people, is today announcing that it has raised $2.25 million in a round that brings the companytotal seed funding to $4.7 million. Dundee Venture Capital led this newest round; other investors in the company include MATH Venture Partners, RevolutionRise of the Rest Seed Fund, Firebrand Ventures, Blue Note Ventures and numerous angel investors. We had a quick chat with Wilson earlier this week to learn more.

TC: Can you tell us a bit more about your customers Are they all property management companies like Waterton

KW: We only provide service to apartments and condos, so our clients are currently property management companies such as Greystar, Bozzuto, Lincoln Property Company and CA Ventures.We have just under 70 properties in Chicago, another 20 in D.C. and we&ve been launching six to 10 new properties in each market each month.

TC: The Minte promises to make a housekeeper available to a property full-time, correct

KW: Yes. A housekeeper is located on site for residents to book cleaning services with them, so that residents are provided with consistency and trust. To be clear, our housekeepers are full-time Minte employees with health benefits and paid time off. We keep our housekeeping cart and supplies at each property, and therea place for housekeepers to go if they have a bit of downtime, although thatrare.

We do have somehousekeepers who split their time between properties, either if the property is smaller or if we&re still in the first couple months of service and still building demand.

TC: What makes the company think people would prefer to work with The Minte versus housekeepers they know These are trust-heavy relationships, a feature that other housecleaning startups have overlooked to their detriment.

KW:Exactly. We bring the personal trust by having the same housekeeper assigned to the property, which allows the housekeeper to get to know the residents, and we bring the corporate side of trust by having insurance, QA by managers and the ability to send a backup housekeeper if someone is out sick. We also have top-notch, live customer service if there is ever an issue.

TC: What does your quality assurance process involve

KW: Itamulti-tier process. First, we&ve implemented an eight-day training program for all new housekeepers. Second, housekeepers and housekeeping managers with whom we work almost always have hotel backgrounds, having worked at the Waldorf Astoria, The Conrad and Sofitel, to name a few. Third, housekeeping managers do random spot checks of service. And fourth, users can rate and comment on every service, which we review in real time. Itcompany policy to reach out to the resident any time something is less than four stars.

Also worth mentioning: ourproducts are eco-friendly, P-G products, so thereno compromise on the quality of our supplies.

TC: How do clients pay, and how much do they pay Is this a subscription model

KW: They can pay à la carte — paying $30 for a hotel-style service, $90 for a deep clean for a one-bedroom apartment, for example — but over half of our cleans are residents who are on a recurring package. For customers on a package, they can customize how many deep cleans and/or hotel-style cleans they have every four weeks, including which days those cleans occur.

TC: The home services model is more prone to leakage, meaning people form relationships and stop using the platform. Is this a concern

KW:Our employees are full-time, so this is essentially a non-issue for us. With our housekeepers on our schedule throughout the entire week, itnot feasible for someone to poach them.

Potentially a resident could do this on a weekend, but in our experience, people want housekeepers to come when they are not home. Furthermore, the property manager would tell us if our housekeeper was getting keys outside of their Minte schedule.

TC: And how are you marketing the company

KW: Through our partnership with the property managers, primarily.

TC: How will you use your new funding

KW: We&ll continue to enhance our tech. Our app is out this week, and we&re rolling out our smart home integration in the coming months. We&re making our button — which is physical hardware that goes on the wall inside each unit — more readily available. We&ll also expand more into condos and corporate housing and target our third city in early 2019.