Posts by Melody Hahm

How a member of the Talking Heads is betting on the next crop of rockstars

What happens when a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member and a financial advisor join forces? We’re about to find out.

On Tuesday, Talking Heads’ guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison and former Morgan Stanley advisor Brian Smith are launching an equity crowdfunding platform called RedCrow .

The concept of crowdfunding likely isn’t new to you. You’ve heard of Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform where you can contribute $19 for a fidget cube or $1 to help a hungry fellow make potato salad .

But as the name suggests , equity crowdfunding allows individuals to get in on the ground floor of early stage companies — offering a piece of the private company pie to average investors.

For Harrison, the startup frenzy we’re experiencing now is comparable to the music culture of the ‘70s and ‘80s that he experienced firsthand.

“We tend to look for rockstars within health care,” Smith told Yahoo Finance.

Read more:

How this 27-year-old engineer plans to democratize robotics

Marita Cheng was always good at math and science. But she fell in love with engineering at the ripe young age of 12 when she attended a four-day camp in her hometown of Melbourne, Australia.

“I built robots out of Lego pieces. I shot water rockets into the sky. I got to build little catapults that flung ping pong balls across the room,” she recalled. “I learned that with engineering, you could travel the world, and you could make an impact to not just one person but to millions of people at a time.”

She added: “I thought, ‘That sounds like a really rewarding career, one where you can use your skills and impact so many people.’”

So at 19 years old, Cheng founded Robogals with three friends while attending the University of Melbourne, as a project that would cultivate these interests among young girls. Starting with humble ambitions to operate in just Australia, she quickly discovered pent-up demand around the world from young women who wanted to learn more about engineering.

Just like she was first introduced to the engineering opportunities while she was still young, she wanted to pay it forward to other young girls.

 

 

2 kinds of homebuyers are driving a surge in home sales

New US single-family home sales rose unexpectedly in September, and we’re specifically seeing a rebound from two kinds of buyers: first-timers and single women.

The number of first-time buyers increased to its highest level since 2013. The typical first-time homebuyer is in the early 30s and is more likely to buy in an urban environment, which is consistent with young professionals’ general aversion to suburbs, says Lawrence Yun, the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

They’re also looking for smaller size homes and do get some assistance from family members with down payments — 25% of first-time buyers indicated they have received help from their families.

According to NAR’s annual profile of homebuyers and sellers, published on Monday , 17% of first-time homebuyers are single women. That’s more than double the rates for single men.

How Trump’s ‘locker room talk’ is taking over Halloween

If you’re looking to spice up your presidential costume, Spirit Halloween has a few ideas. Trumpkin. Trump taco. Trump in the locker room. Hillary jailbird.

“We try to react as quickly as we can,” Mike Dykas, district manager at Spirit , told Yahoo Finance. By putting together a visual rendering of Trump with a taco outfit or Hillary with an orange prison jumpsuit, Dykas says he’s giving customers inspiration for punny and relevant costumes.

And consumers are looking to spend on the holiday. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans are expected to spend an all-time high of $8.4 billion on Halloween this year. That comes out to $82.93 per person (compared to $74.34 spent last year).

Besides polarizing political getups, what else is trending?

“We couldn’t keep them in stock earlier this year and we just got another assortment of those,” he said.

“We’ve gone away from having the traditional skirts and shorts for girls’ costumes. We saw some demand and requests for it last year so this is new to us this year,” said Dykas.

Amazon is failing to steal Costco's customers

We get it. Amazon (AMZN) is an e-commerce behemoth, tackling every category, from consumer products to entertainment (“Transparent,” anyone?). But despite its apparent monopoly on our shopping dollars, there’s still one major player that can’t be overlooked — Costco (COST).

Memberships at the two companies are not mutually exclusive. Actually, of the 23% who are Costco members, 45% are Amazon Prime members as well, according to a new Morgan Stanley survey. And, of the 33% surveyed who are Prime members, 32% are also Costco members. Of the 14% of the survey respondents who shop at both, only 8% plan to shift their spending away from Costco towards Amazon.

Because Costco’s presence is entirely offline and largely suburban, you may think that the chain wouldn’t be able to lure in the younger customer. However, Morgan Stanley points out that Costco members are far younger than perceived — 49 years old (the average Prime member is 44.5).

Here are the stores that are closed — and those still open — on Thanksgiving

Here are the stores that are closed — and those still open — on Thanksgiving

You might be relieved (or devastated) to hear that your Thanksgiving gluttony may end with a tryptophan hangover instead of a mad dash to some of your favorite stores.

Fifty-two retailers nationwide have confirmed that they will be closed on the holiday, according to BestBlackFriday.com. GameStop ( GME ),  Nordstrom ( JWN ) and T.J. Maxx ( TJX ) are among the growing list of holiday hot spots that will shutter their doors on Turkey Day. Of course, the Internet will be open for business, and several retailers are pushing online “doorbusters.”

Co-founder of BestBlackFriday.com Phil Dengler spoke to nearly 50 retailers and found that at least 50% of them explicitly said they are closing so their “employees and customers can enjoy Thanksgiving with their friends and families.”

“Many stores can get away with closing on Thanksgiving, but the major ones do not believe that they can,” said Dengler.

Media mogul Barry Diller calls Durst real estate dynasty a 'killing machine'

Media mogul Barry Diller has taken on an ambitious $200 million project to build a park, called Pier 55, along the Hudson River. There’s just one thing standing in his way: He’s being sued by the City Club of New York, a civic group founded in 1892.

“This group of three people sued us,” Diller said in the closing panel of Vanity Fair‘s New Establishment Summit on Thursday.

In the beginning, Diller said, they sued him for odd things,  like for impeding light from reaching a special fish in the Hudson.  Diller said he was perplexed by these strange lawsuits until he found out who was behind the City Club of New York.

On Thursday, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter tried to correct Diller when he described the entire clan as a killing machine. “No, that’s one member — Robert Durst,” Carter said.

“He should have killed his brother,” retorted Diller.

In an attempt to clear the air, Diller said he set up a meeting with Durst and demanded an explanation.

Read more:

Jeff Bezos dishes on WaPo’s 'swashbuckling' culture

Jeff Bezos is known for his visionary thinking, as well as his obsession with space and making Amazon (AMZN) the ultimate destination for the consumer. And, though he is not a journalist, he decided to explore another passion — the news business.

Bezos purchased The Washington Post in the summer of 2013 for $250 million. Speaking at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit on Thursday , he said buying the paper was a painless process, mostly because he wasn’t a difficult customer.

“That is not a myth [that I purchased the newspaper on the spot]. I did zero due diligence and I did not negotiate. I accepted the asking price,” he said.

Last year, more people visited The Post’s website than The New York Times’ in the month of October. It was the first time that The Post topped the Times’ digital traffic.

Read more:

 

Why the artist Jeff Koons is skeptical of Instagram

Artist Jeff Koons has a complicated relationship with technology.

“Technology has always been a tool for everyone. For artists, it affected the pigments a painter would use, what surface they would paint on, the kinds of materials they would sculpt with,” he said at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit on Thursday . “Technology is always incorporated into the art. But technology is never the art.”

Koons detailed how his artistic process shifted drastically in the late 1990s when he began using a computer.

“I was able to execute my ideas more rapidly and precisely. I’m more and more dependent on it in a liberating way. It has allowed me to achieve my vision more rapidly and precisely,” he said.

Koons is known for reimagining and sculpting ordinary objects like balloon animals or a woman in a tub. In November 2013, his Balloon Dog (Orange) was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for $58.4 million and it’s now the most expensive work by a living artist ever sold at auction.

Read more:

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says Trump is eroding democracy in America

“Finally trashed by @realDonaldTrump. Will still reserve him a seat on the Blue Origin rocket. #sendDonaldtospace ,” Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos tweeted last December.

This was in response to Donald Trump’s Twitter (TWTR) tirade claiming that Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, bought the newspaper “for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, Amazon.”

At the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit on Thursday, Bezos said at first, his instinct was to take Trump’s personal attacks in jest. But, Bezos realized that it’s crucial for him to defend US democracy, which he said is being threatened by Trump’s candidacy for president.

“I should not have taken it lightly,” he noted. “One of the things that makes our country as amazing as it is is that we are allowed to criticize and scrutinize our elected leaders. There are other countries where if you criticize your elected leader you’ll go to jail, or worse, you may disappear.”