Dropbox, WeWork, and Google all think they have the playbook for the part-time office — Aside from religion and politics, it’s hard to think of another topic in recent memory that has provoked more fierce debate than the concept of remote work. For years, “future of work” enthusiasts would quibble over how some people are more productive by cutting out commutes and working in a…

It turns out frequent flyer programs are worth more than the airlines themselves — More than six months after the World Health Organization first declared Covid-19 a pandemic, airlines are barely limping along. The TSA’s daily passenger count tracker currently shows that air travel is down about a staggering 70% from last year. Demand for air travel is better than it was during the…

How Venmo has become PayPal’s pandemic secret weapon — The Covid-19 crisis shifted a large portion of American retail online virtually overnight, but the gradual post-pandemic reopening has led to an interesting second shift: Online payment companies have started moving offline. Last month, CVS Pharmacy announced plans to add PayPal and Venmo QR code payments in its 8,200 stores…

Economics nerds always complain that you should never compare stocks to flows. It’s meaningless to say that one company’s cash on hand is bigger than a country’s GDP, for example, because GDP is quoted in dollars per year and cash on hand is a cumulative quantity. It’s like saying a…

Here’s why investors are bullish on a fantasy sports betting company that went public when sports and casinos were shut down — It was a little over a month after the NBA season and NCAA tournament had been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Spring training had been delayed, and the entire 2020 Major League Baseball season was in jeopardy. Despite all this, fantasy sports giant DraftKings went public in late April…

It’s always tempting to invent an elaborate story for why a particular investment is brilliant, why a trend is about to start (or reverse!), or why some incredible, sweeping change will alter the world and make savvy investors a profit. But there’s an easier place to start, which is to…

Food delivery is a losing game — so why is the most aggressive unicorn on the planet betting everything on it? — When Uber’s board of directors searched for a new CEO to replace Travis Kalanick during the summer of 2017, they landed on Dara Khosrowshahi, an investment banker-turned internet dealmaker. Khosrowshahi had spent nearly two decades of his career working at online travel giant Expedia and before that at IAC, a…

The traditional route to going public is too slow for companies that want to cash in on hype — Special purpose acquisition companies (or SPACs) have raised record amounts in the last few years. Some 28 SPACs have had IPOs this year, raising $8.9 billion, according to SPACData.com. At the current rate, that’s on pace to reach $16.5 billion by the end of the year, beating last year’s $13.6…

This is the once-a-week free edition of The Diff, the newsletter about inflections in finance and technology. The free edition goes out to 8,221 subscribers, up 211 week-over-week. This week’s subscribers-only posts: The UK as a Science Hub is an update on Boris Johnson’s plan (or, if you prefer, Dominic…