Connect with us

Published

2 years ago

on

Executive women platform Chief opened a new clubhouse in San Francisco this week.

Chief

In a bustling building in New York’s Flatiron district, two executive women who work at separate companies discuss marketing strategies for their respective businesses. Next to them, three retired women in their sixties share a champagne toast. Across the room, several other women, sitting at single wooden tables, have their heads down at their laptops. Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” plays in the background.

“I’m in the middle of a career transition,” says one woman to another she just met at the nearby bar. She says she works for Cushman & Wakefield but plans to change careers from her job in human resources.

“I’ve done big companies for far too long and I think it’s time to move on to something smaller,” she continued. “Covid did us all in,” the other woman said, agreeably nodding.

It may sound like a typical professional networking environment but one thing about this building is different: there’s not a single man in sight.

‘Sense that this is a first’

On the opposite coast, a counterpart executive clubhouse just opened in San Francisco and it holds great meaning beyond its four walls.

Start-up Chief launched an exclusive networking platform for executive women in 2019 and saw a surge in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic. It subsequently opened physical clubhouse spaces in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Men are allowed in but members are exclusively executive women.

Earlier this year, Chief received a $100 million Series B investment led by Alphabet venture arm CapitalG with plans to use the money to open a new club where founders say they were getting the biggest demand: The San Francisco Bay Area.

Chief’s San Francisco clubhouse includes a full-service bar.

The recently-opened clubhouse is located adjacent to the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco’s financial district. Silicon Valley had the highest demand from members, said founders Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers. The region is home to 2,000 local members working for Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Zoom and Stanford among others.

The 8,600 square-foot space features a full-service bar with specialty coffee, open lounge space, meeting rooms, private call booths and a Mothers Room. All the artwork in Chief’s clubhouses comes from the women-led company Uprise Art, founded by member Tze Chun.

Over 300 members attended the launch event at the San Francisco clubhouse. Members flew in for the clubhouse opening night in late October. Some arrived straight from the airport. “So exciting!” one woman rolling a suitcase said as she greeted Childers and Kaplan with hugs. “I’ve f—–g earned this,” Kaplan recalled another saying.

Susan Cevallos Coleman, a global vice president at GoPro attended the opening night. “I just looked around and had a moment,” Coleman said.

“You have the profound sense that this is a first,” said Attica Jaques, Global Head of Brand Marketing at Google who also attended the opening night.

‘Full Circle’

A month after the San Francisco Chief club’s opening, women say they already see it as a milestone moment that represents more than just a new building.

Silicon Valley has historically had the highest density of homogeneous demographics that favored white men in executive ranks. It’s also historically been unfriendly to women as exclusionary “boys clubs” long overtook the world’s tech epicenter. Unlike other nearby clubhouses like the Battery, Chief’s new clubhouse is a place designed just for them.

“I know deeply the feeling of the tech industry led by white men,” Jaques said. “It’s interesting coming full-circle and it feels long overdue.”

Executive women platform Chief opened a new clubhouse in San Francisco this week.

Chief

Jaques, a San Francisco native who moved back to San Francisco from New York in 2019, said “we tend to always feel like we have to pull up a seat at the table if it’s not there, so we’ve built a muscle around it.”

Coleman added: “The women who have somehow, some way made it to where we are now, can now influence the younger women who may be hesitant to dip their toes in the lake because what they read is it may not be a friendly place for them.”

“But when I walk into the Chief space, that premise that tech is exclusionary no longer feels true,” she said.

Coleman, who’s spent her career working in tech auditing in Silicon Valley since the early 2000s at Sun Microsystems, said she’s looking forward to using the space as a central meeting place for her core group of Chief members dispersed across the Bay Area. Jaques said she’s looking forward to networking happy hours and programming speakers. The platform hosted a virtual event with speaker Melinda French Gates in early November when around 2,000 Chief members tuned in.

“This is the physical manifestation of what I’ve been benefitting from,” Coleman said after the opening. “I saw so many amazing women, including one I worked with three companies ago.”

The Covid-19 pandemic bolstered Chief’s business as women flocked to Chief’s platform, which served as a support system during a time of solitude, members said. More than 20,000 senior executives have signed on from over 8,500 companies including HBO, American Express, Nike, Google, Goldman Sachs, NASA and Apple. Annual membership starts at $5,800 for women at the vice president level and $7,900 for C-suite executives. About 70% of members are sponsored by their employers.

With backing from Alphabet’s venture arm and a business model that relies on subscription to its digital platform, it’s more sustainable than a real-estate-focused business like The Wing, which was forced to close its doors over the summer.

The platform has a massive waitlist of 60,000 people, but Childers and Kaplan say they should be able to start vetting applicants more quickly now that the company has additional money to hire people and build out the technology.

Less ‘pantsuits and bad cheese plates’

Kaplan briefly worried about a dusty rose art piece at the center of the main San Francisco clubhouse room. “We might have to change that,” she remarked. “It’s kind of pink. I just don’t want it to be like ’this a space for women and this is pink.'”

“So often, executive spaces for women look like a space full of pantsuits and bad cheese plates in the corner but we’re in a moment where we can redefine what it looks like,” she added.

A large open floor plan with leather couches and chairs and high ceilings with bookshelves makes it feel more like a living room for casual, serendipitous interactions, members said.

Bathrooms have brushed gold finishes on faucets and around mirrors. Marble countertops lie under Chief-branded disposable towels by each sink while low-volume music plays overhead. The bar features a mid-century modern design with wooden paneling and a large chandelier made of hundreds of glasses.

The space has several “phone booths” with ring lights built in for Zoom meetings. A room on the other side of the main space is much lighter with eggshell-colored walls, a grand piano, and plush white lounge chairs that appear like furniture from a spa.

“There’s a relaxed atmosphere, no competition,” Coleman said. “We’re just finding ways to support one another.”

“It’s a beautiful space to accompany this feeling that things are profoundly changing,” Jaques said. “Being able to walk and have a new space that you feel welcomed in and meeting other women is going to be incredible and it just feels like there’s no going back to what was before.”

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Technology

Elon Musk promotes far-right Alternative for Germany candidate, hosts discussion on X

Published

2 hours ago

on

January 9, 2025

By

Elon Musk promotes far-right Alternative for Germany candidate, hosts discussion on X

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party, arrives to speak to the media with AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla shortly after the AfD leadership confirmed Weidel as the party’s candidate for chancellor on December 07, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. 

Maryam Majd | Getty Images

Elon Musk used his social network X to promote Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, hosting a live discussion Thursday with party leader Alice Weidel, a candidate for chancellor, ahead of a general election on Feb. 23.

“I’m really strongly recommending that people vote for AfD,” Musk, who is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX in addition to his role at X, said about a half hour into the conversation. “That’s my strong recommendation.”

The AfD has been classified as a “suspected extremist organization” by German domestic intelligence services. The party’s platform calls for rigid asylum laws, mass deportations, cuts to social and welfare support in Germany, and the reversal of restrictions on combustion engine vehicles.

Thierry Breton, former European Union commissioner for the internal market, said in a Jan. 4 post on X directed at Weidel: “As a European citizen concerned with the proper use of systemic platforms authorized to operate in the EU … especially to protect our democratic rules against illegal or misbehavior during election times, I believe it’s crucial to remind you” that a live discussion on X would give AfD and Weidel “a significant and valuable advantage over your competitors.”

While AfD has amassed about 20% of public support, according to reporting from broadcaster DW, the party is unlikely to form part of a coalition government, as most other parties have vowed not to work with it.

AfD previously protested the build-out of Tesla’s electric vehicle factory outside Berlin, in part because the factory would provide jobs to people who were not German citizens.

Musk’s earlier endorsements of AfD, including tweets complimenting the party and an editorial in a German newspaper, have enraged European government officials. Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, has also endorsed far-right and anti-establishment candidates and causes in the U.K.

Political leaders in France, Germany, Norway and the U.K. denounced his influence, NBC News previously reported, warning that Musk should not involve himself in their countries’ elections. 

Musk, who was one of President-elect Donald Trump’s top backers in November’s election, previously promoted Trump in a live-streamed discussion on X. Before that, he hosted a conversation with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who lost to Trump in the Republican primary.

Weidel during Thursday’s talk asked Musk about what Trump might do to bring Russia’s war in Ukraine to a conclusion, as the president-elect has suggested he could quickly do.

Musk demurred.

“To be clear this is up to President Trump, he is commander and chief, so it’s really up to him,” Musk said. “I don’t want to speak for him but you know I do think that there is a path to a resolution but it does require  strong leadership in the United States to get this done.”

Musk also weighed in on what he thought should be done in Gaza, which has been under attack from Israel since Hamas’ deadly incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“There’s no choice but to eliminate those who wish to eliminate the state of Israel, you know Hamas essentially,” Musk said. “Then, the second step is to fix the education so that Palestinians are not trained from when they are children to hate and want the death of Israel.”

“Then, the third thing, which is also very important, is to make the Palestinian areas prosperous.”

— CNBC’s Sophie Kiderlin contributed to this report.

WATCH: Musk’s EU interference is not going to help Trump

Musk's EU interference is not going to help Trump: Analyst

Continue Reading

Technology

Microsoft contributes $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund

Published

4 hours ago

on

January 9, 2025

By

Microsoft contributes million to Trump's inauguration fund

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during an American Technology Council roundtable at the White House in Washington on June 19, 2017.

Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images

Microsoft said Thursday that it’s contributing $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.

The software maker is now more closely aligned with its highly valued peers in the technology industry. Google said earlier on Thursday that it’s donating $1 million to the Trump fund, and Meta offered the same amount in December. Amazon was reportedly looking to make a similar contribution.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in December that he would contribute $1 million individually, and Axios reported last week that Apple CEO Tim Cook will do the same.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and the world’s richest person, has been advising Trump as he prepares to return to the White House following the inauguration later this month.

Microsoft also contributed $500,000 to the first inauguration fund for Trump’s first term and gave the same amount to President Joe Biden’s fund, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, has met with Trump on multiple occasions, including over negotiations surrounding a possible acquisition of TikTok in the U.S. in 2020. Nadella also joined a Trump roundtable of technology executives from around the country in 2017.

Microsoft is hoping that under Trump, the U.S. will push artificial intelligence policy in a favorable direction.

“The United States needs a smart international strategy to rapidly support American AI around the world,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, wrote in a blog post last week.

WATCH: Microsoft to end 2024 with capital expenditures of at least $53 billion

Microsoft to end 2024 with capital expenditures of at least $53 billion

Continue Reading

Technology

Ubisoft appoints advisors to explore strategic options after report on potential buyout

Published

5 hours ago

on

January 9, 2025

By

Ubisoft appoints advisors to explore strategic options after report on potential buyout

Artwork for Ubisoft’s upcoming “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” game.

John Keeble | Getty Images

French video game publisher Ubisoft said Thursday it’s appointing advisors to review and pursue strategic options after a report last year suggested that its majority backers were considering a buyout.

Ubisoft said in a strategic update that “leading advisors” had been hired to explore “transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders.”

“This process will be overseen by the independent members of the Board of Directors. Ubisoft will inform the market in accordance with applicable regulations if and once a transaction materializes,” the company said in a statement late Thursday.

In October, Bloomberg News reported that the Guillemot family who founded Ubisoft nearly four decades ago, and Chinese tech giant Tencent were considering a potential takeover of the firm. Shares of Ubisoft skyrocketed more than 30% on the report at the time.

“We are convinced that there are several potential paths to generate value from Ubisoft’s assets and franchises,” Yves Guillemot, co-founder and CEO, said Thursday, addressing the firm’s strategic plan.

The Bloomberg report followed a decision by Ubisoft to delay the release of the latest title in its popular “Assassins Creed” video game series, “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” by three months, to February 2025.

On Thursday, Ubisoft postponed the launch of “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” again, pushing it back to March 20.

Shares of Ubisoft have declined 45% in the past 12 months amid woes surrounding its pipeline of blockbuster title launches, as well as doubts over the company’s strategic direction.

Last year, activist investor AJ Investments called on Ubisoft to sell itself to private equity or Tencent. At the time, the investment firm said it had gained the support of 10% of Ubisoft’s shareholder base for its campaign.

The game maker had also garnered criticisms for plans to include a paid “Season Pass” for its new Assassin’s Creed game, which would have provided gamers access to a bonus quest and additional downloadable content at launch.

After gamers slammed the decision as adopting a “pay-to-play” model, Ubisoft decided to shelve plans for the paid feature.

Ubisoft is under pressure to prove it can turn things around. On Thursday, the company doubled down on a commitment to cut costs, saying it now expects to reach more than 200 million euros ($206 million) of cost reductions by full-year 2025 to 2026 compared to 2022 to 2023 on an annualized basis.

Continue Reading

Trending