The show is Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch, and it challenges contestants to pitch their company to our board of investors during a 60-second ride to the boardroom. If the investors like what they hear, the elevator doors open, and the negotiations begin. If they don’t like what they hear, the elevator goes back to the ground floor, and the entrepreneurs leave empty-handed.

Related: Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph Reveals the Magic Formula for Grabbing an Investor’s Attention

Negotiations can be tricky, with investors typically digging into the weeds of every tiny facet of a business, from sales traction to overhead costs to team member qualifications. But this week, our board asked some unexpected questions that rattled contestants down to their core:

• You gave a great pitch, but does that mean you have a great product?
• What is to stop a big corporation from swooping in, iterating on your concept and pushing you out of business?

This intense episode has big questions — and bigger investments. Watch and learn from the entrepreneurs who can stay on their feet and convince investors to push their worries aside and take a gamble on the next big thing!

Related: Investors Weigh In on Crazy New Food Biz Pitches

Season 11, Episode 6 Board of Investors

• Marc Randolph, co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, master of scaling
• Kim Perell, CEO of 100.co, serial entrepreneur and investor
• Dhani Jones, former NFL player and serial entrepreneur

Season 11, Episode 6 Entrepreneurs

• Aabesh De, founder of Flora, an app and device that provides care guidance for more than 10,000 types of plants.
• Kalyn Johnson Chandler, founder of Effie’s Paper, a Black- and female-owned personalized stationery business.
• Mario Soave, founder of CleverFi, which connects users to Wi-Fi automatically without the need for passwords.

How to Watch

Season 11 of Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch is presented by Amazon Business. New episodes stream on Wednesdays on Entrepreneur.com and EntrepreneurTV. Follow Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch on Facebook, YouTube and IGTV.

OpenAI’s founding team started with 11 people, including Elon Musk. Now Musk is suing the company for allegedly going against its founding mission and several of OpenAI’s cofounders are stepping away from their roles.

Late Monday, OpenAI cofounder John Schulman announced on X that he would be leaving to join rival AI firm Anthropic. He specified that his decision was personal, and not based on lack of support for AI safety research.

“My decision is a personal one,” he wrote, adding later that he will “still be rooting” for the OpenAI team, “even while working elsewhere.”

Related: AI Is Standing Between You and Your Next Job — Here’s How to Get Your Application Into Human Hands.

Schulman’s departure overlaps with another OpenAI cofounder stepping back from the company. On Monday, OpenAI president Greg Brockman stated that he would be taking an extended sabbatical for the rest of the year.

I’m taking a sabbatical through end of year. First time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago. The mission is far from complete; we still have a safe AGI to build.

— Greg Brockman (@gdb) August 6, 2024

Brockman, CEO Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba, a research and language team leader, are the only members of OpenAI’s 2015 founding team who remain at the company.

The rest, including former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, have left, with Sutskever founding his own Safe Superintelligence venture in June.

Related: OpenAI Resignations: How Do We Prevent AI From Going Rogue?

Peter Deng, OpenAI’s vice president of consumer product, also left OpenAI on Monday per The Information, though he wasn’t on the founding team.

OpenAI has faced controversy recently, with Jan Leike, its former safety leader who departed for Anthropic in May, accusing the company of prioritizing “shiny products” over safety. In the same month, Scarlett Johansson hired legal counsel after finding that ChatGPT’s voice sounded “eerily similar” to hers.

The drama is heating up between CrowdStrike and Delta Airlines amid a potential lawsuit against the technology company after July’s mass outage that allegedly led to the cancelation of thousands of Delta flights.

On Sunday, CrowdStrike’s lawyer Michael Carlinsky reportedly wrote to Delta Airlines’ lawyer David Boies that Delta’s threats of a lawsuit “contributed to a misleading narrative that CrowdStrike is responsible for Delta’s IT decisions and response to the outage.”

The letter alleged that CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz reached out to Delta CEO Ed Bastian amid the disaster to “offer onsite assistance, but received no response,” per CNBC.

Related: Read the Memo from CrowdStrike Explaining Massive IT Outage

Carlinsky also said that should Delta go forward with the lawsuit, the airline would have to “explain to the public, its shareholders, and ultimately a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions—swiftly, transparently, and constructively—while Delta did not.”

Last week, Bastian spoke to “Squawk Box” and said that the airline had “no choice” but to seek damages following the incident.

“We have to protect our shareholders,” Bastian said on the show. “We have to protect our customers, our employees, for the damage, not just to the cost of it, but to the brand, the reputational damage.”

The CrowdStrike update caused widespread outages on Microsoft-run devices and internal issues at Delta, affecting one of the airline’s top crew-tracking tools.

Delta reportedly lost between $350 million and $500 million during the outages and canceled roughly 7,000 flights.

Related: Delta Hires Famous Attorney, Seeks CrowdStrike Compensation

Delta has not disclosed how much it would seek in compensation from CrowdStrike, and the lawsuit has not yet officially been filed. Still, Bastian told employees via an internal memo last Friday that the airline was “planning to pursue legal claims” against the tech company.

Delta Airlines was down over 15.5% year-over-year as of Tuesday afternoon.

Owning a website domain can be lucrative if the stars align just right.

Just ask trademark lawyer Jeremy Green Eche, who is currently in the position to make tens of thousands after purchasing HarrisWalz.com in 2020 when Kamala Harris was seeking the Democratic nomination for President.

Related: Jamie Dimon’s Policy Advice for Donald Trump, Kamala Harris

“I just tried to grab her name and all the heartland governors I could think of,” Eche told the Associated Press. “The Harris campaign has hundreds of millions of dollars, so if they don’t buy their own domain, that is kind of on them.”

Harris formally announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.

Eche said that he’s willing to sell the domain and other Harris-related websites he owns for $15,000, should Harris’ camp be interested. And based on Eche’s prior experience, it might be worth it.

In 2011, Eche purchased ClintonKaine.com, five years before Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine decided to run together in the 2016 election. After Clinton’s team refused to pay for the domain, Eche sold it for $15,000 to what he first thought was a digital marketing company but now thinks was Donald Trump’s campaign, which used it to peddle negative news about Clinton.

“Hopefully (Harris’) people are a little more savvy than Clinton’s people were,” Eche told AP.

Related: Mark Cuban Has Been Advising Kamala Harris on Crypto

Four years after the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, the judge presiding over the case has reached a decision: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”

Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Monday that Google violated section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which makes anticompetitive behavior illegal. The ruling called out Google’s multi-billion-dollar agreements with Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla to make its search engine the default on their products, labeling the partnerships “exclusive” and “anticompetitive.” ^{Judge Amit Mehta, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)}

Though Google has stated that it plans to appeal the decision, the case marks an important turning point, according to Damian Rollison, director of market insights at AI marketing company SOCi.

“[The] decision represents the most concrete signal to date that antitrust activity may ultimately impact Google’s business and the role the company plays in the lives of so many consumers,” Rollison told Entrepreneur.

Rollison added that he didn’t think Google’s dominance in search, with over 90% of the global market, would bother most people, but that dominance is now under threat. Google faces AI competitors, such as Perplexity and OpenAI’s SearchGPT, with its legal challenges. There have also been user complaints about Google’s low search quality.

“Google has argued and will continue to argue that its dominance is due to product superiority,” Rollison stated. “This was true in its initial phase of growth to become the leading search engine, but is arguably no longer such a defensible position.”

Rollison stated that Google had a history of preferring itself and its own services in search results.

Related: The U.S. Justice Department Is Suing Apple in a Groundbreaking iPhone Monopoly Lawsuit — Here’s Why

“When’s the last time you went to a dedicated website to look up the meaning of a word?” Rollison asked.

Search results that provide information and answers to travel, shopping, and local questions “are provided directly by Google on Google-owned search pages with Google-owned properties, monetized via Google-owned ad placements,” he said.

Google’s self-preferential search world could change because of the ruling: The tech giant may have to separate its search business from ads, for example, according to Rollison. With the appeal and the penalty yet to be decided, it could take months to know how this court decision affects Google.

Still, the ruling sets a precedent for pending DOJ antitrust cases against Big Tech companies, including one against Apple.

Related: I Worked at Google for 14 Years — Here’s What I Had to Unlearn When I Started My Own Company

3 Benefits of owning a CycleBar franchise:

1. Access to a growing market with the world’s largest network of premium indoor cycling studios.
2. Scalable executive business model with high EBITDA margins and comprehensive franchisor support.
3. Extensive training and assistance in site selection, sales, marketing, and staff recruitment.

CycleBar is a franchise that offers an engaging and multi-sensory indoor cycling experience with the benefit of a premium, scalable fitness business model focused on music-driven, high-energy workouts. Click Here for more information.

Key Facts:

• Minimum Initial Investment: $337,720 – $511,455
• Initial Franchise Fee: $60,000
• Liquid Capital Required: $100,000
• Net Worth Required: $500,000

As we gear up for an election, economic uncertainty continues. Amidst stubbornly high inflation, the Federal Reserve decided not to change interest rates in its May meeting, leaving them at a more than two-decade high. Whether rates will be cut by the end of 2024 is uncertain.

Recent data shows that small business owners are feeling the effects of this inflation. Compared to just three months ago, 71% of the 1,259 small business owners surveyed say inflationary pressures have increased on their businesses, and 49% say they’ve had to raise the prices of their goods or services over that period.

For small businesses, the best course of action is to be disciplined yet flexible with financial management for the foreseeable future. In addition to steep borrowing costs, small businesses will need to plan for continued inflation, high fuel prices driven by geopolitical unrest, and a tight labor market that will drive up wages.

Related: 4 Key Insights for Driving High-Performance Business — Even Amidst Economic Uncertainty

Until the situation stabilizes, there are steps you, as a small business owner, can take to ensure financial stability and position yourself for growth.

Five steps to improve operational efficiency and control costs

Be disciplined. Manage labor costs, reduce inventories and keep some cash on hand for unforeseen circumstances or to seize an opportunity to pay off a high-interest loan if rates come down.

Review and restructure debt. To prepare for the eventual reduction of interest rates, evaluate your current loans and credit lines to look for refinancing or consolidation opportunities. Today is not a good time to lock in your rate for a long period. Keep flexible as rates will come down — it’s just a question of when.

Manage cash flow tightly. Many small businesses hate to press their customers for payment, but the impact of high receivables on cash flow can leave you starved for funds when you most need them. Cash flow management becomes even more crucial during periods of high interest rates. Tighten or enforce credit terms with customers to ensure faster payments, negotiate longer payment terms with suppliers, maintain strict budget control and draw on lines of credit that provide cash against your receivables to weather the ups and downs of your cash needs. Liquidity is a buffer against the financial strain of higher borrowing costs.

Cut unnecessary costs. Look for areas where costs can be reduced without impacting product or service quality. This might include renegotiating contracts with suppliers, leveraging technology to improve efficiency and using office spaces appropriately.

Focus on customer retention. Depending on your industry, acquiring a new customer costs five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one. Studies have shown that a 5% increase in retention rates increases profits by 25% to 95%. Bonus services, loyalty programs and personalized communication are all cost-effective strategies to improve loyalty.

Related: 4 Key Insights for Driving High-Performance Business — Even Amidst Economic Uncertainty

Make the most of financing

Financing is more expensive in this environment, but that shouldn’t hold you back from seeking the funding you need. Be flexible, creative and explore different options.

Seek alternative sources. Traditional bank loans are just one financing option. Specialty funding sources include asset-based lending, invoice factoring, grants, crowdfunding and angel investors. You may find in these specialty funding sources more favorable and flexible terms, greater access to cash and enhanced ability to adjust to your business needs.

Avoid locking in rates. They’ll come down eventually. If locking is your only option, negotiate the shortest possible term. Variable-rate loans are usually less expensive than fixed rates, and you can refinance when the lending picture improves.

Don’t commit to repayment penalties. You want to be able to move quickly to refinance debt as rates come down and market conditions become more competitive.

Choose a lender that’s also a business partner. Traditional banks are often reluctant to do business with SMBs because they consider them a more significant risk than large enterprises. Non-bank lenders are less likely to suffer from this myopia. Many specialize in specific sectors and are happy to offer advice as well as funding. With a solid business plan, your lender may transform into your collaborative partner.

Keep your ear to the ground. Interest rates have been on a wild ride over the last few years and will likely continue. Stay informed about economic trends and be ready to take advantage of changes in the funding landscape.

Uncertain environments like today present the most significant challenges to small businesses. By being resourceful and strategic with financial and operational management, your business will be stronger and more resilient in the long run.

Any business owner knows that the first few years in business are far from… glamorous. (Read: running on caffeine, instant noodles, and the odd power nap.)

Yet, amidst all the unpredictability of running a business, one thing is certain: You will make mistakes.

But that’s nothing to be scared about — mistakes are actually golden opportunities for you to learn something new and gain valuable experience. Plus, if you don’t make mistakes and try new things, how will you ever know what works and what doesn’t?

The most successful business owners are not the ones who avoid making mistakes; they’re the ones who know how to learn from them and come out stronger.

I’d love to say I reached multi-seven-figure entrepreneur status without any bumps along the road, but… I’d be lying. So, if you were to ask me the biggest lessons I’ve learned from starting a business (that I wish I’d known from the start), these would be my top picks.

Related: The Path to Success Is Filled With Mistakes. Do These Four Things to Tap Into Their Growth Potential.

Lesson #1: Know your numbers (and be realistic about them)

The sooner you know what numbers matter, the sooner you can track them and understand what they mean for your business. Too many entrepreneurs focus on surface-level metrics like social media “likes” or the number of subscribers on their list. But if it doesn’t translate into sales, it doesn’t do much to sustain your business.

Once you know what numbers to examine, it’s crucial to be realistic about them. For example, expecting a 50% purchase rate from 100 subscribers may be unrealistic if the typical conversion rate in your industry is between one and four percent.

Of course, your numbers will be specific to you, so you need to look at where you are and what dials you can adjust to start increasing those percentages.

To stay on top of those adjustments and their results, you have to be looking at all of your metrics, and you have to be looking at them regularly. One of the biggest (and costliest) lessons I’ve learned is that checking my numbers on a monthly basis is simply not enough.

Related: 10 Mistakes That Destroy Your Business

After hearing from my ad agency about how amazing my cost per lead was, I gave them the green light to scale up. But without keeping a close eye on my numbers, we ended up overspending $40,000 with zero sales to show for it. If I had been checking my numbers weekly, I would have spotted the issue sooner and adjusted our strategy before the losses piled up.

Yes, it was a painful lesson to learn—especially at a time when the business was seeing excellent growth — but it was necessary to improve my processes. Now, I check the numbers each week, and my operations manager goes in daily to catch any issues with ads or landing pages.

Lesson #2: Hire before you can afford to hire

Many of us are guilty of thinking we have to generate income first before hiring a new team member. And I can totally understand why — in the average consumer lifestyle, it’s pretty normal to save up for something and then buy it.

However, as a business owner, you need to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. You need that person to reach the next revenue level. You need to hire to scale; you don’t scale to hire.

It’s all too easy for our plates to get overloaded, and before you know it, it becomes too hard to even consider going through the hiring process. The thought of putting together a test, writing the job description, and sifting through the applicants… on top of your already mounting to-do list? No chance.

By leaving hiring until it’s too late — until you already need help — you’ll inevitably end up saying, “I’ll just do it myself.” But that’s not a wise move for the long-term success of your business. You need space to be able to think of and work on the things that only YOU can do. You should look to outsource anything that doesn’t belong on a CEO’s plate sooner than you think.

Related: Avoid Costly Hiring Mistakes With These Five Essential Tips

Lesson #3. Hire for the role, not the person

On the hiring note, remember to choose your team members carefully, as they can make or break your business. People often say, “You don’t have to hire for the role; hire the person.” When you get the right person, they can do just about any job, right? But, as I found out, that’s not entirely the case.

With a more creative mind, I knew I wasn’t the best person to handle the systems and processes in my business. However, when I began looking for an operations manager to ensure the business ran efficiently and effectively, I wasn’t specific enough in what I was looking for.

You must truly understand the traits a person should have before bringing them onto your team. Creating (paid!) tests before hiring someone (or even within the first probationary period) can help ensure that your new team member has the qualities you’re looking for.

Because I didn’t nail down exactly what I was looking for, I had to go through the (rather painful) process of letting that employee go, which is never easy.

Now that the team has solidified the pre-hiring process, we have an effective system for understanding how someone’s mind works before hiring them, so we know they’ll be the right fit for the role.

The longer you’re in business, the more you understand that mistakes are a natural part of the process.

Building a successful business doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, lessons learned, and, most importantly, enormous growth as a business owner.

But with a consistent selling system and reliable team members, you can build a strong foundation to navigate challenges more effectively and achieve lasting success.

A 5’6″ 154-pound worker walks around BMW’s Spartanburg, South Carolina production plant. It places car parts in the right place and self-corrects its mistakes. It can also speak and respond to coworkers.

However, the worker is not a human being — it’s a shiny new human-like robot called Figure 02.

The bipedal machine was released on Tuesday by Figure AI, a $2.6 billion robotics startup backed by big names in robotics and AI like Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

Figure AI claims that Figure 02 is the most advanced humanoid robot currently on the market. The startup designed the robot with the advantages of the human form in mind, giving the machine human-scale hands with human-equivalent strength. The robot can pick up objects as heavy as 55 pounds, coordinate both of its hands and put parts in place accurately, down to the millimeter.

Figure 02 also walks on two legs, speaks with enhanced voice communication, and has AI-driven sight with six sensors.

“Figure 02 has significant technical advancements, which enable the robot to perform a wide range of complex tasks fully autonomously,” said Brett Adcock, founder and CEO of Figure AI, in a press release.

When BMW tested the robot in its Spartanburg plant, the carmaker found that Figure 02 could put sheet metal pieces where they needed to be. Based on the results of the early test, Figure AI and BMW are working together to find new applications for the robot in car production.

Unlike the Figure 01 robot that came before it, Figure 02 looks more polished, with less visible wires. It can carry more with its hands, up to 55 pounds compared to Figure 01’s 44 pounds, and has 50% more runtime, for a total of 5 hours of work on one electric charge.

Related: ‘Some Things You Can’t Replace’: 65% of Jobs in Las Vegas Will Be Replaced By Robots, According to a New Report

Though Figure AI specified that Figure 02 was ideal for physically demanding and unsafe tasks, a look at this human-like robot could spark fears about humans being replaced in a variety of jobs.

Recent news could also add to concerns: In April, Amazon decreased its human workforce by over 100,000 people while simultaneously bringing on over 750,000 robots. Amazon’s $1 billion innovation fund is also focused on funding startups that combine AI with robotics.

^{Figure 02 in action. Credit: Figure AI}

However, a 2022 study from Amazon-backed robotics safety startup Veo Robotics found that over half of global manufacturers (57%) think robots will assist, not replace, human work. Figure AI’s master plan also focuses on robots supporting human work and filling labor shortages instead of replacing humans altogether.

“Our vision at Figure is to bring humanoid robots into commercial operations as soon as possible,” Adcock said in February.

Related: This Company Built a New Kind of Robot: ‘It Moves the Way People Move’

After several proclamations on social media, Elon Musk is officially shutting down X’s headquarters in San Francisco.

On Monday, the New York Times reported that the company’s Market Square flagship office and longtime HQ would be shuttered in the coming weeks, citing an internal memo to employees written by CEO Linda Yaccarino.

Related: Tesla Moving HQ from California to Texas

“This is an important decision that impacts many of you, but it is the right one for our company in the long term,” Yaccarino reportedly wrote, noting the company’s existing offices in nearby San Jose and an engineering office in Palo Alto shared with xAI would remain open. Displaced employees would be transferred to these locations.

X, formerly Twitter, has occupied the Market Square building since 2012, though the company was originally founded in 2006.

Musk confirmed the news on X, responding to a post containing the original New York Times article.

“No choice. It is impossible to operate in San Francisco if you’re processing payments,” Musk wrote. “That’s why Stripe, Block (CashApp) & others had to move.”

No choice. It is impossible to operate in San Francisco if you’re processing payments.

That’s why Stripe, Block (CashApp) & others had to move.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2024

Last month, Musk told his X followers that he planned to move both X and SpaceX out of California to Texas, due to what he called violence in the area and a California law Assembly 1955 affecting LGBTQ+ youth in schools.

Related: Elon Musk Is Moving SpaceX’s Incorporation to Texas — Here’s Why

“This is the final straw,” Musk said at the time, noting that he planned to move X HQ to Austin. “Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building.”

It’s noted that Musk’s Tesla has been headquartered in Texas since 2021.