Bill Gates Reviews 2021 | Storm In The Amazon Cloud | NHL’s Most Valuable Teams

Plus: Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s Billionaire Donors

Good morning.

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has shared his thoughts on what made 2021 such a challenging year for many, and himself particularly, and what he hopes 2022 will bring. We’re also covering the major outage that battered Amazon Web Services and unveiling the NHL’s most valuable teams. Finally, we’ve tracked the billionaires—including some Donald Trump backers—that have donated to Senator Kyrsten Sinema in the past five years.

In The News Today

Concerns about the omicron coronavirus variant have driven a surge in demand for boosters in the U.S. 

Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa has joined a growing list of billionaires to journey out into space, blasting off on a self-funded mission to the International Space Station.

Top Take-Aways

Bill Gates struck a more somber tone than usual in a note on his personal blog, reflecting on 2021 as “an incredibly hard year for many people, including me,” and shared his plans and hopes for 2022.

The United Arab Emirates will adopt a four-and-a-half-day work week for government employees, whose weekend will start at noon on Friday, to align the country’s practices with global markets and “improve work-life balance.”

A major outage at Amazon Web Services affected access to a wide range of services such as Netflix, Venmo, and Amazon’s own offerings, an incident that underscores just how dependent businesses have become on the tech giants that deliver third-party cloud computing services.

Instagram announced new features meant to curb harmful use of its app ahead of its chief Adam Mosseri’s testimony before the Senate subcommittee that has spearheaded Congressional efforts to investigate the disclosures made by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Crunchbase is a well known source of free information about free startup and VC data, but a proprietary sales software that uses its database to make it easier for B2B companies to find potential customers is what has been making millions for the startup.

Ice hockey is hot. The average net worth of a NHL team in Forbes’ yearly ranking is up 32% from last year. At the top of the ranking, the New York Rangers have become the first NHL team worth $2 billion.

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In Case You Missed It

An explosion in mega-deals worth more than $100 million in the European startup scene has helped smash last year’s record $41 billion invested in the continent, as recorded by VC firm Atomico’s annual State of European Tech Report. 

Tips You Can Trust

Even before the term “ghosting” became known in the dating scene, potential employers tended to disappear from a job candidate’s life. But now the practice is on the rise. Here are five steps to take before and after you are ghosted following a job interview.

Are you looking to resign because the grass looks greener on the other side or is it truly time to make a move? Look for these three signs of job dissatisfaction before making a decision.

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