Latest news with #Raconteur
West Australian
12-06-2025
- Sport
- West Australian
Top filly Storyville out to upstage boys in Saturday's Raconteur Stakes at Bunbury
Classy filly Storyville is predicted to upstage the boys in Saturday's Listed $125,000 Raconteur Stakes (1400m) at Bunbury and is just one of two from the fairer sex in the line-up. The $2.35 TABtouch favourite was last into stride and from her wide barrier, settled back last on the fence at her opening preparation run on May 28 at Pinjarra. For almost the duration of the home straight, she was clambering over heels in front of her but made some noticeable progress through the line, beaten less than three lengths by Luvnwar. This week, she has fared much better in barrier two and should appreciate both the second-up fitness and rise from 1200m to 1400m. The only other filly in this weekend's event is $31 outsider Precious God, who had shown lots of talent but must considerably on her seven-length tenth behind Mt Shirataku at Pinjarra two and a half weeks ago. Storyville's trainers Grant and Alana Williams have shown that girls can beat the boys in this race with their 2021 victor Graceful Girl doing just that. Their previous winner in the race was the 2013 triumphant Western Blaze when the race was held over 1500m for a 10-year period before reverting to 1400m in 2020. The nearest challenger in the Raconteur market is Elite Missile ($5.50), who appreciated a freshen-up to salute on May 24 at Belmont when powering home from the second half of the field. A wide barrier leaves rider Brad Parnham with a conundrum, however, the gelding defeated subsequent winner Pond Master ($8) on that occasion. Elite Missile's trainer Stephen Miller will be looking for another success in the race to follow Variation's 2017 effort. With William Pike sticking with Storyville, the door has opened for Lucy Fiore to pick up the ride on Pond Master, with Pike in the saddle for that May 31 win. Fiore has experienced joy in recent times with pick-up rides and this looms as another prospect, with Pond's Master's recent showing demanding respect. After bombing the start and settling last, the son of Saxon Warrior revealed a sparkling turn of foot to gather up his rivals and win by a narrow margin. Wind And The Lion ($9.50) was a positive first-up second at Ascot last month before being beaten by Pond Master in that Pinjarra event last fortnight. After being unable to find a front-running position, the son of Written By went back to settle three wide with cover before peeling at the top of the straight. But his run was just fair and Pond Master came around him to beat him by more than a length. There will undoubtedly be improvement in the gelding and despite drawing poorly in gate 11, he commands attention. Opportunistic ($9.50) was off the boards to win at his debut on May 28 at Pinjarra when backed from double-figure odds down to $2.90 come start time. He didn't let the punters down, shooting down the outside to win easily by over a length. The So You Think bay must elevate again against these opposition, though he remains untapped. Awesome Boy ($12) was specked and delivered comfortably two starts ago, romping home by three lengths on April 26 at Ascot. But after going off $1.55 at his next start, he failed to convert, and needs to rebound to his previous form to play a part. God's Gate ($14) gave a sight at Pinjarra and although he was headed early in the straight by Sunbronzed, he showed fight to hold second after looking in trouble 500m out. King Hit ($31) grabbed victory in a Bunbury midweek last week and was four and a half lengths behind Elite Missile prior to that, meaning he must lift to threaten. Patron Express ($31) has found Rally The Troops too strong at his last two and loses the blinkers now. He has more to give but hasn't recaptured that earlier promise just yet. One-time winners Ripper Farooq ($41) and More Heroic ($41), who has only had one start, round out the assembly. + Million-dollar earner Cool Archie ($3.70f) leads the betting for the Group 1 J J Atkins (1600m) at Eagle Farm and will look to keep an unbeaten preparation in tact after earlier victories in the Darello, Champagne Classic and Sires' Produce. Prior to that, the son of Cool Aza Beel shed his maiden tag on April 16 at Doomben first-up, breaking his duck at his third racing preparation as a two-year-old. He was purchased for just $100,000 while second favourite Hidden Achievement ($6) was a $675,000 Ready 2 Run buy. The son of I Am Invincible has had just three starts since beginning his career on April 21 for one win and earnings of $100,000. Grafterburners ($8), a son of Graff, was sixth and four and a half lengths behind Cool Archie in the Sires' Produce after being beaten a half-length by him in the Champagne Classic. Ciaron Maher's Navy Pilot ($9), also a son of I Am Invincible, was ironically passed in for a very similar fee to Hidden Achievement at $670,000. He was third in the Phoenix at Eagle Farm last week behind Sunrays. Promising four-year-old War Machine ($3f) leads the call for the time-honoured Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap later on the card adter winning his last two starts. A cosy win in a benchmark 100 event at Caulfield on May 10 was followed by an even easier two-and-a-half length victory at Doomben two weeks on in the BRC Sprint. With Blake Shinn out indefinitely after suffering bone bruising in his foot, Tim Clark takes the reins from gate 13. Golden Mile ($8.50) went down in a thrilling three-way photo finish to Joliestar in the Kingsford Smith Cup last weekend and is the only other runner at single-digit odds. Fifth in that race was Rise At Dawn ($11) and Kimochi ($13) was fourth, while Private Eye ($15) will take on this race first-up despite having had four trials. Rothfire ($15) ran one of his greatest ever races in the Doomben 10,000 when chinned by Sunshine In Paris but the hometown hero gets another chance at feature glory as a seven-year-old. The Instructor and The Inflictor (both $15) are next, while Transatlantic could be a good roughie at $18. Transatlantic was declared a Stradbroke horse last year by trainer Tony Gollan and shot to form when winning the Spear Chief by a length last Saturday.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Spotify's HR chief says remote staff aren't ‘children' as company sticks to work-from-anywhere policy
Amid a raft of return-to-office mandates from tech giants, including Amazon and iPhone challenger Nothing, Spotify sees no need to treat its staff like 'children' and end its popular work-from-home policy. Spotify went through an overhaul in 2023, laying off 17% of its staff in December in a move CEO Daniel Ek acknowledged had a larger impact on operations than the company had anticipated. The decision helped more than double Spotify's market value in 2024, as the group notched record quarterly revenues while cutting costs. However, inside Spotify, the layoffs have shaken morale. For those who survived the cull, there isn't likely to be a further morale-sapping plan to break with Spotify's popular 'work from anywhere' policy. 'You can't spend a lot of time hiring grownups and then treat them like children,' Spotify's chief human resources officer Katarina Berg told Raconteur, explaining the group's continued flexible work location policy. 'We are a business that's been digital from birth, so why shouldn't we give our people flexibility and freedom? 'Work is not a place you come to, it's something you do.' In February 2021, Spotify joined several other tech groups in allowing its employees to 'work from anywhere.' This enabled employees to choose where and how they worked, provided the company had an office in that jurisdiction. Unlike other companies that have trickled employees back in on a hybrid basis, like Meta, or gone all out and demanded a full return to the office, like Amazon, Spotify hasn't chosen to renege on this policy. A big reason is likely the effect it has had on retention. Spotify said attrition rates were 15% lower in the second quarter of 2022 compared with the same period in 2019. The company also said it had improved the diversity of its talent. While Spotify doesn't intend to scrap its remote-working policy anytime soon, Berg acknowledged it wasn't an ideal setup. 'It is harder, and we all struggle to collaborate in a virtual environment,' Berg said. 'But does that mean that we will start forcing people to come into the office as soon as there is a trend for it? No.' The company is still using innovative ways to encourage its music-loving staff to come into the office, including hosting 'listening lounge' sessions featuring pop stars including Olivia Dean and Rag 'n' Bone Man. Staff are also strongly encouraged to come into the office during Spotify's 'core week' to reconnect and discuss strategy. Spotify's biggest-ever round of layoffs in December 2023, when it said goodbye to 1,500 staff, came as CEO Ek said the company was doing too much 'work around the work.' The impact of those layoffs on operations was bigger than Ek expected, with Berg explaining to Raconteur that remaining staffers were left in a 'state of shock' by the cull. 'Spotify had been in hypergrowth, and this was the only thing people knew,' she said. 'A lot of people at Spotify had never seen a recession, and it was a lot to absorb and digest.' Editor's note: A version of this article first appeared on on Oct. 8, 2024. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'I'm a mother, female and Asian - but I've built a travel company that can't be ignored'
Radha Vyas, CEO and co-founder of Flash Pack, says it's every company's dream to crack the US market — despite "scary" advice the travel operator received as it aims to create 1 million friendships across the globe. The British-founded company specialises in adventure trips which match solo travellers in their 30s and 40s and, since 2019, the US has represented Flash Pack's biggest opportunity 'because our model works really well there.' 'Most of the advice we received when we first started was that America is where travel companies go to die but we've managed to crack it so that was a huge relief," reveals Vyas, who founded Flash Pack in 2014 with now-husband Lee Thompson. Read More: 'The secrets of success as a CEO? Be honest and transparent' Vyas says that US consumers are less price-sensitive and well-travelled but happy to hand over their money to a company who can promise an optimised experience. Conversely, the pain point for UK customers, Flash Pack's second-biggest market, is travelling with strangers. The founders are no strangers to resilience if their rollercoaster company history is anything to go by. Having bootstrapped the firm from 2016 with £250,000 investment, Flash Pack was one of the fastest-growing startups in 2018. The duo quit their jobs and by 2020 had scaled to £20m in revenue, with a £50m valuation before COVID hit. 'We weren't big or small enough to survive,' recalls Vyas. 'We had no VC funding or VCs to turn to, so it was absolutely terrible. 'All I knew was growth and we were just making hay while the sun was shining. COVID taught me how to be like a wartime CEO where all I knew was how to be a peacetime CEO.' Inspired by the birth of their daughter, the husband-and-wife team revived the business when the tour operator was brought out of administration in a pre-pack deal by its founders, funded by remortgaging their home. Vyas says that she gained a positive work-life balance as a CEO from the experience, as they dealt with retrieving customer refunds and coping with a young daughter. Relaunching in late 2021, within two years Flash Pack had surpassed pre-COVID revenues and secured £5m in funding. 'I'm a much stronger CEO now and it gave me real confidence,' she admits. 'Now I'm just sort of unflappable because anything that happens, it's not thousands of customers stranded across the world and to be grateful for what life throws at you.' Read More: AI will replace humans in translation within five years - Unbabel CEO As an Asian woman and female founder, Vyas has experienced first-hand the barriers (a Raconteur report in 2023 showed only 5.4% of UK CEOs are women from ethnic minorities) that still exist in areas such as VC funding, while she has also been criticised for not being 'aggressive' enough. 'There are just some founders like Oxford graduates who could just raise money off s**t businesses and I'm asked to prove myself again and again, so what we've achieved is so much more amazing,' admits Vyas. 'I have a triple disadvantage. I'm a mother, I'm female and Asian and so there aren't many [CEOs] who look like me.' However, Vyas says that Flash Pack hasn't been totally constrained by fundraising. 'But that's only because I have built a business that can't be ignored,' she says. 'Our biggest failure became our biggest success because VCs were like 'Bloody hell, first of all you've got amazing resilience, you're a married couple' which VCs hate but 'well, if you're going to get divorced you would have done so by now with everything you've been through, so clearly you both love the business, you're strong founders.' 'It gave VCs so much conviction and if someone told me when we were going into administration that our biggest failure was going to become our biggest asset, I would never have believed them.' Before Flash Pack, Vyas worked in charity fundraising for Macmillan Cancer Support. She was single, in her thirties, when a friend asked if she would consider going on a group tour. 'As a super independent woman, I remember feeling offended,' recalls Vyas. 'But then something resonated with me and I realised there was a massive gap in the market for this super cool, aspirational brand that rehabilitated this notion of travelling with strangers. There's nothing like travel that can create friendship.' On a dating site, she was then matched up with photo journalist Thompson. Both were living in Brixton and had a passion for business, travel and wine. On their first date, Vyas revealed her travel idea and their next few dates were spent at travel shows and market research. She says: 'We basically started our relationship and the business at the same time, which I would not recommend. It was a super intense journey and we also bought a flat in London that same year.' Read More: How Jeff Dewing went from bankruptcy to £70m fortune With 90 staff, Flash Pack works fully remotely, while its C-suite is now of equal diversity as it strives for brand leadership in the US. On the consumer side, Vyas says that 85% of its customers make friends and stay in touch while its group dynamic score is 8.9 across thousands of departures. 'We're the only company who actually reject bookings, we reject revenue to protect the group dynamic,' admits Vyas. 'We don't allow big groups of friends or loads of couples as 95% of people come solo. "Even if you've met on a Flash Pack trip and you want to book together. We don't allow you to book with loads of other customers because it can form cliques and disrupt the group dynamic.' After years of manual data, it now embeds AI into its tech, which allows information on a customer's personality or sleeping preferences to be automated so group tours can be matched. As if to underline their misssion to connect 1 million travellers, Vyas says: 'I know for certain we are the only company that does that because we care so deeply that people feel connected and they make friends."When we had our reflection time during COVID one of the things I wasn't happy about the way I led then was hiding our salaries. When you applied for a job, we would say the salary was competitive on the job spec, people would apply and we would try and get the best deal. The best person for the cheapest price inevitably creates pay gaps. Even if you're negotiating five or 10% extra on top of your salary it still creates an unequal footing because you're just starting from a lower base than a male counterpart. As soon as we relaunched, we started pay transparency and now all our job specs have clear salary banding and we don't put employees in that awkward position where we can say 'what are your salary expectations?' and somebody who's desperate for a job feels super vulnerable. Read more: 'I went to a board meeting days after nearly dying but I soon saw my purpose' Meet the CEO responsible for selling London to the world 'Want to grow an iconic brand? CEOs have to value CMOs as servant leaders'Sign in to access your portfolio
