Good morning. It's Thursday, April 30, and welcome to this week's Business & Finance newsletter. Today, we're covering Elon Musk, monopolies, and, in light of last week's announcement that John Ternus, Apple's head of hardware engineering, will take over Tim Cook's role as CEO, Apple.
As always, thank you for being a reader!
—Phoebe Bain, 1440 Business & Finance Section Editor
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Who is Elon Musk?
Born in 1971, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk is the world's richest person, with a net worth of more than $800B as of April 2026. Originally from South Africa, Musk has spent most of his life founding and leading tech companies—aside from a short stint in the Trump administration in 2025, leading the advisory body known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997, Musk sold his first company, the city guide software company Zip2, for $305M in 1999. He used his share of the profits to create online banking company X.com, which later became PayPal, starting a pattern of serial entrepreneurship.
His most notable ventures include founding SpaceX (which pioneered reusable rockets and launched thousands of communications satellites into orbit) in 2002 after becoming interested in colonizing Mars, joining electric car maker Tesla with a $6.5M investment in 2004 before becoming CEO in 2008, and his $44B Twitter acquisition in October 2022 (Musk renamed the social media company X in July 2023).
While critics describe Musk as unempathetic to his employees and accuse him of creating toxic workplace cultures, fans praise his multiple successful companies, engineering breakthroughs, and penchant for innovation and efficiency.
Explore everything else we've found on Elon Musk.
Also, check out ...
> See a timeline of all of Elon Musk's business ventures. (Read)
> Musk is known to sleep under his desk during intense periods of work. (Listen)
> The world's top 20 billionaires in 2026, visualized. (View)
> Elon Musk once tried to make himself CEO of OpenAI. (Read) |
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Monopolies, explained
A monopoly is a market structure in which one supplier with no close competitors dominates the entire market for a good or service. Under US antitrust laws that date back to 1890, companies that command a market and engage in any behavior that discourages competition are considered monopolies.
The case for regulating monopolies includes three main points: price efficiency, innovation, and consumer protection. Without market competition, monopolistic firms have unchecked power to set prices without considering a consumer’s actual willingness to pay. As a result, prices are often higher than is efficient for that market. Similarly, competition incentivizes innovation—in order to remain competitive, firms must continue developing new or better goods and services.
Monopolies aren’t inherently good or bad. Some monopolies, like power companies, are the natural result of high barriers to entry in a market. Other monopolies, like the Rockefeller family’s infamous Standard Oil, had to be broken up after corrupt business practices manufactured those barriers to entry. Ultimately, the decision to regulate monopolies comes down to how firms handle competition in the market.
Explore everything else we've found on Monopolies.
Also, check out ...
> "Monopoly" was a progressive economic thought experiment before it was a board game. (Listen)
> One Chinese businessman controls 70% of the fireworks entering the US. (Read)
> The history of DOJ antitrust enforcement. (Listen)
> Explore a list of well-known monopolies. (Read) |
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Apple 101
Apple is a tech giant renowned for products like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac—devices that have transformed how people communicate, consume media, and interact with technology.
The company was cofounded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, focusing on bringing personal computing for creativity and enjoyment to ordinary consumers. The Macintosh computer's 1984 launch helped Apple set the standard for modern PCs with its graphical user interface. Management disagreements led to Jobs' firing in 1985 and, later, to the company's near-bankruptcy as Apple lost focus and rivals overtook it.
Jobs engineered a return as CEO in 1997, setting the stage for Apple's turnaround: Apple disrupted the music and smartphone industries in the 2000s, debuting the iPod in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007. The company's stock price went from around $14 a share before his return to over $380 by August 2011, the year Jobs died.
Under Tim Cook, who became CEO after Jobs' death, Apple became the first publicly traded US company to reach a valuation of $1T in 2018.
Explore everything else we've found on Apple.
Also, check out ...
> Before starting Apple, Steve Jobs cold-called HP at 12 years old and got a summer job. (Listen)
> See Don Valentine's original 1977 memo for Sequoia's investment in Apple Computer. (View)
> All of Apple's CEOs through the years, from Michael Scott to John Ternus. (Read)
> Creating the iPhone ended the marriages of several of Apple's engineers. (Read) |
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One Story We're Taking Stock In |
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GLP-1 drugs have disrupted a variety of industries since the FDA approved Wegovy for weight loss in 2021, from Weight Watchers' 2025 bankruptcy filing to a marked decrease in US consumer spending on fast food.
The bridal industry seems to be the latest sector forced to adapt, just in time for wedding season: With one in 10 couples arranging a wedding this year using the drugs (and an equal share considering it), wedding dress designers have been faced with increased rush orders and requests for fit adjustments due to brides’ last-minute GLP-1-induced weight fluctuations.
Many are significantly altering their business practices as a result, with some designers even having brides sign legal waivers when purchasing a dress, according to the feature story below (one of our favorites of the week). |
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> Wedding dresses now come with a legal waiver for brides on GLP-1s. (Read) |
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> How the "wedding industrial complex" drives wedding prices up. (1440 Topics) |
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