>> welcome to bloomberg businessweek, i am carol massar. in this issue, how to make millions from snapchat. also, software helping donald trump get ahead and the hollywood divorce lawyer that everybody wants. ♪ carol: i'm here with the editor of limerick businessweek and this is the room where he put the magazine together. ellen: it is. during the course of any week we , put layouts on the walls and this room gets unbelievably crowded with people in our department and editors and we all go over all of the layouts and discuss what they look like, how they should change. and how changes in the storyline

about going to change the layout. so it is a lot of people in this room, hashing out problems, having a good time, too. carol: you put the merit -- magazine puzzle together right now. that includes what is in the future section. this week, you talk about valeant ceo, in the news a lot this week. ellen: he was in the news a lot this week. if you remembered last year, he kind of vanished after a scandal involving valeant raising drug prices a lot. it caught the attention of hillary clinton. and it became kind of this big, sort of public outrage over raising prices, partly because of martin scott, who then was indicted for other reasons and then he got sick and went on medical leave and vanished. this week, he reappeared, he went back to work, and lo and behold, almost immediately, they announced that there was an sec investigation into the company. carol: it is a story that just

gets more and more interesting. another story that i think is interesting and you have it in the company section this week, and that is etsy. it is kind of going up finally. -- growing up finally. ellen: it is growing up. they went public. they have to figure out how to go from a platform that sells homemade stuff to document items. carol: so the homemade stuff, right? ellen: this could be made on at the. -- etsy. this is the one i made into the magazine and this is the one that did not. but, we were trying to show us that items like this are now factory made, they're coming off of a manufacturing line. and we use this to sort of show that in the magazine. and for this one. carol: it didn't quite make it, alas. it could be something that's on

snapchat. that is your cover story this week. talk to us about it. ellen: snapchat is been around for a while. a year ago, they announced they would change their business model, and they have sold advertising. it has completely taken off during super bowl weekend this year, pepsi was on, amazon was on, budweiser, and they were all paying $1 million to be on snapchat. it is sort of a platform that you need to know that, but you you don't understand, and we explain it for you. ellen: -- reporter: snapchat has been hundred million daily users which actually sounds quite a bit smaller than facebook. facebook has one billion daily users. what is so amazing about snapchat is the audience. they are very young. they are very engaged. it is basically just the ideal

audience for advertisers. carol: and advertiser paying to be a part of it? reporter: the money is pretty surprising. there were rumors in the early days that advertisers paying tv like a rates. may not be that crazy expensive, but the money is very real. for the super bowl, for instance, there were four major advertisers, well-known brands, and altogether, they paid over $1 million to be in one snapchat super bowl story. so, it is not quite super bowl money, but it is not quite super bowl tv money but it is , real and definitely growing. carol: it is interesting you say that. audiences in some cases, depending on who is on snapchat, some of those folks, they have some pretty big audiences, comparable to what you see on television? reporter: yes. big network sitcoms have sometimes tens of millions of viewers, but what happens is,

many of those years are very old. not very old, but older. then if you are an advertiser , trying to reach people in their 20's, or late teens, it is very hard. and so snapchat comes in and , they have 86% of your audience under 35. it is very clear that these are young people that are not necessarily watching television, so advertisers look at it, and even though they do not maybe totally understand it because it seems valuable. carol: i feel clear talking about snapchat and we've not mention the founder and the ceo, evan steagall. he is such a big part in terms of them momentum behind us. reporter: it's a great story, and what is kind of amazing about it is that this company has been mocked at every turn. originally, snapchat was kind of dismissed as kind of a thing for sending lewd pictures or what have you. carol: we all remember that.

reporter: that cannot be a major -- could not be a major advertising vehicle, that is for sex. no advertiser want to be assisted with that. and then, they created this sort of media play where they were charging very high advertising rates, and he was made fun of for that. he was reportedly offered something like $3 billion from facebook, turned it down. and yet, despite all of these sort of seemingly counterintuitive, not quite straight down the middle moves, snapchat is doing amazingly well. and you know this media play, , which looked insane, like why would you want to read the wall sex? journal to your people, first of all there's a , lot more happening than dirty pictures. and secondly, really, these people do want to read the wall street journal and there is on snapchat along with cosmopolitan, vice, and a bunch of sort of mix of new media brands.

and all media brands. this, if young of want to read about the king of snapchat the electorate or , article in bloomberg businessweek this week. we will not give it away. i am back with ellen pollock. something that caught my attention is bill collectors in russia. this is really scary. ellen: it is really scary. russia is in a devastating recession. mostly because of the price of oil dropping so dramatically. that means that people are in tremendous consumer debt. something like 1.2 trillion rubles, which is a lot of debt. but, even if you are just a little bit in debt, you might find yourself coming up against these very scary bill collectors. you can come out of your house and find on your car, debtor written in huge graffiti with your apartment number. they'll write on your apartment walls, and they have even thrown bombs and hurt children. carol: destroying baby

carriages. ellen: it is crazy. it is really, really rough. and some of these cases, there have been prosecution, but a lot of them have not. so does ugly to go on for a while. carol: interesting, think you so much. coming up, the software that may donald trump's run for the white house possible. and the many donald trump like politicians in power across europe. also a diverse attorney every hollywood story wants -- star wants, and what is the worst business decision that you have ever made? will talk about more on bloomberg businessweek. ♪

♪ carol: welcome back. in the magazine's opening remarks this week, reporter stephen ferris writes, you're it may sound horrified by the rise

of donald trump, but the truth is, he'll be right at home in paris or berlin. after all, europe has given rise to nationalistic politicians , andas jean marie le pen so promoting media personalities. in fact, donald trump and immigrant brand is shared by numerous political parties across the continent. from finland to greece to switzerland. in other words, europeans want to member of the old proverb, do not throw stones in glass houses. but will this transmit in america? you can read the article about that in bloomberg businessweek. donald trump stays in the spotlights in this week's politics section. would you believe tromso political rise is partly thanks to a software design by antiwar activists? the software is called nation builder. i spoke to a reporter in san francisco. adam: nation builder is a software that serves as kind of a digital hub for a campaign.

so you can build a website, send e-mail, monitor social networking, and you can ingest all of this other kind of data that campaigns nowadays gather on voters. basically, the thing you are trying to do here is put together a profile on voters. so that you can appeal to them about things that they care about in hopes that they will vote for you, donate some of their time, give money. many different things. it is a way which campaigns can slice and dice the electorate to their benefit. carol: talk to us about the individual who actually put this together. because he has an interesting background. adam: jim gilliam who created nation builder is a really fascinating person. he grew up in a christian fundamentalist family. he belonged to jerry falwell's churches. and he went to liberty university in virginia.

and then, when he was at school he became ill and got sick and his mother at the time also got sick. and he ended up losing his faith and going to work in software. he was always kind of a techie. he started to work for a startup. carol: you know when i started , reading your story, adam, i thought this would be for outliers, big campaigns are not going to get involved but campaigns like donald trump's are using this. adam: campaigns like barack obama's in 2008, 2012, really, they built, they spend a lot of money to build customized software to do all of these different things. and so here, what nation builder has done, is sort of build a turnkey approach to this. it is not as sophisticated as what you can build with an unlimited budget that a lot of these presidential campaigns have, but it does give you a lot of these capabilities that just 10 years ago, or a few years ago

were not possible. carol: speaking of innovative technology, and the company and industry section in this week's bloomberg businessweek dana , holding's about one of google's next big ideas. self driving cars in big demand from senior citizens. dana: inspiration for the story came from google. i was in detroit in january for the international auto show and i went to a presentation that the chief executive of the self driving car project gave, and he talked about how google is really trying to develop this technology with stranded seniors in mind. that was kind of the genesis for the story, and then i discover that all of the automakers are basically doing the same thing. really researching how the elderly live, and what their mobility needs are. carol: have the automakers, have google figured out what the size of this market might be? dana: i think it is pretty significant. we have 43 million baby boomers in the united states already.

they are aging at a rapid pace. it'll be a pretty significant check of the population by 2030, which is the time from that a lot of people are looking at for when self driving cars, in the market. i think that for those of us to do drive, car keys of always represented independence, when you lose your ability to drive, or rural communities, which is where most of our seniors actually do list. carol: do we have to be worried about adoption rates? you highlight some questions for baby boomers, and then wanting to adopt self driving cars? dana: nobody has really set up on a business model yet. it is not clear the elderly will be purchasing these cars or if it will be a ridership model. one example might be that the retirement community that currently has a bus driver to take their residents to doctors appointments, maybe they will use a self driving car instead. so, i think we're still waiting for the business models to be hashed out. carol: waiting for the business models, also waiting for the cars rushing at the road.

do they have any idea when this will happen? dana: i think the technology is here, but the regulatory and insurance issues need to be ironed out before this can be adopted at a wide scale. between 2020 and 2030, you are going to see a lot of activity. carol: time for a gut check. -- fact check? what is the worst business decision that you have ever made? that is a survey and the magazines etc. section this week. we are joined with more. you guys devote a whole page took, what was the worst idea that summary had? brett: to be successful business means that you feel the few -- failed a few times. we did an informal survey with entrepreneurs and we ask them a question. the first thing we learned as a woman who tried to do a kid hair care line, originally packaged the materials in a see-through bottle which he thought was , great, everybody else advised against it because when the media went to go photograph the bottle, they cannot actually read any of the text. it cost her $75,000. that was obviously a mistake. another mistake we learned is

that when you are in business with something that is trendy, you do not want to think all of the profits that you make back into the craze because when the craze dies down, you'll be stuck with a lot of cash tied up and stuff that nobody wants anymore. carol: check out the survey on bloomberg businessweek. coming up, biotech is a sugar daddy and his name is alaska. plus, the application will make your divorce a little less stressful, at least on your wallet. in the do's and don'ts of karaoke with coworkers. all in this week's issue of bloomberg business week. ♪

♪ carol: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek, i am carol massar.

in the companies and industry section of this week's boomer business week, reporter donnie bloom hotels is why alaska's $50 billion wealth fund is showing money on startups, specifically biotech startups. hey donnie you write about , alaska being a biotech sugar daddy. what is going on? donnie: alaska made its money from oil, obviously, starting in the 1960's. they got a $50 billion sovereign wealth funds, but what is interesting is that in the past couple of years they have been throwing this money into biotech in somewhat risky early-stage company. and throwing a lot of money even up to $150 million in a single two company. carol: that is a lot of money. has it made sense for alaska to spend their money in this way? donnie: one of the things they like about it is that these investments are liquid, so they actually make it a high return in the long run by getting more a company and taking some of the

risk that other investors are not willing to take. they made an investment in a company called juneau therapeutics. way, is not a coincidence. that investment is turned out really well. they invested $129 million between 2013 and 2014. now the control by 25% of the company and that is a billion dollar plus stake right now. that investment turned out very well for them. to be seen about whether these other investments in biotech companies will turn out quite so well. carol: there are a few other biotech companies. who are they that they have invested in? donnie: kodiak and an alley. carol: i like the alaska connection. donnie: all of them do have an alaska thing. juneau is the capital of alaska. denali is a mountain. kodiak is the brown bear of alaska. clearly, they like having these companies when they invest that much money in them. it's sort of an inside joke.

carol: with oil prices coming down, alaska has had some financial problems. let's get to some of the regulators noticing money being made in biotech. donnie: they are noticed how much cash they have in the fund. the governor said that even if they fired every single state employee, they would still have a budget shortfall. so, they are incredibly desperate for money, and they're thinking about possibly tapping the funds for a couple billion dollars a year. right now, part of it is used to kind of give money to alaskans, just as a kind of handout handout for living in alaska. and of course, free investing, but it looks like the governor and potentially the legislator is considering tapping it, just to make the math work. carol: that was bloomberg businessweek's donnie bloomfield. back once again with editor alan pollack, and there many more must read in a magazine, and there's a great payment at -- app. tell us about it. ellen: this an application for divorce couples and i do not

know why it was not created before. it allows parents to keep track of who is spending what on their kids. it is very clever. it means that you do not have to speak to your ex, which for some people is extremely important. carol: limit the conversation. ellen: limit the conversation. and, you know the spend money on dance classes versus french classes. there is no mixing it up. you do not have to fight about it. carol: that's great, limit interaction. we can do about divorce without talking about a story in a magazine, talking about a divorce attorney, laura wasser, well-known in hollywood, everybody wants her when they need her. ellen: this is a divorce lawyer who is in demand constantly in hollywood. carol: high profile names have used her. ellen: britney spears is one. and this is the story that tells you the secrets of hollywood divorce. it is a business story. it is all driven by money. of course. and she tells you in the story, all kinds of secrets that it

never would have occurred to you. for example, i will give you one or two. there is a reason that most hollywood divorces take place in march. and that is because it is after the academy awards, and people don't want to walk on the red carpet without someone. and then there is another reason, which i won't explain why hollywood divorces come in groups, that you have to read the story for. but it is really inside a world, big-money world, that you know nothing about. carol: ellen, who knew they were so many interesting nuances when it comes to hollywood divorces? a great read. one more thing we want to talk about, karaoke. you actually looked at karaoke with a lot of businesses and workers, they go out and have fun. reporter: it is an opportunity to boost morale, it is a fun time you can have with people that you are normally sitting at a desk with. carol: but you can make mistakes. reporter: sure, doing colleague

-- karaoke with your colleagues. carol: have you done it? reporter: we are working on it. alcohol helps. some people are not necessarily naturally inclined to doing karaoke, but maybe after a couple of drinks, they are a little more open to the suggestion than they would have been when they were stone cold sober. carol: i'm not a great person karaoke, but are there certain songs you should never seeing? -- sing? reporter: i would argue that there are songs that have long sentimental breaks, because you are never really sure to do. and you definitely want to avoid obscure, personal favorites. it is an opportunity to pick some crowdpleasers. go with "we built this city." go with a song by journey. don't pick a deep cut from the smashing pumpkins album that only you love that nobody else will appreciate. carol: what about if you're really good at singing, do have to play nice? reporter: yes if you went to

, juilliard or tish in another life and you still can sing along to the entire album of chorus line you might want to , play down a little bit. you don't to be too much of a show off. sort of the same rules as worker you want to get along and have a good time he did not want to take yourself too seriously. carol: so if you went out and did karaoke with sam, what kind of song would you saying? ellen: i would think something very easy. very easy. so far come i have now gone and i broke one of your rules. the boss is allowed to go, but only stay for 30 minutes, which i did not know. reporter: you want to get out of things before they get too risque or dicey. it puts everybody and uncovered position. carol: last time i heard it risque or dicey, that is when i left. alan pollack, sam, thank you very much. it is all in this issue of bloomberg businessweek, check it out on newsstands and also online. thank you for joining us. we'll see you next week.

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♪ haslinda: hello, and welcome to "high flyers," a show that gives you a 360-degree view of asia's business elite. today we meet one of india's richest women. she runs the country's largest publicly-traded biopharmaceutical company. it is a success story that started in a humble garage to the sound of people mocking her ambition. but she has never taken no for