Bart Ons

Let's take a look at how Seattle's DoorDash law actually turned out. In 2024, Seattle implemented "PayUp" — a minimum wage law for food delivery drivers, setting the rate at $26.40/hour. The intent was to protect workers. Here's what actually happened: DoorDash added a $5 fee to every order. Customers stopped ordering. Within two weeks, 30,000 fewer orders. UberEats volume dropped 30%. Drivers — the people the law was supposed to help — saw their available deliveries cut in half and earnings per hour fall 25%. A new National Bureau of Economic Research study confirmed what the numbers already showed: higher per-delivery pay was completely offset by fewer deliveries and lower tips. Active drivers saw zero net gain in monthly earnings. KUOW reported this week that two years in, the results are undeniable — Seattle is now the most expensive delivery market in the country. Denver, Portland, and San Francisco, cities without these laws, saw delivery revenue grow 20-40%. Seattle stagnated. The parallel to what's happening with WA tax proposals is obvious. SB 6346 would impose a 9.9% income tax on high earners. The QSBS add-back bills would strip federal tax exclusions from founders. The argument is always "just a small tax on those who can afford it." But capital moves. Founders move. Companies incorporate elsewhere. The DoorDash data gives us a controlled experiment: same company, same product, same time period, different policy environments. The city with the heaviest regulation saw the worst outcomes — including for the workers it tried to protect. Incentives matter. Every time. kuow.org/stories/seattl… #StartupLaw #WashingtonState #PolicyMatters #QSBS #Founders #waleg

Anyone who thinks the California government has a revenue problem is mathematically illiterate or part of the fraud. California does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. Politicians and their henchmen stealing tens of billions of dollars PER YEAR from our pockets. Ask yourself why they can’t pass an audit! Ask yourself why they change the reporting rules on your pension! Do you start to see a pattern? Endless reams of money keep falling through the cracks with no accountability into the waiting hands of thieves. When is enough, enough? California will soon start to lose its grip on being the most vibrant state in America. The billionaires will leave. The millionaires and middle class will too. And once they are done taxing us of everything we have, and none of us are left, they will tax you. Now, if you’re frustrated about crime, healthcare and education you should be. I am, too: our approach to these issues is trash. Our results on these issues are also trash. So fix the problem: kick out the people who run the kleptocracy. Elect real leaders who are competent, firm, tough and high agency. But no matter what you do, if you keep asking for politicians to take people’s money, you are firmly part of the fraud not part of the solution…and everyone sees you.

Wait until @nickshirleyy gets to California!

Cancel your @nytimes subscription and give the money to @nickshirleyy instead!

Tonight is breakout moment for AI. $META and $MSFT just sent a message to every company; there's gold in those hills. The reference to a gold rush is fitting because that's what we're likely going to get over the next 2-4 years, including a run up more than people can comprehend followed by a bust.

1/ Big day for Microsoft 365 Copilot: I’m really excited about our latest update. Copilot has truly become the UI for AI – and for me, it’s the scaffolding for my workday. Here are four new features I’ve especially been enjoying.

Across every industry and at Microsoft, AI agents are revolutionizing not only how we work but what work we do. This shift is bigger and faster than anything we've seen in the past 30 years of tech transformation, from the rise of PCs to mobile, the internet, and the cloud. Teams are evolving. People and agents are collaborating to engage customers, analyze data, scale operations, and much more. According to our latest Work Trend Index report, released today: - 82% of leaders are confident they'll use agents as digital team members to expand workforce capacity in the next 12 to 18 months. - 46% of leaders say their organization is using agents to fully automate workstreams or business processes for entire teams or functions. This is a whole new paradigm! It calls for a new mindset for leaders – from deploying agents for specific tasks to scaling them across the organization. A good starting point is to identify the processes that differentiate your business – where expertise, speed, or scale give you a competitive edge. Then choose three to five high-impact processes and begin a cycle of continuous improvement with agents. Just as Excel became essential to every knowledge worker, building, managing, and improving AI agents will become central to the way we work. Over time, these agents won’t just act independently; they’ll interoperate, collaborating like a team. We think this democratization of AI presents a clear opportunity to empower every employee to be a director of work and scale impact through agents. Read the full report below: aka.ms/2025WorkTrendI…

A great example of what's possible when someone connects their passion with their purpose to make a real difference. DxGPT, a rare disease diagnostic tool, is now live, showing how AI can be applied to help truly improve lives.

AI agents are completely reshaping how we work – from global companies automating business processes at massive scale to individuals building personalized solutions in natural language. I had a chance to talk about what this transformation means for business and even daily life in the latest installment of the FYAI series. Check it out here -

Proud to announce computer use in Microsoft Copilot Studio! Agents can now click, type, and interact with desktop + web apps – no APIs needed. Learn more in our blog: microsoft.com/en-us/microsof…

Our mission with Copilot Studio is to bring together the best AI innovations into a single low code agent platform so that you can build amazing things. Today, I get to share two new (and very different) updates: deep reasoning and agent flows. I explain both in depth in this article – check it out! linkedin.com/pulse/introduc…

Amazing to see the agent ecosystem around Copilot growing! The Adobe Marketing Agent and Adobe Express Agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot help teams go from idea to execution faster. These agents are transforming how marketers create, engage with customers, and drive business growth.

We are bringing GPT-4.5 to Copilot Studio in limited preview! Check out the blog to learn more: microsoft.com/en-us/microsof…

Great story from @TMobile about their exciting work with AI. They’re using Copilot Studio to create agents that enhance both customer and employee experiences!

Excited to introduce the new Sales Agent and Sales Chat – two pre-built agents designed to support sales reps and boost productivity and efficiency! Together these agents provide conversational insights and automatically build qualified pipeline, all seamlessly integrated into a seller’s daily workflow. Check out the blog to learn more: aka.ms/CopilotSalesAg…

At Microsoft, we’ve deployed agents for thousands of internal and external use cases. I get to see this transformation firsthand – despite any doubts you may have heard from @Benioff. e.g. our Copilot landing page features an agent to help with any product questions. And on Azure.com, we built an agent that helps customers find product details and get tech support. Check them out - pretty impressive!

@JeffBezos @JeffBezos, I highly recommend @JeffBezos 😉

Who’d you pick as the next Bond?

@altcap @DOGE @altcap couldn’t agree more Brad. Would you mind writing another “letter” please. Seems like you worked some magic doing that last time…

Who doesn’t believe that there is 10-20% of inefficient spend in government?! @DOGE 🇺🇸

The state of California has a $13B+ rainy day fund. If there was ever a “rainy day” is this not it? Why hasn’t Governor Newsom already plugged the hole in the Firefighters budget? Why hasn’t anyone in the media run this down? Why does it fall on private citizens to do the work of government?

@JillianMichaels @TulsiGabbard @DavidSacks for Secretary of State 🙏

.@TulsiGabbard for Secretary Of State 🙏