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Sally Tian spent years moving between cultures. In 2025, she decided to move back to China to start a search fund.Sally Tian.Sally Tian grew up between China and Canada, living and working in both countries at different points in her life.After grad school, she decided against corporate life and moved to China to pursue a search fund.She says returning to China reshaped her identity, work goals, and relationship with her parents.Growing up between two cultures shaped Sally Tian's perspective on the world.Tian was born in Guangzhou, China, and lived there until she was 10, when her family moved to Vancouver. At 15, she returned to China to attend an international school before heading to Toronto for college, where she later started her career in management consulting."I thought, 'I'm going to fulfill the immigrant dream. I'm going to get a great corporate job and all that,'" Tian, now 30, told Business Insider.However, the predictability of her days left her wanting more, and after three years, she moved to Beijing in 2020 to work for a major Chinese tech company.After completing her MBA, Tian realized she didn't want to be in a corporate job.Sally Tian.What was meant to be a one-year stay in China stretched to nearly three years. After a year in Beijing, she was relocated to Shanghai, where she remained in the role for another year before moving on to a startup.In 2023, amid prolonged lockdowns in Shanghai, Tian and her boyfriend left for graduate school in the US, hoping the time away would help them decide where to build their future.After two years of pursuing her MBA at Harvard, Tian said she found her answer: The life she wanted didn't include a corporate job.Instead, she and her boyfriend wanted to start a search fund, which involves looking for and acquiring a small business to run themselves."I would say a lot of the reason why people want to do it is because they don't want to work for someone else. They want to be their own boss, and I definitely want to do that as well," Tian said.Moving back to ChinaWhile search funds are more common in the US, Tian said China felt like the place where she could make it work. In September, she and her boyfriend packed up their bags and moved back.Tian moved into a three-bedroom apartment in Shanghai with her boyfriend.Sally Tian.The couple considered several cities, including Guangzhou, but ultimately chose Shanghai for its strong investor network and business opportunities.With the help of a real estate agent, they found a three-bedroom apartment located about 40 minutes from the city center. The monthly rent is 8,900 Chinese yuan, or about $1,270.The neighborhood has everything they need, including a mall, a Sam's Club, and a Costco, Tian said. Due to its proximity to many international schools, there are a lot of expats living in their area too.Rent is about $1,270 a month.Sally Tian."Culturally, I understand. I just feel like this is my home, and I don't feel like I'm doing it in someone else's home," Tian said.Moreover, she said the success of her search fund in the US would depend heavily on relationship-building with potential sellers, which she felt would be more challenging due to cultural differences."I don't think I can connect as well with, for example, a Midwest person in their 50s or 60s, or all the sports that they're into," she said.Tian said she is looking to acquire a business in industries including B2B services, B2C franchises, and manufacturing.Sally Tian.A 2024 Stanford report of 681 search funds formed in the US and Canada since 1984 found that investors have put about $1.45 billion into search funds and search-acquired companies over the past four years.While search funds remain rare in China compared to the US, Tian believes that gap represents opportunity.While services and enterprise software dominate most North American search fund acquisitions, Tian said her focus in China is broader, spanning B2B services, B2C franchises, and manufacturing.Many…

A new study from a German think tank found that foreign exporters paid only 4% of the US tariffs, with the rest paid by American buyers.Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty ImagesA Kiel Institute study found US tariffs are mostly paid by American importers and consumers.The study found foreign exporters paid only around 4% of the tariff cost.The research contradicts Trump's messaging that Americans aren't paying for tariffs.A favorite tool of President Donald Trump has been costing Americans, according to new study.The brunt of US tariffs — 96% — have been paid by US buyers, research from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, found, while about 4% of the tariff burden was paid by foreign exporters."American importers and consumers bear nearly all the cost," the researchers said of the tariffs.The study, published Monday, said that the $200 billion increase in customs revenue that the US government raised in 2025 was a "tax paid almost entirely by Americans."The research contradicts Trump's messaging that tariff costs would not be paid by Americans, but by other countries and overseas exporters. The president's aggressive tariff policy launched last year placed additional duties on dozens of trade partners, including China, India, and the European Union.The Kiel Institute study examined more than 25 million shipment records, worth nearly $4 trillion, between January 2024 and November 2025. The researchers found that there was a "near-complete pass-through" of the tariffs."US import prices rise nearly one-for-one with tariffs, while trade volumes contract," the study said.The findings echo other research that has found Americans are paying for tariffs, including from Harvard Business School and The Budget Lab at Yale. Analysts at Deutsche Bank and Bank of America also said last year that Americans were the ones paying for the tariffs.The Kiel study said American importers and wholesalers are first hit by the tariff cost, followed by manufacturers and retailers, all of which must choose whether to absorb the tariff or pass it on to their customers. American consumers are then hit by increased prices, both on imported goods or American-made products that use foreign inputs. There's been more limited availability of goods in the US, the researchers found.Trump has continued to use tariffs, saying on Saturday that he would impose additional tariffs on Denmark and other European countries unless they agree to a deal that would transfer Greenland to the US.Many of Trump's tariff policies could also be undone. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the legality of a host of Trump's tariffs that were instituted under an emergency national security law. Trump has said the US would be "screwed" if the tariffs are overturned.Read the original article on Business Insider

OpenAI CFO Sarah FriarPATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty ImagesOpenAI is focused on "practical adoption" in 2026, CFO Sarah Friar wrote.The company sees opportunities to grow its business in health, science, and enterprise, she said.OpenAI generated more than $20 billion in annualized revenue in 2025, CFO noted.OpenAI is going on all in on "practical adoption" of artificial intelligence in 2026, according to its CFO."The priority is closing the gap between what AI now makes possible and how people, companies, and countries are using it day to day," Sarah Friar wrote in a recent blog post."The opportunity is large and immediate, especially in health, science, and enterprise, where better intelligence translates directly into better outcomes," she added.There are signs the startup is already taking advantage of these opportunities. Data from Ramp showed that business spending on OpenAI models surged to a record in December, outpacing rivals Anthropic and Google.Still, some investors and analysts are concerned about OpenAI's huge financial commitments and whether the startup will generate enough revenue to make a profit in future years. For example, OpenAI has announced roughly $1.4 trillion in infrastructure deals, such as data centers, in the past year or so.One potential source of new revenue is advertising, something that OpenAI said on Friday it would start testing. CEO Sam Altman once labeled ads a "last resort," although the move has been expected for months now.Friar addressed concern about OpenAI's finances in her recent blog, noting that revenue has grown in sync with compute availability.OpenAI's compute expanded from 0.2 gigawatts in 2023 to about 1.9 GW last year. Meanwhile, annualized revenue grew from $2 billion to more than $20 billion in the same period, Friar disclosed.That represents "never-before-seen growth at such scale," Friar wrote. "And we firmly believe that more compute in these periods would have led to faster customer adoption and monetization," she added.This did little to quell the critics.On Monday, tech blogger Paul Kedrosky reacted to Friar's blog post by saying: "Amusing reading from OpenAI CFO bragging that they are successfully selling dollars for $0.70 in huge volume."Read the original article on Business Insider

Hady KfouryNAYAHady Kfoury grew Naya from a single restaurant to a fast-casual chain with more than 40 locations.Kfoury's experience has shown him there are several common misconceptions about the industry.He said running a fast-casual spot is harder than you'd think and that it's not just about the food.This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Hady Kfoury, the founder of Naya, a fast-casual Lebanese-inspired food chain with more than 40 locations on the East Coast. Naya plans to have 200 locations nationwide by 2030. This story has been edited for length and clarity.I studied hospitality in Switzerland and then came to New York to work under celebrity chefs, Daniel Boulud and François Payard, so I had experience in fine dining. When I decided to open the first Naya in 2008, that was more or less my comfort zone.A week after we launched, we got an amazing article in the New York Times and then we were packed for lunch and dinner. It definitely helped prevent us from shutting down after a few months.A couple of years in, we realized the food worked incredibly well in a faster and more accessible format. If you go to a Lebanese restaurant, you have all these mezze in the middle of the table, like a plate with a variety of dips and vegetables, and you're putting scoops on your plate. That's how we eat usually. So that's why I shifted my focus into a fast-casual model.Today, we have 44 restaurants and we are riding the wave of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine in general. It's definitely become mainstream, which is totally different than almost 20 years ago when I started the business.As we scale, I've found there are four major misconceptions about the restaurant business.1. Fast casual is not easyA lot of people think fast-casual restaurants are easy. It is not easy. Serving more guests at a faster pace doesn't mean it's a simple effort; it means you should master your systems and consistency at scale, possibly even more rigor than in fine dining.The biggest challenge we have is that you're on an assembly line. You're not cooking per order. It's a problem for any restaurant with a service line. How do you plan to rotate food in a certain way, and to cook it a certain amount, so the food remains fresh and not overcooked?My R&D doesn't stop. It keeps me up at night thinking about how we can keep improving what we do. And any change you make to improve something, you're rolling it out at 44 restaurants, so you have to be very mindful and careful.2. Expansion doesn't mean successGrowing only works when the business fundamentals — training, supply chain, quality control — are built to handle it repeatedly. Growing without readiness is chaotic.From 2008 to 2020, I grew Naya to seven restaurants without any partners because all I cared about was being profitable and having a great team in place. Growth only works when you have those fundamentals. In 2020, I partnered with a private-equity firm, which was initially scary, but the rules were clear from day one that we would prioritize those fundamentals.3. Cutting corners doesn't increase profitsSome people think cutting corners gets you a more profitable bottom line, but that is not the case. Cutting costs often undermines guest trust. You lose the customer trust, and the brands that endure are the ones that deliver authenticity, quality, and transparency every time.We're trying to be very affordable, and we fall somewhere in the middle of the category, but I will never drop quality. I recently partnered with Pat LaFrieda, one of the best high-end butchers in the tristate. Even with our vegetables, we try to get deliveries three to four times per week rather than two times where you could get cheaper products.4. It's about more than foodPeople think that it's all about the food, but people matter so much too. What keeps guests coming back and what keeps your team thriving is a culture of service, training, and retention.I take extremely good care of my team.…