• In 1954, the first Burger King opened its doors.
• An early version of the Burger King logo featured curved letters sandwiched between two yellow buns.
• The Whopper, which has been around since 1957, was still popular well into the 1980s.

Burger King has grown from a small-time burger joint to a major American corporation.

When Burger King first opened in 1954, it served 18-cent flame-broiled burgers, milkshakes, and fries. Three years later, the chain introduced its signature Whopper — now, that same burger is fueling growth for the burger chain.

In February, Burger King updated the Whopper with a new bun, “creamier” mayonnaise, and box packaging after customers complained that the burger’s old paper wrapper sometimes left it squished in transit.

The changes appear to be paying off. Burger King’s US same-store sales jumped 8.5% in the second quarter, and customers bought about 20% more Whoppers than they did in the previous period.

The 1980s were similarly a time of growth for the brand, with multiple menu changes. However, some aspects of visiting the restaurants, such as the chain’s salad bars, haven’t stood the test of time.

Here’s a look back at what it was like to visit Burger King in the 1980s.

By the 1980s, Burger King had expanded across the US and had a well-established brand identity.

The first iteration of Burger King was called Insta-Burger King and opened to the public in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1953. But the company says the first real Burger King opened a year later.

By the 1980s, the chain had opened 2,000 restaurants and had expanded to every state, FLAME magazine, a publication for Burger King’s franchisees, reported in 2004. By 1986, the company had 4,743 restaurants, including locations in 25 countries, per the timeline.

As the above photo shows, an early version of the Burger King logo featured curved letters sandwiched between two yellow buns. The chain is now using a very similar logo that embodies the same nostalgic, vintage feel. 

Burger King locations in the 1980s offered both drive-thru and dine-in service.

Drive-thrus, which the company introduced in 1975, have proven essential to the success of fast-food chains.

By 1987, drive-thrus were responsible for 60% of sales in the fast-food industry.

In 1982, Burger King’s drive-thru lanes started offering “late-night” service, according to the company timeline in FLAME magazine.

Customers could line up to try the chain’s iconic Whopper and eat in the adjoining dining room.

By 1985, customers could also grab their own drinks from self-service machines.

There were some new additions to Burger King’s menu in the 1980s, including its bacon double cheeseburger and chicken tenders.

While Burger King’s brand identity hasn’t changed drastically since the 1980s, its menu has been updated.

While many menu items, such as the Whopper, fries, and burgers that customers could customize and “have it your way,” are still on the menu, Burger King restaurants in the 1980s also had a customizable salad bar, according to a vintage photo posted on X.

After years of testing, breakfast items were also added to the menu in the ’80s.

Other items that debuted in the 1980s included breakfast items: The Croissan’wich was first offered in 1983, and French toast sticks were released in 1985.

Its menu has since expanded further to include breakfast items such as hash browns and pancakes.

Employees wore hats and striped polo shirts.

Burger King’s uniforms have changed drastically during the chain’s lifetime.

In the 1980s, the brand started experimenting with plaid, stripes, and baseball caps to give a relaxed, approachable feel.

They also wore red dresses over red plaid shirts.

In this image from 1983, Burger King University dean Al Jesness shows an employee how to fill a soft drink cup.

As the company grew, Burger King’s managers were trained at the Miami-based university “to learn the holy grail of the perfect burger,” UPI reported in 1983.

• TikTok is letting go of 250 workers in its Nashville office, which is set to close in October.
• The company is offering workers one month’s severance, plus additional pay based on their tenure.
• Many of TikTok’s Nashville staff worked on trust and safety for its US business.

TikTok is shuttering its Nashville office in early October and laying off 250 staffers.

Last week, the company told impacted workers they’d remain on payroll for the next couple of months before the office officially closed. After that, employees are being offered one month of severance pay plus an additional month of pay for each year they’ve worked at the company, three impacted staffers said.

TikTok’s severance package falls within the range of what other media and tech firms have offered in recent layoff rounds:

• In February, The Washington Post offered laid-off workers a month of base pay, plus two weeks of pay for each year they’d worked at the company if they’d been there for more than three years.
• In April, Disney offered non-manager staff one month of severance if they’d been there fewer than five years. Non-managers who had been there over five years were offered a week of pay for each year, up to 52 weeks.
• In May, Meta offered four months of base severance pay, plus two additional weeks of pay for every year of employment.

TikTok emailed Nashville workers to tell them they were being laid off on the morning of August 5. It then shared more details during an office-wide video call, in which the chat was disabled, and employees couldn’t ask questions. The company directed staff to send individual questions directly to HR, a spokesperson said.

Some Nashville employees with early shifts were already at the office before the layoff was announced, and were escorted out of the building.

TikTok’s decision to shut down its Nashville office caught some employees off guard, while others told Business Insider they weren’t too surprised after noticing a slowdown in new hiring or backfilling of office roles over the past year.

“Even without anyone explicitly telling us Nashville was at risk, people naturally started wondering whether certain teams or locations might eventually be consolidated,” one impacted staffer said.

A TikTok spokesperson said the office is being closed “to streamline our operations and better align our teams for long-term growth.”

“We remain fully committed to providing secure, safe and positive experiences for the 200 million Americans that create, discover and connect with what they love on TikTok,” they said.

Many of TikTok’s Nashville employees worked on its trust and safety team, which handles tasks like enforcing community and safety guidelines and content moderation. These staffers work separately from ByteDance via a joint venture the company set up with a mix of investors, including Oracle, called TikTok USDS JV.

TikTok has trust and safety workers in other US offices, including Seattle, California, and New York, as well as a large cohort based in Scottsdale. It also works with third-party contractors for tasks like content moderation.

Ahead of the Nashville layoffs, TikTok was shifting more of its content moderation work to third-party contractors, one impacted staffer said. It was also encouraging its trust and safety workers to use AI to streamline their work, using internal AI tools such as the AIME chat interface and the coding product TRAE, which are available to most company employees, two laid-off workers said.

TikTok’s global team previously made cuts to its content moderation operations, including laying off hundreds of UK workers about a year ago as part of a reorganization and push for automation, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company has also trimmed other divisions in recent years, such as e-commerce and marketing, to meet shifting business needs.

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• OpenAI veteran Brad Lightcap is leaving the company “to start something new.”
• Lightcap worked for years as the company’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer.
• His departure joins a string of others for the ChatGPT-maker as it turns toward an IPO.

Veteran OpenAI executive Brad Lightcap announced on Tuesday that he’s leaving the company, the latest departure at the AI juggernaut as it orients itself toward an initial public offering.

Lightcap served as the company’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer during his eight-year tenure, and most recently led a special projects team at OpenAI. He shared a goodbye message with staff and reposted it to X, calling the departure “bittersweet” and saying that he was leaving “to start something new.”

He said he planned to continue helping advance OpenAI’s mission “from a different vantage point,” but offered no details. Lightcap said he’d still be around and available to staff for a few weeks.

When asked for comment, OpenAI pointed to Lightcap’s post Lightcap did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lightcap’s departure comes just a month after Fidji Simo, also formerly a top OpenAI executive, announced that she’d be stepping down into an advisory role at the company. Johannes Heidecke, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, also left in July. Other recent departures include the company’s AI ethics lead Chloé Bakalar and chief futurist Joshua Achiam, the Financial Times reported.

Lightcap transitioned to his special projects role in April. An internal memo at the time said he would report to CEO Sam Altman and help expand OpenAI’s enterprise software sales through private equity partnerships. Denise Dresser, the company’s then-new chief revenue officer, took on some of Lightcap’s other commercial duties.

Before joining OpenAI in 2018, Lightcap invested at Y Combinator, worked at Dropbox on strategic finance, and was an investment banking analyst at J.P. Morgan.

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• I went on a five-week trip to Mexico to relax and see if I might want to retire in La Paz.
• It was harder than I anticipated, mostly due to my lack of preparation and the intense summer heat.
• The trip helped me realize I’m more capable than I think, and no matter where I land, I’ll be fine.

For months, I’d been looking forward to my five-week solo trip to Mexico, where I’d be housesitting in a beautiful oceanfront home in La Paz.

I expected I’d have a relaxing stay, and I was especially eager to learn more about the area and its local culture to see if I might want to retire there someday. Right now, I’m not tied to staying in the US and am exploring options close by.

I planned my trip before the official start of summer, bought gauzy clothes to cover my arms and legs, and packed a couple of sun hats. I assumed that if I could survive going to college at the University of Arizona, I could surely handle five weeks in La Paz, which is also in the Sonoran Desert.

On all fronts, I thought I was prepared. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was not.

Between the heat and language barrier, my trip quickly became more stressful than relaxing

When I arrived, the temperature was already in the mid- to upper-90s Fahrenheit — much hotter than I anticipated.

And after two decades in Seattle, my body took longer than I expected to acclimate to weather that 20-year-old me was able to take in stride while living in Tucson, Arizona, three decades prior.

I also hadn’t practiced my Spanish as much as I’d planned, and quickly learned that not speaking the language made everything more complicated.

I was afraid to seem like a rude American tourist, wanted to be respectful of local customs, and felt overwhelmed by all there was to remember.

As I ventured out for my first ride along the Malecón de La Paz, a seaside promenade known for its sandy beaches, public art, and open-air restaurants, I was filled with anxiety.

What if I got a flat tire? Or had heat stroke? Or was forced to suffer the embarrassment of using my limited Spanish in a difficult situation?

For 30 years, I’d traveled with a partner — first my dad, then my boyfriend, and eventually my husband. This time, I was all alone with no one else to read the map, make decisions, or take charge in a difficult situation.

If anything went wrong, there was no one to rescue me, and I thought about turning back. Then I remembered who I was.

Eventually, I found the motivation to move forward by remembering how far I’ve come

Just when I thought I might retreat to my air-conditioned villa, my mind flashed through all the hard things I’d done in my life, ones I once told myself I couldn’t possibly accomplish.

I’d lived in a new and unfamiliar state, I was the first person in my family to graduate from college, I stood alone in court representing myself during my divorce, and I had raised two daughters as a single mom in one of America’s most expensive cities.

I’ve accomplished much more difficult tasks than riding a bike along a beautiful waterfront on a sunny day, and that knowledge gave me the courage to keep going, even when part of me wanted to give up.

At one point, I decided to keep pushing myself and search out the local tortilleria about a 10-minute bike ride away.

It was intimidating at first. I left mid-morning when it was already too hot, got lost, and when I tried to order after practicing the entire way, my mind went blank — all I could do was point to the fresh, hot tortillas rolling off the conveyor belt.

But the next time I went, I knew the way without looking up directions, remembered how to order in Spanish, and felt welcomed by the workers who remembered me.

By the time I left, I realized the real question wasn’t whether I could live in Mexico

I went to La Paz to see if I could start a new life there after I retire. Along the way, I realized that I’m someone who can build a new life anywhere.

This trip reminded me how quickly I tend to doubt myself and forget my own strength when navigating difficult, unfamiliar surroundings, and how important it is to keep going and keep trusting myself.

I still don’t know yet if I want to move to Mexico permanently, but I am confident that wherever I retire, I’ll be just fine.

• Top consumer VCs are betting on AI apps that make the internet more social.
• Vibe coding, AI dating, and IRL social platforms are attracting fresh capital.
• Investors said agents can reshape how consumers connect and create.

Investors are hunting for social media startups that can spark new connections and nurture existing ones.

“Social media companies started based on connection,” Shawn Carolan, a partner at Menlo Ventures, said of the previous wave of giants like Facebook and Instagram.

Carolan said these companies “evolved into media companies” and abandoned that connection.

That leaves an opening in the market.

Venture capitalists at major firms like Menlo, Forerunner, and A16z have several investors dedicated to backing new and innovative internet startups. Other firms, like Verdict Capital and Premise, were founded by partners at firms like General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and NEA, who wanted to set out on their own with investment theses focused on backing consumer-facing startups building for the AI era.

Niko Bonatsos, cofounder and managing director of Verdict Capital, said that AI is allowing startup founders to “reimagine entire categories” and build “so much faster.”

Business Insider recently highlighted 22 VC firms backing social startups in our third annual list. They’ve invested in startups in broader categories such as social media, AI assistants, and dating apps.

So, where exactly are these top investors placing bets?

Here are 5 categories investors are betting on:

1. Vibe coding — but make it social

Kids and teens are “vibe coding apps,” Vanessa Larco, cofounder of Premise, told Business Insider.

She’s one of several investors closely watching how vibe coding is being adopted by younger internet users.

Startups like Wabi and Sekai — which are building platforms where people can vibe code mini apps, then share and remix them — have raised millions of dollars from firms like Khosla, A16z, and Connect Ventures.

“People don’t want to just watch anymore. They want to create,” Connect Ventures’ Nicole Quinn said, who invested in Sekai.

Gaming is another opportunity in this category, with tools like Lemonade (an AI agent for creating Roblox mini-games) and ForgeGUI (an AI-powered game design tool for developers) receiving investments from Menlo Ventures and Verdict Capital, respectively.

As Menlo’s Amy Wu Martin put it: When the barriers to coding go down, consumers have the realization — “I can make stuff for myself.”

It’s shifting digital culture, too. Creators who make content about vibe coding or vibe code new apps themselves are emerging.

“Apps are going to be the new media,” Patron’s Amber Atherton said.

2. New ways to find love

For these VCs, there’s love in the air.

A new class of dating apps is challenging the mainstays like Tinder and Bumble. The AI dating app Overtone comes from an icon of the old guard: Hinge founder Justin McLeod. FirstMark’s Rick Heitzmann contributed to the company’s $18 million raise.

“Probably a year ago, someone would’ve said ‘dating,’ I would’ve been like, ‘Ugh, it’s a horrible category,'” Heitzmann said. “But then you meet somebody who’s thought about the world completely differently, more originally, and better than you have, and it changes your mind.”

Many of these startups promise that AI will help ease the awkwardness of dating, either through custom matchmaking or wingman-style assistants. The AI app Sitch is backed by A16z Speedrun and Premise. Its cofounder, Chad DePue, is an investor for Uncommon Projects.

There’s also Known, an AI dating service with audio matchmakers, backed by Forerunner Ventures.

Other apps promise users a better dating pool or matching strategy, like the Seven Seven Six-backed Left Field, which pairs based on shared interests and communities.

3. Social apps that get you outside instead of online

There is a bounty of new social startups with the sole purpose of getting people off their screens.

“People are kind of feeling exhausted and maybe a little bit nervous about AI,” Precursor’s Marina Girgis said. “They want to put their phones down and connect with people IRL.”

Abstract Ventures, for instance, backed two social apps built around maps: Corner, for finding and sharing local spots, and Amo, a French app studio behind Bump, which lets you track friends.

Meanwhile, Posh, a platform for IRL events and ticketing, announced a $37 million Series B round led by FirstMark Capital in March.

There are more niche apps for activities, too, like Sweatpals for fitness and wellness, and Swsh for sharing content at live events like music festivals or sporting events.

“As we all lean into AI and we’re more efficient with the productivity gains of AI, human beings will have more disposable time,” Quinn said. “How do they like to spend disposable time? It’s doing what they love.”

4. AI companions and personal assistants to help you connect

What if AI agents could actually make our social lives a little bit easier? It’s a big question — and it’s still heavy on the if — but some investors are placing early bets on this space.

Town, an AI personal assistant for managing inboxes and calendars, announced a $55 million Series A in June. Both A16z and Forerunner participated in the round.

While Town is currently focused on professionals, there are assistant startups for families, too, like Ollie, which helps parents manage household tasks.

If people start to use these AI assistants and companions more and give these tools access to troves of personal data, there could be some unique social applications.

“Someone’s going to build this kind of god-like companion that knows everyone and is omnipresent,” Shine Capital’s Ethan Daly said.

Menlo Ventures’ Carolan said he’s fascinated by AI-era startups reinventing “the contacts book” to help people connect.

Babylon’s Hugo Amsellem sees potential in AI acting as an intermediary between people. He invested in Eigen, a startup that announced $15 million in seed funding this year for an AI “mutual friend.”

The space is still quite nascent, however.

5. Entertainment with an AI twist

From music to gaming, entertainment platforms are getting supercharged by AI.

For example, Suno, a platform for making and sharing AI-generated music, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and announced it was valued at $5.4 billion in June. Menlo Ventures led the company’s Series C in 2025.

There’s also Lore, a fandom platform powered by AI search, which provides people a new way to “rabbit hole” about their latest pop culture obsessions, “instead of just doing it in Google,” said Precursor’s Girgis.

Then there are new social gaming apps like Status, an AI mobile gaming startup that lets people role-play as characters, backed by Abstract Ventures and Creator Ventures.

Building a new social app? Have a tip? Contact Sydney Bradley by email (sbradley@businessinsider.com), encrypted messaging app Signal (@sydneykbradley.123), or encrypted email (sydneykbradley@proton.me).

• The Arena Group is rebranding to Paradium.AI as part of its shift to become an AI company, Business Insider has learned.
• CEO Paul Edmondson told employees in a memo obtained by BI that it was “more than a name change.”
• The company is “building a unified, AI-powered ecosystem,” he wrote. Read the full memo below.

Goodbye, Arena Group. Hello, Paradium.AI.

The media company that owns publications including TheStreet, Parade, and Men’s Journal informed employees in a Monday memo obtained by Business Insider that it was changing its name as part of its evolution into a “publicly traded AI company.”

The company plans to announce the name change during its Q2 earnings after market close on Monday, the CEO wrote.

Shares of Arena Group Holdings are down around 48% this year.

“This is more than a name change; it is a commitment to our future as a tech-centric leader in media, data, and commerce,” CEO Paul Edmondson wrote in the memo to employees. “By integrating the acquisition of Info Sentience and the launch of Cutter Studio, we are building a unified, AI-powered ecosystem that empowers us to perform at the speed and scale of artificial intelligence.”

The new name, which is also a URL, re-routed to The Arena Group’s website on Monday afternoon.

The company did not immediately provide comment when reached by Business Insider.

Read the CEO’s full memo to employees

Team,

Today marks a pivotal moment in our company’s history. Following the news shared by leaders with their teams this morning and as we prepare for our Q2 earnings call this afternoon, we are incredibly excited to share that The Arena Group is evolving into Paradium.AI.

This is more than a name change; it is a commitment to our future as a tech-centric leader in media, data, and commerce. By integrating the acquisition of Info Sentience and the launch of Cutter Studio, we are building a unified, AI-powered ecosystem that empowers us to perform at the speed and scale of artificial intelligence.

We are entering a rare and exciting moment — the opportunity to be part of a publicly traded AI company during one of the most transformative periods in technology. Together, we have the chance to shape what comes next and help build the future of AI-powered innovation.

The public announcement will be distributed shortly. Please remember that this information remains confidential until 4:05 PM ET today when we release our Q2 results.

Best,

Paul Edmondson
CEO