Plenty's Matt Barnard: "You’re eating year-old apples”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Matt Barnard, co-founder of indoor-farming startup Plenty, to talk about building a ‘global agricultural utility’ (4:25), America’s outsized appetite (6:00), eating old apples (9:00), why tomatoes are terrible in Britain (11:20), building 500 city-centre farms around the world (14:30), luring Softbank as an investor (16:40), and Jeff Bezos (19:30), integrating with Amazon (20:20), why growing indoors works (22:50), using less than 1% the water that normal farms need (24:20), machine learning (26:30), selling cheap fruit and veg (28:00), recreating the Mediterranean in a warehouse (29:15), huge energy bills (30:15), and changing a 10,000-year old business model (31:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
23 Sep 201735min
Plug and Play's Saeed Amidi: "We invest a little money, then pray a lot"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Saeed Amidi, founder of Plug and Play, one of the world’s largest startup accelerators, to talk about how he invests in 150 companies each year (2:50), chickening out of an Airbnb investment (4:10), arriving from Iran (7:50), starting a bottled water company (9:00), becoming an angel investor (11:40), investing in Google when it was just three people (12:45), his $100m payday from Dropbox (14:30), backing Peter Thiel at Paypal (16:05), investing judo (17:20), why accelerators help (20:30), his London plans (22:50), trying to find the Uber of insurance (25:30), the problem with tech tourism (28:40), on whether unicorns face extinction (32:05), if the Silicon Valley model can be exported (35:00), and why he likes to back immigrants and foreigners (36:55). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
16 Sep 201739min
Uber's Frances Frei: "Culture can kill a company, full stop"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Uber’s new head of leadership and renowned company doctor Frances Frei to talk about what she found when she walked into Uber (2:30), its army of first-time managers (5:30), taking Uber to school (6:30), the company's ‘toxic’ culture (7:40), the problem with startups (9:15), arriving as a woman (11:00), the importance of culture (12:20) overhauling Harvard Business School (13:00), making the right diagnosis (17:40), taking advantage of a crisis (18:15), necessary turnover (20:00), the power of diversity (22:40), having less 'do-overs' (23:30), harnessing Uber’s aggression (25:30), being a college basketball player (27:10), stepping on toes (28:30), Uber’s board upheaval (29:45), leadership by committee (31:55), and office push-ups (36:15). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
9 Sep 201738min
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: "Make Data Great Again"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO and one of the world’s richest men, to talk about retiring with a $33bn fortune (1:55), launching his new project USA Facts (3:00), losing his shirt investing in Twitter (3:55), starting as employee number 30 at Microsoft (5:20), what disruption looked like in 1980 (9:20), the most important negotiation of his life (11:25), being Microsoft’s biggest investor (13:00), why he started USA Facts (15:05), on “Making Data Great Again” (16:05), fake news (17:00), on whether he wants to run for office (22:10), spending $2bn on the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers (24:00), when he tried to buy Yahoo for $45bn (27:20), his biggest mistake (29:15), and the next big thing (30:20). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2 Sep 201733min
Marc Andreessen: "Darwin has kicked in"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Marc Andreessen, founder of Internet pioneer Netscape and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, to talk about the early days of the Internet (2:45), the "absurd" power of the web giants (7:30), delivery robots (10:45), the ease of starting an web company today (12:00), the ideal time to invest (15:00), the truth about artificial intelligence (16:30), the “luddite” panic (25:45), industries tech is aiming for next (33:00), why the answer to our problems is more technology (36:00), whether the big Internet companies are too big (37:30), why he told Mark Zuckerberg to turn down a takeover from Yahoo (39:30), how he's not worried about screen time for his 2-year-old son (43:10), and why the disruption of all human activity is only just getting started (44:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
26 Aug 201747min
SPECIAL: inside Silicon Valley's quest to defeat ageing
The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson talks to the scientists and executives pledging to redefine life as we know it about why we may be finally on the cusp of an age revolution (2:00), taking the pain out of being old (6:00), the wonder drugs already in circulation (7:45), on whether we are playing god (17:45), the rejuvenating effects of young blood (22:30), freezing your stem cells (26:45), the merging of artificial intelligence and medicine (30:00), and what the future of ageing looks like (37:00).SUBSCRIBE: find all our episodes at sundaytimes.co.uk/dannyinthevalley and on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/danny-in-the-valley/id1233991021 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
19 Aug 201744min
Boxed.com's Chieh Huang: “1999 called, they want their business model back”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Chieh Huang, founder of Boxed.com, to talk about setting up the “Costco for millennials” in a two-car garage (1:30), why Brexit and small houses make coming to the UK hard (3:00), growing up as a son of immigrants (5:30), making his first fortune selling an office-decoration game to Zynga (9:00), the entrepreneurial itch (17:30), taking on the $200bn big-box retail industry (20:30), struggling for funding (23:00), the challenge of shipping giant boxes (26:30), being an “undercorn” (29:00), paying university fees for the children of his workers (30:00), unlimited maternity leave (31:15), the financial calculus behind those benefits (34:15), predictive shopping (37:15), and trying to please a Tiger Mom (39:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
12 Aug 201741min
Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff: "You just bankrupted the company."
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring, the video doorbell company, to talk about about getting rejected on national television (2:00), turning failure into funding (4:00), putting his email address on every box (11:00), being lambasted by "nasty" British customers (12:15), following the James Dyson model (14:00), doing 24 hours on the home shopping television, (17:00), starting ten other companies (19:00), getting his first outside money (21:45), spending $1m to buy the ‘ring.com’ domain (26:15), luring Sir Richard Branson as an investor (32:45), being sued by a giant rival (34:45), showing up at customers’ houses (38:00), and shipping a faulty product that nearly bankrupted him (39:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
5 Aug 201743min
