98 - BlackBerry CEO John Chen; Plus, How to Beat Amazon

Whether it’s sports, college, or work at Goldman Sachs, Carter Reum and his brother Courtney have always had a tendency to do things together.   But it’s still pretty surprising that the two Midwestern guys managed to start a company together selling specialty alcohol … make millions of dollars … and now coach and invest in other entrepreneurs.   They’ve written a book about it – together, of course. Shortcut Your Startup is available January 16, and tries to turn conventional business advice on its head.   The Reum brothers don’t have a rags-to-riches story – they grew up outside of Chicago with a dad who was CEO of a manufacturing company and a Mom who had an MBA from Columbia. It is a story of teamwork, invention, and the guts to abandon what’s comfortable – budding careers in finance at Goldman Sachs – to pursue something potentially great. And I think that makes it a perfect story for the start of a new year.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

7 Jan 201834min

Success doesn’t usually come along a simple path, and that was definitely true for Shan Sinha. He was raised by a single mom in Texas, fell in love with technology, went to M.I.T., dropped out to do a startup, and …    Failed.    He went back to M.I.T. But of course that’s not the end of the story, or he wouldn’t be on this podcast. He got a job at Microsoft, left to start another company, and this time struck gold – by eventually selling that company to Google in 2010. Now he’s the founder and CEO of yet another business – Highfive, a video conferencing outfit that’s breaking new ground.      I don’t like straight lines. My career hasn’t traveled in one, and chances are, yours hasn’t either. So I love when I get to explore the stories of people who started out at a disadvantage. Or struck out a few times before hitting that home run. That, I can learn from.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

23 Dec 201734min

We used to buy things. Remember that? Hard drives, hit singles, our favorite movies. But for now at least, the hot trend is subscriptions.   Instead of buying hard drives, we subscribe to cloud storage from Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Dropbox. For music there’s Spotify. For movies there’s Netflix. And it seems a new subscription service is born every minute.   They say that during a gold rush, the surest way to strike it rich is to sell picks and shovels. That’s what Tien Tzuo is doing in this new subscription economy. His company, Zuora, is the engine that powers the subscription process for companies like Box, SurveyMonkey and TripAdvisor.   I talked to Tien Tzuo about how he founded Zuora, and grew it into a company that’s raised nearly a quarter of a billion dollars and is pushing for more growth. He’s got some unique ideas about managing people, and stepping out on your own.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

17 Dec 201738min

Justin Dent is the co-founder and executive director of GenFKD, a non-profit dedicated to getting Millennials smarter about their finances before it’s too late. He’s a Millennial himself – he graduated from the University of Maryland just a couple of years ago. Dent didn’t come from money, and neither did I – we’re both African Americans, though from different generations, who grew up on the East Coast and had to fight the odds to get into a better financial position.  With the tax changes that are wending their way through Congress and the questions about who they’ll help or hurt, it’s worth having a bit of an American family meeting, and thinking about just how we got into this sorry state, and how we get out. Dent is taking a bold step at a young age, toward doing exactly that. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

9 Dec 201737min

About 13 years ago, Andy Jassy had a big, big idea. What if you could rent computing power and storage over the Internet instead of having to buy a whole bunch of computing equipment?   Jassy worked for Amazon.com at the time, as the technical assistant to one Jeff Bezos – the founder and CEO of Amazon. He told Jeff about the idea. They decided to do it. And now, more than a decade later, Andy Jassy has not only built a business that brings in 16 billion dollars a year. He and his team also essentially invented the business of cloud computing, and upended the tech world in the process.  I flew out to Las Vegas this week to have a chat with Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services. The company was having its annual re:Invent conference, where software programmers from around the world gather to hear the latest cloud tools Amazon is looking to put in their hands.   I wanted to hear from him about how he got started at Amazon; how he worked with his boss, Jeff Bezos, to launch a business that has turned out to be Amazon's biggest profit-maker; what his strategy is now, and just how massive he thinks it all can get. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

2 Dec 201746min

Growing up in the black community in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were a few things you'd take for granted:  We learned Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, also known as the Negro National Anthem, in school. We learned there was practically nothing George Washington Carver couldn’t do with a soybean. And a middle class black family was likely to have at least four magazines in the house: Ebony and Jet, of course. And if they were a little fancy, Essence and Black Enterprise.   These days, magazines aren’t what they used to be. Like many digital publishers, Black Enterprise is undergoing a reinvention, becoming less a publication and more a live events business. Back in October I interviewed Intel's CEO at a Black Enterprise tech event outside San Francisco – an event that showcased the brand's push to evolve beyond the printed page.   Earl Graves, Jr. -- he's known as "Butch" -- is the son of the founder of Black Enterprise. Now he's the CEO. I sat down with him to talk about how the brand was born, how it's trying to evolve in a digital world, and what the future looks like for minority entrepreneurs.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

25 Nov 201742min

Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix. And as of today, at 34 years old, she is probably the youngest woman to take her company public – ever.   Stitch Fix is a San Francisco company that combines data-crunching computers with human stylists on a mission to send you the perfect outfit. On Friday the company went public on the Nasdaq stock market at a market value of more than $1 billion, and I was there for CNBC, covering the remarkable story.  Katrina Lake sat down with me at the Nasdaq in Times Square minutes after shares of Stitch Fix started trading for the first time – you can hear the buzz of Stitch Fix employees and customers in the background as we talk. The first part of our conversation was live on CNBC's Squawk Alley, which I co-anchor weekdays on the network. She took some time after that portion to talk more about how she developed the idea for the company, why she still works as a stylist on the platform, and why the story of how she overcame sexual harassment from an investor is especially resonant today.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

18 Nov 201722min

Hot technology companies tend to be based in Silicon Valley. They tend to be founded by eager undergrads or Harvard or Stanford business school alums. And these days, their leadership tends to lean strongly to the left politically.  Bandwidth is different.   Bandwidth is a business communication software company based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Co-founder and CEO David Morken served in the Marine Corps and went to law school. And he doesn't hide his Christian faith – while he says he also encourages his employees who have different belief systems to be authentic at work, too.  Bandwidth had its IPO on the Nasdaq on November 10, the day before Veterans Day and birthday of the Marine Corps. Morken timed it intentionally. The company is worth more than 300 million dollars, and Morken is determined to keep it independent and based in North Carolina. We talked about how the Marines prepared him to be an entrepreneur, why he believes student debt is a drag on the country's future, and how he handles today's divisive culture wars. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

11 Nov 201735min