122 - The Uber IPO Show; Plus, Amnon Shashua on Intel's Driverless Challenge

Have tech companies gotten so big that it’s bad for the economy? Senator Elizabeth Warren says so. She’s proposing to break up not one, but several tech giants, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. She says they shouldn’t be allowed to both run distributor platforms and compete on them. It’s like being an umpire and a team owner at the same time.   Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek not calling for a breakup, but he is calling for an overhaul – specifically when it comes to Apple. He’s pointing to the same issue Warren is: Apple is charging Spotify to operate on its App Store, but then also competing with Spotify in the same store.   So. Is there a problem here? Should big tech be broken up? If not, should regulators step in to change the rules?  This week I’m joined by Wired senior writer Lauren Goode; and here with me, New York Times Tech columnist Kevin Roose.   Joining us in just a bit, former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Author of new book: “From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future”  Later on the podcast: Dominique Morisseau is a playwright, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, and her musical “Ain’t Too Proud — The Life and Times of the Temptations” opens on Broadway this Thursday. A unique innovator shares her journey and you don’t want to miss it. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

16 Mars 201941min

You’ve probably heard of Fortnite. It’s a game and more than a game – a cultural moment that’s swept in with all the force of Pokémon Go, and arguably more of the staying power. There’s the game itself, but there are the dances, the addictions.   Now, here’s a twist: Fortnite has competition. Electronic Arts a month ago dropped Apex Legends, its own free-to-play multiplayer team combat game, and it MIGHT be hotter than Fortnite. It has grown as much in a month as Fortnite did in four. Fortnite’s developer is already copying features.   So. What makes this style of game so different from what came before? How big is the money involved? And how does it fit into the future of eSports? Plus: Gary Smith grew up in Birmingham, then the industrial heart of the United Kingdom. Both of his parents worked in factories. For career day, the high school took the kids to a coal mine and a steelworks. Smith wasn't inspired.  Smith is now the CEO of Ciena, a networking company with a market value over $6 billion. But at the time, he didn't reject a future in mining because of high-tech dreams. In a recent conversation, Smith told me that after high school, he moved to London to pursue a dream of becoming a photographer; he took commercial photos of buildings, and also shot weddings and other events.   Only by wading into the job market and trying to make it did he discover technology, and figure out what skills he would need.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

9 Mars 201957min

There’s little question that technology – software – is shaping the future of our work, our play, and even how we form opinions. But who is shaping that technology?  It’s been quite an economic run. The stock market’s been climbing for a decade, and in that time, tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook have gone from underdogs to overlords. Even as that’s happened, employees and observers have settled on a nagging question: Is there room for more women and minorities on the campuses and in the startups where this future is crafted?   With me in New York this week, Anu Duggal, founding partner at Female Founders Fund. Joining me from Atlanta, Kathryn Finney, founder and managing director at Digital Undivided, which encourages entrepreneurship among black and Latina women. And from San Francisco, Ruben Harris is CEO of Career Karma, host of the Breaking Into Startups podcast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

2 Mars 201926min

So long, New York! Amazon has pulled out of its commitment to build a massive campus and bring 25,000 to 40,000 high-paying jobs to Long Island City in Queens. On Valentines Day!  Roses are red / violets are blue / you’re not getting / my HQ2 – Love, Jeff  What went wrong? Why the breakup?   First of all, some critics were mad that New York offered 3 billion dollars in tax incentives to lure Amazon in the first place. Most businesses just come here because they want to be in New York and pay the taxes.   Second, you’ve got the union issues. Amazon flat out said, we’re not going to want our employees to unionize.  But still. It wasn’t as if the working class in Queens was rising up in protest against the Amazon deal. A poll by the Siena College Research Institute found 56 percent of New Yorkers wanted it, Democrats and Independents more than Republicans. Blacks and Latinos favored the deal more than any other group.   So what gives? And what does it mean for future deals between billionaire-run corporations and cities?   Joining me: Anand Giridharadas, author of  “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and CNBC Wealth Editor Robert Frank. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

16 Feb 201930min

Facebook is worth almost a half trillion dollars. It has more than 2 billion users who log in at least once a month. It has a famous CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, hailed in Silicon Valley as a Bill Gates for the Internet age – the suburban Harvard kid who dropped out of Harvard to start a company and change the world.   Facebook also has problems. Its once non-controversial mission of connecting the world has taken a dark turn. Connecting the world to what, exactly? After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and controversies over how Facebook gave partners access to user data, there’s a question hanging out there. Is Facebook unwittingly connecting the world to too much misinformation, political manipulation, or worse? Or does the good that happens on Facebook outweigh the bad?  With me this week: Roger McNamee. He’s an early investor in Facebook. He’s an early adviser to Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has made him a lot of money. And he’s the author of a new book out this week: “Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe.” He says Facebook is bad for America.   Also with me: Antonio Garcia Martinez, former Facebook employee, and author of “Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley.” He does not think Facebook is bad for America.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

9 Feb 201929min

Apple this week pulled a Facebook app from the App Store. It’s called Facebook Research, and its purpose was to let Facebook watch everything that users did on the phone. Apple says the snooping app is too invasive, even if users had consented to letting Facebook watch their every move.   Which raises the question: How much social media is too much? Are we giving these platforms too much data? Are we posting stuff too quickly without thinking about it? Is it time to step back?  With me this week, Farhad Manjoo, a New York Times columnist who recently wrote a column about the response to the controversy around Covington Catholic students, and how that inspired him to change his Twitter behavior.   Also with me, Jeff Jarvis, professor at the City University of New York and longtime journalism commentator. Chris Moody is a former data strategy VP at Twitter, currently a partner at investment firm Foundry Group. And later, Jaron Lanier, noted computer scientist, and researcher at Microsoft.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

2 Feb 201931min

He did this the hard way – grew up playing guitar in a band, skipped college, became an accountant by testing into the profession and, after he got into the corporate world, made a lateral move into marketing. He is Andy Mooney, the CEO of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.  Mooney and Fender are trying to change the way we look at musical instruments, and the process of buying one and learning to play. It all made sense after he told me his role in the Disney Princess concept becoming a global marketing phenomenon. Also: The game has changed. It used to be, a movie was valuable if it had a big showing at the box office, though there was the occasional film that did big rental business but didn’t do much in theaters. For more on that, see the entire careers of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen after Full House. And then for TV, much of the same: A show is big if it gets people to watch commercials or buy cable.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

26 Jan 201956min

Scott Belsky didn’t drop out of college, didn’t go straight into being an entrepreneur – he had an idea about what a certain group of customers needed, and he kept tweaking his approach until he built the right thing. That thing, Behance, is a professional network for artists. Kind of like a LinkedIn for visual people. He sold it to Adobe for $150 million. That in itself is pretty cool. But maybe more impressive is what he’s done since. He helped kickstart Adobe’s move to software at a service and invested early in a bunch of hot startups like Uber, Pinterest, Warby Parker and Sweetgreen. Now he’s back at Adobe, leading the development of creative cloud products.  Scott Belsky is the author of The Messy Middle, a book about the challenges between starting something and declaring it a big success. I loved this conversation. Here’s Scott Belsky.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

21 Jan 20191h