Beacon's Fraser Robinson: "The more swear words people use to describe a problem, the bigger the opportunity"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Fraser Robinson, founder of Beacon, to talk about solving supply chains (2:45), the problem (5:10), his first startup (11:15), becoming the “adult in the room” (18:30), the early days at lastminute.com (19:50), starting another business in 2010 (22:30), getting recruited to Uber (24:45), running Uber in Europe (27:10), how to move fast and not break things (30:00), on whether Uber can survive (32:00), the mistakes in London (36:20), doing the big deal with Saudi Arabia (38:30), leaving in 2018 (42:10), getting sued (45:20), and being left on the tarmac by an oligarch (46:50). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
30 Apr 202152min
Gitlab’s Sid Sidbrandij: “Meetings are expensive”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Sid Sijbrandij, co-founder of Gitab, to talk about running a remote-first company (2:45), how it works (5:45), organising informal communication (8:30), minimising meetings (9:45), on-boarding (12:30), convincing investors (14:15), the problem with “hybrid” work models (15:50), the future of cities (18:15), and inventing ways to measure success (19:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
27 Apr 202127min
Cade Metz: “The human didn’t have a chance”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Cade Metz, New York Times tech journalist and author of Genius Makers, to talk about the rise of artificial intelligence (3:00), the most important auction in tech (4:35), Europe’s AI crackdown (7:40), Geoff Hinton and neural networks (10:00), how AI starts to spread (13:00), Deepmind’s Demis Hassabis (18:20), why he turned down Facebook’s takeover bid (21:00), Project Maven (23:20), the AI “arms race” with China (25:25), whether artificial general intelligence is possible (29:20), the AlphaGo moment (33:00), Move 37 (38:10), what AI disrupts next (42:00), bias (45:05), the robot arm room (51:30), and the Rubik’s cube solution (56:15) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
23 Apr 20211h 1min
Larva Labs’ Matt Hall: “Creating cryptopunks"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Matt Hall, founder of Larva Labs, to talk about creating cryptopunks (3:00), what he did before this (4:30), creating cryptopunks in 2017 (9:00), cryptokitties (11:00), how it works (12:45), giving them away (14:00), from zero to a $250m market (15:15), why NFTs took off (20:05), who is buying them (24:20), trying 50 other things before this (25:45), Autoglyphs (27:00) and what’s next (29:25). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
16 Apr 202131min
Terraformation’s Yishan Wong: “Forest as a service”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Yishan Wong, founder of Terraformation, to talk about his plan to plant a trillion trees (3:30), his days running Reddit (8:10), on whether social media is manageable (10:50), working at Paypal and Facebook in the early days (13:15), marrying tech and tree planting (15:15), how he got into climate change (18:00), making tree-planting a business (23:15), the first project (28:20), the reforestation bottleneck (33:20), why solar is key (36:05), raising venture capital (44:00), selling forest “kits” (47:30), banking on a shift in thought (52:10), his lessons from scaling Facebook (57:45), why trees are the easiest answer (1:02:15), and why the goal is 1 trillion (1:04:50).PLUS: Gianni Settino on why he joined an investor group that spent $208,000 on a Lebron James video highlight (1:06:40), tinkering with ethereum (1:08:50), cryptokitties (1:11:45), building a crypto football card experience (1:15:40), NBA Top Shot (1:16:30), buying the Lebron James card (1:19:00), what his parents said (1:22:00), and whether this is a bubble (1:25:15).Get The Times and The Sunday Times for a BIG discount by clicking here: times.co.uk/dannyinthevalley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
9 Apr 20211h 32min
Alchemy's Nikil Viswanathan: "NFTs are the future"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder of Alchemy, to talk about the boom in non-fungible tokens (NFT’s) (3:00), his first app (7:50), what Alchemy does (10:10), how much NFT sales have grown since January (14:00), fads and staying power (17:30), the value of digital goods (20:20), the weirdest NFTs (23:30), the future (25:15), how Alchemy makes money (30:30), growing up in small-town Texas (34:00), Stanford (35:15), his worst day (36:35), and his investors (40:00). PLUS: Raj Choudhury, of Harvard Business School, comes on to talk about the return to work (42:00), the 25% model (44:20), engineering random interactions (48:40), getting senior people to buy in (51:30), the problem with our “meeting culture” (54:10), the financial benefits of “work from anywhere” (58:30), recreating the office (1:00:45), and reversing the rural brain drain (1:01:15).Get The Times and The Sunday Times for a BIG discount by clicking here: times.co.uk/dannyinthevalley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
2 Apr 20211h 6min
Tim O'Reilly: "Silicon Valley: turning idealists into monopolists"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Tim O’Reilly to talk about the end of Silicon Valley as we know it (3:30), how the markets were designed to give us monopolies (6:30), his history in tech (90), incentives (10:30), the coming crash (17:00), the tech industry’s changing culture (23:15), how venture investors now pick the winners (26:15), on whether Silicon Valley can do deep tech (29:15), the antitrust backlash (38:20), how the industry is moving away from its ideals (38:35), how that tax code powers the bubble (40:55), and the next opportunities (45:00).Get The Times and The Sunday Times for a BIG discount by clicking here: times.co.uk/dannyinthevalley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
26 Mars 202149min
Chargepoint's Pat Romano: "We just had to wait it out"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Pat Romano, chief executive of Chargepoint, to talk about taking a company public in a pandemic (4:20), the electric car revolution (7:30), about whether there are enough chargers (11:40), why charging cars will be completely different from filling up at a petrol station (11:20), how long before we think of EV’s as just cars (16:50), the lack of standards (18:00), going to the market via SPAC (20:15), the rush of electric car companies to the market (23:15), and investor interest (25:50), the race between electric cars and the infrastructure they will require (34:00), subsidies (34:35), how he makes money (37:55), and how the world changed in 10 years (40:30).Click here for Pat Romano's first interview more than two years ago:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/chargepoints-pat-romano-hiding-in-plain-sight/id1233991021?i=1000425353783Get The Times and The Sunday Times for a BIG discount by clicking here: times.co.uk/dannyinthevalley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
19 Mars 202146min
