Fortt Knox

The Consumer Electronics Show, CES, is how tech starts the year. It’s a massive event in Vegas with halls full of booths, wall-to-wall people, and companies competing to convince the world that they own the future.  

Julia Boorstin and I were there for CNBC, interviewing executives, taking in the news, now we’re going to break down what it all means. 

This year there is no single hit product to take over for the smartphone. And unlike the past few, there’s no contender. We know drones aren’t really going mainstream. Virtual and augmented reality aren’t either. Artificial intelligence is fun, and 100 million Alexa-powered devices have been sold by Amazon and its partners, but no one’s getting rich off of selling voice-powered devices.  

At the same time, we’ve got 5G, fifth-generation wireless on the horizon, and big ideas like autonomous driving and quantum computing. Julia and I got into all of that in Vegas.

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Wellness, fitness, nutrition – all of it is getting a makeover in this age of mobile tech.  

Now you can book doctor appointments on an app, get your blood drawn and the results back in 20 minutes. You can give your doctor access to your genetic code and get truly personalized service.  

Your stationary bike can connect to the Internet to motivate you.  

But how much is too much? And what are the best services to check out?  

We have got just the show to kick off the year, whether you do resolutions or not. Joining me today, CNBC reporters Chrissy Farr and Diana Olick. And I’m thrilled to have WW CEO Mindy Grossman here with me. What’s WW? It’s the artist formerly known as Weight Watchers. 

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The economy is in a very odd place right now. The overall numbers are great in the United States. Unemployment is low, growth is decent, several companies have been raising the wages of blue-collar employees.  

But at the same time, stable, full-time jobs with benefits can be hard to come by. To make ends meet and improve their quality of life, lots of people are joining the gig economy, or doing other kinds of temporary work.  

These observations about the state of work and the economy led me to a conversation with Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of Upwork. Upwork is a digital platform where people who have skills can put those skills out for hire, either by the project or on a longer-term basis. I met Stephane at CNBC’s Productivity at Work event, where he gave a talk about how employment is changing. We took it further, to talk about geopolitics, his journey as an executive, and what today’s workers need to know to seize control of their careers. 

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When Intel found itself without a CEO, the board of directors turned to Bob Swan, the chief financial officer, to keep the company running. That was six months ago. A few days ago Swan and I sat down at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York to discuss a tumultuous year, an ongoing transformation, his path to the top of corporate finance, and more.

But first, on the Fortt Knox live show this week, it’s the most expensive purchase many of us even consider: a place to live.  

As we head into 2019, a complicated landscape in real estate: For a decade in a rebounding U.S. economy amid cheap loans, home prices have marched steadily higher. When the market bottomed in February 2009, the median sale price for a home was $140,000. Last month it was nearly $258,000. 

That might sound OK if you’re looking to sell a home, but not so fast: Interest rates are creeping higher, reducing how much buyers can borrow. And the number of homes for sale is rising, giving shoppers more homes to choose from. Are we heading into a healthier housing market? Or a more dangerous one? 

Joining me to talk real estate I have the very best: CNBC’s Diana Olick, Realtor.com CEO Ryan O’Hara, and real estate agent Josh Flagg of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles. Season 11 kicks off January 3.

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As 2018 draws to a close, a panel of journalists looks back at some of the defining controversies of the year. Digital data became a flashpoint as more people considered the implications of smartphone apps that literally track our every move. Digital fun came into question as parents heightened their concerns about kids glued to screens. And digital money experienced a crash, as the price of a Bitcoin dropped from nearly $20,000 to less than $3,500.

Ina Fried of Axios, Ed Lee of the New York Times and Josh Lipton of CNBC join Jon Fortt to explore how those issues played out in 2018, and what's likely next in 2019.

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Keith Block spent a long career at Oracle before joining Salesforce five years ago. This summer he became co-CEO alongside Marc Benioff, the company’s chairman and cofounder.  

I spent time with Block at CNBC’s Capital@Work event this week in San Francisco, talking strategy, his background, and more. 

Plus: Not many people are getting a cloud for Christmas. But … chances are a lot of the stuff you do get is going to require that you buy online storage sometime down the line. You’ve got to back up those holiday photos and videos eventually, in case your hard drive fails or your phone gets lost, or just to free up space! 

So. Today we talk cloud, to save you money. Joining me to break it down, Rob Marvin is Associate Features Editor at PCMAG.com. Jefferson Graham is a tech columnist for USA Today. And Jordan Novet is a tech reporter for CNBC.com.

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Andy Jassy started the cloud business at Amazon, and still runs it. As AWS re:Invent, Amazon's annual cloud conference, I talked to him about Amazon's cloud strategy, global tech momentum, rivalries with other tech giants, and more.

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Max Levchin learned to write code out of necessity. His mother's necessity, specifically.

Levchin co-founded PayPal, reaped a windfall from its IPO and sale, and became one of the best-connected investor/entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. But before all that, he was a teenage refugee from the Soviet Union, figuring out how to make his mark at the dawning of the consumer Internet era.

Before the family had left Ukraine in the early 1990s, Soviet officials had given Levchin's mother a poorly translated programming manual, a PC, and a mandate: Learn to program it. Mother and son took turns reading each other the manual, and by the time they moved to the U.S., both knew how to code.

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KIND Snacks today is a business valued in the billions of dollars, but this wasn't Daniel Lubetzky's first food company. That would be PeaceWorks – a venture with the lofty goal of bringing Jews and Arabs together through mutually beneficial trade.

What they have in common is a strong sense of mission. KIND bars come in mostly clear packaging, intentionally showing buyers exactly what's inside. Lubetzky started out selling $100 worth of bars at a time – he says he now sells more than 1 billion in a year – and he believes in making a simple, straightforward promise about the ingredients inside.

In our conversation for the Fortt Knox 1-on-1 this week, I talked to Lubetzky about how his family's legacy as Holocaust survivors informs the way he thinks about entrepreneurship and mission. He also talks about mistakes he made along the way.

Also in this week's episode:

It’s upon us: the holiday season. I don’t know about you, but I got an email come-on from Amazon about early Black Friday deals the day after Halloween. Talk about scary.  

So: If you’re an entrepreneur, how do you break through the noise this holiday season? If you’re a shopper, how will you get the best deals?  

Joining me to untangle this retail riddle I’ve got a great panel of experts:  

Adam Glassman is creative director at O Magazine, and has been preparing for this season for more than six months. Stephen Sadove is former chairman and CEO of Saks, and an adviser to Mastercard. And Lauren Hirsch is a retail reporter with us at CNBC.com.

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The theme this week is "underdogs." John Chen has history in this department: His parents escaped communist China to Hong Kong, and his father had to work jobs beneath his education level so Chen could have a shot at a better life. At age 17 he came to the United States to finish high school. After he entered the workforce, Chen hit a roadblock. It wasn't common at the time for engineers to get promoted into broader management positions, and he was still growing in his comfort with communicating as a leader in English, his second language.

Fast-forward to today, and Chen has been CEO of BlackBerry for five years. He has taken the company from a dying smartphone maker to a stable provider of security and automotive software. And it's not Chen's first turnaround; after becoming CEO of Sybase in 1998, he led a reinvention that saved the company.

In all of my years covering Chen, I'd never heard his personal story. For the Fortt Knox 1-on-1 this week, I finally get to the root of why Chen is so comfortable playing the long game when it comes to leadership ... and how it ties back into the sacrifices he saw as an immigrant and the son of refugees.

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