Times Tech

By The Sunday TimesNews Technology Business News Tech News

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Times Tech episodes

March 30, 2018 Five questions with... Benedict Evans
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Benedict Evans, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, to answer five big questions about tech: One, How long will it be before self-driving cars take over (1:55), Two, Will cryptocurrencies replace the dollar, pound and other fiat currencies (8:40),Three, Is Big Tech too big (17:05), Four, How worried should we be about the march of the machines (28:15), Five, What is the next revolutionary technology (35:20).
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47 min
March 23, 2018 Former Facebook executive Antonio Garcia Martinez: "A gaping wound of data"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Antonio Garcia Martinez, one of the architect’s of Facebook’s ad system, to talk about his days at the social media giant (2:15), what Cambridge Analytica did (4:55), the Wild West of online information (7:45), how Facebook has responded to the scandal (10:00), on how trust has been broken (12:40), why a subscription model would be hard to implement (14:30), whether Facebook is too big to govern (17:05), if it can recover (18:45), how Facebook backed into its ad-driven model (21:45), why breaking it up may not solve the problem (24:15), why #deleteFacebook won’t move the needle (25:00), and the Facebook buffalo (27:00).
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30 min
March 23, 2018 Ethereum’s Joe Lubin: “Building a crypto-Google”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on billionaire entrepreneur Joe Lubin, co-founder of cryptocurrency ethereum, to talk about his pre-crypto career (4:05), producing reggae in Jamaica (5:00), meeting Vitalik Buterin (6:00), getting ethereum off the ground from an Airbnb in Miami (6:50), setting up HQ in Switzerland (8:55), the coming regulation on cryptocurrencies (11:10), why he’s a believer (13:25), spawning dozens of ethereum-based businesses (15:25), the dawn of the new Internet (19:05), hiring Silicon Valley refugees (20:30), paying workers in cryptocurrencies (21:05), setting up a “cryptopia” (22:55), the debate over Ethereum as a non-profit (23:40), bring the “legacy” economy titans into the fold (26:05), and how much ether he still holds (29:10).
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31 min
March 16, 2018 Groupon founder Andrew Mason: “I may not be Jeff Bezos or Jesus Christ, but I've done ok”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Groupon founder Andrew Mason to talk about his new company Descript, launching his first startup in Chicago in the late 1990’s (4:30), turning it into Groupon (6:15), admitting he was fired (7:40), starting a guided-tour company (9:30), pivoting to podcasting (12:00), but keeping Detour alive (14:00), underestimating potential (16:00), the explosion of text-to-speech technology (17:00), raising venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz (21:30), learning from past mistakes (23:00), not wanting to be a public company chief executive (24:15), why he keeps working with a couple hundred million in the bank (26:30), his worst day of work (28:40), machine learning’s assault on the $10bn transcription industry (32:45), and the horse story (34:50).
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39 min
March 09, 2018 Sophia Mahfooz: “It’s torture or an adventure, depending on your perspective’”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Sophia Mahfooz, entrepreneur and former operations chief at Girls in Tech, on sharing a house with other Silicon Valley hopefuls (3:00), winning her first pitch competition (4:05), building a product in China (6:20), trying (and failing) to sell to the NHS (7:55), launching another company (10:25), growing up in Afghanistan (12:15), learning entrepreneurship at home (14:30), getting in to Draper University (17:20), going through hell to get funding (19:00), hitchhiking (23:00), giving the money back (29:05), starting at Girls in Tech (32:00), and leaving (33:45), the next thing (35:00), making a career in a male-dominated world (37:00), why she is so determined to work on the West coast (38:30) and meeting Elon Musk (40:15). PLUS: A quick chat with Michael Hughes, chief executive of LoopUp and founder of the Silicon Valley Internship Programme. (42:30).
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51 min
March 02, 2018 Stripe's Patrick Collison: "I'm petrified of getting too confident"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Patrick Collison, founder of $9bn payments startup Stripe to talk about building the financial plumbing of the Internet (2:45), why the web is just getting started (5:05), treating the big and small the same (8:45), the problem with ads (12:00), the origin of the name ‘Stripe’ (13:25), growing up in a village (14:45), trying to not be too “Silicon Valley” (18:35), going from 40 to 1000 people in four years (21:30), hiring adults (23:45), avoiding complacency (25:45), arriving in America (27:20), first mover disadvantage (30:15), America’s stagnant banking market (20:10), dissonance between Silicon Valley’s image and reality (32:00), the future of money (35:10), his worst day of work (37:55), and learning to fly (39:10).
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43 min
February 23, 2018 AirBnb's Brian Chesky: "We're the David to the hotel industry Goliath"
The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Brian Chesky, founder of Airbnb, to talk about the home-sharing giant’s tenth birthday (3:00) aiming for a billion guests (4:30), how he plans to grow without destroying communities (7:30), growing up in New York (13:30), convincing Y Combinator to invest $20,000 (16:00), doing 'an Amazon' (18:00), creating an airline (20:15), tech’s existential crisis (22:00), the limitations of algorithms (24:45), not floating on the stock market (26:15), bringing in $1bn each quarter (27:00), his worst day of work (28:45), giving away most of his money (32:15), stepping into controversies (35:00), the need for Silicon Valley to take responsibility (36:30), taxes (37:15), and fending off attacks from the hotel industry (39:30).
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46 min
February 16, 2018 SENS Foundation’s Aubrey de Grey: “You may live for a million years”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Aubrey de Grey, founder of the Sens Research Foundation, to talk the possibility of turning humans into a "multi-century species" (1:40), why rejuvenation is the key (4:40), aiming for “longevity escape velocity” (6:00), what’s wrong with the current approach to ageing, tackling the seven types of ageing damage (10:20), why the Google guys are wasting their money (11:30), getting funding from Peter Thiel and Vitalik Buterin (13:35), why cryptocurrency millionaires are enthused by living forever (15:25), why eternal life is the next step in evolution (18:45), what rejuvenation looks like (23:25), why he has no time for dystopic predictions (27:00), the coming war on ageing (31:20), how he ended up in Silicon Valley (35:45), why ageing doesn’t get much funding (38:20), and treating the human body like a car (39:30).
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45 min
February 09, 2018 Hooked’s Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia: “We went from zero to 40 million users"
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia to talk about remaking reading for millennials (4:00), on reaching 40m people in a year (5:10) creating “chat fiction” (6:20), finding writers (8:10), how mobile reading is like film was at its outset (11:00), creating their first music-making apps (12:30), creating an antidote to social media addiction (19:30), trying to write a fantasy novel (22:00), translating the novel into mobile phone form (25:00), finding readers through Facebook ads (26:30), luring Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey and Stephen Curry as investors (28:15), creating a “next generation” film studio (32:30), trying to create the next Harry Potter on the mobile (35:30), the power of teenage girls as early adopters (37:15).
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41 min
February 02, 2018 Finless Foods’ Mike Selden: “We brew fish meat”
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Mike Selden, founder of Finless Foods, to talk about growing fish flesh without the fish (3:15) how it works (4:30), turning mush into fillets (7:00), why he started the company (8:50), the scourge of sea lice (10:40), blind tuna (12:05), how to avoid the public relations mistakes made by the GMO industry (13:35), leaving a medical career for a startup (16:10), why banana candy tastes terrible (17:10), being an environmental activist (18:20), the nascent ‘clean meat’ industry (19:40), the synthetic biology revolution (22:00), the ingredients (23:50), vegetable “scaffolding’ (25:45), taking on Big Fish (26:40) why Europe will be a challenge (28:00), being transparent in marketing (30:00), fish brewery tours (31:45), why cost is key (33:10), the beginning of the end of industrial livestock (36:05), and banishing vegetarianism (38:00).
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40 min