Times Tech

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Trip Adler, founder of Scribd, to talk about creating the “Netflix of reading” (2:00), teaming up with newspapers (4:30), the evolving attitude to subscriptions (5:50), why less than 1% of users are paid subscribers (7:45), pivoting and pivoting again (9:05), taking on Amazon (11:20), the parallels to the music business (12:15), the generation gap (14:35), being classmates with Mark Zuckerberg (15:35), starting at Y Combinator (16:55), experimenting with a ride-sharing service (18:35), going from zero to 100 million users (19:05), the end of ownership (21:00), raising the company’s first $12,000 and working out of the “Y-scraper” (23:30), luring in venture capitalists (25:15), paywalls (29:30), splitting the pie with publishers (32:00), Scribd’s trove of sheet music (33:10) and teaming up with The New York Times (33:45).

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The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, the first investor in Snapchat, to talk about moving to America from Australia (2:10), working for Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi (4:00), the AOL diaspora (5:00), becoming a venture capitalist (7:15), tracking down Snapchat in 2012 (8:00), how a picture with Barack Obama helped sealed the deal (10:00), young women as a lead indicator (12:25), the sexting issue (15:05), the Snap rocketship (17:00), why Snapchat’s founders have created an ironclad grip over the shares (18:45), being on Evan Spiegel’s Christmas card list (21:25), Facebook’s copycat programme (22:00), Snap as the anti highlight reel (24:00), avoiding becoming Twitter (26:25), finding the next Snapchat (27:15), the power of GIF’s (29:15), investing in frivolity (31:00), on whether smartphones are ruining a generation (31:55), the next big thing (33:00) and how voice technology is going to transform the Internet (35:30).

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The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ev Williams, chief executive of online publisher Medium and Twitter co-founder, to talk about upping Twitter’s character limit (2:20), the dark side of the Internet (3:40), the power of the web in politics (6:00), starting four companies (7:15), the idea behind Medium (9:35), the problem with the ad-based web (11:30), pivoting (13:15), putting up a paywall (14:55), cat videos vs investigative journalism (16:40), his new “pay-for-claps” model (19:10), the broken media (20:00), why it’s so hard to make money from content online (24:00), Twitter’s problem with “trolls” (27:50), and anonymity (29:00), Silicon Valley’s awakening (30:55), and his worst day of work (34:30).

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The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Matt Barnard, co-founder of indoor-farming startup Plenty, to talk about building a ‘global agricultural utility’ (4:25), America’s outsized appetite (6:00), eating old apples (9:00), why tomatoes are terrible in Britain (11:20), building 500 city-centre farms around the world (14:30), luring Softbank as an investor (16:40), and Jeff Bezos (19:30), integrating with Amazon (20:20), why growing indoors works (22:50), using less than 1% the water that normal farms need (24:20), machine learning (26:30), selling cheap fruit and veg (28:00), recreating the Mediterranean in a warehouse (29:15), huge energy bills (30:15), and changing a 10,000-year old business model (31:30).

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The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Saeed Amidi, founder of Plug and Play, one of the world’s largest startup accelerators, to talk about how he invests in 150 companies each year (2:50), chickening out of an Airbnb investment (4:10), arriving from Iran (7:50), starting a bottled water company (9:00), becoming an angel investor (11:40), investing in Google when it was just three people (12:45), his $100m payday from Dropbox (14:30), backing Peter Thiel at Paypal (16:05), investing judo (17:20), why accelerators help (20:30), his London plans (22:50), trying to find the Uber of insurance (25:30), the problem with tech tourism (28:40), on whether unicorns face extinction (32:05), if the Silicon Valley model can be exported (35:00), and why he likes to back immigrants and foreigners (36:55).

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The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Uber’s new head of leadership and renowned company doctor Frances Frei to talk about what she found when she walked into Uber (2:30), its army of first-time managers (5:30), taking Uber to school (6:30), the company's ‘toxic’ culture (7:40), the problem with startups (9:15), arriving as a woman (11:00), the importance of culture (12:20) overhauling Harvard Business School (13:00), making the right diagnosis (17:40), taking advantage of a crisis (18:15), necessary turnover (20:00), the power of diversity (22:40), having less 'do-overs' (23:30), harnessing Uber’s aggression (25:30), being a college basketball player (27:10), stepping on toes (28:30), Uber’s board upheaval (29:45), leadership by committee (31:55), and office push-ups (36:15).

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The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO and one of the world’s richest men, to talk about retiring with a $33bn fortune (1:55), launching his new project USA Facts (3:00), losing his shirt investing in Twitter (3:55), starting as employee number 30 at Microsoft (5:20), what disruption looked like in 1980 (9:20), the most important negotiation of his life (11:25), being Microsoft’s biggest investor (13:00), why he started USA Facts (15:05), on “Making Data Great Again” (16:05), fake news (17:00), on whether he wants to run for office (22:10), spending $2bn on the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers (24:00), when he tried to buy Yahoo for $45bn (27:20), his biggest mistake (29:15), and the next big thing (30:20).

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The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Marc Andreessen, founder of Internet pioneer Netscape and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, to talk about the early days of the Internet (2:45), the "absurd" power of the web giants (7:30), delivery robots (10:45), the ease of starting an web company today (12:00), the ideal time to invest (15:00), the truth about artificial intelligence (16:30), the “luddite” panic (25:45), industries tech is aiming for next (33:00), why the answer to our problems is more technology (36:00), whether the big Internet companies are too big (37:30), why he told Mark Zuckerberg to turn down a takeover from Yahoo (39:30), how he's not worried about screen time for his 2-year-old son (43:10), and why the disruption of all human activity is only just getting started (44:45).

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The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson talks to the scientists and executives pledging to redefine life as we know it about why we may be finally on the cusp of an age revolution (2:00), taking the pain out of being old (6:00), the wonder drugs already in circulation (7:45), on whether we are playing god (17:45), the rejuvenating effects of young blood (22:30), freezing your stem cells (26:45), the merging of artificial intelligence and medicine (30:00), and what the future of ageing looks like (37:00).SUBSCRIBE: find all our episodes at sundaytimes.co.uk/dannyinthevalley and on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/danny-in-the-valley/id1233991021

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The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Chieh Huang, founder of Boxed.com, to talk about setting up the “Costco for millennials” in a two-car garage (1:30), why Brexit and small houses make coming to the UK hard (3:00), growing up as a son of immigrants (5:30), making his first fortune selling an office-decoration game to Zynga (9:00), the entrepreneurial itch (17:30), taking on the $200bn big-box retail industry (20:30), struggling for funding (23:00), the challenge of shipping giant boxes (26:30), being an “undercorn” (29:00), paying university fees for the children of his workers (30:00), unlimited maternity leave (31:15), the financial calculus behind those benefits (34:15), predictive shopping (37:15), and trying to please a Tiger Mom (39:45).

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