Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning into Tech Stuff.
Speaker 2: If you don't recognize my voice, my name is Oz
Speaker 2: Voloshian and I'm here because the inimitable Jonathan Strickland has
Speaker 2: passed the baton to Cara Price and myself to host
Speaker 2: Tech Stuff. The show will remain your home for all
Speaker 2: things tech, and all the old episodes will remain available
Speaker 2: in this feed. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm oz Voloshian and I'm care Price.
Speaker 2: It's Wednesday, which means it's time for a deep dive
Speaker 2: conversation with a fascinating person in and around tech. Were
Speaker 2: thrilled to bring you a conversation with Jessica Lesson. She
Speaker 2: is the CEO of The Information, which is a media
Speaker 2: company based in San Francisco that covers the tech industry.
Speaker 2: Because just two days after the inauguration, one of the
Speaker 2: stories I find most personally fascinating is the alliance for
Speaker 2: now between MAGA and the tech Bros. And it's obviously
Speaker 2: clearest in Elon Musk. Have you seen that video of
Speaker 2: him and DJT dancing right away?
Speaker 3: It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: This is the robot dance they're both doing on Newye's
Speaker 1: Eve at mar Lago.
Speaker 3: My first thought when I was watching it was who's
Speaker 3: better thing?
Speaker 2: That is Trump's dance And you see Elon starting and
Speaker 2: then you see Trump kind of shooting him at Lance,
Speaker 2: being like, slow down, br that's my dance. But of
Speaker 2: course it's not just Elon his currying favor with the
Speaker 2: new president. Up and down Silicon Valley, there's this rush
Speaker 2: to cozy up to Trump. And eight years ago there
Speaker 2: was this amazing moment where Trump summoned all the tech
Speaker 2: CEOs to Trump Tower in Manhattan right before he was
Speaker 2: inaugurated to kind of show them who was boss. And
Speaker 2: now all these stories about tension between Trump and tech,
Speaker 2: and now it couldn't be more different. And the coziness
Speaker 2: between Silicon Valley and Trump seems to be getting, you know,
Speaker 2: cozier and cozier.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's incredible to it's it's almost as incredible as
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg's fashion transformation.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to get to the fashion choices too.
Speaker 2: I found just one of the most striking things an
Speaker 2: outside observer of technology is Mark Zuckerberg's physical transformation. I mean,
Speaker 2: from the hoodie wearing character of the social network to
Speaker 2: a mixed martial artist who also released his own t
Speaker 2: shirt line, which have Latin sayings printed on them. He
Speaker 2: wore on recently that said out Zuck out Nihil. How's
Speaker 2: your Latin Cara?
Speaker 3: Not good enough?
Speaker 2: I had to google it too, But it means all
Speaker 2: Zuck or all nothing.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it means he's a big guy.
Speaker 2: Before that, I want to note that Jessica has this
Speaker 2: kind of interesting personal connection to Mark Zuckerberg. The co
Speaker 2: host of her podcast, which is called The More or
Speaker 2: Less Podcast, was at Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg and went
Speaker 2: on to be VP of Product at Facebook. That co host,
Speaker 2: Sam Lesson, is also Jessica's husband. Finally, if I couldn't
Speaker 2: have imagined being closer to my podcast host than you
Speaker 2: and I are but stranger things but more seriously, and
Speaker 2: we've got She got a listener email about this. Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg suspended the fact checking program at Meta and at Facebook,
Speaker 2: which sewed, frankly.
Speaker 1: Quite a lot of horror.
Speaker 2: He also added to the board of Meta Dana White,
Speaker 2: the founder of UFC and a very close confidante of Trump.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things I really wanted to
Speaker 2: talk to Jessica about is what's going on with Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: how much of this kind of change is driven by personality,
Speaker 2: and how much of it is driven by kind of
Speaker 2: opportunism and wanting to appeal to the new power center
Speaker 2: in the US.
Speaker 3: So I'm excited to get the inside scoop. Jessica was
Speaker 3: originally a tech reporter for The Wall Street Journal who
Speaker 3: was covering Silicon Valley from New York City before she
Speaker 3: moved west to Silicon Valley and eventually started her own
Speaker 3: site called The Information.
Speaker 1: The clues in the name very much, so it's.
Speaker 3: The sort of mainline source for news on technology.
Speaker 2: I heard Jessica on the Daily Beast podcast, which is
Speaker 2: hosted by Joanna Coles, who's a friend and a mental
Speaker 2: and advisor of mine. And Joanna and Jessica and Samantha
Speaker 2: Bee were talking about this idea of the revenge of
Speaker 2: the Nerds, and I thought I was just irresistible. So
Speaker 2: I wrote to Jessica, who greed to sit down for
Speaker 2: tech stuff. I really enjoyed your conversation with Joanna and
Speaker 2: sam Bee, and you use this very entertaining phrase, the
Speaker 2: revenge of the Nerds, and I was wondering if there
Speaker 2: was like a single moment or a dinner or a tweet,
Speaker 2: or an outfit or an image or something that really
Speaker 2: sort of brought that moment home to you.
Speaker 4: Great question. I think it's really more a shift in
Speaker 4: communication style among leaders here in Silicon Valley, who, yes,
Speaker 4: could somewhat be stereotyped as nerds, although the industry has
Speaker 4: certainly grown beyond that, but a real kind of flex
Speaker 4: in their communication, often using social media. And I think
Speaker 4: Elon must is obviously a trendsetter here. Mark Zuckerberg is
Speaker 4: part of the picture, and you know it's clear that
Speaker 4: this kind of go direct to share their message, wearing
Speaker 4: their luxury fashion clothing and so forth, is really the
Speaker 4: vibe shift in tech right now. And I do think
Speaker 4: it's been building, and I think Elon's kind of over
Speaker 4: the topness, outrageousness, whatever you would call it, has given
Speaker 4: kind of cover and shifted the window, and many other
Speaker 4: CEOs are following.
Speaker 2: I mean, you've been at this since two thousand and five, right,
Speaker 2: originally the Journal and then founding Information. Where would you
Speaker 2: say that like sort of vibe shift if you had
Speaker 2: to pinpoint in a moment in time, when did it
Speaker 2: kind of start to coalesce.
Speaker 4: You know, right now, in a micro sense, we are
Speaker 4: in this moment fueled by the Trump election. I think
Speaker 4: one of the big questions in twenty twenty five will
Speaker 4: be will it continue or which direction will it go?
Speaker 4: If you zoom out a little bit more, I think,
Speaker 4: particularly as it relates to politics, tech had been a
Speaker 4: little more defensive over the last four plus years. I mean,
Speaker 4: the vibe was very much a very tense relationship with Washington,
Speaker 4: with regulators, with the press, and I think broadly a
Speaker 4: lot of companies kind of not that they didn't rattle cages,
Speaker 4: but they tried not to rattle cages in a sense
Speaker 4: because there's a lot at stake, and the regulatory pressures
Speaker 4: were very real with the cases and finds they were
Speaker 4: getting hit with, and so it was sort of like,
Speaker 4: don't poke your head out too much and draw attention.
Speaker 4: And so I think prior to this very new period,
Speaker 4: we were in a little bit of apologizing defending we
Speaker 4: in the industry, and this is a reaction to that.
Speaker 4: But I think everything is a reaction to the thing
Speaker 4: before it.
Speaker 2: You have been a reporter and an editor and found
Speaker 2: an incredible media company covering this space, but you're also
Speaker 2: part of the world, I guess. I mean through your
Speaker 2: through your marriage with Sam and social relationships with some
Speaker 2: of these figures. Is that a kind of complicating factor
Speaker 2: or a bonus or sometimes one sometimes the other.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you kind of navigate that?
Speaker 4: I mean, every journalist has a personal life, and I'm
Speaker 4: no different. But I don't feel at all that I'm
Speaker 4: part of, you know, that world of the elite Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley CEOs in any way. I mean, I think, you know,
Speaker 4: the information has been scrutinizing the technology business now for
Speaker 4: more than eleven years, and I think that's firmly where
Speaker 4: my reputation is. Although I hope that as a founder,
Speaker 4: I have experience in what it's like to build a company,
Speaker 4: and so that helps inform the storylines we go after
Speaker 4: the questions we ask.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes as this feeling from the Silicon Valley
Speaker 2: folks that like journalists the enemies and don't understand them
Speaker 2: and all these things. You know, you obviously come from
Speaker 2: from the same point of coverage in terms of speaking
Speaker 2: truth of power, but also you know how to slip
Speaker 2: into that register. I suppose in terms of how to communicate.
Speaker 4: There are some commonalities. I mean, sometimes you can get
Speaker 4: a source to build a relationship by talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: some recruiting challenge you're having that mirrors some recruiting challenge
Speaker 4: they're having. But you know, I think there's no doubt
Speaker 4: in people's minds, you know what the purpose of the
Speaker 4: information is and what our mission is to be the
Speaker 4: most authoritative publication covering this industry. But it does also
Speaker 4: help to have known and covered as a reporter people
Speaker 4: over a long time.
Speaker 2: Let's start with it with Mark Zuckerberg because in a sense,
Speaker 2: the esthetic transition of Mark Zuckerberg for me as an outsider,
Speaker 2: has been one of the clearest indicators that like, something
Speaker 2: is going on. So and can you just describe for
Speaker 2: people who haven't been sort of following his personal appearance
Speaker 2: for the last sort of five years, what's changed and
Speaker 2: what it may say about meta and the wider industry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's I mean, I think it's in interesting a
Speaker 4: part because Mark has talked about it. I don't know
Speaker 4: that I have great insights into the choices that he's
Speaker 4: made from a fashion perspective, but I think what's clear
Speaker 4: is that he's leaning in to being himself and I
Speaker 4: think that also feels very elon. Elon that you see
Speaker 4: on Twitter is you could be having a dinner conversation
Speaker 4: with him and these would be the things he's saying,
Speaker 4: and he's not censoring himself. And I don't think Mark
Speaker 4: is censoring himself.
Speaker 2: And so when it comes to when it comes to
Speaker 2: something on the top of censorship, like you know, the
Speaker 2: removal of the fact checking function of Facebook, I mean,
Speaker 2: do you view that as sort of Mark being himself
Speaker 2: and feeling unconstrained, or do you view it more as
Speaker 2: a kind of gesture towards the new political elite.
Speaker 4: I think it's both, I really do. I think from
Speaker 4: the earliest days of Facebook, Mark was talking about free expression.
Speaker 4: He has given many speeches about and pushed back on
Speaker 4: on things he is deemed censorship. There's obviously a period
Speaker 4: in the whole Internet where many platforms went in the
Speaker 4: direction of moderating more and more and more under pressure
Speaker 4: from regulators in the media, and I think Mark seesed
Speaker 4: a political opening in a moment to get back to
Speaker 4: where he has always thought the company should be. What
Speaker 4: happens next is anybody's guests, right, I mean, I think
Speaker 4: having made the decision to do this, he's definitely striking
Speaker 4: the notes of mentioning Elaw and giving him shout outs,
Speaker 4: attacking some of the same enemies that President Trump has attacked,
Speaker 4: so making something out of this moment. But I don't
Speaker 4: think he pivoted to Curry favor. He's very consistently been
Speaker 4: very uncomfortable with the direction a lot of these platforms
Speaker 4: have gone in moderating and even as a journalist, I
Speaker 4: think it's very complicated.
Speaker 2: And yet when it comes to like the Elon version
Speaker 2: of free speech and the Mark Zuckerberg version of free speech,
Speaker 2: most generous feel very ucomfortable.
Speaker 1: So it's a strange kind of paradox.
Speaker 4: What I know is a journalist is a we have
Speaker 4: to fight for the value of professional journalism. Social media
Speaker 4: is not going to reveal the things that companies want hidden.
Speaker 4: It's not going to tell you that the Chinese government
Speaker 4: owns a direct stake in byte dance and scrutinize what's
Speaker 4: happening to us users data things that are in the
Speaker 4: public's interest. And right now, especially in Silicon Valley, the
Speaker 4: discourse is so toxic around it that tech folks hate
Speaker 4: journalists and journalists hate tech folks, and there's sort of
Speaker 4: no room to say what if These are both important
Speaker 4: pieces of the information ecosystem. Now, of course, how we
Speaker 4: combat the misinformation that can spread very quickly on social
Speaker 4: media's a tremendous problem, but I think that is outside
Speaker 4: what any one company can necessarily do.
Speaker 3: When we come back, we'll hear about the rise of
Speaker 3: Christianity in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: It's funny you mentioned this last four years of the
Speaker 2: tech industry having to be very careful around the administration
Speaker 2: obviously Lena Khan and the FTC and stuff. But rewind
Speaker 2: eight years and there was that famous moment where Trump,
Speaker 2: like the school principle, summoned all of the unruly tech
Speaker 2: CEOs to Trump Tower, basically to Flex's authority. And the
Speaker 2: coverage at the time was all around how much tension
Speaker 2: there was between Trump and the tech community. How did
Speaker 2: that change so dramatically in the last eight years.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think over the last four years, in particular,
Speaker 4: the relationship between the tech industry and the Biden administration
Speaker 4: really beyond soured, I would say, and on multiple fronts,
Speaker 4: from crypto to just anti trust to AI regulation, things
Speaker 4: that have become very press issues for the industry. Washington
Speaker 4: and the industry was really not seeing eyed eye. So
Speaker 4: I think you had a group of tech leaders receptive
Speaker 4: for a different approach, and Trump, either because he believed
Speaker 4: it or was opportunistic, really effectively positioned himself as an
Speaker 4: alternative to that and someone who would not take the
Speaker 4: same approach on blocking the smallest of acquisitions companies wanted
Speaker 4: to do and so forth. And this was really crystallized
Speaker 4: when markind Recent and Ben Horowitz, who had been staunch
Speaker 4: supporters of the Democratic Party announced and we broke in
Speaker 4: the information we're going to endorse Trump, And I think
Speaker 4: they outlined their thinking very clearly, I mean from their
Speaker 4: point of view, and it was really how on so
Speaker 4: many topics they thought it was existential around things for
Speaker 4: AI to have a different approach. So the industry was
Speaker 4: never it wasn't cozy with Trump the first time around
Speaker 4: this time, it seems, you know, in many cases and
Speaker 4: not at all, there's an attempt to forge an alliance
Speaker 4: and see more alignment. But it is so early and
Speaker 4: I think it's very safe to say that the relationship
Speaker 4: will be a bumpy one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think there was a story from Maggie Haeman that
Speaker 2: Trump has already started to kind of comment that Elon's
Speaker 2: around a lot.
Speaker 1: Do you have any intel on the unfolding of that relationship.
Speaker 4: I don't. I mean from what I hear, there is
Speaker 4: a friendship there, so I have every reason to sort
Speaker 4: of believe that. But yes, And one question I have is,
Speaker 4: obviously you have a lot of technology leaders really sort
Speaker 4: of bragging about how frequently they're in mar A Lago
Speaker 4: talking about their influence. I mean Mark in recent recently
Speaker 4: went on a podcast, said he spent fifty percent of
Speaker 4: his time since the election involved in some way on
Speaker 4: the new administration. I also imagine there are a lot
Speaker 4: of people in Washington and politicians who might be somewhat skeptical, right,
Speaker 4: but you still have two different worlds clashing and colliding here.
Speaker 4: Time will tell. You'll also undoubtedly have reporters and folks
Speaker 4: trying to make something of friction because that's a good story.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's a problem with the press these days.
Speaker 4: So I think we'll see, you know, what are the
Speaker 4: policies that come out, what are the appointments. Obviously, in
Speaker 4: terms of appointments and tech figures who are playing direct
Speaker 4: roles in the administration, there are quite a few, so
Speaker 4: I think we just have to watch it unfold.
Speaker 2: I wonder if in a sense Trump's approach himself with
Speaker 2: something of a revelation or point of inspiration in terms
Speaker 2: of how he effectively sidestepped the media and created his
Speaker 2: fan base and used that political leverage, and whether that's
Speaker 2: something that leaders and say they can value have kind
Speaker 2: of consciously emulated, or whether it's just something which kind
Speaker 2: of happened at the same time.
Speaker 4: I think so the relationship between what now is so
Speaker 4: not affectionately dubbed the legacy media by tech leaders and
Speaker 4: the tech industry has gotten quite poor in a sense.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think you have a lot of media
Speaker 4: outlets who have just been out to get the tech industry,
Speaker 4: who have pursued stories based solely on the sort of
Speaker 4: agenda that they have to show a particular thing. And
Speaker 4: so I think in that respect you have some tech
Speaker 4: leaders who are sort of rightfully miffed. At the same time,
Speaker 4: there's been a lot of very fair, tough journalism of
Speaker 4: growing businesses that are having extraordinary impacts on the world,
Speaker 4: and powerful people don't much like the scrutiny. So you
Speaker 4: had a situation where there was a lot of animosity
Speaker 4: so absolutely, a figure like Elon who literally bought a
Speaker 4: very important communication platform to subvert the media is inspiring
Speaker 4: to the enemies of the press for sure. Now, of course,
Speaker 4: the fact that these leaders then go on and lie
Speaker 4: about the media and create all sorts of animals toward
Speaker 4: it that isn't deserved is also problematic.
Speaker 2: When you think think into the future, when people kind
Speaker 2: of write the history of this next chapter of Silicon Valley,
Speaker 2: what do you think I'd write about Elon Musk and
Speaker 2: how will they describe his influence on the on the
Speaker 2: culture of the whole industry.
Speaker 4: I think the story is still being written, honestly. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think from a perspective of a leader being emulated
Speaker 4: by others, the impact is real. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: you can see from Sam Altman all the way down.
Speaker 4: You know, you used to just be the CEO of
Speaker 4: one company. Now everyone wants to run four or five
Speaker 4: because Elon does. You know, you used to give your
Speaker 4: interviews and now you just tweet at your enemies and
Speaker 4: until they buckle. So that's clear. Obviously Elon has built
Speaker 4: and is building some incredible businesses. You know, it seems
Speaker 4: to me that he's trying to fashion himself as shaping
Speaker 4: political opinion culture you know, around the world, and that
Speaker 4: seems awfully audacious, perhaps as audacious is going to Mars.
Speaker 4: And so what's interesting though in this is a little
Speaker 4: bit meta, so to speak. But like Elon, the cult
Speaker 4: of people around him will always celebrate him. I think
Speaker 4: people are choosing to believe what they want to believe
Speaker 4: and to vilify or celebrate who they want to.
Speaker 2: Is this stuff with the alternative foot doutsge Land thing,
Speaker 2: the AfD in Germany making anyone in the valley uncomfortable?
Speaker 2: I mean, this seems to be like crossing yet another
Speaker 2: rubicon in terms of the company.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think everyone here is a little bit uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: But there's also the He's going to send us to Mars.
Speaker 4: I say this too much, but everything just it feels
Speaker 4: like the pendulum swinging in these days, it's swinging faster
Speaker 4: and more furiously. And so to be in the role
Speaker 4: of a journalist kind of standing by and watching is
Speaker 4: fascinating and I think it actually is a bit hard
Speaker 4: to predict at this moment because so much is at play.
Speaker 2: I remember when I used to work for Charlie Rose,
Speaker 2: a producer many years ago, and we came to Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley to do some interviews in like twenty ten, I think,
Speaker 2: and like one of the interviews was at Facebook with
Speaker 2: Mark and Cheryl, and it was like such a traveling
Speaker 2: from New York. It felt like going to this like
Speaker 2: flip flops, T shirts, green juice, like liberal enclave. And
Speaker 2: now it's like completely in a very very short period
Speaker 2: of time in grand scheme of things flipped. But there's
Speaker 2: been some very interesting reporting in the information this feature
Speaker 2: that you ran on the rise of Christianity in the
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley, which I found super interesting because it speaks
Speaker 2: to a kind of cultural conservatism that maybe also had
Speaker 2: something to do with what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was a wonderful story in our weekend section
Speaker 4: about the rise of Christianity in tech and really fueled
Speaker 4: by I mean figures like Peter Teal who have long
Speaker 4: been very religious but it being more open about it,
Speaker 4: who have anti christ seminars and so on and so forth,
Speaker 4: and it's definitely something to watch. The industry now is
Speaker 4: so big that certainly doesn't speak for the entire industry,
Speaker 4: but it's emerged as a pocket that's quite strong. You
Speaker 4: have people going to meet founders by hearing them preach
Speaker 4: and then going up to them. So, I mean, based
Speaker 4: on our surveys of our subscribers with the information, you
Speaker 4: still have the majority of tech workers voting for Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris to be clear, right, But there's a very loud
Speaker 4: group that's not and I think they're you know, they're
Speaker 4: winning some more followers and they'll probably win some more too.
Speaker 4: But what's so interesting is they also have the largest
Speaker 4: megaphones in society right now. So and maybe the lesson
Speaker 4: here isn't Maybe what's different is there's nothing exceptional about
Speaker 4: the tech industry right now. The tech industry is now business.
Speaker 4: It's grown up, it's big, it reflects lots of different things,
Speaker 4: and so it votes less as a block so to
Speaker 4: speak on all of these issues. And you know, I'm
Speaker 4: not sure that's good or bad actually, but it's interesting
Speaker 4: and we'll have some.
Speaker 2: Consequences when we come back how it all started. Jessica
Speaker 2: talks about why she felt big tech needed the information.
Speaker 1: You wrote a piece last year in the Atlantic.
Speaker 2: It was a stark warning to other media companies not
Speaker 2: to partner with AI companies. Essentially, even though funny enough,
Speaker 2: the Atlantic was one of the you know trailblazers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there were higher ups there who were not happy
Speaker 4: with the timing of those two things, but kudos to
Speaker 4: them for not interfering because I didn't know that at
Speaker 4: the time. I still think these deals are very dangerous
Speaker 4: and for a lot of reasons. I think fundamental technology
Speaker 4: companies and news and information companies are not in the
Speaker 4: same business. They're not aligned. There may be particular partnerships
Speaker 4: or getting more eyeballs on journalism, things like that, but
Speaker 4: the history of these partnerships is that they've n did very,
Speaker 4: very poorly, and that news organizations have diverted time, resources,
Speaker 4: attention focus to placating these partners who, at the end
Speaker 4: of the day change their strategy, don't do what they
Speaker 4: say they're going to do, not because they're evil, but
Speaker 4: because they're not news organizations. So we saw this with
Speaker 4: social media publishers rush to make content for Facebook. Facebook
Speaker 4: change its priorities. You can see this down the line,
Speaker 4: the same as true Google. You know, it's so important
Speaker 4: that as news organizations we control our own destiny, that
Speaker 4: we don't align with tech companies, but that we use
Speaker 4: tech to better reach our audiences and in particular. These
Speaker 4: partnerships also sought to remove sort of legal issues around
Speaker 4: news content and other content that these models were trained on.
Speaker 1: And will the New York Times case be heard this
Speaker 1: this year and twenty five times.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but I am cheering them on because
Speaker 4: I think to just say, let's wait a second, maybe
Speaker 4: there is a partnership, Maybe we can come up with
Speaker 4: fair value for this, but we're not there yet. I
Speaker 4: think takes tremendous courage and so yeah, to strike these
Speaker 4: deals when there is no product, there is no business model.
Speaker 4: It's just not possible at this point. And also there's
Speaker 4: always you have to read the fine print of them.
Speaker 4: You know, there's some headline grabbing numbers, but a huge
Speaker 4: portion of the payouts are in open AI credits. So
Speaker 4: it's not even that you know, these newsrooms are getting
Speaker 4: cash and so forth.
Speaker 1: It's a classic will invest in your company but not
Speaker 1: in cash.
Speaker 4: I mean that's not You're just explaining the whole SaaS
Speaker 4: enterprise cloud ecosystem there. So we need to let this
Speaker 4: play out and come up with the right framework and
Speaker 4: then build the right partnership soft products that actually exist
Speaker 4: and have users.
Speaker 1: And just have question on Sam Oltman.
Speaker 2: Why back in two thousand and five did you want
Speaker 2: to cover him when nobody else did And how have
Speaker 2: you seen him change or not change in the intervening
Speaker 2: twenty years.
Speaker 4: Well, I'd like to say there was some grand plan,
Speaker 4: but I was really, you know, the young reporter scrounging
Speaker 4: for stories. And I was actually a tech reporter based
Speaker 4: in New York. And at the time, all of the
Speaker 4: journals tech reporting was out in Silicon Valley, and they
Speaker 4: got to cover Google, and they got to cover all Yahoo,
Speaker 4: a big story back in the day, and I was left.
Speaker 4: I mean, scrounging is not inaccurate, and so everyone who
Speaker 4: got in my inbox got a follow up. But what
Speaker 4: I remember from that was also at the time, the
Speaker 4: Wall Street Journal didn't write much about startups. I believe
Speaker 4: there was a rule that, you know, the paper wouldn't
Speaker 4: write about a deal less than a billion dollars or
Speaker 4: something that in a very of antiquated way of looking
Speaker 4: I think at business and what was happening. And so
Speaker 4: you know, I think my editor rolled his eyes when
Speaker 4: I was talking about this mobile thing. And what Alman's
Speaker 4: app was was it was a friend finder, so you
Speaker 4: could see your friend's location, and obviously that raised a
Speaker 4: number of questions around privacy and phones weren't really being
Speaker 4: used in that way before with those apps. And so
Speaker 4: I think the way I got my editors interested was
Speaker 4: hooking it to a partnership with AT and T that
Speaker 4: the app was doing. And then also Sam had gone
Speaker 4: to Washington to talk about legislation around mobile privacy that
Speaker 4: he wanted to advocate for, and I remember he offered
Speaker 4: me this his like documents that he was, you know,
Speaker 4: sharing with senators or so on. And I think I
Speaker 4: had a light bulb go off about two years ago
Speaker 4: when there were a bunch of headlines if Sam was
Speaker 4: again going to Washington with his thick binder of proposals
Speaker 4: on how to regulate AI. And I think there's a
Speaker 4: savviness to Sam to try and get ahead of the
Speaker 4: narrative and shape it that was there kind of twenty
Speaker 4: years ago. There was also a savviness, you know, to
Speaker 4: working with a reporter to get coverage in a paper
Speaker 4: that really was not super friendly or interested in startups,
Speaker 4: which he worked with me to do. So I guess
Speaker 4: the story, the story published, story published it.
Speaker 1: So you had the first byline in any major press.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean maybe there was some tech Crunch articles or
Speaker 4: whatever existed back in the day, but I think it's
Speaker 4: quite telling. And as a business reporter, I really enjoyed
Speaker 4: watching people, you know, operate for a very long time.
Speaker 4: I think you can learn a lot.
Speaker 1: Why did you leave the Journal to start the Information.
Speaker 4: For two reasons. The first was I was very frustrated
Speaker 4: with how technology was being coveredwere including the Journal. This
Speaker 4: was twenty thirteen when I left, and there was a
Speaker 4: lot of hype around companies. It was a lot of
Speaker 4: putting founders on the cover of magazines, and to me,
Speaker 4: all of these businesses were going to be very important
Speaker 4: businesses and needed to be understood as businesses. They're financials,
Speaker 4: you know, so on and so forth, and I just
Speaker 4: thought there wasn't a rigor to covering the tech industry,
Speaker 4: and even internally the journal. I'd reach out to a
Speaker 4: colleague to try and collaborate on the story and they'd
Speaker 4: sort of dismiss So I'm not a tech reporter. That's
Speaker 4: what those people out there do. And so I thought
Speaker 4: that was just a huge missing opportunity because I know
Speaker 4: business leaders are very smart and they were seeing tech
Speaker 4: upend their businesses and they wanted to go deeper. The
Speaker 4: second piece was business model. Back then, the line of
Speaker 4: thinking was that if you're a big publication, you had
Speaker 4: to chase what Google and Facebook were chasing with ad
Speaker 4: dollars and go for traffic. The rise of digital advertising
Speaker 4: cause publishers to go crazy for traffic, and what that
Speaker 4: did is obvious. It meant we were catering to huge
Speaker 4: audiences that we weren't going deep. We were focused on
Speaker 4: live blogging announcements instead of doing investigative reporting, and we
Speaker 4: weren't playing to our superpowers. And so I knew that
Speaker 4: for the industry to have a really successful and sustainable
Speaker 4: digital future, digital subscriptions had to be more than an afterthought.
Speaker 4: They had to be the kind of true north. And
Speaker 4: no one really believed me. I mean even when we launched,
Speaker 4: everyone laughed. And eleven years later, you can't name a
Speaker 4: publisher that doesn't have a digital paywall or subscription, or.
Speaker 1: An executive Silicon Valley who doesn't pay for the information.
Speaker 4: We've got a fair number of them, shall we say.
Speaker 4: But also, you know, more than half our readership is
Speaker 4: outside of Silicon Valley. Actually, so there is a growing group.
Speaker 4: But Yeah, it was really those things. It was a
Speaker 4: commitment to the business model and really the type of
Speaker 4: coverage that inspired me.
Speaker 1: Jessica, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: I really really appreciate you taking the time and enjoyed
Speaker 2: the conversation.
Speaker 4: Thanks as me too.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I found most interesting about
Speaker 3: this interview is this shift that seems to be happening,
Speaker 3: vibe shift, major vibe shift in Silicon Valley. The fact
Speaker 3: that when Biden came into office, the attitude towards Silicon
Speaker 3: Valley was very different than its feels right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Biden hired as his FTC chair Federal Trade
Speaker 2: Commission Lena Kahan, who's actually somebody that you and I
Speaker 2: somewhat know. She was on our previous podcast, Sleepwalkers, and
Speaker 2: as a very young Yale law student, she wrote a
Speaker 2: paper called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, and this was basically a
Speaker 2: broadside against the tech industry and how previous frameworks of
Speaker 2: anti trust enforcement weren't appropriate to dealing with monopolistic practices
Speaker 2: in tech. And she became kind of a hero in
Speaker 2: the tech regulation sphere and then became like in her
Speaker 2: thirties chair of the FTC and basically made it her
Speaker 2: business to make the tech companies lives more difficult.
Speaker 3: And actually, something really crazy is happening right now, which
Speaker 3: is that Lena Kahan is siding with Elon Musk on
Speaker 3: what issue, on the issue of sam Altman transferring open
Speaker 3: ai from a nonprofit to a for profit into this
Speaker 3: sort of as they said on Puck Mega Unicorn. Wow,
Speaker 3: and you know Elon is not about it at all.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's interesting. Obviously OpenAI is transitioning or
Speaker 2: hoping Samilton's trying to transition it from you know, safety.
Speaker 1: Focus not for profit to for profit.
Speaker 2: But OpenAI and Microsoft are so closely connected that I
Speaker 2: can kind of understand why, you know, Lina Khan's anti
Speaker 2: monopolistic practices spidery senses are tingling here.
Speaker 3: The last thing I wanted to bring up was an
Speaker 3: article that I read in the New York Times that
Speaker 3: Maggie Haberman wrote about Elon's physical positioning near the White House. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and just to imagine in the Biden administration that like
Speaker 3: the owner of a mega technology company would have office
Speaker 3: space so close to the executive branch. Is such a
Speaker 3: departure from twenty twenty. I mean, both of you look
Speaker 3: at Lena Khan as the head of the FTC, but
Speaker 3: also just in terms of the relationship between the executive
Speaker 3: branch and Silicon Valley and how they were sort of
Speaker 3: at odds, like especially when we were even reporting on Sleepwalkers,
Speaker 3: Like there's real technoskepticism and an interest in regulating AI
Speaker 3: and understanding its effects on the American public. And now
Speaker 3: it's like let's play.
Speaker 2: But by the way, I mean, Biden was close to
Speaker 2: various executives, Jeffrey Katzenberg being one, much of Hollywood. Hollywood
Speaker 2: picked Biden, the tech industry picked Trump.
Speaker 1: It's true who.
Speaker 3: Won, who has money, That's who won. That's who won.
Speaker 3: That's it for tech Stuff Today. This episode was produced
Speaker 3: by Victoria Dominguez, Lizzie Jacobs, and Eliza Dennis. It was
Speaker 3: executive produced by me Kara Price, os Vaalahan and Kate
Speaker 3: Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvell for iHeart Podcasts. Our
Speaker 3: engineer is Charles de Montebello at CDM Studios. Kyle Murdoch
Speaker 3: wrote our theme song.
Speaker 2: Join us on Friday for tech Stuff's the Week in Tech.
Speaker 2: We'll run through our favorite headlines, talk with our friends
Speaker 2: at four or for media and try to tackle a question,
Speaker 2: when did the PayPal mafia become a thing.
Speaker 1: Please do rate and.
Speaker 2: Review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 2: and reach out to me and Kara at tech stuff
Speaker 2: podcast at gmail dot com with thoughts and feedback. We'd
Speaker 2: love to know what's on your mind.