WEBVTT - Rob Glaser 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:07.600 Okay, we're gonna jump right into it. So, Rob, what 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:09.760 did your father do for a living? What did my 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:12.320 father do? From My father had a small printing company 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:16.440 in New York called Flair Printing, which was on eight West, 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.279 just off Fifth and Uh. It was a business he 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:21.480 started in nineteen sixty two years before I was born. 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.400 And he did it my whole adult kid, my whole 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.720 life growing up New York up until about nine. And 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:30.080 you grew up in Manhattan. So I grew up in Yonkers, 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:31.840 two blocks outside of the Bronx. I was born in 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:34.000 Mount Sina Hospital, so I was born in Manhattan, but 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:36.199 I grew up in basically Yonkers. But I know you 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:39.280 went to the same school as Jason Flam Right, Jason 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:42.200 flam and I were both Filston class of seventy nine. Um, 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:45.519 it's a it's a true story. I met Jason uh 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:49.080 freshman year that Fieldston has two feeder schools, a grammar 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:51.199 school called Filston Lower, which is the one I went to, 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:53.800 and know the grammar school called Ethical in Midtown Manhattan, 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:55.840 which is what Jason went to. I think. So Jason 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:58.639 I first met in seventh grade in Mrs Lesher's home 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:01.240 room and I remembered ovidly because one of the first 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:04.880 days of school, Jason walked in with a T shirt. Uh, 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.200 this is nineteen seventy three, I think, with a T 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:09.920 shirt of one pig on top of another one said 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:15.040 Macon Bacon and Mrs Lesher made Jason go home and 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.040 get a different shirt. So he was a troublemaker from 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:20.600 day one. Were you friendly with Jason? Then? Jason and 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:23.679 I were always like, uh, friendly, but not best buddies. 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:26.640 We were in different circles. Um and Uh I was 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.840 like Jason. Uh. I've learned subsequently as we've become much 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:32.320 closer as adults. Part of wide and see him a 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:33.720 lot of part of high school, and he spent a 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:35.520 lot of time at the track, which I think he's 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.679 talked about subsequently. So he, Jason spent the latter part 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.839 of his high school years uh, in a very different 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:44.360 arc than I spent on mine. Uh. And we reconnected 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.120 later in life. Okay, so were you a science kid 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:50.800 from day one? I was more of a math kid 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:53.480 than a science kid. I was one of these kids 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:55.280 who just numbers. I always made sense to me. I 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:57.840 grew up a baseball fan and to me, like baseball 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:01.520 with statistics, so like literal would would study way before 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.520 saber metrics or way before any of this stuff became popular. 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.360 I would know everybody's batting average to the fourth decimal point. 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.000 I just numbers kind of made sense to me, and 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:12.360 I was like a numbers kid. I also liked media. 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:14.400 I mean my one of my favorite things to do 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.320 was listening to w ABC radio as a kid. I 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:20.040 just felt like radio was like this window to the 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:22.840 whole wide universe. This is you know. I didn't at 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:25.079 the time, I didn't have a shortwave radio, and it 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:27.519 was obviously way before other stuff ended up doing. But 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.760 I was like media, especially music started radio station when 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:33.160 I was in high school. So I was the fact 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:35.480 that my life ended up connecting to music, even though 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.640 I have very, very poor skills as a performer. I 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:40.440 played cello for two years in piano for a couple 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:42.200 of years, and I sucked at both of them. But 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.000 I love music, and music and math were two of 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:50.040 my passions growing up. And was that encouraged in your household? Uh? 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.240 Yet both were? Um? I mean my uh my my 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:55.760 sisters two years older, and she was a really good 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.960 pianist and music good musician. She went to Oberlin the 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:00.680 lulib Arts part, but she spent a lot of time 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:02.760 with her buddies in the conservatory. She went to music camp. 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:04.760 So she's quite a good musician, or was quite a 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.840 good musician, probably still is. Uh and uh. I was 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:09.880 like the math kid, and so we kind of each 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:13.359 gave each other our own turfs kind of deal. But yeah, 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:15.280 my parents were like they were both the first and 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:18.080 their families to go to college. They were very much 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:22.280 focused on pushing us in academic directions. But in a 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.280 Jewish family, well, my mom's Catholic, my dad's Jewish. Really 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:28.120 we raised Jewish. I was great double majored and guilt 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.440 um and uh uh so I, well, the woman you're 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:36.320 married to now she Jewish. I've actually done multiple religions. 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:38.240 I've buried at jew and I've married a Catholic woman, 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:40.920 so I've kind of haven't done Buddhists yet. But okay, 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:45.160 but but I am uh my current partner grew up Catholic, 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:47.320 so yes, I've gotten back to Catholicism. But you can 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:49.840 only marry what I'm told. Um, although the Pube's kind 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:54.160 of changed that, I think. But but anyway, the Uh, 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:57.800 the role of religion. We had a Christmas tree, which 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:00.720 was kind of almost a cultural thing, but we were 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:02.960 mostly My mom was from California, so I didn't really 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.840 know as closely my the Catholic side of the family. 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:09.120 I knew the Jewish relaity was my dad's brother lived 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:11.840 in Long Island and we would do holidays with him, 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.240 So I was in Fieldson is probably like a third Jewish, 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:16.520 so I was in touch with kind of both sides 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:18.440 of my heritage. Okay, you have I have to ask 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:20.440 them if your mother was from California, did your father 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.400 meet her? It's actually an awesome story. So my dad 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:27.320 and my mom met at a folk dancing place, uh 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:32.159 in nineteen fifty three or nine four, I think, Uh. 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:34.360 And my dad and his best friend, Bob weren't back, 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.080 and my mom and her her best friend, uh Felice, 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:42.480 both went to this place, and uh, three lifelong couples 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:44.800 were formed that night. So my mom and my dad met, 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:47.360 Felice met her husband Roger, and Bob and his wife 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:49.479 Audrey all the same night. So I don't know it 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.560 was in the tequila there that night, but something magical, uh, 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:56.520 and they all married for life, which was just pretty 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:58.760 amazing and what was folk dancing? Did they ever tell 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:01.440 you what actually went trance fired at this venue? There 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.440 were no videotapes at the time, so there's very subjective 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.840 recollections of it, but it was. It was a meaningful night, 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:09.760 obviously for all six of them. Uh and relatively you know, 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:12.040 my parents were married over fifty years until my dad 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.320 passed away five years ago, and so they had a 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:16.280 great long run out of it. Okay, So if you're 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:19.200 born in nineteen sixty two, you're in high school when 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.440 the Apple two comes out? Were you an adherent of 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:25.240 computers in high school? I was, but not through uh 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:27.800 not through PCs. I was a little before and a 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:29.799 little after in a funny way. So my first computer 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:35.520 was a a programmable t I fifty eight computer, which 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:37.320 was not a computer at all. I was a calculator 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:39.799 with two hundred forty steps in it, so you literally 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:41.919 you had to learn how to really efficient code. That 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:45.719 was the first UH computing device that I owned. Uh 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:47.920 And and you could program it to do sort of 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.600 simulation kinds of things that had a little display. I 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.480 couldn't afford the expensive one with magnetic cards, but I 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.440 was able to save my money from shelving stone, raking 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:58.520 leaves and other stuff to where I got the printer 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.360 so I could actually save my programs and type them 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:05.360 back in meticulously, all two and forty instructions of them. 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.680 Then my senior in high school, Fieldston started time sharing 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.320 on another computer down the street at the school called 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:14.440 Riverdale UM. And so that was when I got first 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:17.640 got into any sort of serious interactive programming. Uh. It 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.640 was a PDP eleven thirty four. There ran an obscure 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:24.200 operating system called Ristus for any nerds out there, UM. 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:26.839 And the biggest thing that I did there was I 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.520 wrote a game that simulated running a presidential election called 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:34.360 pres and it became very popular, and it leveraged that popularity, 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:36.360 and I put a trojan horse in it that gave 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:41.279 me system access to the entire computer system. Okay, and 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.320 did you utilize that access to do bad or good? 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.480 I utilized it for because back in the day, hacker 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:50.560 meant something different than it means now. Hacker meant somebody 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:53.680 who had the curiosity, the pioneer spirit. Stephen Levi's book 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.000 Hacker describes this, and it was about like climbing the mountain. 0:06:57.240 --> 0:06:59.520 The digital version of the Mountain. So I never did 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.520 anything malicious. I would basically there were there were fun 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:06.200 games on the system that you could play if you 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.000 had access to them, I would do that. Uh. So 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:10.880 the worst you could say is that I stole some 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:15.520 CPU cycles um from the from the Riverdale computer. I 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:17.320 did it with a buddy. I won't say his name, 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:19.240 but he ended up being our professor at m I 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:23.000 t so and uh a very accomplished person in his 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.679 own right. So apparently we didn't We were not too 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:30.440 too bad, but but we had fun and I learned 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:34.120 a lot about programming computers. Uh and uh, I can 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:36.880 tell you a lot about bad computer operating system security 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.000 and trojan horses because the case did not have robust security. 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:43.720 So that computer terminal that you had access to the 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.360 main frame or mini computer whatever it was, that was 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.360 at school, that was in high school. That was my 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:50.760 that was my first experience. My my first experience in 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.120 owning our computer was in one when the IBM PC 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:55.960 came out. But that was I was alarading. Okay, but 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.280 before your college. So when you're at Fieldston, would you 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:02.280 stay after school to use that computer it was it? 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:05.520 Would you track your relationship with a computer in school 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:09.360 somewhat similarly to what Bill Gates says his experience was. 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.280 So I didn't in beak between between the program blow 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:16.000 calculator that I owned and my access to the the 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.160 PDP eleven thirty four through a time sharing terminal. I 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:21.160 um I got. I don't know if I got my 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:23.440 full ten thousand hours, and but I definitely got a 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:25.880 decent amount of computing experience. We also, by the way 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:27.360 we had it, we had a PDP I forgot. My 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:29.880 whole Sky school had a PDP eight before the PDP 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.320 eleven thirty four, which had a one tin bawd teletype, 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:34.719 you know, the old like you know, something out of 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:38.120 two thousand and one, with the with the he's clanging 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.280 and the uh, the loud teletype. Uh. The only thing 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:43.880 about that was the computer would reboot when you plug 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:46.480 the coffee pot in. So it really wasn't that robust 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:48.920 a computer. So I dinked out with that a little bit. 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:52.880 But it was really the the my own calculator and 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.800 the other one where my main computing experence. And you know, 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:58.040 by I'm a little bit older than you. I was 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:00.280 born in nineteen fifty three, and then people are younger. 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:04.520 But there was really class division in my high school, 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:06.920 but it was much larger than your high school. When 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.920 you're pursuing your love of computers, does that make you 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.720 an ostracized nerd or does that include you in the class? 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.880 So this I had different things I did. So when 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:18.960 I before I started this, I started a radio station 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.960 in my high school. Uh, and that was that was fun. 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:23.840 I just did because I loved radio. Actually when I 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:25.240 went when I when I was twelve, I went to 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:28.640 a summer camp and my camp counselor was a a 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:31.920 d J at w N y C. I think it 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.040 was the City College, uh station, And I thought it 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.840 was was it was that a classical station back then? Uh? No, No, 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:39.800 this was it was like an all format station. Was 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:41.599 that it was a SID No, no, w CC, it 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:43.680 was a it was the City College in New York station. 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:45.200 So not even I see c C and Y or 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:47.280 something like that. And so I went and visited his 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:50.280 radio station, uh that next fall, and I thought it 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:52.280 was the coolest thing in the world. So I got 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.480 my we we ended up setting up a intercom radio 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.000 station in high school. When I did that, when I 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:00.319 was like a sophomore junior. How much techno? Well know, 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:02.360 how did that know? It was more of the inspiration. 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:04.280 It was more of the inspiration. It wasn't super technical. 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:05.880 I mean it was literally we didn't get it. We 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.760 didn't get a low watching license. We just literally wired 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.320 the building from the UH from the when we were 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:14.120 into the gymnasium in the cafeteria. So it was basically 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.600 doing radio over wired lines, basically what I ended up 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:20.600 doing twenty years later when we started real networks, but 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:22.840 not used. The Internet didn't exist then, so we just 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:27.319 wired it ourselves. Okay, so you end up going to Yale. 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.280 Where else did you apply to college? I actually only 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.000 applied to two places. I applied to Yale and a 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.480 little college and Iowa called Grinnell. And the reason I 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.440 applied to Grinnell was um I thought after being growing 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:42.000 up in New York and thinking I didn't necessarily want to, like, 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:44.720 you know, follow all the whole sort of snobby elitist 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:47.160 kind of stuff that you associate with the Northeast and 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.480 the I vs. UH. One of the inventors, one of 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:52.240 the inventor of the integrated circle, one of the early 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.200 people in Intel, was a Grinnell graduate and so in 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:57.520 the late seventies, Grinnell had one of the best funded 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.400 computer science facilities of any small liberal arts college in 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.360 the country. UH and I had. I went and visited Grinnell, 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:06.200 had a lovely time, was super fun. But I made 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.240 the purely pragmatic decision that if I hated Yale and 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:11.160 I wanted to switch to Grinnell, they would have be 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:13.880 with open arms U. Whereas if I went the other 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.520 way and I turned down YELLEH went to Grinnelle and 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:18.280 tried to get back into Yelle, they'd flipped me the bird. 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:20.320 So I figured the right thing to do was to 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:22.880 pick the pick the I like them both, and I 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.200 picked the one that seemed like if I didn't like it, 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:27.280 I could twitch to the other one. And UH and 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.200 I ended up having a great time. So you did 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:31.720 have a good experience in college. Fantastic I was. It 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.080 was and I actually by the time I went there, 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:37.000 I felt really good about it. My UH sister, who 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:38.640 was two years older, a couple of her one of 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:40.000 her friends going to Yale, and went up and hung 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:42.040 out with them, and it was like it was a 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.280 revelation to find a place where like being a nerd 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:47.400 was kind of cool, at least not as ostracized as 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.679 at Ostracigo Strong. It was not in the cultural mainstream 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:52.800 in my high school to be a nerd like it was, 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.480 but whereas college, it was a college full and nerds, 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:57.440 so it felt they were different kinds of nerds, not 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:01.400 all computer nerds, some or math nerds to different things. Uh. 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:03.800 The other thing was helpful is so in I was 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:05.400 good at math, but there was a kid named Paul 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:07.920 Quintus who was the best in math in my school, 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:10.480 and there were a few of us. Jason was before 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:12.360 he started becoming a stoner, was super smart at math. 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:13.760 Who there are a few of us who were like 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:16.640 vibed for second best in math. So I never had 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:18.680 the image that I had to become a pure mathematician. 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:20.960 But then at Yale, I started, Okay, I'm gonna see 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:22.880 what I can do. So I started in the early 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.960 Concentration math program, which was like the hardest program. Had 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:28.400 to take the AP and all that stuff to get in, 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:30.520 and it started out with about fifteen people in it, 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:33.040 and after two weeks everybody had dropped out except for 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.400 me and five guys who knew each other from math 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:38.280 camp um, which I had not gone to. Uh, So 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:41.240 I was nerdy, but not uber nerdy, I guess and 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:43.760 uh And it was really a revelation for me because 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:46.400 I was clearly the worst of the six of us UM. 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:48.800 And it was a really good thing to learn that, uh, 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:50.719 you know, at the age of still seventeen, I think, 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:53.000 and then turn eighteen yet that I would not be 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:57.000 hurting society by not being a theoretical mathematician because there 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.199 were five people in the room with me who were 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.000 far better theory mathematicians and me just in that one 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:04.720 room in one class at Yale. So it was a 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:07.040 liberation for me that I could go do other stuff 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:09.000 that built on the fact that I was pretty good 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.360 at math without having to go to the purest route, 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:14.840 which of course academia almost always steers you towards, like 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:17.080 if you're really, really good, you do the purest form 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:19.840 of something, and then if you're you know, if you're 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:21.679 not able to cut cut it in the purest thing, 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.480 you can do something more philistine like being business. So 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:27.760 for me, I got that UM feedback early on, and 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:31.240 it was quite liberating for me. Okay, so you wake 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:32.599 up one day and you say you're not gonna be 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:34.600 the head of the class in math. What are your 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.439 other interests in college? So it was a combine a 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:39.360 bunch of things. I was always sitting media, but in 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:42.120 college I did it by getting involved in the student newspaper, 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:44.880 the All Daily News. I got involved in student activism, 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:48.480 and I was pretty politically active because night was when 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:50.480 Reagan came in. There was a lot of you know, 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:52.880 saber rattling going on. I didn't like that very much. 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:55.840 So I got I was sort of a student activist 0:13:55.920 --> 0:14:00.760 in a bunch of anti military, anti militaristic ninety military 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.559 excuse me, anti militaristic, anti jingoistic, uh, you know, anti 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.800 Reagan kinds of things, uh. In college, and I throw that. 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.640 I got involved with writing editorials in the student newspaper, 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.080 and a bunch of these friends are like, hey, we 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:15.640 like you would you've wrote a column for us UM 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:17.960 And so I wrote a column for two or three 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.960 years in college called What's Left? Uh. And then the 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:22.680 funny thing about it is the guy who wrote the 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:25.040 column right of Way has actually become a good friend 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:27.840 of mine, a guy named David from So David David, 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:29.800 and I wrote, I didn't know that David from David 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:33.240 and David was like the point counterpoint of this. Uh 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:35.400 you know, And so I would I wrote the left 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:37.800 wing column, he wrote the right wing column. I would 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:40.040 think I wrote one that was a kind of a 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.040 headline that was a little nasty, as I recall, it 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:47.640 was from colon distortions, misrespsentations and lies. Um. But we've 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.040 since buried the hatchet on that. And well he's also 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:53.560 moved left. Well he he's moved. He's moved sensible at least, 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:55.720 I would say. And he and I when I got 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:57.520 involved many years later and a bunch of stuff around 0:14:57.600 --> 0:14:59.960 Putin and Trump. Uh, David was one of the firs 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:01.880 as people I talked about, and he ran along piece 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:04.480 in Atlantic about it. And so we've stayed, we've our 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:06.600 lives have intertwined in a funny way. In college, we 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:09.480 were pretty pretty different views. And then he I think 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:11.200 you have to doing penance for the whole access of 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:13.960 evil thing, because he's famously one of the person I 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.120 think he's the person who coined that phrase. Uh he Uh, 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:20.280 he's now obviously changed his views of that part of 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.000 the Republican Party. Anyway, So you say you got your 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:26.000 first computer at nineteen and IBM PC what was the 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.200 inspiration for that? So luck? Luck always plays a role 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:30.680 in life. So in the summer of eighty one, I 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.200 went to work for IBM uh in Pokeepsie, New York, 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.560 who was a little slower. So you're this was this 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:40.520 is right after freshman year of college, after sophomore year, 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.000 after sophomore years. So how did you even get that gig? 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.640 It's actually interesting thing. So I I did computer programming 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:48.600 while I was I was. I ended up doing a 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.160 computer science degree and then a master degree in economics. 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:55.000 So I was sort of sprattling between those two fields. Okay, wait, wait, wait, 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:59.520 just you you start with math in N one to 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:03.000 what agree? Yale? Is there a computer science program? Y'all 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:05.560 had a good but small computer science program. It was 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:08.760 not It's not as large as certainly uh m I 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:10.320 T s or one of the other clothes. But it 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:14.440 had some really good professors. Uh a few, one of 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.560 the pioneers of early program language of Alan Perliss, who's 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:20.800 since passed away. Some really interesting people in there. But 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:22.280 it was a small program. I don't know. There were 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.880 maybe fifteen of US majors, maybe a little more than 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:27.480 that um and so I was doing computer science stuff 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:29.360 and then I was doing economics. And one of the 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.080 virtues of having done advanced math is you can start 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:35.400 doing advanced economics earlier, because basically the only difference, as 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.080 I can see between the graduate and the undergraduate economic 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:42.160 classes is the graduate economic classes assumed calculus in economics. 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:43.720 So I was able to kind of did you have 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:45.760 any vision of who would what you wanted to do 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:48.480 or be? I think I knew I wanted to do 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.720 something at the intersection of technology, media and politics, but 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:54.160 what the manifestation of that would be, and the fact 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:58.000 that it ended up involving more technology and media professionally 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.360 and more politics as a as an advocation rather than 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:05.000 a vocation, uh was It's sort of kind of how 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:07.760 it evolved. Part of it is when you do computer stuff, 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.880 you can get decent summer jobs that pay reasonably well. 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:13.160 And like so, I gotta I applied for a summer 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:15.280 job at IBM in the summer of eighty one, and 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:17.840 because one of the jobs they had at school involved 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:21.280 doing programming on an IBM main faw also my first 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:23.560 paid job. I worked at n y U the summer 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:25.720 after by senior in high school working on their computer. 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.240 So I did that my and doing what on their 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:29.960 computers it was for it was a computer for the 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.840 admissions department. So I was just doing regularly, regular random 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:38.280 programming assignments, you know, job running reports for a basic 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.080 for mini computer h on that the n y U 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:44.000 Admissions department had as their in house. Okay, when you 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:46.679 were at Fieldston, was there a teacher who taught you 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:48.879 this stuff? That we were all self taught? It was 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:51.080 a computer science. There were no teachers, so I taught. 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:53.199 I taught myself programming. But you know, if you know 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:57.560 math and you're you know, technically uh inclined, you know, 0:17:57.640 --> 0:17:59.600 I didn't find learning programming was that hard. So my 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:04.120 first actual course in programming was freshman year in college probably. 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:07.200 And what was the language then? Uh? We learned everything 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.240 from you know, C that was before C plus plus 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.320 C two, A p L which was it's kind of 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.359 obscure sy mode language LISP, which was a natural language programming. 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:19.280 I did some Burgram for trand, which was more for 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:23.400 these applied jobs. Basic is obviously the presidential election simulators 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.760 slash Trudgan Horse was written in Basic, uh, which was 0:18:27.000 --> 0:18:30.639 Basic was probably the first higher level language I wrote in. Okay, 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.280 So what is your gig after your sophomore year at IBM? 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:36.800 So I worked at IBM in a really boring job 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:40.680 in Pokeepsie, New York. UH in a group that wrote 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:43.919 IBM had a language called j c L that was 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.159 a language to batch program computers. And I came in 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:49.720 just I just missed having to work on punch cards. 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:51.959 I'm really lucky in that. But this was They had 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:54.119 a language called Jewel. I don't know, I remember that 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:57.000 because it's a prett obscure language that generated j c L. 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:00.720 So my job was to write programs in Jewel UH 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:04.400 that we were used for some set of maintenance programs 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:06.480 for the for the Maiden Rand group. The reason it 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:08.399 wasn't super boring is one of the guys in my 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.520 group that I was in in Pokeepsie, New York, happened 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:13.720 to be part of the task force that was working 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:16.280 on the IBM PC. So I got I get there 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:18.280 in June. Who getting lucky is better than good all 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:21.080 the time? I get there in June, or like Marylyn June, 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:23.639 and there about a month the IBM PC gets announced 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.159 and asked this guy Jim, and he knows everything was 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:27.679 to know about it. So he tells me all about it, 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:30.200 and I get super excited. I was never an Apple 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:32.639 two kid, as I mentioned that kind of sort of 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.320 generationally didn't quite line up with that. But I thought 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:37.560 the ibm PC seemed like it was going to be 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:41.560 a really good thing, uh in terms of like taking 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:44.000 the PC industry to the next level. And you can 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.399 say legitimizing and famously, Steve Jobs and Apple once ran 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:49.640 an ad you know what they said that people say, 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:52.760 the ibm PC is going to legitimize personal computing. Well 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.360 the bastards say welcome. So that was a famous ad 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.879 Apple ran. But I but it did have that vibe, 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:00.480 that feel and the culture. And this is going back, 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:04.320 you know, thirty seven years now. And so I, after 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.080 I finished my job summer job, with a bunch of buddies, 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:10.640 decided to start a little software company, which I called 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:15.119 Ivy Research, to make games for the ibm PC. So, okay, 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:17.840 so the ibm PC, I've already forgotten. It was introduced 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:20.240 exactly when it came out. It was just announced in 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:22.560 the summer of eighty one and at first became available 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.200 early in the fall Okay, so when you start this 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.080 ivy company, are you saying, oh, this will be fun 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:32.119 or you see dreams of riches a little bit of both, 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:35.439 but really more it'll be fun and we'll learn a lot, 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:39.520 uh and maybe it will become something. So basically bought 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:43.520 one PC, which I think I used most of my 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:45.760 summer job money to buy. I think one of the 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.080 other guys bought the printer or something like that. UM 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:50.400 in the in the we couldn't really we there were 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:52.600 originally half a dozen of us that got excited about it. 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:54.639 There were three of us who ended up working on 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:57.000 it full time. So my summer job in the summer 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.640 of eight two other than you a little political organizing 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:02.320 which I could talk about, was to write games for 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:06.240 the IBM PC UM and the game. We wrote two games. 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.400 My friends was a better programmer than me. Uh so 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:12.000 he wrote the libraries for both of them, and I 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:14.399 wrote one of them. Um he wrote the other. They 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:18.520 were called SLINKs and Viper and SLINKs is basically you 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:20.800 know the old snake game on the Nokia candybar phone. 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:22.920 It was that game, and it may have been the 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.120 first incarnation of it. I've never heard of an older one, 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:27.200 but it was the notion that you basically you run 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.360 around a maze and the longer that you you pick 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:33.040 up tokens, and the more tokens you get, the longer 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:34.800 the snake gets. And the goal is to get the 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.800 snake could be as long as possible without tripping into yourself. 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:40.520 It's fun game. And that was one of our games. 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:43.320 And uh we sold them nationally through a chain of 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:47.280 computer stores called computer Land. UH and so I mentioned 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:50.280 all these old defunct names. Um and if you do 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:52.920 the math on it, the three of us made enough 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:55.240 money to make it a good summer job, but not 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:58.439 a life changing event. So it was like that was 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:00.840 that was our we It's the summer of eight t 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:02.320 two and then a little bit into the fall, and 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:04.600 then I got busy getting ready to graduate and finishing 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:10.800 with my school work. We'll take a quick break and 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:13.439 come back with more of my conversation with CEO of 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:17.200 Real Networks, Rob Glazer, recorded live at the Music Media 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:21.840 Summit in Santa Barbara, California. This week. I'm speaking with 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:25.200 Real Networks Rob Glazer. Over the last couple of months, 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:27.760 I've interviewed Tony Hawk and the head of music for 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:30.919 YouTube and Google Lee or Cone. Be the first to 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:34.560 hear next week's episode by subscribing to the podcast I'm 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:38.879 tuned in, Apple Podcast or your podcast Apple Choice. While 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:43.160 you're there, please rate and review the podcast. Okay, let's 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:47.840 get back to my conversation with Rob Glazer. Okay, So 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:52.159 you have the experience with the IBM PC, you graduate, 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:54.639 and then you go to graduate school. No. No, I 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:57.520 was lucky because of my head certain math. I was 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:00.440 able to do the master's degree at an economic concurrent 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:02.560 with the bachelor green computer science. So I was able 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:04.639 to do all that in four years. And what was 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:08.720 your thinking getting a master's in economics? So I thought 0:23:08.760 --> 0:23:10.240 about whether or not I wanted to go get a 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:15.199 PhD in economics, and I didn't know. I loved the 0:23:15.560 --> 0:23:19.280 questions that economics addresses. How do we create a just society? Uh? 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:22.040 You know, how do you what? What's the source of wealth? Uh? 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:24.200 You know, how? What's the fairest way to distribute things? 0:23:24.200 --> 0:23:26.560 What's the right how to markets work? But I didn't 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:30.560 end up liking the methodology that academia uses in economics. 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:33.480 It seemed very abstract and a historical by and large, 0:23:33.800 --> 0:23:36.120 So I really by the time I graduated, I thought, 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:37.720 I'm just gonna go out in the world. But what 0:23:38.000 --> 0:23:41.400 my master's thesis was on the job market for academic economists, 0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:44.840 because I thought, how can I It's a market, right, 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:48.000 And I thought, how can I uh learned about what 0:23:48.080 --> 0:23:50.520 it's like to be an academic economist. I know, I'll 0:23:50.560 --> 0:23:52.800 write a paper about them. So I did a survey 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:55.720 about how the market worked and how the structural market worked. Um, 0:23:56.040 --> 0:23:57.600 and by then I was clear I didn't want to 0:23:57.640 --> 0:23:59.840 go do that. Uh. So I thought about what I 0:23:59.880 --> 0:24:02.320 was going to do next. Uh And I so, what 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:05.560 did you determine? What was the market for academic It's 0:24:05.600 --> 0:24:07.760 a very self referential market, in other words, as a 0:24:07.800 --> 0:24:11.879 market where reputation carries a huge amount of weight. And 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:15.840 you look at the feedback loop of which graduate programs 0:24:15.960 --> 0:24:19.040 place people in which academic institution. Now this was, you know, 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:22.359 thirty five years ago, so it may have changed, although 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:25.440 I doubt it that. Uh. You know, over a long 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:27.399 period of time. You might say the cream risers at 0:24:27.440 --> 0:24:32.000 the top. But insofar as the best people uh go 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:34.520 to the best schools, it's fine. But it tends to 0:24:34.560 --> 0:24:38.240 provide a lot of sort of feedback around orthodoxy where 0:24:38.280 --> 0:24:41.960 the best professor's best students get the best jobs as 0:24:41.960 --> 0:24:45.040 sort of the pattern that emerged, which is okay. At 0:24:45.080 --> 0:24:48.080 this late date, there's a huge division between the left 0:24:48.080 --> 0:24:50.000 and the right read Paul Krugman the New York Times 0:24:50.119 --> 0:24:52.520 is one thing, and we have all the economists backing 0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:55.919 up the right wing. What's your viewpoint on this, on 0:24:55.920 --> 0:24:59.840 on the degree to which economics it can be used 0:24:59.840 --> 0:25:02.920 as justification? Right now, we're in a it's a very 0:25:02.920 --> 0:25:06.600 weird world because we're in such a a world where 0:25:06.600 --> 0:25:09.520 there's the division is not between the academic left and 0:25:09.520 --> 0:25:13.640 the academic right. The it's between people who are scienced 0:25:13.680 --> 0:25:16.320 and fact based and people who are know nothings. So 0:25:16.760 --> 0:25:18.720 you know nothings in the old American condition of nothing. 0:25:18.840 --> 0:25:23.520 So when you look at the degree to which the 0:25:24.359 --> 0:25:27.679 tax cut, for instance, is being justified on academic on 0:25:27.760 --> 0:25:30.800 academic economic grounds, that's not really the case anymore. You 0:25:30.800 --> 0:25:33.439 look at the deficits, right, the fact that the right 0:25:33.440 --> 0:25:35.760 wing said they hate deficits, but they have now passed 0:25:35.800 --> 0:25:37.560 the tax bill that's going to blow up the deficit 0:25:37.840 --> 0:25:39.639 to a higher level than it's ever been before, at 0:25:39.640 --> 0:25:41.840 a faster rate than you've ever seen outside of an 0:25:41.880 --> 0:25:45.480 economic depression. Ever, so right now, I actually don't really 0:25:45.480 --> 0:25:47.760 think when you look at what's going on, um in 0:25:47.840 --> 0:25:52.800 the economy, Uh, we were was a strong economy before Trump. 0:25:52.840 --> 0:25:55.200 They've you know, added a little bit of uh of 0:25:55.480 --> 0:25:58.280 of you know, put some more sugar in the in 0:25:58.359 --> 0:26:00.240 the in the coffee to make it even sweet, or 0:26:00.520 --> 0:26:03.280 uh not doing a way that's sustainable. I don't think 0:26:03.320 --> 0:26:05.480 most academic conicts would say that that's what you should 0:26:05.520 --> 0:26:08.199 have done. But people who like low tax rates for 0:26:08.240 --> 0:26:11.760 corporations are very happy and staying on the same point 0:26:11.760 --> 0:26:14.600 of know nothings in fact base. Is there any hope 0:26:14.600 --> 0:26:18.600 for America both in terms of the top level arguing 0:26:18.640 --> 0:26:21.800 and the people you know in the hinder lands moving 0:26:21.840 --> 0:26:25.000 back towards facts. Are we on this divergent path and 0:26:24.960 --> 0:26:27.800 it will sustain? I think it could go either way. 0:26:27.840 --> 0:26:30.879 I mean I'm pretty uh generally an optimist, but in 0:26:30.920 --> 0:26:34.359 the present time, Um, you know, you've always had political 0:26:34.359 --> 0:26:36.560 division in this country, you know. But and I didn't 0:26:36.560 --> 0:26:39.480 like Reagan very much, although in hindsight, the worst thing 0:26:39.520 --> 0:26:42.120 he did in terms of creating a huge military conflict 0:26:42.359 --> 0:26:46.000 was invading Grenada, So you know that was a pretty Uh. 0:26:46.160 --> 0:26:47.879 You know, that was a pretty mild thing to do. 0:26:48.040 --> 0:26:49.840 You know, you knocked over a few palm trees, and 0:26:50.080 --> 0:26:52.639 you know, maybe maybe one or two people got their 0:26:52.640 --> 0:26:55.719 noses broken or something. But compared to you know, some 0:26:55.800 --> 0:26:57.520 of the really bad worst we've had since then, it 0:26:57.600 --> 0:27:01.240 wasn't that pernicious. Uh. You know then you uh uh 0:27:01.280 --> 0:27:05.040 George H. W. Bush, who you know, did some really 0:27:05.119 --> 0:27:08.959 horrible things, but uh, ultimately the system worked and the 0:27:08.960 --> 0:27:12.360 pendulum swung back. Uh. And then with Obama, I think 0:27:12.400 --> 0:27:15.560 what happened was there was a lot of people who 0:27:15.640 --> 0:27:19.480 got freaked out by the fact that this uh, the 0:27:19.480 --> 0:27:23.240 the the change, the visual change, and the of having 0:27:23.840 --> 0:27:28.160 an African American president, which in my view was a 0:27:28.200 --> 0:27:31.240 sign of society being a fundamentally healthy place and a 0:27:31.320 --> 0:27:33.040 very positive thing. And I still think he's the best 0:27:33.040 --> 0:27:35.919 president of my lifetime. Uh, But but that there were 0:27:35.920 --> 0:27:37.880 a lot of people who really freaked out about that, 0:27:38.240 --> 0:27:40.199 and that created an environment when you look at they 0:27:40.200 --> 0:27:43.240 were freaked out about what the fact that somebody who 0:27:43.280 --> 0:27:45.800 doesn't look like them got to be president, and they 0:27:45.680 --> 0:27:48.840 that's you know, you whether whether it's because there was 0:27:48.960 --> 0:27:50.679 there's all these studies that are coming out now that 0:27:51.080 --> 0:27:53.439 status anxiety was a huge motivator of a lot of 0:27:53.440 --> 0:27:56.640 the Trump supporters, and the status anxiety has an economic 0:27:56.680 --> 0:27:58.720 element to it, But also want to explain what you 0:27:59.000 --> 0:28:02.800 for my audience, what lot of anxiety as well. Basically, 0:28:02.800 --> 0:28:05.480 the people are afraid that they're they're not going to 0:28:05.520 --> 0:28:08.560 be able to maintain their life situation, be it financially 0:28:08.680 --> 0:28:11.760 or be its social prestiges, and that that those kinds 0:28:11.800 --> 0:28:14.119 of fears get played on in all kinds of different 0:28:14.160 --> 0:28:18.320 ways by uh, uh you know, by by people who 0:28:18.359 --> 0:28:22.160 are you know, fearmongers or uh you know, various kinds 0:28:22.200 --> 0:28:25.800 of uh whistle dog whistleblowers, And a lot of what 0:28:25.880 --> 0:28:28.560 happened with Trump has been a lot of that sort 0:28:28.600 --> 0:28:32.200 of uh rhetoric, in my view, combined with the fact 0:28:32.240 --> 0:28:35.080 that when the economic recovery happened, you know, there's all 0:28:35.080 --> 0:28:37.280 these things that happened with two that's sixteen, but it 0:28:37.359 --> 0:28:39.600 was when the economic recovery happened, it happened on the 0:28:39.640 --> 0:28:41.600 coast very well, and it happened in the middle country, 0:28:42.120 --> 0:28:45.280 uh much much less comprehensively, and a lot of people 0:28:45.600 --> 0:28:50.040 that had solid middle class lives with union jobs, they 0:28:50.040 --> 0:28:54.640 don't have those union jobs anymore, and ironically, the the 0:28:54.800 --> 0:28:57.120 economy is getting gutted in a way that makes it 0:28:57.240 --> 0:28:59.760 much much harder for people who aren't college educated and 0:28:59.840 --> 0:29:03.160 or living in you know, the wealthier coastal cities to 0:29:03.160 --> 0:29:06.880 to to make it. And that the that created an 0:29:06.920 --> 0:29:10.080 environment where people who were chingo istic are people who 0:29:10.080 --> 0:29:14.960 are willing to manipulate the truth uh to uh sort 0:29:14.960 --> 0:29:18.800 of create uh boogey men are able to do that. Okay, 0:29:18.840 --> 0:29:21.160 So you graduate from college, you decide you don't want 0:29:21.160 --> 0:29:24.280 to be an academic economists't want to be an economists 0:29:24.280 --> 0:29:26.120 at all. So what do you do? Uh? Well, I 0:29:26.160 --> 0:29:27.920 had had two or three different job choices, and they 0:29:27.920 --> 0:29:30.200 were pretty interesting. I could have stayed with a little 0:29:30.240 --> 0:29:33.920 ivy research company that had made it made those games, 0:29:33.920 --> 0:29:36.240 and we were working on some consulting projects that turned 0:29:36.280 --> 0:29:39.560 into some interesting things. My friends Steve stayed with that, 0:29:40.280 --> 0:29:41.800 but I decided, I do I want to do something 0:29:41.840 --> 0:29:44.240 where I could learn a lot more about scale um 0:29:44.640 --> 0:29:46.239 and so I had a couple of job offers at 0:29:46.240 --> 0:29:48.480 Hewlett Packard, which I thought was I didn't want to 0:29:48.480 --> 0:29:50.680 go to IBM. I thought it was too bureaucratic and 0:29:50.840 --> 0:29:55.200 to organized around like people who's you know, in intensity 0:29:55.280 --> 0:29:58.040 level and in intellect and like, we're more sort of 0:29:58.080 --> 0:30:00.720 within one standard deviation of the norm in a place 0:30:00.720 --> 0:30:02.360 where if you really want to throw yourself into it, 0:30:02.400 --> 0:30:04.520 you could have a huge impact. And IBM is a 0:30:04.520 --> 0:30:06.800 is a great company in a lot of ways, but 0:30:06.840 --> 0:30:08.960 at that point it was it had gotten pretty big 0:30:08.960 --> 0:30:12.800 and bureaucratic um so Hewlett Packard had a couple of 0:30:12.800 --> 0:30:14.960 opportunities there. I thought it was an interesting place. And 0:30:15.000 --> 0:30:18.960 then Uh, Steve Bomber, uh and Paul Allen went to 0:30:19.000 --> 0:30:22.160 Mike went to Yale and and and inteviewed people from Microsoft. 0:30:22.520 --> 0:30:23.880 And I knew a little bit about the I knew 0:30:23.880 --> 0:30:25.640 more about the PC than the average college kid in 0:30:26.920 --> 0:30:29.800 three so interven with them and they, you know a 0:30:29.840 --> 0:30:32.200 little bit slower. Did you know them previously? You know, 0:30:32.240 --> 0:30:34.760 I knew, I knew who Microsoft was, but they just 0:30:35.000 --> 0:30:37.280 they came to campus. One of the things Microsoft did 0:30:37.280 --> 0:30:40.160 well and why it's scaled up, is they did uh 0:30:40.320 --> 0:30:43.040 college recruiting very early in Microsoft cycle. At the time, 0:30:43.080 --> 0:30:47.560 Microsoft was about two fifty people, and they started recruiting 0:30:47.600 --> 0:30:52.400 on at least some college campuses starting in like so 0:30:52.680 --> 0:30:55.760 by that time Microsoft was coming to Yale, and Microsoft 0:30:55.800 --> 0:30:58.920 ended up hiring me in six or seven of my classmates. 0:30:59.360 --> 0:31:01.720 Uh for uh with the class of eight three And 0:31:01.800 --> 0:31:03.800 what do you think? And you moved to Seattle, right? 0:31:03.840 --> 0:31:05.920 I did? Yes? And what was that for someone who 0:31:05.920 --> 0:31:08.560 basically was at East Coast boy, Well, my mom was 0:31:08.600 --> 0:31:12.680 from California and we visited the Barrier bunch. Uh and Uh, 0:31:12.720 --> 0:31:14.280 So I thought, if you'd asked me, I thought, maybe 0:31:14.320 --> 0:31:16.760 I'll end up in California. Uh. And all I knew 0:31:16.760 --> 0:31:18.720 about Seattle was I'd read Ball four when I was 0:31:18.720 --> 0:31:22.080 a kid, which was Jim Bountain's baseball book, primarily about 0:31:22.080 --> 0:31:23.520 the year that he was with the Seattle Pilots in 0:31:23.600 --> 0:31:26.160 nine nine. So I knew that Seattle was a team. 0:31:26.240 --> 0:31:30.040 Was he was a city that hadn't lost a baseball team. Fortunately, 0:31:30.080 --> 0:31:31.440 by the time I got through in a D three, 0:31:31.480 --> 0:31:34.200 they had a new one because the Mariners started in 0:31:34.200 --> 0:31:37.520 seventy seven as part of an antitrust settlement for the 0:31:37.560 --> 0:31:42.120 Pilots moving to Milwaukee. So the the uh the head 0:31:42.120 --> 0:31:44.600 of baseball team. So that was a check. It was 0:31:44.640 --> 0:31:47.120 close to the West Coast. My parents ended up retiring 0:31:47.120 --> 0:31:49.760 to northern California a couple years after we were out there, 0:31:49.800 --> 0:31:51.760 so that was sort of a check. And it was 0:31:51.800 --> 0:31:54.960 honestly that when everybody in a Microsoft was incredibly smart, 0:31:55.000 --> 0:31:58.080 incredibly hardcore, and I thought, well, this is this place. 0:31:58.120 --> 0:31:59.600 Seems like it's got a lot of people that I 0:31:59.640 --> 0:32:01.360 want to work with and I can learn from, and 0:32:01.400 --> 0:32:02.640 I'll do it for a couple of years. Un Look, 0:32:02.680 --> 0:32:05.479 it's boring and ended up being ten years. Okay. When 0:32:05.560 --> 0:32:07.360 you went to work there, it wasn't public yet, No, 0:32:07.520 --> 0:32:09.480 it was. I was getting lucky but better than good. 0:32:09.640 --> 0:32:12.120 So I got there in eighty three. Uh, and Microsoft 0:32:12.160 --> 0:32:15.800 went public in eighty six. Okay, And what was your 0:32:15.840 --> 0:32:18.800 gig at Microsoft? Well, I worked in basically three parts 0:32:18.840 --> 0:32:21.280 of the company. Was always met banking products because that's 0:32:21.320 --> 0:32:24.160 my passion. The first four years I worked in the 0:32:24.240 --> 0:32:28.400 applications products. Uh, I was involved with the I didn't 0:32:28.400 --> 0:32:31.000 create Microsoft Word, but when I got involved with word, 0:32:31.040 --> 0:32:33.800 word was like number five and word processing and got 0:32:33.840 --> 0:32:35.640 it up to number two at the time, right behind 0:32:35.640 --> 0:32:38.640 Word Perfect, and we're kind of getting getting strong with them. 0:32:38.640 --> 0:32:40.840 And then I ran what it's called program management for 0:32:40.840 --> 0:32:43.920 all the applications products, which is like the connective tissue 0:32:43.960 --> 0:32:47.240 between the marketers on the one hand and the engineers 0:32:47.280 --> 0:32:48.840 and the other. And since I had sort of a 0:32:48.920 --> 0:32:51.840 dual background, I was able to kind of play hopefully 0:32:52.000 --> 0:32:54.720 a contructive role in spanning the two. So that was 0:32:54.760 --> 0:32:57.880 my first four years, and then my next to three 0:32:57.960 --> 0:33:00.680 years was working on networking products because I was always 0:33:00.680 --> 0:33:03.960 interested in communication, right, so networking is about understanding the 0:33:03.960 --> 0:33:06.840 plumbing and the infrastructure. So that was the least successful 0:33:06.880 --> 0:33:09.480 thing I worked on because at the time Microsoft was 0:33:09.520 --> 0:33:12.840 betting heavily on an operating system called OS two and 0:33:13.040 --> 0:33:16.400 which was a joint venture of form between Microsoft and IBM, 0:33:16.440 --> 0:33:19.520 and Microsoft decided to build all its networking products on 0:33:19.560 --> 0:33:23.000 the OS two platform. UM and UH. So I did 0:33:23.000 --> 0:33:24.560 it for a couple of years, worked with some great people. 0:33:24.600 --> 0:33:26.680 It was a fantastic lesson to me of how when 0:33:26.680 --> 0:33:30.400 you have a great team, great products, and a bad strategy, 0:33:30.480 --> 0:33:33.280 you fail right. So UM a lot of the people 0:33:33.320 --> 0:33:36.560 I work with ended up in different capacities, having senior 0:33:36.640 --> 0:33:38.440 jobs in Microsoft for a number of years and doing 0:33:38.480 --> 0:33:40.760 cool things in the industry. But our products weren't that 0:33:40.800 --> 0:33:45.040 successful where the generally were failures because OS two was 0:33:45.080 --> 0:33:49.040 not a viable platform to build UH networking servers on. 0:33:49.080 --> 0:33:52.040 Top of Microsoft ended up being very successful in networking 0:33:52.240 --> 0:33:54.520 when it moved from OS to to an operating system 0:33:54.520 --> 0:33:57.640 called Windows NT, which was the next generation. But but 0:33:57.760 --> 0:34:00.160 that was after I left that group, so did for 0:34:00.200 --> 0:34:02.240 a couple of years, and then I worked in something 0:34:02.320 --> 0:34:05.120 we called Multimedia and Consumer Systems, which is the last 0:34:05.440 --> 0:34:07.920 three or four years there, which was basically about figuring 0:34:07.960 --> 0:34:11.359 out how to add media technology into Windows and then 0:34:11.360 --> 0:34:14.000 starting working on the next sort of advanced digital to 0:34:14.120 --> 0:34:16.759 some of the early sort of proto digital devices. So 0:34:16.840 --> 0:34:18.680 that was my last three or four years there, and 0:34:18.920 --> 0:34:21.799 I ended up it was a fantastic tenure run. I 0:34:21.880 --> 0:34:25.040 learned a ton uh and made made some lifelong friends 0:34:25.200 --> 0:34:29.080 and uh couldn't and financially it was obviously a very 0:34:29.120 --> 0:34:33.000 advantageous time to be there. So financially, you know, if 0:34:33.040 --> 0:34:35.960 you read the literature, you did very well. It was 0:34:36.000 --> 0:34:39.279 that primarily getting in early or your success in the 0:34:39.320 --> 0:34:43.520 operation or well, yeah, I mean it was the right place, 0:34:43.640 --> 0:34:45.560 right time. And then I did work my butt off 0:34:45.680 --> 0:34:48.640 and worked very closely with you know, Gates and Bomber 0:34:48.680 --> 0:34:51.040 and these other guys and uh, and they I think 0:34:51.040 --> 0:34:54.839 they viewed me as somebody who was hardcore like you know, 0:34:55.200 --> 0:34:57.319 I would work six seven days a week without not like, 0:34:57.360 --> 0:34:59.120 without worrying about it because I I loved what I 0:34:59.160 --> 0:35:01.000 was doing. It was was like it was I didn't 0:35:01.040 --> 0:35:03.799 have any family or kids at the time. So classic thing. 0:35:03.800 --> 0:35:05.480 You know, you're in your twenty you throw yourself into 0:35:05.480 --> 0:35:07.480 your career and had a great time with it. So 0:35:07.560 --> 0:35:09.839 it worked out. It worked out very well to me. 0:35:10.040 --> 0:35:12.000 And uh, you know, at the end of the ten years, 0:35:12.040 --> 0:35:14.000 when I looked up and you know, said, wow, this 0:35:14.040 --> 0:35:16.279 has been a decade and pull up my pull my 0:35:16.320 --> 0:35:19.040 pariscope up, I was ready to do something else. But 0:35:19.080 --> 0:35:22.040 I was incredibly happy for the experience. I okay, So 0:35:22.480 --> 0:35:26.120 what came first in terms of leaving this the concept 0:35:26.200 --> 0:35:29.000 that you were done and you've fulfilled your mission at Microsoft, 0:35:29.200 --> 0:35:31.160 or that you wanted to do real networks. Well, I 0:35:31.200 --> 0:35:33.120 didn't have the idea for real network So I remember 0:35:33.160 --> 0:35:37.320 in the spring of nineties three, so I'm what thirty one, uh, 0:35:37.360 --> 0:35:39.960 and uh Gates comes to me and says, I want 0:35:40.000 --> 0:35:42.600 to reorganize some things, and I say, great, let's re 0:35:42.719 --> 0:35:45.200 organize me out of a job. Um, which I don't 0:35:45.200 --> 0:35:48.440 think what he expected because but it was really was 0:35:48.520 --> 0:35:50.440 how I was feeling I was. I'd been working so 0:35:50.520 --> 0:35:53.239 hard loving it, but I knew that I wouldn't really 0:35:53.280 --> 0:35:55.359 be able to step back and think about the next 0:35:55.360 --> 0:35:57.360 thing until I had some breathing room. I had to 0:35:57.680 --> 0:36:00.239 create some separation. Just go back when you have sets 0:36:00.239 --> 0:36:02.239 off the way you tell the story, you really were 0:36:02.239 --> 0:36:05.120 not a programmer. No. I wrote a very little code 0:36:05.120 --> 0:36:07.520 that ended up in Microsoft products. I was a technical 0:36:07.680 --> 0:36:11.319 enough person to help to work with the engineers UH, 0:36:11.360 --> 0:36:14.280 and a marketing business or in enough person to understand 0:36:14.360 --> 0:36:17.080 to go talk to customers, try to understand what the 0:36:17.120 --> 0:36:19.960 market wanted. And I was thought of myself as adding 0:36:20.040 --> 0:36:23.239 value at that intersection between those two. Okay, so you 0:36:23.280 --> 0:36:26.360 wanted some breathing room, so you said, Bill, let's reorganize 0:36:26.360 --> 0:36:28.520 me out of a job. Right? And how did that 0:36:28.560 --> 0:36:32.480 go down? So we had three meetings on the topic. UM. 0:36:32.600 --> 0:36:35.640 The first meeting, he yelled at me, this is the 0:36:35.719 --> 0:36:39.080 most irrational thing, This is the stupidest thing. Why you're 0:36:39.080 --> 0:36:40.520 doing this, Why do you want to do this? Go 0:36:40.600 --> 0:36:42.160 talk to this guy and go to talk to that guy. 0:36:42.320 --> 0:36:46.560 So fine, I did. That second meeting was basically the same. UH. 0:36:46.680 --> 0:36:48.839 Then the third meeting happened in about five minutes into 0:36:48.880 --> 0:36:51.239 the third meeting two star, I looked at him and 0:36:51.280 --> 0:36:54.120 I said, is this making you feel better? And he 0:36:54.160 --> 0:36:55.799 looked at me like I was crazy, because why would 0:36:55.800 --> 0:36:57.560 I say that? And I said, because it is making 0:36:57.560 --> 0:36:59.520 you feel better, you should keep doing it, but it's 0:36:59.520 --> 0:37:02.720 not making me feel better and it's not changing my mind. Um, 0:37:02.719 --> 0:37:05.280 And to his credit, he stopped cold, and we proceeded 0:37:05.320 --> 0:37:09.440 to have a very rational conversation about you know, uh, 0:37:09.760 --> 0:37:12.319 how we make a good transition, how what we do. 0:37:12.640 --> 0:37:14.680 I ended up technically doing a leave of absence, so 0:37:14.719 --> 0:37:17.120 I spent six months traveling around the world and do 0:37:17.200 --> 0:37:19.160 another taking up. Actually I took a class down and 0:37:19.160 --> 0:37:21.759 maybe I go to PhD, which I decided not to do. 0:37:22.280 --> 0:37:25.080 Uh and uh. Then I did some consulting from Microsoft 0:37:25.280 --> 0:37:27.839 on a few topics that are related to the one 0:37:27.920 --> 0:37:31.080 related to what the intersection of the Internet and Microsoft 0:37:31.120 --> 0:37:34.680 strategy should be. One related to the future. There's this 0:37:34.760 --> 0:37:37.640 joint venture Microsoft was brewing called cable Soft, and I 0:37:37.680 --> 0:37:39.759 consulted with Bill on whether he should do the joint 0:37:39.800 --> 0:37:42.080 venture with the two big cable companies to try to 0:37:42.120 --> 0:37:45.960 create the dominant operating system for cable TV set top boxes. 0:37:46.200 --> 0:37:48.440 So I did a little consulting at the back end 0:37:48.480 --> 0:37:50.600 of that. Uh and at the time I was already 0:37:50.600 --> 0:37:53.480 brewing the idea for what became Real Networks. But it 0:37:53.520 --> 0:37:57.239 was really during that that summer and fall of of 0:37:57.520 --> 0:38:01.799 two thousands of other uh three, that I was figuring 0:38:01.840 --> 0:38:03.759 out what I was gonna do next. And when you 0:38:03.840 --> 0:38:06.560 left Microsoft, did you have enough money to never work again? 0:38:07.480 --> 0:38:11.080 You know? If I was a monk? Sure, okay, I 0:38:11.120 --> 0:38:14.200 got my answer. But but I figured, like I was 0:38:14.239 --> 0:38:18.920 thirty one, uh, I think I Uh, I knew I 0:38:18.920 --> 0:38:20.880 had a lot of ambitions and things I was interested 0:38:20.880 --> 0:38:22.719 in doing, and ended up putting a bunch of the 0:38:22.719 --> 0:38:25.359 money into the company that became Real Network. So uh 0:38:25.400 --> 0:38:26.960 it worked out just fine. So how did you come 0:38:27.000 --> 0:38:29.279 up with the idea for Real Networks? Well? I had 0:38:29.320 --> 0:38:32.120 two ideas, actually, uh in the summer of ninety three. 0:38:32.800 --> 0:38:35.560 One was focused on this notion of set top boxes 0:38:35.600 --> 0:38:38.760 and cable and television as his starians and this stuff. 0:38:38.880 --> 0:38:41.239 Remember all the cable companies were talking about the five 0:38:41.239 --> 0:38:43.879 inter channel universe that time. Warner had their big trial 0:38:43.880 --> 0:38:46.760 in Orlando, Florida. They were reinventing, They're going to reinvent 0:38:46.840 --> 0:38:51.080 television uh, t c I, the other big cable company 0:38:51.200 --> 0:38:53.399 had their own tiles, and telcos had them. So we're 0:38:53.440 --> 0:38:55.319 like tele A TV, which was the thing that Howard 0:38:55.320 --> 0:38:57.759 Stringer was involved in. They're on these different trials. So 0:38:57.800 --> 0:39:00.680 I thought, when maybe I'll make technology gene products for 0:39:00.719 --> 0:39:04.319 those And then at the same time, I thought, well, 0:39:04.360 --> 0:39:07.520 maybe there's something to this online communications world. I've been 0:39:07.520 --> 0:39:09.520 an online geek. One of the products that created a 0:39:09.560 --> 0:39:13.680 Microsoft was an online product called Microsoft Access, before the database, 0:39:13.719 --> 0:39:16.720 Microsoft Access, the first Micronofic Action was a communications product 0:39:16.800 --> 0:39:19.640 that was not that successful, but I'd work closely with 0:39:20.000 --> 0:39:23.239 trying to trying to create a consistent user interface behind 0:39:23.239 --> 0:39:25.600 CompuServe and a o L and the products and all 0:39:25.640 --> 0:39:28.160 these services. So I was very smilar with the online world. 0:39:28.680 --> 0:39:31.279 And I got lucky again. A good friend of mine 0:39:31.360 --> 0:39:33.480 named Mitch kap Poor asked me to get involved in 0:39:33.520 --> 0:39:36.719 a nonprofit he started, Well, that was Lotus one, two three, right. 0:39:36.800 --> 0:39:39.840 I got to know Mitch through various interact with Microsoft. 0:39:40.080 --> 0:39:42.719 Mitch was somebody and is somebody who cares about the 0:39:42.760 --> 0:39:46.480 intersection between technology and society. And Mitch is one of 0:39:46.480 --> 0:39:49.840 these people who's always understand stuff. Five years before anybody 0:39:49.840 --> 0:39:54.360 else does both, both strategically and really more almost like, uh, 0:39:54.400 --> 0:39:57.720 you know, conceptually. And Mitch was convinced that the Internet 0:39:57.760 --> 0:40:00.279 was going to be a huge deal cyberspace was most 0:40:00.320 --> 0:40:02.800 people called it at the time, and he created this 0:40:02.880 --> 0:40:05.960 organization called the Electronic Frontier Foundation that was very focused 0:40:06.000 --> 0:40:09.319 on issues of civil liberty and community in cyberspace. So 0:40:09.440 --> 0:40:12.279 Mitch asked me, and the time that I was I 0:40:12.280 --> 0:40:14.120 was technically to leave, but I was I wasn't gonna 0:40:14.120 --> 0:40:16.719 go back to Microsoft. So in this late spring early 0:40:16.719 --> 0:40:19.000 summer of nine three, he said, come to a board 0:40:19.040 --> 0:40:21.839 meeting of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, And so I went 0:40:21.880 --> 0:40:23.880 to one of the board meetings in Austin, Texas, I 0:40:23.920 --> 0:40:26.520 think it was, and I met and one of the 0:40:26.520 --> 0:40:28.759 guys there was this guy named Dave Farber, who really 0:40:28.840 --> 0:40:31.319 was one of the fathers in the Internet, was telling everyone, Hey, 0:40:31.360 --> 0:40:33.799 you gotta try this Mosaic thing. So that's when I 0:40:33.800 --> 0:40:36.600 first saw the Mosaic web browser in a very early 0:40:36.680 --> 0:40:40.080 form that Mark Andresen and his band of of geeks 0:40:40.120 --> 0:40:43.640 at University of Illinois Champagne ORBANDA were creating. So I 0:40:43.680 --> 0:40:47.480 downloaded Mosaic, I got an I S D n dial 0:40:47.520 --> 0:40:50.520 in line to my home in Seattle. UH, And I 0:40:50.560 --> 0:40:52.440 just all of a sudden saw, wow, this is the future. 0:40:52.880 --> 0:40:54.600 Because you would look at the web, you look at 0:40:54.640 --> 0:40:56.760 the web browser, and they they had a web page 0:40:56.800 --> 0:41:00.000 called What's New with NCSA mosaic And at first there 0:41:00.080 --> 0:41:02.880 be like one or two new web pages a week. 0:41:03.480 --> 0:41:05.759 Then there'd be like six new ones a week. Then 0:41:05.800 --> 0:41:08.279 there'd be like three a day. And it literally felt 0:41:08.320 --> 0:41:10.680 like I was looking at a Petrie dish where the 0:41:11.520 --> 0:41:14.920 sales were multiplying rapidly. And it was clear that as 0:41:14.960 --> 0:41:18.120 the summer of ninety three progressed and got into the 0:41:18.120 --> 0:41:19.960 fall of ninety three, that there was a huge thing 0:41:20.040 --> 0:41:26.000 happening UH that was going to be like a a 0:41:26.040 --> 0:41:29.960 huge cultural phenomenon. And I had been very interested in media, 0:41:30.040 --> 0:41:32.440 of course, and had done a bunch of staff rounding 0:41:32.520 --> 0:41:37.520 around video and audio Codex in my world and Multimedia Microsoft. 0:41:37.840 --> 0:41:39.400 So I had the idea, what if I tried to 0:41:39.480 --> 0:41:43.040 do what Mosaic is doing for text and still graphics, 0:41:43.239 --> 0:41:44.560 what if we tried to do the same thing for 0:41:44.600 --> 0:41:47.400 audio and then video? Uh? And that's why what the 0:41:47.440 --> 0:41:50.440 idea for real networks ended up being, and ended up 0:41:50.480 --> 0:41:54.080 incorporating in February nine and creating the first prototype in 0:41:54.120 --> 0:41:58.560 the summer of ninety four UH, and then launching in April. Okay, 0:41:58.680 --> 0:42:02.600 and did you raise money of Real Networks? Yes? What 0:42:02.719 --> 0:42:05.280 I did was when I started, I took a million 0:42:05.280 --> 0:42:08.040 dollars of my Microsoft crop steak, which was a high 0:42:08.040 --> 0:42:10.319 percentage of it, but not a you know, I wasn't 0:42:10.320 --> 0:42:12.040 I didn't have to sell any houses or anything, or 0:42:12.280 --> 0:42:14.920 my one house. But I took a million dollars, put 0:42:14.960 --> 0:42:17.200 it into the company and told the four of the 0:42:17.320 --> 0:42:19.759 people I hired, we've got this much money to get 0:42:19.800 --> 0:42:21.279 to the next phase. So I was very lucky that 0:42:21.320 --> 0:42:23.359 I didn't have to go raise money. Then my friend 0:42:23.440 --> 0:42:25.839 Mitch kape Poor got excited about what I was doing, 0:42:26.480 --> 0:42:30.280 and in the fall of ninety four window of ninety 0:42:30.920 --> 0:42:33.640 Mitch made about a two million dollar investment into Real 0:42:33.680 --> 0:42:37.120 Networks UM. And then we launched in UH in April nine. 0:42:37.960 --> 0:42:41.440 So I was able to bootstrap it with some of 0:42:41.480 --> 0:42:44.960 my grub steak from Microsoft. Mitch, because you know, Mitch 0:42:45.000 --> 0:42:46.799 and I became close through the involved with you have 0:42:46.800 --> 0:42:49.720 have Mitch made the original Angeal investment. Then we launched. 0:42:49.760 --> 0:42:52.799 Then we took our first venture round in the fall 0:42:52.840 --> 0:42:55.120 of ninety five from a great firm called Excel and 0:42:55.160 --> 0:42:58.040 a guy named Jim Bryer who's uh, you know, maybe 0:42:58.040 --> 0:43:00.600 on the second most famous investment, but invested years later 0:43:00.640 --> 0:43:02.279 in this thing called Facebook. That worked out pretty well 0:43:02.280 --> 0:43:04.719 for him to Okay, when you're starting real network, so 0:43:04.800 --> 0:43:08.120 many people are working there. So when we started, obviously 0:43:08.160 --> 0:43:11.359 it was just me UM, and then I cobbled together 0:43:11.400 --> 0:43:14.640 a team of three guys, only one of whom became 0:43:14.680 --> 0:43:17.719 a full time employee UH to help build a prototype 0:43:17.760 --> 0:43:21.160 for real report became Real Audio UM, and then by 0:43:21.200 --> 0:43:25.279 the time we launched UH in April of ninety we 0:43:25.400 --> 0:43:29.040 probably had fifteen employees something like that. UM. One of 0:43:29.080 --> 0:43:31.200 the key guys I got was an named Phil Barrett, 0:43:31.440 --> 0:43:34.760 who was a key engineer and injuring leader in Windows 0:43:35.239 --> 0:43:37.440 UH and was one of the unsung heroes of the 0:43:37.480 --> 0:43:40.719 success of Windows UH. Windows. If people know the history, 0:43:40.719 --> 0:43:43.480 Microsoft had a very long gestation period and it was 0:43:43.520 --> 0:43:46.640 basically a near failure, and Phil got involved in creating 0:43:46.640 --> 0:43:49.680 the first useful version of Windows called Windows three D six, 0:43:49.920 --> 0:43:52.440 which allows you to run multiple doss apps on a 0:43:52.480 --> 0:43:54.920 three D six until three D six chip computer and 0:43:54.960 --> 0:43:57.120 it was really useful. And then he and a couple 0:43:57.160 --> 0:43:59.959 of his guys created a version of Windows that saw 0:44:00.000 --> 0:44:03.640 of the memory problem that Windows has. Windows was really 0:44:03.719 --> 0:44:06.680 bad with using memory because the PC had a the 0:44:06.719 --> 0:44:08.719 Intel chip had a kind of a funny segmented memory 0:44:08.800 --> 0:44:11.200 architecture that made it hard. And they fixed that and 0:44:11.239 --> 0:44:13.480 they created a core of what became Windows three. So 0:44:13.600 --> 0:44:16.560 Phil was the the unsung hero behind that, and I 0:44:16.600 --> 0:44:19.240 got him to come in not technically as my co founder, 0:44:19.480 --> 0:44:22.000 but as the technical leader of the company in the 0:44:22.080 --> 0:44:25.200 fall of ninety four. And then he Phil led the 0:44:25.239 --> 0:44:27.399 team that launched Real Audio, and so I said about 0:44:27.440 --> 0:44:33.480 a fifteen people when we launched. You're listening to my 0:44:33.520 --> 0:44:37.479 conversation with CEO of Real Networks, Rob Glazer, recorded live 0:44:37.560 --> 0:44:41.880 at the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. I 0:44:41.880 --> 0:44:44.319 hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of The Bob 0:44:44.440 --> 0:44:47.040 Left That's podcast. If you want to listen to sound 0:44:47.080 --> 0:44:49.880 bites from the interviews and see some of my guests, 0:44:50.160 --> 0:44:54.000 check it out and at tune in or Twitter, Facebook, 0:44:54.080 --> 0:44:57.800 and Instagram. Now more of my chat with the CEO 0:44:57.840 --> 0:45:01.839 of Real Networks, Rob Glazer on The Bob Left sets podcast. 0:45:03.360 --> 0:45:06.160 So if you go to the late nineties, real Player 0:45:06.320 --> 0:45:09.480 is the standard. But if one were to pull back 0:45:09.680 --> 0:45:12.040 and look at the war, one would say, you may 0:45:12.120 --> 0:45:14.120 or may not agree. That's what I'm asking you, that 0:45:14.239 --> 0:45:17.359 Real Player ultimately lost the war other than China, which 0:45:17.400 --> 0:45:20.840 we'll talk about in a minute. True, what did you 0:45:20.960 --> 0:45:24.799 learn there? Uh? Well, we had a great run, and 0:45:24.840 --> 0:45:28.080 of course I'm back running the company now, so we're 0:45:28.239 --> 0:45:30.120 we've lived to fight another day, and I think we 0:45:30.120 --> 0:45:32.200 have another renaissance coming up, which we can talk about. 0:45:32.239 --> 0:45:34.080 But one of the things I learned is that when 0:45:34.120 --> 0:45:40.000 you have a huge competitor that threatened is threatened by you. Um. 0:45:40.160 --> 0:45:42.960 You can try to do anything you can to avoid 0:45:42.960 --> 0:45:45.080 a head on fight with that competitor, but the end 0:45:45.120 --> 0:45:46.799 of the day, you just gotta assume it's coming, and 0:45:46.840 --> 0:45:49.839 you've got to scale up massively to do that. So 0:45:50.200 --> 0:45:52.239 what happened is the following. So we got out there 0:45:52.520 --> 0:45:55.120 with real Audio in ninety five or video, and ninety 0:45:55.160 --> 0:45:59.239 seven became the de facto market standard, uh for you know, 0:45:59.320 --> 0:46:03.480 for a number different use cases of streaming audio streaming video. 0:46:03.719 --> 0:46:05.680 We can talk about the music connection. Later we started 0:46:05.719 --> 0:46:09.840 dabbling music, UM and then Microsoft decided that both we 0:46:10.200 --> 0:46:14.040 and we us Netscape and Java or existential threats to Microsoft. 0:46:14.080 --> 0:46:17.520 So they decided to do whatever they could to beat us, 0:46:18.000 --> 0:46:20.680 and UM they had a huge work chest of money 0:46:20.719 --> 0:46:24.560 to do it. UH, they had willingness to use their 0:46:24.560 --> 0:46:27.880 power relationship with PC manufacturers in any way they needed to, 0:46:28.400 --> 0:46:32.480 and so they moved and moved to potentially get PC 0:46:32.600 --> 0:46:37.080 manufacturers to ship their software and not ship our software, 0:46:37.280 --> 0:46:39.960 and to get media companies to use their software and 0:46:40.040 --> 0:46:42.960 not use our software. In the case of the computer manufacturers, 0:46:43.120 --> 0:46:46.239 they basically had a program where let's say the price 0:46:46.239 --> 0:46:49.200 of Windows license vis a hundred dollars UM. And but 0:46:49.239 --> 0:46:51.560 they have a co op program where if you ship 0:46:51.600 --> 0:46:54.480 Windows in the configuration they want, it only costs you sixty. 0:46:55.320 --> 0:46:58.000 So let's say you sell a million PCs, So that's 0:46:58.000 --> 0:47:00.120 a that's a forty million dollar difference in what you 0:47:00.120 --> 0:47:02.360 have to pay a year, and it's forty million dollars 0:47:02.360 --> 0:47:04.719 of pure margin or a low margin business. So all 0:47:04.760 --> 0:47:06.799 you have to do is what Microsoft tells you. So 0:47:06.840 --> 0:47:09.759 that's very powerful. So Microsoft was able to leverage the 0:47:09.760 --> 0:47:13.560 power of their monopoly to squeeze US out UH to 0:47:13.920 --> 0:47:17.080 at the time squeeze the Netscape browser out and and 0:47:17.200 --> 0:47:20.040 uhh force Netscape to basically sell to a o l 0:47:20.480 --> 0:47:24.759 um uh and uh to uh also mess around with 0:47:24.840 --> 0:47:27.400 Java and job and Java script is complicated history, but 0:47:27.760 --> 0:47:32.719 so so we got basically squeezed. And the rational thing 0:47:32.760 --> 0:47:34.560 for us to have done at the time, if what 0:47:34.680 --> 0:47:36.600 we wanted to do was take our chips and go home, 0:47:37.000 --> 0:47:40.120 was to sell to the highest bidder uh make it 0:47:40.200 --> 0:47:43.560 their problem or sell to someone at such larger scale 0:47:43.840 --> 0:47:47.000 that they could fight the fight on with with us 0:47:47.040 --> 0:47:49.600 as a tool or a piece of it. UM. But 0:47:49.680 --> 0:47:52.080 I kind of. I mean's a few things reason why 0:47:52.080 --> 0:47:53.840 I didn't do that. One is I actually wanted to 0:47:53.880 --> 0:47:55.560 try and build a company for long term. I didn't 0:47:55.600 --> 0:47:58.120 want to just flip it and sell it. Um. The 0:47:58.120 --> 0:48:01.640 second was the UM you know a lot of things 0:48:01.680 --> 0:48:05.239 that happened concur with that. This is now around the 0:48:05.320 --> 0:48:08.240 until the had the the the the the Internet bubble 0:48:08.239 --> 0:48:11.200 bursting at the same time. So you have the telecom 0:48:11.200 --> 0:48:14.040 bubble burst and the Internet bubble bursting, and this assault 0:48:14.040 --> 0:48:18.879 from Microsoft against and a trust uh violations that turned 0:48:18.920 --> 0:48:22.120 out UM and uh and they and those those three 0:48:22.120 --> 0:48:25.120 things had a very negative impact on us. We ultimately 0:48:25.200 --> 0:48:27.799 ended up uh not only surviving, but in a star 0:48:27.800 --> 0:48:31.440 way prevailing. We won. Ah, we started winning some and 0:48:31.560 --> 0:48:34.480 a trust legal cases against Microsoft, and they ended up 0:48:34.480 --> 0:48:37.439 settling with us for about seven and fifty million dollars. Uh. 0:48:37.480 --> 0:48:40.080 So we got a decent outcome from that standpoint. From 0:48:40.080 --> 0:48:43.920 the standpoint of shareholders, um but um, but we ended 0:48:44.000 --> 0:48:46.640 up also pivoting the company and reinventing the company in 0:48:46.680 --> 0:48:48.560 a few different ways. But you know, if I had 0:48:48.560 --> 0:48:51.480 it to do over again, I would probably have found 0:48:51.920 --> 0:48:55.239 the safe given that we didn't have the resources ourselves 0:48:55.680 --> 0:48:58.799 to compete head on with that attack. Even though we're 0:48:58.800 --> 0:49:03.120 able to win legal settlement, they basically uh compensated us 0:49:03.160 --> 0:49:04.919 for the lost business, but they didn't replace the lost 0:49:04.960 --> 0:49:07.760 business except in China. More than that in a minute. 0:49:08.520 --> 0:49:12.719 But they um but they If we found the right 0:49:12.760 --> 0:49:15.000 safe port in a storm, that could have been interesting. 0:49:15.120 --> 0:49:16.640 It's not clear who they would have been like in 0:49:16.680 --> 0:49:20.040 two thousand, who would have who would have been the player? Obviously, 0:49:20.080 --> 0:49:21.960 net Escape went to a o L. They got some 0:49:22.000 --> 0:49:24.919 money from a share oulder standpoint, but the browser didn't 0:49:24.960 --> 0:49:27.360 live in a o L, didn't even ultimately end up living. 0:49:27.360 --> 0:49:29.839 And now they get folded into a Verizon. So it's 0:49:29.960 --> 0:49:33.080 it's not obvious the I mean, you know, it depends 0:49:33.120 --> 0:49:34.440 on you're playing the game, but playing the game to 0:49:34.440 --> 0:49:36.719 make the most cash. The thing that Netscape did, or 0:49:36.719 --> 0:49:39.399 that Mark Huban did, where Mark sold his broadcast dot 0:49:39.440 --> 0:49:42.880 com business to Yahoo for four billion dollars and you know, 0:49:42.960 --> 0:49:44.640 took the money and did other stuff with it. You 0:49:44.680 --> 0:49:46.480 could have done that, but I was was trying to 0:49:46.480 --> 0:49:49.319 build something for the longer term. So when did you 0:49:49.360 --> 0:49:53.000 buy the Pro Bowlers Tour? So, okay, that's kind of 0:49:53.000 --> 0:49:55.080 a weird one, but it's true. So my friend Chris 0:49:55.120 --> 0:49:57.960 Peters was a Microsoft buddy of mine who got really 0:49:58.000 --> 0:50:00.759 into bowling. Uh. Chris is a much better bowler than me. 0:50:01.360 --> 0:50:04.759 Uh he He approached me in a third friend of ours, 0:50:04.800 --> 0:50:07.840 Mike Slade, uh more than ten years ago, I have 0:50:07.840 --> 0:50:11.600 to remember how longer it was, probably sixteen seventeen years ago, 0:50:11.880 --> 0:50:15.200 and said, hey, I can buy the p b a 0:50:14.560 --> 0:50:18.160 uh at a bankruptcy or near bankruptcy that's been mismanaged. 0:50:18.360 --> 0:50:20.240 And I was bowling was one of my favorite sports 0:50:20.280 --> 0:50:22.360 as a kid. I was in a bowling league. Um, 0:50:22.400 --> 0:50:24.719 I am a mediocre bowler, but I enjoy it to 0:50:24.719 --> 0:50:26.360 this day. And you have a bully at a bowling 0:50:26.400 --> 0:50:29.600 lane in your house. I I Uh, I used to 0:50:29.600 --> 0:50:32.200 have a bowling lane in my office. Yes, we and 0:50:32.280 --> 0:50:34.560 Real Network's office in where we were for a decade, 0:50:34.560 --> 0:50:36.239 we had a bowling lane. When we moved to the 0:50:36.400 --> 0:50:37.920 to a top floor of a building, we didn't get 0:50:37.960 --> 0:50:39.680 a bowling lane there, but we did have a bowling 0:50:39.719 --> 0:50:41.200 We did a pair of bowling lanes in the in 0:50:41.239 --> 0:50:43.759 the building uh that we had and uh in a 0:50:43.800 --> 0:50:46.360 neighborhood called Belltown in Seattle, and that was fun. So 0:50:46.400 --> 0:50:49.319 I love bowling. Uh, and I thought, okay, let's do 0:50:49.400 --> 0:50:53.080 this and uh Chris ended up bowing out about five 0:50:53.160 --> 0:50:55.239 or six years ago. So now Mike and I are 0:50:55.239 --> 0:50:56.719 the owners of it. We got a really good guy 0:50:56.760 --> 0:50:59.319 named Tom Clark who runs it. Um if anybody wants 0:50:59.320 --> 0:51:01.480 to buy the p b A, I'm willing to sell it. 0:51:01.719 --> 0:51:05.320 But it's it makes a little money. Uh, it's uh, 0:51:05.360 --> 0:51:07.080 it's nice to be a steward or something that you 0:51:07.120 --> 0:51:10.320 care about. The bowlers are all great human beings, uh 0:51:10.440 --> 0:51:13.680 and uh but most of them are great human beings. 0:51:13.800 --> 0:51:16.800 And uh, you know, I'm happy that we're able to 0:51:16.840 --> 0:51:18.680 sustain a sport that is sort of at the center 0:51:18.680 --> 0:51:21.759 of Americana, And is there any hope for bowling or 0:51:21.800 --> 0:51:25.400 is it going to go extinct? Uh? Well, bowling itself 0:51:25.440 --> 0:51:27.600 has never even more popular in terms of like, you know, 0:51:27.719 --> 0:51:31.080 how many people your bowl bowling leagues have had to 0:51:31.080 --> 0:51:34.760 reinvent themselves because there's describe a book called Bowling Alone, 0:51:35.440 --> 0:51:37.800 which he sent me a copy of for sort of 0:51:37.800 --> 0:51:41.200 obvious reasons and talked him once or twice how bowling 0:51:41.320 --> 0:51:44.920 was tied to the industrial period where everyone worked the 0:51:44.960 --> 0:51:47.959 same shift and left the shift and then went bowld 0:51:48.000 --> 0:51:50.080 at night, you know, sort of Lavern and Shirley style, 0:51:50.520 --> 0:51:53.480 And that culture doesn't really exist anymore. We have a 0:51:53.640 --> 0:51:57.440 much more everybody's on their own schedule, much more scattered, 0:51:57.760 --> 0:52:01.239 both in more and more families both both parents work, 0:52:01.600 --> 0:52:04.480 so you have much less rhythm around that. So there 0:52:04.560 --> 0:52:07.200 is a core industry of corp like four million people 0:52:07.200 --> 0:52:09.440 you're bowling bowling leagues, but it's down from whatever ten 0:52:09.480 --> 0:52:11.440 million used to be, But the number of people who 0:52:11.520 --> 0:52:14.680 bowl recreationally is up higher. You just bowling has been reinvented. 0:52:14.800 --> 0:52:18.400 So how you actually connect professional bowling into that world 0:52:18.440 --> 0:52:21.279 where you have a lot of casual bowlers, but you 0:52:21.320 --> 0:52:23.720 don't have as many sort of league bowls who identify 0:52:23.800 --> 0:52:26.239 with bowling as their sport. Sort of an interesting thing 0:52:26.280 --> 0:52:29.359 to do. But what we've managed to, you know, the 0:52:29.400 --> 0:52:31.440 p b A, we've been on, We've had a long 0:52:31.520 --> 0:52:34.120 run on ESPN. We're just moving to uh Fox. I 0:52:34.120 --> 0:52:36.440 think that kind announced. I hope I'm not jumping the 0:52:36.440 --> 0:52:38.520 gun on that one. I don't think I am uh 0:52:38.560 --> 0:52:40.840 and uh and so I think we're gonna have a 0:52:40.880 --> 0:52:43.479 good you know, next next run with the bowling um 0:52:43.520 --> 0:52:46.440 And it's a it's it's a funding. I only get 0:52:46.440 --> 0:52:48.799 to like one or two tournaments a year. I wish 0:52:48.840 --> 0:52:50.360 I get to more of but I have a pretty 0:52:50.360 --> 0:52:53.560 busy day job in between that and family. Okay, so 0:52:54.040 --> 0:52:58.960 you're into two thousand. There's a steria revolution in the 0:52:59.040 --> 0:53:02.719 music business, and abster you have real networks, you ultimately 0:53:02.760 --> 0:53:06.080 decide to go in that business, right, What is your 0:53:06.160 --> 0:53:09.560 thinking there? Well, I believe that the end of the 0:53:09.640 --> 0:53:12.200 day there would be a legal streaming industry. I didn't 0:53:12.239 --> 0:53:14.239 know all the fits and starts in the twist of 0:53:14.239 --> 0:53:17.160 the road, but I had the belief that all this 0:53:17.719 --> 0:53:21.480 illegal uh you know, uh pirate stuff was going to 0:53:21.560 --> 0:53:23.480 be a phase the industry would go through and the 0:53:23.480 --> 0:53:25.680 industry would figure it out. So I started having conversations 0:53:25.680 --> 0:53:27.920 with people the music industry about this as early as 0:53:27.960 --> 0:53:31.600 like ninety five. I remember meeting Charlie Koppelman, who was 0:53:31.640 --> 0:53:34.160 when he was running a M. I remember meeting, you know, 0:53:34.719 --> 0:53:38.839 senior folks UH in UH multiple labels. Nothing really came 0:53:38.880 --> 0:53:42.240 with those discussions. I remember, you know, having a conversation 0:53:42.320 --> 0:53:45.000 with Al Teller, who was running MC at the time, 0:53:45.280 --> 0:53:47.040 and we're in the middle of the conversation and then 0:53:47.440 --> 0:53:50.960 um uh then Edgar Brompan bought m C A and 0:53:51.000 --> 0:53:52.799 it was clear there's gonna be a new sheriff in town. 0:53:53.080 --> 0:53:54.680 So that there's a lot of a lot of that 0:53:54.719 --> 0:53:58.200 happened a few times. So then um what happened was 0:53:59.120 --> 0:54:05.000 UH sony UH and Universal decided to come together to 0:54:05.120 --> 0:54:07.680 create a joint venture that ended up being first was 0:54:07.680 --> 0:54:10.040 called Duet and it'd be called press called press Play, 0:54:10.200 --> 0:54:13.120 and UM we talked to them about using our technology 0:54:13.120 --> 0:54:14.759 and they kind of wanted to build their own, so 0:54:14.800 --> 0:54:17.439 we put together a coalition of the three other UH 0:54:17.640 --> 0:54:20.640 majors at the time, but there was E M I Bertlesman, 0:54:20.719 --> 0:54:24.239 causin Ian BMG hadn't merged yet. UH and Warner and 0:54:24.280 --> 0:54:25.600 we also had a O L in there because it 0:54:25.600 --> 0:54:27.600 was after the all time Warner and we created a 0:54:27.680 --> 0:54:32.080 joint venture called music Net and it was basically it 0:54:32.120 --> 0:54:35.440 was the other three majors and they had the two majors, 0:54:35.480 --> 0:54:38.200 so the two biggest so UH they had about forty 0:54:38.239 --> 0:54:40.440 percent of the content. We had about forty percent. There 0:54:40.480 --> 0:54:43.240 was about there were indies that were licensed to both 0:54:43.680 --> 0:54:46.279 and it was clear that that wasn't gonna work. It 0:54:46.360 --> 0:54:49.040 was just one of the series of tactical maneuvers to 0:54:49.200 --> 0:54:52.840 create UM UH an opening for everything to get licensed 0:54:52.920 --> 0:54:56.319 everybody and UM and so then what happened was there 0:54:56.360 --> 0:54:59.239 was a little company UH that product called Rhapsody. The 0:54:59.400 --> 0:55:01.799 product was called Listen to Coming Listen dot Com. And 0:55:01.880 --> 0:55:04.880 they ended up being like the Checkpoint Charlie of if 0:55:04.880 --> 0:55:07.760 you remember the in the Cold War that exchanged prisoners, 0:55:08.160 --> 0:55:10.640 Checkpoint Charlie and Berlin right the line between East Berlin 0:55:10.680 --> 0:55:13.600 and West Berlin, and Rhapsody was the Checkpoint Charlie. And 0:55:13.600 --> 0:55:16.440 that they were the first company that all five majors 0:55:16.680 --> 0:55:19.000 would license to because they wouldn't they didn't license to 0:55:19.040 --> 0:55:21.239 each other yet because the lawyers were freaked out about that. 0:55:21.600 --> 0:55:25.160 But by creating sort of standard licenses that Rhapsody could have, 0:55:25.239 --> 0:55:29.399 Rhapsody became the first company that had licenses from all 0:55:29.440 --> 0:55:33.719 five majors. At the time we owned of music Net 0:55:33.719 --> 0:55:35.759 and A During fence with the labels and the board 0:55:35.800 --> 0:55:38.160 meetings were the most painful things. They were like the 0:55:38.280 --> 0:55:40.440 u N in terms of like everyone shows up with 0:55:40.480 --> 0:55:42.680 all these lawyers. The lawyers are making sure there's no 0:55:42.760 --> 0:55:47.000 ended trust collusion. Meanwhile nothing gets done. So uh. So 0:55:47.200 --> 0:55:51.280 we had an opportunity to basically to buy Rhapsody because 0:55:51.280 --> 0:55:53.840 they were running out of money. Uh, and we believed 0:55:53.840 --> 0:55:57.400 in the space, so we basically bought Rhapsody and sold 0:55:57.400 --> 0:56:00.840 our stake in music Net. So we sort of switched 0:56:00.880 --> 0:56:05.000 horses until the license got cleared. And then basically at 0:56:05.000 --> 0:56:07.759 the time we bought raps and you had fifty subscribers 0:56:07.840 --> 0:56:11.120 or something, and then we wrote it up as our vehicle. 0:56:11.600 --> 0:56:14.439 Uh and you know it's still going. We actually merged 0:56:14.440 --> 0:56:16.400 with Napster and now we use the name Napster. We 0:56:16.520 --> 0:56:19.960 got you know, to an appallion subscribers whatever it is. Uh. 0:56:20.000 --> 0:56:24.160 We are we're uh we've resized the staff so it generates, 0:56:24.239 --> 0:56:27.360 so it's even a positive. But we're obviously we're not 0:56:27.400 --> 0:56:29.680 Spotify and we're not Apple. So there were so many 0:56:29.760 --> 0:56:32.200 lessons there which we can talk about about why that 0:56:32.280 --> 0:56:34.200 ended up. You know, we still have a business that's 0:56:34.200 --> 0:56:37.680 got you know, uh, it's you know, if you if 0:56:37.719 --> 0:56:40.920 you step back from the you know, from Spotify and 0:56:41.000 --> 0:56:44.960 obviously Apple were the largest, uh independent company in the space, 0:56:45.320 --> 0:56:48.600 but you know, a huge order of magnitude lower than 0:56:48.880 --> 0:56:51.160 than the two big guys, and you know where that 0:56:51.160 --> 0:56:53.840 goes is an interesting question. But learned a lot of 0:56:53.840 --> 0:56:56.440 things along the way. So isn't the real business being 0:56:56.440 --> 0:57:00.759 a white labeled service now licensing your technology the third party? Uh? 0:57:00.840 --> 0:57:03.040 So the Naster business is a combination of white label 0:57:03.080 --> 0:57:05.920 and co branded. It depends what partners want. So like 0:57:05.960 --> 0:57:08.120 for instance, the case of I Heart Radio, I heard 0:57:08.200 --> 0:57:10.600 music and we power there on demand. I Heart wants 0:57:10.600 --> 0:57:13.120 to be the brand and it says powered by Napster, 0:57:13.440 --> 0:57:16.120 but you don't necessarie it prominently. Some our other partners 0:57:16.200 --> 0:57:19.000 use an Abster brand more prominently like and uh and 0:57:19.040 --> 0:57:21.560 so it just depends. Like in Brazil, uh, we have 0:57:22.240 --> 0:57:25.760 Vivo Music. Uh, it was the largest whereless carrying Brazil, 0:57:25.840 --> 0:57:28.680 powered by Napster. Uh So we use different brands and 0:57:28.720 --> 0:57:31.360 different parts of the world. We have a director consumer business, 0:57:31.360 --> 0:57:33.600 but it's it's not it's the minority of the business. 0:57:33.680 --> 0:57:37.439 It's no longer the main business. So you ultimately walk 0:57:37.520 --> 0:57:40.520 away from real networks to become a VC. What's the 0:57:40.560 --> 0:57:44.000 thinking there, Well, well, these things always, these life changes 0:57:44.000 --> 0:57:47.800 always happen through accombination of personal reasons and professional reasons. 0:57:48.440 --> 0:57:52.640 I have three fantastic kids, twins who are almost twelve, 0:57:53.000 --> 0:57:55.520 and the little guy called little Guy is almost eight. 0:57:55.840 --> 0:57:59.480 Um Um, I've said this publicly, so I'm not speaking 0:57:59.480 --> 0:58:02.360 at the school. In their mom Oh I'm still get 0:58:02.360 --> 0:58:05.360 along with very well, had really bad postpart and depression. Um. 0:58:05.400 --> 0:58:07.720 Like you know, she wanted kids every but as much 0:58:07.760 --> 0:58:10.160 as I did, and she is a fantastic mom, but 0:58:10.200 --> 0:58:12.760 she went through a really rough period. So my switching 0:58:12.800 --> 0:58:15.600 gears and focusing on being a dad for about three 0:58:15.680 --> 0:58:17.760 years was one of the best things I ever did 0:58:17.800 --> 0:58:20.040 in my life. It probably wasn't the best thing for 0:58:20.040 --> 0:58:23.640 Real Networks because the we tried to other people into 0:58:23.640 --> 0:58:25.080 the company who were kind of like the drummer and 0:58:25.120 --> 0:58:29.000 spinal tap unfortunately if that's the music ANALYSI people know. 0:58:29.920 --> 0:58:34.000 But it was appropriate for me personally to to really 0:58:34.200 --> 0:58:36.960 go deep in in family. And my kids are doing great, 0:58:37.320 --> 0:58:40.440 uh great partner, Uh, my ex is doing super well. 0:58:40.480 --> 0:58:41.960 The kids go back and forth in the two and 0:58:42.320 --> 0:58:43.800 I don't know that we could have gotten there if 0:58:43.840 --> 0:58:45.960 I had stayed, you know, full time. A real networks 0:58:45.960 --> 0:58:50.120 the whole way through. And did you I mean, were 0:58:50.120 --> 0:58:53.000 you in basically a house dad or were you a 0:58:53.080 --> 0:58:55.600 VC during that period? So I was this thing called 0:58:55.640 --> 0:58:59.920 a venture partner, which I it's a little bit like 0:59:00.080 --> 0:59:05.360 the p massuseatists I wrote on on economists. Um, if 0:59:05.360 --> 0:59:08.200 you want to be a VC, or think if you 0:59:08.240 --> 0:59:10.000 think you might want to be a VC, if you 0:59:10.040 --> 0:59:12.320 go be a venture partner at a firm, you learn 0:59:12.360 --> 0:59:14.600 a lot. So Excel is an incredible firm. You know 0:59:14.640 --> 0:59:17.880 they invested you know I mentioned us, but they Facebook 0:59:17.920 --> 0:59:20.680 is probably their signature huge investment. They've had many other 0:59:20.760 --> 0:59:23.760 successes over the years. You can go look at their website. Um. 0:59:24.000 --> 0:59:25.200 And so what I would do is I would go 0:59:25.240 --> 0:59:27.880 down to board to partner meetings once or twice a month, 0:59:28.200 --> 0:59:30.720 and I would KiB its uh and give them feedback. 0:59:30.760 --> 0:59:33.560 I probably made three or four investments with them. I 0:59:33.640 --> 0:59:35.080 probably made, you know, in the period when I was 0:59:35.120 --> 0:59:38.840 actually investing, I probably made fifty investments, UM, maybe a 0:59:38.920 --> 0:59:40.560 quarter of them with Excel on a quarter of them 0:59:40.680 --> 0:59:43.040 either on my own or with other venture enities. I 0:59:43.200 --> 0:59:46.160 ended up deciding that I'm not wired to be a 0:59:46.160 --> 0:59:49.400 good VC. UM. I like angel investing, which is very 0:59:49.440 --> 0:59:52.640 different than a VC. But when you're a VC, uh, 0:59:52.680 --> 0:59:55.840 it's this weird mix of you've got a partner partnership, 0:59:55.880 --> 0:59:59.320 you are running shared money, but you're each individual responsible 0:59:59.320 --> 1:00:01.600 for a deal. And if the chemistry is great with 1:00:01.640 --> 1:00:04.520 the partners, I'm sure it can be great, but it's 1:00:04.600 --> 1:00:08.080 very easy for these partnerships to fracture, depending on like 1:00:08.440 --> 1:00:10.440 you know, which deals work, which deals don't work, who 1:00:10.440 --> 1:00:12.360 gets credit for them, who doesn't get credit for them? 1:00:12.840 --> 1:00:15.800 And Uh. To me, I'm much I much prefer to 1:00:15.840 --> 1:00:18.680 do individual angel investing, which I do very little of 1:00:18.720 --> 1:00:20.360 nowadays because I'm too busy. I do a little bit 1:00:20.360 --> 1:00:23.960 of it. Uh. I prefer that to being part of 1:00:24.000 --> 1:00:27.160 a professional venture fund. But I only know that because 1:00:27.200 --> 1:00:29.560 I spent a couple of years sort of sitting around 1:00:29.600 --> 1:00:31.400 the table with the Excel guys as they did their thing. 1:00:31.960 --> 1:00:34.840 So at this late date, what are the main products 1:00:34.960 --> 1:00:38.000 of Real Networks and where's the company going. So Real 1:00:38.040 --> 1:00:41.760 Networks has four major growth initiatives going forward. Um and 1:00:41.800 --> 1:00:43.200 you can say it's a late date, but for some 1:00:43.240 --> 1:00:46.800 of these initiatives is actually super early. Um we one 1:00:46.880 --> 1:00:49.120 is a consumer initiative that's actually in the games business. 1:00:49.120 --> 1:00:51.120 We we had a games business that we spun up 1:00:51.120 --> 1:00:53.360 in the nineties. Uh. It did well for a while 1:00:53.360 --> 1:00:55.040 and then it lay follow and then I brought back 1:00:55.320 --> 1:00:58.080 to the entrepreneurs that helped create the European business. It's 1:00:58.080 --> 1:01:01.200 called game House. It's actually East in the Netherlands, and 1:01:01.240 --> 1:01:05.000 it's at the intersection of of casual gameplay and storytelling. 1:01:05.320 --> 1:01:07.760 So we have now about two dozen of what we 1:01:07.800 --> 1:01:10.440 call these game House original stories, and we're in the 1:01:10.440 --> 1:01:13.360 process of launching a subscription product around them. We for 1:01:13.400 --> 1:01:14.960 the first couple years, we didn't have enough to make 1:01:14.960 --> 1:01:17.840 a subscription, so we sold them individually, built a decent 1:01:17.880 --> 1:01:20.680 business on it. It's about it's about million dollar business 1:01:20.720 --> 1:01:23.920 something like that. But now with subscriptions, were pretty optimistic 1:01:24.080 --> 1:01:26.640 that we can grow it significantly. And the team doing 1:01:26.680 --> 1:01:29.840 that kind of rut Computers and Rakusen's are the two 1:01:29.840 --> 1:01:33.240 guys who are in a jointly. They're fantastic entrepreneurs. They're uh, 1:01:33.480 --> 1:01:35.560 they kind of both do both, but Eric is more 1:01:35.600 --> 1:01:37.840 of the creative spark and Rutgerry is more of the 1:01:37.840 --> 1:01:40.240 business guy. Although they both do both and they probably 1:01:40.600 --> 1:01:44.080 um blanched my pigeonholing him in that way, but they 1:01:44.080 --> 1:01:46.920 work together collaboratively. They do a fantastic job. I love 1:01:47.000 --> 1:01:49.800 working with them, and Uh in that business, I think 1:01:50.160 --> 1:01:52.680 I'm very optimistic about its future as a subscription business. 1:01:53.120 --> 1:01:55.400 Then we have three B two B products, which is 1:01:55.720 --> 1:01:57.680 something real has always had a foot in. Both we 1:01:57.760 --> 1:02:00.760 make technology, we love consumers. Um. The one that when 1:02:00.760 --> 1:02:03.480 I said, remember China, the one that's the most obscure, 1:02:04.160 --> 1:02:07.080 but it's true, is we have a robust business of 1:02:07.160 --> 1:02:11.640 licensing video compression technology in China. Uh and uh we 1:02:11.800 --> 1:02:14.480 when I came back, it was clear that what happened 1:02:14.480 --> 1:02:17.160 is and I'll explain why when Microsoft displaced us with 1:02:17.200 --> 1:02:18.640 this thing I told you about where they got to 1:02:18.680 --> 1:02:21.200 PC manufacturers and they say you only have to pay 1:02:21.280 --> 1:02:23.720 us sixty dollars per windows if you do what we 1:02:23.760 --> 1:02:27.160 say a hundred dollars. Otherwise, the Chinese manufacturers companies like 1:02:27.320 --> 1:02:29.920 Legend which became Lenovo, or a great Wall or some 1:02:29.960 --> 1:02:33.160 of these others. They basically told Microsoft, you know, I 1:02:33.160 --> 1:02:36.080 only shipped a hundred thousand PCs this year, here's your money. 1:02:36.120 --> 1:02:38.240 And when Microsoft said, no, we think you shift a million, 1:02:38.440 --> 1:02:41.800 They're like, you know, maybe only ship fifty. So so 1:02:42.200 --> 1:02:45.640 the Microsoft had less leverage in the Chinese market circuit 1:02:45.640 --> 1:02:49.440 two thousand to use this tactic of using their marketing 1:02:49.480 --> 1:02:51.680 car program to push us out of the market. So 1:02:51.760 --> 1:02:54.040 we never got displaced in the Chinese market. So our 1:02:54.120 --> 1:02:57.040 video format, which is called r M v B continuous 1:02:57.040 --> 1:03:00.400 to be very popular. So about three years ago three 1:03:00.400 --> 1:03:02.440 four years ago, I spot up a team where commissioned 1:03:02.440 --> 1:03:04.240 the team to spun up to build a next generation 1:03:04.320 --> 1:03:06.680 video technology. We put half the R and D team 1:03:06.680 --> 1:03:08.840 in Seattle, half in Beijing, and we have a next 1:03:08.840 --> 1:03:13.360 generation video technology called r MHD that is doing very 1:03:13.360 --> 1:03:15.640 well in China. We have a partnership with one of 1:03:15.640 --> 1:03:18.480 the three largest broadcasters in China called c I the 1:03:18.600 --> 1:03:23.600 end UH their affiliate just launched uh in uh in 1:03:23.640 --> 1:03:26.000 the in the first phase of of launch in China. 1:03:26.320 --> 1:03:28.600 So that business is going to do very well basically 1:03:28.680 --> 1:03:32.760 licensing video technology. That's next generation technology. It's better than 1:03:32.800 --> 1:03:35.560 the next generation m PEG. It's very competitive with the 1:03:35.600 --> 1:03:38.240 best in the world. Whether we bring that technology from 1:03:38.320 --> 1:03:40.480 China the rest of the world, we'll see. It's something 1:03:40.520 --> 1:03:41.760 we want to do, but we've got to get into 1:03:41.760 --> 1:03:44.280 the chip sets. We've got to build out the infrastructure first. 1:03:44.480 --> 1:03:47.720 So those are two businesses. The third business is actually 1:03:47.840 --> 1:03:52.120 very obscure, but it's very interesting. It's around messaging. UH. 1:03:52.240 --> 1:03:54.840 Do you know how much like robotcalling and spam you're 1:03:54.840 --> 1:03:57.800 getting on your phone. Uh. We built a product called 1:03:57.880 --> 1:04:01.560 Context that's designed to cut down on TECHT spamming and 1:04:01.560 --> 1:04:05.320 then also providing a way for message UH providers to 1:04:05.480 --> 1:04:08.800 classify their messages to basically create more structure on them 1:04:08.960 --> 1:04:10.520 a lot of stuff that's done an email and not 1:04:10.560 --> 1:04:12.960 done in texting. The reason we've gotten that business is 1:04:13.000 --> 1:04:16.480 we have a related business that is the powers what's 1:04:16.520 --> 1:04:18.720 called inter carry messaging. So if you're on Verizon on 1:04:18.840 --> 1:04:21.120 an A, T and T and I send you a text, 1:04:21.360 --> 1:04:24.240 it goes over our inter carry messaging software. So we 1:04:24.280 --> 1:04:27.680 have the software that is the highly reliable but invisible 1:04:27.960 --> 1:04:30.280 layer that about a billion and a half message today 1:04:30.280 --> 1:04:33.080 travel over. So that team used that expertise to build 1:04:33.120 --> 1:04:35.760 this next product, which is called Context and that's just 1:04:35.960 --> 1:04:38.160 rolling out. And then the fourth, which may be the 1:04:38.200 --> 1:04:41.240 coolest of them all, is a computer vision platform called 1:04:41.280 --> 1:04:44.040 real c V, which leverages all of our expertise and 1:04:44.120 --> 1:04:49.000 video technology to do phenomenal face recognition. We haven't yet 1:04:49.040 --> 1:04:51.480 described what markets are going after that, but we've got 1:04:51.520 --> 1:04:54.400 some fantastic ideas that we think are gonna go are 1:04:54.440 --> 1:04:58.479 gonna make people really happy to have computer based face 1:04:58.560 --> 1:05:02.400 recognition be applied, not in creepy situations, but in situations 1:05:02.400 --> 1:05:04.960 where it's actually good for society to have people know 1:05:05.240 --> 1:05:09.560 who's who. Okay, you're also very heavenly political. If one 1:05:09.640 --> 1:05:13.000 follows your Twitter feed, most of it is politics. You 1:05:13.160 --> 1:05:17.920 invested in Air America, So what was your thinking of 1:05:17.960 --> 1:05:21.800 the Air America and where are you relative to politics today? Well, 1:05:21.840 --> 1:05:23.480 so the reason I got involved in America, and that 1:05:23.520 --> 1:05:27.280 goes back over a decade, UH is UH I was 1:05:27.440 --> 1:05:31.520 very frustrated by the rise of UH Fox News and 1:05:31.640 --> 1:05:36.160 the the right media right that there was no longer 1:05:36.880 --> 1:05:39.880 UH any kind of There was not any kind of 1:05:40.480 --> 1:05:42.840 balance because you had the mainstream media which is very 1:05:42.880 --> 1:05:46.880 much covers the horse rays tries to have journalistic ethics, etcetera. 1:05:46.920 --> 1:05:48.960 And then you had Fox operating as kind of a 1:05:49.360 --> 1:05:53.280 right word magnet that was not operating within journalistic bounds 1:05:53.280 --> 1:05:56.200 in my view even back then, but was sort of 1:05:56.640 --> 1:06:00.320 being uh like talk radio and television. Uh also had 1:06:00.320 --> 1:06:02.680 a lot of right wing talk radio. So the question 1:06:02.760 --> 1:06:04.760 was why can't why why can't there be a progressive 1:06:04.800 --> 1:06:08.800 alternative just to rebalance society. So I got to know, uh, 1:06:08.920 --> 1:06:11.800 somebody who may talk about in a minute, Al Franken 1:06:12.240 --> 1:06:16.040 Uh through some people I knew, uh, and Al got 1:06:16.080 --> 1:06:19.040 was interested in getting involved in this fledgling in Gold America, 1:06:19.360 --> 1:06:21.560 and he asked me for advice, and I said, well, all, 1:06:21.600 --> 1:06:22.959 I think you should do it. I think it's gonna 1:06:23.000 --> 1:06:25.280 I think you'll be fantastic. You know, Al had already 1:06:25.560 --> 1:06:28.200 uh you know, he'd done Saturdayright Live, he'd written some 1:06:28.200 --> 1:06:30.680 books that were very compelling, and I thought, Alex somebody 1:06:30.680 --> 1:06:34.440 who could could really have a big impact. Um and uh, 1:06:34.760 --> 1:06:36.400 but I said, I don't know about the people that 1:06:36.480 --> 1:06:37.919 the people are backing yet. I don't know if it's 1:06:37.960 --> 1:06:41.120 the resources anyway, So through Al I allowed myself to 1:06:41.120 --> 1:06:43.880 get sucked in and became for a while the chairman 1:06:43.920 --> 1:06:46.320 of this thing. Um. And it was very it was 1:06:46.360 --> 1:06:50.200 financially not very robust. Uh it was. But we you know, 1:06:50.240 --> 1:06:52.720 there's this there's this old expression, right, you know, the 1:06:52.720 --> 1:06:56.000 patient operations was successful, but the patient died. Um. That's 1:06:56.080 --> 1:06:58.919 kind of like what happened with Their America because through 1:06:59.000 --> 1:07:02.640 Air America we created something that had critical mass around 1:07:02.680 --> 1:07:05.440 progressive media. Rachel Maddow came from Air America. She was 1:07:05.440 --> 1:07:08.080 one of our up and coming stars. Uh. And and 1:07:08.320 --> 1:07:10.960 obviously Al played a huge role in it. Uh. You 1:07:10.960 --> 1:07:12.200 know you you there are there are There are a 1:07:12.200 --> 1:07:14.160 few other folks that are less famous that came up 1:07:14.200 --> 1:07:17.280 to the ranks there. The whole way MSNBC started came 1:07:17.320 --> 1:07:20.560 out of the um, the sort of the ashes, if 1:07:20.600 --> 1:07:23.360 you will, of Air America. So it was not a 1:07:23.440 --> 1:07:26.040 good use of capital from the standpoint of making money, 1:07:26.040 --> 1:07:27.680 but I kind of knew that. But I think it 1:07:27.720 --> 1:07:30.480 did play a catalytic roll. Um. It took a while, 1:07:30.840 --> 1:07:32.959 uh in two thousand fours when it started, it didn't 1:07:32.960 --> 1:07:36.240 move the meter enough to change the outcome there. But 1:07:36.520 --> 1:07:40.760 over time I think we do have more you know, 1:07:40.840 --> 1:07:44.400 be it Huving to Post, be it, the MSNBC more 1:07:44.440 --> 1:07:48.479 outlets that are that give voice to progressive ideas and value. 1:07:48.480 --> 1:07:51.200 So I'm not involved it anymore, but I'm glad I 1:07:51.240 --> 1:07:53.440 did it, even though it was from a cash on 1:07:53.520 --> 1:07:56.120 cash standpoint, is a bad investment. Okay, So the big 1:07:56.160 --> 1:08:00.120 issue today and technology is privacy. So what's your a 1:08:00.160 --> 1:08:03.320 point on what's going on there with privacy and data? Uh? 1:08:03.680 --> 1:08:07.560 I think that the reckoning that's happening now is important 1:08:07.880 --> 1:08:13.560 and has to happen. I think that, uh remember Facebook's 1:08:14.120 --> 1:08:18.360 used to have their slogan move fast and break stuff. UM, 1:08:18.439 --> 1:08:21.040 I don't think they meant to break democracy, but I 1:08:21.040 --> 1:08:25.160 think that's largely what happened. Uh And and and it 1:08:25.280 --> 1:08:30.120 happened because it became too easy for bad actors. Probably 1:08:30.160 --> 1:08:32.840 Cambridge Analytics could be one of those bad actors, uh 1:08:32.960 --> 1:08:37.519 to scoop up huge amounts of data on people UH 1:08:37.560 --> 1:08:42.120 that that can be used to uh both target uh 1:08:42.160 --> 1:08:45.880 them and influence them uh in all kinds of pernicious ways. 1:08:46.000 --> 1:08:49.200 And so so from my standpoint, we need to have 1:08:49.360 --> 1:08:54.800 much more rigorous uh laws and enforcement of those laws 1:08:54.840 --> 1:08:58.200 around data privacy. Uh. And and you know, for instance, 1:08:58.240 --> 1:09:01.280 this this new European Ladge GDPR, which I think it 1:09:01.280 --> 1:09:03.960 becomes effective like amount a month from now, I think 1:09:03.960 --> 1:09:06.160 the middle end of May. I think it's a huge 1:09:06.200 --> 1:09:08.880 step forward in the right direction. What I'm seeing is 1:09:08.920 --> 1:09:11.960 a lot of companies are actually used because Europe is 1:09:12.000 --> 1:09:14.400 such a big part of their business. Whatever policies they're 1:09:14.400 --> 1:09:18.120 putting in place for um uh for Europe, they're putting 1:09:18.120 --> 1:09:20.240 in place globally. But I think the U s should 1:09:20.360 --> 1:09:23.800 should have its own GDPR law not rely on the Europeans, right, 1:09:23.840 --> 1:09:26.160 you know, we would We wouldn't say, well, the Europeans 1:09:26.200 --> 1:09:28.200 are taken care of air traffic safety, we don't need 1:09:28.240 --> 1:09:30.200 our own air traffic safety standards. Of course we do, 1:09:30.439 --> 1:09:32.599 and maybe they'll be the same as Europe, maybe they'll 1:09:32.600 --> 1:09:34.519 be a little different or something, but we should have 1:09:34.560 --> 1:09:38.720 our own equivalent GDPR in the US. Absolutely agree with 1:09:38.760 --> 1:09:43.360 that in terms of what it would mean in practice. 1:09:43.640 --> 1:09:46.760 I still think most people would would be willing to 1:09:48.680 --> 1:09:52.479 uh use these social media services uh and would use 1:09:52.520 --> 1:09:55.240 the ad supported versions of them. The approach that I've 1:09:55.280 --> 1:09:57.759 taken is I don't think I've had I think every 1:09:57.760 --> 1:10:01.679 post I've ever posted on Facebook, I've basically put Twitter 1:10:01.760 --> 1:10:04.080 Twitter rolls on it. I assume that it's public because 1:10:04.080 --> 1:10:07.160 my assumption is anything I post, if I share it 1:10:07.200 --> 1:10:10.000 with fifty friends, I've shared it with the world anyway. 1:10:10.360 --> 1:10:12.479 So I don't post pictures of my kids on social 1:10:12.520 --> 1:10:15.800 media just as a matter of personal preference, personal truth, 1:10:15.840 --> 1:10:17.800 and privacy. If I want to send pictures of my kids, 1:10:17.800 --> 1:10:20.080 I email to my friends and I trust that they're 1:10:20.080 --> 1:10:23.080 not gonna you know, Poston social media. Um, anything I 1:10:23.120 --> 1:10:25.599 post publicly assume you know, I'm gonna have to live 1:10:25.640 --> 1:10:27.160 with it twenty years from now. If I said something 1:10:27.360 --> 1:10:29.600 obnoxious about Trump, and you know, Trump gets to know 1:10:29.640 --> 1:10:33.560 about prize or something, gonna have to eat crow, that's possible. Um, 1:10:33.680 --> 1:10:37.360 But but I you know, it's uh, my my assumption 1:10:37.479 --> 1:10:41.360 was and with this anything. So my daughter is now eleven, UM, 1:10:41.439 --> 1:10:43.519 and she rides a school bus because she now goes 1:10:43.560 --> 1:10:46.800 to a Catholic girls school that she has to take 1:10:46.800 --> 1:10:49.920 a bus to go to. UM and uh, it's fantastical, 1:10:50.000 --> 1:10:52.519 great for her. But now she needed a phone. So 1:10:52.760 --> 1:10:54.320 she was like, well, Dad, can I have an iPhone? 1:10:54.680 --> 1:10:56.519 She's eleven years old. I said no, So I got 1:10:56.520 --> 1:10:59.400 her a five year old LG flip phone with a 1:10:59.479 --> 1:11:02.240 text keep word when you can buy an eBay by 1:11:02.280 --> 1:11:05.400 the way, um, And she's mad at me about this. 1:11:05.400 --> 1:11:07.960 This is like, this is like the biggest like and 1:11:08.160 --> 1:11:11.200 so she she's like, Dad, all my friends have iPhones. 1:11:12.080 --> 1:11:15.000 And I said, what about Andy's daughter? And he's a 1:11:15.000 --> 1:11:17.519 guy worked with a Microsoft, and I know that Andy 1:11:17.600 --> 1:11:20.639 is also vigilant about this stuff. And she said, well, 1:11:20.680 --> 1:11:23.479 Andy's dad won't even let his Naomi get a flip 1:11:23.479 --> 1:11:25.920 phone for two more years. And I said, why don't 1:11:25.920 --> 1:11:27.519 we go to lunch with Andy and his daughter and 1:11:27.560 --> 1:11:29.960 talk about this? And I said, no, no no, Dad, we 1:11:29.960 --> 1:11:32.800 don't need to do that. So my point is that 1:11:33.240 --> 1:11:36.000 a lot of what makes how to make social media 1:11:36.479 --> 1:11:40.320 healthy for kids and not unhealthy is actually parents understanding 1:11:40.320 --> 1:11:43.120 that there are choices. The choice isn't give him an 1:11:43.120 --> 1:11:45.360 iPhone or not. You know, yeah, you gotta go to 1:11:45.400 --> 1:11:47.240 let your way to find a five year old flip phone. 1:11:47.680 --> 1:11:50.120 But it works just fine. She can text and call us, 1:11:50.360 --> 1:11:51.920 which is all at the age of eleven I want 1:11:51.960 --> 1:11:54.000 her to do. When she's thirteen. I'm sure she'll have 1:11:54.040 --> 1:11:57.000 an iPhone. We'll probably have policies on you know that 1:11:57.040 --> 1:11:58.400 she has to show us all of her text. I'm 1:11:58.439 --> 1:12:01.680 sure she'll get around them in some ways, but it 1:12:01.840 --> 1:12:05.479 to me, Um, the pernicioners of social media comes with 1:12:05.560 --> 1:12:09.080 the interaction between the fact that most people don't understand 1:12:09.080 --> 1:12:12.360 what this stuff is and the fact that the large 1:12:12.360 --> 1:12:15.599 scale companies running it we're too willing to take advantage 1:12:15.600 --> 1:12:18.000 of that naivete. So I don't think the solution is 1:12:18.040 --> 1:12:20.599 no social media. I think the solution is better regulation 1:12:20.640 --> 1:12:28.280 and better education. We'll plause here for a brief moment 1:12:28.320 --> 1:12:31.759 and get right back to CEO of Real Networks, Rob Glazer. 1:12:33.520 --> 1:12:35.760 As you know, I'm a writer and you can read 1:12:35.840 --> 1:12:38.920 my work at left sets dot com. In addition of 1:12:39.040 --> 1:12:41.920 reading my commentary on music tech in the world at large. 1:12:42.160 --> 1:12:44.400 There'll be the first to find out when we've published 1:12:44.400 --> 1:12:47.200 a new podcast. Go to left sets dot com and 1:12:47.320 --> 1:12:51.120 sign up for the news left Now More with CEO 1:12:51.160 --> 1:12:54.160 of Real Networks, Rob Glazer, recorded live with the Music 1:12:54.200 --> 1:12:59.600 Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California. Okay, it's time for 1:12:59.720 --> 1:13:02.679 question and from the audience, raise your hand. Jim has 1:13:02.680 --> 1:13:06.439 a microphone, and please talk into the microphone and ask 1:13:06.439 --> 1:13:08.799 a question as opposed to the basic a statement. Okay, 1:13:09.080 --> 1:13:14.320 before the first question, Um, quick story. So, when we 1:13:14.320 --> 1:13:18.559 were about to reach out to um Rob about coming here, 1:13:19.240 --> 1:13:21.599 I spelled his name with a Z and I get 1:13:21.640 --> 1:13:26.160 this note from Bob, you know, chastising me, like, dude, 1:13:26.200 --> 1:13:29.440 you've got to spell people's names correctly if you're gonna. 1:13:29.560 --> 1:13:33.519 And so then Rob gets here today and and uh 1:13:33.720 --> 1:13:36.120 looks at his name tag and it has two essays. 1:13:38.280 --> 1:13:41.600 So I have to apologize for that and take ownership 1:13:41.680 --> 1:13:44.040 of it. And I don't know how it happened. Well, 1:13:44.200 --> 1:13:46.240 I'll tell you a story about my daughter, which um 1:13:46.560 --> 1:13:48.120 since I don't show a pictures of the internet. So 1:13:48.439 --> 1:13:50.719 her name is Eva E v A. And it turns 1:13:50.760 --> 1:13:53.439 out that in the current generation that's a moderately popular 1:13:53.479 --> 1:13:56.280 in but apparently because of Reef Witherspoon, Ava a Via 1:13:56.439 --> 1:13:58.200 is like one of the five most popular girl names. 1:13:58.600 --> 1:14:01.120 So about five years ago, when she was six years old, 1:14:01.320 --> 1:14:03.320 she goes through T S A and the T S 1:14:03.360 --> 1:14:08.519 A guy looks at her and says Ava Glazer, and 1:14:08.600 --> 1:14:10.400 she looks back at him. T s A guy you 1:14:10.400 --> 1:14:13.080 know she doesn't know, noting its assassin, she says, actually 1:14:13.160 --> 1:14:16.880 it's Eva, and the T S A Gui apparently isn't 1:14:16.920 --> 1:14:19.120 used to being sassed by six year old kids. Uh 1:14:19.280 --> 1:14:21.000 hands her back the passport and in a kind of 1:14:21.000 --> 1:14:26.360 exaggerated way says, excuse me, Eva, And then her reply is, 1:14:26.560 --> 1:14:33.519 actually it's a common mistake. So it's actually a common mistake. 1:14:36.360 --> 1:14:39.920 I have a couple of technical questions, So tracking all 1:14:39.960 --> 1:14:44.519 the video technology but you've been doing since where do 1:14:44.560 --> 1:14:46.800 you where do you think the technology is moving with 1:14:47.040 --> 1:14:49.400 like AI and like fake app and all that stuff 1:14:49.439 --> 1:14:51.040 that's going on, and how big a problem is that 1:14:51.080 --> 1:14:53.200 going to be? And then following up on that with 1:14:53.320 --> 1:14:59.080 AI and the Sergey brand founder's letter about saying responsibilities 1:14:59.080 --> 1:15:01.599 in AI? Where you see AI and what's your feeling 1:15:01.600 --> 1:15:03.600 on that? Well, the first one is easier than the 1:15:03.600 --> 1:15:05.599 second one because the second one is like so open ended, 1:15:05.680 --> 1:15:07.439 you know, you get to the you know, the Elon 1:15:07.520 --> 1:15:11.280 Mesk debates with everybody that stuff and Sergey Uh. So 1:15:11.560 --> 1:15:13.519 there's gonna be a really interesting convergence in the next 1:15:13.560 --> 1:15:18.400 five years between uh C g UH computer graphics and 1:15:18.520 --> 1:15:22.280 natural video. We already see it today with augmented reality 1:15:22.280 --> 1:15:24.240 because you think about what it augumented reality is. It's 1:15:24.560 --> 1:15:27.640 it's reality where you take a video and you superimpose 1:15:27.720 --> 1:15:30.920 in some way something that looks very lifelike that is 1:15:30.920 --> 1:15:35.720 not actually in the scene, and so augmented reality is 1:15:35.760 --> 1:15:38.559 incredibly powerful, you know, with lots of utility for it, 1:15:38.640 --> 1:15:40.920 but also means that you can no longer trust the 1:15:40.960 --> 1:15:44.160 authenticity of an image or an experience. Uh. And that's 1:15:44.160 --> 1:15:45.840 been going from for a while. I mean people have 1:15:45.880 --> 1:15:48.880 been uh, you know, retouching photos for years, you know, 1:15:48.960 --> 1:15:51.400 the whole You can argue that you know, uh, you know, 1:15:51.800 --> 1:15:54.760 People Magazine and the like are our pure examples of 1:15:54.760 --> 1:15:57.360 the fact you can't trust to photograph, uh, you know, 1:15:57.400 --> 1:15:59.800 where the images they show of people looking for more 1:16:00.000 --> 1:16:03.040 itiful than they ever could look or have looked. But 1:16:03.080 --> 1:16:05.000 it's gonna get worse, and it's gonna apply to video. 1:16:05.920 --> 1:16:07.880 I think we'll probably have to come up with some 1:16:09.080 --> 1:16:13.560 authentication techniques on video that involve some combination of triangulation 1:16:13.560 --> 1:16:16.880 and water marking. And by triangulation, I mean literally when 1:16:16.960 --> 1:16:19.439 you get the same image with the same time code 1:16:19.800 --> 1:16:23.040 from multiple cameras and multiple advantage points, and then you 1:16:23.040 --> 1:16:26.240 you have those water marked by some kind of trust authority, 1:16:26.320 --> 1:16:28.360 so you know that that's the image of what really 1:16:28.400 --> 1:16:32.840 happened and the uh and that's that whole how you 1:16:32.920 --> 1:16:38.519 create um trust authorities that people respect for factual things. 1:16:38.960 --> 1:16:41.320 Is a huge problem you have already in in you know, 1:16:41.360 --> 1:16:43.639 in text and quote unquote fake news, and it's gonna 1:16:43.640 --> 1:16:46.760 get even worse as this uh, you know, connection between 1:16:46.760 --> 1:16:49.799 computer generated video and natural video gets deeper and deeper. 1:16:49.840 --> 1:16:52.920 But hopefully we'll solve that problem because you know, and 1:16:53.080 --> 1:16:55.200 and we're living in weird times, right because at the 1:16:55.240 --> 1:16:58.240 same time, there's all this forensic stuff that gets that 1:16:58.240 --> 1:17:00.960 that gets done, like the Golden a killer got caught 1:17:01.240 --> 1:17:04.519 because of consumer DNA websites that were used by law 1:17:04.640 --> 1:17:08.160 enforcement to track relatives of the guy. So that's a 1:17:08.200 --> 1:17:11.679 case where data was used to solve a crime. Um 1:17:11.720 --> 1:17:14.760 that where you actually were able to combine gumshoe work 1:17:14.840 --> 1:17:17.240 with data. And you know, he'll go to a trial 1:17:17.320 --> 1:17:19.840 and you know, he's guilty, instantly proven guilty, but it 1:17:19.960 --> 1:17:23.160 sounds like he's probably the guy. Uh, And they got 1:17:23.240 --> 1:17:26.320 him through science that authentically figured out who he was 1:17:26.360 --> 1:17:28.599 based on you know, DNA from thirty years ago they 1:17:28.600 --> 1:17:31.519 got put in a vault somewhere. So there's cross currents here. 1:17:32.080 --> 1:17:33.600 But I do think for video, we're going to have 1:17:33.680 --> 1:17:38.240 to create strategies for validating authentic video rather than just 1:17:38.439 --> 1:17:41.559 looks realistic to me, because sometimes it might be just 1:17:41.600 --> 1:17:46.439 a brilliant fake. On the second point about ai UH, 1:17:46.800 --> 1:17:50.240 there's no question that there are certain categories of jobs 1:17:50.280 --> 1:17:53.240 that will be massively disrupted by a i UH. Like 1:17:53.360 --> 1:17:56.960 let's take like a radiologist, for instance. The best radiologists 1:17:57.360 --> 1:18:02.639 can find things that that mediocre radiologists can't find, and 1:18:03.000 --> 1:18:05.720 the best AI system can probably find things that the 1:18:05.760 --> 1:18:09.639 best radiologists can't find. Is that good for society? Yes, 1:18:09.680 --> 1:18:13.200 it's good to have better radiology. Is it good for radiologists? 1:18:13.960 --> 1:18:16.200 Probably the best ones will still do fine. Probably the 1:18:16.240 --> 1:18:19.040 mediocre ones will will find that in their job being 1:18:19.040 --> 1:18:21.200 outsourced to India, the job got outsourced to a computer. 1:18:21.640 --> 1:18:25.360 So there's gonna be economic disruption around from AI, for sure. 1:18:26.120 --> 1:18:28.080 I don't know that. I take the view that you 1:18:28.080 --> 1:18:29.479 know we're gonna have the problem that you had in 1:18:29.520 --> 1:18:32.040 two thousand one with how where they're going to take over. 1:18:32.439 --> 1:18:35.040 I think that's a little bit of a stretch. But 1:18:35.120 --> 1:18:37.320 I think the economic disruption that's going to come from 1:18:37.960 --> 1:18:40.519 AI is gonna be huge. Um, But I think it 1:18:40.520 --> 1:18:43.160 takes longer than you think. Like, for instance, I'm personally 1:18:43.240 --> 1:18:45.920 quite bearish on self driving cars. I think it's not 1:18:45.960 --> 1:18:50.320 gonna be self driving cars as a phenomenon replacing taxi drivers. 1:18:50.680 --> 1:18:55.880 Uh won't happen uh before Let's say, um, and that's 1:18:55.880 --> 1:18:58.479 a bearer's few compared to some. There'll be scenarios where 1:18:58.520 --> 1:19:01.479 augmentation is good, Like, for instance, you're driving and you 1:19:01.520 --> 1:19:03.800 start to fall asleep. It'll save a bunch of lives 1:19:03.800 --> 1:19:07.200 in that case. Uh, that's a good thing. Um, Somewhat 1:19:07.280 --> 1:19:09.719 somewhat that will be maybe because it notices your braiding 1:19:09.760 --> 1:19:12.080 pattern and it wakes you up by by you know, 1:19:12.320 --> 1:19:14.840 giving you a little bit of shake. Maybe it'll be 1:19:14.840 --> 1:19:17.200 because it prevents you from u steering into a rail 1:19:17.520 --> 1:19:20.200 and then it wakes you up. But pure that's augmentation. 1:19:20.280 --> 1:19:23.879 So I'm bullish on that big picture. I'm a technology optimist. 1:19:23.920 --> 1:19:27.000 I mean I called uh my company Progressive Networks before 1:19:27.000 --> 1:19:29.280 we ended up changing the real networks foundation is the 1:19:29.280 --> 1:19:31.919 Glazer Progress Foundation. I believe in the idea of progress, 1:19:32.240 --> 1:19:34.000 but I don't think it's an unguided missile. I think 1:19:34.000 --> 1:19:36.439 you've got to make very conscious social choices on how 1:19:36.680 --> 1:19:42.240 you use the technology. Question over here, Um, two things. 1:19:42.680 --> 1:19:45.919 One is recently on I think it was on CNN. 1:19:46.439 --> 1:19:50.000 They were showing some augmented video of Obama and but 1:19:50.040 --> 1:19:53.479 they were interviewing a company that actually has software to 1:19:53.520 --> 1:19:57.839 detect that. So maybe there's a future with those companies 1:19:57.880 --> 1:20:02.040 and embedding their software. But secondly, I don't know if 1:20:02.080 --> 1:20:04.640 anyone else has this question, But you worked for Microsoft 1:20:04.680 --> 1:20:08.680 all those years when you had to deal with them 1:20:08.800 --> 1:20:14.439 um trying to basically bury you, didn't you at any 1:20:14.479 --> 1:20:18.320 point reach out to them and see if we could 1:20:18.360 --> 1:20:20.800 make a deal? Or because I didn't, hang I did 1:20:20.840 --> 1:20:23.320 I skipped over that story. I mean, Bob asked amazing questions, 1:20:23.320 --> 1:20:25.320 but you can only cover so much stuff. So in 1:20:25.800 --> 1:20:28.920 what happened in ninety and remember the years, right? So 1:20:30.200 --> 1:20:34.400 uh in nine seven we came out with real real 1:20:34.479 --> 1:20:39.120 video and then uh uh later that year or was it, 1:20:41.400 --> 1:20:43.960 we heard that Microsoft was about to buy our biggest competitor, 1:20:44.000 --> 1:20:47.120 coming called the Extreme. Uh, and so we we went 1:20:47.160 --> 1:20:49.760 to Microsoft. We said, rather than buying the Extreme, why 1:20:49.800 --> 1:20:51.519 don't we do a deal with you? And so we 1:20:51.560 --> 1:20:53.760 did a licensing deal. When we sold Microsoft ten percent 1:20:53.800 --> 1:20:57.080 of our company, licensed them our technology, gave them an 1:20:57.120 --> 1:20:59.519 opportunity to buy another ten percent of our company and 1:20:59.560 --> 1:21:02.479 gave it comortunity buy another license to US in order 1:21:02.560 --> 1:21:04.880 to create a counter common roadmap. And that was the 1:21:04.920 --> 1:21:08.080 deal done in good faith with the very senior people 1:21:08.080 --> 1:21:11.000 to Microsoft. What happened then was just one of those 1:21:11.040 --> 1:21:13.040 unfortunate things, and we had a plan B for it. 1:21:13.439 --> 1:21:16.880 But what happened was Microsoft gave the responsibility of that 1:21:17.840 --> 1:21:20.479 deal to the guys whose job previously was to compete 1:21:20.520 --> 1:21:23.200 with us, and they hated our guts UM, and so 1:21:23.280 --> 1:21:24.880 they did everything they could to try to put us 1:21:24.880 --> 1:21:27.679 out of business by they took the software, the license 1:21:27.720 --> 1:21:30.280 from US and they gave it away for free, trying 1:21:30.320 --> 1:21:33.840 to create our server business UM. And we got around 1:21:33.880 --> 1:21:36.560 that by coming out with a new version of the 1:21:36.560 --> 1:21:38.960 product three months later than meant they were giving away 1:21:39.000 --> 1:21:41.800 day old milk for free UM. And so there was 1:21:41.840 --> 1:21:44.479 a lot of back and forth and maneuvering. UH. We 1:21:44.520 --> 1:21:46.400 took a shot at trying to be aligned with them. 1:21:46.920 --> 1:21:49.280 We meant it sincerely. We weren't time, We were not 1:21:49.320 --> 1:21:51.760 trying to get into the PC operating system business. We 1:21:51.760 --> 1:21:54.320 weren't trying to be a hostile competitor. There's but we 1:21:54.360 --> 1:21:57.799 didn't We did not manage to UH get the team 1:21:57.840 --> 1:22:01.200 that received the deal licensing deal to feel good about it. 1:22:01.680 --> 1:22:03.880 That's life. So we took our best shot at trying 1:22:03.920 --> 1:22:05.760 to trying to stay a line with them. Uh. And 1:22:05.800 --> 1:22:08.240 then years later, we actually didn't end up initiating the 1:22:08.280 --> 1:22:10.519 lawsuit until three or four years later because I kind 1:22:10.520 --> 1:22:12.720 of wanted us to stabilize the company. And you know, 1:22:12.760 --> 1:22:14.760 with these suits workers, you can look back three or 1:22:14.800 --> 1:22:17.920 four years. So we waited until we were stable and 1:22:18.000 --> 1:22:19.840 we're still in a look back period, and that's when 1:22:19.840 --> 1:22:23.360 we started the lawsuit and we settled the lawsuit. I 1:22:23.400 --> 1:22:27.080 sat down with Gates and we negotiated the final negotiation. 1:22:27.479 --> 1:22:29.920 Some very senior people on both sides were involved, so 1:22:29.960 --> 1:22:32.160 we ended up settling without going to court. Uh. We 1:22:32.360 --> 1:22:34.760 we started in court, we didn't finish in court. Um 1:22:35.360 --> 1:22:36.920 we Uh. We settled, you know, a year or two 1:22:36.960 --> 1:22:39.519 into the lawsuit. Uh, and got a good outcome and 1:22:39.560 --> 1:22:46.240 moved on. Okay, any Jim, you have the microphone? Okay? Hi? UM, 1:22:46.320 --> 1:22:48.800 My name is Vicky Nahman and I actually worked at 1:22:48.880 --> 1:22:52.880 music Net back in the day and uh, just as 1:22:52.880 --> 1:22:55.880 side anecdote, one of the first meetings I had was 1:22:55.960 --> 1:22:59.320 with Warner Music wanting to license US tracks at four 1:22:59.360 --> 1:23:02.360 dollars and d five cents wholesale, and that that was 1:23:02.400 --> 1:23:04.160 a yeah, that was a point where I thought, Okay, 1:23:04.200 --> 1:23:06.439 this is going to take a while. UM. But my 1:23:06.520 --> 1:23:09.600 question for you is is in there's a school of 1:23:09.640 --> 1:23:12.080 thought that there's only one Apple, there's only one Google, 1:23:12.160 --> 1:23:16.519 there's only one Facebook. UM. In music, do you what 1:23:16.560 --> 1:23:19.639 are your thoughts about there's only one Spotify, there's only 1:23:19.680 --> 1:23:23.640 one streaming service? Um. Right now we have a commoditization 1:23:23.720 --> 1:23:26.640 of all of the catalogs and I'm just interested in 1:23:26.880 --> 1:23:31.120 what your view is in in the landscape for music. Well, 1:23:31.520 --> 1:23:34.600 I would say the following. Uh, Spotify has done an 1:23:34.600 --> 1:23:37.439 incredible job and a huge respect for Daniel and folks 1:23:37.439 --> 1:23:40.280 like Toroy with her yesterday, what they've done, they were 1:23:40.280 --> 1:23:42.759 able to succeed in a particular context and maybe useful 1:23:42.760 --> 1:23:44.519 for this group to explain that. I thought maybe Bob 1:23:44.520 --> 1:23:47.800 would ask about this. Spotify I was able to get 1:23:47.840 --> 1:23:51.639 to scale because they started in Europe for a very 1:23:51.680 --> 1:23:55.759 particular reason. So we uh, we launched in the US 1:23:56.160 --> 1:23:58.280 between US which was rapture at the time, Napster, a 1:23:58.280 --> 1:24:01.080 few others, we had over a million subscribe verse. We 1:24:01.080 --> 1:24:03.000 we did a teeny bit of every in Europe, but 1:24:03.040 --> 1:24:05.360 not a much much. In the early days, Europe was 1:24:05.439 --> 1:24:08.160 very expensive because you had a license, county, back country, 1:24:08.200 --> 1:24:10.519 and of course every country has its own repertoire, where 1:24:10.560 --> 1:24:13.519 sixtiescent of the repertoire in most countries is local language, 1:24:13.520 --> 1:24:15.760 local culture. So it was much more expensive to launch 1:24:15.800 --> 1:24:19.240 in Europe at the time that Spotify launched Europe. If 1:24:19.240 --> 1:24:22.040 you guys had a million paid subscribers Europe, maybe at 1:24:22.040 --> 1:24:24.760 a hundred thousand, it was tiny. So Spotify was able 1:24:24.800 --> 1:24:26.479 to go to the majors and get a much more 1:24:26.520 --> 1:24:30.280 flexible deal for their free to premium, for their freemu 1:24:30.360 --> 1:24:31.960 offer than we could never get in the US. We 1:24:32.000 --> 1:24:34.200 begged the labels for that deal. The best deal we 1:24:34.200 --> 1:24:35.840 can get from the U S labels was what we 1:24:35.880 --> 1:24:38.840 called rapswenty five, which was a non subscriber could listen 1:24:38.880 --> 1:24:40.760 to twenty five streams a month and then we have 1:24:40.840 --> 1:24:43.160 to pay. And that turned out maybe we were allows 1:24:43.200 --> 1:24:45.519 you marketers, but I think that was much harder to 1:24:45.600 --> 1:24:48.719 market than the than the than the Spotify pre product. 1:24:48.920 --> 1:24:51.479 So Spotify launched and got two critical mass in Europe 1:24:51.960 --> 1:24:54.439 with a free offer that was much much more robust 1:24:54.680 --> 1:24:56.920 than any free offer that that we were able to 1:24:56.920 --> 1:24:59.080 get the U S labels too right now. Then Spotify 1:24:59.120 --> 1:25:01.519 came to the US and Spotify already had the momentum 1:25:01.520 --> 1:25:03.720 of Europe and they basically said to the majors, we 1:25:03.760 --> 1:25:05.720 want to do the same deal in the US, and 1:25:05.760 --> 1:25:07.679 it took two years to get the deal done because 1:25:07.720 --> 1:25:10.559 the major's kept saying no. Finally, Daniel raised a hundred 1:25:10.560 --> 1:25:13.160 million dollars, basically paid it to the labels and he 1:25:13.280 --> 1:25:17.080 got a pretty similar form of that deal. Good for him, 1:25:17.120 --> 1:25:20.440 incredible for him. But that's a huge reason why Spotify 1:25:20.560 --> 1:25:24.360 became the king of the industry was because it had 1:25:24.360 --> 1:25:26.559 the bootstrap in Europe and by the time it got 1:25:26.640 --> 1:25:30.760 into the US, it had the financial structure to raise 1:25:30.800 --> 1:25:33.559 a hundred million dollars like a billion dollar valuation or something. 1:25:33.760 --> 1:25:36.280 So as tempers in the company ended up, obviously, they've 1:25:36.280 --> 1:25:38.680 they've created a lot of economic values since then. They 1:25:38.720 --> 1:25:40.479 don't they know the cash flow yet, but they have 1:25:40.560 --> 1:25:44.959 the economic value in terms of what happens next UH 1:25:45.160 --> 1:25:47.240 visa to be Spotify and the labels. I think the 1:25:47.240 --> 1:25:50.479 big question is what happens to the current day tont 1:25:50.600 --> 1:25:53.439 right Spotify, it's been widely reported. I have no proprietary 1:25:53.439 --> 1:25:55.680 information on this. Has contractually agreed they're not going to 1:25:55.720 --> 1:25:58.960 be a labeled right, so they they can only go 1:25:59.080 --> 1:26:02.320 so far. They can negotiate margins, try and get more profitability, 1:26:02.360 --> 1:26:05.120 but at the end of the day, their their biggest 1:26:05.120 --> 1:26:08.000 power as a distributor is to leverage that into being 1:26:08.000 --> 1:26:12.000 a label. And how that plays out is to me, 1:26:12.160 --> 1:26:14.880 the unwritten story of the next five years, which is 1:26:14.920 --> 1:26:19.080 real Universal and Sony and and and Warner, which are 1:26:19.080 --> 1:26:21.439 the three big labels and that control a huge amount 1:26:21.439 --> 1:26:26.360 of catalog end up getting um uh, I don't know 1:26:26.360 --> 1:26:30.320 what the right world would be uh squeezed by Spotify 1:26:30.640 --> 1:26:33.600 needing to have more control of repertoire. Now Spotify has 1:26:33.600 --> 1:26:35.920 tried to branch out video, trying to branch out of 1:26:36.000 --> 1:26:39.439 Jason areas, but in so far Spotify stays an independent company. 1:26:39.760 --> 1:26:42.639 They have to make a move like that somehow sometime 1:26:42.680 --> 1:26:45.800 in the next five years, uh, or they're ultimately their 1:26:45.800 --> 1:26:48.280 model is going to be compromised unless they sell to 1:26:48.320 --> 1:26:50.880 somebody else. That's a massive scale. So you know, there's 1:26:50.920 --> 1:26:53.920 all these things that haven't played out yet. If I 1:26:53.960 --> 1:26:55.599 knew the answer to that question, I know the answer 1:26:55.640 --> 1:26:58.960 to your question, which is what happens next? Right, you know, 1:26:58.960 --> 1:27:01.880 you've got Spotify have any million change whatever numbatory I 1:27:01.920 --> 1:27:04.200 told you yesterday, Apple at forty and change or whatever 1:27:04.200 --> 1:27:06.960 their lettuce number is, uh, and then you know everybody 1:27:07.040 --> 1:27:09.080 is much much lower than that. Amazon a sort of 1:27:09.080 --> 1:27:10.800 a wild card because they have a hundred million prime 1:27:10.880 --> 1:27:14.639 users and they've got a catalog, you know, mediocre product 1:27:14.680 --> 1:27:16.800 for them, and then they've got a premium product that 1:27:16.840 --> 1:27:20.040 has many, many fewer users, but it's it's very stratified. 1:27:20.640 --> 1:27:22.639 And if I were a major, I would view that 1:27:22.880 --> 1:27:25.840 as a very very dangerous, unstable place to be for 1:27:25.880 --> 1:27:27.400 the reason that I just described. So if I was 1:27:27.439 --> 1:27:29.759 a major, I'd be doing everything it could. It's ethnically 1:27:29.840 --> 1:27:31.960 legal to make sure there are three or four other 1:27:32.040 --> 1:27:35.320 scale competitors so that when Spotify comes to you for 1:27:35.400 --> 1:27:37.800 the next renewal cycle and wants to jam, you wants 1:27:37.840 --> 1:27:39.160 to get out of this, we can't be a labeled 1:27:39.160 --> 1:27:42.920 through whatever. You'd have the ability to walk away. But 1:27:42.960 --> 1:27:45.200 if there's a certain point, if Spotify is half of 1:27:45.240 --> 1:27:48.400 the major's revenue, that's going to be unbelievably hard for 1:27:48.439 --> 1:27:50.160 them to do. And we're getting to that point. I 1:27:50.160 --> 1:27:52.320 don't know what the math is today, but Spotify is 1:27:52.320 --> 1:27:54.960 obviously a majority there streaming revenue, and streaming is a 1:27:55.000 --> 1:27:57.280 majority of their revenue, so it doesn't take to more 1:27:57.560 --> 1:27:59.960 much for Spotify'd literally be a majority of their revenue 1:28:00.000 --> 1:28:02.400 the whole, in which case the labels, you know, the 1:28:02.400 --> 1:28:04.559 power Dinamic and shift. So if I were a label, 1:28:04.840 --> 1:28:06.880 I would be trying to encourage as many people as 1:28:06.920 --> 1:28:09.880 possible to create as much diversity as possible. We have 1:28:09.960 --> 1:28:13.920 that conversation we meaning Napster with Sony, with Warner, with Universal. 1:28:14.280 --> 1:28:16.479 They get it, but then there's a question of how 1:28:16.520 --> 1:28:21.680 you activate it. Okay, Uh, but I'm aware of your 1:28:21.720 --> 1:28:26.320 interest in what's happened and what happened in VSA V 1:28:26.479 --> 1:28:31.120 Russia and uh their involvement in our elections. Uh looking 1:28:31.120 --> 1:28:35.920 forward to what do you anticipate the things that uh 1:28:36.200 --> 1:28:38.240 we ought to be, you know, looking out for an 1:28:38.280 --> 1:28:43.120 anticipating vs V their chicanery. Uh well, I'll explain what 1:28:43.160 --> 1:28:45.080 you what you said for the post. So in the 1:28:45.120 --> 1:28:48.080 summer of sixteen, I started a website called putin Trump 1:28:48.120 --> 1:28:50.320 dot org um. And it's not because I have a 1:28:50.360 --> 1:28:53.040 crystal ball. Uh, It's because I was just pattern matching, 1:28:53.040 --> 1:28:55.360 which is one of the things that I do right, 1:28:55.760 --> 1:28:57.280 and it was clear to me that there was something 1:28:57.320 --> 1:29:01.559 really weird happening when the Republican convence and soften in 1:29:01.600 --> 1:29:05.880 their in their um, you know, in their uh, their platform, 1:29:06.120 --> 1:29:11.040 they softened their program to be anti Ukraine and pro Russia, 1:29:11.360 --> 1:29:15.040 whereas the Republican Party had been the hardercore ones, particularly 1:29:15.080 --> 1:29:17.880 when Mitt Romney is running the hardercore anti Russia party. 1:29:17.880 --> 1:29:20.040 So there was something weird going on there. There's all 1:29:20.040 --> 1:29:22.639 this stuff about uh, you know, all of the uh, 1:29:23.120 --> 1:29:26.280 the money laundering ish things that happened with high end 1:29:26.320 --> 1:29:29.320 real estate and Trump that has been reported on UH. 1:29:29.360 --> 1:29:32.680 And I didn't know anything about tapes of of of 1:29:32.800 --> 1:29:34.800 random things that happened in Moscow, any of that stuff. 1:29:34.920 --> 1:29:36.800 I didn't know anything about the I heard rumors about 1:29:36.880 --> 1:29:40.080 the what what ended up, uh you know, uh being 1:29:40.120 --> 1:29:44.200 the Steel Documents steal dossier in the fall of sixteen 1:29:44.240 --> 1:29:46.160 after we launched the website, but I didn't anything about 1:29:46.160 --> 1:29:48.400 it at the time we launched it. UM. But it 1:29:48.439 --> 1:29:50.360 was clear that there was something weird going on here, 1:29:50.560 --> 1:29:51.960 and I wanted to just shine a light on it. 1:29:52.000 --> 1:29:54.720 So we created a website. UH didn't put a huge 1:29:54.720 --> 1:29:57.160 amount of money behind it, but publicized it a bit, 1:29:57.439 --> 1:29:59.200 got some attention for it. But at the end of 1:29:59.200 --> 1:30:02.479 the day, UH, there were so many other massive trends 1:30:02.680 --> 1:30:06.240 that were driving the election of Trump over Hillary. Looking 1:30:06.280 --> 1:30:09.320 to do thousand eighteen, there's no question in my mind 1:30:09.800 --> 1:30:13.360 that there is going to be a lot of of 1:30:13.360 --> 1:30:20.600 of effort by the Russian government to influence the elections 1:30:20.920 --> 1:30:24.879 where they can. They're gonna have one disadvantage relative to sixteen, 1:30:25.160 --> 1:30:28.040 which is there's not you can't write the same national, 1:30:28.600 --> 1:30:32.080 national fake news and fake social media postings that you 1:30:32.120 --> 1:30:35.400 couldn't do thousand sixteen. A because hopefully the facebooks and 1:30:35.400 --> 1:30:37.519 the twitters of the World War vigilant and be because 1:30:37.560 --> 1:30:40.320 it won't be one national issue. What what wins that 1:30:40.400 --> 1:30:43.800 swing state congressional district in Ohio will be specific to 1:30:43.800 --> 1:30:46.200 two Ohio candidates. The most of us have ever heard 1:30:46.200 --> 1:30:48.439 of the same thing, So it'll be district by district. 1:30:48.720 --> 1:30:52.440 But I do think that who wins Congress in ten 1:30:52.760 --> 1:30:55.439 is the binary issue for the next two years. You know, 1:30:55.520 --> 1:30:58.759 if Democrats win control of the House representatives, they're gonna 1:30:58.760 --> 1:31:03.879 be robust UH hearings. UH there's gonna be a robust process, 1:31:03.960 --> 1:31:08.400 and I think it's highly likely than Trump will be impeached. Now, 1:31:08.439 --> 1:31:12.240 the Democrats are afraid to say that because they don't properly. 1:31:12.320 --> 1:31:13.880 I think they don't want to make it sound like 1:31:13.920 --> 1:31:15.920 they're not going to be data driven. I say that 1:31:15.960 --> 1:31:18.559 because I think that what the data would expose between 1:31:18.600 --> 1:31:22.040 the Muller axis UM and the uh, you know, the 1:31:22.560 --> 1:31:25.280 Michael Cohen sleazy stuff and who knows what else, is 1:31:25.320 --> 1:31:28.639 that Trump has committed a series of acts that are 1:31:28.760 --> 1:31:31.680 impeachable offenses. But we have we don't have all the 1:31:31.720 --> 1:31:33.840 data yet, we only we have certain things that are 1:31:34.640 --> 1:31:36.920 suggestive of that. But I think when we get the data, 1:31:36.960 --> 1:31:39.560 we'll see what happens. My personal belief is when we 1:31:39.600 --> 1:31:42.080 get the data, it will demonstrate the need to impeach him, 1:31:42.280 --> 1:31:44.599 and that that should then happen. Then there's no question 1:31:44.600 --> 1:31:46.759 would be what happens in the Senate and does Trump 1:31:47.640 --> 1:31:50.599 cave then or does he stay in fight. Different people 1:31:50.600 --> 1:31:52.600 of different views of that. I don't think it's a 1:31:52.600 --> 1:31:56.599 foreker conclusion either way. If you study seventy three seventy four, UM, 1:31:56.760 --> 1:31:59.280 you know it was the smoking gun tapes that ultimately 1:31:59.360 --> 1:32:03.160 cause Republic in the Senate to flip and made Nixon resigned. Whereas, 1:32:03.200 --> 1:32:08.360 of course in in in nine with the Lewinsky stuff, Uh, 1:32:08.479 --> 1:32:11.160 it was an idea stuff. It was clear that Clinton 1:32:11.160 --> 1:32:15.960 had perjured himself over a blowjob, which was wrong. I 1:32:15.960 --> 1:32:18.240 think you can have an interesting debate about whether that's 1:32:18.240 --> 1:32:20.040 an apeche of offense or not. But I don't. I 1:32:20.040 --> 1:32:22.760 think the Democrats didn't feel under political pressure to call 1:32:22.800 --> 1:32:25.320 it in a petual offense, and therefore he finished his 1:32:25.400 --> 1:32:27.240 termat So I don't know how it's going to go 1:32:27.600 --> 1:32:29.720 beyond that, but I think the eighteen election will be 1:32:29.800 --> 1:32:32.559 the uh, you know, the limit. If the Democrats don't 1:32:32.560 --> 1:32:34.280 win the House an eighteen, we'll just have two more 1:32:34.360 --> 1:32:36.160 years like the last two years, the less year and 1:32:36.160 --> 1:32:40.479 a half. Okay. I have another political minded question, and 1:32:40.520 --> 1:32:45.040 that's if there if the right has uh media and 1:32:45.080 --> 1:32:47.120 they have media scale with Fox News, and then they 1:32:47.200 --> 1:32:49.800 have the biggest you know, tweeter of all time that's 1:32:49.840 --> 1:32:54.720 really dominating the headlines. Based on your experience with Air America, Um, 1:32:55.320 --> 1:32:58.400 what can the left do to create a media engine, 1:32:58.520 --> 1:33:03.040 communications strategy move forward that can rival what the right 1:33:03.200 --> 1:33:06.599 is doing at scale and to communicate what the demos 1:33:06.600 --> 1:33:10.120 about or what the left represents. And then also how 1:33:10.200 --> 1:33:13.080 does that intersect with technology? Is it like what the 1:33:13.160 --> 1:33:15.800 crooked media guys are doing, but just at scale. And 1:33:16.160 --> 1:33:17.720 if you were to say I'm gonna I'm gonna launch 1:33:17.720 --> 1:33:21.760 you America for what would that company look like and 1:33:22.000 --> 1:33:26.439 what would that communication strategy be? Well, UM, I have 1:33:26.600 --> 1:33:30.680 thought about conceptually, but not operationally, what it would be. UM. 1:33:31.080 --> 1:33:33.760 I think it actually if you look at the fact 1:33:33.840 --> 1:33:38.080 that Trump's popularity is still below UM, I think it's 1:33:38.120 --> 1:33:43.599 all about marshaling electoral critical mass from people who want 1:33:43.640 --> 1:33:45.560 our country to work where it's supposed to work. So 1:33:45.640 --> 1:33:47.880 I don't think the right thing to do is to 1:33:48.200 --> 1:33:55.400 fight UM their boisterous UH propaganda and UH name calling 1:33:55.640 --> 1:33:58.600 and frequently lies with the same. I think the right 1:33:58.640 --> 1:34:01.599 thing to do is to appeal to anybody that thinks 1:34:01.680 --> 1:34:05.760 that our democracy is too important to allow truths to 1:34:05.840 --> 1:34:09.400 become a subjective thing, that our societal cohesion is too 1:34:09.439 --> 1:34:14.000 important to allow uh facts to be irrelevant. And if 1:34:14.080 --> 1:34:16.160 you just say, look, this is just about what the 1:34:16.240 --> 1:34:19.680 facts are, right, you know, climate change, there's there's an 1:34:19.840 --> 1:34:24.040 incoutabal scientific consensus around this. That's a fact. Um. The 1:34:24.840 --> 1:34:27.160 the data on what weather is happening. That's a fact. 1:34:27.439 --> 1:34:29.720 And yes, it's unfortunate for people in the abstract, in 1:34:29.760 --> 1:34:32.559 the extractive industries that those facts are there, but those 1:34:32.560 --> 1:34:35.479 are facts. So I think if we just literally um 1:34:35.720 --> 1:34:41.000 stick to the facts and being unyielding about raising those 1:34:41.080 --> 1:34:43.439 facts in the space, in the face of name calling, 1:34:43.800 --> 1:34:45.920 in the face of about hominem attacks, in the face 1:34:45.960 --> 1:34:48.479 of whatever else, I think that's the greatest chance to 1:34:49.000 --> 1:34:54.720 restore some balance to the political discourse and to the 1:34:54.920 --> 1:34:57.840 text and balances. I mean the big tragedy of TWI 1:34:58.000 --> 1:35:01.040 sixteen West and just Trump's election, but the fact that 1:35:01.520 --> 1:35:03.360 one of the one of the other branches of government's 1:35:03.400 --> 1:35:06.720 supposed to be a check and balance has completely abdicated 1:35:06.760 --> 1:35:10.719 that responsibility. And it's advocate the responsibility because the politics 1:35:10.920 --> 1:35:13.800 for the for Republicans are that they feel like if 1:35:13.840 --> 1:35:16.400 they don't, they'll get primary and they'll lose, and if 1:35:16.439 --> 1:35:19.360 they do, they'll get to keep playing ball. So that's 1:35:19.479 --> 1:35:22.280 it's unfortunate that that that is the dynamic we have. 1:35:22.840 --> 1:35:25.519 But the only solution to that dynamic is to is 1:35:25.560 --> 1:35:29.280 to not have them being the have the levels of power. 1:35:29.600 --> 1:35:31.519 And to do that we've got to persuade a lot 1:35:31.560 --> 1:35:34.000 of independence that that change has to happen. And if 1:35:34.040 --> 1:35:46.160 we do that, then I think that will build on itself. Okay, rights, 1:35:46.200 --> 1:35:51.840 The question was about music and VR. Um. I am 1:35:53.240 --> 1:35:58.920 mediu embarrassed on VR because the ergonomics of using a 1:35:59.040 --> 1:36:03.960 VR headset and an experience are not Uh. It's so 1:36:04.160 --> 1:36:08.040 immersive that it is not doesn't fit in a wide 1:36:08.120 --> 1:36:11.160 enough swatch of life. Everyone got excited about three D 1:36:11.800 --> 1:36:13.880 because you could go to watch James Cameron movie in 1:36:13.880 --> 1:36:16.920 a movie theater, but that's an intended immersive experience where 1:36:16.960 --> 1:36:19.799 for two hours you're focusing on you're going to a location, 1:36:19.880 --> 1:36:24.080 you're watching it home. Three D didn't work because people 1:36:24.160 --> 1:36:26.519 don't watch glass put glasses on to watch movies at 1:36:26.560 --> 1:36:30.519 home because they're watching in such a range of different ways. So, 1:36:31.160 --> 1:36:33.200 you know, and lets until you have the equivalent of 1:36:33.320 --> 1:36:36.880 direct view VR. Uh, I think it's going to be 1:36:37.000 --> 1:36:40.640 a more of a niche thing, uh than than people realize. 1:36:40.680 --> 1:36:44.519 So do I think that? Um? Uh? There are ways 1:36:44.560 --> 1:36:49.840 to do much more immersive experiences with live music shows. Absolutely, 1:36:49.920 --> 1:36:52.080 and you know there's a there's there's lots of different 1:36:52.479 --> 1:36:55.080 uh techniques for doing that. Do I think people are 1:36:55.080 --> 1:36:58.760 gonna put VR headsets on to watch concerts. It makes 1:36:58.800 --> 1:37:01.720 for a great demo. But know, the headset fatigue thing 1:37:01.800 --> 1:37:05.640 is a real phenomenon, and uh, you know, the the 1:37:05.840 --> 1:37:09.879 ergonomics of using these devices have to be uh compelling. 1:37:10.520 --> 1:37:13.639 Uh and uh you know I I one of one 1:37:13.680 --> 1:37:16.639 of the Angel investments that I've done that I'm proudest 1:37:16.800 --> 1:37:18.639 in the last couple of years is a company called 1:37:18.680 --> 1:37:22.600 Control Labs, which Stephen Lee wrote the nice write up 1:37:22.640 --> 1:37:24.960 of in Wired magazine to bringian kind of Thomas Weird, 1:37:25.000 --> 1:37:27.200 who I've known for for many years, and his his 1:37:27.400 --> 1:37:33.080 his band of of neurobiologists, and they've created a technology 1:37:33.240 --> 1:37:36.040 letch of an arm band that you basically think of 1:37:36.080 --> 1:37:39.080 it as like an Apple Watch or a you know, 1:37:39.280 --> 1:37:41.760 a next generation fitbit where the Apple where the band 1:37:41.840 --> 1:37:46.880 can can literally detect individual electron signals, uh, neurological signals 1:37:47.200 --> 1:37:49.800 from your brain to your fingers, so you it can 1:37:49.880 --> 1:37:52.360 tell what you're doing here with your individual fingers with 1:37:52.680 --> 1:37:55.479 a band that sits under wrist something like that, where 1:37:55.520 --> 1:37:57.360 the technology is not in base, you don't have to 1:37:57.400 --> 1:37:59.360 wear a big data glove. I think it's going a 1:37:59.439 --> 1:38:02.400 huge import for the input side of all this this 1:38:02.640 --> 1:38:04.720 a r VR staff and we need the equivalent of 1:38:04.720 --> 1:38:06.559 the output side of that where you can get an 1:38:06.560 --> 1:38:09.840 immersive experience without having to wear an immersive headset. And 1:38:09.960 --> 1:38:12.920 I think I think the a R plus path is 1:38:12.960 --> 1:38:14.920 probably a better path for achieving that in my view 1:38:15.280 --> 1:38:17.960 than the than the immersive headset experience, which make for 1:38:18.000 --> 1:38:21.120 incredible demos, but I don't think people really want to 1:38:21.160 --> 1:38:24.240 be in those. Thank gear for that long. Okay, let 1:38:24.280 --> 1:38:25.840 that be a lesson. You don't have to be limited 1:38:25.880 --> 1:38:29.959 to one vertical Rob as we've owned the Pro Bowlers 1:38:30.040 --> 1:38:34.640 tour is involved in music, technology and politics. Thanks so 1:38:34.800 --> 1:38:37.439 much for being here and sharing your ideas of the audiences. 1:38:43.600 --> 1:38:46.080 That wraps up this week's episode of the Bob left 1:38:46.080 --> 1:38:49.080 Sets podcast, recorded live at the Music Media Summit in 1:38:49.120 --> 1:38:52.840 Santa Barbara, California and produced by tune In. I hope 1:38:52.880 --> 1:38:55.760 you enjoyed this conversation with CEO of Real Networks, Rob 1:38:55.800 --> 1:38:58.800 Glazer and his interactions with Asia and his history with 1:38:58.920 --> 1:39:01.800 Bill Gates and micro us off. What did you think 1:39:01.840 --> 1:39:04.400 of the interview? Emailed me at Bob at left Sex 1:39:04.479 --> 1:39:13.080 dot com. Until next time, I'm Bob left Sex. Can 1:39:13.479 --> 1:39:22.040 think of and me reas don't know exactly why must 1:39:22.200 --> 1:39:25.000 be its out of theseas