WEBVTT - Chris Anderson: Don’t Confuse Valuation With Tech Adaptation 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.320 Masters in Business is brought to you by the American 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:07.160 Arbitration Association. Business disputes are inevitable, resolve faster with the 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:12.240 American Arbitration Association, the global leader in alternative dispute resolution 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.760 for over ninety years. Learn more at a d R 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:22.919 dot org. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:28.400 on Bloomberg Radio. This week on the podcast, I have 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:31.720 a special guest. His name is Chris Anderson. He is 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:35.680 the founder of three D Robotics. He was formerly editor 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:39.640 in chief of Wired magazine, and he is the author 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:43.800 of the book The Long Tail. Chris Anderson has been 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:48.360 at the forefront of technology for a good couple of decades. 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:52.040 He saw pretty much where the industry has been going, 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:56.560 long before the bulk of the public has figured it out. 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:01.480 He has tremendous insight into why certain things are as 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:11.280 valuable as they are and why certain products, industries, sectors, software, gadgets, etcetera. 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:17.120 Are capable of achieving mass acceptance. I find him to 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:24.000 be consistently insightful and forward looking, and I don't know 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:29.520 anybody else who's quite had his vantage point throughout the nineties, 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:32.000 two thousands and beyond. He really has seen a lot 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:38.839 of things coming before anybody else did. Three three D Robotics, 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:41.440 as an example, is a started out as a d 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:44.959 I Y drone company and they just got so of 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.559 warm with orders that they pivoted to being a drone 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:52.760 manufacturer and now they're a drone software creator. Really really 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:58.919 fascinating stuff. If you are at all interested in technology, drones, software, 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:02.600 this is sort of conversation that you're going to really enjoy. So, 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:11.880 with no further ado, my interview with Chris Anderson. My 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.560 special guest today is someone I've known for a long 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:18.000 time and have been a big fan of his work 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.800 for all these many years. His name is Chris Anderson. 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.760 He is the former editor in chief at Wired magazine, 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:29.120 worked as a journalist and editor at the Economist for 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:33.399 seven years. He is the author of several books, including 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.480 the New York Times bestseller The Long Tail. Presently, he 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:40.680 is CEO and founder of three D Robotics, which is 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:45.760 a UH drone and software company, The Long Tale. You 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:49.640 probably are familiar with it from either the original Wired 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:53.000 article or the book itself. The book won the Lobe 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.640 Award for the Best Business Book of the Year in 0:02:56.720 --> 0:02:59.639 two thousand and seven. He has been named to all 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:03.200 man or of lists, one of Time magazines one hundred 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:08.480 most Influential People, Tech forty, the most influential minds in technology, 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.960 foreign policies, global thinkers. Chris Anderson, welcome to Bloomberg Radio, 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:15.640 and let me add thank you for having us here 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.839 in the Three D Robotics headquarters. There is just great 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:21.160 to have you on our coast. It's it's a pleasure 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:23.560 out here to be out here. And I travel all 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.880 over and don't frequently say I could I could live 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.320 in this climate. And this is one of those places where, yeah, 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:32.760 I could live here if I had to adapt. It's 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.320 worth noting. You're in Berkeley, which is the nicest part 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:38.400 of the pay area, is it? Do you say so? Yeah? 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:41.400 It's a little cooler here than down in normally what's 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:43.960 cooler than Palaul? A bit warmer than the city. Okay, 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.200 there you go. Um, so let's let's jump right into it. 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:50.720 You have a really unusual background. You studied quantum mechanics 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.800 and science journalism. Some people do science and some people 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:58.040 do journalism. Not a lot of people do both. How 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:00.600 did you find your way to marry those two fields. 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:03.880 I didn't actually study either of them properly. I might 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:06.680 my degrees in computational physics, okay, but it just so 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:09.720 happened that in writing up my my resume, I happened 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:12.200 to take have taken a class in science journalism, which 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:15.280 at the time seemed the only link I had to journalism, 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:17.000 so I stuck it on my on my resume. But 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:19.200 but no, my degrees in computation. So your whole career 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:21.440 is a sharade? Is that what you're it is? It 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.760 is no you know in it's in it's big dimensions. 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:26.679 It doesn't make a lot of sense. I went from 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.080 from physics, um, to ultimately end up working for a 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:34.240 fashion company. Um, it's conde NaSTA. But fashion advertising is 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:36.840 the main revenue. Okay, But they're a little more than 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:41.000 a fashion there. There are a lot more fine publication indeed, indeed, 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:42.920 and it's not fair to conde NaSTA call it. But 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.080 but when you're in the you know, the elevators of 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.279 when the time was four times square and it's supermodels 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:51.039 up and down, you ask yourself, how did I get here? 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.120 It is? It does require some explaining, to say the least, 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:58.800 so computational physics. I don't want to jump too far ahead. 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:04.279 The idea of how drones operate and managed to both 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:09.000 fly within three dimensional space as well as do analytics 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.520 of what's around them. That seems to be like, oh, 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:17.640 computational physics to drones. But the middle so years are 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.680 a little aberrational. So let's start with with the economists. 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:25.080 You were there for seven years a writer and editor, 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:27.960 is that right? Yeah? I ran Faius bureaus, but it 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.560 was mostly writing, as the case for most people. The economist, 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:33.040 I mean the the You're absolutely right, there's a straight 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:37.479 line from from physics to to drones and measuring the 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:41.240 world and analyzing an etcetera. The wiggly in between bits 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:46.640 which consists of a about thirty years UM had to do. Um. 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:49.840 It's kind of interesting paths. So physics in the late 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.640 eighties e early nineties, which is when I was there, UM, 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:55.040 we were all inspired by the way to physicists of 0:05:55.040 --> 0:06:00.960 the twentieth century, the you know, the fiem etcetera. UM, 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.920 and that really was that the noble science. Unfortunately, UM, 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:07.440 the quest of physics was to get closer and closer 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:10.520 to the Big Bang, to understand the origins of the universe, 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:12.680 and closer to the Big Bang means higher energies, which 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:16.560 means bigger particle accelerators, which means more money. And eventually 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:18.720 we just scaled out of government budgets and so there 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.040 were no more particle accelerators in the US that we're 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:23.640 going to be built, and so and so you had 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:25.840 two choices. You could either like wait in line for 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.680 you know, the LHC and CERN in Switzerland, wait in 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:31.800 line for like twenty years and maybe your experiment would 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:34.840 be would be a success, maybe wouldn't. Or you could 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.520 take the skills that you learned in physics and apply 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.160 them elsewhere. So the skills were when you think about 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.320 the internet was invented in the physics world to connect labs. 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:47.200 The web was invented at CERN, a physics laboratory, and 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:52.000 the first big data was physics data supercomputers using accelerator data, 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:54.279 and so you really only had some Most people sort 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:56.040 of said, well, what do I got here? I got 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:59.120 I got you know, statistical skills, I can crunch big data. 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.240 I'll go to Wall Street be a quant That was 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:03.200 the natural one. A lot of people went went and 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:05.599 did that for the money? Go for for the money. 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:07.479 Some of us said, well, Okay, yeah, we can do that. 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.400 But there's also this Internet thing, which seems kind of interesting. 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:12.920 The time, it was really just a network to connect 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.880 scientific laboratories. Well, the original Dark Book concept was, hey, 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.160 we have to have the capacity to send launch instructions 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.760 in the event that we're hit first. Well sure, but 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:25.240 I mean at the time this was a little bit 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:27.239 past then. The true the Internet was largely to connect 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.920 supercomputer centers for things like climate modeling. You know, this 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.040 is the part where Al Gore you know, invented it, 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:34.840 um which you know, he actually had a lot He 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:36.280 didn't invent it, but he had a lot to do 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:40.760 with them with encouraging its growth during that era. Um. So, 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:42.480 so those of us, you know, who were sitting here 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:43.840 and say, well, I don't want to go to Wall Street, 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:45.640 but I do have some some Internet skills. What's the 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.640 internet good for? Along comes this magazine in called Wired 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.240 with like fuluorescent ink and saying, hey, this Internet thing 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:55.640 is going to be big one day. One day. It's 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.280 not just you know, a tool to connect labs. It's 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:01.320 gonna be cultural revolution at cetera. And so I decided 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:04.120 to make my career the Internet, and the first step 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.040 you know, there was I went. I was working for 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.119 scientific journals as an editor, and then the Economist asked 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.120 me to take over their technology beat and I said sure, 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:14.720 but I'd like to cover the Internet. And they're like why, 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:16.840 I don't know, whatever, whatever, you say, what do you need? 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:21.480 And I like I needed internet connection? This is this 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:26.400 was ninety three. Yeah, and and at what point did 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:30.000 you end up leaving so the economists you weren't necessarily 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:33.720 covering covering economics and business. I was, I was originally 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:36.320 and then I went to China to to run the 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:40.960 bureau there and China from just before the handover of 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:44.720 Hong Kong Um. I guess that was ninety seven two 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:47.840 after wto in two thousand and one. Fascinating time to 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:50.080 be in China, got to serve to see China emerge. 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:51.840 And there was in New York where you and I 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:54.480 spent time together and them was recruited from there too 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:57.480 by Condyn asked to run Wired. Um so the only 0:08:57.480 --> 0:08:59.520 publication I would leave the economists. You were in the 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:03.000 econom New York Bureau, and that's what led to Conde 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.000 Nast and Wired. So you take over Wired, which was 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:08.640 it was always a good magazine, but it was kind 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:12.520 of a hodgepodge for a while. Well it was, it 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:17.360 was you know, it basically created this sort of esthetic 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.880 and philosophical foundations of the Internet is going to be big. 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:22.719 It's like the biggest things since electricity. That was kind 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.640 of the wired concept. UM. I took over in two 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:27.840 thousand and one. So this is after the stock after 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:32.520 the dot com bust, and six weeks before September eleventh, UM, 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:36.600 excellent time. Well, so you know, at that point everyone 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:39.800 was dismissing the Internet as as as a fraud or 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:42.319 at least or at least wildly over high. But that's 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:44.640 what I mean by excellent time. You come in with 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.520 very low expectations. People aren't torturing you to why don't 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:50.960 he we have any results this quarter? Precisely so, so 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:54.240 I was betting that the Internet was real and that 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.520 the dot com bust was about Wall Street, not about 0:09:57.520 --> 0:09:59.800 Silicon Valley. UM. And And as you say, when you 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.560 when buy at the bottom, you get three wonderful things. Um. 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:07.280 First of all, your failures are discard cloaked by the marketplaces. 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.320 It's just everybody's can't succeed in that in that in 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.920 that environment, Secondly, a lot of talent had come to 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.920 Silicon Valley during the boom and they were available, so 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:18.720 I was able to hire really good people on the 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:23.720 cheap on the cheap um, well, they were available. And Thirdly, 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:28.280 my year on years, I had a exactly the next 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:29.599 year I was just going to blow through my n 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:33.360 So before we move too forward past two thousand and one, 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:38.320 having lived through the nineties and all the enthusiasm and 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:41.600 all the excitement and then the collapse, how did that 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:46.080 color your view of technology and the Internet or did it? 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:50.080 It was? It was I think I was my um, 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:54.080 my faith and technology was completely unshaken. Um. You know, 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:56.880 as a physicist, you basically think in terms of like, 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:01.000 you know, what's like fundamental in the world, and there's 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:03.640 something about the Internet that just struck me as fundamental. 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.680 It struck me as in the same category as democracy 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.960 and evolution. It's kind of one of these one of 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.160 these truisms. And as a matter of fact, when I 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:13.839 was at the Economists my first they had these things 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.520 called surveys, which are these big sixteen page special features. 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:18.839 It's the only time you get to use your name 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.560 as an author, and which is by the way, is 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:25.440 unique in the world of journalism, pretty much unique exactly. 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:27.360 I mean, where there's no byline, you write an article 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.120 and it's by the economy. The notion of the collective voice. Yeah. 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:34.240 Um so, my my first survey on the Internet was 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:38.760 entitled the Accidental super Highway. Um, and the notion of 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:43.200 things happening, you know, by accident, suggests that really they're 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:46.480 happening by nature. There's that that that you know, this 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:50.320 this emerged it was an emergent organic universe exactly. And 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:53.360 the fact that it was an emergent rather than synthetic, 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.280 meant that it was more real. Huh. That that that's 0:11:56.320 --> 0:12:00.920 quite fascinating. The the thing I thought you were heading towards, 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.760 and I think I'm mangling this is it met Metcalf's 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.920 law that does the each node multiplies the value. That 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:11.880 quickly became obvious that every time you add another user 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.080 to the Internet the value increased. Explanab absolutely. So that's 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:18.680 the value element. But the governance structure, the fact that 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.520 it was not centrally controlled. I mean, there's some trivial 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:27.160 central control, but that's that's that's that's a very lowest level. 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.120 But the terms of the content itself, the fact that 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:31.120 it was the fact that it is, you know, truly 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:37.400 democratic ameritocratic system. Um. That is, that's actually the more 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.480 important rule um. And that's why we've worked so hard 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.320 to protect the openness of the Internet is because the 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.000 emergent properties come from that openness. So one of the 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.280 questions I wanted to ask you, you kind of answered already, 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:54.120 So I want to expand on it. You've been quite 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:59.400 a student at forecasting let's call it near trends, extrapolating 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:04.800 from just very nascent things not well formed. Well, at 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:06.920 this point, I think we all can agree mobile is 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:09.480 going to be big one thing. But on the other hand, 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:13.480 you were looking at things that were the trend wasn't clear, 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:17.679 It wasn't let's just extrapolate this in infinity. You identified 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:22.720 seedlings and said this is gonna be significant. Is it 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.520 simply the organic nature of it that court your eye? 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:28.360 Or how did you How are you able to say, oh, 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:31.400 there's huge potential. You know, you're just you know the 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:35.360 people who, especially after the crash, people said, you know, 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:38.240 it's too good to be true, this is just overhyped. 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:40.800 What made you turn around and say, no, this is 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:44.679 substantial forget the finance part of it. The technology part 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:46.720 of it is real. Yeah, I mean things like the 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:49.880 long tail or or drones, which I would do right now. 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:52.480 So basically it's there's two elements. One of them is 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.160 that it's just exciting. You know, it's just shiny and 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:58.040 exciting and you know, my heart sings and all that 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:00.320 kind of stuff. But that's that's necessary, but not suf issued. 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.800 Um what sufficient is that also has to align with 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.080 my world view of what what works, this sort of 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:08.880 notion of openness or emergence or or you know the 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.480 fact that it benefits and democratization. Um. So when you 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:15.400 so like my first book, The long Tail, I mean 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:18.360 the an article as well. I mean the way that 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:22.200 happened was not It wasn't an idea. Um. What happened 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:24.240 is that I'm sitting here, you know, it's it's two 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:30.440 thousand two. Um, I'm I'm a physicist in Silicon Value, right, 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.160 I'm now running a magazine. I'm not really trained as 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:35.000 a journalist. I'm not, you know, I was. I had 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:37.960 a staff of brilliant narrative storytellers, but I was just 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:42.640 kind of a nerd, you know, with number cruncher indeed indeed, 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.200 so I need some numbers to crunch. And I was 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:46.960 I was thinking, you know, I was like, Okay, look, 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:49.840 I believe that this is the you know, the seeds 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:52.760 of the century being formed in the Googles and Amazons 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:55.640 and ebays around me. And I'll bet that in those 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.760 servers is the data that can illustrate what the century 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.080 it looks like. Let's just ask them for the data. 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:05.680 And has anybody previously asked them, Hey, we'd like to 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.520 see you know? And well, no, I mean because typically 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:11.160 the academics weren't looking at that, because that was considered 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:15.240 sort of cultural and trivial. Um. The companies themselves were 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:17.480 just starting to bring up the data scientists and the 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:21.160 commist was quite early, and UM and and journalists just 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:25.080 typically weren't weren't quantitative exactly. So there was a brief 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:27.800 window if you, if you asked nicely and you know, science, 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:29.600 some n D s et cetera, that you could actually 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.400 get that data. And so I I got the dat 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:34.520 different places, like it was a rhapsody I think was 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:37.160 my music services original one, but I also got sort 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:41.280 of scrubbed data from from eBay and elsewhere. I just 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.120 started analyzing, and the long tailed popped right out of 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:45.760 it. It It was clearly obviously there was a kind of 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.560 a power law distribution, and that the size of the tail, 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:51.600 you know, depending on how you split it, was about 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:53.360 the size of the head, which suggested that there was 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:57.640 a market and a submerged marketplace out there beyond beyond. 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:02.880 And what's interesting that about a year later after I 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:05.400 started got all this data, then you may be remember 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:07.320 this M A O L. You know, then people started 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:09.720 academics started saying, hey, you know, there's some interesting data here, 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.400 let's ask for it. A O. L. Released a bunch 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.200 of data and anonymized it, but didn't anonymize it well enough. 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:20.200 It got de anonymized, um you know, privacy issues, and 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:22.120 then became impossible to get dat again. So it was 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.200 like a window of about two years where you could 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:25.880 have done the long tale, and I just happened to 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:28.360 be there. Then I was a subscriber. I still have 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.800 a subscribe to Wired for it's like a decade plus now. 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:35.000 And and the thing that always stood out to me 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:40.920 about Wired was the marriage of great content with the 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:48.480 technology slant with fantastic design ethics. The the visual impact 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:54.080 of the magazine felt like the Internet and a print 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.200 magazine had a baby. It was. It was so visual 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:01.240 in ways that other magazines weren't. Was the thinking beyond that, 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:03.760 So I can take no credit for that whatsoever. Is 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:06.960 that that was the vision of the original founding team 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:09.960 A Lewis Rosetto, Jane Metcalfe and John Plunkett, who was 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:13.080 the original designer and their inspiration at the time, the 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:14.919 dear friends right now. As a matter of fact, every 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:16.919 time there's a new editor, Nick Thompson from the New 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:19.040 Yorkers now the In and we all had dinner together, 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:21.600 we always kind of, you know, infuse the new editor 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:23.919 with the creation myth and all that. But the idea. 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:27.240 You know, if you if you ask them with the story, um, 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:29.399 they'll say, well, you know, we were this was the 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.880 emergence of computers and and so print ink has got 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:38.320 reflective properties, but screens have a missive properties. So pixels 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.520 emit light, and so you know, we wanted to we 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.639 want to use an aesthetic that seemed emittive, emissive. It 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:46.800 like like it glowed, and a lot of the page, 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:49.560 a lot of the neon colors and other things. Very much. 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.879 We were like a screen amidden absolutely. Um So I 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.120 think that I think they'll forgive me for for saying 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:56.520 that this is a little bit of a kind of 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:00.639 a of a of a post facto expo nation. I 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:02.440 think what really happened at the time is there was 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.000 a new printing process, Like I again any about this. 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:09.119 It was a five color printing process, and it was 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:12.440 very expensive, and some printing plants that invested in these 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.159 new kind of five color processes were looking for some 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.159 examples to show them off. And it just basically that 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:22.000 like a fancy ink and like fluorescent became available affordably, 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:24.320 and so they took advantage of it. And it makes 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:26.680 perfect sense. And the magazine always popped. You turned the 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:30.280 pages and it really it really was alive. So you 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:33.200 take over wired with the air coming out of the bubble. 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.119 It was mid collapse, um. And it would get worse 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:38.800 and and got worse. How hard was it to stay 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:42.760 positive as things just went down the tubes? Um? For 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:47.440 me it was it was super easy. Um So. Um. 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.000 I would say that if you and I, you know, 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:52.080 I think you're gonna be talking to Mark andresen As 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:54.720 as well, you know, those of us who were there 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:58.359 then never never doubted that the Internet was real. We 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:02.040 understood the distinction between the this this stock market valuations 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:05.200 and the underlying technology was the West Coast view. Oh, 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.440 the guys in New York, really they really messed us up. 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:11.960 You know, they took valuations too high. No surprise, Choris 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:14.680 crashed into the sea. I was actually in China during 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:16.840 the bubble, uh to the dot com bubble, So I 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.199 can't really say what they with the collective view was, 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.119 but I do think that, you know, the underlying belief 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:24.560 there was something fundamental going on here with the networks, 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:27.640 um was was never doubted. Now this is of course, 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:29.520 you know, you know how the Internet works, like there's 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:31.720 the layers, right, There's like the hardware layer with the 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.120 fiber opter cables, and then there's like you know, then 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.200 the software layers and content layers. A lot of the 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:38.760 valuations were at the higher level of the content, and 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.600 the notion was the content was ephemeral, would come and go. 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:44.399 But the underlying notion of connecting the world was was 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:47.639 really important. Um And so you know, the the I 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:52.080 think when I got there, the consensus was that Wall 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:55.720 Street had financed an extraordinary infrastructure build out which made 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.640 fiber capacity super cheap and this was the best thing 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:03.119 ever for restarting. That's suddenly the cost of enter the barriers, 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:05.840 the cost of entry was very low, thank you, thank 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:08.199 you Wall Street, and that we would just now, you know, 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:10.960 build for the next two years without you know, the 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.920 financial microscope and see where it goes. Dan Gross wrote 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:18.320 a book called pop While Bubbles are better than people 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:22.800 realizing and the example use whether it's railroads or telegrams 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:26.480 or in this case dark fiber, Global crossing and Metromedia 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:28.960 fiber and go down the list. They laid miles and 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.719 miles of dark fiber at thousands of dollars per whatever 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.359 it was, and it sells for pennies on the dollar. 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:39.080 The theory is, but for this collapsing, you don't end 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.760 up with YouTube and Facebook and all these other band 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:46.480 with intensive intensive things. Yeah, now, Dan, Dan, Dan super 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:48.640 smart And then the book's great um And I think 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:51.080 when you look back now at that decade, it's almost 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:53.760 impossible to see the bust when you look at the 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:57.360 underlying adoption curves and data curves, etcetera. It's weird. I mean, 0:20:57.359 --> 0:20:59.520 you can obviously see it on the nineties or in 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:01.360 the if you look back today, if you look back 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:05.280 at internet adoption trends, you almost can't see the dip 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.200 right because the end customers continued to be added at 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.040 a tremendous rate because there was something real there. People 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:13.760 wanted what we were making in the fact that was 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:17.720 cheaper and accelerated the often. So let's let's talk about Wired. 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.679 When you take over Wired, it's kind of uh we 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:23.880 I said a Hodgepodge. I think at one point they 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:26.720 didn't even own their own domain. So if you wanted 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:30.399 to do internet stuff, how did that come about? Again? 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:34.080 Before my time? But but yeah, so, um so Wired 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:36.480 was you know, sort of the before the dot com bubble. 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:41.000 There was there were previous bubbles, and Wired was the 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:43.840 hottest thing around in the you know, in the late nineties. 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:47.840 UM basically created a lot of online media. So like Apache, 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:50.760