WEBVTT - Anil Dash Talks About Tech Industry Ethics 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:06.800 This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio. 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:12.399 This week on the podcast, I have a special guest. 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:18.840 His name is a Neil Dash. He is a leading technician, entrepreneur, 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:23.080 founder uh in the world of micro publishing and blogging. 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:27.720 I know his work from back when six Apart was 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:32.480 an early pioneer in the world of blogging. They put 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:39.640 out type Pad, which was really the first robust, whizzywig 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:42.919 what you see is what you get sort of blogging platform. 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:47.320 Before that, you had companies like Yahoo Geo Cities. My 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:50.919 first blog was on Geo Cities and I say this 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:53.319 it's It's really not a joke. It's true. I say 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:55.400 it as a joke, but it's true. I would take 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:58.760 fift twenty minutes to write something and then two hours 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.080 to code in an HTM out in order for it 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:04.200 to work. On Geo Cities. It was you were literally 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:09.880 coding everything. Every every indent, every bold, every underlying, every 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:14.760 paragraph had an htmail code arout it. So to reduce 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.600 that process of of micro publishing to something that was 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.720 like it very much was like working on a document 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:27.920 on Microsoft Word. If you wanted to format it, you 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:31.520 just clicked the button that said, here's your underline, here's 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:34.240 your talles, here's your footnote, here's your and it was. 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:39.840 It was absolutely game changing. It went from a tent 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:44.600 to one ratio of of coding to writing to hundreds 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:46.760 to one in the opposite direction. You would take a 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.760 half hour to write something and maybe thirty seconds to 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:53.720 format it. It was easy as pie. My first blog 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.520 was big Picture dot type head dot com. It's still 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:59.000 up there, by the way. Not only did they create 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:02.600 the software for this, but they also created the hosting 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.559 for it. And I find six apart was a game 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.800 changer for the world of publishing. I found this to 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:15.840 be an absolutely fascinating conversation. If you're into blogging, technology, entrepreneurship, 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:20.440 venture capital, et cetera, you're gonna find this conversation fascinating. So, 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:27.720 with no further ado, my conversation with a Neil Dash, 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.200 My special guest today is a Neil Dash. He was 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:35.760 an advisor to the Obama White House's Office of Digital Strategy. 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:40.240 He is a technical advisor to Vox Media advises the 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:43.760 company medium on its publishing. He is also on the 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:49.000 National Advisory Council of Donors Choose. His day job is 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:53.919 CEO of fog Create Software, which has created such products 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.760 as stack overflow and trell Oh were they involved in 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:00.000 Marker Bass or is that something separate? Was a startup 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.240 was doing right before this? Before that, he writes a 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:06.080 monthly opinion column on the impact of technology on society 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:09.839 for Wired magazine. I know him as employee number one 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:15.000 at six Apart, behind the seminal blogging software type Pad. 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:17.760 He also serves on the board of the Data and 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:22.600 Society Research Institute. Neil Dash Welcome to Bloomberg. Thanks so 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:25.520 much for having me here. So I mentioned type head, 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.640 I really have to jump right into that. I know 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:32.120 who you are because I actually was a beta tester 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:34.280 for type pad, and that's where I rolled out. Thank 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:36.480 you for being one. That's where I rolled out the 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.560 big picture blogged tell us about your role with the 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:44.280 company six Sure. So I started blogging back and there 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:46.560 were a couple dozen bloggers on the internet, and I thought, 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:49.480 what were you using? Two blog? I was manually doing it. 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:52.240 I was the people who use Windows who remember an 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.200 app called notepad, and I was manually writing HTML, the 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:00.160 language of webpages, in Notepad and saving it onto a 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.560 web server by myself, which is the cutting edge or 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.320 technology back into the last So I was using Yahoo 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:09.040 geo Cities, which you're telling me is more advanced. I 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.600 was just cutting and pasting content and then having to 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:14.800 wrap the HTML code around, right. So that was the 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:16.640 state of the art. And then in late ninety nine 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.560 a couple of the first blogging tools came along and 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:21.919 then and so I started using those like Blogger and 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.480 which Google later bought and other things like that, and 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.799 uh and Friends shortly thereafter built this tool called movable 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:31.120 type and it was the first sort of serious blogging platform. 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.359 Almost immediately people used it to build Gawker, huffing and post. 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.400 What was behind movable type, Uh, they were then husband 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:41.120 and wife couple Ben trot A, Mina trot Um and um, 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:43.839 and really we're sort of visionaries about the idea that 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:45.640 we should take this medium seriously. It was going to 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.200 be something big. It wasn't just h you know, people 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:51.000 sharing their feelings in a journal online like this was 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.200 going to be where media was head. And this is 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:57.359 this is pre Facebook, pre Twitter. Oh yeah, this is 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.320 way earlier. Yeah before friends stir you even remember that one, 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.799 so way way back there, and consumer internet was dead 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:06.000 deader than dead in two thousand one. I mean you 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:10.039 couldn't you know. We we did it a round that 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.080 was six grand that we raised, and people were like, wow, 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:14.520 that's all the money in the world. You know, I 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:16.400 was here. I mean, it's it's it's like the catering 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.320 budget for a launch party for one of these startups today. 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:22.120 And uh. And so we did that and what was 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:25.279 interesting was people almost immediately recognized this is important, this 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.520 is something new in media. There's something really powerful enabling here. 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:29.840 And we thought it's still not easy enough. It was 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:31.480 still you had to have a lot of technical knowledge. 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.080 And that was where Type came from. You know, I 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.480 think the predecessor to today. You see the word presses 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.120 and mediums and tumblers of the world, and all of 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:41.720 them I think would say, you know, Type had as 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:44.160 a direct antecedent to that. And it was the first, 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:46.120 as far as I can recall, is the first whizzy 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:49.080 wig sort of blogging software. What you see is what 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:51.920 you get. It was like operating within a word perfect 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:54.159 or a word doc. Since it was since it was 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:56.480 seventeen years ago, I could say word perfect exactly like 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.080 anyone knows what that for The old timers. But I think, 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:01.200 you know, the other thing really interesting was we were 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:04.680 experimenting with today you know, a lot of things that 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:06.560 we take for granted and consumer web. So just the 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:08.960 fact that we had a consumer pay model those five 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:10.400 bucks a month, ten bucks a month. I mean, now 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:12.960 you know, everybody's paying for Spotify and Netflix and it's nothing, right, 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:15.919 Nobody was really thinking in terms of recurring revenue stream 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:18.279 in a monthly Yeah, hits a credit card. Yeah. The 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:20.400 idea that that we were even gonna ask people to 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:22.320 do that was radical. I mean, this stuff sounds like 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:24.800 ridiculous because we all do it now, but you know, 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.160 it was this sixteen years ago. Fifteen years ago, people 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:30.719 were really really taken aback by that. The other thing 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:34.840 that I think in retrospect was a bigger deal, huge deal, 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:36.440 and we sort of just took it for granted, was 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:39.400 we were probably the first consumer product to use Amazon 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:42.800 Web services on the back end, so were we had 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:44.960 some features that would let you list books you were 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:46.560 reading and music you were listening to, and they would 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.000 talk to Amazon and link up you know, buy my 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:51.719 book or or or you know by this back then CD. 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.000 And the interesting thing about that is some of us 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.800 still buy CDs just as every one's in a great while, 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:02.480 I will say so for collecting purposes, that's right. And 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:04.440 and so it was an interesting thing was that, um, 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:11.240 we had this this app talking to web services from Amazon. Um, 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:13.760 you know, years and years before I think that became commonplace. 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:15.640 And then the third thing that that type Pad did, 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.320 I think nobody really remembers. Um So the you know, 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:21.600 the iPhone launch, you didn't have an app store. You know, 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.800 Steve Jobs is like, you gotta use against it originally 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.240 and then and then a year later, so they said, okay, 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.120 we're gonna introduce the app store. At that initial rollout 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:31.239 on stage with Jobs, we had our head of product 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:34.400 for type Pad showing type Pad taking photos on your phone, 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:36.920 uploading them to the web from your iPhone, you know, 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.000 in real time. This was, you know, the sort of 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:42.440 the years long before Instagram took off. The very first 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:44.320 initial launch of the app store, type Pad was one 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:46.600 of the first apps they ever future and type head 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:49.440 is still around, still support, still doing this. They they 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:51.920 changed ownership a bunch of times. I don't I literally 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:54.160 have even followed because I've been so busy with other stuff. 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:55.520 For the the last several years. But they I mean, I 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.120 know the old big picture, which I did not take 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:00.840 down when I moved toward press in in oh eight. 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:03.280 I picked September oh eight is perfect time in the 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:05.800 middle of the financial crisis. It was like six months 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.920 in advance, and then the world blew up. I kept 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:12.280 both that and I had a fun Essays and a 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:16.640 Fluvia for just random of fluvia. Um and they're still 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:19.040 up and running. I still at one point in time 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:21.400 it was fifty percent of the traffic to wear Press 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.400 and then it gradually, you know, as as people move 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:28.200 their bookmarks and RSS feeders which no longer. Yeah, there's 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:29.520 a lot. I mean, there's a lot of technology that's 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:31.280 sort of come, come and gone, and I think some 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:32.959 of these things will come back around again. But it's 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:35.800 been an interesting thing to watch. Um, a lot of 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:38.400 these ideas we thought were really radical around Oh, you 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:40.760 might take a picture on your camera on your phone 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:43.480 and then share with people instantly, and you might store 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.320 that on Amazon web services, and you might use a 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.960 service that's got a consumer subscription model as the way 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:52.760 of accessing it. All those things, Um, you know, we 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:55.320 weren't necessarily what we were first on some of them, 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:57.240 but we weren't, you know, the only ones doing them. 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:00.439 I think to have been certainly popularized that I think 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:02.320 to bet that that was the way the Internet was headed, 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:04.600 where some of the things that we're just as important 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:06.280 as the idea that blogs were going to be media 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:08.200 that matter. Here's the quote of yours that I like, 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.720 any form of electronic communication will first be dismissed as 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:15.720 trivial and worseless until it produces a profound result, after 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:18.680 which it will be described as obvious and boring. Yeah, 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:22.160 that's been my experience for sure. You've been blogging since? 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:27.400 Was this the plan all along? To keep keep? You know? 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:29.960 It was really one of those I was underemployed, not 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:32.000 real happy with my place in life, and thought, I'm 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:33.880 gonna have a creative outlet to put stuff out there. 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.320 And I can't sing, and I can't, you know, I can't, 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:38.679 I can't do a radio show, so let me do this, 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:41.960 and uh, it was an interesting thing to to sort 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:43.959 of just have this outlet. And then realized this media 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:46.120 mattered enough and that I had been early, you know, 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:48.760 I thought it was late, starting at nine. That's funny 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:51.800 because when I started on type head. It was oh 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:55.480 three the song I even remember July, and it was 0:09:55.600 --> 0:10:01.640 essentially a handful of college uh economics p fessors, nobody 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:05.360 really writing about markets, nobody really writing about investing, and 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.120 you end up my experience was similar to yours, and 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:10.760 that I'm not thrilled with what I'm doing. I'm kinda, 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.800 you know, looking for a creative outlet. But it was 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:16.520 clear that the mainstream media they take some young kid 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.160 out of school and throw them. Uh. Nobody wants to 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:22.400 cover the FED. Nobody wants to do economics back then, 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:29.239 and they were frequently, if not wrong, then lacking context. 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:31.440 They were they weren't deep enough in it right. And 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:32.840 I think that was the thing. Is that then the 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:34.360 people writing the blogs, with the people who are like, 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:36.440 I'm obsessing over this whether there's an audience or not, 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:39.320 that's that nobody cares, you know. My view was, who 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:41.280 cares if there's an audience? There was a whole run 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:45.400 of expert amateurs. Is that is that a real thing? 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:47.120 I don't know, but I know exactly what you mean. 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:49.800 And I think that summer too was a particularly interesting time, 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.120 summer a GOO three, because we had folks coming up 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:56.200 that we're doing covering aspects of economics that people weren't covering. Um, 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:58.199 we brought some of the verse first. Well, really, I 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:00.200 think all the first vcs that started blog and came 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.160 out on type paths. We had Fred Wilson on, we 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:05.520 had yeah, David Hornick from August Capital, a bunch of 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:09.560 these folks, Joe Eto, who's now heading up the media, 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:13.280 and you know, all these folks were Reid Hoffman, um, 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:18.480 you know, like has a podcast exactly, the CEO of 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.960 of Lincoln and uh and so all these people were 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:23.920 you know, I knew them as investors, and I was 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.040 not at all fluent in m VC. You know, I 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:29.640 knew tech, but at that time you could actually build 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:34.000 an entire career writing software and never crossed paths with VC. Really, yeah, 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:35.880 you know it was it was pretty common. And because 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:37.840 it was a lot of big companies on the pop 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:39.800 shops that were building software and apps and they would 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:42.560 sort of grow organically out of that. And um, and 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:44.560 if you weren't in the valley in particular, you know, 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:46.360 you could easily. I was in New York. You could 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:48.560 just never cross paths. And so to read these blogs 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:50.720 was like opening up this whole new world, and they 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.400 were now I understand, like you know, to some degree, 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:57.080 was content marketing. They were marketing their their firms by 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:01.520 being better storytellers. I think that's what it's involved, right, 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:03.839 I think that's what it's evolved to, the same thing 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:06.040 with the freemium model. Here was a whole bunch of 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:07.760 free content owned by the way. If you want to 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:11.200 work with us, you can. But that's not I don't 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:13.920 think that was anyone's intent. It truly wasn't my intention. 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:16.800 Here's what I do. I'm gonna blog in obscurity for 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:20.720 twelve years and then have a radio show. Well, it's 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:22.520 so interesting because I had that where. You know, one 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:24.960 of the people I connected with back then, UM was 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.880 Joel Spolsky who was writing a blog called Joel on Software, 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:31.240 and he was really the first person to write about 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:35.160 sort of coding culture, technical culture, and it was one 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:36.920 of the things that those of us were coding for 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:38.800 a living, which is what I did back then. I 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.080 knew these things, but had never seen them addressed as 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:42.920 like you are you are you know people at the 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:46.800 place in society, and he was taking programmers very seriously. Um. 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:48.400 Part of the reason he was blogging. Then he was 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:50.720 explaining the ideas behind the new company he had just created, 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:54.200 which was Fall Creek Software. And so seventeen years later, 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:57.200 you know, for well sixteen years from that point that 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.360 I took over as CEO of that company. Uh, it 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:03.160 felt like I knew everything about how this company ran 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:05.080 and what its values were, and what his purpose was 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.959 in the world, because I had from day one followed 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:10.200 along with the storytelling. And you think he was not 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:13.000 content marketing, He was not. He didn't start writing this stuff. 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:14.319 He was literally like trying to solve a problem like 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:16.240 how do you deal with real estate in Manhattan? How 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:18.000 do you how do you keep programmers happy in a 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:20.240 world where you know, back then, hard as it is 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.040 to believe, programmers were treated sort of like dirt. They 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:24.400 were like this guy in the back, We're going to 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:25.920 get him a computer and lock him in the dark 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:30.760 and exactly right, and throw caffeine at him. And uh 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:32.840 and now you know, you think, well, I mean, there's 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:35.680 probably no more spoiled workers in the world in terms 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.240 of like the free massages and the trades of candy. 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.320 And you mentioned that Google lifted the idea of all 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.880 the free food. Yeah, this and this is one of 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:47.160 those things where like things become urban legend, and so 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:49.280 it's hard to separate fact from fiction. But what I've 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.400 heard so one thing that is, you know, definitely true 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:55.000 is fault Creek was one of the first companies to 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:57.360 do the like let's really spoil our coders and our 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:00.600 technical workers. And it was everything from great free lunches 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.760 to UM. One of the things I still spend a 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:06.840 lot of time working on completely end to end healthcare. 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.120 Nobody on our team pays anything for healthcare UM. In fact, 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:11.320 we have people who have been at the company a 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:13.200 long time or they came right out of school. They 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:15.600 didn't know what in network out of network means because 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:17.360 they never had to deal with it the network. And 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:18.920 I was like, that's great, Like that's what we want 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:21.160 people to feel. And then one of those things was 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.720 really great free catered lunches. In retrospect, I think some 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:26.840 of this was the company was always like downtown Manhattan, 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:29.560 and especially back then, you know, just post nine eleven, 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.400 there wasn't There wasn't like good restaurants there, you know. 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:34.520 You know it also, especially if you're working late, like 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:37.280 five pm, it would just shut down that neighborhood would 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:38.840 just be dead a so how do you get food 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:41.200 down to So they had caterers, right, and they had 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:45.440 caterers come in many employees. So now the company were 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.440 about forty it's it's still pretty small. It's it's kind 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:50.680 of going up and down in size because um over 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:52.720 the years, like they co created stack Overflow and they 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:55.280 created Trello, and as those products grow, they get pretty 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:57.560 big and then they would spin them out. You know, 0:14:57.600 --> 0:14:59.400 Trello spun out a couple of years ago and sold 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:03.320 to it last back in January for let let me 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:05.280 reel you back into the blog is sphere and talk 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:09.560 about one of my favorite subjects, which is um uh 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:13.200 public a blog post of yours called Don't Read the 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:17.960 Comments Now. I wrote Bailout Nation on the blog. I 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.280 would put up a few hundred words and I would 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:22.240 get feedback and have you seen this story and look 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:27.400 at this link and the readers the community was astonishing. 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:30.600 And then tragedy of the comments that just gets overrun 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.480 with the spammers and trolls, and it became so time 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:38.480 consuming to stay on top of comments that finally I 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.160 had to just grip my teeth and rip the band 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:43.680 aid off in close conscience, and I was not happy 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.960 about doing it, but it just became this giant time suck. 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:49.440 What is the problem? And by the way, that's true 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:52.120 on my columns at the Washington Post and Bloomberg as well. 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.600 It's like, if you want to say something, go someplace. 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:57.720 Here's a link to Twitter, Here's a link to Facebook, 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:01.880 where hopefully you aren't doing this anonymously, and you could 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:04.760 be called out because eventually I could subpoena Twitter and 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:07.440 find out who you are if you say something. Although 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:09.960 Twitter has been done a good job of protecting people's nanimity, 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.280 they've done at protecting on a non amenmity yet but 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:15.720 but not abuse at all. Right, they're just in fact. 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:19.560 In fact, my argument as to why Twitter stock prices 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:21.960 has been in the crap all this time is they 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.440 have not created an encouraging communally totally agree. So there's 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:26.840 a couple things I would sort of break out here. 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:30.360 You know. The first is, um, I get to watch 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:33.000 people creating the first comment systems on the internet. You know, 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:34.720 there was a time when you couldn't actually comment on 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:39.040 a web page and so um. The interestingly, the challenge 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:40.680 then was what are people can type in this box 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:42.760 at all. Are they can even understand that you can 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:44.360 leave a comment and will show up on the page, 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:46.280 and that's the thing you can do. So they were 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:49.520 hyper optimized for at any cost. We just want to 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:51.960 put we don't want to put any barriers to somebody 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:54.800 typing in this box and leave and comment. Um. Of 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:57.840 course that pretty quickly became well, we made it really 0:16:57.840 --> 0:16:59.600 really easy, and now there's no barriers and there's no 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.400 standard and what you know, I wish we had understood 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:04.920 the time. And I will say this, this is something 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.520 I personally didn't get for a long time. Was you 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.280 make a real community by introducing a set of rules 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:13.359 that everybody understands. This is true in the physical world. 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:15.199 We get it very intuitively. If you go to a 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:17.439 park and it's got the you know, you can't be 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:19.479 throwing your ball around here because you're gonna hit these 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:21.440 little kids that are over here, or there's a dog running. 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:23.200 You gotta keep your dog inside the fence. Whatever the 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:25.760 rules are. It makes the place work for everybody, and 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:27.280 it doesn't have to be honors. It doesn't have to 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:29.439 be a burden. We needn't do any of that in 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:32.479 creating these online systems, and in fact, a lot of 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:34.639 the people, and this is something it wasn't as much me, 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:37.160 but people that I saw that were creating other tools 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:40.480 that made the systems for commenting and feedback online were 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:43.480 total zealots about the fact there shouldn't be any rules. 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:46.639 It should be wild West all the time. And you 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:48.720 know wild West is basically well, if you have wild 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.200 West and there's no cops, guess who runs the shell 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.840 the outlaws. And in fact, when when I was I 0:17:56.320 --> 0:18:00.000 went through a two step process. The first step was saying, 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.439 all right, we're gonna do moderated comments and and in 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:06.080 order to I'm gonna set up some rules which I'm 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:09.280 not going to share, so you're not gonna know, you 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.480 won't be able to gain the system just for just 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:14.720 just to get past step one. And then step two 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.640 is no ad hominem attacks, no no false no fake 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:21.919 news like it. It's amazing that one simple sentence of 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:28.480 nonsense can undercut this conversation deep deeply researched, intelligently debated 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:31.960 um and I want back and forth. I wanted debate, 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.960 but what I didn't want was just people derailing things 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.919 with nonsense. So we've had Trump talk about fake news. 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.880 Fake news, some of which is confirmation bias and tribalism, 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:48.920 and some of which is just people purposefully trying to Yeah. Yeah, 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:52.200 And there's there's a couple of guides online which I've 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.679 posted on the blog as a see. It's it's the 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.800 guide to disrupting Social Forums. They're they're actually out there 0:18:59.840 --> 0:19:02.400 and they're out of the CIA Black Book to how 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:06.560 to go disrupt society. Right, it's misinformation as a tactic. 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:09.200 And so there's there's an interesting thing here where we 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.399 we've had this escalation. So first we had, um, you 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:14.600 know what, the Internet always had ordinary trolls, right, just 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.280 people saying like I don't because I can hide behind 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:21.760 my anonymity or relative nanimity, I can be transgressive in 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:23.959 this way where I'm just being the person who's like, 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:26.800 you know, ruining things for people, but but in a 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:29.479 way that I think they think it's entertaining. Um, And 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:31.639 that's sort of like it's annoying, but it's not a 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:33.720 big deal, and if you can ban them, that's fine. 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:38.760 The evolution of that into organized communities that are trying 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.919 to undermine other communities or undermine individual people who are 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:47.240