Acquired - Recode (with Kara Swisher)

0:00That's different, that's just a bunch of white guys talking. Apple, Apple, Apple. Oh, that damn Google. Facebook. Ah. Welcome to season three, episode four of Acquired, the show about technology acquisitions and IPOs. I'm Ben Gilbert. I'm David Rosenthal. And we are your hosts. We're here today to talk about the acquisition of Recode by Vox Media. And in fact, broadcasting live from the Recode podcasting studio in the red shares nonetheless.

0:39We're here with one of the greatest people, which we probably the greatest person that we could imagine to help us tell this story. All right, okay. The one and only Kara Swisher. Nice to meet you. This is not really the recodes, it's just a studio we all have to show you now. We're not fancy here at Vox Media, that's why I'm here. Listeners don't know that. Yeah, okay, it's really impressive. We're in suits. We had a really nice view of the Bay Bridge before and our other office, but it was too expensive. So here we are looking at the Trans Bay Terminal.

1:07which is buses. Beautiful on its own, right? This is what happens after you get acquired. And then the, no, no, that was before we had the night. Before we acquired, we started the company and my backyard, so this is much nicer than anything else. Well, we'll get into that. Yeah, okay. All right, listeners, Karen needs no introduction, but I'll do one anyway, because it was fun to put one together.

1:25Kara is the executive editor and co-founder of Recode. She is the illustrious host of the Recode Decode podcast. She's an absolute legend in the technology industry, previously founding the All Things Digital Conference and Blog at the Wall Street Journal, which is a pioneer of legitimizing blogging and creating an actually good technology conference. Kara has been called one of the greatest interviewers of our time by as recline and once interviewed Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in their only ever combined interview actually in the chairs we're sitting in.

1:53I actually vividly remember where I was when I watched this for the first of many times. She's interviewed President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the mooch, and famously made Mark Zuckerberg sweat through his Facebook illuminati hoodie on stage. She's an amazing storyteller and a renowned author, and we are so, so lucky to have her with us today, so I think that's a nice, I think we'll stop now. I've never seen. No, you won't get off that easy. All right.

2:19All right, well, if you're new to the show, you can check out our Slack at acquired.fm. It's the place where David, myself, and 1600 of our favorite listeners discuss episodes right after we release them along with real-time hot takes and some of the biggest tech news of the day. All right, listeners. Now is a great time to talk about a new partner of ours here on Acquired, LaGoura, the agentic operating system that is redefining how the world's best legal teams work.

2:45Yup, it's sort of obvious that AI is going to completely change the legal industry. I bet most of you listening have dropped a contract into some sort of AI chatbot out there. Legora took that insight and asked the question, what if you really built something with that power from the ground up for the legal industry? So the founders did exactly what great founders do, operate with obsessive customer focus. They embedded inside a massive law firm.

3:12for months. They sat with the lawyers just watching how the work really gets done. And that's how you get features that customers love, like tabular review, where you drop in a folder of hundreds of contracts, and it pulls every key term into a grid a lawyer can actually work with. Lugora's bed here is interesting. Since it lets each lawyer handle more complexity, any given person can increase the quality of their work and do higher value work. And this means that the pie can grow even as each individual task takes less time.

3:41And they recently launched LaGora agent offering greater intelligence and performance. The agent lets lawyers set an objective. Then it can handle the planning and the execution and delivery of the final product. Legal teams get to maintain full control and transparency since they're still involved where judgment is required. And LaGora works where you already work. You can use it within Microsoft Word while redlining or drafting. The early LaGora numbers essentially speak for themselves. When they have a head-to-head pilot with their top competitor, they win 70% of the time. Legora now has over a hundred thousand lawyers on the platform from 1200 legal teams in 50 countries. And crazily, they went from one million to a hundred million in ARR in about 18 months. Truly insane numbers. And that is the real test.

4:33Plenty of things demo well, but the question is whether a busy associate actually reaches for it during crunch time or whether a partner trusts it before going into a conversation with a major client. If your legal team wants to check it out, whether you're a law firm or you're in house at a company, you can learn more at logora.com slash acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. All right. Well, could we dive in? Yes, please. All right. Let's do it. Okay. So.

5:00Carrie, you have a super interesting personal story that we won't get into here today. But listeners, of course, you go listen to you on the Ezra Client Show. Sure. Great interview where you talk all about that series. I think it was one of our car belts while back. Yeah. Yeah. It was a great, it was a great, yeah. Ezra was a great interview. It was great. The lift notes version is out of school. You work in print journalism to start your reporter in DC, first at the Washington City paper, then at the Washington Post, brief detour in TV in between. Again, go listen to the Ezra Client Show.

5:29And David's not just saying that, so we can save time or something. It's one of my favorite podcasts episodes I've listened to in the last year. You should go listen to it. None of that sounds like tech blogging. No. Because you basically invent tech blogging after that. But you do me during that time period, your partner Walt Mossberg. Absolutely.

5:51How did you first meet? Well, and of course he was also a dessert. Well, I was writing a book because I was working for the Washington Post and I started covering AOL when it was tiny. It was a tiny little company which I think I talked about as was show. And so he was an integral part of the early success of AOL.

6:04he had a very powerful column in a print column in the Wall Street Journal and personal technology. And he wrote a very positive review of AOL. And so I interviewed him for it because he sort of got a lot of people to use it for the first time. And he picked it over two very big efforts by Sears and IBM. Yeah, CompuCircology. CompuCircology. Yes. And so he said those suck and please use AOL. And this was a big giant boost. This is the reason Steve K. Sohn's half of Hawaii is I think the Walt Moss book today. Yeah, but today AOL invented I don't know about that. I don't know. And in any case, he was the person who did it. And so he got what was going on way before other people. And I had already been very much interested in digital stuff. And so he was just in my book. He was beginning of a chapter of a book. And then we just hit it off. And both saw things the way print was going the same exact way. And so he then tried to convince the Wall Street Journal too.

6:59How are you away from the post? He did. He got me my job at the post in the journal and they didn't have anyone covering the internet. There wasn't the internet. Which is crazy. Well, no, it wasn't because it didn't exist. It just didn't exist. It's like covering cryptocurrency a couple of years ago. There wasn't anyone covering that. But this was, it was 97 when you joined the journal, right? Yeah, but it really wasn't. It was online services. You can't, you know, there was no Google. There was barely an Amazon.

7:23I think I joined in 96, actually. Somewhere in there. But it was barely a net scape had gone public, but it wasn't very big. You had Microsoft, really. And that was more computing. And it was not internet computing. And so very few people were using the internet. And Mark Andrewsson was a teenager, I think, in creating...

7:40the mosaic browser and and at the university of Illinois and so there wasn't there wasn't that big people think it was but it wasn't but it was real small and Yahoo when I met them they just a few people working there in amazon just a few people so no it wasn't big.

7:59Bureau already? Or did you start? They were covering things like Intel, like the chips. They had chip coverage. They had Microsoft coverage, obviously, because that was software. They had Apple coverage, mostly downward, the downward facing Apple, essentially. And they had stuff like that, but it was all about the hardware, essentially, and also the chips and the inerts and stuff like that. It was very technical. And so I was the first person hired in that bureau to cover the internet.

8:26per se, like what it was in online services in Yahoo. And so there was no one covering these people, excite, there was excite, you don't remember that company. No, definitely. So it's John Doerr. Yeah, John Doerr was in that one. And, you know, they just didn't have people, they just didn't, that was it.

8:42And people made fun of me, as I've said many times. Well, Carol, what do you think it was about you that, you know, this is weird corner of society that's clearly not a thing yet, but you're all in on it. You're saying the internet doesn't mean you. Yeah, I got it right away. It's sort of like seeing a movie and going, oh, like, you know, I think I just saw it and I was very interested in it before when I was at the Washington Post. I was very interested in, we had these little trash-80 computers that we used. I used to write...

9:05party stories about Washington for the style section. I used the trash 80 and we'd put the couplers on telephones. It was crazy that we did this at like pay phones if you remember those.

9:15And then I started liking the phones that we had. We had a portable phone that was in a suitcase. And I was obsessed with it. And I carried it around. And nobody was interested in it. And I kept saying this makes total sense. Why aren't we using this? Why isn't everybody having? Why do we have it? It just started making connections. And I think I just made connections on just this one thing. And the minute I saw it, when I saw the browser and the World Wide Web, which you called it the World Wide Web, you have to spell it out all the time.

9:40you knew you saw oh oh well just a minute and so there was all these experimentation going on like there was a eighteen t at this thing called interchange uh... there's computer prodigy there's all kinds of stuff but i remember thinking this is gonna be gonna change everything and i covered retail for the washington post and you could see classifieds were gonna get screwed you could see i remember being mad at deadlines at one point i'm like why do we have deadlines that stupid people should get news anytime and i don't i met a lot of people that dot like i did You know, so there weren't that many, but Walt was one of them, and so I just kept pursuing it, and even though people made fun of me, until they started to be worse something in the 90s, in the mid to late 90s, and that was a boom, that was one of the first boom.

10:21The pre-crypto boom. No, it was a boom. It was several booms. That was one of them. The early 90s, and then late 90s, I'm sorry, not the early 90s, were a time when all these companies started to be worth a lot. And there was like Mark Andreessen was on the cover, I think he was 20. The king, the king of something. He was on a throne, and he had hair at the time, and was barefoot, and like this guy's going to rule the universe. So there was lots of attention to it, and then Bill Gates got very wealthy.

10:49And that was a big deal. When I met him, it was wealthy, but not that wealthy. And Steve Jobs was making his comeback. So you mentioned deadlines. You and Walt together, I believe, went to the Wall Street Journal after you've been there for a while and you're like, we should do a blog. Yeah, yeah.

11:06Yeah, I got pregnant. I had a baby. And when I came back, I was just fat. I'd read a lot of blogs and I was away. And I was especially Andrew Sullivan had one. There was suck.com, if you recall suck.com. It was great. I forget what that guy's name is. Anyway, it was very funny. I saw some others like TechCrunch and others and I thought, well, they suck at journalism. Why can't we do that? Yeah, they don't have deadlines. Why can't we do this? We should do this. We should have an ongoing conversation. And we couldn't convince the management of the Wall Street Journal to do it.

11:35Was it the edit side? Was it the business side? Both. They were just ignorant. Then we just kept saying this is like the way of the future. And they didn't agree with us. They were interested in a Saturday journal and things like that. But they didn't understand conferences. And they had a conference division that was just terrible. And we said, we'll do a conference the right way.

11:53You know, it was a money making thing from the start. And so it's a good way to get in. And we started with the conference in the early 2000s. And then we moved to the website. I think in 2007. Yeah. Yeah. So there's only the five years of the conference going on. Right. Did you always intend the conference to be the way to bring management of the journal around? Yes.

12:13100% like here's some money. Here's some millions for you, you know, and profits and what reporter brings millions and profits and, you know, they don't bring $10 and if you bring, you know, more than $1,000 and I can confirm I was actually a spreadsheet monkey at Dow Jones. Yeah. Before I became a BC. Yeah, like you guys made like millions, like, millions, 20% of the journal's profit. At some point, yeah, we were like, we called it self-Mr. and Mr. 20%, but they weren't making any money, so that's a low bar. I can confirm that. It was a low bar. We did call our self-Mr. and Mrs. 20%. But the problem the journal made is they made a deal with us where we got a percentage of the profits, so they didn't make that much money. Which was good for me and good for Wal. Walters, a nice TV set and everything. Were you an employee of the journal then? I was originally, and then I went, became a contractor.

13:01I did. I didn't want to work for them anymore. And why is that? I don't like working for people. I'm a bad employee. So I'm doing a thing for Forbes on this, being a bad employee. Like, I'm a bad employee. I was, hey, hey, bosses. I think they're stupid. I'm rude. I'm just not a good employee. And so I'm a pretty good employee. Well, Vox is great. They never bothered me. And they're smart enough not to. But like, they were making decisions about the internet. And I thought we're stupid. And I knew more. And I just was tired of banging against my head against a wall.

13:29They just didn't want to do, they were not very into online stuff. They were later, and they had some early stuff that Bill Guruskin did a lot of really cool stuff, but they didn't.

13:37They weren't interested in it. They saw it as an adjunct. They saw it as something to beat. They thought it was going to go away. This was not uncommon at newspapers. When I was at the Washington Post, they had a separate division in Virginia. They kept the online people over there. And I was like, this has to be fully integrated. And I didn't want to be in management. That was the other part. That was sort of unathomous. So is that way? I'm curious I was going to save this question until later.

14:06You sort of become a half entrepreneur with all things D but it wasn't until much later that you fully become We were from the beginning. We got to do what we wanted to do and the way we kept them at bay was we made money, right? So if you make money, they shut up They like just bring us just here's the bag of money leave us alone like that kind of stuff and they kind of did and Walt had a really big reputation that it was making a lot of money for them In the print publication, because his Thursdays, when his column appeared, that's where all the big ads were. That was the big ad day for the Wall Street Journal. One of them, he was important for their business, from a print perspective. They would do what he wanted, essentially, and should have, because he made them a lot of money. And so, they indulged us in this thing, and by the way, it made money. And it also brought attention. And then it brought great attention, because the first year we had gates, we had jobs, and we had...

14:56Gates and jobs, then we had this person, that person, and did these amazing interviews that go out of attention. And then we had Gates and jobs. And so what's to our US? Except they did. Except they did. Did you, did you guys consider though doing it fully independently to start or do you think the timing was wrong in the beginning? We should have. We should have, but it wasn't, you know, we could have. And we didn't, you know, Walt had a great franchise there. I think I, I was a contractor. So I didn't mind as much to be a lot of reporters need to be at.

15:25A big, that's their identity is being part of the blank. And I felt like it was the first time I realized you didn't need the giant mothership to be famous. Like you could do it on your own. And I'd seen others do it. There's a lot of people on the internet who became, you know, whatever you think of my client and I don't think much of them still to this day. He got a, he got a brain. And Sullivan, great. And Sullivan, who seems to have gone a little crazy too. But they got their own thing based on their own work. And so one of the things I always say to people is if you do the work, Nobody can touch you. Like, if you do good work, it has to be good work and has to either make money or cause attention or something. It has to have some value, whatever that value happens to be. If you do the work, nobody can hurt you, ever. Like, a lot of people that come to me with political issues at the company, I'm like, do the work. And they're like, yeah, what about this guy? It doesn't like me, I'm like, do the work. Like, trust me when I tell you, if you do the work, aside from various issues of sexism and ageism and things like that, which do exist at every single company I've worked at, if you actually perform

16:23you tend to get rewarded. or you tend to. And again, women are just right. Or at least you get license to do whatever you want. You also have to not care. You have to also not care. I didn't care to be in a management. I didn't care to climb the ladder. I didn't care if they liked me. And so that helped. That helped a great deal. And you had the leverage that if you go do it on your own, that's also going to be successful. Oh yeah, they would hate that. They would hate that we succeeded without them. But I don't, you know, okay. And by the way, I also the important thing, which I hate to do, there's such a trope of Silicon Valley, I didn't care if we failed.

16:54care. And I was older at this point. I was much older. You were in your 30s already, right? 40s. Oh. Yeah. I'm old. You'd have, you know, profit sharing with them where you guys took most of it. Did they ever try and renegotiate that? Well, they originally, you know, it was interesting. The first year we made, I forget it was, it was a good, it was a good summer money. It was a million bucks or something like that. We made a lot of money. Well, we didn't even try, but nobody was trying it all and we'd made money. And I remember calling Walt and I said, I think I said this on the other show. Did you get the flowers? Because I didn't get the flowers. Like I said, you're fracking flowers if you made her money. And and the next year we're like, you're giving us money. And so I think they gave us $40,000 extra. They thought that was like a big deal. And then they didn't want to give it. Like I'm giving you millions. Yeah, like I know. And we were like, oh, that's not very much. And so I think it was $40,000 sticks in my head. But and then the next year they just didn't want they were like mad about the $40,000. And we're like, well, give us part of the

17:45like, I don't know why they did it. Like, they just did. And so they gave us a third of the profits and it was a lot of money. And they hated it. They hated it. They couldn't. It was like a three or four-year contract. And I remember being in a cab, but it's exactly what you guys realized from the present. You don't need to be part of the X. No, exactly. No, they hated it. I remember one guy's like, we never should have done that. That was our error. And I'm like, you were so greedy for this short term. You didn't understand. What it did is unleashed the idea that could go on their own like Jessica Lesson at the information or Kevin Delaney at Quartz. Yep, absolutely both.

18:20great Wall Street Journal reporters, but they all of a sudden were like, care, I made a break for the border, now I'm going to do it. And so that was the great part. So you started the trip. Yes, I did. No, we did. We did. It was like you could. You could. It's worth calling out just how much talent you cultivated there, too. Yes, we did. I mean, when you're just naming a couple of names now, but you look at the journal at the journal, that was Kevin and they weren't at all things D, but we tried to get Kevin to come to all things D, but he wouldn't take the risk at the time. He didn't want to leave the journal. But he then he did. Even to come into D, which was not only part of the

18:49He knows that he knows he knows we talked about it the other day, but there was I mean, everybody was there at that time. Yeah, we were you know, I mean, it was like you say Jessica lessons. She was just good at the journal. Yes, that was at the journal. Not at all things day. We had great. We've had amazing like my guys. It is amazing. Not only bowls is amazing. They're all the time. Yeah, yeah, everybody was there. Yeah, we had a lot of people coming through. What was that? We were good at training people were you and Walt like Were you out there identifying people? Were you recruiting? Yes. Yeah, because people wanted to work for something exciting. You know what I mean? And we were doing one of the things we also were doing, which other places we're doing is we were writing exciting journalism. We were doing like personality, be like Peter Kafka, and who's still at recode. We were doing like...

19:32Hey, this Comcast deal sucks, and here's why. Like, that we had that kind of tone. That was a big part of why you wanted to do the blog. You wanted that one opinion, and you didn't, you had this line in another. You wanted to have an informed opinion based on reporting. That is very different than mowling off about something. We knew, like, when I write columns, I've done, Dave, I do checking. I called.

19:52Mark Zuckerberg when I asked him when I'm about to say something terrible about Mark Zuckerberg. But, you know, we spent a lot of time doing reporting, and so we had a tone of voice that had, whether it was great features that we did, or like, look at this, or...

20:06This is a mess over at Yahoo, we would have narratives, the whole Yahoo things, and we'd have great graphics to John Petchkowski, who now works for BuzzFeed, did amazing graphics. Raise the Yang Tannik, which was the Titanic Tannik for Yahoo. We would put a red... Did you call Jerry and tell him you were going to... Oh, he laughed, he didn't care. Most people, some people cared, but we don't care about them. But we put a ball gag in...

20:30Eric Schmidt's mouth when he kept saying stupid things so every time he said stupid thing we'd say Eric Schmidt said a stupid thing again today and bear his Google the ball gag goes up and so we don't do that now but it was great and then I had a little camera a little flip cam that I was like shoving people's face that was a precursor to a lot of stuff yeah so we would I'd stick it on like hi hi how you doing how you doing like to whoever I was around and you posted on the side I just would post him fold on the sides and I think people like that it was fun it sort of it was we were trying Everything different one time I did a whole story that just said Apple Twitter Apple Twitter Apple Twitter just to see how many likes we not how many likes how many is stupid because how nobody cares about anything and so we were and then you would just it would just be honest and I think that's what what was great about it like Peter Kafka is a perfect example of that great reporting because he always got the scoops That's right. We always got the scoops that was critical, but at the same time

21:24We got the scoops whether we had access or not like they gave us access great if they didn't fuck you Like you know, I mean like that's the kind of thing we feel like don't give a great I'm good without you your help. I'm good with with your help But we didn't we didn't cultivate that access to journalism and yet we got a lot of access which is which I think having worked at the Wall Street Journal It was all about access. We're gonna give it to you first as an exclusive. I kind of hated that. I don't mind it, but I'm like, eh, what am I leaving with? Well, it comes with strings attached, right? It always does. And you mentioned this on the ESR Client Podcast, but your strategy is...

22:01already know everything that's going on, and then go talk to them, and they have to tell you. Yes, or they think you do. There's a whole thing on. Okay, I always know everything that's going on, but sometimes I don't. No, I actually do these days. It's really kind of sad. I've forgotten things. I literally have a list of tips people have told me that I've forgotten about. I have a really good tip on Facebook that I literally am waiting for Kurt Wagner to get back from his honeymoon.

22:22because I know no one will get it. I'm just sitting there, but I would have been in the old days just typed it right up and shoved it out there. But things have changed in that way. The stuff we pioneered, everybody else copied, and we copied from other people, et cetera, et cetera. But everyone iterated on a little bit of our model, and BuzzFeed has a similar tone. Everybody's done a lot of the stuff we did, and Jessica's doing these long stories, which people are now iterating on her innovations. So I think people have caught up to a lot of our tricks. Who reminds you, today of the pioneering you back then that was breaking all the rules. Uh, you know, Jessica a little bit, um, but she's doing a different thing. So, you know, she's just a long story. And I, I, I, you know, some what Axios is doing kind of, but I think it's, I think it's formulaic and I think it'll get tired after a while. I think that one's going to exhaust you. Although certain people like, I like my gallon. I like some of the newsletters got Casey Newton has a newsletter called the interface that I love recently. I thought he was, I just, I've always like,

23:20try to bug him about access journalism, but this thing is great. It's totally insightful and useful. What I'm interested in is journalists who make products that people find useful and helpful to their lives, or funny, or insightful. And whatever format it takes, I don't care. Same thing with podcasts. We started this four or five years ago. I forget it's four years ago.

23:40Hold on. We're going to come back. We just decided we just decided we just decided to do things and that's the environment I want to be in. Like I just now I'm going to do this. Like too bad. Same thing with the New York Times. I'm going to do it. Like did I think about that I work for a box? Sure. But I don't care. Like I have a plan like why I'm doing it that way. For folks that haven't checked it out, I think a few amazing op-eds. Yeah, I have one a week. I have one a week now. Yeah, there's about five now.

24:05Yeah, I'm gonna have to this week. Last week was on Trump mouthing off on. Yeah, I've moved to Chris, you know, about about Twitter and Silicon Valley at last. That's very good. They're unfair to him. They're unfair. By the way, well, we were going to ask you, but the mooch. That was my favorite interview ever. That was so great. Well, here's a good example of that. So everyone's like, oh, you can't interview him. I'm like, why not? Sure, I can. I think that's what I'm having a big fight today on Twitter about ban and I'm like, you can't interview him. I'm like, yeah, I can't. No, you can't. Well, I'm going to.

24:37Whatever like I get your problems with them, but I'm gonna still interview them But what was it to people told us about you what you can interview her what can't and we said we can yes, you can like whatever she'll swear on your show right exactly So is that by the way that's why we like oh come on Is there a clean night? No one's listening on your team cocaine listening and by the way you did a great interview with me recently on MSNBC but What was I talking about? Oh, mooch. Oh, so what happened was I trolled them on Twitter all the time. I just, he just made me laugh, like, but I also thought it was appalling in many ways. And so I just kept writing hate scare emoji and then I would make a joke about whatever he had stupid things had. And I forget, there were a lot of them. They went odd and odd, like hundreds of them. They were terrible for me to do. And then I was at this event that John Patel had in Silicon Valley at a restaurant, at this restaurant. There was a thing. And this, and I don't wear my glasses. I don't see very well. And this,

25:32person was like coming over and his tiny little man was like headed by way with a lot of hair. And I'm like, who is that? And he comes right in my face and he's like, Oh, you, I know you. You're mean to me on the internet. I'm like, Oh my God. Scary mochi. And we ended up talking. She's Italian. I'm Italian. It was great. We had a great bunch of drinks. We laughed and I said, you had to come on my podcast. And he goes, you kidding me? I'm like, absolutely not. And we did it at his office, his crazy office in New York. And it was fun. And I think he was surprised because I'm super liberal on Twitter, obviously, and anti-dromp. And he thought, well, why wouldn't she talk to me? Like, but of course, I would. Why wouldn't I? He was really interesting. And actually it was a good podcast. It was, it was, Evan. Everyone has my favorite interview you've ever done. Yeah, it's one of them. Because he, like, the narrative on him was he's the mooch. He's, he's like caricature. He's not a human. But he is. But he is. But he's also a caricature. Well, yes. Yeah. But you can tell in your interview that like,

26:27There is a method to his madness. There is. There is. But he's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He still the mooch. He

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28:35All right, let's pick this back up. So D becomes very successful. You're Mr. and Mrs. 20% and well, we get to towards the end of 2013. Yeah, the contract for D is up. Yeah, we had signed another one to Rupert Murdoch much to my sugar in that I did that but when he bought the company, he loved Wal Mossberg. I'll tell you that. He didn't know my name for a long time, but he we kind of first contract with them and then the things just everything it down Jones. What was that another three year? Do you sign it? Yeah, something like that right when they bought it. We did. Oh, that was 2007. So you signed. Yeah, we signed. Yeah, we signed a couple of them. Yeah, I know. We did. We were there a long time. Maybe two contracts. Yeah.

29:14But we're go ahead. I was my favorite story from my favorite repert. So I never actually met him when it worked there, but my desk on the 8th floor in 12 11 was I was hired. There was headcount allocated for my job. My boss had hired me and Wendy Deng his wife. She wanted her personal assistant to take my desk. And so your desk was taken. And so my boss had to go and fight with newscorp corporate and Wendy did no no no no I won I mean that wasn't even there yet but my last one yeah yeah I like Wendy that was uh it was it was a victory I was one time caught between the two and the dinner and I'll just can't even go into it it was quite a night yeah I'm sure yeah um all right so when did you know that the you know we tried and then after that um

30:04First of all, they didn't want to invest. We had an idea of to do all things, finance, all things, whatever. We had a great idea. And John Miller, who was the chief ditch officer at the time, loved it. Former AOL president? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I knew him super well from...

30:18writing books on AOL. And I liked him. I think he's super innovative. It's done very well since then. But he wanted to do, he liked the idea of all things, this all thing. Like, we would have a conference. We thought about newsletters, podcasts. We're not thought of at the time, but that certainly would have worked or events. You know, finance, health. We were going to women, like, we could have, like, owned a lot of categories, and they just didn't want to invest. I have a section of the paper you could have your own. Exactly. And then you pick out reporters who are well-known. They didn't want to make stars of reporters. I think that might, I don't know why. Maybe they just were busy with whatever they were busy with sports rights and phone hacking. Well, exactly. So that happened. So we had a lot of pushback. We got a lot of hostility from the journal people themselves, because we often beat them. And they didn't like that. And we weren't that nice to them. Like when they stole our stories, we were like, hey, you

31:06shoplifters they hated that like be collegial i'm like we're not your colleagues so no uh... here's my contract yeah i like i don't work for you like i don't have to be nice to you and so um... they they it was just had an old school of thinking that we didn't and they they were resentful i think they were aware of how much money we made i think they would say that wasn't an issue but i'm sure it was they didn't like us being famous also and so it just was it was just they just wasn't ready for us right you know today they're different Or maybe they are. I don't care. I don't read the last returals. In any case, exactly. I do read the New York Times, which is why I'm there.

31:44And then the phone hacking thing happened and we were like, oh God these people we're trying to pretend they're not Satanic and they are all right, so what's what's the phone hacking thing? What happened was the only good thing was Wendy swatting away the pie, you know, pretty much in that incident, but they they would hack the phone of a dead girl newscorp did newscorp internet and it was run by the time of London and and they and they did it They did these terrible things that were just so unethical and well, they're like, oh God, just can we hang out with these people anymore? They're not They're giving us a hard time. They're not going to invest in us. We're too small to invest in but if we want to get big they won't give us the money to get big. It was just like they aren't going to do what we want and we're too small.

32:24and too big at the same time. You know what I mean? And so they just like it wasn't going anywhere. And so we went around and interviewed a bunch of people. We wanted to not have venture capitalists. So we interviewed media companies and we had a list and we had, you know, A B and C people we'd love to invest in us and we talked to a lot of them. Bloomberg, everybody. What was your hang up with taking VC? I just didn't want to listen to a VC. Like eventually they'd screw me.

32:49Eventually, they screw me, right? Like, I know them. I covered them. I'm like, eventually, they screw you. So, no, thank you. And so, we wanted to be careful about it. We wanted immediate investors. We wanted immediate investors who understood media because we weren't going to make a ton of money. Like, there just wasn't. You know, we could do okay, but it wasn't an massively scalable business. And so, we wanted someone who cared about it and who we could experiment with. And so, we went with NBC because we liked the television thing. And we went with Terry Semmel, who wouldn't work for ya, who actually was originally

33:18a media investor, and he had a media company called Windsor, right? He did, and he was retired, and he had a venture, not a venture firm, it was investment firm that invested in media. So you guys raised $12 million. Yes. January of 2014, you launched. All things to, yep. You take.

33:36All things, well, the journal keeps all things D. They do. They wouldn't sell it. We tried to buy it from them, but Rupert wanted $30 million for it. They were going to sell it to us. We offered them a million, which was insane at the time. Because you took every single employee came with you to recon. Yes, they did. And what would that have even gotten you? Did people, like, was there RSS feeds that people would... Just was a name. We had a lot of, we had a lot of, yeah, we had everything. Like it would have been nice to have it. Yes, we would have kept all things D and would have kept the brand name, but they never used it. It's the thing. They did WSJD, whatever that is.

34:05But they never used it. I was like, it's just pure peak that they did that. It was insane. It was a waste of their money. They could have had a million bucks from me. And that was way too much. That would have been meaningful to their operating. Exactly. Yeah. I was like, it was so dumb and he wanted $30 million. And I remember thinking, you know, I could buy fuckyourooper.com for that much money, right? Like, come on. Like, which had been funny. And I don't know. It was not a good parting. It was. And they were obnoxious to us on the way. They tried to say they fired us, which was crazy.

34:35you know what I would um okay so We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it.

35:06the other day, and this is what recode means, and this and that. And I did, we just liked it. In a minute, we saw it, we're like, oh yeah, that. There were a bunch of really crazy names, like, oh god, I can't remember. Some of them were wacky. What was it? I was finding it. The parent company was Revere Digital. Yes, that was because we were, what was that for those? Paul Revere. Yeah, Paul Revere. Yeah, Paul Revere. Yeah, it was Walt. It was Walt from that area. And it was, I forget, there was an obnoxious reason. It was originally called Shut Up and Listen, LLC. That was the original.

35:36I think it was called Shut Up and Listen. That's good. Yeah, that was my art. Even you couldn't go with that. No, we did. We went with it for a day. It was shut up and listen for a long time, and I forget where we changed to review. It was something with Paul Revere. I know I've forgotten. Is the Wall Street Journal, like the red coats or something? Yeah, something like that. We're getting out. There you go. Something like that. I forget. Everything we do is based on obnoxious tendencies. And so we had a naming group and they came up with that. And then the guy who owned recode.com It was a German guy who wouldn't give it to us. He wanted a lot of money. And so we decided to make net sexy. And then... You and John Gruber, like the Daring Fireball, the two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what the hell? Nobody cares, but nobody cares. Everyone's like, you can't do that. We're like, why? Who cares about this stuff? Nobody types. And nobody types, right? Exactly. And hello Google, I just put recode. And so then, and then the guy, we're trying to get code.com, and it's owned by the kind bar guy.

36:28That guy what yeah, so something he just had it. He just I don't know why he has it. He wanted to start over that com story. Yeah, he has it. He I think he still does But anyway, I ran him to a party and like give me your URL and he's like if you do a site a conference about peace. I'm like, no, fuck you. I'm not doing a conference about peace. I know. I was like, if you're not, we do actually, but with that by choice. And he wanted, I don't forget. He wanted to lend it to us. He was very nice. He was very sweet, but I wasn't going to be doing a peace conference, and I did not want to rent his URL for any reason. Anyway, we didn't get that, and it was fine. It doesn't matter. It's a great name. It's a great name. It is a great name. It's a great name. So you said something.

37:10A little bit. And then it has a code conference and then recode decode. It works perfectly. That's fine. So you said something a while back that I want to pick back up on. You said you you and Walt knew like this was good. You'd make money. You were already making money, but you knew this wasn't going to be like V.C. scale business. No, however, at the pretty much the same time you start recode, all of these new media sites get started. Yes, ridiculous. Of course, box switch. You know, we're sitting in box headquarters right now.

37:34Which has a fun story to itself, but there's BuzzFeed, there's, you know, all these companies. They're raising tons of money. VCs are jumping in. Yes, all the content companies. What were you thinking when you saw this? Oh, Jesus. Oh no. Like, because I've seen it before. Yeah. And it always ends in tears. You know, and not good tears. So I was like, oh, damn. And they were like a business insider. They raised a bunch of money. Then they started getting my, they tried to poach my employees for ridiculous.

38:01salaries I was like you see money you know in one point when I was trying to hire someone they I was offering them a lot what I thought was a lot of money and then they Wanted a lot more and I'm like I didn't you want to pay the first one? I'm not gonna pay you the second one if I really don't want to pay it in fact I'm not paying the first one anymore And so it was that was that you saw that happening and these and then that one Univision one what are they those guys Kevin Rousse went there a whole bunch of Alex Madrigal Alex Madrigal went there fusion fusion They came in and offered like, here's $3 million report. It was craziness. It was craziness. And it was, I just saw. And again, I mean, the moneymaker for D and the events, the events, right? And now the podcast makes a lot of money.

38:44Jeff Zucker quote you know for all of Jeff's like he was right like digital dollars turn into you know or and like dollars down he thinks it's a quarter or more it's actually doing it for some people and it was once a good it was just like come on this isn't gonna work like I'm not an idiot and so I was sort of and then we would have had to turn to VC money and I just was like, I can't fundraise. I can't do my journalism. I can't do the things that make us great. And so I thought we got a sell. I was like pushing hard, pushing wall-tired. And how far into the business was this? That was six months. I was like, no, no, no.

39:18This could go very wrong for us with the money we have. And so, you know, if there wasn't that fundraiser, we probably would have stayed independent, but that was, it was crazy money. It was, the money was being thrown around and it wasn't going to stop and it could really hurt us. And so I think one of the great things I did learn from tech people was that you move.

39:34Like you move and you don't like stand on ceremony. You don't go, oh, this will work. You just panic. By moving, you don't make this, you don't just stand there and say, oh, no. Only the paranoid survive. Wait a minute. And I had seen this story before. And so I was worried. And I also didn't think it had any economic underpinnings. And so it was just, it was a race to the bottom, as far as you know. But there were, but you know, bigger scale, even if it's hard, you have to be bigger. I just, I felt that. And so I looked around and talked to a bunch of people who were like us. There were several.

40:04Did you talk with any of those that had raised crazy money to sort of combine with them? None of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were offers all the time. It was crazy. Like reporters deal making. Like it's that you know you've got to get off the train if that's happening. Cara, I got to deal for you. I'm like, no, you don't. And I'm pretty good at deals, but I'm not that good. And you're really bad. And so, you know, really. So you know what I'm saying.

40:25Like no, like no, thank you. Like even VCs are stupid, right? Like I'm not gonna have a reporter make a deal with me So Jim bankoff had talked to me about using their ad system and I'd known Jim forever because he did well And I loved him chorus chorus Yeah, it was chorus. I guess it was chorus. No, it was chorus is their content management systems They had an ad system to in any case he wanted he wanted he wanted it wasn't called that then but he wanted us to be part of their ad group. Like they sell our ad, one of those deals. And I was like, well, why don't we just merge about that? And you don't have anything fancy. Like we're fancy. We're another revenue stream. We got ideas. We're well-known. We're like your other brands. We're like Vox. We're like Eater. We're in the same zone. Especially the verge, but not. But you guys are very different. It's different. Right. Well, well, but it's like.

41:17Walt went over there. We moved about it. Exactly. We moved about it. We moved about it. And the consumer stuff really wasn't working on recode. Walt's consumer stuff. We were a tech news site. And adding the consumer stuff just didn't... It just wasn't right from a journalism point of view for the product. And so we were doing all this scoop breaking news business stuff, and then we had Walt there. And so he was better to give him a bigger audience the verge made more sense.

41:44By the way, we do anything again if it makes more sense. We're not stupid. If things change, we change. Nothing is sacred. Nothing, absolutely nothing. And so Jim wanted to do some kind of commercial deal, where he said, let us take this ad sales off our hands, we got this great technology platform, and you're like, nah.

42:00What about this and he thought of it too like he thought he understood how famous wall nine were and how it did add to his brain. It adds to it is to advertise or interest it adds to buzz it adds to all kinds of things and he's a pretty conservative media mogul like you know if you can compare him to Shane Smith or even The guys over at Buzzfeed and who Shane Smith Shane Smith runs vice got his vice who now is not running vice because They have some issues because I see my et cetera. And so Nancy Dubuque runs that they get the lady to come in and clean it up. So anyway, so they it was a good match. It was a good match. We've been thrilled. It's been you four years almost now. So it was May May. We announced it a code. Yeah. We announced it a year later. May May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May, May,

42:53conclusion until close to the deal. So he spent a year sort of figuring it out because it was 18 years. Yeah, we were running it for, yeah, it was 18 years. Before you sold, but it really was six months when you started. Yes, absolutely. It was pretty soon. It was pretty soon. And you know, I thought about the employees, I'm like, oh, I promised them this, now I'm doing this. And, you know, I know, it's fine. Like, you know what I mean? Like all of them are doing well. You know what? They'll all do well. They'll all do well. And so they understood that this was an entrepreneurial effort. And again, I don't see, there's nothing wrong with saying, we're going to change our tune.

43:22Like, there's nothing wrong. I think journalists are super risk averse and they're very rigid and I'm not. So I will literally change at any moment. I was going to save this for our tech theme section, but I want to bring it up now. Facebook. Yeah. That was...

43:39I think if I had to rewind back to that time and justify all the VC money going into the space, it's that social distribution is eliminating the traditional media gatekeepers. You can build new, you know, timing for the digital age on the back of social distribution. New media was in every article. Yeah. What is new media? What is new media? Yeah. But the way that's kind of played out is it's great for Facebook. It's great for Facebook. Not great for racist.

44:06anti-Samites. It's great for people, Russians, the Russians that worked out well for. But not so much for the rest of us, no. They didn't come up with a business plan of how to do it. I'm not saying there isn't one. I just, they haven't come up with it in a way that I think anyone feels happy about. And they tried everything. We'll get to podcast. Yeah. Well, at one point, I remember that when they started Facebook, I had all these issues with Facebook live, including the fact that I thought people would murder each other on it. I was like, oh, it seems like a perfect way to kill someone and then show it or do suicide or something like that. And I expressed my reservations to them about that issue. Like, wow, you don't have control of the rest of your platform. Now you're going to unleash a video platform. All right.

44:41incredibly irresponsible people go right ahead. But remember them saying, you should do Facebook Lives. Remember that? That all the journalists were doing Facebook Lives. And I go, and it was like from the top, they were like, care, you should know Cheryl or whatever, you should do Facebook Lives or Chris Cox or whatever. And I was like, I'm not doing your Facebook Lives. And they're like, why? I'm like, where's my money? Where's my sack of money? Because it's a waste of my time. You'll get more users. I'm like, I don't need it. I have 700,000. They're not making me money. That's also aren't your users. They're Facebook users. Where's my money? Like I kept saying, where's the

45:10It's like a head fake, right? Because you'll get more famous. I'm like, I am famous. But really what was going on was. For all these new media platforms, I'll just coming from Facebook. I literally never saw, I was like, I'm not wasting. I'd rather watch Law and Order because that would give me pleasure. But doing talking to people that sometimes I'll do it to get people to read an article, but it doesn't help. What's the 700,000? Is that?

45:39So, Twitter is 1.3. I'm actually dipped when they did their cleaning, their culling, and now it's back up the purge. When they did the purge, and now it's up again to 1.3 or something like that of the world. But again, it's like Twitter selling ad dollars, selling ad units against your 1.3 million followers. Yeah, I guess. So, I'm sure half of them are bots. So, I'm guessing half of them are bots. I was just there early, that's all I think. You didn't actually buy them.

46:03I didn't buy any of them. I was an early user, and I was on the early recommended list, and I think it just was put on everybody's thing. I don't think half the people know who the hell I am. All right, so speaking of audience size, so when you got bought by Fox Media, what would your audience look like on Recode? How big it was? Small.

46:23Small a couple million has it grown since the acquisition? You know, we're not as focused on the website. I'm not again We haven't been as focused we had been focused on the way so but we don't see it as just the website or the podcast or the event It's all a group of things. They all feed on some kind of flywheel or something. It's that's the way you think about it makes sense It's like all journalism is how we look at it whether we break news on our on our podcast We broke plenty of news on the Mark Zuckerberg podcast like hello that like drove a news cycle for two or three days so Is that recode? Is that the recode podcast? I don't care. Again, the same thing. Then we had Cheryl on stage a code, and then we had...

46:59We don't think about like that. We don't think about like that. And then the code interviews become news. Then they become podcasts. All our code interviews become podcasts. And then we break them up into pieces. And then we make news to it. And we sort of at least won every like three or four episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we did. Like why not? It's all content. And I know however people want to consume it is really how I look at it. I think we definitely are rethinking what is the traditional web news site? Because it's changed. Really. I mean, like Bloomberg is doing everything in the world. Like Hoover up every piece of information.

47:28that it out like so you know they do right they have a lot of people a lot of money to do that because they make all those money from the machines and so you have to think really hard is what is your value in each product you're making like I'm super interested in newsletters recently I don't know why because I think Casey's is so good yeah I'm thinking a lot about it like that's an interesting I know there's a 2018 we're talking about email newsletters I know but you know what they're good but they're good but but I still think some of them are to start my day with primac right except You don't do all of them, so what is it about his that's great? What is it about? I mean, you just want to read yours. I would have a different idea. I have a new thing I'm cooking up that I think would be interesting. I'm not saying that flattery. I want your tone, my head every more. Yeah, but it's going to be in a different way. I have a different, I think newsletters are great, but they're heavy. I find they pile up. And so I'm like, I still like them. They pile up. They're like Sunday newspapers. How can I get this in a way that's...

48:19There's a way to do it that's different. You want to break news on the show? No, I don't. I'm still thinking about it. I'm thinking hard about it because I'm reading a lot of them. And I'm like, this is just the way when I started listening to podcasts, I was like, all right, this is what I think is good and what I think is bad. And so when we started the podcast, it was the same thing. Everyone was like, you can't do an hour. And it was two months after the acquisition. You started the podcast. Yeah, because nobody was paying attention. Did you know how big it was going to get? No. No, yes, yes, yes, because I knew we were, because our bet is that people are smart.

48:45smart people like smart interviews, people like substantive things, it'd become a twitchy little universe of content, right? And so everyone's getting little pieces of information that made no sense. And I thought conversations matter. I always thought things conversations matter. It's what we do with code, but only a certain amount of people get to hear it, even though we put them in podcasts. At code, we have the big swinging dicks, essentially, right? That's what we have.

49:10and most of them are. But that's pretty much it. People have to pay the money to make their own. This is the formula for code. And then when you go down, when you go down the stack a little bit, there's all these fascinating people.

49:22You know who should get attention? We didn't have a lot of VCs at code for example, I just we just didn't and Andrew Mason may have been my favorite of the sort of free code decode. That was a great one So blunt honest amazing exactly and so people feel more comfortable in that setting But I could get to people like Chimath like he like we wouldn't have put Chimath on the code stage But boy is he great in a podcast or April underwood like you don't know she is but she's critically important or like I had today Nicole Wong who ran big legal teams at Google and Twitter and was very central to a lot of their early decisions talking about what's happening now? Like, who? I wouldn't put Nicole, you know? I know who she is, and now you will know who she is. And so I think what's interesting is that you can do all kinds of different things with the medium. And that's what I liked about it. But my premise was that you could do an hour and everyone says you can. And I was like, yes, I can.

50:15No, you can't. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to just do it. And I'm not going to listen. It was great about Vox as there was nobody here to say we couldn't. Like, they just didn't. They're like, oh, try it. Like, it didn't cost them anything. And I think what's cool is everybody's realized you can do it an hour and a half. Oh, we can do more. If they're good, we did 90 minutes with Mark that everybody listened to that 100%. Why not? It was good. Like, the only thing is it just has to be good. That is, again, do the work. If you do the work, whatever format, there's no, everyone tries to make all these

50:44Hard and fast rules of oh, this is gonna work. That's gonna I don't that's just bullshit. You know that like right if it's good if if a product is I have like a criteria it has to be useful entertaining and Kind of a you have must have like a must have and if it makes money fantastic if it hits even one of these things. It's great. So you know, I think about the podcast. It's useful. It's entertaining. It makes money And you can't get an interview with Mark Zucker, except Kara Swisher's interview. I don't care how many people interview him. I did the best one, and so you can't get it anywhere else. So that's a perfect product as far as I'm concerned. You know, the conference. When you can't get people who guest up podcasts, talking like they do on podcast and in the other format. Yeah, but it's also I can get them talking like that. So that's the whole thing. Mark Marin is only Mark Marin doing it. You cannot replicate it. You cannot be

51:39If anything that can be replicated, you really have to not do. Like that kind of thing. And so my gallon can't be replicated. Lots of things can't be replicated. To Snapchat's chagrin, a lot of their things can be replicated and quite well by Kevin Sister and Instagram. That's a problem. Like, as delightful as I think Snapchat is and my kids love it, it's replicable. And that's a problem. You have to create moats around yourself and someone. All right, listeners.

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53:42So if you're trying to turn AI Ambition into real business outcomes and make it work safely, securely at scale, go check out servicenow.com slash acquired and tell them that Ben and David sent you.

53:53with podcasts in the future of recode how important is it to the strategy how much are you saying like actually this is kind of the way forward or not paying attention to the website as much I think I'm not writing for the website right now I don't think it's not important by the way we have great journalists doing an amazing job I'm not that interested in that format right now that's all that's just me Cara Swisher it's not we have a great editor Dan Fromer and we've got a great staff and things like that and they're Figuring out what they think is the way to go and they're trying different things recently. I've been doing a lot of really substantive big articles We're doing less scoops, I think, but that should be the decision of whoever the editor is not me I have ideas of the way you would do a news website. I just I'm not interested. It's like

54:32I paint it over here in paint, and now I'm interested in photography. And now that's how I look at it. And so whoever's making the website, the RICO website, it has to integrate into everything else we're doing, like our events and the podcast, but it's part of the same branding idea. You have to think of that. And so the reason I'm interested in podcasts is Ila and Peter Kafka has one, and we're starting another one coming, is because we're interested in creatively. Ultimately, it's creatively interesting to us, and so therefore we create work that I think is laudable.

55:02If it wasn't, we'd stop doing it. And it also makes a lot of money. Like that's, and it makes a lot of money. Money, you keep that Facebook doesn't. Exactly. It's our money and we make it fair and square pretty much. You know, that's how it's a fair and square pretty much business as far as I can tell. And it has all kinds of interesting...

55:20applications. We think we're doing a bunch of live podcasts. We're doing a bunch of all kinds. There's all kinds of things you can do off of it that are really interesting. We also give the opportunity for the Recode Reporters to do podcasts like Kurt Wagner did a bunch for Peter. Joanna Boolean is doing what she's doing.

55:37What's she doing? The guy, the auto guy, Lawrence Burns. They get the opportunity to learn how to be better interviewers and stuff like that. So it gives us, gives that opportunity. Jason Del Rey is doing this. I can't say what it is, but he's doing a multi-part series, which will be a short version. It won't be a show. Everyone wants, I want a show. Why do you want a show? Why don't you do four episodes? They are doing a Netflix with certain shows. So he's doing one that's really going to be great. He's doing two of them that are great, two audio things that are just...

56:06They're gonna be what they are and we're gonna we have a sponsor for them and That'll be great and so it gives it gives them an opportunity to be the reporters of Rico to be creative Why did they monetize so much better? I just do right now they might not later I think because people really listen to them and they like them and they download them you could they're very quantifiable I think that people can measure them People talk about them. You can see they get a lot of buzz and I don't think I think the idea that the audience do thinks really hard about where they're getting their content is kind of an old school thing like if it's not on the website It's like well, so what if it's in in podcast form? So what if it's on the event side? So what if it's in a story in a print journal like what if it's a tweet? Yeah, like I tweet a lot like I tweet a lot of stories kind of stuff and unbelievably in this world It's the place where you have a direct relationship with that person instead of this You know, yeah, you remember we got we've famously got rid of comments six five years ago, right?

57:00Everyone was like, how can you do that? I'm like, I hate them. I don't know. I'm excited. It's my voice. It was interesting, because when we took them up, first of all, I was like, you have to have comments and do we? And of course you do. I'm like, why? They take their vial. They don't add to the...

57:15the benefit they don't help the website in fact all we do is try to like knock things off I'm wasting time my copy editors taking off you know you faggot like I don't need it like you know what do you like awful what would I need these awful anonymous people saying terrible things on a website that I run and so we took it off and I remember there was one guy who was just terrible by all homophobic and a symmetric race everything like this guy was the whole package And he, you know, he was, he wrote me an email, they somehow find my email and they're like, how dare you? And comments. I should, it's a first amendment. I'm right to say whatever I want. You know, that stupid trope. And I was like, you know,

57:54Get your own fucking website. It's my website. Get out of my bar. Get out of my bar. Get out of my bar. Guess what? I'm not giving you a beer. Like, sorry. You're an awful vile human being. And so it was really interesting. And I said Twitter was our comment section, really. And so that's where I engage with people a lot. I've recently not done Instagram as much. Because I don't. Well, I'm so glad we ended up on podcasts and this before. How are you liking podcasting boys? What do you think?

58:20It's fun. Not only is it tremendously fun, I never thought. It enables people who aren't in media and we're not journalists. We have things to say, right? You're smart, interesting people like why not? I don't know us. I'm just saying you seem so far. You haven't said anything too stupid. You know? No, you haven't said anything stupid so far. Maybe the best comment you've ever got. Yeah, put that on the website. You don't seem too stupid. No, but I mean, it's creative. Like, no matter who you are. And I think, again, conversation is really important. And people like to hear people love great conversation. The other thing is David and I

58:52do the podcast for a variety of reasons. And even though a wonderful sponsor in Silicon Valley, bank zero of it is to make any money on the show. And the number one reason that we do it is because it allows us a creative journey in self-directed education. We get to learn stuff that we otherwise would never learn about. And it's awesome to get to share it with people. But it lets us quench this thirst of, you know.

59:13You know, we're not in school. We're not going to class as we do. Me, people you want to meet. Yeah. I often like, I don't have your part. I was just, I just did a, I did an event where I interviewed Sean Hayes. Do you know the guy who was on Will and Grace? He's so great. He's amazing. But he's also a very important producer in Hollywood. People don't realize he has tons of shows.

59:28He was like, I love your podcast. I said, come on it. And he's like, okay. And so I'm going to do that, by the way, Sean Hayes. But I want to talk about the entertainment business. He's doing all kinds of digital stuff. And he's a producer. And so it was just like, I want to talk to Sean Hayes. And that would be wonderful on lots of levels to talk to him, on lots of things. And so it gives you that opportunity to meet people and have people surprise you.

59:52thoughts. And I think that's my favorite part. Like today, the Nicole Wong was really good. She had some thoughts that I, she said things and I was like, oh, I hadn't thought of that. Like, you know what I mean? And I love that. I love that. That's my favorite part is learning from the other people. Well, that's the, yeah. In a lot of ways, I think podcasts, or we're totally like doing tech themes now instead of later, but that's fine. We always do that. I think podcasts are have really removed gatekeepers. Yeah. I mean, like, We're two guys. We're not journalists. Tim Ferris isn't a journalist. It does a great podcast. It does a great podcast. All of the top, with the exception of really box podcast, which we get into in a sec, it's Indies. It is in a lot of ways. It is. It will be consolidated. Look, it's going to be consolidated. You get that. One of the things I wouldn't take out print all the time. That's why I did the Times thing. People are like, what are you doing? I'm like,

1:00:44I think print is important. I think not just print, but a global brand. The written word and a global brand. And I felt like one of the things that I thought was happening and a thing that I kept banging on for the past year was the irresponsibility of the tech sector and how they had misused their platforms and mismanaged them. And I've been talking about this for a long time. And so it was fine to do it at recode because but it's like the house or, you know, it's like the local newspaper. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to get on a global scale and start whacking at these people. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and they're going to pay attention.

1:01:13So I want them to do something about it. And, fortunately, there's still a global brand to be able to do that. Exactly. But I don't discount it, because I've gotten a whole new bunch of people now paying attention to the messages that I think are important. And that's why it's important to think holistically about. It's not just podcasts, it's not just websites. It's not just events.

1:01:32It's not just speeches, it's all of them together that gives you these tools that you can reach people in different ways, and that each require a different skill. All right, you talk about consolidation. I'm curious more on why you're sure that it's going to consolidate when right now we're sort of in this era of Indies thriving. Because it always consolidates.

1:01:51Everything I you know, it's interesting. I don't know if you know as I have two tattoos. Yeah many tattoos in my hands So it's centripy and entropy and I could go into like all the ridiculous things about it But it's essentially everything dissipates everything Organizes, right? So there they're too obvious and they exist right exactly and so everything moves towards organization everything moves towards consolidation and then it moves towards destruction like in the same right way and so i think that that that's that's it's sort of a cycle you see that that will happen and i think podcast everyone's like wait a minute this makes money and then everyone's going to pile in many we should be fed right these in a bunch of i know we'll federated media remember that that was john battel uh... so that didn't work out so well uh... uh... it was a good idea uh... but you know you know these things are going to federate they're going to federate and then they're going to unfetterate and then the big companies will get into them and they will suck and then all all but i think you matter what like

1:02:45The reason Mark Marren's popular is only one reason is a great podcast, right? You cannot make that. You cannot make. You just can't. You can't replicate. You can't change it. So I think I'm not that worried about the consolidation, but I do think there's going to be a few places that are creative in making them. And therefore, there's a bunch of them that are really good at making them. And some will have a certain style. The daily with the New York Times, Michael Barbar was a friend of mine. And I think he's They're great. They're so creative there. Who would have thought that? Talking about me. What about me? Newspaper stories every day telling you how I put together stories. Nothing could be more boring. And I can't stand the ones they have in the newspaper, right? This is how we put together. I'm like, I don't want to hear you. I want to hear Michael Barbaro do his, but he goes beyond the story, right? So it just works. And that team there is so talented. The team of people who put that not just in, but there's a whole pack of people there that are just so good and tell a story in a great way.

1:03:43Well, I think that's our category consolidation. We categorize each acquisition. In a way, I was going to go business line, so the way that we do this for people in the show, we decide what category the acquisition was. Was it people, technology, product, business line, asset, or consolidation?

1:04:01I was going to go business line because for me, it's really picking up a whole new P&L and running that P&L independently and hoping it expands and realizing synergies and saying that every episode now is pissing me off. It's okay. It's a good one. With Walt going across and writing it at the verge. But as effectively, it's still its own business unit that you're buying for, hopefully, some of future cash flows.

1:04:25Yeah, but it's other things. There's more things to it. Like you advertised your interest. As a client started his show right around the same time you did, right? Well, you know, he came to me when he was starting it. We had done ours. No, he did it after.

1:04:35After, so there you go. But he came and he said, what should I do? And he wanted to interview the deputy secretary of agriculture. I'm like, can you do some interesting people? What about Cory Booker? Yeah, bring in Biden. I kept saying Biden would be good. And he's like, well, I'm like, you know, Biden, he'd be like a people in love to hear from Biden. And he's a very good interviewer. And he's more wonky. And he's definitely more wonky. He should call something wonky, something. He should. But I was already won cat, if you remember, and wonk blog and things like that. And that was it. I think that was it.

1:05:04The Washington Post, where they were. I believe it was in adjacent to them, so I don't think they could take that. He's like, you're doubligating. Didn't you start one blog? He is. I was like trying to make a joke there. It landed flat. Oh, sorry. I love Ezra. Ezra and I are of the same mind, I would say. I have lots of things. We'll be doing more together in the future, I think. He's really great. It's exciting. Yeah.

1:05:25He's great. All right, well that blows my acquisition categories. That's consolidation. What would have happened otherwise you would have failed on your own? Yeah, to speculate on that. I'm curious. Oh, that's a good good. Probably. Maybe not. I know what has failed me. Well, sold to someone else for a different price later on. We would have sold. We might have been smart enough to sell it to someone else. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was smart. I did. I sold it. I'm sorry. You would have failed to have meet the return thresholds of the $12 million you raised. I don't think they cared.

1:05:54Yeah. So I had investors who didn't care. That's why you don't have VCs. Hey, you get the investors you ask for. When I got money from Terry, I called him to thank him for, I think they gave us $5 million due to first. And I kept not being able to reach him. He was such a lovely man. And I go, hey, I finally reached him. I afraid he was going to start dinny at wherever the hell he was on his yacht. And he goes, I go, hey, Terry, thanks for the $5 million we got in the bank. And he's like, oh, good. Who are you again? No, he goes, no, he knows what I was. And he goes, he goes, oh, good.

1:06:22for you. I hope you enjoy it. And it was like literally like Uncle Gamer's money. He was like, good luck with that. And I was like, okay. And I was like, all right. See ya. And it was really like I was like, he's not going to bother me in any way for that money ever again. And he actually got his money. We got the second box. So anyway, yes. The sale to box more or less than the 12.

1:06:45Investors all made their money back. They all took Vox stock. They could have gotten cash. They took Vox stock. I think, I don't know if I'll, I don't know what everybody did, but I'm pretty certain they did. Yeah, it was more. Cool. It was good. But it's all those like, yeah, content, valuation. So I don't know. I don't know. Right. Yeah. Well, speaking of, we've already covered a lot of tech themes. We'll see where it ends. We'll see where Vox ends too. That's like, should we be integrating? Yeah. All right.

1:07:15Cary, do you want to be on the hot seat? Go for it. Okay, go ahead. I know a lot of big shareholders, so. This is how we grade in the show. So we decide, you know, the acquirer with all their might and resources and interesting things they could do with their shares and their capital, was it a good use to buy this company? Yes it was. Well, you got a grade A to F. So A plus Instagram, 1 billion into hundreds of billions of value. F.

1:07:42You're familiar with. Yeah, there must be a point in there somewhere. Yeah, yeah, I got that. I would say, I would say a B plus at least if not an A. Yeah, I would. It benefited in lots of ways. Yes. Yes. There's no downside. There's absolutely. High cast alone. Exactly. Made their money back. There's no, and also they get a good name. They get good journalism. They get.

1:08:04I think they've done pretty good on most of their acquisitions. It seems like all the, you know, they ran into trouble with one, but it still was a great journalistic product rack that they still a great journalistic product. And I think they did the right thing with it. So I don't consider any of those a failure. I think they have very good taste in how they do things. I do. I think just like any content company, they're going to run into the same issues of content companies. Like they're in the same, they're not exactly in the same boat. BuzzFeed spent more money, but they're in the same Contact media's hard like that's their problem. That's the problem they have Media she's hard Like do either you know the what the valuation of ox media was at the recode acquisition and then what it is now So something they've raised it like it's a unicorn announced at 1.1 billion. Yeah, it was several hundred million. They acquired you. Yes

1:08:58Yes, it's much higher. And who knows if they could ever solve for that? Like all of them. I think Buzzfeed was 1.5. Yeah, right. Yeah. Vox was 1.1 if I remember from the news stories. And then I was mashable. And actual was some ridiculous sum. And then it sold for like a...

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1:09:35I guess. Yeah, they're big NBC. Yeah, sure. But why? Like, yeah, if I had to go write a news, they see the way I think about it. Like, I remember writing about Tumblr being bought and they were on the edge of like, death essentially. And all the tip I got was it was being acquired by a company for a billion.

1:09:51I didn't hear it was Tumblr. A digital content company is being acquired by Yahoo for a billion dollars. That's just somebody intentionally encrypting it. They just said that. That's all I got. And I was like, okay. And I call myself Sherlock Homo. I was like, all right. Watson. Who's your Watson? My cat.

1:10:12And I was like, okay, and I made a list and I was like, this is what they would buy. This is what they'd be interested in. This is what I know she likes. Do you know what I mean? I know her tastes and stuff like that. And Tumblr was third on the list because she wants to be helplessly hip. You know what I mean, even though she's not. Twitter was on there. And I started making calls as if I knew. And so I called up, I knew all the investors of Tumblr and I knew they were in trouble and I was like, she could possibly spend this amount of money on this. She couldn't be this stupid. But I will try it and I literally went,

1:10:41I said, oh, so yeah, I was buying you and they're like, how did you know? Thank you. I have my ways. I know. I was like, I'm so smart. You're so good, Karen. I'm like, mm-hmm. I'm not good. You're so stupid. Why did you tell me? Can you freeze that in a direct quote, please? Yeah, but it was really fast. But all I did was I thought about it. Like, I strategized it. So I think about like, box and those things all the time. Like, box.

1:11:03Comcast yeah, but why like what would Steve Burke like why would he need this what would it add like you know we same thing if you bought BuzzFeeder if you bought any of these companies or anything That's how I think about everything like who would but when Twitter was the rumors were who would buy Twitter this and this would they want to buy this and everyone was like Google's gonna buy Twitter. I'm like no, they're not they don't want to buy that mess like Like, but you know, that's how you have to think. I could see like a Verizon. Someone that has distribution who can marry great content distribution. Yeah, but look how those work out for the day. That works in theory. In theory. Yeah, or it will work one day. The platonic form of that will be realized in some way. Like, look, look, we'll see. We'll see. Clear channel. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Newscorp.

1:11:47I think he's quite lively, I suspect. We had James Murdoch on stage the other day. I don't think he's staying with that. I think it's going to be Lachlan and Rupert at the other place. I think that's what he said. Didn't he? No, no, no, he said it on stage. It's a recode media. I think he did. He's doing investments.

1:12:12He said it. He said it publicly. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Well, there we go. If one of my scoops I forgot. I'm like Hermione Granger. That's amazing. I think it's an A- because this is my own narrative. My head has clearly been evident in the episode, but I don't think Vox is the biggest player in Vox's right now.

1:12:38No, NPR. No, NPR is not doing podcasts. NPR distributes radio shows on podcasts. Yeah, yeah. That's the idea. They're not making native podcasts. Not new ones. Everyone's trying to copy the daily is really pretty interesting. Yeah. And they just announced one, I think. NPR just announced. Plus, I think, as we've talked about a little bit on the show, the whole podcast business model is about to go through a lot of positive disruption where people are going to pay creators direct. Yes. And Vox now has probably the biggest aggregated audience of podcast listeners in America. Yeah. Outside of NPR, which already monetizes through direct payments. So for whatever they paid for recode to help jumpstart that, like, I think it's fantastic. Is it an Instagram? Sorry, Karen, I don't think so. No, but on a lot of levels, sometimes I think, should I have just done those on my own? Well, right. I would have been like, I'm thinking of like that guy who does the bend.

1:13:34Tom Sinner either. That's what I was gonna bring up. Yeah. Then some days it's like, oh, that would be me. Could you write that much? How does Ben Thompson write that much every day? He lives in Taiwan, that's all. He lives in Taiwan, that's all. It doesn't give him more than 24 hours. It just gives him a jump in the morning. I could do it. I could do it. I could do it. I could do it. I just have to stop doing other things, but yeah. Do you pay for it, Mr. Techery? I do.

1:13:56Yeah, I think I do. Yeah, I do. I think we have one to record. I think he's he's really interesting. I think all those people are just I think about those things like what do you need anything? Like I always am trying to go for like I'm not trying to Maria condo everything and I'm deaf. I like look when I did the time thing I didn't leave.

1:14:12Fox did I like there's ways to do it. I think what what these tech all these media companies have to think about is how do you keep really creative people interested all the time? How do you keep a like an Andrew Rossoorken interest in the New York Times? How do you keep a star? Yeah, how do you keep them? But why not keep them creative? They create more great things that make more money like how do you do that as any like if you're vanity for anything? How do you keep?

1:14:35creative people interested and reward them in the way that if they make money, how do you help reward them? I think that's an interesting thing. None of this is scalable, obviously, because it's all human. You can't AI this thing. That's the only issue. But if you're interested in media, I think it's going to be a lot more, I'm not a sports person. What's it called when someone is free agent? It's going to be a lot more free agent. You see contracts for what kind of like you had you involved with the journal. I have three contracts now.

1:15:04I have one with NBC, because I do my MSNBC show. It's periodic. Interviews I do based like Tim Koch, we did the Google guys. I've got a contract with the New York Times, and I employed by Box Media, so. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. It's better than sports. You can play for three years. I know, right? Yeah. It's interesting. I just think about it. You wouldn't have been able to do that many years ago. Yeah.

1:15:23That's interesting. I find that fascinating. My logic isn't any different, but I can't be anywhere close to an A because we know of like on the show A's mean like in the same multiples on billions of dollars. So you know what I'd be? You have a high curve then.

1:15:37You're just grating on an Instagram. It's kind of really? Well, not enough to get them. Actually, we're all freaking us. Well, you got it. It's long with me. My son got it. Speaking of grades, my son got a day in math a couple of years ago. And he, he, he got, he's got nasi math too. So it's kind of a, you just didn't like this teacher at one point. And he, remember him saying to me, um, he got, I go with Louis a D. I'm not that hard on my kids about grades. I was like, but a D. Come on. And he goes, well, at least it's not enough.

1:16:04And I was like, it is an F. A D is an F. A D is an F in this household. A D is an F period. Yeah. It's just that the school just won't go to F. Though D is like, you got an F, but I'm giving you a D. You can tell we gave AOL time order a D. D. Oh D. Yeah, we did that. No, that wasn't enough. That wasn't enough. I would just offer some of the journals. I've written an entire book on this, exactly, but I'm telling you it was the right idea. It was absolutely the right idea. It was the wrong time and the wrong people. But it was certainly the right idea.

1:16:31We're talking about media and the internet here. It was the right idea. It was just early and a bunch of assholes running the show. So I wrote a book on it. They were assholes. All sides. Ben, do you want to do? All right, so we got it. We got to know what's a day in the life of Kara Swisher like. I wake up. I wrote a I brought a column this morning, and then I came in here and did a whole bunch of podcasts. I'll spend some time tonight thinking about some live events we're going to do, and some the next MSNBC thing. I make a lot of calls. I call around. I talk to a lot of people. Now that I'm doing the column, I spend a lot more time talking to people. I'm starting to plan, Peter and I just went to Phoenix to look at some hotels for code. We have to move the hotel.

1:17:24So I'll work on that. I'll work on some hotel stuff and thinking about that. I'll work on code speakers. We have a new list of who we want for next year. Often I'll fly places to meet different people. I'm going to meet some pretty well-known people going to fly to see them. I try to ask people in person to come to code a lot of times. I think it's a hard time saying no to me. It's good to agree. We should steal that. Yeah, hello. Hi. Did you show up?

1:17:51Let me know I'm coming. I was kind of coming for lunch. A few people turned down lunch. One of the things that I think is a big clue is everyone's always like, how did you talk to them? I'm like, I called them. People will talk to you. If you get their emails and you write them, they will write you back. It's really interesting. And anyone, if you get their emails, we'll write you back. And if you ask the question.

1:18:12We emailed you. Yes, did I write you that? You did write it like that. There we have it. If you seem like not crazy, I'll write you back. So I'll go visit people. I'll do a lot of lunches. I'm trying to think of them in the next couple of days. It's a lot of podcasts in the next couple of days. Some events, a bunch of events like next week, I'm interviewing Maggie Haberman at Lesbian Soutek. We're going to make a podcast out of that again. And I'm doing Jane Lynch. She was a friend of mine actually. We're going to make a podcast out of that. So a lot of events I do outside of.

1:18:39Vox, we make it a podcast because that's the price of admission for me doing it. We're doing a 90-second street Y thing. So we do a lot of live events. We go to a lot of live events. And I'll always do panels with women's issues or young people. That's it. Then I have my kids. Hang out with my kids. Hang out with my different people. Family, my mom. So not busy at all? Not busy at all. I'm real busy. I have a great family.

1:19:08All right, you're running for Mara San Francisco in 2023. Give us an update. I don't think I know. No, I think London breed is good. I think she's good. I don't want to like I think she's good. I don't think anyone expected to die. And I think I'm going to give her a chance. She seems like she deserves one. That's a good reason. I was just doing that because my point I was trying to make is someone's got to fix this.

1:19:29Forget mess here to mess and so I think I was trying and at the time I really meant it was like someone's got a you've got to get away from all these career politicians She seems some of her stuff. I'm really interested in we'll see. We'll see. I mean, it's an incredibly difficult job that she's got But I like some of her moves visiting the homeless things. I like her whole PR. Yeah, I like it. I like it. I'm gonna have her. She's bringing scooters. She seems sensible. She seems sent just like same thing with like Stacey Abrams and Georgia. I'm really interested in politicians like that. I think she's really sensible and she's she comes to compromises. She's not angry. She's not like in partisan. I don't mean angry. I mean partisan like in a way that's inflexible. I like I like politicians like that. So we'll see. I'm hoping have her mayor breed on the show. I would hope that would happen. We've asked. Best of luck. Oh, okay. All right. One more. No, but you don't get across your whole career.

1:20:24You think? You try it? I'm gonna try. Why not? I heard it here first. Well, then we'll have an answer to this next question. Across your whole career, what work are you the most proud of? The Gates jobs interview was great. I think it's hard not to top that. I think it was great because lots of reasons. It was historic. It was important. It was a great interview. It was revelatory. I think it was emotional.

1:20:46I think that was really great. I think some of our coverage of Uber was great. What we did, getting him fired was, if we were just one small part in that effort, I thought that was good. That was time well spent. A lot of the interviews of code and recode and all things do, are going to be historic. I know it. Like nobody has done those interviews. Our Elon Musk ones, although I think he did some crazy today.

1:21:07But you had him he was speculating on the multiple universes. Simulation. Simulation. Simulation. Simulation. We're a pawn of other creatures. That was a great interview. That was a fantastic interview. That was a real insight to him. Even my Kim Kardashian interview was great. I think there's a body of work there. I was thinking the other day, like someone's like, oh, you've got to keep trying. I'm like, I can retire right now.

1:21:33Like, we have a, I have a, like, Walt did. He had a body of work that was so substantive and so important. Um, and these interviews were going to go down it. Like, if 100 years people are going to look at those interviews, some of them, not all of them, some of them, and they're going to matter. They're going to matter. And so everything we do now is just gravy as far as, you know what I mean? And so that's a really good way to look at it is there's no.

1:21:54downside to anything we're doing, and so we can continue to push upward. Your jobs and gates interview is so formative to me. I think I said something about it earlier, but I watched it a dozen times, first in a bunch of tiny clips, as it dribbled out, and then eventually the whole thing. That's free on iTunes. Newscorp didn't want that. We'll get you snuck it up. They came back later when we were using some of those clips or something else, and they're like, that's our IP. I'm like, no, you gave it away. We got you to give it away. Years ago was so great.

1:22:24such a moment. We got Rooper to sign it away. It was great. That was great. We wanted to put that on for all of humanity. I mean, in lieu of doing carbats today, that to me, I think you asked Steve about he and Bill's friendship. Yeah. And he responded with the Beatles line. The Beatles at the end. You and I have memories. Yeah. Oh, that made every day cry. It almost made me cry. I didn't plan it. I was such a manipulative person. I'm in a good way. But I like the one where I said, what?

1:22:53We asked good questions. Actually, there's two interviews. That one, when we asked him, what is the thing you don't know about your relationship with Gates? And he said, oh, for a long time, we've been married. I can't remember that. It was so good. And Gates was so disturbed by it, because you could see, like, flickering. I'm not anti-gay, but I am, but I can't. Like, oh, my God, what did you just, he totally got him. That was a great moment. And then I have to say the last interview he did. Gates did, I mean, jobs did with Walt and I, right, before he died.

1:23:23It was pretty close before he died. And he was just skinny as can be and just emaciated and it's very weak. But I got to tell you, go watch that interview. Go physically watch it because you can't get it by the voice. He is so vibrant as a person. I know there's all these controversy about his daughter and everything else. He was a shitty father and, you know, everyone, he's a shitty father. It looks dark at least. I don't know about his other kids. And obviously she has to talk about it.

1:23:52But that interview I have to say, he was so vibrant and full of life. He really exemplified a lot of the good things I like about Silicon Valley about keeping going. And the relentlessness of him was there. And he had more energy than anybody in the room. And he was about to die. And I thought that was kind of cool. That's a real, and he answered. And I think I asked him, I think one of the best questions I asked him.

1:24:16ever was what do you do? What are you gonna do for the rest of your life? I think that's I just and you could see everyone like Did she just ask that that guy's about to die and I was and I did it on purpose What are you gonna do the rest of your life and he started? He knew what I was doing and it was great because he couldn't believe I asked it I think but he could and he didn't mind he never minded stuff like that And he said, he was like, OK, this is what I do with TV. Like, as if he was going to live for 20 more years. And I thought that was a great answer. He didn't go like, on my waning days, I shelf, contemplate the universe, or whatever. He knew he was, he had to know he was dying. Maybe he didn't. I don't know. But it was a great, that was a...

1:24:54That was my favorite interview, I think. I thought that was in terms of... But, you know, just the recent Zuckerberg interview, I thought it was very good. I thought it changed things. I thought I got him to say things. We all knew he thought that he never said. And I think I wasn't unkind, and I don't think I snarked at him, and I thought I allowed him to speak, and he just... I thought that was a really good and revelatory interview, so that seemed... And the next one, whatever I do, the next one. We'll see. Maybe Elon. Next.

1:25:22Yeah, final day. I don't know. Let's say with him. I'd like to interview him again. I need to get some sleep first. I don't know. Something's going on. Yeah. Something's got something. Who knows. I don't know. We all have our crosses to bear, right? I think that's the like the big thing is like, they're people. They're people. Yeah. They're people. Do anything else you want to leave our listeners with? Just do the work. Please just do the work. And then you'll be just fine. Again, there's so many ways that people get in your way, whether you're woman in sexism or person of color, it's racism, or anti-semitism, you are absolutely going to face those things and don't let anyone tell you that's not holding you back. But if you keep doing the work, I do think you can succeed, you can succeed in a way and be very happy with your work. I know that's easy to say, but I think it's always helped me. I think that's it. Thank you, Cara. Thank you, Cara. That was a great interview. I appreciate it. You guys are very talented.

1:26:19All right, listeners. Now is a great time to talk about one of our favorite companies, Statsig. Yes, there is a reason why the best product teams rely on Statsig, whether they are iterating on their core product features or shipping AI-powered experiences at scale. Yep. In the crazy speed of today's AI world, shipping fast is just table stakes now. It's basically trivial to build and deploy your app constantly.

1:26:47The real advantage is how quickly you learn what changes actually created value for customers, and how fast you can use that signal to guide what you shipped next. This is where Statsig comes in. It brings experimentation, feature flags, and product analytics into one unified system so teams can ship safely, test rigorously, and directly link what they changed to how users actually behaved.

1:27:09So if you want to make learning your competitive advantage, whether you're building new AI experiences, or just evolving your existing core product, go to statsig.com slash acquired to get started. If you aren't subscribed and you want to hear more, you can subscribe from your favorite podcast client. You can follow Kara on Twitter. Kara working, they follow you on Twitter. They can find me at Kara Swisher. Excellent. Yep, I got one of the early ones.

1:27:33That was a good one. I have swisher at Gmail, I think, or one of those early ones. I think my type, Cara swishers. Email tips to swisher at Gmail. Whatever. I'm not going to answer that when I never use it. But I have a lot of the early everythings, which is because I was there. Awesome. Well, if you like the show, review us on iTunes, come join the Slack, acquire.fm, or don't, and enjoy whatever podcast you listen to in the future. Thanks, everyone.