Special

2018 Year Wrap Up

Episode 52

2018 wasn’t such a great year for our tech giants, from Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica debacle to Google’s sexual misconduct investigations, last year was rocked by scandal within the tech industry. In this Moonshots episode we look into theses scandals and how they are likely to influence 2019, as well as, what can we learn from these events and how they shape the future. 

Clip List

A BLOCK

PRIVACY // ETHICS

VISION VS. LYING

  • Theranos Owner/ 'We Made So Many Mistakes' With Tests Guardian

  • John Carreyrou’s 'Bad Blood How Were So Many People Duped

  • John Carreyrou’s 'Bad Blood Why Elizabeth Mislead Investors

CULTURE

  • Across The Globe , Google Employees Walk Out To Protest Misconduct, Inequity - PBS NewsHour

B BLOCK

HUBRIS

MAKING MONEY

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 52. And I'm your cohost Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the man from Manhattan. Mr. Chad Owen. Good evening. I am coming to you from Manhattan. I am. I am a Brooklyn night through and through my, I will set the record straight. Okay. The record has been said, he's on tour. He's he's he's journeyed outside of the beautiful borough of Brooklyn across the river, straight into Manhattan. Chad, how nice is it that we are kicking off a completely. New different show something we haven't done before as a little, uh, A little pause before we jump into our Simon Sinek series in the next show, our Epic Simon's the next year. Oh gosh, get ready listeners. It's going to be huge. But before we get there, uh, I'm really excited about this show because it is completely different format to what we've done before with a different theme. Chad, why don't you set us up? What an earth are we going to do on the show today? We thought we'd come at you with. A rapid fire sequence of clips around some cautionary tales that have come to light in the past year or so from the innovators in Silicon Valley and beyond. So. We're gonna, I think we have like 15 clips in today's show around five or six different topics, and we're not, we're not going to be bashing any of these companies. Like they've already been raked over the coals by, by the media and what we're actually really going to try and focus on is.

What can we learn and how can we ensure that things are different so that maybe some of these things don't happen or happen as often right. Or blow up in everyone's faces as badly as some of these things did. Yeah. Yeah. So, so a little context here, is that really, for the first time in recent memory, um, the last year or so tech has, I had a really tough ride. I mean, I did my first internet project in 1996. And for. For the last 20, 25 years, the internet has just been on fire. Took a quick pause after the first bubble burst, but largely these tech Titans. And we're talking about the, you know, the Microsofts, the Facebooks, the Googles, the Amazons, they have been the darlings of the media. They've created these. Incredibly wealthy founders, such as bill Gates, Jeff Bezos. It was really up until the last year they could do no wrong. And what's really fascinating is not just one, not just two, but several tech Titans have hit rough waters in the last year. It has been a remarkable change. Hasn't it Chad, to, to that, that last 10 or 20 years where tech could do no wrong. I mean, it's really interesting. What's been going on in the last year. Yeah, you can feel it in, in the air there's entire political platforms here in the States that are talking about how to break up tech, you know, these are things that were, as you said, kind of unthinkable even just right. Yeah. It's it's to me. Um, is that the words you use? Cautionary tales and, and I think, look, we've seen a lot of problems for, for Elon Musk who looked untouchable. Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and probably one of the biggest single disasters of the last year was thera. Nice. And their founder, Elizabeth Holmes, who is in a big trouble for how she led that company. I think.

As you said, we're not going to try and bash them up some more because all these people have made mistakes and they're going to pay the price, whatever that might be for their respective misdoings. However, I think for us and our show, what we saw this as, as an opportunity to learn from those mistakes. In fact, maybe the greatest mistake to be made would be not. To ask, what can we learn as entrepreneurs and innovators from these mistakes and how can we do things better? Yeah. Yeah. And, um, because the, the news cycle is so crazy and fast. Many of you may have forgotten, uh, the big story that broke that first got Facebook into the really hot water that it's in now, but. The Cambridge Analytica breach is really, I think it's probably the first mile. Well, yeah, I think it's the first milestone that just opened the flood Gates for all of these stories that we're going to be caring about today. And you might get found a great clip from the horse's mouth, someone who worked at Cambridge Analytica to, uh, help explain just exactly what it was and how things went wrong. I do feel responsible for it. Um, and, uh, it's something that I regrets and upper-class Etonian who expects people to follow him wherever he goes. Alexander next, uh, is with me. And he starts with this sort of like razzle-dazzle the Pentagon we worked for Eben G brilliant. and I'm a posh British matter. You should trust me with all the money. Kogan offered us with something that Roy is way cheaper, way faster and have a quality that nothing matched. They had a. Apps on Facebook that were given special permission to harvest data, not from just the person who used the app or joins the app, but also it would then go into their entire friend network and pull out all of the friend's data as well. Things like status updates, likes in some cases, private messages to, to, to, you know, touch a couple hundred thousand people to expand into there. Yeah. Entire social network, which would then scale us to you. Yeah. I picked up America and people had no idea that the data was being told. We don't work with Facebook data. We don't have Facebook data, but we do use Facebook as a platform to advertise as do all brands in many, most of agencies, all agencies, I should say from when I was there, that's just fundamentally not true because we spent a million dollars harvesting tens of millions of Facebook profiles. The company itself was founded on using Facebook data. We would know what kinds of messaging you would be susceptible to and where you're going to consume that. And then how many times do we need to touch you with diet in order to change how you, how you think about something? You know, it is a full service propaganda machine. A full service propaganda machine. Chad, this was crazy. I mean, they were literally not only getting people to use their, uh, trivia personality apps at Cambridge Analytica, they were literally getting your profile, your friends' profiles, getting even private messages and.

For me, uh, Chad, the worst thing of all of this was Facebook admitted that they actually knew about this for a long time before they were caught and they had worn them, but they did almost no enforcement. Uh, when they warned them years and years and years ago, this for me is, I mean, what Cambridge Analytica were up to was bad, but how Facebook just did not take it seriously until it became public speaks volumes to how they truly think about privacy and ethics. Yeah. And I think. The whole idea in the financial crisis that hit in 2008, 2009, this idea of banks being too big to fail. I think Facebook had a bit of that mindset and I think just the nature of their business, like their business. And their users outgrew their capabilities in their operations. They just didn't have the security and the tech team and the privacy team to be, to be even aware of, of these sorts of issues. And so in my mind, it was a failure on leadership's part to look around the next corner. And then look around the next corner to, to borrow some ideas from the previous episode. Um, they did, they, they weren't thinking about second order consequences. They were just thinking, Oh, you know, sure. We'll give 'em certain partners access to some data when they're running ads or when they're running these trivia's and quizzes. They're not. Doing the red team, blue team exercises where they're thinking of all of the worst case scenarios, like of course someone that's profit driven is going to try and gain the system. And that's exactly what happened. Cambridge Analytica, you know, exploited, you know, the vault, the vulnerabilities and Facebook's system. Yeah. And in the end, As always they got caught and this is going to outline just what exactly happened once people knew what they were up to. 5 billion bucks.

That is what Facebook could end up paying the federal trade commission and what would be the largest fine ever by U S regulator against a single tech company in a report to investors yesterday, the social network revealed that they are setting aside billions of dollars in anticipation. And those possible penalties. The agency opened its investigation into Facebook. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke last March, the report found 87 million users had their data scraped, eventually leading to Zuckerberg. First appearance before Congress wearing a tie publicly apologizing for the company's handling of the scandal. But despite all of this. Just remember this thing. Facebook stock surge after posting strong first quarter earnings. And that is something to remember when Facebook has two issues, they've got a public relations issue. They don't have much of a stock price issue at the moment. Joining us now, Scott Galloway, professor at the NYU stern school of business and an expert on all things, Facebook. To Ali's point, Scott Facebook, lots of public outrage, they face, but never anything that affects their bottom line. Do you think this is, do you think this is going to have a real impact, a real dent? Oh, Stephanie, not only do I not think it's not going to have a dam, but I think the FTC has unwittingly been sort of co-opted into being a co-conspirator in Facebook and effectively. What you have is a fine, that puts aside some of the uncertainty. At a price tag that Facebook can shrug off. Let's talk about numbers here. Let's say it's 3 billion. It said it's three to 5 billion. That's about two weeks of revenue, about seven weeks of cashflow. So a Facebook and say to the marketplace, we can continue to do this.

We can continue to engage in this type of behavior and it results in what is effectively a parking ticket. Then the government is no longer sort of a countervailing force to private influence in private corruption. It's now sort of been co-opted into a co-conspirator. So not only does this not deter things, this probably enables them. Labeling like a parking ticket. Oh my gosh. That is such a great analogy for that fine. It really is. Yeah. Uh, I think I'd heard someone, maybe it was even Scott say somewhere else that they need to add a zero or two to these fines for it to be a deterrent. Yeah. And, and the, the, the interesting thing for me that we can learn from Facebook. Is that they have this, this kind of quandary, this, this sort of balance that they have to make, which is because they don't charge us to use the product. We fundamentally. As human beings, we become the product. And so you've got this sort of conflict of interests. On one hand, I need to take care of us, but on the other hand, they need to exploit us. And, you know, we've seen how challenging this can be. We only need to look at my space and so forth. Monetizing social networks is actually way trickier than you May 1st think because. This idea of an one hand protecting the rights of your users, but then exploiting them. This can be a very, very tricky balance. And I think what we can learn from this is that at any point that you are not. Charging your customers to use your product. It creates a huge ethical dilemma down the track. And what was really interesting is that you might remember when we did the Travis Kalanick show, he often talked about, and Apple CEO has also talked about is the following idea that. These companies talk about us not being the product. So Tim cook, Travis Carolyn often talk about, we charge you, you get it, you buy it and we don't need to exploit you for that. This is how people attack Facebook. But when we phrase this in a different way, it's how can we create value for our customers? And. A dividend, a yield, create a income stream for our business or our product that is not in conflict with the interest of those same customers. I think that's the big ethical question that, that Facebook presents. Yeah. The lesson for me is kind of, don't start a company like Facebook, where the user is paying it does, doesn't it, you almost, you almost start to think, well, if, if they're not prepared to pay for it, do they really want it? Yeah.

And I have some very conflicted views on this, especially when it comes to the world of the arts. We're so trained for things to be free now that asking people to pay, especially again, when it comes to the arts, it's a, it's a very tricky thing. Um, for me, it's why I leave my Spotify running all the time, because I know that Spotify is like paying a dollar and 80 cents for every, to the artists for every dollar that they're collecting. Um, because I want to get paid. What's what what's due to them. But yeah, the, this idea. The lesson for me is understand what the value is, as you're saying and how, or when, or why the customers are or what amount the customers are willing to pay for it and make that contract open and transparent, which was how Facebook got into trouble, because, you know, they hid sure it was done legally, but it was done behind these terms of service that are. Hundreds of pages long that no one reads and privacy settings didn't exist. And those are the, those are the two lessons that I'm taking away. Yeah. Yeah. There's a last thought here that I have, which is, um, I can't remember from whom I learned this, but they, they once told me this, this idea that I really like, which is don't do anything in life. That you wouldn't be comfortable being put on the front of the newspaper that your grandmother reads. I really like this idea. You might even say don't do anything behind closed doors that you wouldn't want your customers to understand or to know. And I think it's the simple questions of transparency and like, how would this look to the outside can be a way of you. You know, refining your, your compass, your ethical compass. And I think that's, it's kind of a neat way to think about. You know, the things you're doing, particularly as soon as everybody heard and saw what Facebook was doing with Cambridge Analytica, it became immediately a massive problem because it just wasn't good. Yeah. And speaking of, of things.

That you wouldn't do or things. Yeah. Speaking of situations that you wouldn't want your grandmother to find out about? I think one of the most intriguing stories to come to light recently in, in large part due just to, I think the mystery. Still about what exactly went on is Elizabeth Holmes story and fairness and what they were or weren't doing and how they were able to grow to the Heights of billions of dollars, um, only to come crashing back down. But here's the first in a series of, of some really great clips from the people that were following the story most closely about thoroughness and the founder, Elizabeth Holmes. The ABC news investigation involving the young woman, the self made billionaire and her company. Theranose she claimed you have developed a blood test that could save lives, but did she put lives at risk tonight? We have now obtained the deposition never seen before. And ABC's chief business correspondent, Rebecca Jarvis reports. She's the Stanford dropout who became the youngest female self made billionaire and had legions of believers. Elizabeth Holmes, boasted her company Theranose could detect hundreds of diseases from just a drop or two. We've made it possible to run comprehensive laboratory tests. From a tiny sample that pitch convincing everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the owner of the Patriots, to American retirees to invest. I need to get all you want to say, but home is now facing criminal charges. And up to 20 years in prison, she's pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say she knew Theranose couldn't deliver accurate and reliable results for all its blood tests, which experts say potentially put thousands of patients at risk. Okay. This is the Walgreens. Sherry Aker took a Theranose test at her local Walgreens and mistakenly feared. Her breast cancer had returned. The nurse called me back and she said, I am so sorry. That's not good. There could be a tumor growing somewhere. I will never forget that day. A different test showed Sherry was healthy tonight in this deposition obtained by ABC news, never before seen questioning of homes under oath, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I do pressed about those hundreds of tests. She claimed her company could perform to detect diseases.

And how many tests could it run at that time in 2010? Um, I, I don't know exactly what the number was. I was probably, um, tens of, of tests. They say tens of testing means something less than a hundred. Yes. Did it concern you that a number of tests weren't working on fairness as devices? I know that we made so many mistakes on this front, but we were, we were trying to take this forward. I, uh, I don't know this there and us thing. This was such a deception. There is a fantastic documentary on HBO that you can enjoy, which goes into green, the inventor. Very good one. We'll have a link to that in the show notes, which you can get on moonshots.io. Yes. We made so many mistakes, but you know, the thing is when you hear what they're playing with, I mean, this is. Health care. People thinking they had cancer when they didn't people who didn't have cancer, who may have had cancer that didn't know as a result. I mean, this is the line you cross when you, I mean, she's arguing we had vision, but I would argue no, no, no, that wasn't vision. You were just downright lying. And to say that we made so many mistakes, I mean, does that qualify as the understatement of the Chad. Yeah, I, I think the reason this story was so intriguing to me is Elizabeth Holmes. At least the way she's profiled in the, in the book by John Kerry, who bad blood in this documentary, the inventor by the amazing documentary filmmaker, Alex Gidney, she she's portrayed as. Kind of like the Paragon, entrepreneurship and inventors, and it's like, you, you turn all the kind of normal people up to 11. And so it's not that I don't see too much evil or malice in what she did. It was just all of those characteristics that make a great entrepreneur and innovator. We're just. They were just over amplified in, in, she got herself into a situation where there were no checks and balances on, on that hyped up, you know, entrepreneurial personality. Yeah. The, so I think, you know, the, the line that you drew first there is, is this line between vision and misleading people. And it's, it's a big part of people who are doing. Ambitious future leading things. You know, some people do this really well. You, you would argue that, um, Elon Musk has found it rather challenging to navigate this same line because he's always promising things of the future or even simple things like we're going to produce this many cars in a given period. And he's, you know, of recent times he's also been caught out and where people are like, you know what. I'm not sure if I believe you anymore, because I kind of heard this story on. So this is a really important topic, but these next few clips are go deeper into this whole fairness scandal. And the man that you're going to hear speaking is John Kerry, you, he is a wall street journal reporter and a great author, and he was the one. Who put the spotlight on theranostics, Austin, Elizabeth Holmes.

And he can take up a large part of the, I think the praise for revealing just how misleading fairness really was. So let's have a listen to John Cario talking about all the different people that were duped by Theranose. How were so many people and companies duped along the way? Well, what, uh, Elizabeth was really adept at, uh, it was winning the support of someone older experience who had a great, uh, reputation and then leveraging that association to get her own credibility. In the first person she did that with was her Stanford engineering professor, Channing Robertson, then a few years into the life of Theranose. She met Don Lucas, the venture capitalists who groom Larry Ellison. Uh, bring, uh, Oracle corporation public in the mid eighties. Um, and then in 2011, she met George Schultz, the famous former secretary of state who crafted the Reagan administration's foreign policy and who many still credit with winning the cold war. And, uh, what many people don't know about George Schultz is that he's passionate about science. His house is right off the Stanford campus. And when he met Elizabeth. He was wowed with, uh, her claims about what our technology could do and quickly agreed to join her board and then introduced her to his buddies at the Hoover institution, which is a think tank housed on the Stanford campus. And that's how she came to meet. The likes of Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn and bill Frist, bill Perry, et cetera. And they, they soon joined the board too. Was timing also a factor in all this, because right around 2010, we see Facebook rising. We see Twitter being very popular. Um, investors were basically looking for the next unicorn startup in there's their nose. Right. And, um, you know, money was gushing into the Valley because, uh, in large part. We'd had the great recession in 2008, 2009. And the federal reserve had lowered interest rates. And so a traditional investments like bonds no longer, no longer returned, good money. And so investors went looking for higher returns elsewhere. The main Valley became the goldfish. The Valley became the gold rush and, um, uh, one of the companies, uh, that, that seemed so promising. Uh, was fairness and, and, uh, late 2013, early 2014, the company achieved evaluation of more than $9 billion.

And Elizabeth Holmes had made, managed to keep half of the equity. So she was worth almost $5 billion. And this fulfilled, this yearning, there was for the first female. Tech founder who became a billionaire. There had been other women in the Valley who had achieved, you know, fame and wealth. Cheryl Sandberg. Who's the number two at Facebook, Marissa Meyer, but they hadn't created their own companies. Elizabeth Holmes was going to be the first tech founder who was a woman and who achieved great riches. I'm hearing two things in this, one's kind of like a good lesson out of the bad. And then something here at the end where we collectively as a society wanted something so bad. I know that we, in a way almost, maybe we helped create. It as well, because we wanted, we wanted it. We wanted her to succeed so badly because we wanted a female founder to become a billionaire. But the first part, actually I think a good lesson is this kind of stepping stone of reputation. So that if we're, if we, if, if we're an innovator or an inventor with a. A legitimate idea, uh, that does provide value to the customers to use those stepping stones of, uh, of reputation that, that works so well in her favor. But when she was deceiving them, the lie just kind of passed right. Between all of them because of, of their connection and reputation. Yes. So, I mean, the endorsement thing is a huge learning inside of this one. But the other thing that I thought was really powerful in that clip was the reference to the Goldberg. I wish it was on at the time people got so carried away. It was these other stocks where we're flying. There was a sense of don't, you know, fear of missing out. Um, and so that's why the timing of things like raising money and IPOs is just so important. And that's why we're seeing a flood of them at the moment, because you know, there's an appetite there and, you know, people got really burnt on the lift IPO. We'll talk about that in a little bit. So I think there's that. And, and you're, you're absolutely right to talk about. It was a female led company. She dropped out of Harvard. She was actually promising something that like, how could you not want a universal blood test? That's just a little prick on the finger rather than the whole time I arm up and take a few gallons. I mean, Every human on the planet would say, well, that is a damn good idea. So we, we so desperately wanted all of this to be true. And, um, it just wasn't. And, um, just to, to go deeper, another level on this, we've now got a little bit of thinking from John Kerry, you again, and this time it's, it's really about like, The motivations or perhaps, you know, why, why tell the lie? Why mislead people? So let's have a listen to John Kerry.

You talking about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. So do you think she was intentionally trying to mislead investors or was she consumed by her own ambitions and thought she could make this happen? A mixture of both, this is not a Maydoff long con you know, made off essentially decided, uh, in the late eighties that he was no longer really investing money and built a Ponzi scheme. Uh, Elizabeth Holmes, when she dropped out of Stanford, had a vision and really set about. Creating a company and hiring people to make that vision happen. But along the way, encountered setbacks as entrepreneurs do and, and refused to, um, Admit the reality of those setbacks and continued to over promise to investors. And it got to a point where the gap between her promises and what she said she had achieved technologically, and what the reality of the technology was got so enormous that by the time they went live with the finger stick blood tests in Walgreens stores in the fall of 2013, it had become a massive fraud. Hmm. So is there a possibility that, um, that there could be criminal charges stemming from this? Because the sec of course charged her with massive fraud. She agreed to pay a $500,000 fine. Are there criminal investigations going along, going on right now though, right? Um, there's a, uh, an investigation, uh, spearheaded by the us attorney's office in San Francisco. That's been going on since December of 2015. So we're now two and a half years into it. And my sources tell me that that investigation is very active and very advanced. Um, and it may well result in criminal indictments, civil Elizabeth Holmes, and her ex boyfriend who was a number two of the company. Sonny Balani the, the thing that sticks out to me here is, and this is, this is a life lesson, but it's. Those little white lies or innocent lies or, or, or lies by omission, they only grow larger over time. Isn't that true? Like you can just see if at the beginning when things weren't working out there must have been this pivotal moment where she decided to lie. And then there was a second moment where she told a lie on the lie. And then after that, She was toast. And it reminds me of when you're a little kid and you're learning the rules life, like just. Don't lie because it always ends up bad. I'm always, when I'm watching a movie with my son, I'm always like, see if they hadn't told a lie, then, then they'd be okay. But now they've told the lie on the line and you know, how many times, times in our professional career life growing up, just, it never works out. You always get Courtney and Sue just at the first moment where they it's a hard conversation. You have to admit that you made a mistake. Just admit it better do it now. Cause it never gets any easier. Does it? No, it's, it's easier said than done though, because so many entrepreneurs face that moment that Elizabeth did, they're talking to the R and D team or the engineers and they simply say we can't do it. What, what, what we're promising or what you're asking us to do, we just can't do, cause we don't have enough money or time. The technology doesn't exist. We can't invent it. And you know, the founders that have survived and gone on to create great companies, I'm sure that people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have faced these same moments. But instead of doubling down on that small deception, that then grows, they. I hate to use this word, but they take that, that moment to then pivot. They take that roadblock and then do some subtle judo to TaeKwonDo, to kind of deflect the energy of that obstacle. And then put it back into something where maybe they do have more traction on the R and D front or on the, on the customer market front. But in this case, it all gets so very real when she knowingly. Agreed to put the theranostic installations into Walmart, sorry. Uh, what's that Walgreens.

And to do this when she knew they didn't have it, like there there's one thing about being in production before you got alive and pushing people to overcome the unknown and the impossible, but there was a huge Abby and she crossed the Rubicon when she said. Hey Walgreens, let's deploy this to real people. When she went in, she knew it wasn't working. And that, that was just one of the very many bad decisions. Oh, sure. Sure. But where I would have liked to have been is like that first year. Meeting in the moment where she was told that her vision wasn't achievable and then to kind of like, see the look on her face and get inside of her head and understand what was going on, because I'm sure that that moment happened. And a different founder may have again gone in a different direction, but she, she didn't and we all know how that story ends. The learning here. I think for all of us, is there, there, there are, I mean, just a lie and a lie always ends up terribly, but more importantly, I really want to come back to the moment. When they agreed to put the products live and out into the universe, that is a moment that we should all feel like, okay, this is such an enormously important moment and should not be underestimated. And if we're not ready, then we should just call out and say, no, we're going to delay that until you get it right. Because when we face that moment, you know, Disappointing not delivering to customers or being their health at risk. Those stakes are massive. And once you lose trust, it happens very quickly, very easily, and it is incredibly hard to earn back. So it may as well take the short term heat and delay and put it back until you really do have it. I mean, for me, that's the really strong lesson that lies within thoroughness. Yeah, one of the more fascinating parts of the documentary is they speak to former thoroughness employees, the oppressive culture that was fostered there because they all. They knew that they were lying, but no one said that they were lying, but you know, everyone felt horrible because they were lying.

It was just, um, it was certainly an unsustainable and unsustainable business because the people there, you know, grew the ethical backbone that the leadership didn't and we have a really interesting, uh, clip about a different company. Who's, you know, a big movement of. Of employees, uh, you know, decided to speak out against some, some practices. And I'm, I'm talking about Google and the walkouts to protest MIS misconduct and, and inequity. And. Do you remember exactly how many people it was? It was, it was thousands, 10% of the global company. So that would be about 10,000 people basically said, Hey, the way women are treated in this company is not cool. I have to say, you know, putting aside the issue itself, I actually think culturally, whilst they were not treating women fairly, the fact that the company had the capacity for employees to stand up. And to call this out to protests and that they've been able to create change from within. I think that part, that part is a real positive here. So let's have a listen to this, a PBS report on the Google walkout. Thousands of employees walk out of Google offices in more than 40 locations around the world today, protesting the company's handling of sexual misconduct claims the New York times reported last week that Google had paid millions of dollars to departing executives accused of sexual harassment and never made the allegations public among them. Android creator, Andy Rubin, who received 90 million on his way out. The door Reuben denies, forcing a female Google employee into a sexual act. Despite the fact that an internal investigation found the claim, credible employees in New York city held a rally after leaving their office and call for a broader cultural shift at the company. We need the structural change and the Nana transparency, accountability. This is not really just for myself. It's for everyone here. We also know that we have the eyes of many companies looking at us and we've always been a Vanguard company. So if we don't lead the way, nobody else will. Katie Brenner co-wrote that original New York times story that disclosed how Google handles sexual misconduct claims. She's been following the walkouts today and she joins me now, Katie runner, thank you for joining us. Once again, was this the turnout that had been expected today? This turnout exceeded expectations by far we'd have reported that we expected about 1500 people. Other people thought it'd be a few thousand. At this point, we have, you know, unverified accounts, but clearly a lot of head count going on up to more than 10% of the company's overall 94,000 employees. It has walked out today of the people you've talked to. What's motivating them. Sure. I feel motivated by a few things. There's been a long simmering tension within Google about the way that. That women are treated. It's not just the idea that sexual harassment has gone unaddressed. It's also the fact that Google has refused to be transparent about whether or not men and women are paid equally. It's the idea that top leaders of the company with, by having high profile affairs that were very. Obvious there were known secrets that they treated the, the, the women at the company, like their personal dating pool. And what kind of messages does that send? And then of course, the straw that probably broke the camel's back was the report that Andy ribbon received $90 million, which is an extraordinary sum after a credible claim of sexual assault. These things altogether send a clear message, which is that men are more valued than women and for a company as important as Google, as high profile, where the employees are as highly paid, they said that. The time it's now the time to stop. I don't know how to respond to this other than just to say there.

All right. Well, you know, as, as, as I was listening to this, the. The big, um, sort of thing here is you can cause I'm being the best engineering company on the planet, but if you're not working on culture, you're going to have problems as well. I mean, that's the big thing that they've always been so famous for their engineering, right. At Google. Quite obviously, they didn't invest in culture. And that seems the big call out here. Just having good code. Isn't gonna make you a great. Business. Yeah. I, someone said it very simply in that, you know, people are asking, well, how do we solve these problems of, of the pay gap and, and, you know, no, no equity or no equity in, in leadership or on boards. And this. Simplest answer is you have to hire the diversity and you have to make, pay transparent and pay people the same. It's, it's kind of as simple as that. Yeah. And, and the, the another tool that I ran into when I've been thinking about culture and I've been using this a lot, I just explain this. Cause I think this is really helpful when we think about like, well, okay. When we say we want good culture, that can feel a little bit. Uh, abstract for me, like the best definition of culture is that culture is created through the unspoken messages people receive about what is valued and what is important. So it's the unspoken messages. Okay. Now everybody pays lip service to saying the right thing, but it's really the unspoken thing. So it's shifting around from what you say to what you do in a company. And there's like three key areas here. One is how people behave and that can be things like how people do meetings, how they talk to each other and emails, how people interact. So there's the behavior. The next one is systems like how you plan, what, what gets allocated budget and what doesn't. And. The process of budgeting, how things are measured and all the structures and organizational stuff. And the next thing that this one for me is the symbols. It's little things. The titles, the car parks, the promotions, how time is spent. So when we think about culture, I think a really practical way to take such a emotional sensitive abstracting is culture is created through the unspoken messages.

People receive about what is valued. And we break that down into those behaviors systems and symbols. And I actually, you and I use this together on a project with a client recently and it was so powerful, wasn't it? Chad? Yeah. In, in some ways the kind of more materialistic outputs from the workshop paled in comparison to the, the cultural aha. As we started to pull. To gather the insights around the behaviors, the systems and the symbols that were were necessary for, for this client to take the work forward inside of the company. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot to learn there and, you know, we get through this and, and, you know, without a doubt, Facebook and thoroughness with these massive scandals. Where we had real privacy issues, where we saw this, the line between vision and misleading people became very gray and yeah. Bad decisions made, but what's, what's really important. What we can see from this Google, uh, situation is there's so much we can learn and take from this. I mean, on one level we can say, well, well, I hope that doesn't happen at my company. That's step one. But step two, you can say, well, well, what does the opposite look like? What is it. A great culture look like, and, uh, hopefully we've uncovered already at this sort of mid point of the show. Lots and lots of insights for our listeners, but we've still got Chad, we've still got two more big blocks of content to come. Um, and I think we're going to segue away from culture and I think we're going to get a little bit more into. Ego and hubris or flying a bit too close to the sun. Yeah. Boy, Chad, you want to lead us off? Well, coming back into my back yard, you, you said it well, one of the biggest marketing stunts pulled by the world's second largest company largest. I don't know. It changes on a weekly basis was Amazon's H Q two fiasco. And after all of the hoopla and pitches. They ended up backing out. So we, the pier that's, that's a summary of Amazon going through all of that work and hoop off or nothing.

Tonight the world's biggest company is saying no, thanks to the world's financial capital. Amazon had announced it would bring 25,000 jobs to new York's long Island city as part of its HQ. Two initiatives splitting 50,000 jobs with Northern Virginia, but almost immediately in face to face stiff opposition, oppose to the party initial impact on traffic, housing schools and the financial agreement. Amazon struck with the city and state. Now three months later. The company is pulling the plug on its New York plans shows that everyday Americans still have the power to organize and fight for their communities. And they can have more say in this country than the richest man in the world, Amazon blames politicians who will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project among locals, both regret and relief. This is basically Amazon picking up their toys and leaving the sandbox, a revolution for Queen's economy. This is could have been something outrageously awesome for us. Amazon's canceled order means a loss of 25,000 jobs and billions of dollars in economic impact. I think the protesters are gonna realize longterm that while they won the battle, they lost. The war tonight, New York mayor, bill de Blasio is saying, you gotta be tough to make it here in New York. He says Amazon had an opportunity, but it walked away or threw that opportunity away. Meanwhile, Amazon says it is not reopening it's discussions about where each Q2 is going to go. Northern Virginia and Nashville are still the winner. Well, Chad, I mean, there's a lot to say on this. Um, but I want to know. I mean, how did it feel when you put on your New York Brooklynite hat, how did it feel? Do you think for you? How did it think? How do you think it felt for the community? We heard a lot of opposing views there. Some saying, Hey, uh, Good that we avoided that other saying, geez, we really missed an opportunity. How, how do you think new people in New York felt about losing this massive Amazon office? Inflicted is the best word that I have to describe. I don't know. Many people personally that felt a hundred percent in one camp or the other. Right. Interesting. I think, I think most people could agree that the entire, like charade of in circus around, you know, pitching and wasn't a shooter. I think everyone can agree that that was absolutely the wrong way to do it. You know? Everyone suspected that they knew that they were going to go to Virginia and New York all along, but they just wanted to create a bidding war and to see what kind of incentives they could get. I'm pretty sure that's, that's quite true. But for me, the lessons for me, the lessons are. Really around the impact of an importance of community when it comes to the companies that we create, Amazon, I think just went a bit too far in, in thinking, Oh, we're the most important, uh, company. We ha we're bringing the most jobs. And so of course you will do our, our back and call. And while I think maybe New York. Wasn't necessarily protesting against the specifics of what Amazon was doing. Certainly some people were, uh, unions and organizers, uh, around wages and working conditions, certainly, but I think it was more just of new Yorkers.

Because I think as a, as a whole, we're probably the most proud, uh, citizens in the United States when it comes to having city, city pride. And so a company like Amazon coming in thinking that they were better than New York, New York was not going to stand for that. Yeah. You know, that's so true. I mean, it's got such a vibrant sense of identity, New York, I think. For me the way we can think about one way we can think about this is thinking about how Apple, uh, was a little bit indulgent in creating their own new office. And I want you to contrast the two different approaches. And I think it tells us a story of how good Apple is at marketing and how bad Amazon is. Amazon basically did their ticky to a charade process with many people. Suspecting they'd already decided. And then because of the pushback for awarding New York, they pulled out of New York. And then you heard in that, they've said, okay, we don't want to talk about this anymore, which is a classic sign of, wow. We were talking about this a lot for a whole year. Right. And it's really funny, whereas. If you think about Apple, they created this amazing place. They did it with more discretion and judgment and it became just yet another thing Apple did where everyone's like, Oh, wow. Right. What a stark contrast to massive new headquarter projects from two Titans of Silicon Valley, but completely different outcomes. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the community in which we're starting companies is probably. Often overlooked and yeah. And so I did that again. The lesson for me here is. Know, this is why by default people move to the coasts, uh, because see a lot of the opportunities there. But yeah, there are many other cities that are thriving because of how welcoming they are to new businesses and technology in so many different industries. Yeah. I mean, they could have done this a little quieter, a little bit more meaningful, a lot quicker because the process took forever and they could have just taken a leaf out of the Apple playbook. But talking about companies that, you know, cross the line flew too close to the sun. One of our favorite innovators who has. Amazing mental models, enormous courage, but has shown some real judgment problems is mr. Elan mask. And, um, we've, we've picked a clip here that he's done a little while ago, but we've chosen it because of some of the, the items that, that it talks about. Um, and this is in reference to Elon Musk and he's tweeting and, and. For context here, Ilan has been, uh, I think challenging Donald Trump, uh, uh, Twitter's favorite celebrity.

And I think Ilan and Tesla have become, uh, actually really dependent upon Ilan saying things to pump up the stock price. There's serious questions about the viability of Tesla. Can they produce it? Enough cars to make money. And, um, we'll put that topic aside, but contextually here, Ian has been an absolute hero for the media. They've loved him. They've adored him. I think a lot of people buying a Tesla or actually buying Elon Musk. Yeah. Now here's the thing where you get in a bit of a twist. And if you're not careful, if you don't stay humble, you can sometimes get a little bit big for your boots. And Ilan has made a point of attacking the sec. And the sec are responsible for governing listed publicly listed companies and the rules by which they can disclose things about their business. And there are certain expectations and rules as to how ACO and spokespeople other companies should behave. And Ilan has got in a lot of trouble and the, the allegations and fines that are discussed in his favor. Elan actually did get fined. Actually Ian did get in a lot of trouble, but what's really important here is we're going to hear from a former sec commissioner giving some really good analysis on Elon Musk and him getting in trouble for saying just a little too much. You look at this case and the filing that the STC just made. If you're the judge, you do what to Elon Musk. Well, I, I have to say, I think the SCC is acted very responsibly. We've got a CEO who I guess for want of a better word is irrepressible. Um, he needs to have. A certain amount of repression of his instinct of a drive to go to Twitter. So I think that, um, holding him in contempt, finding him and, uh, hang him with strict instructions that if this continues, the, uh, punishment will be worse, um, would be an order. At least that's what I would do under the circumstances. He is, he is a flaunting, the, um, judicial decree that he agreed to back in September. What, what kind of fine are we talking about here? Um, I don't, um, no, but I'm assuming, uh, Uh, you know, fines, uh, that would be in the tens of millions of dollars dollars, um, uh, to make at least an impact. Uh, he's got plenty of money. The point is to show him that if he continues issuing tweets without getting them pre-cleared. He is headed for very serious problems. Harvey though, it should the fine be for Elon Musk. And I don't want him to dissuade you of that, but also for the company itself. And frankly, even for the shareholders to pay, given that it appears that the board and a management did not put in any meaningful place. System, even though I know the sec says that they tried to put something in place, but one that's working, uh, to, to pre clear these, these, these, uh, these emails or these, uh, social media messages. I think there's, um, a fundamental problem here. Musk is a creative genius. I don't think anybody would deny that. Therefore he has real value to the company. On the other hand, he does not function the way. Um, a normal CEO should function. There has to be something that represses this instinctive drive to put things out on Twitter and, uh, just give vent to his, every thought and emotion that comes into his head. So in that sense, I'm not certain how much the company itself can do. Hmm, other than staying off of Twitter, when you're coming out of confidential financial meetings with your CFO, I don't, I don't know what I'll take.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and the reason that we chose that clip is. Look, here's the thing Elon Musk could chose to take Tesla, public Elon Musk chose to raise money from the market. And whether you agree or disagree with his findings and his behavior, you, when you take money from them, public markets, you agree to the rules of the public markets. And. I'm sorry, but he's not better than the public markets. I think he got way too arrogant thinking he could actually break the rules and. If he didn't want to play by the rules. That's cool. Don't go public. Don't go raise a couple of billion from investors. And to me, this is the real point here. We know he loves his Twitter, just like Donald. We know that he's got exciting ideas to share. That's all good and well, but he also chose to go public and you can't have your cake and eat it. Like which one do you want? You want Twitter? Oh, you want to raise money from the markets. And more specifically here to go back to the fine line between vision and misleading people. Let's be clear here do are really big where he said we have raised money to go private done. And when you're a public company and you make that sort of statement in Twitter, that is a huge breach of the rules. And let's not forget, Chad. They actually hadn't raised the money and they haven't gone private. Right? Yeah. It's, this is interesting to me because in a lot of ways, it, it heralded this wave of IPOs that we're going through right now at the moment. We're kind of in between lots of different IPOs and I'll let you close the book on, on the Elan story. But, uh, to me it's pretty clear and simple. You know, if you're a named, uh, elected officer of a public company, there's just some rules that you have to follow. And if you don't want to follow them, then maybe you should find someone else to, to, to fill.

That role, right? Which, which some, some founders have done after they've run their course, uh, in the founders CEO role, you know, I'm hearing a lot of calls for Mark Zuckerberg just to step down, but I think he has too many controlling shares of the company to tackle yes. To that. Yeah. Well, a funny thing on Zachary. I think he's doing a, sort of a better job than Cheryl. I mean, if, if I look at the last, uh, crisis at Facebook, I think a lot of this lands on, on Cheryl chief operating officer, let me remind you. And secondly, talking about hubris, she went right out there with lean in and we did a show on it and we love that thinking, but. When you go out on such a high, moral ground, you have to remember you're now, you know, you only are held to those expectations. And I think that has been, uh, you know, A very stark wake up call for her to kind of round out the show and, and this talk of IPOs and the securities commission and all of this stuff. The reality is this is still one of the most preferred, legitimate ways for founders and investors to cash in on, um, their entrepreneurship. I mean of recent times, we we've seen a Pinterest, uh, zoom and a number of other companies have a really, really big IPOs. And at the heart of this is we were moving into a moment where IPOs are back in fashion, uh, in the previous. Decade. We've seen real swings, ups and downs on the IPO market. And up until recently, uh, private equity and venture capital were more easily obtained by companies. But now that's a really, really in receiving tech IPO. So we're seeing a lot of blocks, uh, blockbuster IPOs, and there's a lot to come. Here's what we know for sure. Coming very soon. It will be. We work and Uber and Slack. Those are going to be who you are. Huge. Uber promises to be one of, if not the biggest IPO ever in history, but we, we also got a couple of others. Don't forget. There's still Airbnb sitting there waiting out their time.

I wouldn't be surprised before the end of the year. They, they actually go for it as well. Now. The the thing here, uh, is really gets us to our last lesson at some point. And this is particularly relevant, uh, to funded companies or tech companies who are in those early seed or a, B, C rounds of funding at some point. You have to make money. And if you're not making money now, the key thing here, and this might sound so self evident. If you're an entrepreneur, what would he mean? You have to have the promise of making money in the future. And the last few clips we want to share with everybody is it is a bit of an analysis. And this has got, there's a lot of learnings in there. So, so I really recommend you tune in. You've got to make money and there are ways that you can look at stocks. Or businesses in general to understand if and how, and when they're going to make money. And we have a great example. Don't we chat? I mean, if there was one stock of recent times that really brings us into question, it's lift, isn't it? Yeah. Not only because it's a precursor to Uber, but it, um, Is one of the first big IPOs around the sharing economy, which again is also kind of a precursor to Airbnb Airbnb as well. We've got, yeah, we've got some clips here to talk. Not only that's about Lyft, but Lyft and in relationship to some of these other companies that have, and soon will be on public offer. No, we've been scoring 14 aspects of tech companies as they go public for about six years, we scored about 150 deals and the above average scores do about twice as well as everyone else. So the lift score was interesting, paired lift to snap at that time, right? They were high profile deals that were both set up with very low scores to do poorly and that played out. And now we have Pinterest coming and we can compare Pinterest to snap because they're basically the identical business. Although they run their businesses a little bit differently. And so do you think they're identical businesses? Yeah. They sell ad campaigns to be Brent advertisers. Okay. That's a very simple, simple way to think about it. I'm sure that, uh, Evan Spiegel will think that his business is different than, uh, Ben will think of it.

These guys will argue all day long. Will I tell you what is different? Is their scores just snap score of 5.91 and Pinterest as a 6.63 versus an average of 6.3. Right. So Pinterest is well above average and the scoring system. And we think this deal will reflect that and it seems to be shaping it. What goes into that scoring system. So that, so that viewers in those who are thinking about whether to buy Pinterest under that and the dynamics, for sure. Well, there are 14 different aspects of it. So there's the business, there's the transparency. There's the board, there's the investors, right? There's the syndicate. So those 14 aspects are all pretty important, but there are three things that I think tell the story about the comparison and Pinterest versus snap. One of them is transparency. Right. Pinterest is just a little bit more forthcoming about how the mass trap actually works. Pinterest, obviously much more profitable than snap was not losing a fortune when they went public. And those losses have continued Pinterest closing in on breakeven. Right. And then the killer one is valuation, right? Pinterest obviously priced sensibly in light of the lift disaster and so forth snap, not priced sensibly. And so we think Pinterest again, across all of these things. Nets to a 6.63, which is again, just radically better than a 5.91. Were you surprised at what's happened to Lyft now? I mean, given where it lift is, I mean, did you, did your score reflect how far lifts has fallen? I mean, it was a low score, 5.47 lift score versus a 5.91 for snap.

Right. So we were expecting, you know, not good things out of Lyft. And, you know, I think look, the more high profile it is, the more people are looking at it and saying like, I don't know, this doesn't really make sense to me. Right. Sometimes we'll see companies trade against their scores. And usually what that means is it's sort of out of the way of attention and things like that. When people focus, they can see the things that I don't want you to front run this. But dare I ask where Uber's lying right around now. I mean, Uber is interesting, right? Because like the price is maybe a little bit trouble. They were a little bit more for forthcoming about their metrics. The loss profile is much more attractive in the sense that they're only losing $3 billion on 11 billion of revenue, right. Versus Lyft losing a billion dollars on $2 billion in revenue. But the valuation, I think will be the thing that sort of moves it in one direction or another. Yeah. So just a basic math lesson. Uber, sorry, Lyft. Yeah. We're generating $2 billion in income, but at the same time, They had $3 billion in costs and they went IPO. Right. That means you are betting on the future in a big, big way. Doesn't it? Chad? Yeah. And I think that's what I was taking away. And the financial mumbo-jumbo aside was the things that mattered was transparency into the business model. Do I ever as a proxy, like, does the public understand how this company makes money? Yes or no? Snap? People didn't really get, but Pinterest. Yeah, they, you understand the mouse trap as he said a bit better. And then the, the revenues or losses. So many of these startups, aren't making money when they're going public, but you want to be sure that that graph trend line is moving up into the right. So many companies are focused on revenues. They often forget about profitability, certainly when you're able to raise money. Against those revenues, uh, VCs are willing to look further into the future maybe than the public markets in terms of getting those returns, right? Yeah.

To me, I still think it's kind of insane that these companies are going public and that people are buying these stocks in the IPO. Is that just. It tells you a bit about my own conservative financial leaning. Well, let's just keep going deeper in this. There's a lot more to learn. We've got, uh, another, uh, lift, uh, clip and this time we're going to get deeper into the quagmire that was left. The linchpin here in terms of a company like Lyft becoming profitable is going to be this bet on autonomous driving. We've had investors on honor air who've actually suggested maybe we never actually get fully autonomous driving and driverless cars. I mean, what happens then? Well, I think that they go through what every company goes through, which is they're gonna have to start looking at ways to cut costs. I mean, I look at the amount of money that lifts spends on marketing and it is phenomenal. I mean, they are, and it, and it's not just the traditional marketing, but it's, you know, sponsoring concerts and getting people. Rides to rap events. I mean, they are doing all kinds of creative things because you know, they're in that phase where they're trying to acquire customers. So I think that, you know, as a public company, they're going to have to start looking really hard at costs.

If this bet on autonomous doesn't go their way. We just saw this week, there was this experiment. I think it was in China where people were putting markers on the road, basically that were designed to redirect, uh, driverless cars, autonomous cars. It was a good reminder that the path from here to here. Safe ubiquitous, autonomous driving out in the places where people want to travel, not just in controlled campus environment. It's actually pretty, pretty cool long. And there are these issues. If you can put stickers on a road or paint symbols on a road and cause cars to veer into oncoming traffic, that's a problem. Yeah, for me that just dabbles down on the first clip in saying, well, you're not making money now, but what you could see is people really questioning the promise of. The profits of tomorrow. And I felt that what they quite clearly highlighted was just a bit of due diligence. If you think about how you're betting on driverless cars. Oh, well, a lot of infrastructure needs to happen for that. That's a big bet. The earliest clip. What I loved about that is that was like forensic analysis of factors that speak to the health and the profitability of a company. These things we can all do. I mean, that's the big lesson here. We can all do these things. It's a question of, are we going to have the rigor to go through doing that when we invest in stocks or when we look at our own. Company.

And I think this is a big thing we can take so far out of the Lyft story. Don't you chat? Yeah, I think, I think that these IPOs are a bit of a gut check or reality check or piercings popping the reality distortion field that often surrounds most of these companies and taking this all the way back to. Fairness and Elizabeth Holmes, they, she and sunny her business partner and boyfriend, they hid behind the secrecy and privacy that you get when you're a private company. And. So in a way maybe some good from these IPOs is that it is, you know, shining a light on these companies in a way that maybe they hadn't been shined on before, you know, cause they're getting VCs because their friends got the same VCs to invest in their friend's company. And so it kind of breaks them out of the, you know, the old boys club. That's what's interesting to me is kind of this transparency and shining a light. Yeah. The, the, um, The thing is that what we saw occur in the public markets for Lyft is no different to what we can do in our own companies, which is ask those tough questions. I mean, at a certain point, you have to ask yourself, is this venture that I am doing? Is it going to make money? Right? What is the real legitimate path to profitability? Because. Profitability is a proxy for value, because if you can do a thing and people are prepared to pay for it and you can cover your costs and make a bit more on the top that suggests you're creating value. And what we're seeing here, both with Facebook, both with, um, Some of those other companies that depend on turning people into their products is it is a real cautionary tale because underlying both Uber and Lyft is great convenience for us as riders. But we've all heard about it. The concerns of the conditions and the ethics by which they take people out of employment, into partial, kind of, if you will, freelance status where they don't get healthcare, where they don't get. A number of other benefits. So it really does start to not only, uh, stimulate a question, are we going to make money, but can we do it in the right way? Can we do good business by doing good? If you will. Yeah, as I'm thinking about it and hearing some of these numbers, it's really interesting to me that some of these startups that are IPOing in our collective minds have been put kind of in the same echelon as companies like Apple, but Apple is throwing up off tens of billions of dollars in profits, right. Of billions in revenues. And. Again, to me, there's like no comparison. The interesting dark horse in all of this is Amazon who in the very first year that Jeff founded the company, he said, I am not optimizing for profits. Here. I am. I'm eating the world in the revenues that I'm generating, and I'm just going to grow it to be such a giant company. And then he'll, he'll turn the screws for yeah. For profitability. But that was a decision that he made at the very. Outset and founding of the company. I think it is going to be a big payoff for him. That story still needs to play out. Right. But it's, it's really interesting for me to look at all these companies in this purely financial way. It's just a different lens, a different perspective. And seeing the value that they're creating for their customers. What I really enjoy is to see the intersection of, you know, the way you think about. Culture and the way you think about money and ethics, they end up intersecting. And perhaps this is the biggest lesson from our cautionary tale here. If you want to prosper as an entrepreneur, UNF forced to consider the fine line between vision and misleading people. You're forced to consider what's the culture that I want to create to nurture the people in my organization. How you are forced as a modern business leader and innovator as a founder, privacy and ethics is a conversation you have to have. It's gotta be part of how you build the company.

And if you find success, I think humility, we are learning that humility is such an important thing to have in your mind about how you and the company behave. I think. Yeah, we set ourselves the challenge at the beginning of this show, Chad. Let's see what we can learn. I think there it is. You know, there is a deep intersection between entrepreneurship, privacy, ethics, vision, culture, humility. I think these all come together to be the modern entrepreneurs playbook. Yeah. So, so maybe, um, Maybe it we'll call this episode. Lessons learned not quite as an ominous, uh, title as, yeah. What, what did I, what did I say earlier? Generic details. Yeah. Cautionary tale lessons learned. I can agree to that. Chad, I can agree to that. That sounds, that sounds good. But, um, what a nice segue and what a nice Paul is after that great architect series, how wonderful has it been? Just to learn a very different set of lessons and, and to really actually, I feel like we really kind of grabbed a little bit of like, The modern twist on entrepreneurship. Like I think right now it's not just about a startup and running Amazon web services and having something in the shared economy. I think it's, it's a much more holistic view, which I think we can all be very thankful for. Yeah. I think the, the meta lesson in all of these clips in this episode for me is just been. Consequences. Think about the consequences and not just the first order, but the second, third, fourth, fifth order consequences of, of many of the actions. So those cultural things that you may not think matter now, or you can, you can put them off. That's very shortsighted and in fact could, can kind of create rot. That will be the end of your company. Yes, sir. Indeed. Wow. Chad, I mean, This was really, really fun to do, and really very satisfying to, to approach our clips from a different point of view, to approach the topic of entrepreneurship and innovation from a different point of view, but we're not stopping in our unique, fresh new approaches to lay it up. We got five shows coming up, which are again, a knock out listeners. Socks off. I just got a big pack package from Amazon. It contains all of the, uh, Books, the entire complete library of Simon Sinek. And we're going to take one episode to go through each of his books. Um, I'm really looking forward to expanding upon our most popular episode ever here. We're just about to cross 30,000 listens of the Simon Sineck episode. And. I just want to like wet people's appetite, just a little, I think, you know, we obviously included Simon Sineck in our favorite for authors. He was up there with, you know, clay Christiansen, Peter Drucker. Eric Reese. Look, if he, if, if Simon Sinek was a stock, I would be buying his IPO. Take it from me, ladies and gentlemen, this guy is one real talent and we are going to do a really in depth, look at his books and ask ourselves, what can we learn from Simon Sinek? Yeah. And I also want to remind you. Everyone. If you're just now discovering this show, please go back, listen to the back episodes that peak your interest. You can find everything@moonshots.io. We've gotten, I think six series completed thus far. And before that many episodes profiling individuals across so many different categories, industries. Uh, personalities. It's been really interesting. I've been revisiting. I kind of pick a random episode in our back catalog to listen to once a week. It's been a, it's been a very fun exercise. I think one of the call to action. Um, you know, you can find obviously everything@moonshots.io, but I want to get everybody going into that iTunes podcast or where now. W we have a five star five out of five star rating. We have a 12 reviews. We need a ton more. I know you're listening out there. If you guys and girls can jump into to your favorite podcasting app. Jump into iTunes, whatever it is, and just share with people, what you like about the show.

We'd really appreciate it. And we love getting so much feedback and seeing our audience grow and grow and inspire us and challenge us. So get in there and give us a review or writing, share it with a, with a friend. We would so appreciate it. Wouldn't we chat? Yeah. And if you have any ideas on people or companies or industries, Uh, that we should profile. We don't have anything that firm yet for after we wrap up the assignments, the next series. So please get in touch and let us know who and or what you would like us to turn our attention to and deliver to you here on the podcast. Absolutely. Well, Chad, that brings us to the end of the show. It has been great. I want to thank you. And I think our listeners for being part of it, it was so good to really learn from some of the, a cautionary tales of recent times from our tech Titans. Enjoy the rest of your evening in your Chad. Can't wait to see you in New York and just just a week or two. It's going to be great, huh? Yeah. And I want to take this short moment here at the end of the episode to thank you, Mike, and give a huge shout out to all of my new while attends, uh, brothers and sisters across the globe officially coming on board with you and the team. Our listeners may. Have already assumed that, uh, we were working together and in an official capacity, but I'm so thrilled to say that we are in fact, uh, on this journey together at, at quality tends to, to build and, and. And test and launch some pretty radical products and services for clients. It's going to be so fun. Welcome to the family, Chad. And, uh, if it wasn't happening before, I think we probably now speak to each other more than we speak to our wives. We'll have to sort that out some other time, but yeah, it is so, so great to be working together. In even more wonderful ways. It's only taken you like five or six years to finally join the team for real. So I'm glad you got across the line there. Chad, let's go out, let's kick some ass and we hope all of you, our listeners do too. Have a wonderful time enjoying not only this show, but our Simon Sinek show to come thank you to everyone. And that's a wrap of the moonshot podcast.

 
 
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