The Times Tech Podcast

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Uber’s new head of leadership and renowned company doctor Frances Frei to talk about what she found when she walked into Uber (2:30), its army of first-time managers (5:30), taking Uber to school (6:30), the company's ‘toxic’ culture (7:40), the problem with startups (9:15), arriving as a woman (11:00), the importance of culture (12:20) overhauling Harvard Business School (13:00), making the right diagnosis (17:40), taking advantage of a crisis (18:15), necessary turnover (20:00), the power of diversity (22:40), having less 'do-overs' (23:30), harnessing Uber’s aggression (25:30), being a college basketball player (27:10), stepping on toes (28:30), Uber’s board upheaval (29:45), leadership by committee (31:55), and office push-ups (36:15). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO and one of the world’s richest men, to talk about retiring with a $33bn fortune (1:55), launching his new project USA Facts (3:00), losing his shirt investing in Twitter (3:55), starting as employee number 30 at Microsoft (5:20), what disruption looked like in 1980 (9:20), the most important negotiation of his life (11:25), being Microsoft’s biggest investor (13:00), why he started USA Facts (15:05), on “Making Data Great Again” (16:05), fake news (17:00), on whether he wants to run for office (22:10), spending $2bn on the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers (24:00), when he tried to buy Yahoo for $45bn (27:20), his biggest mistake (29:15), and the next big thing (30:20). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Marc Andreessen, founder of Internet pioneer Netscape and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, to talk about the early days of the Internet (2:45), the "absurd" power of the web giants (7:30), delivery robots (10:45), the ease of starting an web company today (12:00), the ideal time to invest (15:00), the truth about artificial intelligence (16:30), the “luddite” panic (25:45), industries tech is aiming for next (33:00), why the answer to our problems is more technology (36:00), whether the big Internet companies are too big (37:30), why he told Mark Zuckerberg to turn down a takeover from Yahoo (39:30), how he's not worried about screen time for his 2-year-old son (43:10), and why the disruption of all human activity is only just getting started (44:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson talks to the scientists and executives pledging to redefine life as we know it about why we may be finally on the cusp of an age revolution (2:00), taking the pain out of being old (6:00), the wonder drugs already in circulation (7:45), on whether we are playing god (17:45), the rejuvenating effects of young blood (22:30), freezing your stem cells (26:45), the merging of artificial intelligence and medicine (30:00), and what the future of ageing looks like (37:00).SUBSCRIBE: find all our episodes at sundaytimes.co.uk/dannyinthevalley and on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/danny-in-the-valley/id1233991021 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chieh Huang, founder of Boxed.com, talks about setting up a 'Costco for millennials', struggles with funding, the challenge of shipping giant boxes, and his unique employee benefits like paying university fees and unlimited maternity leave.

Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring, talks about getting rejected on national television, turning failure into funding, being lambasted by British customers, following the James Dyson model, starting ten other companies, luring Sir Richard Branson as an investor, being sued by a giant rival, showing up at customers’ houses, and shipping a faulty product that nearly bankrupted him.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Oren Jacob, former CTO of film studio Pixar and founder of computer conversation startup Pullstring to talk about the new age of voice technology and talking Barbie (2:30), how the Amazon Echo ended the family shopping trip (7:30), his years at Pixar (12:00), building Mrs Potatohead (13:30), how a stuffed bunny inspired his startup (14:45), cold-calling speech experts (18:30), doing market research in a tent (20:30), raising the first round of venture capital (23:30), the difficulty of doing speech recognition for children (25:30), the many tech revolutions making voice systems possible (28:45), turning algorthms into characters (36:00), whether bots kill jobs (40:00), expecting too much from machines (46:00), and the importance of a voice assistant elegantly saying “I don’t know” (47:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Rich Pierson, co-founder of Headspace, the popular meditation app, to talk about how it started in London nine years ago (6:30), meeting his co-founder (8:00), quitting his job marketing deodorant (9:15), starting out with group meditation events (13:00), accidental focus groups (16:00), moving to California (16:45), going from 18 to 170 employees (19:30), layoffs and mistakes (20:00), convincing investors to put money into mindfulness (21:30), competing with 3,000 rival apps (25:00), struggling to manage people (30:00), helping nurses with “compassion fatigue’ (34:00), and signing up big companies (34:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Phil Libin, founder of Evernote, one of the first companies to be labelled a “unicorn”, to talk about his plan to create the Netflix of artificial intelligence (1:00), growing up poor (3:30), selling his first company at 16 (6:00), starting another after September 11 (9:45), creating Evernote (11:00), being one of the first apps in the App Store (13:45), getting funding from fanboys (17:00), being saved by a random Swede (19:30), the downside of the hype cycle (21:30), leaving Evernote (24:30), becoming a venture capitalist (25:45), his worst day at work (29:30), bureaucracy robots (32:45), and building something for yourself (36:00). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Will Marshall, founder of Planet, a billion-dollar startup that operates the world’s largest constellation of satellites, to talk about taking a picture of earth every day (2:30), making satellites the size of shoeboxes (4:30), the space renaissance (6:30) increasing crop yields from 300 miles overhead (10:30), selling data to hedge funds (14:45), buying Google’s satellite arm (15:45), the rocket bottleneck (16:30), how smartphones changed space (18:45), the perils of rubbish travelling at 20,000 mph (20:15), blowing up satellites (22:30), how he came to America from Britain (23:45), the future of the space business (28:30) and creating an accidental unicorn (29:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.