January 22, 2025 • 33 mins
Jessica Lessin is the founder and CEO of The Information, a media company that’s a trusted source for tech readers and tech leaders. She’s reported on the industry for almost two decades and is deeply familiar with the culture shifts in Silicon Valley. Lessin sits down with Oz to discuss these trends, including tech titans appealing to the new Trump administration.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for tuning into Tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
If you don't recognize my voice, my name is Oz
Voloshian and I'm here because the inimitable Jonathan Strickland has
passed the baton to Cara Price and myself to host
Tech Stuff. The show will remain your home for all
things tech, and all the old episodes will remain available
in this feed. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm oz Voloshian and I'm care Price.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for a deep dive
conversation with a fascinating person in and around tech. Were
thrilled to bring you a conversation with Jessica Lesson. She
is the CEO of The Information, which is a media
company based in San Francisco that covers the tech industry.
Because just two days after the inauguration, one of the
(00:44):
stories I find most personally fascinating is the alliance for
now between MAGA and the tech Bros. And it's obviously
clearest in Elon Musk. Have you seen that video of
him and DJT dancing right away?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
This is the robot dance they're both doing on Newye's
Eve at mar Lago.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
My first thought when I was watching it was who's
better thing?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
That is Trump's dance And you see Elon starting and
then you see Trump kind of shooting him at Lance,
being like, slow down, br that's my dance. But of
course it's not just Elon his currying favor with the
new president. Up and down Silicon Valley, there's this rush
to cozy up to Trump. And eight years ago there
(01:28):
was this amazing moment where Trump summoned all the tech
CEOs to Trump Tower in Manhattan right before he was
inaugurated to kind of show them who was boss. And
now all these stories about tension between Trump and tech,
and now it couldn't be more different. And the coziness
between Silicon Valley and Trump seems to be getting, you know,
cozier and cozier.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, it's incredible to it's it's almost as incredible as
Mark Zuckerberg's fashion transformation.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, I want to get to the fashion choices too.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I found just one of the most striking things an
outside observer of technology is Mark Zuckerberg's physical transformation. I mean,
from the hoodie wearing character of the social network to
a mixed martial artist who also released his own t
shirt line, which have Latin sayings printed on them. He
wore on recently that said out Zuck out Nihil. How's
(02:20):
your Latin Cara?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Not good enough?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I had to google it too, But it means all
Zuck or all nothing.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, I think it means he's a big guy.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Before that, I want to note that Jessica has this
kind of interesting personal connection to Mark Zuckerberg. The co
host of her podcast, which is called The More or
Less Podcast, was at Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg and went
on to be VP of Product at Facebook. That co host,
Sam Lesson, is also Jessica's husband. Finally, if I couldn't
have imagined being closer to my podcast host than you
(02:52):
and I are but stranger things but more seriously, and
we've got She got a listener email about this. Mark
Zuckerberg suspended the fact checking program at Meta and at Facebook,
which sewed, frankly.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Quite a lot of horror.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
He also added to the board of Meta Dana White,
the founder of UFC and a very close confidante of Trump.
And so one of the things I really wanted to
talk to Jessica about is what's going on with Mark Zuckerberg,
how much of this kind of change is driven by personality,
and how much of it is driven by kind of
opportunism and wanting to appeal to the new power center
(03:32):
in the US.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
So I'm excited to get the inside scoop. Jessica was
originally a tech reporter for The Wall Street Journal who
was covering Silicon Valley from New York City before she
moved west to Silicon Valley and eventually started her own
site called The Information.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
The clues in the name very much, so it's.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
The sort of mainline source for news on technology.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I heard Jessica on the Daily Beast podcast, which is
hosted by Joanna Coles, who's a friend and a mental
and advisor of mine. And Joanna and Jessica and Samantha
Bee were talking about this idea of the revenge of
the Nerds, and I thought I was just irresistible. So
I wrote to Jessica, who greed to sit down for
tech stuff. I really enjoyed your conversation with Joanna and
(04:23):
sam Bee, and you use this very entertaining phrase, the
revenge of the Nerds, and I was wondering if there
was like a single moment or a dinner or a tweet,
or an outfit or an image or something that really
sort of brought that moment home to you.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Great question. I think it's really more a shift in
communication style among leaders here in Silicon Valley, who, yes,
could somewhat be stereotyped as nerds, although the industry has
certainly grown beyond that, but a real kind of flex
in their communication, often using social media. And I think
(04:59):
Elon must is obviously a trendsetter here. Mark Zuckerberg is
part of the picture, and you know it's clear that
this kind of go direct to share their message, wearing
their luxury fashion clothing and so forth, is really the
vibe shift in tech right now. And I do think
(05:19):
it's been building, and I think Elon's kind of over
the topness, outrageousness, whatever you would call it, has given
kind of cover and shifted the window, and many other
CEOs are following.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I mean, you've been at this since two thousand and five, right,
originally the Journal and then founding Information. Where would you
say that like sort of vibe shift if you had
to pinpoint in a moment in time, when did it
kind of start to coalesce.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
You know, right now, in a micro sense, we are
in this moment fueled by the Trump election. I think
one of the big questions in twenty twenty five will
be will it continue or which direction will it go?
If you zoom out a little bit more, I think,
particularly as it relates to politics, tech had been a
little more defensive over the last four plus years. I mean,
(06:11):
the vibe was very much a very tense relationship with Washington,
with regulators, with the press, and I think broadly a
lot of companies kind of not that they didn't rattle cages,
but they tried not to rattle cages in a sense
because there's a lot at stake, and the regulatory pressures
were very real with the cases and finds they were
(06:32):
getting hit with, and so it was sort of like,
don't poke your head out too much and draw attention.
And so I think prior to this very new period,
we were in a little bit of apologizing defending we
in the industry, and this is a reaction to that.
But I think everything is a reaction to the thing
before it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
You have been a reporter and an editor and found
an incredible media company covering this space, but you're also
part of the world, I guess. I mean through your
through your marriage with Sam and social relationships with some
of these figures. Is that a kind of complicating factor
or a bonus or sometimes one sometimes the other.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I mean, how do you kind of navigate that?
Speaker 4 (07:11):
I mean, every journalist has a personal life, and I'm
no different. But I don't feel at all that I'm
part of, you know, that world of the elite Silicon
Valley CEOs in any way. I mean, I think, you know,
the information has been scrutinizing the technology business now for
more than eleven years, and I think that's firmly where
(07:33):
my reputation is. Although I hope that as a founder,
I have experience in what it's like to build a company,
and so that helps inform the storylines we go after
the questions we ask.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think sometimes as this feeling from the Silicon Valley
folks that like journalists the enemies and don't understand them
and all these things. You know, you obviously come from
from the same point of coverage in terms of speaking
truth of power, but also you know how to slip
into that register. I suppose in terms of how to communicate.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
There are some commonalities. I mean, sometimes you can get
a source to build a relationship by talking about, you know,
some recruiting challenge you're having that mirrors some recruiting challenge
they're having. But you know, I think there's no doubt
in people's minds, you know what the purpose of the
information is and what our mission is to be the
most authoritative publication covering this industry. But it does also
(08:29):
help to have known and covered as a reporter people
over a long time.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Let's start with it with Mark Zuckerberg because in a sense,
the esthetic transition of Mark Zuckerberg for me as an outsider,
has been one of the clearest indicators that like, something
is going on. So and can you just describe for
people who haven't been sort of following his personal appearance
for the last sort of five years, what's changed and
what it may say about meta and the wider industry.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, it's I mean, I think it's in interesting a
part because Mark has talked about it. I don't know
that I have great insights into the choices that he's
made from a fashion perspective, but I think what's clear
is that he's leaning in to being himself and I
think that also feels very elon. Elon that you see
(09:19):
on Twitter is you could be having a dinner conversation
with him and these would be the things he's saying,
and he's not censoring himself. And I don't think Mark
is censoring himself.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And so when it comes to when it comes to
something on the top of censorship, like you know, the
removal of the fact checking function of Facebook, I mean,
do you view that as sort of Mark being himself
and feeling unconstrained, or do you view it more as
a kind of gesture towards the new political elite.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
I think it's both, I really do. I think from
the earliest days of Facebook, Mark was talking about free expression.
He has given many speeches about and pushed back on
on things he is deemed censorship. There's obviously a period
in the whole Internet where many platforms went in the
direction of moderating more and more and more under pressure
(10:09):
from regulators in the media, and I think Mark seesed
a political opening in a moment to get back to
where he has always thought the company should be. What
happens next is anybody's guests, right, I mean, I think
having made the decision to do this, he's definitely striking
the notes of mentioning Elaw and giving him shout outs,
(10:32):
attacking some of the same enemies that President Trump has attacked,
so making something out of this moment. But I don't
think he pivoted to Curry favor. He's very consistently been
very uncomfortable with the direction a lot of these platforms
have gone in moderating and even as a journalist, I
think it's very complicated.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And yet when it comes to like the Elon version
of free speech and the Mark Zuckerberg version of free speech,
most generous feel very ucomfortable.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So it's a strange kind of paradox.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
What I know is a journalist is a we have
to fight for the value of professional journalism. Social media
is not going to reveal the things that companies want hidden.
It's not going to tell you that the Chinese government
owns a direct stake in byte dance and scrutinize what's
(11:23):
happening to us users data things that are in the
public's interest. And right now, especially in Silicon Valley, the
discourse is so toxic around it that tech folks hate
journalists and journalists hate tech folks, and there's sort of
no room to say what if These are both important
pieces of the information ecosystem. Now, of course, how we
(11:43):
combat the misinformation that can spread very quickly on social
media's a tremendous problem, but I think that is outside
what any one company can necessarily do.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
When we come back, we'll hear about the rise of
Christianity in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It's funny you mentioned this last four years of the
tech industry having to be very careful around the administration
obviously Lena Khan and the FTC and stuff. But rewind
eight years and there was that famous moment where Trump,
like the school principle, summoned all of the unruly tech
CEOs to Trump Tower, basically to Flex's authority. And the
(12:29):
coverage at the time was all around how much tension
there was between Trump and the tech community. How did
that change so dramatically in the last eight years.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah. I think over the last four years, in particular,
the relationship between the tech industry and the Biden administration
really beyond soured, I would say, and on multiple fronts,
from crypto to just anti trust to AI regulation, things
(12:57):
that have become very press issues for the industry. Washington
and the industry was really not seeing eyed eye. So
I think you had a group of tech leaders receptive
for a different approach, and Trump, either because he believed
it or was opportunistic, really effectively positioned himself as an
(13:19):
alternative to that and someone who would not take the
same approach on blocking the smallest of acquisitions companies wanted
to do and so forth. And this was really crystallized
when markind Recent and Ben Horowitz, who had been staunch
supporters of the Democratic Party announced and we broke in
the information we're going to endorse Trump, And I think
(13:41):
they outlined their thinking very clearly, I mean from their
point of view, and it was really how on so
many topics they thought it was existential around things for
AI to have a different approach. So the industry was
never it wasn't cozy with Trump the first time around
this time, it seems, you know, in many cases and
(14:01):
not at all, there's an attempt to forge an alliance
and see more alignment. But it is so early and
I think it's very safe to say that the relationship
will be a bumpy one.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I think there was a story from Maggie Haeman that
Trump has already started to kind of comment that Elon's
around a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Do you have any intel on the unfolding of that relationship.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
I don't. I mean from what I hear, there is
a friendship there, so I have every reason to sort
of believe that. But yes, And one question I have is,
obviously you have a lot of technology leaders really sort
of bragging about how frequently they're in mar A Lago
talking about their influence. I mean Mark in recent recently
(14:44):
went on a podcast, said he spent fifty percent of
his time since the election involved in some way on
the new administration. I also imagine there are a lot
of people in Washington and politicians who might be somewhat skeptical, right,
but you still have two different worlds clashing and colliding here.
Time will tell. You'll also undoubtedly have reporters and folks
(15:05):
trying to make something of friction because that's a good story.
I mean, that's a problem with the press these days.
So I think we'll see, you know, what are the
policies that come out, what are the appointments. Obviously, in
terms of appointments and tech figures who are playing direct
roles in the administration, there are quite a few, so
I think we just have to watch it unfold.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I wonder if in a sense Trump's approach himself with
something of a revelation or point of inspiration in terms
of how he effectively sidestepped the media and created his
fan base and used that political leverage, and whether that's
something that leaders and say they can value have kind
of consciously emulated, or whether it's just something which kind
of happened at the same time.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
I think so the relationship between what now is so
not affectionately dubbed the legacy media by tech leaders and
the tech industry has gotten quite poor in a sense.
I mean, I think you have a lot of media
outlets who have just been out to get the tech industry,
who have pursued stories based solely on the sort of
(16:13):
agenda that they have to show a particular thing. And
so I think in that respect you have some tech
leaders who are sort of rightfully miffed. At the same time,
there's been a lot of very fair, tough journalism of
growing businesses that are having extraordinary impacts on the world,
and powerful people don't much like the scrutiny. So you
(16:34):
had a situation where there was a lot of animosity
so absolutely, a figure like Elon who literally bought a
very important communication platform to subvert the media is inspiring
to the enemies of the press for sure. Now, of course,
(16:54):
the fact that these leaders then go on and lie
about the media and create all sorts of animals toward
it that isn't deserved is also problematic.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
When you think think into the future, when people kind
of write the history of this next chapter of Silicon Valley,
what do you think I'd write about Elon Musk and
how will they describe his influence on the on the
culture of the whole industry.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
I think the story is still being written, honestly. I mean,
I think from a perspective of a leader being emulated
by others, the impact is real. I mean, I think
you can see from Sam Altman all the way down.
You know, you used to just be the CEO of
one company. Now everyone wants to run four or five
because Elon does. You know, you used to give your
(17:39):
interviews and now you just tweet at your enemies and
until they buckle. So that's clear. Obviously Elon has built
and is building some incredible businesses. You know, it seems
to me that he's trying to fashion himself as shaping
political opinion culture you know, around the world, and that
seems awfully audacious, perhaps as audacious is going to Mars.
(18:02):
And so what's interesting though in this is a little
bit meta, so to speak. But like Elon, the cult
of people around him will always celebrate him. I think
people are choosing to believe what they want to believe
and to vilify or celebrate who they want to.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Is this stuff with the alternative foot doutsge Land thing,
the AfD in Germany making anyone in the valley uncomfortable?
I mean, this seems to be like crossing yet another
rubicon in terms of the company.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Yeah, I think everyone here is a little bit uncomfortable,
But there's also the He's going to send us to Mars.
I say this too much, but everything just it feels
like the pendulum swinging in these days, it's swinging faster
and more furiously. And so to be in the role
of a journalist kind of standing by and watching is
(18:54):
fascinating and I think it actually is a bit hard
to predict at this moment because so much is at play.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I remember when I used to work for Charlie Rose,
a producer many years ago, and we came to Silicon
Valley to do some interviews in like twenty ten, I think,
and like one of the interviews was at Facebook with
Mark and Cheryl, and it was like such a traveling
from New York. It felt like going to this like
flip flops, T shirts, green juice, like liberal enclave. And
(19:22):
now it's like completely in a very very short period
of time in grand scheme of things flipped. But there's
been some very interesting reporting in the information this feature
that you ran on the rise of Christianity in the
Silicon Valley, which I found super interesting because it speaks
to a kind of cultural conservatism that maybe also had
(19:44):
something to do with what we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Yeah, this was a wonderful story in our weekend section
about the rise of Christianity in tech and really fueled
by I mean figures like Peter Teal who have long
been very religious but it being more open about it,
who have anti christ seminars and so on and so forth,
and it's definitely something to watch. The industry now is
(20:09):
so big that certainly doesn't speak for the entire industry,
but it's emerged as a pocket that's quite strong. You
have people going to meet founders by hearing them preach
and then going up to them. So, I mean, based
on our surveys of our subscribers with the information, you
(20:29):
still have the majority of tech workers voting for Kamala
Harris to be clear, right, But there's a very loud
group that's not and I think they're you know, they're
winning some more followers and they'll probably win some more too.
But what's so interesting is they also have the largest
megaphones in society right now. So and maybe the lesson
(20:54):
here isn't Maybe what's different is there's nothing exceptional about
the tech industry right now. The tech industry is now business.
It's grown up, it's big, it reflects lots of different things,
and so it votes less as a block so to
speak on all of these issues. And you know, I'm
not sure that's good or bad actually, but it's interesting
(21:16):
and we'll have some.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Consequences when we come back how it all started. Jessica
talks about why she felt big tech needed the information.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
You wrote a piece last year in the Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
It was a stark warning to other media companies not
to partner with AI companies. Essentially, even though funny enough,
the Atlantic was one of the you know trailblazers.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Yeah, there were higher ups there who were not happy
with the timing of those two things, but kudos to
them for not interfering because I didn't know that at
the time. I still think these deals are very dangerous
and for a lot of reasons. I think fundamental technology
companies and news and information companies are not in the
(22:03):
same business. They're not aligned. There may be particular partnerships
or getting more eyeballs on journalism, things like that, but
the history of these partnerships is that they've n did very,
very poorly, and that news organizations have diverted time, resources,
attention focus to placating these partners who, at the end
(22:25):
of the day change their strategy, don't do what they
say they're going to do, not because they're evil, but
because they're not news organizations. So we saw this with
social media publishers rush to make content for Facebook. Facebook
change its priorities. You can see this down the line,
the same as true Google. You know, it's so important
that as news organizations we control our own destiny, that
(22:47):
we don't align with tech companies, but that we use
tech to better reach our audiences and in particular. These
partnerships also sought to remove sort of legal issues around
news content and other content that these models were trained on.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And will the New York Times case be heard this
this year and twenty five times.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
I don't know, but I am cheering them on because
I think to just say, let's wait a second, maybe
there is a partnership, Maybe we can come up with
fair value for this, but we're not there yet. I
think takes tremendous courage and so yeah, to strike these
deals when there is no product, there is no business model.
It's just not possible at this point. And also there's
(23:31):
always you have to read the fine print of them.
You know, there's some headline grabbing numbers, but a huge
portion of the payouts are in open AI credits. So
it's not even that you know, these newsrooms are getting
cash and so forth.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
It's a classic will invest in your company but not
in cash.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
I mean that's not You're just explaining the whole SaaS
enterprise cloud ecosystem there. So we need to let this
play out and come up with the right framework and
then build the right partnership soft products that actually exist
and have users.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
And just have question on Sam Oltman.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Why back in two thousand and five did you want
to cover him when nobody else did And how have
you seen him change or not change in the intervening
twenty years.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Well, I'd like to say there was some grand plan,
but I was really, you know, the young reporter scrounging
for stories. And I was actually a tech reporter based
in New York. And at the time, all of the
journals tech reporting was out in Silicon Valley, and they
got to cover Google, and they got to cover all Yahoo,
a big story back in the day, and I was left.
(24:40):
I mean, scrounging is not inaccurate, and so everyone who
got in my inbox got a follow up. But what
I remember from that was also at the time, the
Wall Street Journal didn't write much about startups. I believe
there was a rule that, you know, the paper wouldn't
write about a deal less than a billion dollars or
something that in a very of antiquated way of looking
(25:02):
I think at business and what was happening. And so
you know, I think my editor rolled his eyes when
I was talking about this mobile thing. And what Alman's
app was was it was a friend finder, so you
could see your friend's location, and obviously that raised a
number of questions around privacy and phones weren't really being
used in that way before with those apps. And so
(25:24):
I think the way I got my editors interested was
hooking it to a partnership with AT and T that
the app was doing. And then also Sam had gone
to Washington to talk about legislation around mobile privacy that
he wanted to advocate for, and I remember he offered
(25:46):
me this his like documents that he was, you know,
sharing with senators or so on. And I think I
had a light bulb go off about two years ago
when there were a bunch of headlines if Sam was
again going to Washington with his thick binder of proposals
on how to regulate AI. And I think there's a
savviness to Sam to try and get ahead of the
(26:09):
narrative and shape it that was there kind of twenty
years ago. There was also a savviness, you know, to
working with a reporter to get coverage in a paper
that really was not super friendly or interested in startups,
which he worked with me to do. So I guess
the story, the story published, story published it.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So you had the first byline in any major press.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
I mean maybe there was some tech Crunch articles or
whatever existed back in the day, but I think it's
quite telling. And as a business reporter, I really enjoyed
watching people, you know, operate for a very long time.
I think you can learn a lot.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Why did you leave the Journal to start the Information.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
For two reasons. The first was I was very frustrated
with how technology was being coveredwere including the Journal. This
was twenty thirteen when I left, and there was a
lot of hype around companies. It was a lot of
putting founders on the cover of magazines, and to me,
(27:15):
all of these businesses were going to be very important
businesses and needed to be understood as businesses. They're financials,
you know, so on and so forth, and I just
thought there wasn't a rigor to covering the tech industry,
and even internally the journal. I'd reach out to a
colleague to try and collaborate on the story and they'd
sort of dismiss So I'm not a tech reporter. That's
(27:37):
what those people out there do. And so I thought
that was just a huge missing opportunity because I know
business leaders are very smart and they were seeing tech
upend their businesses and they wanted to go deeper. The
second piece was business model. Back then, the line of
thinking was that if you're a big publication, you had
to chase what Google and Facebook were chasing with ad
(28:00):
dollars and go for traffic. The rise of digital advertising
cause publishers to go crazy for traffic, and what that
did is obvious. It meant we were catering to huge
audiences that we weren't going deep. We were focused on
live blogging announcements instead of doing investigative reporting, and we
(28:21):
weren't playing to our superpowers. And so I knew that
for the industry to have a really successful and sustainable
digital future, digital subscriptions had to be more than an afterthought.
They had to be the kind of true north. And
no one really believed me. I mean even when we launched,
everyone laughed. And eleven years later, you can't name a
(28:45):
publisher that doesn't have a digital paywall or subscription, or.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
An executive Silicon Valley who doesn't pay for the information.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
We've got a fair number of them, shall we say.
But also, you know, more than half our readership is
outside of Silicon Valley. Actually, so there is a growing group.
But Yeah, it was really those things. It was a
commitment to the business model and really the type of
coverage that inspired me.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Jessica, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I really really appreciate you taking the time and enjoyed
the conversation.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Thanks as me too.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
One of the things that I found most interesting about
this interview is this shift that seems to be happening,
vibe shift, major vibe shift in Silicon Valley. The fact
that when Biden came into office, the attitude towards Silicon
Valley was very different than its feels right now.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, and Biden hired as his FTC chair Federal Trade
Commission Lena Kahan, who's actually somebody that you and I
somewhat know. She was on our previous podcast, Sleepwalkers, and
as a very young Yale law student, she wrote a
paper called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, and this was basically a
(30:03):
broadside against the tech industry and how previous frameworks of
anti trust enforcement weren't appropriate to dealing with monopolistic practices
in tech. And she became kind of a hero in
the tech regulation sphere and then became like in her
thirties chair of the FTC and basically made it her
business to make the tech companies lives more difficult.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
And actually, something really crazy is happening right now, which
is that Lena Kahan is siding with Elon Musk on
what issue, on the issue of sam Altman transferring open
ai from a nonprofit to a for profit into this
sort of as they said on Puck Mega Unicorn. Wow,
(30:48):
and you know Elon is not about it at all.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Well, I mean it's interesting. Obviously OpenAI is transitioning or
hoping Samilton's trying to transition it from you know, safety.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Focus not for profit to for profit.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
But OpenAI and Microsoft are so closely connected that I
can kind of understand why, you know, Lina Khan's anti
monopolistic practices spidery senses are tingling here.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
The last thing I wanted to bring up was an
article that I read in the New York Times that
Maggie Haberman wrote about Elon's physical positioning near the White House. Yeah,
and just to imagine in the Biden administration that like
the owner of a mega technology company would have office
(31:33):
space so close to the executive branch. Is such a
departure from twenty twenty. I mean, both of you look
at Lena Khan as the head of the FTC, but
also just in terms of the relationship between the executive
branch and Silicon Valley and how they were sort of
(31:54):
at odds, like especially when we were even reporting on Sleepwalkers,
Like there's real technoskepticism and an interest in regulating AI
and understanding its effects on the American public. And now
it's like let's play.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
But by the way, I mean, Biden was close to
various executives, Jeffrey Katzenberg being one, much of Hollywood. Hollywood
picked Biden, the tech industry picked Trump.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
It's true who.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Won, who has money, That's who won. That's who won.
That's it for tech Stuff Today. This episode was produced
by Victoria Dominguez, Lizzie Jacobs, and Eliza Dennis. It was
executive produced by me Kara Price, os Vaalahan and Kate
Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvell for iHeart Podcasts. Our
(32:43):
engineer is Charles de Montebello at CDM Studios. Kyle Murdoch
wrote our theme song.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Join us on Friday for tech Stuff's the Week in Tech.
We'll run through our favorite headlines, talk with our friends
at four or for media and try to tackle a question,
when did the PayPal mafia become a thing.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Please do rate and.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,
and reach out to me and Kara at tech stuff
podcast at gmail dot com with thoughts and feedback. We'd
love to know what's on your mind.
Thanks for tuning into Tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
If you don't recognize my voice, my name is Oz
Voloshian and I'm here because the inimitable Jonathan Strickland has
passed the baton to Cara Price and myself to host
Tech Stuff. The show will remain your home for all
things tech, and all the old episodes will remain available
in this feed. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm oz Voloshian and I'm care Price.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for a deep dive
conversation with a fascinating person in and around tech. Were
thrilled to bring you a conversation with Jessica Lesson. She
is the CEO of The Information, which is a media
company based in San Francisco that covers the tech industry.
Because just two days after the inauguration, one of the
(00:44):
stories I find most personally fascinating is the alliance for
now between MAGA and the tech Bros. And it's obviously
clearest in Elon Musk. Have you seen that video of
him and DJT dancing right away?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
This is the robot dance they're both doing on Newye's
Eve at mar Lago.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
My first thought when I was watching it was who's
better thing?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
That is Trump's dance And you see Elon starting and
then you see Trump kind of shooting him at Lance,
being like, slow down, br that's my dance. But of
course it's not just Elon his currying favor with the
new president. Up and down Silicon Valley, there's this rush
to cozy up to Trump. And eight years ago there
(01:28):
was this amazing moment where Trump summoned all the tech
CEOs to Trump Tower in Manhattan right before he was
inaugurated to kind of show them who was boss. And
now all these stories about tension between Trump and tech,
and now it couldn't be more different. And the coziness
between Silicon Valley and Trump seems to be getting, you know,
cozier and cozier.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, it's incredible to it's it's almost as incredible as
Mark Zuckerberg's fashion transformation.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, I want to get to the fashion choices too.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I found just one of the most striking things an
outside observer of technology is Mark Zuckerberg's physical transformation. I mean,
from the hoodie wearing character of the social network to
a mixed martial artist who also released his own t
shirt line, which have Latin sayings printed on them. He
wore on recently that said out Zuck out Nihil. How's
(02:20):
your Latin Cara?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Not good enough?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I had to google it too, But it means all
Zuck or all nothing.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, I think it means he's a big guy.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Before that, I want to note that Jessica has this
kind of interesting personal connection to Mark Zuckerberg. The co
host of her podcast, which is called The More or
Less Podcast, was at Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg and went
on to be VP of Product at Facebook. That co host,
Sam Lesson, is also Jessica's husband. Finally, if I couldn't
have imagined being closer to my podcast host than you
(02:52):
and I are but stranger things but more seriously, and
we've got She got a listener email about this. Mark
Zuckerberg suspended the fact checking program at Meta and at Facebook,
which sewed, frankly.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Quite a lot of horror.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
He also added to the board of Meta Dana White,
the founder of UFC and a very close confidante of Trump.
And so one of the things I really wanted to
talk to Jessica about is what's going on with Mark Zuckerberg,
how much of this kind of change is driven by personality,
and how much of it is driven by kind of
opportunism and wanting to appeal to the new power center
(03:32):
in the US.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
So I'm excited to get the inside scoop. Jessica was
originally a tech reporter for The Wall Street Journal who
was covering Silicon Valley from New York City before she
moved west to Silicon Valley and eventually started her own
site called The Information.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
The clues in the name very much, so it's.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
The sort of mainline source for news on technology.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I heard Jessica on the Daily Beast podcast, which is
hosted by Joanna Coles, who's a friend and a mental
and advisor of mine. And Joanna and Jessica and Samantha
Bee were talking about this idea of the revenge of
the Nerds, and I thought I was just irresistible. So
I wrote to Jessica, who greed to sit down for
tech stuff. I really enjoyed your conversation with Joanna and
(04:23):
sam Bee, and you use this very entertaining phrase, the
revenge of the Nerds, and I was wondering if there
was like a single moment or a dinner or a tweet,
or an outfit or an image or something that really
sort of brought that moment home to you.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Great question. I think it's really more a shift in
communication style among leaders here in Silicon Valley, who, yes,
could somewhat be stereotyped as nerds, although the industry has
certainly grown beyond that, but a real kind of flex
in their communication, often using social media. And I think
(04:59):
Elon must is obviously a trendsetter here. Mark Zuckerberg is
part of the picture, and you know it's clear that
this kind of go direct to share their message, wearing
their luxury fashion clothing and so forth, is really the
vibe shift in tech right now. And I do think
(05:19):
it's been building, and I think Elon's kind of over
the topness, outrageousness, whatever you would call it, has given
kind of cover and shifted the window, and many other
CEOs are following.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I mean, you've been at this since two thousand and five, right,
originally the Journal and then founding Information. Where would you
say that like sort of vibe shift if you had
to pinpoint in a moment in time, when did it
kind of start to coalesce.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
You know, right now, in a micro sense, we are
in this moment fueled by the Trump election. I think
one of the big questions in twenty twenty five will
be will it continue or which direction will it go?
If you zoom out a little bit more, I think,
particularly as it relates to politics, tech had been a
little more defensive over the last four plus years. I mean,
(06:11):
the vibe was very much a very tense relationship with Washington,
with regulators, with the press, and I think broadly a
lot of companies kind of not that they didn't rattle cages,
but they tried not to rattle cages in a sense
because there's a lot at stake, and the regulatory pressures
were very real with the cases and finds they were
(06:32):
getting hit with, and so it was sort of like,
don't poke your head out too much and draw attention.
And so I think prior to this very new period,
we were in a little bit of apologizing defending we
in the industry, and this is a reaction to that.
But I think everything is a reaction to the thing
before it.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
You have been a reporter and an editor and found
an incredible media company covering this space, but you're also
part of the world, I guess. I mean through your
through your marriage with Sam and social relationships with some
of these figures. Is that a kind of complicating factor
or a bonus or sometimes one sometimes the other.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I mean, how do you kind of navigate that?
Speaker 4 (07:11):
I mean, every journalist has a personal life, and I'm
no different. But I don't feel at all that I'm
part of, you know, that world of the elite Silicon
Valley CEOs in any way. I mean, I think, you know,
the information has been scrutinizing the technology business now for
more than eleven years, and I think that's firmly where
(07:33):
my reputation is. Although I hope that as a founder,
I have experience in what it's like to build a company,
and so that helps inform the storylines we go after
the questions we ask.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think sometimes as this feeling from the Silicon Valley
folks that like journalists the enemies and don't understand them
and all these things. You know, you obviously come from
from the same point of coverage in terms of speaking
truth of power, but also you know how to slip
into that register. I suppose in terms of how to communicate.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
There are some commonalities. I mean, sometimes you can get
a source to build a relationship by talking about, you know,
some recruiting challenge you're having that mirrors some recruiting challenge
they're having. But you know, I think there's no doubt
in people's minds, you know what the purpose of the
information is and what our mission is to be the
most authoritative publication covering this industry. But it does also
(08:29):
help to have known and covered as a reporter people
over a long time.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Let's start with it with Mark Zuckerberg because in a sense,
the esthetic transition of Mark Zuckerberg for me as an outsider,
has been one of the clearest indicators that like, something
is going on. So and can you just describe for
people who haven't been sort of following his personal appearance
for the last sort of five years, what's changed and
what it may say about meta and the wider industry.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah, it's I mean, I think it's in interesting a
part because Mark has talked about it. I don't know
that I have great insights into the choices that he's
made from a fashion perspective, but I think what's clear
is that he's leaning in to being himself and I
think that also feels very elon. Elon that you see
(09:19):
on Twitter is you could be having a dinner conversation
with him and these would be the things he's saying,
and he's not censoring himself. And I don't think Mark
is censoring himself.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And so when it comes to when it comes to
something on the top of censorship, like you know, the
removal of the fact checking function of Facebook, I mean,
do you view that as sort of Mark being himself
and feeling unconstrained, or do you view it more as
a kind of gesture towards the new political elite.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
I think it's both, I really do. I think from
the earliest days of Facebook, Mark was talking about free expression.
He has given many speeches about and pushed back on
on things he is deemed censorship. There's obviously a period
in the whole Internet where many platforms went in the
direction of moderating more and more and more under pressure
(10:09):
from regulators in the media, and I think Mark seesed
a political opening in a moment to get back to
where he has always thought the company should be. What
happens next is anybody's guests, right, I mean, I think
having made the decision to do this, he's definitely striking
the notes of mentioning Elaw and giving him shout outs,
(10:32):
attacking some of the same enemies that President Trump has attacked,
so making something out of this moment. But I don't
think he pivoted to Curry favor. He's very consistently been
very uncomfortable with the direction a lot of these platforms
have gone in moderating and even as a journalist, I
think it's very complicated.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And yet when it comes to like the Elon version
of free speech and the Mark Zuckerberg version of free speech,
most generous feel very ucomfortable.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So it's a strange kind of paradox.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
What I know is a journalist is a we have
to fight for the value of professional journalism. Social media
is not going to reveal the things that companies want hidden.
It's not going to tell you that the Chinese government
owns a direct stake in byte dance and scrutinize what's
(11:23):
happening to us users data things that are in the
public's interest. And right now, especially in Silicon Valley, the
discourse is so toxic around it that tech folks hate
journalists and journalists hate tech folks, and there's sort of
no room to say what if These are both important
pieces of the information ecosystem. Now, of course, how we
(11:43):
combat the misinformation that can spread very quickly on social
media's a tremendous problem, but I think that is outside
what any one company can necessarily do.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
When we come back, we'll hear about the rise of
Christianity in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It's funny you mentioned this last four years of the
tech industry having to be very careful around the administration
obviously Lena Khan and the FTC and stuff. But rewind
eight years and there was that famous moment where Trump,
like the school principle, summoned all of the unruly tech
CEOs to Trump Tower, basically to Flex's authority. And the
(12:29):
coverage at the time was all around how much tension
there was between Trump and the tech community. How did
that change so dramatically in the last eight years.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah. I think over the last four years, in particular,
the relationship between the tech industry and the Biden administration
really beyond soured, I would say, and on multiple fronts,
from crypto to just anti trust to AI regulation, things
(12:57):
that have become very press issues for the industry. Washington
and the industry was really not seeing eyed eye. So
I think you had a group of tech leaders receptive
for a different approach, and Trump, either because he believed
it or was opportunistic, really effectively positioned himself as an
(13:19):
alternative to that and someone who would not take the
same approach on blocking the smallest of acquisitions companies wanted
to do and so forth. And this was really crystallized
when markind Recent and Ben Horowitz, who had been staunch
supporters of the Democratic Party announced and we broke in
the information we're going to endorse Trump, And I think
(13:41):
they outlined their thinking very clearly, I mean from their
point of view, and it was really how on so
many topics they thought it was existential around things for
AI to have a different approach. So the industry was
never it wasn't cozy with Trump the first time around
this time, it seems, you know, in many cases and
(14:01):
not at all, there's an attempt to forge an alliance
and see more alignment. But it is so early and
I think it's very safe to say that the relationship
will be a bumpy one.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I think there was a story from Maggie Haeman that
Trump has already started to kind of comment that Elon's
around a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Do you have any intel on the unfolding of that relationship.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
I don't. I mean from what I hear, there is
a friendship there, so I have every reason to sort
of believe that. But yes, And one question I have is,
obviously you have a lot of technology leaders really sort
of bragging about how frequently they're in mar A Lago
talking about their influence. I mean Mark in recent recently
(14:44):
went on a podcast, said he spent fifty percent of
his time since the election involved in some way on
the new administration. I also imagine there are a lot
of people in Washington and politicians who might be somewhat skeptical, right,
but you still have two different worlds clashing and colliding here.
Time will tell. You'll also undoubtedly have reporters and folks
(15:05):
trying to make something of friction because that's a good story.
I mean, that's a problem with the press these days.
So I think we'll see, you know, what are the
policies that come out, what are the appointments. Obviously, in
terms of appointments and tech figures who are playing direct
roles in the administration, there are quite a few, so
I think we just have to watch it unfold.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I wonder if in a sense Trump's approach himself with
something of a revelation or point of inspiration in terms
of how he effectively sidestepped the media and created his
fan base and used that political leverage, and whether that's
something that leaders and say they can value have kind
of consciously emulated, or whether it's just something which kind
of happened at the same time.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
I think so the relationship between what now is so
not affectionately dubbed the legacy media by tech leaders and
the tech industry has gotten quite poor in a sense.
I mean, I think you have a lot of media
outlets who have just been out to get the tech industry,
who have pursued stories based solely on the sort of
(16:13):
agenda that they have to show a particular thing. And
so I think in that respect you have some tech
leaders who are sort of rightfully miffed. At the same time,
there's been a lot of very fair, tough journalism of
growing businesses that are having extraordinary impacts on the world,
and powerful people don't much like the scrutiny. So you
(16:34):
had a situation where there was a lot of animosity
so absolutely, a figure like Elon who literally bought a
very important communication platform to subvert the media is inspiring
to the enemies of the press for sure. Now, of course,
(16:54):
the fact that these leaders then go on and lie
about the media and create all sorts of animals toward
it that isn't deserved is also problematic.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
When you think think into the future, when people kind
of write the history of this next chapter of Silicon Valley,
what do you think I'd write about Elon Musk and
how will they describe his influence on the on the
culture of the whole industry.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
I think the story is still being written, honestly. I mean,
I think from a perspective of a leader being emulated
by others, the impact is real. I mean, I think
you can see from Sam Altman all the way down.
You know, you used to just be the CEO of
one company. Now everyone wants to run four or five
because Elon does. You know, you used to give your
(17:39):
interviews and now you just tweet at your enemies and
until they buckle. So that's clear. Obviously Elon has built
and is building some incredible businesses. You know, it seems
to me that he's trying to fashion himself as shaping
political opinion culture you know, around the world, and that
seems awfully audacious, perhaps as audacious is going to Mars.
(18:02):
And so what's interesting though in this is a little
bit meta, so to speak. But like Elon, the cult
of people around him will always celebrate him. I think
people are choosing to believe what they want to believe
and to vilify or celebrate who they want to.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Is this stuff with the alternative foot doutsge Land thing,
the AfD in Germany making anyone in the valley uncomfortable?
I mean, this seems to be like crossing yet another
rubicon in terms of the company.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Yeah, I think everyone here is a little bit uncomfortable,
But there's also the He's going to send us to Mars.
I say this too much, but everything just it feels
like the pendulum swinging in these days, it's swinging faster
and more furiously. And so to be in the role
of a journalist kind of standing by and watching is
(18:54):
fascinating and I think it actually is a bit hard
to predict at this moment because so much is at play.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I remember when I used to work for Charlie Rose,
a producer many years ago, and we came to Silicon
Valley to do some interviews in like twenty ten, I think,
and like one of the interviews was at Facebook with
Mark and Cheryl, and it was like such a traveling
from New York. It felt like going to this like
flip flops, T shirts, green juice, like liberal enclave. And
(19:22):
now it's like completely in a very very short period
of time in grand scheme of things flipped. But there's
been some very interesting reporting in the information this feature
that you ran on the rise of Christianity in the
Silicon Valley, which I found super interesting because it speaks
to a kind of cultural conservatism that maybe also had
(19:44):
something to do with what we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Yeah, this was a wonderful story in our weekend section
about the rise of Christianity in tech and really fueled
by I mean figures like Peter Teal who have long
been very religious but it being more open about it,
who have anti christ seminars and so on and so forth,
and it's definitely something to watch. The industry now is
(20:09):
so big that certainly doesn't speak for the entire industry,
but it's emerged as a pocket that's quite strong. You
have people going to meet founders by hearing them preach
and then going up to them. So, I mean, based
on our surveys of our subscribers with the information, you
(20:29):
still have the majority of tech workers voting for Kamala
Harris to be clear, right, But there's a very loud
group that's not and I think they're you know, they're
winning some more followers and they'll probably win some more too.
But what's so interesting is they also have the largest
megaphones in society right now. So and maybe the lesson
(20:54):
here isn't Maybe what's different is there's nothing exceptional about
the tech industry right now. The tech industry is now business.
It's grown up, it's big, it reflects lots of different things,
and so it votes less as a block so to
speak on all of these issues. And you know, I'm
not sure that's good or bad actually, but it's interesting
(21:16):
and we'll have some.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Consequences when we come back how it all started. Jessica
talks about why she felt big tech needed the information.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
You wrote a piece last year in the Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
It was a stark warning to other media companies not
to partner with AI companies. Essentially, even though funny enough,
the Atlantic was one of the you know trailblazers.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Yeah, there were higher ups there who were not happy
with the timing of those two things, but kudos to
them for not interfering because I didn't know that at
the time. I still think these deals are very dangerous
and for a lot of reasons. I think fundamental technology
companies and news and information companies are not in the
(22:03):
same business. They're not aligned. There may be particular partnerships
or getting more eyeballs on journalism, things like that, but
the history of these partnerships is that they've n did very,
very poorly, and that news organizations have diverted time, resources,
attention focus to placating these partners who, at the end
(22:25):
of the day change their strategy, don't do what they
say they're going to do, not because they're evil, but
because they're not news organizations. So we saw this with
social media publishers rush to make content for Facebook. Facebook
change its priorities. You can see this down the line,
the same as true Google. You know, it's so important
that as news organizations we control our own destiny, that
(22:47):
we don't align with tech companies, but that we use
tech to better reach our audiences and in particular. These
partnerships also sought to remove sort of legal issues around
news content and other content that these models were trained on.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And will the New York Times case be heard this
this year and twenty five times.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
I don't know, but I am cheering them on because
I think to just say, let's wait a second, maybe
there is a partnership, Maybe we can come up with
fair value for this, but we're not there yet. I
think takes tremendous courage and so yeah, to strike these
deals when there is no product, there is no business model.
It's just not possible at this point. And also there's
(23:31):
always you have to read the fine print of them.
You know, there's some headline grabbing numbers, but a huge
portion of the payouts are in open AI credits. So
it's not even that you know, these newsrooms are getting
cash and so forth.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
It's a classic will invest in your company but not
in cash.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
I mean that's not You're just explaining the whole SaaS
enterprise cloud ecosystem there. So we need to let this
play out and come up with the right framework and
then build the right partnership soft products that actually exist
and have users.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
And just have question on Sam Oltman.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Why back in two thousand and five did you want
to cover him when nobody else did And how have
you seen him change or not change in the intervening
twenty years.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Well, I'd like to say there was some grand plan,
but I was really, you know, the young reporter scrounging
for stories. And I was actually a tech reporter based
in New York. And at the time, all of the
journals tech reporting was out in Silicon Valley, and they
got to cover Google, and they got to cover all Yahoo,
a big story back in the day, and I was left.
(24:40):
I mean, scrounging is not inaccurate, and so everyone who
got in my inbox got a follow up. But what
I remember from that was also at the time, the
Wall Street Journal didn't write much about startups. I believe
there was a rule that, you know, the paper wouldn't
write about a deal less than a billion dollars or
something that in a very of antiquated way of looking
(25:02):
I think at business and what was happening. And so
you know, I think my editor rolled his eyes when
I was talking about this mobile thing. And what Alman's
app was was it was a friend finder, so you
could see your friend's location, and obviously that raised a
number of questions around privacy and phones weren't really being
used in that way before with those apps. And so
(25:24):
I think the way I got my editors interested was
hooking it to a partnership with AT and T that
the app was doing. And then also Sam had gone
to Washington to talk about legislation around mobile privacy that
he wanted to advocate for, and I remember he offered
(25:46):
me this his like documents that he was, you know,
sharing with senators or so on. And I think I
had a light bulb go off about two years ago
when there were a bunch of headlines if Sam was
again going to Washington with his thick binder of proposals
on how to regulate AI. And I think there's a
savviness to Sam to try and get ahead of the
(26:09):
narrative and shape it that was there kind of twenty
years ago. There was also a savviness, you know, to
working with a reporter to get coverage in a paper
that really was not super friendly or interested in startups,
which he worked with me to do. So I guess
the story, the story published, story published it.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So you had the first byline in any major press.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
I mean maybe there was some tech Crunch articles or
whatever existed back in the day, but I think it's
quite telling. And as a business reporter, I really enjoyed
watching people, you know, operate for a very long time.
I think you can learn a lot.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Why did you leave the Journal to start the Information.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
For two reasons. The first was I was very frustrated
with how technology was being coveredwere including the Journal. This
was twenty thirteen when I left, and there was a
lot of hype around companies. It was a lot of
putting founders on the cover of magazines, and to me,
(27:15):
all of these businesses were going to be very important
businesses and needed to be understood as businesses. They're financials,
you know, so on and so forth, and I just
thought there wasn't a rigor to covering the tech industry,
and even internally the journal. I'd reach out to a
colleague to try and collaborate on the story and they'd
sort of dismiss So I'm not a tech reporter. That's
(27:37):
what those people out there do. And so I thought
that was just a huge missing opportunity because I know
business leaders are very smart and they were seeing tech
upend their businesses and they wanted to go deeper. The
second piece was business model. Back then, the line of
thinking was that if you're a big publication, you had
to chase what Google and Facebook were chasing with ad
(28:00):
dollars and go for traffic. The rise of digital advertising
cause publishers to go crazy for traffic, and what that
did is obvious. It meant we were catering to huge
audiences that we weren't going deep. We were focused on
live blogging announcements instead of doing investigative reporting, and we
(28:21):
weren't playing to our superpowers. And so I knew that
for the industry to have a really successful and sustainable
digital future, digital subscriptions had to be more than an afterthought.
They had to be the kind of true north. And
no one really believed me. I mean even when we launched,
everyone laughed. And eleven years later, you can't name a
(28:45):
publisher that doesn't have a digital paywall or subscription, or.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
An executive Silicon Valley who doesn't pay for the information.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
We've got a fair number of them, shall we say.
But also, you know, more than half our readership is
outside of Silicon Valley. Actually, so there is a growing group.
But Yeah, it was really those things. It was a
commitment to the business model and really the type of
coverage that inspired me.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Jessica, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I really really appreciate you taking the time and enjoyed
the conversation.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Thanks as me too.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
One of the things that I found most interesting about
this interview is this shift that seems to be happening,
vibe shift, major vibe shift in Silicon Valley. The fact
that when Biden came into office, the attitude towards Silicon
Valley was very different than its feels right now.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, and Biden hired as his FTC chair Federal Trade
Commission Lena Kahan, who's actually somebody that you and I
somewhat know. She was on our previous podcast, Sleepwalkers, and
as a very young Yale law student, she wrote a
paper called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, and this was basically a
(30:03):
broadside against the tech industry and how previous frameworks of
anti trust enforcement weren't appropriate to dealing with monopolistic practices
in tech. And she became kind of a hero in
the tech regulation sphere and then became like in her
thirties chair of the FTC and basically made it her
business to make the tech companies lives more difficult.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
And actually, something really crazy is happening right now, which
is that Lena Kahan is siding with Elon Musk on
what issue, on the issue of sam Altman transferring open
ai from a nonprofit to a for profit into this
sort of as they said on Puck Mega Unicorn. Wow,
(30:48):
and you know Elon is not about it at all.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Well, I mean it's interesting. Obviously OpenAI is transitioning or
hoping Samilton's trying to transition it from you know, safety.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Focus not for profit to for profit.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
But OpenAI and Microsoft are so closely connected that I
can kind of understand why, you know, Lina Khan's anti
monopolistic practices spidery senses are tingling here.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
The last thing I wanted to bring up was an
article that I read in the New York Times that
Maggie Haberman wrote about Elon's physical positioning near the White House. Yeah,
and just to imagine in the Biden administration that like
the owner of a mega technology company would have office
(31:33):
space so close to the executive branch. Is such a
departure from twenty twenty. I mean, both of you look
at Lena Khan as the head of the FTC, but
also just in terms of the relationship between the executive
branch and Silicon Valley and how they were sort of
(31:54):
at odds, like especially when we were even reporting on Sleepwalkers,
Like there's real technoskepticism and an interest in regulating AI
and understanding its effects on the American public. And now
it's like let's play.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
But by the way, I mean, Biden was close to
various executives, Jeffrey Katzenberg being one, much of Hollywood. Hollywood
picked Biden, the tech industry picked Trump.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
It's true who.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Won, who has money, That's who won. That's who won.
That's it for tech Stuff Today. This episode was produced
by Victoria Dominguez, Lizzie Jacobs, and Eliza Dennis. It was
executive produced by me Kara Price, os Vaalahan and Kate
Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvell for iHeart Podcasts. Our
(32:43):
engineer is Charles de Montebello at CDM Studios. Kyle Murdoch
wrote our theme song.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Join us on Friday for tech Stuff's the Week in Tech.
We'll run through our favorite headlines, talk with our friends
at four or for media and try to tackle a question,
when did the PayPal mafia become a thing.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Please do rate and.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,
and reach out to me and Kara at tech stuff
podcast at gmail dot com with thoughts and feedback. We'd
love to know what's on your mind.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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