Meg Whitman on 'Challenging Environment' for Leaders

with us. UM talked to us about Quimby. I mean, the timing is such a timely one considering the surgeons streaming that we're seeing because of so many of us sheltering in place. UM, talk to us about what you're seeing initially these first couple of days. Well, good, well, thanks for having me. Um. Yeah, we launched yesterday and

we were very pleased by our first day response. We're number three in the app store, between behind TikTok and Zoom, and number two in their entertainment category, behind TikTok and ahead of Netflix and Disney Plus. So we're very pleased by that. It's day one, long way to go, but we're pleased by that. And UM, you know listen. It was a hard decision to decide to launch, right, I mean, this is a terribly you know, disruptive time for everybody.

But we ultimately said, you know, we're not medical professionals, we're not first responders, but maybe we can bring a little joy and levity to people's lives with the content that we have, and so we decided to go for it, and we had to change everything about the launch. As you can imagine, we had a physical UM launch event

with a big red carpet. But guess what our biggest TV buy was launch week the n C Double A Finals, which were to be last night, so we had we had all bought everything on March madness, and we were so excited that the finals were supposed to be last night, the evening of our launch. Okay, that all have to be scrapped. So there's been challenges UM, but but we've you know, the team has been great and our production partners have been amazing because let many of them are

daily essentials are all being produced you know from home. Well, and I've been remiss. Are you're doing well, your family, your colleagues, everybody doing Okay? Yes, yes, very much. So when I have Um, you know, I live in l A now, but my husband is a medical professional. He's a neurosurgeon, and so I'm sheltered in place in Sacramento where he's at you C. Davis in Sacramento. Wow, So I decided to come up here because he's you know, he's on the front lines every single day. He's doing great.

But it's you know, it's pretty tense out there, honestly, it really is. And what do you you know, Meg, You you've obviously been very politically active in a candidate for high office before you understand the collision of political

and economic and business and all of that. What do you make for from that perspective as a leader of some of the responses that we've seen, I mean, Governor Newsom is you know, getting some some decent reviews, more than decent reviews there in California as you look across the country. I know we're a little off topic here, but what do you make of the response? Yeah, well, listen, this is unprecedented, right, No one, no governor, no president, no one has had to deal with something quite like

this before, well maybe in seventeen or something. Um, so it's completely different. And I think you know, they're feeling their way. I think Governor Newsom was doing a very good job. He jumped on this early. He had us all, you know, sheltering in place. The curve appears to be flattening here, but but we'll see. Um. You know, I think it's a very challenging environment for leaders, you know,

in the political sphere. Well. And you know what's interesting is, you know, we talk a lot meg um about how things are changing. Like I think about you were really wonderful. I did a breakfast of Corporate Champions with you about the breakup of HP and your panel, the panel, your colleagues that helped in that breakup and and what went on. And I just think, remember, yeah, and I think you know how things change, right, and who would have thought HP the breakup? But it did happen, and we live

in a different environment. I do wonder how you see today's environment, um, how it will impact the virus, how it will impact our world going forward maybe longer term. Yeah, I think that's a really very interesting question. I mean, don't you wonder whether work from home has changed from forever? Yes? Um,

I think it may have. We've all learned how to do this I mean I've been going into an office for forty years, and all of a sudden I've had to figure this out, which you know, it's been pretty easy. I've happened to be a chech exect but still, you know, and it's pretty efficient. So I wonder if that will have changed. I wonder if this will have changed how

families communicate. I mean every weekend, now we're on with you know, both my husband's family and my family for an hour and a half, you know, doing a zoom call, because we never did that before, right, So no, I think that I think that's totally true. Well, and and men, you know, on the subject of media, I feel like, you know, we were just speaking with Susan Lyne and obviously, like you, she knows a huge amount about media and

technology in the intersection. Uh they're in you know, you've been, you know, elbow neck deep in the creation of a new media company. How do you think media changes going forward, both in terms of this inflection point but also wrapping a in you know, the whole notion of this virus. Yeah, yeah, well I think, um listen, you know, Hollywood is a surprisingly um uh entrepreneurial place. Think about it every time you start a movie. Okay, a movie is a startup.

It's not different from a startup in Silicon Valley. And uh so they are adapting really fast to um this entirely new environment. And I think you may see different kinds of content. I think how it's consumed maybe different. Um you know, you wonder where everyone comes pouring back into the movie theaters or you know, that's fundamentally changed. I don't know, but people are exploring new ways to

consume content. Um. We were excited because we thought, you know, if we could make watching um holiday Hollywood quality content on your phone, UM, terrific. You know, that would be something that hadn't been done before. It was technology enabling a new way to tell stories. And I think you're going to see a lot of that, you know, in part because the situation in which we find ourselves, but also the normal march and time of technology and its advancements.

And uh, you know, given everything that's been going on with shutdown, how much sort of content do you have in the can? How much do you worry about sort of production shutdowns? Well, we have enough content, believe it or not, to get us through November. Might say one. Why did that happen? How did that happen? Well, we knew we needed to bank content because I thought, you know, what if if this, you know, was remarkably successful, maybe

we need to pull forward some content. So we wanted to have enough content in our you know, in the archives if you will. But we also thought there might be a writer strike in May, so that was the other thing we did. And um, so we've got enough content now. Remember part of our content is Daily Essentials and that is produced every day. And um, so you know, our news partners are you know, doing it up in

their studio, but many are doing it from home. We've got you know, music news, Um, we've got celebrity news, talk shows, sports, whether you name it, and so different of our partners are doing it different ways, but again super um, you know, entrepreneurial and figuring out how to make it great from people's living room. You've seen it all the time. It's crazy. So okay, i'd be remiss. You've only got about forty seconds left here about um Xerox giving up its pursuit of HP any any kind

of final thoughts on that. Well, you know, listen, I always thought that seemed sort of a strange thing because HP is so much bigger than Xerox. I mean, if anyone was going to buy someone, who should be the other way around. And so, you know, I never quite understood the rational, um, and so I think listen, you know, the leaders at HP now are fantastic. Chairman of the board, chips are doing a great job. And um, you know, so I think it's it's you know, a great company

and they'll do fine on their own. Listen, Meg, thank you so much, really appreciate your time. Good luck with quimby, and we look forward to talking to you again, um as the year progresses on. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Well Susan Lyons professional background it is been in all worlds of media, publishing, multimedia. Also, she has become a venture capitalist and has been for several years. She's former president

of ABC Entertainment. She ran Martha Stewart on the Media Oversaw a o L dot Com directed the board of Guilt Groups. So UM so delighted to have her back with us. She is the founder and president of BBG Ventures, making investments and women founded startups. Quite a portfolio, and she joins us on this Tuesday on the phone in New York, Susan, it is great to have you back with us. Really appreciate your time. I hope you your family,

Uh folks are doing okay. Everyone's fine. I've got children in Brooklyn, I've got sisters here in Manhattan and uh, and I'm here in Manhattan too, so uh, we're all working from home at this point, like the rest of the world, right exactly. I do wonder when you look at this, um, the kind of the world that we're in right now. You know, we talk about people are doing more streaming, We're talking about changes that might come

to education or medicine. I'm just curious, you know, with your investor hat on, you know, how you see it, how our world might be changing as a result of this. You know, this is the giants question out there. UM. I think we know the near term impacts, I think uh, and I'm happy to talk about some of the things we're seeing. I think the the more interesting piece of this is whether it will create um behavior changes over time.

How much of what we are are being forced to do now will actually become part of our work lives or as you say, learning lives or UM or just the way we live UM and that I think will take time to really understand. But there are certain things that that I have to believe will never completely go back.

You know, I can't imagine that companies are going to go back to spending as much on business travel, for example, because everyone has been forced to figure out how to do business across country using Zoom or whatever, uh, whatever video product your company h uses UM, and there's a ton you can get done. There's no question, and it can be very intimate in fact. So uh seems like that I think are going to have UM a much bigger impact than just keeping us in for a couple

of months. And what do you Let's let's continue to talk about that, because this is the most fascinating piece of this to to me. Honestly, Susan and Carol and I talked about it on air off air all the time. We talk about it within our company because we are seeing things differently, uh, you know, working from home, candidly, spending more time with our families in many cases, I I hope, you know, more balanced parenting in some ways, I'm not so tired anymore so what's the net effect

of that, you think. I think that, Look, I hope it's going to have um uh lasting impact on things like co parenting. That would be a beautiful thing. Um. And certainly I think there's a lot of men out there who are realizing, um, there's great pleasure in doing a lot more with their their families and maybe they were able to do when they were working sixteen hours a day. UM. I do think that there will be more working from home, just no question about it. There's

a um there's value in it for companies. UH. Maybe not full time and certainly not for your entire team as who are forced to do right now. But there's a lot of jobs that can be done remotely and there are a lot of days in the week I think when you could organize things to do your work from a home office. So I do think that is going to have um uh runover effect um And I think there's going to be demands on both sides at

the table for it. I think there are our companies who's who are going to realize they can be more efficient by doing this, And I think there are people in all levels of jobs who are going to say, you know what, I want to work from home to day to week. Well, listen, like I think even you know, TV, television, radio, who would have thought you mean, Jason and I are both you know where a state apart, where forty miles apart, and we're doing you know, a anchored show and television.

We've all seen people from their homes who would have thought that we would be able to do. I'm not saying that this, you know that we're the most important industry hardly, but it would have been one of those things you're like, no, you can't do that from home, Well, yeah we can, Yeah, absolutely, And I think it's um. Someone said to me the other day that that they've seen the inside of people's homes and apartments so much more frequently in the last three weeks than they ever

had in their lifetime. So there's there's definitely things you learn about your co workers too, when, uh, when you're operating like this. So Susan line back with us. Susan, thanks for hanging on gott to ask you, you know, given all of your experience in the media world, what do you make of the media world right now? We're at such an interesting inflection point and we're testing all these different things, given everybody streaming and consuming in a

different way, what do you see out there? Yeah, look, I think this is a really interesting moment um, certainly for as you said, streaming media. I think it's obviously much tougher for for scripted media. For entertainment, UM, there's tons of it being consumed right now, but until and unless they can get back to actually producing, UM, it's

gonna be far more difficult. But there's no question moments like this, UH make people hungry to understand what's going on in the world, and hungry too, you know, be entertained to laugh. And there are so many options for re viewing at this moment. I think the mainstream media, what you can see just by the ratings snumbers, UM, they've doubled uh their audience in some cases even more than that for what we consider may stream media, things like cable news, UM. And I think that will continue

for a while. But I think the issue is how do you keep that kind of UM. I would say, solution to what people need, what people want on a daily basis, once they're not completely isolated and uh, and once they're UM, they're no longer concerned about the immediate health threat. Yeah, exactly like I. We will see how much of this, you know, ultimately stays with us. I mean, I'm one of those people who's you know, I've been binged on Tiger King, but I think I'm done, Susan.

I do wonder we're gonna be talking with Meg Whitman of Quimby CEO Quimby. They launched us yesterday. When you look at the media world, what are the types of investments that you find interesting? Well, I think Quimby is really interesting. We tend to invest less in what I would call traditional media, largely because, um, it's been a challenging sector. Uh, because it's hard to figure out how

to monetize it. So our focus has been much more on um on technology, investments, on commerce, investments, on on services, things that uh, we know our core customers are looking for. UM. Really, when when you when you dig into what female entrepreneurs are building, their problem solvers, their consumer problem solvers. So uh, they look at some aspect of life and saying, you know, either this is missing or I can create a much

better experience. UM. And I know it's it's like making you pick up on your children, but you only have about a minute left here, Susan, what's one thing in your portfolio that you would point to that's representative of that. Well, I'll tell you about two because they're sort of opposid ends of the spectrum. One is the Wing, which has been deeply impacted by b COVID, but they are well capitalized and they uh, they will be reborn once this is over because it it created um a very safe

place for women and a joyful place for women. And I think that the need for a place to work, to learn, to come together, to meet your next partner or to whatever. You're still going to be there, Susan, it just got twenty seconds left forgive me, okay. The other one is Squad. So this is a screen sharing app that allows you to hang out with your friends. Think Zoom for friends and family UM. And they have just taken off, So you know, two very good time Maconese.

Yeah yeah, interesting, all right, We can't wait to catch up with you again. We really appreciated Susan Lyne, founder and managing partner of BBG Ventures, Carol, thank you so much. Day Safe. Susan really appreciate it.