For this episode, I’m talking to Steve Aoki. He is a superstar DJ, producer, record label owner, and prolific entrepreneur. Steve has been part of the music industry since 1996, so he’s been through a lot of these big tech transitions, and now he’s heavily invested in another, with Web3, the Aokiverse. It involves selling tokens and NFTs and, over time, is meant to be part of the metaverse. Because, of course. Links Aokiverse Dim Mak Travel Advice from Steve Aoki, Who Throws Cake at 2,500 People...
Mar 29, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Aparna Chennapragada is the chief product officer at Robinhood, the popular stock and crypto trading app. And we have some news to discuss: Robinhood is launching a new cash card today that allows people to spend money directly out of their Robinhood account and set up various plans to automatically invest by rounding up purchase amounts to the nearest dollar and putting the difference in various investments. Links: How r/wallstreetbets gamed the stock of GameStop The chicken and the pig Google ...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Margrethe Vestager is one of the driving forces behind tech regulation worldwide. Appointed as the European Commission’s Commissioner of Competition in 2014 and an executive vice president in 2019, she’s pursued antitrust cases against Apple, Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), and Amazon among others. Now, with the EU on the verge of implementing a new antitrust law called the Digital Markets Act, Vestager is planning her next moves. Links: EU's Vestager says analysing metaverse ahead of possible...
Mar 17, 2022•35 min
Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, which he co-founded, and Tumblr, the irrepressible social network it acquired from the wreckage of AOL, Yahoo, and Verizon. Matt’s point of view is that the world is better off when the web is open and fun, and Automattic builds and acquires products that help that goal along. Links: Exclusive: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on what’s next for Tumblr Verizon is selling Tumblr to WordPress’ owner Automattic, owner of Tum...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 18 min
Today I’m talking to Eben Upton, the CEO of Raspberry Pi, a fascinating company that makes beloved tiny hackable computers that are extremely inexpensive. They’re also some of the only readily available computers that are designed to be tinkered with. They’re not heavily locked down, and using one requires learning how a computer actually works. And that’s the entire point: Eben told me the idea of the Raspberry Pi was to create a product that enticed kids into studying computer science at the U...
Mar 08, 2022•1 hr 11 min
This week I sat down with Patrick Spence, the CEO of Sonos, and Eddie Lazarus, his Chief Legal Officer. I wanted both Patrick and Eddie on the show to talk about when a company like Sonos makes the decision to head to the courts and increasingly, Congress. Sonos has long accused other tech giants of stealing its tech, but in 2019 it actually sued Google for patent infringement. Sonos recently won that lawsuit at the US International Trade Commission, which ruled that Google infringed all five pa...
Mar 01, 2022•1 hr 5 min
I’m going to let you in on a Decoder secret: at the end of last year, I tasked our producers with finding better ways for us to cover crypto and Web 3.0 on Decoder. I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m fairly skeptical of crypto, but I want to come by that skepticism honestly—and on the flip side, I want to make sure to see its opportunities and benefits clearly. We’ve already done episodes on Bitcoin and DAOs, decentralized autonomous organizations, and we’re going to do more episodes as the ...
Feb 22, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Bärí Williams is a legal and operations advisor to tech companies who focuses on AI and diversity. Her credentials are rock solid: Bärí was lead counsel at Facebook working on various projects, including internet connectivity efforts and diversifying the company’s supply chain. After that, Bärí went to work at StubHub, an AI startup studio called All Turtles, and a data and identity analytics company called Bandwagon Fan Club. But now, she’s independent — a business of one, consulting on operati...
Feb 15, 2022•50 min
Lauren Williams is the co-founder and CEO of Capital B, a new nonprofit media company dedicated to news for Black audiences. Capital B launched on January 31st, with both a national news site and a local newsroom dedicated to Atlanta – and they plan to expand to more cities over time. Links: Capital B Recode Media Podcast Tired Of The Social Media Rat Race, Journalists Move To Writing Substack Newsletters Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/22686070 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Ver...
Feb 08, 2022•57 min
It’s an interesting time to talk to someone in the business of helping people get new jobs — we’re still fully in the middle of the pandemic-driven Great Resignation, and a record 4.5 million people quit their jobs in November 2021, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. But that’s exactly what Career Karma and CEO Ruben Harris are doing. Links: Career Karma A record 4.5 million workers quit their jobs in November Breaking Into Startups AT&T’s $1 billion gambit: Retraining nearly half its workf...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Regular listeners of Decoder know car CEOs love coming on the show. There is a lot of change in the car industry, a lot of big ideas about how to manage that change, and a lot of big problems to solve: the transition to electric vehicles, the fact that cars are basically turning into rolling smartphones, how to make self-driving work safely, and more. And, of course, we always end up talking about Tesla — because how can you not? Links: Listen to the full interviews here Luminar CEO Austin Russe...
Jan 25, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Links Dieselgate coverage on The Verge VW vows to build massive electric car charging network across US Electrify America announces doubling of charging network with 1,800 stations and 10,000 chargers Transcript https://www.theverge.com/e/22652357 Credits Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone, and Jackie McDermott with and it was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our...
Jan 18, 2022•1 hr 16 min
Cristiano Amon is the president and CEO of Qualcomm, and he’s always been a relentless cheerleader for what mobile computing can do for people — especially if that mobile computing is powered by Qualcomm’s chips. Links: Apple supplier TSMC confirms it’s building an Arizona chip plant Intel will make Qualcomm chips in new foundry deal The Verge 5G landing page Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip is here to power the Android flagships of 2022 Qualcomm’s next-gen CPU for PCs will take on Apple’s...
Jan 11, 2022•59 min
In this special, Thursday episode of Decoder, Andrew Hawkins spoke with secretary of transportation Pete Butigieg ahead of his speech at CES 2022. 2021 was an eventful year for Buttigieg, the youngest and arguably the most notable person to take on the role of transportation secretary in many years. Congress passed President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, which will provide billions of new funding for the creation of a national network of electric vehicle charging stations. The sec...
Jan 06, 2022•30 min
Logitech is one of those ubiquitous companies — it’s been around since 1981, selling all kinds of important things that connect to computers of all shapes and sizes: mice, keyboards, cases, cameras, you name it. Nilay Patel spoke with Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell about how the company met increased demand during the pandemic, whether that changed his plans to shift to a services company, and how the supply chain issues around the world affect his business. They also talked about how he manages L...
Dec 21, 2021•1 hr 1 min
So today I’m talking to Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, about one of the hardest problems at the intersection of tech and policy right now: the question of how to regulate social media platforms. Everyone seems to think we should do it – Democrats, Republicans – even Facebook is running ads saying it welcomes regulation. It’s weird. But while everyone might agree on the idea, no one agrees on the execution, and the biggest hur...
Dec 16, 2021•46 min
John Hanke is the CEO of Niantic, a company that makes the wildly popular Pokemon Go mobile game in partnership with Nintendo and the Pokémon company. Pokemon Go, and its predecessor Ingress, are now the largest and most successful augmented reality games in the industry, which means John has long been at the forefront of what we’ve all started calling the metaverse—digital worlds that interact with the real world. Lots of companies are chasing metaverse hype but John’s been at it for a while, a...
Dec 14, 2021•1 hr 8 min
Jonah Erlich is one of the core members of a group called ConstitutionDAO, a group that raised $47 Million to try to buy one of the original copies of the United States Constitution at an auction held by the high-end auction house Sotheby’s. Links: ConstitutionDAO Endaoment Crypto collective raises $27 million to bid for rare copy of US Constitution ConstitutionDAO loses $43 million auction of rare US Constitution copy ConstitutionDAO will shut down after losing bid for Constitution Almost buyin...
Dec 07, 2021•1 hr 7 min
Kat Norton is a Microsoft Excel influencer. She has over a million followers on TikTok and Instagram, where she goes by the name Miss Excel, and she’s leveraged that into a software training business that is now generating up to six figures of revenue a day. That’s six figures a day. And she’s only been doing this since June 2020. Nilay Patel talks to her about how she built the business, how she uses energetics to go viral, and why her relationship with social media is so different than other c...
Nov 30, 2021•52 min
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky prides himself on thinking very differently than other CEOs, and his answers to the Decoder questions about how he structures and manages his company were almost always the opposite of what I’m used to hearing on the show. Airbnb is pretty much a single team, focused on a single product, and it all rolls up to Brian. That’s very different from most other big companies, which have lots of divisions and overlapping lines of authority. And Airbnb’s relationship to cities is ...
Nov 16, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Nilay Patel talks to Steven Yang, the CEO and founder of Anker Innovations. The conversation covers the full stack of Decoder topics: taking bets on new tech like gallium nitride, building a direct-to-consumer business on Amazon, and the complexity of managing the Amazon relationship, regulatory issues, platform fees — you name it. And all from a company that started making phone chargers. Anker is endlessly fascinating. Links: Anker CEO Steven Yang is all in on USB-C Amazon-Native Brand Anker G...
Nov 09, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Welcome to a special Thursday edition of Decoder. You may have read on the site that Verge executive editor Dieter Bohn has been working on a documentary called Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone. It's about a company called Handspring and I think the Decoder audience will be really into this story so today we're interviewing Dieter. We talked about his documentary and he brought an exclusive clip that didn't make it into the film. That documentary is streaming now on T...
Nov 04, 2021•21 min
Facebook announced a major corporate rebrand by changing its company name to Meta. The new name is meant to solidify the social media giant’s longterm bet on building the metaverse. On this episode of Decoder, vice president of Reality Labs Andrew Bosworth talked with The Verge’s Alex Heath about Facebook’s rebrand to Meta, how content moderation will work in the metaverse, and the hardware journey from virtual to mixed reality, and eventually, AR glasses. Links: Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook ...
Nov 01, 2021•45 min
Adobe is one of those companies that I don’t think we pay enough attention to — it’s been around since 1982, and the entire creative economy runs through its software. You don’t just edit a photo, you Photoshop it. We spend a lot of time on Decoder talking about the creator economy, but creators themselves spend all their time working in Adobe’s tools. On this episode, I’m talking to Scott Belsky, chief product officer at Adobe, about the new features coming to their products, many of which focu...
Oct 26, 2021•1 hr 6 min
This week we are talking to Jeep CEO Christian Meunier – and there’s a lot to talk about. Jeep just announced its second hybrid electric vehicle in the US, the Grand Cherokee 4xe. It also announced a plan for its first electric car in 2023, and to have EVs across the line by 2025, which is very soon. And it’s now part of a huge global car company called Stellantis. So I wanted to know: why start with hybrids, instead of jumping straight to EVs? What does it mean to be the CEO of a brand like Jee...
Oct 19, 2021•1 hr 14 min
My guest today is Dave Limp, the senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon – or, more simply, the guy in charge of Alexa. Dave’s group at Amazon also includes the Kindle e-reader, the Ring and Blink security camera systems, the Eero wifi router, and a host of other products that connect to Amazon services. We wanted to know what the business behind Alexa looks like — Amazon sells Echo products at basically break even, it runs the Alexa for all of them for free, and it employs thous...
Oct 12, 2021•1 hr 17 min
In Land of the Giants: The Apple Revolution, Recode’s Peter Kafka explores the company that changed what a computer is — and then changed what a phone is. From its beginnings as a niche personal computer company, Apple became the preeminent maker of consumer tech products, a cultural trendsetter, and the most valuable company in the world. And along the way, it changed the way we live. Listen to Land of the Giants on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choi...
Oct 07, 2021•34 min
Waymo is working on self-driving taxis. Which is a huge deal. Ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft have remade cities, allowed people to give up their cars, and generally connected the buttons you push on your phone to real things happening in the world more directly than almost any other app. Nilay Patel talked to Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, about expanding Waymo’s service to other cities, the hurdles in place, and how she thinks the company will make money over time. We also talked about...
Oct 05, 2021•37 min
Nilay Patel talks to John Carreyrou about his reporting on Theranos from his Wall Street Journal articles that broke the scandal in 2015 to his podcast covering the trial of Elizabeth Holmes today. Links: Bad Blood: The Final Chapter https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-blood-the-final-chapter/id1575738174 Theranos’ greatest invention was Elizabeth Holmes https://www.theverge.com/22656190/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-wire-fraud-trial-founder-myth Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for fraud over her...
Sep 28, 2021•1 hr 2 min
We talk a lot about the creator economy here on Decoder and one thing we’ve learned from all those conversations is that the creator economy is a market just like any other, with supply and demand, but that it’s also a market that is absolutely starved of information. So today I’m talking to Lindsey Lee Lugrin, the co-founder and CEO of a new platform called Fuck You Pay Me, which is an all-time great company name. FYPM is an app for creators to review and compare brand deals: what brands are pa...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 6 min
