The Times Tech Podcast - podcast cover

The Times Tech Podcast

The Sunday Timeswww.thetimes.co.uk
As The Sunday Times’ West Coast Correspondent, Danny Fortson has witnessed the technological whirlwind coming from Silicon Valley first hand. The Times' Technology Business Editor Katie Prescott has reported on how digital technology is transforming businesses and society around the world. Now, 'Danny in the Valley' meets 'Katie in the City', with a podcast presented from San Francisco and London. Each week sees a fresh interview with pioneers in tech, from the brightest start-ups to the tech giants, as Katie and Danny chronicle the AI revolution.

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Episodes

Marc Andreessen: "Darwin has kicked in"

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Marc Andreessen, founder of Internet pioneer Netscape and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, to talk about the early days of the Internet (2:45), the "absurd" power of the web giants (7:30), delivery robots (10:45), the ease of starting an web company today (12:00), the ideal time to invest (15:00), the truth about artificial intelligence (16:30), the “luddite” panic (25:45), industries tech is aiming for next (33:00), why the a...

Aug 26, 201747 min

SPECIAL: inside Silicon Valley's quest to defeat ageing

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson talks to the scientists and executives pledging to redefine life as we know it about why we may be finally on the cusp of an age revolution (2:00), taking the pain out of being old (6:00), the wonder drugs already in circulation (7:45), on whether we are playing god (17:45), the rejuvenating effects of young blood (22:30), freezing your stem cells (26:45), the merging of artificial intelligence and medicine (30:00), and what the future of ageing...

Aug 19, 201744 min

Boxed.com's Chieh Huang: “1999 called, they want their business model back”

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Chieh Huang, founder of Boxed.com, to talk about setting up the “Costco for millennials” in a two-car garage (1:30), why Brexit and small houses make coming to the UK hard (3:00), growing up as a son of immigrants (5:30), making his first fortune selling an office-decoration game to Zynga (9:00), the entrepreneurial itch (17:30), taking on the $200bn big-box retail industry (20:30), struggling for funding (23:00), the challenge of shipping giant box...

Aug 12, 201741 min

Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff: "You just bankrupted the company."

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring, the video doorbell company, to talk about about getting rejected on national television (2:00), turning failure into funding (4:00), putting his email address on every box (11:00), being lambasted by "nasty" British customers (12:15), following the James Dyson model (14:00), doing 24 hours on the home shopping television, (17:00), starting ten other companies (19:00), getting his first outside money (21...

Aug 05, 201743 min

Pullstring CEO Oren Jacob: “Alexa, order me 100 gallons of chocolate ice cream”

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Oren Jacob, former CTO of film studio Pixar and founder of computer conversation startup Pullstring to talk about the new age of voice technology and talking Barbie (2:30), how the Amazon Echo ended the family shopping trip (7:30), his years at Pixar (12:00), building Mrs Potatohead (13:30), how a stuffed bunny inspired his startup (14:45), cold-calling speech experts (18:30), doing market research in a tent (20:30), raising the first ...

Jul 29, 201753 min

Headspace CEO Rich Pierson: ”This is my business partner, the ex-Buddhist monk.”

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Rich Pierson, co-founder of Headspace, the popular meditation app, to talk about how it started in London nine years ago (6:30), meeting his co-founder (8:00), quitting his job marketing deodorant (9:15), starting out with group meditation events (13:00), accidental focus groups (16:00), moving to California (16:45), going from 18 to 170 employees (19:30), layoffs and mistakes (20:00), convincing investors to put money into mindfulness...

Jul 22, 201737 min

Evernote founder Phil Libin: “I sold my first company for $500”

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Phil Libin, founder of Evernote, one of the first companies to be labelled a “unicorn”, to talk about his plan to create the Netflix of artificial intelligence (1:00), growing up poor (3:30), selling his first company at 16 (6:00), starting another after September 11 (9:45), creating Evernote (11:00), being one of the first apps in the App Store (13:45), getting funding from fanboys (17:00), being saved by a random Swede (19:30), the do...

Jul 16, 201738 min

Planet CEO Will Marshall: "We swept the leaves out of the garage and started building satellites"

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Will Marshall, founder of Planet, a billion-dollar startup that operates the world’s largest constellation of satellites, to talk about taking a picture of earth every day (2:30), making satellites the size of shoeboxes (4:30), the space renaissance (6:30) increasing crop yields from 300 miles overhead (10:30), selling data to hedge funds (14:45), buying Google’s satellite arm (15:45), the rocket bottleneck (16:30), how smartphones cha...

Jul 08, 201733 min

True Ventures' Jon Callaghan: 'You've got to fail with class'

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jon Callaghan, founder of True Ventures, on investing in things before there is a market (3:15), finding Fitbit (6:00), backing big ideas (9:15), celebrating failure (16:00), a drone investment that crashed (21:00), backing Wordpress (26:00), why we're not in a bubble (27:15), turning computers on human health (32:00), why venture capital is a weird business (35:00), how money gets in the way of good ideas (39:45) and why robots are 'th...

Jul 01, 201745 min

Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta: "We got 42 'no's' before we got a 'yes'"

The Sunday Times tech corespondent Danny Fortson brings on Marco Zappacosta, the 31-year old founder of Thumbtack to talk about building a billion-dollar startup, getting rejected 42 times by venture capitalists (7:00), finally getting a "yes" (10:30), the importance of having entrepreneur parents (13:30), the myth of overnight success (14:30), competing with Amazon (17:30), insecurity in the "gig" economy (21:30), the atomisation of work (26:30), his worst day (31:30) and advice to his younger ...

Jun 24, 201737 min

Mitch and Freada Kapor: "Uber is a seven-foot tall 12-year old"

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Silicon Valley power couple and investors Mitch and Freda Kapor to talk about publicly challenging Uber, on Freada's pioneering work on workplace sexual harassment (6:30), on whether Uber can be fixed (9:45), their early days at Lotus (12:30), investing in startups (16:00), how they found Uber (18:45), how tech can fix itself (23:00), the evolution of hacking (27:30), the need for Internet "peace talks" (29:15), and the backlash from t...

Jun 17, 201734 min

Slack co-founder Cal Henderson: 'Email is the cockroach of the Internet'

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Cal Henderson, co-founder and CTO of Slack, the wildly popular business messaging platform, on founding photo sharing company Flickr (2:30), its ill-fated sale to Yahoo (6:00), starting again (9:00), the accident that became Slack (10:30), being a unicorn (14:30), his early days in London (17:00), learning to be an optimist (19:15), why he's not worried by Microsoft (21:00), 'Calloween' (25:00), the power of emojis (28:00), what's it's...

Jun 10, 201735 min

Hyperloop's Dirk Ahlborn: “The moon landing of transport”

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Dirk Ahlborn, chief executive of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies to talk about traveling at airline speeds over land, why the idea has failed in the past, (7:00) his part-time army of scientists (11:00), Trump putting a hyperloop on the wall with Mexico (17:30), the end of short-haul flights (26:00) bringing the first "pods" into service by 2020 (42:00) making it free to ride (45:00) and why using freelancers is the best way to ma...

Jun 03, 201757 min

Meta AR's Ryan Pamplin: "The end of the flatties"

The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ryan Pamplin of Meta, developer of augmented reality glasses, to talk about the next paradigm in computing and why it won't be the another Google glass (4:30), replacing the smartphone (7:00), the death of privacy (14:30), when holograms will replace text books (23:00), Disney's plans (27:00), a life full of spam (33:00), what Apple's going to do (35:00), typing with your mind (42:00) and hoverboards, obviously. Hosted on Acast. See aca...

May 27, 201750 min

Jason Calacanis: "A cacophony of idiots"

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent brings on Jason Calacanis, one of Silicon Valley's most prolific "angel" investors, to talk about being one of the first investors in Uber (3:00), being the Cesc Fabregas of investing (9:00), how to fix Uber (12:00) how to make it as a foreign entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, Google and Facebook's damaging monopolies (28:00) having more Twitter followers than Barack Obama (38:00) and buying Tesla's very first Model S. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...

May 20, 201744 min

Comet Labs' Saman Farid: "Let's be friends with the robots"

The Sunday Times tech correspondent brings on Saman Farid, a investor who specialises in all things robotic to talk about how artificial intelligence is making machines smart (6:00), robots that pick apples (10:00), how China is planning to outlaw human drivers (15:00), why the building industry is about to be turned upside down, burger bots and maid bots (25:00), the end of accountants (33:00) and the future of humanity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....

May 12, 201744 min
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