The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Arvind Gupta, founder of IndeBio, to talk about why he founded his laboratory-venture capital hybrid (4:00), putting all the world’s knowledge into a test tube (4:30), the synthetic biology revolution (7:45), starting as an options trader (9:35), then moving to IDEO (11:00), how IndieBio works (13:00), base-jumping on the side (14:25), how jumping off buildings is like investing (16:30), why faster science means a revolution is coming ...
Nov 23, 2018•40 min•Season 3Ep. 13
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ben Rubin and Sima Sistani, founders of video chat app Houseparty, to talk about trying and failing multiple times (3:00), why live streaming didn’t work (5:50), telling investors that their company was a bust - three months after raising $14m (8:50), focussing on the 99% (10:45), how Sima and Ben teamed up (14:15), building an alternative to “performative” social media (17:35), Sima’s background in banking (21:00), countering the lone...
Nov 16, 2018•53 min•Season 3Ep. 11
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Louis Hyman, Cornell University professor and author of the book Temp , to answer five big about the present and future of work in the age of automation: 1. Is technological progress bad for workers? (2:45). 2. How does reality differ from the myth of automation? (7:00), 3. Is the corporation dead? (14:30), 4. Are unions also going extinct? (25:10), and 5. What does history tell us about the future of work? (28:35). Hosted on Acast. Se...
Nov 09, 2018•38 min•Season 3Ep. 10
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Index Ventures’ Danny Rimer and Jan Hammer to scooters (3:05), flying cars (6:), self-driving cars (7:00), why Deliveroo will stay independent (9:15), the future of insurance (10:30), changing the approach to data privacy (15:20), robo-restaurants (19:00), the rise of "mass-scale artisanal" brands (20:40), getting inside the minds of young people (24:10), how Softbank is changing the Valley (26:45), how money is changing the tech lands...
Nov 02, 2018•44 min•Season 3Ep. 10
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Mike Harris, founder of 89up, to talk about his work uncovering Russia’s election meddling in Brexit (2:25), the importance of Facebook groups in spreading misinformation (4:10), making an enemy of Russia (7:00), the government’s impending ‘fake news’ report (8:10), the “Mainstream Network” (9:20), Facebook’s complicity in anonymity (14:15), the problem with the master algorithm (17:30), how to fix it (19:45), and the business of chaos (22:35) Hoste...
Oct 26, 2018•26 min•Season 3Ep. 8
The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Mick Batyske, to talk about becoming Big Tech’s chosen DJ (4:30), paying his way through grad school (5:30), moving to New York (8:05), bidding goodbye to “Mick Boogie” (9:10) rebranding (11:10), DJing Andreessen Horowitz’s annual barbecue (14:30), the intersection of technology and culture (17:00), doing parties for Lebron James and Jay Z (20:10), breaking into tech (24:05), growing a Silicon Valley network (25:30), becoming an investo...
Oct 26, 2018•44 min•Season 3Ep. 7
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on tech tycoon Naveen Jain to talk about solving bigproblems (2:30), turning the moon into the “eighth continent” with his company Moon Express (6:25), getting approval for interplanetary travel (8:10), the new space race and moon (10:15), modifying humans to live in space (12:30), why we should bother (15:00), spending $50m to get to a moon launch (17:00), how outer space is like the Internet (18:30), the first baby born on the moon (21:...
Oct 19, 2018•52 min•Season 3Ep. 6
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Laura Deming, a 24-year-old longevity investor to talk about young scientists (3:05), the goal of the Longevity Fund (4:30), her incubator Age 1 (5:55), starting out as a 11-year-old (7:00), skipping school (10:00), getting funded by Peter Thiel (11:40), raising a venture capital fund as a teenager (13:15), targeting ageing through specific diseases (15:00), her goal (16:20), trying to become superhuman (18:45), “de-ageing” beetles (21...
Oct 12, 2018•44 min•Season 3Ep. 5
TheThe Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jessica Powell, former Google communications chief, to talk about her new satire of Silicon Valley, The Big Disruption (2:35), how at her old job she called a hookup site a “meeting platform” (5:55), when noone was interested in a Silicon Valley satire (8:00), the lack of nuance in the industry’s perception (9:20), the growing number of critics (12:40), problem of the tech industry’s ‘sameness’ (14:30), how living in London made her...
Oct 05, 2018•44 min•Season 3Ep. 4
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Austen Allred, founder of Lambda School, to talk about how he moved to Silicon Valley and lived in his car (2:50), getting his first job (5:05), his first failed startup (6:05), trying to kill payday loans (9:05), landing on his current startup idea of offering free university in exchange for a cut of students’ income (9:50), the education problem (11:50), going to Y Combinator (113:50), expanding the model into other industries (15:00), soaring uni...
Oct 04, 2018•43 min•Season 3Ep. 3
The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson takes a "Monks to Metallica" tour of the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco before sitting down with Andreas Weigend, Amazon's first chief scientist, to cover five big questions: 1. Is china's social credit score a glimpse of the future? (12:30), 2. Is privacy dead? (24:55), 3. Is the concept of data being used for rather than against every people a realistic prospect? (33:45), 4. What does Amazon do that other's don't that makes it so succe...
Sep 28, 2018•59 min•Season 3Ep. 2
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ali Parsa, founder of Babylon Health, to talk about ending healthcare as we know it (4:00), doing to medicine what Google did to information (5:45), using artificial intelligence to diagnose patients (7:20), overcoming the trust issue (9:10), the problem with humans (11:30), the complete automation of healthcare (14:05), the challenge of pushing technology into hospitals (17:30), the limitations of remote care (22:40), the half of the ...
Sep 21, 2018•32 min•Season 3Ep. 1
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Adam Fisher, author of Valley of Genius: the Uncensored History of Silicon Valley as told by the Hackers, Founders and Freaks who Made it Boom, to answer five questions. 1. Who is Nolan Bushnell and why is he one of the most important figures in Silicon Valley? (7:40), 2. How did LSD and the hippie counterculture lead us to where we are today? (13:00), 3. Who are the forgotten “other guys” who have founded the biggest companies? (17:25...
Aug 03, 2018•48 min•Season 2Ep. 32
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Geoff Woo and Dr Brianna Stubbs of HVMN, developer of a synthetic ketone drink to “optimise humans,” to talk about Woo's his early days tinkering “nootropics” (3:30), experimenting on himself (7:10), tapping the biobacker community (10:00), getting investment from Silicon Valley A-listers (11:30), the Pentagon’s super-solder programme “Metabolic Dominance” (14:30), ketones and ketogenic diets (15:55), turning ketone ester into a produc...
Jul 27, 2018•45 min•Season 2Ep. 31
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Michael Acton Smith, co-founder of Calm, the hit meditation app, to talk about starting out with the idea five years ago (4:40), the rise and fall of his previous company Mind Candy (8:30), moving to San Francisco (13:20), trying to build a “moat” around around the app (14:45), how meditating is like jogging (16:45), why Calm uses the smartphone as the delivery mechanism (19:45), the death of boredom (21:15), creating a profitable busi...
Jul 20, 2018•47 min•Season 2Ep. 31
The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jason Calacanis, prominent angel investor, for the second part of their interview, in which he answers the final two of five big tech questions, which are 4. What is the next foundational technology or development? (2:10) And 5. Where are we in the cryptocurrency boom-and-bust cycle, and will it yield the next big tech giant? (23.45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jul 17, 2018•40 min•Season 2Ep. 30
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jason Calacanis, prominent angel investor, to answer five big questions. In part 1 of a two-part podcast, he answers: 1. Can Facebook be defeated, and should it be? (2:10) 2. Is a world awash in “fake news” the new normal? (19:45), 3. The worst pitch he’s ever heard, he best pitch he’s ever heard, and did he invest? (38:10). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 13, 2018•54 min•Season 2Ep. 29
The Sunday Times tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Othman Laraki, founder of Color Genomics, to talk about taking genomics to masses by reducing the cost by an order of magnitude (4:45), the importance of genetic counselling (6:45), the ‘value for money’ equation (12:35), how data is treated (14:55), starting the company after leaving Twitter (20:35), the slow evolution of genomics’ role in consumer health (23:00), how these tests may be abused by insurers (25:50), raising $150m (28:45)...
Jul 06, 2018•47 min•Season 2Ep. 28
The Sunday Times’ Danny Fortson brings on Chris Sheldrick, founder of what3words, to talk about the problem with addresses (4:25), why we need a new system (5:10), the challenge of convincing people to leave old way behind (7:15), who is using what3words today (8:55), competing with GPS (11:10), the “killer app” he is looking for (12:45), how wheeled suitcases are like addresses (14:05), starting out as a musician (17:10), how a sleep-walking accident changed his life (19:00), how he settled on ...
Jun 29, 2018•38 min•Season 2Ep. 27
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Damian Bradfield, co-founder of file-sharing company Wetransfer, to talk about setting up near Muscle Beach (3:30), being the alternative to Dropbox (4:30), how Wetransfer makes money (6:30), how the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal has helped (9:15), why Facebook shouldn’t become a ghost town (12:25), starting the company in Amsterdam (13:50), creating the ‘sex lottery’ ad campaign (14:45), missing the golden age of advertising (1...
Jun 22, 2018•39 min•Season 2Ep. 26
The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Stefan Krause, founder of $1bn electric car startup Evelozcity, to talk about why cars look like they do (5:40), why electric vehicles will be dramatically different (6:30), a car for megacities (10:00), raising $1bn (13:05), the importance of batteries (14:30), pricing the car at $35,000 (18:00), ending up in California (22:45), developing their first car in 5 months (24:45), the death of ‘range anxiety’ (28:55), not being the next St...
Jun 15, 2018•45 min•Season 2Ep. 25
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Boris Sofman, founder of Anki, a maker of AI-powered toys, to talk about why he chose toys (2:45), convincing investors to back him (5:25), starting out making a real life Mario Kart (7:20), using a prototype to pitch (9:50), creating a Pixar-style robot (13:05), putting software at the heart of its toy (17:00), engineering emotion (18:05), the importance of eye contact (21:15), if toys can get ‘too good’ (23:50), the difference from o...
Jun 08, 2018•42 min•Season 2Ep. 24
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Dan Woods, cyber security expert at Shape Security, to answer five big question about hacking and online crime. 1. How likely is it that your online details are for sale online right now? (3:10) 2. What are the weirdest scams he has found? (6:40) 3. Are state actors or criminal gangs the biggest threat? (11:35), 4. Why is being a cyber criminal so easy (20:35) and 5. What should you do to protect yourself (24:40). Hosted on Acast. See ...
Jun 01, 2018•33 min•Season 2Ep. 23
The Sunday Times’s tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ethan Brown, founder of Beyond Meat, on why he got into “clean meat” (4:15), treating the problem like climate change (6:00), the four building blocks of meat (8:15), the problems he is trying to solve (9:15), growing up around a farm (13:00), his first career in green energy (15:00), starting in 2009 with "chicken wood chips" from Taiwan (17:30), why smell matters (18:45), the centrality of meat in life (21:30), recreating the cow th...
Jun 01, 2018•47 min•Season 2Ep. 22
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Sir Richard Branson to talk about how he chooses ideas (4:40), investing in Memphis Meats (7:00), bringing billionaires together on Necker Island to invest in startups (8:30), setting up a $2bn fund with TPG (11:45), starting Virgin at 15 (13:00), what works (15:30), why he has backed Hyperloop (18:25), what problem it is solving (20:10), how short haul flights will be hurt by Hyperloop (23:15), why India will start with passengers by ...
May 25, 2018•47 min•Season 2Ep. 22
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Jaron Lanier, virtual reality pioneer, computer scientist, and author, to talk about being a “traitor” to Silicon Valley (3:40), the “bummer machine” (7:10), being purposefully alarmist (7:50), why nastiness is the crude oil of social media (9:10), why technology's role in social movements is misleading (12:20), why we should be like cats (16:25), why the incentives need to be remade (18:45), how the industry could be overhauled (21:05...
May 18, 2018•42 min•Season 2Ep. 20
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Christina Bognet, founder for PlateJoy, to talk about changing how people eat (3:10), combating diabetes virtually (5:35), weighing in online (11:05), going to MIT (13:40), gaining and losing 50 lbs (14:55), getting inspiration from Stripe’s Patrick Collison (18:15), nabbing investment from her first pitch (19:15), getting into Y Combinator (20:15), the importance of education (22:30), why she doesn’t use the “D” word (27:00), the rise...
May 11, 2018•45 min•Season 2Ep. 19
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson takes a deep dive into the esports world, starting in Los Angeles, home of the new Overwatch League, (4:00). We examine how gaming could become a spectator sport (6:00), what it takes to be a pro (12:25), why life is tough as a pro (15:00), the importance of streaming (17:50), selling the dream (21:55), esports youth leagues (26:15), why careers are brutally short (27:30), and the need to bring more women into the fold (29.30). Hosted on Acast. ...
May 04, 2018•35 min•Season 2Ep. 18
The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Suhkinder Singh Cassidy, founder of theBoardlist, to talk about the lack of women in tech (3:00), why that’s a problem (4:05), how scandal has created urgency (6:40), working at Amazon pre-bubble (9:45), losing 95% of her fortune (11:30), launching a fintech startup in 2003 (13:10), helping start Google Maps (13:45), starting a rival to Home Shopping Network (15:05), and then theBoardlist (16:30), the lack of demand for female board members (18:20),...
Apr 27, 2018•38 min•Season 2Ep. 17
The Sunday Times' tech correspondent brings on Scott Galloway, NYU professor and author of The Four, to answer five big tech questions in 2018. 1. Is the (ad-based) Internet broken? (2:00), 2. Should Facebook be broken up? (3:40), How has Amazon managed to avoid the backlash? (6:00), 4. Why have advertisers not flexed their muscles (9:40), and 5. Is this any different from the robber barons or other eras where a handful of companies dominated industries? (13:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/p...
Apr 20, 2018•21 min•Season 2Ep. 16
