Big Technology Podcast - Investor, Activist Swati Mylavarapu: Tech World Must “Get Uncomfortable” With Its Impact On Society

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

Swati Mylavarapu is a tech investor and activist who spent $2 million in the 2020 election cycle on Democratic causes, in partnership with her husband, Nest co-founder Matt Rogers. Mylavarapu isn’t your typical Silicon Valley investor. She’ll explicitly admit that the tech industry has some culpability in the hollowing out of the middle of our economy, delivering wealth to the few while leaving the rest in a tough spot. She also served as Pete Buttigeg’s national finance chair in the 2020 Democratic primaries, playing a key role in his surprising upstart campaign.  Mylavarapu joined the Big Technology Podcast fresh off a bout with Covid-19 to discuss the tech industry’s role in our society, and how it can be a force for good moving forward. 

All right. So are you ready to begin? I am. Okay. Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool, how did it, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Today, we're going to have a really interesting conversation talking about Silicon Valley's power, economic and otherwise, with someone who's been,

watching it and helping influence its direction from the front lines. We're joined today by Swathi Mila Varaupu, a founder of Insight, which is an atypical investment firm and someone who's also been on the front lines of the Silicon Valley's involvement in the political scene in the U.S. over this past election season. She and I have spoken in the past for stories, and it's been great, and I am thrilled to welcome her to the show. Welcome, Swathi. Hi, Alex. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, it's great having you here. We were actually scheduled to record last week. And then do you want to fill us in on what your past couple of weeks have been like? Yeah, it's actually why I am literally excited to be here. My family and I contracted COVID. So we were grappling with the

realities of that for most of the last two weeks, including over election day. But thankfully, relatively mild symptoms in our house. And we are on the mend and very lucky to have had access to great medical care, which is something that I wish every family had access to. And it was also such a reminder because we've been being extremely careful maintaining a strict quarantine, lockdown, not traveling, and it still managed to come into our house. So it's a reminder that this thing is very real and we need a better coordinated response out there than what we've got at the moment. How did you know you had it? We found out that we had it because our kids had sniffly noses. And then we have been really proactive in testing. So we have the kids tested

and they tested positive. And then Matt and I were on a testing schedule. And about seven days later, we tested positive. Uh-huh. And were they, do you think it might have been that they were with friends or they were also locked down? No, because the kids have been super lockdown also. So we asked our nanny, who has also been under strict lockdown, to go and get a flu shot. And our best guess is that she was exposed when she went into a Walgreens to get a flu shot. Oh, man. It's a really crazy disease. God, I'm sorry you went through it. Was there, were there scary points or do you feel like you were able to get through with like mild symptoms? Well, the scariest part is, you know, you hear so much.

about how unpredictable the diseases and, you know, the number of people that have experienced unexpectedly severe symptoms and even lost their lives. And so you're just sitting there waiting after you test positive and you have, and we had mild symptoms. You're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Am I going to get super duper sick? Is it in my head or am I actually having a harder time breathing? At what point do I need to call the doctor or go to the hospital? So it's more sitting there and sort of waiting like this thing is hanging over your head during the, you know, the 15 to 20 days that you're riding it out. Right, because you could, you could crash it at any time, which is the scary part.

So you're saying that COVID isn't fake? It's certainly not fake. It is very real. It was like having the worst cold that I can remember having. It was awful. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you being able to speak candidly about it.

You're the first guest that we've had on that's, that's had it, especially like, you I guess a week before. So, but I'm glad that you've recovered and are doing well. Thanks. We're also really lucky to be in San Francisco because the city's gone above and beyond to make testing super accessible. So that helped us. Definitely. They test.

So the numbers are up. I guess that's the sort of what we're hearing from our leadership now, which is not very, not San Francisco leadership, U.S. leadership. I'm very grateful for science right now, Alex. Yeah. Okay, great. So let's get into a little bit. we, well, it's too bad that a disease is politicized, but it is. And we've already gotten a little bit into the politics stuff.

So let's just. I think this is a theme you and I are going to revisit today. Yeah. Yeah, we'll just dive into it. So the first question I have for you is there are people that call you a Silicon Valley power broker. I know you don't like the term. But why do you think people say that? Oh, I think that's an awful term.

I suppose people say that because I'm. do a fair amount of work really at the intersection of supporting breakout leaders. And increasingly, that's been in the political realm, not just in the startup and venture realm. And I think that I am too rare a bird in Silicon Valley. But part of what I'm excited to talk to you about is why I think it's important that more of us do this kind of work. Like, we're doing it insight to invest in early stage political leaders as well as early stage startup and technology builders. So, Swathi, I want to talk a little bit today, and the reason why we're having this discussion is because I had you on, or not on the podcast, but we were speaking for an article that I was working on in the past about how all tech is political. And you said something very interesting and actually have it in front of me.

And you talk about the fact that the downstream impacts, the downstream impacts from these businesses that we've been building are probably contributing in non-trivial ways to what we're seeing today, some of the political unrest. Um, and, and I wonder about that, you know, in terms of, it's very rare for me to hear someone working in the tech industry to actually take a step back and look at the way that the businesses, you know, and I'm putting, might be putting words in your mouth, but might be contributing to income inequality, uh, for instance. So can you elaborate a little bit on that? Um, it's an extremely, uh, you know, uh, self-reflective thing for someone in the tech industry to say. And I felt like a discussion that starts with that is would be an important discussion, um, to have? For me, this thinking, the point that I'm making is much broader than whether or not the CEO or founder of a company is pro-Biden or pro-Donald Trump. I think we're missing the plot when we focus on whether or not someone's taking a position on who should be president alone. The bigger truth, if you look underneath the hood, is that we are increasingly building products, platforms, and businesses, because these are businesses at their core, that are benefiting from the polarization of America,

from the decay of truth in this country, from some of the core foundational stones that our democracy is built on. You can see that in a way that's been super well documented with social media companies for sure, but it's beyond that. I mean, consider also what's happening with Prop 22 versus AB5 here in California

and what it means for the ascent of these, technology platforms and the future of labor. You know, we're living in this moment in America where the idea of market fundamentalism and unfettered capitalism is increasingly in question. And that is not just led from one political party. You see people on the conservative side, like Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley starting to call for more conscious capitalism to folks on the super progressive side as well. And, you know, tech is very much caught in the cross. of all of these conversations. And I think the best way for us to grapple with that is to start grappling with these hard questions about what we're building and why and who it benefits

and where it concentrates power and who loses out as a result of it. Because if we're not having those conversations, the world outside of our industry is having them for us. Right. Okay. You know, one thing that I want to seize it, so we covered a lot in that in that answer, but one thing I want to seize on too is, you know, the way that capital influences the labor markets or to put a finer point on it. Silicon Valley seems to have built a lot of platforms that end up accruing wealth to the few and end up, you know, sort of taking opportunity from the many. You know, one example is an old example, but it's turbotax, right, where there used to be this whole class of workers who would, accountants,

who would, you know, make a nice living going and doing families work. But, you know, turbotex came around. It was more efficient. It definitely made life better for the consumer. But it wiped out a good portion of like this important middle of the economy. And that's what I think we've seen over the past, you know, a bunch of years is that the middle keeps getting wiped out while tech keeps accruing the wealth. So do you see this as a problem? It's one of the biggest problems of our time.

And it's not something that sits squarely on the shoulders of technology companies and our. industry, but it's something that we very actively play a role in. So can you elaborate on that a little bit? Sure. Well, you've given a great example of what this might look like if you are, say, building an enterprise software company. It's equally true if you are building a delivery service company and you are starting to make decisions about, you know, who are stakeholders in your business versus not and what

is the relative value that a driver or delivery person participating on your platform. has or not. It's also something even more fundamental. You know, there's Mary Gray is an anthropologist who has recently given a MacArthur Genius Prize. And her research over the last couple of years has done groundbreaking work to talk about what she calls ghost work. And the idea that any sort of major technology platform in the modern age, whether you're Amazon and what they've done with Mechanical Turk to a gig economy company or any large company like Facebook that's using a huge distributed global workforce, you know, what they have done to create an underclass, a global underclass around the world. And some of these might seem like fringe ideas,

but I think we're starting to see the credence that this notion of class and cast is starting to take on in public conversations about what's happening in America. And it's extremely relevant to what we're building, to what we build in the tech industry. And these forces of power and earning asymmetry and the divide between capital and labor and how tech feeds into it. Yeah. And I don't want to get too deep into the contract workforce because that's, or at least right now, because that's a whole different story. But going back to the fact that like with a program like TurboTax, the accountants are, you know, put out on the street and into it accrues all the wealth, how does something like that get fixed? Or are we going to end up in a society where we do

have, you know, a small percentage of people who have the wealth and everybody else struggling to get by because, you know, you have been politically active and we'll get to that in the second half here. But we do have a lot of political unrest in this country. I would say in large part because people feel that the system has left them, maybe one expense away from economic catastrophe. I think that's right. Populism, I think, is in some ways a really powerful lens through which to view what's happening in the United States at this moment. And if you think about technology as a way of supercharging, some of the forces they're giving rise to populism, it can be really telling. I mean, look, I spent a lot of time last year in places like Iowa, where Donald Trump is about as

popular as Bernie Sanders. And that should tell us something. It's not this red versus blue, good versus evil, the predominant cleavage for a growing number of Americans is around who gets access to having and who doesn't. And so, you know, it's interesting. You're posing this as a question of technology building software that's kind of inverse Robin Hooding, taking from the folks that can least afford it and accumulating wealth. I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. It's not just that certain stakeholders are getting to accumulate disproportionate amounts of money. It's also what we're taking away from so many people that provided for their family were able to put bread on the table and, you know,

bind the American dream of their children and their children's children having a better life than their own, that we are stripping that away and we're not offering a viable alternative. Right. But is, so I guess what, what you're pointing at is this is something that the political system needs to address versus, let's say, you know, this inverse Robin Hooding. No, I don't think this is something that sits just on the political system. I think that this is also a reality that the tech industry has to grapple with and ask questions around. At some point, these companies that we're building, what is the point of them if they are not meaningfully improving the quality of life for people? Do you think people actually ask that question?

I think we're starting to more and more. And I think, you know, in our earliest days, those were the questions that really gave rise to the tech industry as we currently. know it. You know, wherever those intentions have led us, I, you know, I believe at our core, we are good and we do hard things, not just to make a lot of money, but because they make the world better. And so what I'd love to see is a wider spread, deeper reckoning with some of those core values-based questions. You know, these days, I think our industry would be better if we talked as much about our leader's values and the real world value that our companies are creating as do a better evaluations. Right. And it's interesting because this is, again, this is sort of the reason

why I thought it would be great to have this discussion and put it on the show, is that so often when I speak with tech leaders, you know, they talk about like people who are against technological changes being similar to the people who are against moving from the horse and buggy to the car, you know, just totally not being able to see the bigger picture. And I wonder, like, is is it actually something that we should start, you know, discussing? And why have so few people started to ask how are tech products leading to the state of society that we have today in terms of, you know, the economic haves and then the economic have nots? Yes. We should be having those conversations. Those conversations are happening. They are happening today right now,

whether or not we acknowledge that they are. So the question for for my peers and my colleagues is Do they want to be part of those conversations? I mean, look, obviously there's somebody in the White House who calls into question foundational science and the advance of modern thinking when it benefits him. And he is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a growing movement of conservatives and elected officials in this country that do the same. And so too on the other side of the political spectrum, a growing conversation around what is the purpose of capitalism? What is the purpose of technology

and innovation if it is not fundamentally improving the lives of everyday people? This movement's getting a term, conscious capitalism. And I think there's a lot of credence to it. And the more those of us that are here investing in future technologies, building the companies of the future choose to participate in it, I think the better served we are in terms of what we find is investment worthy, but also in the kinds of problems that we decide to take on and solve with the companies that we build. You know, for example, should more venture capital go into technologies and companies that are addressing our climate crisis, we make that choice in the allocation of capital in the founders and companies that we back alongside wanting to generate a top-notch

return. It's not clear that we have to choose between building great businesses and making a ton of money and solving big, hard problems that are worth solving. I think we do hard things regularly. And you got to find the opportunities that sit at the intersection of those two things. And one of the things that's interesting is I feel like maybe people, you know, in private make this admission that this is something that needs to happen, but we rarely hear it in public. What is going on behind closed doors when you speak with people in the tech industry about what the impacts of this wealth consolidation is? It's a, the tech industry isn't a monolith.

You know that better than most. It's showcased in the diversity of viewpoints you bring onto your podcast and you cover in your stories. But I think that there's a growing concern. You know, it's interesting. 2020 saw two concurrent things that are really interesting to me. One, there's a growing popular tech lash, if you will, across most of America outside of Silicon Valley that calls them to question the motivations at goal.

and unquestioned utility of what's happening in our industry. But we also saw an unprecedented number of people from inside the tech industry become politically and civically engaged. I mean, how many of our colleagues and friends were motivated to do something around this year's election? And so what that tells us is we're an industry full of individuals that care deeply about the future direction of America, about doing good in the world, about solving hard problems that matter.

But somehow that has come a little bit unplugged from what the ramifications of our platforms and our businesses have had. And that, you know, there's reason for optimism in that. I think we can get out there and sort of rectify things and take more ownership and have these harder conversations. It's something that I push the folks in our Insight portfolio to do all the time.

You know, we start at the very beginning by looking for founders that want, want to build big, hard problems and values-driven businesses. And we drive them and help create platforms for them to have conversations about some of these hard questions around what they're building as they're building their businesses. I'd love to see us create more space for those kinds of conversations from more leaders across our industry. Okay.

I want to talk a little bit more about the solutions that you're working on to this. When we come back right after the break, so hang with us. We'll be back right after this with Swathi, My Love, Rappu. Hey, everyone, let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news.

Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So search for The Hustled Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on the big technology podcast with Swathi Mila Varapu, a founder at Insight, an investment firm that invests a little on traditionally. Maybe we'll get into that, you know, on the second half here. And she's also been involved, I think, in a $2 million spend in this past election cycle.

Correct me if I'm wrong on that, Swathi. And extremely politically active, trying to work to fix some of the problems that we're seeing you know, in society today, which candidly, she admits that sometimes the tech industry might be, you know, responsible, at least in part for. Was that sort of a fair characterization, Swathy? We definitely play a role in exacerbating some of these challenges. Yeah. The good news is we're really good at solving big, hard problems.

So I think we've got the potential to play an even bigger role in addressing them. Right. And so one of the interesting things that I found, so you studied with Pete Buttigieg, and ended up being his lead fundraiser here in Silicon Valley. And one of the questions I have for you is, like, if we're looking at, like, the fact that tech is creating this world of haves and have not, you know, why a Pete Buttigieg and not someone like Bernie Sanders, who seems more, more attuned to the idea of, like, Pete Buttigieg felt to me like more of like a status quo candidate, you know, obviously like

something status quo that's not Donald Trump, but, but Bernie Sanders talked about this really focused in on, on, you know, bringing the people who are left out of the economic picture and, you know, giving them a chance to succeed in this economy. Now, I'm going to say this caveat that I'm not a Bernie Sanders voter. But, you know, looking at the, looking at the message, it seems to me that you might have gravitated towards him. So why Pete Buttigieg? Yeah. Well, look, I think the way that you phrased your question, Alex, is in part my answer. So much of Pete's magic and his unique talent is his ability to have very direct conversations with voters and talk to them openly about ideas that they might have pre-assume to be too extreme or too radical, if you will,

but to make them palatable. I'll give you an example. You know, at the beginning of the primary last year, Pete was the candidate out there in the Democratic presidential primary, talking about, you know, calling into question why the number of justices that we have on the Supreme Court was a fixed number. And in fact, opening up the question of maybe there's future court reform that calls into the question the size of the court. Now, wherever you are on that as a potential solution, it became a mainstream idea in the run-up to the election two weeks ago, something that everybody across the spectrum was talking about. It was there on Fox News as much as it was discussed on CNN or C-SPAN. That is so much of Pete's magic and his talent is to position ideas that might seem too far extreme or too futuristic and to make them seem approachable and palatable and to make them relevant in the current political moment.

It's a skill that he has in spades. It's also something that I think is true of new generation political leaders. So while you're right, you know, I've known Pete for half of our lives and he asked me, he gave me the opportunity to, work on this presidential campaign. It's also something that I've seen in the deep political work that I've done for the last four years. So right after the 2016 election, I help build a program called the arena that at this point has trained a few thousand young Americans around the country who are incredibly diverse to be first-time candidates and staffers. And this attribute, this ability to talk past partisanship and to speak to core values and to connect with voters on both sides

of the political spectrum is a skill that we see in all of these graduates coming out of the arena, too. I think it's an indicator of the direction our politics are headed in. Right. But with Pete, you know, you mentioned the court packing thing. And, you know, it wasn't exactly. I mean, yeah, it was definitely something that was embraced by the more, you know, progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But it wasn't something really geared towards fixing the economic system. And I don't think that's like when you, when people thought of Pete Buttigieg, I don't think that that's really what they thought of. In fact, you know, the knock on tech industry

support of him, you know, Mark Zuckerberg seemed to also, you know, have a fondness for him and had gone out and traveled, you know, taking this car ride with him. And the knock on Silicon Valley support on Pete was that it was kind of a safe candidate that would ensure that the economic systems

that have made, you know, tech folks wealthy would stay in place. So what do you think about that? I don't know. He came out here and he protested with Uber drivers. He was in support. of AB5. You know, he was out there very openly saying that social media platforms had gotten away from our democracy and the institutions that we respected and that those were all things that needed to be open to review. So, I mean, were the positions as extreme maybe as a Bernie

Sanders economic positions? Not necessarily, but I think that they had a degree of pragmatism to them that also made them approachable, and there was a willingness to put everything out there. And I'll say, you know, I think part of the reason why folks on the West Coast gravitated to Pete, especially in the tech industry, is because we have this thing. We understand what it is when young people step up to the plate and go and try to do big, hard things. And I think we have a unique appreciation for that. So that's part of what we saw reflected in the support that came out of Silicon Valley for Pete.

But he was always very clear about his positions, even where that put him counter to tech companies. Yeah. And I don't want to relitigate the whole, you know, Democratic primary heading up to the 2020 election. But do you do you think that, I think the folks who listen to this, you know, might be skeptical that Silicon Valley actually wants, you know, real change in the political system? You know, in terms of the interviews that I've done, I've spoken with people who are like, basically folks would just like it to be. be the same, uh, and grow their companies. Uh, and, you know, even the people who are skeptical of it, you know, uh, say that there's going to be a price to pay politically, but don't see the hunger for the tech industry to get involved in any way or start to change the stuff that they've created someone. No, look, I, I mean, this is not an anti-tech industry podcast. I think

tech industry has done a lot of good and driven a lot of growth for society. But, um, there's definitely a feeling that there's a reticence, uh, to, to tackle some of the real trouble. aspects of our society head on. So where do you stand on that? For sure. Yeah. And so let me be very clear. This is not a normative position. I want I want to be very descriptive of what I see happening as a student of the social sciences and history. Change is coming for the technology industry. The question is how actively our industry is going to participate in that conversation and in what ways. So say more about that. I just think you can see it. in the tea leaves of what is happening in different corners of our country and the way that that is

starting to gain steam. You know, the fact that populism is becoming a major theme in our politics, that there are more and more Americans beginning to question the technology industry that are beginning to sort of wake up and realize that actually democracy is more fundamentally American than capitalism, that the notion of unfettered market fundamentalism and and businesses seeking profits for profits sake, that these truisms are getting called into question tells us that the broader sentiment of public opinion is changing. And like I said, before, you can make a choice in that scenario.

You can either be a turtle and stick your head back in the shell and hope that it just passes by, or we can get out there and actually listen, learn, and participate, and demonstrate that there are better ways to build a more conscious kind of business that solves hard problems, satiates shareholders, and brings all of the other stakeholders like our employees, our labor pools, the consumers that we rely on along with us. Yeah.

Can you see people actually, you know, in this, in this world, gravitating towards that message? Oh, absolutely. For sure we can. For sure I can. It's part of the reason why we built insight and why we look to invest in founders that lead with their values as well as their desire to create value. And so it's, you know, we've got a portfolio now of in the last four years, we've made 60

investments of companies that are building important climate technologies at cancer therapeutics companies that have pivoted into COVID treatment development firms. We've got companies that are led by incredibly diverse teams that are making maternal health care more accessible to more people in America that are building really amazing high return likelihood businesses, but are also doing it in a conscious way. And if their businesses succeed, their stakeholders will succeed, as will their investors. So I'm in this business because I believe I know it to be possible. Right. So I have a question for you. So it seems like, you know, at Insight, you're looking for mission driven or, you know,

you know, founders that want to heal the world make, make things better. I don't know what we call it these days, but we invest in good people that want to solve big problems and make some money along the way. Doesn't everybody in the tech world feel like they're a good person who wants to solve, you know, a problem in a good way and make some money and, you know, along the way? I hope so. I want to believe that most of us in tech are good people. But again, you got to be willing to have the hard questions about what you're building and why and in what ways does it actually benefit people. You know, I think for a long time, the first few years after I started the insight, I could tell some people got it and some people really didn't because you'd start to talk about values and doing good and it would make some folks really uncomfortable, like, oh, there's no data around that or, well, what's good or what's bad, you know, this notion of a false neutrality. But nope, you've got to have the conversations. Right. Interesting. Yeah, I feel like once you bring that up, then it might. You can start to see who's actually in it and who actually just had a.

slide in their PowerPoint deck. That's, we're going to improve the world by doing X. So you're trying to help with the fund and with the political activism. What would you say is more impactful? They're both really impactful. And at their core, they are very similar. It's the willingness to take early bets on good people that are getting out there to solve really big, hard problems. But we do it with an awareness that in 2020, big hard problems aren't just things that startup companies can fix. Sometimes they require really talented leaders in our politics. Sometimes they require new nonprofits to advocate for whole new areas of investment. So we try to be flexible and nimble in the form that that solution can take.

Totally. Okay. Let's end with this. What are some of the key policies that you would like to see implemented over the next four years? Now, I know we're going to have divided government most likely. So the chance of anything getting done, the last four years are any indication is little. But if you had a dream set of policies that we would implement, what would they be? Well, for one, I'd like to see us get this pandemic under control because I think there's no economic recovery. We can't even really start a conversation about economic recovery until we figure out how we're going to get this virus in control. And there are too many Americans who's health, but also livelihoods depend on that, on better leadership from the top.

So that's the first thing that I hope we get there on. I think it's such a huge opportunity for the tech and innovation community to step up to the plate and pay a part in it because we know how vital science and scientific and tech breakthroughs are going to be in the development of treatment and the widespread accessibility of it. So that's a big one. But the other thing is I want us to have a set of forward-looking policies that really look at getting the economy working for more Americans.

It's a lot of the themes that you and I have spoken about today, Alex, but I think we've got an opportunity with the new administration to focus on some of these nonpartisan conversations around how we get the American economy working for more Americans. And maybe that starts with things like student loan debt forgiveness and an economic stimulus and relief for families and small business owners. across the country. But forward-looking, I think it's got to be a lot more than that and really look at the breakdown of capital versus labor in this country and who has access to those two

things. And just looking at the composition of the transition team for the Biden-Harris administration and how incredibly diverse it is in gender, in race, but also in thinking, socioeconomic background, I'm really hopeful. I think this could be one of the boldest periods of leadership on economic issues that America's seen in a long time. Okay. So I mean, I got two, I think two policies. Maybe I missed one, but help end the coronavirus and then, you know, think about student loan forgiveness. Is there anything else that you'd be interested in pursuing? Oh, no. Well, student loan forgiveness would be part of just a much broader based economic reimagining. So I think that that could include a host of things, including reinvestment in underprivileged communities, focusing on,

advancing homeownership for more parts of the country, focusing on minimum wage and what that looks like. We saw some important advances at the ballot box around those questions two weeks ago, but I think there's more to be done under federal leadership there. Okay. And then for tech companies out there, if there's a few things that they could do differently, what would you recommend? Focus on their core products and platforms and ask those hard questions about how their products and platforms are supporting or undermining democracy and who they're working for and why and how we ensure that they work for more people. That's a big part of it. And then the second is to look internally because it's not just what our companies build. It's also how we build them.

So these conversations that we've been having for a while around the diversity or apparent lack thereof in our boardrooms, in our management teams, in our employee bases. It's a really important moment to be asking those questions. These are the things that we have control over what we build and how we build it. So I'd love to see more of us asking these kinds of hard questions and pushing ourselves to choose between right and wrong. Get in there and get uncomfortable. Yeah, I hope more people will. And I think that I admire your ability to step out and you're willingness to step out and start talking about some of the things that, you know, people might speak about behind closed doors, but, you know, then you see them on Twitter or you

see them in op-eds and they talk about how good the tech industry is and aren't willing to start to, you know, admit that there are some problems that the industry is causing and then think about how to solve it. So it's good that you're doing it. It'll be interesting to watch the way that you end up, you know, working with political candidates in the future and helping, train the next set of political candidates with the arena and we'll definitely be keeping a close watch here on the big technology podcast. Thank you, Swathi. Of course, Alex. Look, I'm happy to do it because I believe fundamentally that ours is an industry that does amazing things and we are full of remarkable people. So hope springs eternal for me on the potential that our industry and our

community has to make the world better. But it's got to start with asking ourselves hard questions. and to your point, having these conversations out in the open. Totally. Well, all right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. It's been a great another week on the Big Technology podcast. We bring out these interviews every Wednesday. So if you're a first-time listener, we invite you to subscribe.

And if you're a longtime listener and like what you're hearing, if you could rate us on your app of choice, that would be terrific. We'll be back next Wednesday with another edition of the Big Technology podcast. Until then, take care and we'll see you in a bit.