On with Kara Swisher - Peering into the Future with Tony Fadell

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Less screen time: it’s on everyone’s list of new year’s resolutions — or, at least, it’s on ours! Today, Kara and Nayeema discuss the addictiveness of tech and social media, before Kara dives into a conversation about the present and future of tech with a person who’s been around Silicon Valley for decades: engineer and designer Tony Fadell. The “father of the iPod,” as he’s known, helped bring the famous 5,000 songs to your pocket before helping design the iPhone, co-founding Nest ( selling it to Google for $3.2 billion) and writing the bestselling book, “Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making.” These days, he is bullish on climate tech and excited about the newest product he's designed: Stax, a crypto hard wallet.  Kara and Tony trade notes on Silicon Valley, including why Apple should think beyond four-wheel cars, why Google struggles to innovate (coddling employees is part of it) and how the next Fortune 500 companies will be the ones who help solve climate change. Oh, and they talk about the different types of assholes — and whether you need to be an one in order to build something great. You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is Intervention with 100% Less Tact in Ending Your Addiction. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Reza. Last year, I actually was meaning to stage an intervention for you about Twitter, your Twitter addiction. But then Elon self-destructed. Well, you know, Amanda and I were talking about it. We're hardly on it anymore. I just do it for, you know, flacking the show and stuff like that. But I'm kind of happy about it because the addiction is over in a lot of ways. I just don't want to help him any. Anyway, it's good.

Did you make a New Year's resolution, by the way? I did. I do. I make the same one every year. What's your resolution? I would like it to rain, and it did on New Year's. That's not a resolution. That's my resolution. Do you think you are the earth? No, I just think rain is great. I think rain is a happy thing. And so it rained,

and then there was a beautiful rainbow the next day. So I basically win. Okay, well, thank you for the rain in Palm day. So I basically win. So my decision is- Okay. Well, thank you for the rain in Palm Desert. It was very important. Yeah, I know. I'm just telling you, it was perfect. And then there was a rainbow. So- Okay. So I'm done for the year. Okay. Okay. Do you have one?

Mine was more water, drinking it and spending more time in it, not creating it for the masses as you did. More water and less screen time. Oh, good. Good idea. You should start swimming like Mike Birbiglia. I shall. I actually was a very good swimmer, excellent swimmer. And the screen time resolution that I have is actually kind of relevant to our guest

today, Tony Fadell. He's the designer, innovator, and engineer behind the iPod and the Nest thermostat, which I am constantly battling with in my life. Are you? Why? Yeah. Every time I go to a Nest thermostat, I just feel like it keeps changing it. I know it makes it eco-friendly. It's doing it on purpose. That's why it's at some point. And yet I don't want to be controlled by it. All right. Well, you can do it from your phone. You don't have to go up to it all the time and talk to it. You can do a phone. I do it on my phone all the time. I'm like a person who still goes to the bank teller instead of the ATM. Oh, all right. Because I like to know exactly what kind of bills

I'm going to get. All right. He also helped, by the way, design the iPhone. And these days, he's investing out of Paris. He was quite a figure in Silicon Valley for a long time. I met him a long, long time ago at a company. I think it was General Magic. I met him right around there. And he's been working on a crypto hard wallet called Ledger Stacks. It's the first real design thing he's done in a while because he's mostly focused on investing and probably enjoying the life in Europe.

Yeah, out of Paris. Come on, what an upgrade. Well, I mean, he did sell Nest for $3.2 billion. He ain't struggling. He ain't struggling. Anyway, he's really interesting. I wanted to have him here because he always says what is on his mind, and that's why I like him. So we were thinking new year, new tech, new valley. And I'm curious to hear what he thinks

lies ahead. He's also been beating the drum on the addictiveness of tech for years, something we've heard a lot about lately, especially after Francis Hogan and the whistleblower testimony. But he had a Wired op-ed quite a few years back on this very topic. Right. He was pushing for something like detailed screen time reports before Apple had that feature. And it's something that I still think isn't good enough. And I suspect he doesn't either. It has to be a much more actionable way to do this.

And he said before, as a designer, he wakes up in a cold sweat at night thinking, what did we bring to this world? Ah, the guilt. The guilt. I'm not sure he's guilty. I think he's on to something. By the way, Representative Mike Gallagher, who's the youngest Republican from Wisconsin, who Kevin McCarthy put in charge of the New House Committee on China back when Kevin McCarthy had some power. How many votes are we on?

Oh, my God. We're on fourth, right? Oh, God. He's being held captive by Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert? Oh, my God. We're on fourth, right? Oh, God. He's being held captive by Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boberg. Oh, good heavens. It's a very sad situation. They deserve every minute of it. Let me just say, AOC was on TV last night positively giddy, but probably shouldn't have been.

A little schadenfreude going on there. But anyway, go ahead. Sorry. Representative Mike Gallagher? Yes, Representative Mike Gallagher. He recently called TikTok, quote, digital fentanyl. TikTok. I mean, obviously, he was being China-specific, not Facebook, et cetera. But what do you make of that, this idea that that's digital fentanyl? Here's the thing. They just can't stop for a second. Fentanyl is a

massive issue across, a tragic and massive issue around the world. People are dying. And TikTok is an addictive social network is what it is. It's not digital fentanyl. This is what happens. This is what Trump did. Like you can say, we've got a problem here. We've got a security problem. We've got an addiction problem without having to go this far. And I think it really undercuts what we need to do here when we're talking about it, calling it fentanyl. It's like, I just, it irritates me because we have an opportunity to do good things and then these people just can't help but, you know, mug for the cameras. So you think they over-inflate the issue where the issue becomes insurmountable? It's not digital fentanyl. It's a problem. It's an addiction problem and it's a security problem. Let's deal with it like normal people and not

have to make big, like, let's get on Fox News statements so Tucker Carlson will hug us tighter. It's ridiculous. So China, of course, has been really ahead of the game on curbing, creating and curbing screen addiction. So kids under 18 are legally limited to three hours of video games. We saw that in 2021 when they put that rule up and they can only use it on weekends and holidays. Kids under 14, the Doyen, which is the Chinese version of TikTok, unless you think TikTok is the Chinese version of TikTok. Doyen can only be used for 40 minutes a day. And then they have these internet addiction camps that they send children to. Obviously. They have those here. They have those all over. There's more than

you think. And especially kids who use video games too much. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah, they have them. China owns companies or has such holdings in companies like Tencent and Doyen that they can get these companies to impose the limits. Well, it's because they're an authoritarian government. Exactly. That's how they can do it. They just say it.

But are they on to something? Yeah, I think they're on to something as long as people have the ability to make a decision themselves. It's like telling people, you can't smoke here is one thing in a public place. If I find you smoking, I'll jail you is a very different thing. And so you put stuff all over it to deter it. I had this one aunt who would put her kids' TVs into a box during the school year. That's a good idea. A box, that's what you do. She would get the, she had the big old box. A lot of South Asian parents keep all the boxes of everything that they ever bought in life. And so she would put the TV into the box during the school year. That's funny. It's going in the box.

Those cousins are the ones who are the most addicted to technology. Oh, really? Because they didn't get enough, so they're like the sugar people. They didn't get enough. They're all very successful, but they love their TV and video games. I think if we educate parents, especially around the impacts, and get real information from these companies, because that's the issue. It's like, what's the actual impact versus what we think it is and what is anecdotal? This is something we can deal with in an intelligent way.

And one of the ways is through design and how we design this. And that's why Tony's a smart person. But also one of the ways is through these lawsuits. They are pursuing these addiction lawsuits. There are over a thousand of them, all filed after Francis Hogan came out. Sounds like a good idea. Well, 80 of them are grouped into the social media adolescent lawsuit, which is a big multi-district suit going before this kind of tech-savvy federal judge in California. She's U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers. I spoke to a lawyer who has been involved in the opioid settlements, who's been really a big champion, Jane Conroy. She's been involved in the opioid lawsuit since 2002. She helped negotiate that $10 billion settlement

with CVS and Walgreens recently. Far too small, but go ahead. Far too small. And I asked her where in the cycle we were on these social media addiction cases. Like, are we kind of where she was in 2002? I expected her to say 2010, you know, 10 years away from any kind of real victory or result. But she said we're more like 2017 or 2018. Like, we will, we're relatively close. And these lawsuits, I don't know, they're going to say that these companies knew and these companies were negligent. We need proof. Like tobacco.

Proof. Proof would be good. But they do what you're saying, which is they put information into the ether of what these companies know and what's the real data on how addictive these things are. Right. Exactly. And then how to deal with it because these are a part of our lives, these things. And by the way, Tony Fidel had a lot to do with that. He did.

So let's go to our interview with him. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll come back with the interview. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.

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And so I want to really get some big ideas. I want to talk a little bit about this last year and last couple of years in tech. How are you doing in this new year? Well, thanks for having me on first, but I'm really looking forward to this new year. You know, the last three years have been just intense. And last year just really sucked. The other two years weren't so great either because it was always feast or famine. So I'm hoping we're going to find some new level of normalcy where it wasn't always everything's going to die.

Everything's going to be a success. Everything's going to die. Can we just get back to some kind of rational thoughts? And making of things. And making of things. And making of things. Yeah, make things. Let's start with current tech. You left Silicon Valley a long time ago.

People don't realize you live in- Seven years now. Seven years. In Paris, correct? You live in Paris. Yes. I'd love you to talk about what it's been like to be away and how you see the industry from afar.

Well, I have to say, people think that the industry has still got the center of gravity in Silicon Valley. And being outside of it now, I don't feel the same center of gravity anymore. I see things happening in London, in Paris, all around the world. And that's where we're investing with Build Collective. We have 200 investments all around the world. And so I don't see innovation just coming out of the valley. Actually, I see more innovation everywhere else, especially when it comes to climate

change initiatives and startups tackling that, because there's different solutions that need to be addressed all around the world. How do you look at then Silicon Valley? Because it was sort of, it was the fulcrum of everything. And the big companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, all still live there, and Amazon to a lesser extent because it's in Seattle. But it's still still the big giant companies remain there.

Has that shifted anything or do you feel like that's the way it is? Well, I think for those types of products, yes, they are there in Silicon Valley. I think innovation has, you know, we have to really think about, well, where is the innovation really happening now? Is it happening in Silicon Valley? Sure, there's big business, but are those businesses in maintenance mode, in optimization mode,

than really in innovation mode? They want to innovate, but you're seeing all the stuff in AI. It's not coming out of the big companies, even Google, which has a huge AI team. Why is that? Why do you think that is? Well, I think when we look at this,

especially when it comes to AI, and this is what Google's issue is, is that, you know, there's a lot of ethical issues around that, that comes out with these, and you just saw Facebook's, you know, they put out their AI engine and then they pulled it back, right? There's a lot of tentativeness around it because it's like, they already have this fear of regulators, right? The regulators are already on top of them. They can't have too many more missteps or there's going to be more pressure applied to them. So you're going to see much more innovation from people outside of it, small companies who don't have the regulators on their

back or larger companies who aren't really targeted right now. And that's usually not in the U.S. You know, and you're seeing in China, right? You're seeing the regulation is being pulled back in China. So I think you're just seeing the dynamics. Yeah, they're more in maintenance mode. They're more in protection mode than they are in building and changing right now. So, but they still are the most valuable companies. Let's start with the obvious leader, Apple, which is the most valuable company in the world now. Dipped below $2 trillion, but it's $1.99 trillion.

Not bad. Oh, I remember when. I remember when. When it. Oh, I remember when. It was $4 billion. Yeah, it was $4 billion. That's right. Or less, right? Less? Oh, yeah. Yeah, less. Yeah. So how do you look at them as a company? Well, I look at them as still being the category leader in so many important categories, as well as a platform leader, right? If you look at the Android ecosystem versus the iOS ecosystem, it's nowhere near the same, right? If you look at the Android ecosystem versus the iOS ecosystem, it's nowhere near the same, right? If you look at Apple, it's got all of the different services and products on top of it all tied together under this one blanket, whereas Android's still struggling to even get a tablet

out or connected headphones that work and Bluetooth ecosystem that works. So as far as I'm concerned, they're the only ones who's doing it right from that perspective. And that is incredibly hard to unseat. And unless you have the same ideals and the same kind of way to design, you know, you're not going to see that. And it's hard to do that, you know, because really Android is the Microsoft ecosystem, you know, that was Windows back in the 90s and the early 2000s. It's also the same people. There's not a lot of change at the top there. The management team there is very similar to the way when I was there. And that was 20 years ago.

They seem to be doing OK, though. I mean, sometimes that's a bad thing. Why does that work there? No, no, they're doing great. Why does that work there? Sometimes it doesn't. Someone might argue that Facebook, it doesn't work out. Why do you think it works there?

Well, I think it's because there's still, first there was growth, right? And every person on the planet needs a smartphone more or less. And then there's an upgrade cycle that happens with that. And if you have a great, you know, a great capture the customer story between each upgrade cycle, then you keep those customers for, for into eternity, right? So they just keep managing that and keep building on top of that ecosystem and keeping people in, not necessarily growing that pie much larger. Right.

So they're innovating at every level. It's just, you know, most people want to see, oh, where's that new category? Right. Where's that new thing? As opposed to, you know, just building out what they already have. I'll get to that in a second.

But do you think it's still too closed, though? They're facing, as you mentioned, regulation for lots of people. They have the 30% fee on the App Store. And is there any way for it not to be closed if you're talking about this kind of ecosystem where you continue to upgrade? You know, we've seen alternative App Stores come out on Android. And if we look at it, none of them have taken off. None.

Right? I think that you could have alternative app stores on an iOS ecosystem, but at the end of the day, it's all about how easy it is to get to those stores, how compatible it is, how much you can trust them. And so I think the path of least resistance will always win, even if you were to add more and more app stores or reduce the cut that the app store gets. I think all those discussions are happening, and we'll see where that lands. But I remember that day when Steve was like, 30%. That one thing, that one day we were at the whiteboard, and he's like, that's the cut. Why? Because that's what was traditionally done in

many different other industries. And so it was born out of that. Now, all the other things, subscriptions and in-app purchases, I think that all can be argued. But of course, there's an incredible service that Apple gives to their developers to allow this easy access for all their customers into that. Eventually, I think they'll give themselves. They'll do it themselves versus being regulated. Would you reduce Apple's dependence on China? To be frank, and I love Jeff Williams and all the guys over there, I remember going into China first. iPod was one of the first products to go into China. The laptops were also at that time, back in the mid-2000s. I thought there was an over-reliance. Yes, it's my fault. That's what I was told to do, by the way. Okay, all right.

So at that point, I think to be over-reliant and have so much of your logistics chain be built in China and all those things, I think, yes, it's a resiliency nightmare. And so you need to go and think about other things. We know what's going on in India, Vietnam, what have you. That trend's going to continue. It Vietnam, what have you. That trend's going to continue. It needed to continue even with the geopolitical issues. It's just got to happen

from a resiliency perspective. So that is not going to change. So you can replicate it elsewhere because a lot of people think you just can't. It takes time. Well, two things. It takes time, but it takes government intervention. And government intervention means really about making sure the tariffs are there to be able to fund those businesses to come and build those manufacturing sites there. India did it. Brazil did it. And you're seeing the benefits of that. You're going to see more and more of this. We're already seeing it in the US. We're seeing all kinds of subsidies, what have you, tariffs getting on for Chinese imports, what have you, to fund more and more manufacturing and development inside that country. So I think this deglobalization is going to be happening. And it's going to happen really rapidly because of climate

change. Last thing on Apple, speaking of which, it's apparently developing a self-driving car that goes in and out. Well, now the rumor is it's not self-driving. Oh, it's not. It's just an electric car. Well, it's ADAS level two, two plus, maybe three. But it isn't what we think of that has been sold to us. But there is no such thing as a real, true self-driving car. Explain what that means for the people who don't understand that. I do understand what you're saying. But go ahead.

OK, so what's ADAS? ADAS is assisted driving levels. And you can start with level one, which is kind of like speed control, like your cruise control. Level two is like lane keeping and those kinds of things. Parking. Two plus.

Yeah, parking. And then you go to three, four, and five. And five is like full autonomy in all environments and all weather, all those kinds of conditions. Right. And you step down from that. So level three, people are mostly talking about two plus to level three, which is more or less highway driving and safety features, but you're still in control of the car in

most cases, unless it's a very well-known, well-controlled situation like a highway, something like that. This ability to just replicate a human is very, very difficult, especially under all circumstances. Did you see Apple being a big player here? In self-driving? Not self-driving, in the car, in the putting itself in the car. You see, I have a very, very different take on this. I don't think Apple should be doing a car. Apple has to change the way people think about mobility. They've changed the way people thought about music, how they thought about communications,

how they get information access. They need to change the way people think about mobility. It's not just, what is an Apple car going to be that's going to be that much better if it's four wheels and it's a traditional car? Even if it's self-driving. Well, you could say that about AirPods. There were tons of them, and then there was AirPods.

Yes, but that's an accessory to a product. It's not a platform. And so I look at something like going, how can Apple innovate mobility being two wheels on two wheels? How does it innovate on three wheels or light four wheel vehicles? Not your traditional stuff, because that's already taken care of. There's so many of those things out there. Where can Apple change the way people think about mobility and truly bring a whole new class of product out, not a Tesla plus plus or minus minus or whatever. Right. What about the augmented reality glasses?

That's something that obsesses Tim Cook, I know, because he talks about it whenever we have lunch excessively. Well, AR or mixed reality, you know, VR glasses, depending on which angle you take from it. I think they're incredibly powerful applications in entertainment for sure. And in commercial and industrial kinds of applications, I think they're great, but they're episodic use. You know, you hear a lot of things from the meta Facebooks of the world that we're going to have meetings in it. We're going to, it's going to be, you're going to do social. I'm going to be in it all day. I think it's total bullshit. I think these episodic uses. Yeah, I agree.

We're in a company called Gravity Sketch, which is a new 3D virtual reality collaborative environment to create new products, either virtual or real ones. So you would sit in there. Instead of having a meeting in person, you just all collaborate together. But you can design. You can literally design that you can't use the typical 2D tools to use today. It's really powerful. So you have to really look at what tools and what am I trying to do? Why am I trying to use these technologies? As opposed to just saying it's going to make a virtual meeting better. I don't believe that at all. If you were running Apple, what would you focus in on? I would be focusing on the mobility thing. Mobility. To tell you the truth. Like I said, what I was going after. I

think there's a lot of things to be done there. I would be seeing what it could be done with audio only kind of information assistant. I think that's really important to do. Yeah, absolutely. I think those two things is really where I think Apple could shine. In terms of like hardware and those kinds of things, going back to the basic Apple, as opposed to more software-only services built on top of everything. You know, I'm not very much for this Apple getting into advertisements thing. But it's money. It's money on the floor, right?

Why not take more of it from anyone else? Well, I just think that, you know, Apple's been all about privacy, right? And so I haven't heard an articulated story on how these ads are private, right? And how this data isn't there. So, you know, it just, it clouds the story. So I need to see more articulation around why these ads from Apple are special and do not go against the message they've been been talking about, privacy, security, all the other stuff. Yeah. Can they do ads better? Is there any way to do ads better? That's the big question. Yeah. I don't think about that because I frankly hate them.

Yeah. Okay. Facebook. That's just not something I invest in or worry about. Yeah. Okay. So let's go to Google because one of the things that's been big this past month is chat GPT and other things. And of course, Nest was about smartness. Yeah, we had AI in a thermostat. We couldn't call it that back then. Yeah, yeah. It scared people. Yeah, yeah. It still scared me. I still have them in my house, but nonetheless. When you think about that, why isn't Google at the forefront of this? They have their version of it. It's called Lambda, but this is being funded in part by Microsoft and with Sam Altman and OpenAI. Google bought all the AI companies.

Why aren't they at the forefront of this? It would seem like this is the most challenge to search, correct? This is a version of search. The rumor is they put a red team on this at Google. So literally it was all hands on deck. What does this mean to the future of search and to the future, basically, of their ad business, right? Right, exactly. And if you think about it, because remember, search doesn't make money.

It's everything that comes from the search as a tool that makes money. So how do you monetize a chat GPT? We've already seen that none of the voice interfaces, whether that's Apple, Siri, or Google, hello, Google, or any of the Amazon Alexa, none of those can be monetized. So how would you monetize a chat GPT? And Sam and those guys are trying to figure it out. And so even if Google puts this out,

how will they monetize it? I think there's one, which is they're timid, like where to get this thing go and what could it do first. Second of all, it's not real time. It's trained on data that's older, right? It's not up to the seconds, which that can get fixed. It just takes a lot more processing and resources. And then there's how do we, you know, how do we make sure that this thing gives actually good information? So I think there's all three of those things that, and, you know, and they don't want to lose the search business because if they come out with it and it's a hit and they don't monetize it, what happens to their revenue? Right.

So I think all of those things, there's an innovator's dilemma in a way that Google has. So sticking with search is important. It's sort of the way Marx shifted to metaverse when his other business is something else, which is not at all the metaverse. True. I don't know if the metaverse is a business in is something else, which is not at all the metaverse. True. I don't know if the metaverse is a business in the way he's defining it, but what have you. Can Google innovate into this area or not? Because as you know, when it started, it wasn't making money out of things. And then they just luckily happened upon this business that made it.

Because for years, it was like, how are they going to make money just from search? And then found those things i think they can if they had the if they had the mission and they had that kind of we must figure it out as we know google's doing a many many different things and if you look at their you know it should say alphabet because i was a victim of that yes or i should say nest was a victim of the alphabet transition. Or I should say Ness was a victim of the Alphabet transition. But if we look at that and say, okay, if they took all the, what is it, other bets, the money on other bets that they, how many billions per quarter on that? Yeah. If they were to put that on something like Lambda or whatever their Google version is,

I'm sure they could come up with it. But they got to really focus the teams. They really have to cut out all of the noise that goes around Google and literally, as far as I'm concerned, very wasteful. I have a whole chapter in my book about it. Yes, I know. I know. Yeah, they like to do that. You mean the solar sales and the wind sales and the this and that? Look at how many Alphabet projects have not turned out. But they've been cutting back. Certainly, Ruth Peratt and Sundar have been cutting back on those. Well, sure. But there's still a lot that's there that hasn't been cut way back. What would you cut?

I would just be putting anybody on notice that hasn't done anything or done real revenue over the last even year to two years. If you look at most of the projects, almost all of it, any of it is dead. I love Google Ventures or GV. I love Google Capital. It works well. You know, certain things work really well, but all these other side projects, they all seem to be, was Sidewalk evaporated, you know. So I haven't seen one thing Waymo might, but it's billions and billions, it's 10 years

on now. And it's going to be how many more years? Right. And I don't know if it's going to get anywhere. Right. So I think they need to focus on one or two things in that area, not as many as they're doing. Well, speaking of which, you mentioned Ness, that you were a victim of that. And you and I have talked about that.

I know. But you did get $3.2 billion, so I'm not feeling particularly bad. Oh, I'm not. Hey, look, I wrote in the book. I'm not regretting it, but we were a victim of the alphabetization. Yeah. Well, talk about what you think could have happened there versus what did. Well, what happened specifically was we were bought, and the reason why we allowed ourselves

to get bought was we were going to be part of Google and be part of the platform and part of using all the resources. When the alphabetization of Google happened, it was like, let's spin out all of these companies that are draining, are adding to our expenses, our OPEX, so that Wall Street can see how healthy our search business is, our search ads business is, and all these other things are investments in the future. So breaking it out. But when you do that, you have all kinds of legal and FASB issues to deal with, standards boards, IP issues, all kinds of things that you have to deal with. And what happened was, for us specifically, was when we wanted to be part of Google, that

was how we started. Then a year and a few months into it, they were like, oh, no, you're out of Google now and you're going to be using our services. And our headcount costs went up two and a half times. And our people were still doing the same things, but our headcount costs two and a half times more. And they're like, well, you got to make it profitable now. I said, wait a second.

I'm sitting here. We're not doing anything differently. And you're charging us more. And we never wanted all the buses and food and all this other stuff. We never wanted the buses. You didn't want the buses, not the food? Well, somewhat. Not to the level you get them.

Yeah, yeah. So all these extra perks were costing us, plus then the alphabetization was costing us money, and nobody at Google wanted to work with us anymore because you're a separate company. Right. So it was like, it was the worst of everything. Right.

We couldn't optimize, like if we were a private company. What was the optimization then? Talk about the internet. Explain what the Internet of Things is for people who don't know at this point. Well, the Internet of Things is all the things we know of now, which is like your Amazon Echo things in the house, smart thermostats. Now your Wi-Fi is there, lighting. There's so many things now compared to what was in 2011, right? to what was in 2011, right?

So all of these things have now created this web of all these devices, accessories really, to your computer or to your smartphone that can connect your house or your office into being controlled in an intelligent way to save energy or make it more convenient to do stuff. So that was what the idea of the Internet of Things was. It's finally getting there. Smart but hackable, but nonetheless,

this was the idea that you put computers in everything. How do you look at something like Nest now? I find it very useful, but someone asked me, like, what do you think? I'm like, well, it's okay. It's good. It works. It works. I don't think it changes my life, but it's a good version of that. The idea was bigger than that, correct? Yeah, the vision was much bigger. And what my vision was, was really about getting all these devices. And once you have all those devices, they can start coordinating and working together so that the cameras plus your smoke alarms, plus your alarm system can become a better alarm system or a better smoke detection system or what

have you. It's about this confederation of all these connected devices working on your behalf to do things for you or another family member or what have you when you're home or away to save energy. Because we really need things like this to save energy to help us with the climate change situation we're in. But it hasn't really worked out that way. It hasn't because nobody wanted to invest that time. They were like, oh, we're going to, to me, they went off and took the easy route and said, oh, now we're just going to add another screen and we're going to take a tablet and make it into a screen and you're going to just control it. So everything looks like a remote control as opposed to an intelligent assistant to help you, you know, really manage

your household, manage your bills, your, your, you know, your energy spend, what have you. And that's, that's not where we are today. And I'm hoping with the new thread and matter standards that just came out, we'll get there in the next five to 10 years. Explain that. Back in the day when we started Nest, there was only two standards. There's really Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to connect things in. And then there was a bunch of proprietary protocols like Z-Wave, what have you. We knew that those things were not good for very, very low power battery operated devices. They need to be very, very resilient.

So we worked on this IP standard, basically making IP to go to all of these devices. So they are like another computer, another internet connected device, but something that can be operated by a battery for years, five years, or it could be powered off a solar cell in some cases. And so that's called the Thread standard, and it's a new radio. People at Google hated it, frankly. They said, no, we don't need another standard. I'm like, yes, we do. So we created this new meshed thing. Every device talks to every other device.

So if one falls off of it, the network self-heals, so they're all together. So that's what Thread is. And Matter, on top of it, is the protocol and the devices so that whether you buy a device from Apple or Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, what have you, they all have the same kind of API interface so you can connect to them, you can get them to work together regardless of the brand. So that's why Matter and Thread need to exist because of this new type of set of connected protocols that are going to really take us to that next level where hopefully the vision that I had and we had at Nest is actually going to come to fruition over the

next five to 10 years. The idea, of course, that people are most worried about is the creepiness of it. The surveillance, Amazon had an indoor drone at one point. I don't know where that went. Obviously, each of these things, when Eero was bought by Amazon, I had Eero because I liked it as a startup. And then Amazon bought Eero and then they bought Ring I had Eero because I liked it as a startup. And then Amazon bought Eero. And then they bought Ring. And you're like, oh, God, now they have that. Like, how do you look at that?

Because at one point you said, let me give you a quote. I wake up in cold sweats every so often thinking, what did we bring to the world? Well, that quote was, that's out of context. What we brought to the world was about smartphones and allowing things like social media to happen. Right. Okay. When I think about Internet of Things, that can be secure if it's done well. If you look and you look at Nest, those things, at least the devices we worked on, haven't been hacked.

They have never been hacked. Some of them have. Right. And a lot of them have not. Yeah. But some of them have. And so now it's then up to the trust. Do you trust the device, the company owners, whether that's Google or Amazon or whatever, to make sure they're not exploiting that data?

And I think this is exactly where we need more and more regulation on, to tell you the truth. Because we need to hold these companies accountable if they do release our credentials, if they do use our data in wrong ways. There's got to be some kind of hard line there about that so that we can feel good about using these devices because they will bring convenience. And they're, I believe, a real necessary part

of solving the climate crisis we're in without us going back to cave days. What is the cold sweats that you have right now? What's your techno nightmare at this moment? So the cold sweats was all about getting people hooked on things, right? The issue was now the world, it's not just a tool, but it's become a way of life that you can't get off these devices. Digital addiction is real, but it's become a way of life that you can't get off these devices.

I have firsthand experience with that, those digital addictions through our family, extended family, what have you, friends and what have you, right? We know people who have. So my issue is we want to bring information to everyone, but then there are people who can weaponize those devices. The iPhone is just a refrigerator. You can, in your physical refrigerator at home, you can put bad food, you can put good food, you can over consume good food, you canconsume bad food. It's that nutritional guide like we have, which could be better than we have today for food, but it says, so what's our digital scale? We need something like screen time to give us a digital scale of what we're consuming or our loved ones are consuming if we're parents to them,

making sure that we understand the things that we're downloading or using, what is inside of them? Do they have certain kinds of like, not just in-app purchases, but are they designed to feed our psychological system to take up more and more of our money or in our time so that we're hooked on these things? And what also are the rules that we should follow or the rules of thumb to say, here's what's good consumption, here's what's bad consumption. Here's the best way of thinking about these things. And all the education that needs to be done. Right.

We should be having these types of things in schools. Screen time seems to be the very least that you could do, correct? Very least. What would a device like that look like in that regard? Well, I don't think it's a separate device. I think it's software on the device. And it's a software that's not just on your iPhone or your smartphone. It's also on your TV devices and on your gaming devices and all the other things that are in your world. So it's that

whole worldview, right? To show you how much you're spending digitally. And then you can take that data, you get that data, and you can then put it through different types of apps or different types of things to try to get an analysis, like a 23andMe for your digital DNA. Right, right. So that you can start to learn and then we can start to learn and modulate.

I'm not saying I have all the answers, but there are more and more steps we can do to help us with this issue. Beyond just knowing how much time. Beyond doing screen time, which is literally some information and a tiny bit of control. Support for this show comes from Indeed. Thank you. You find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast.

Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need indeed. Support for this show comes from Grammarly. 88% of the work week is spent communicating, typing, talking, and going back and forth on topics until everyone is on the same page. It's time for a change. It's time for Grammarly. Grammarly's AI ensures your team gets their points across the first time, eliminating misunderstandings and streamlining collaboration. It goes beyond basic grammar to help tailor writing to specific audiences, whether that means adding an executive summary,

fine-tuning tone, or cutting out jargon in just one click. Plus, it surfaces relevant information as employees type, so they don't waste time digging through documents. Four out of five professionals say Grammarly's AI boosts buy-in and moves work forward. It integrates seamlessly with over 500,000 apps and websites. It's implemented in just days and it's IT approved. Join the 70,000 teams and 30 million people who trust Grammarly to elevate their communication. Visit grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more. Grammarly, enterprise ready AI. So one of the things that I have been banging on about is the unintended consequences of building things. Has that changed at all? When you make things, do you think about the creepiness? Say you make

Nest, you think about the creepy factor. When you make whatever, why is that so rare? Well, here's what I've come to learn over my 30, 35 years in the business, which is typically founders, and you see a lot of this in founders, they're younger, they don't have kids, they don't have families, they just care about themselves and what they want. When you start having a family and you understand kids and you understand you're part of society and you care about society being healthy so your kids get raised, you think about those things.

You think about more and more of the consequences of what you're building in the greater context than just I want, I want for me and get out of my way. So if we look, most of the companies that we know of today were founded by founders that were not married, right? And now I know, I've had conversations with some of them that once they've had kids, they're like, they think about things differently and they would make decisions differently now that they see this greater context. But sometimes that's

what it takes to make that great company because you don't want to have those boundaries. You want to have somebody, a younger audience, snap it up and use it and then do all the things they probably shouldn't to be healthy members of society. Right. It's interesting. This is your new book. You talk a lot about assholes. So I want you to break down your asshole. This is your book build, nomenclature. And you yourself are an asshole, correct?

I am a bit of an asshole too, but. Hey, look, the question is, is what, if you're going to be really an asshole, I guess you could be really like driving the point. Why are you needling people? Why is this? Are you doing it for your ego? You're a famous needler, correct? You are a famous needler. I'm a needler. I'm a needler. I get in the details and that's what has made me successful and driven the team. But at the same time, are you doing it for your ego? Are you doing it for a mission that's customer driven? Steve was like this. Steve Jobs was like this. He did

it for the customers. He did it for the customers. He did it for a better outcome. It wasn't to take people down and out. It was to drive a better solution. So that's a product asshole? No, no, a customer asshole. No, no. So they're mission-driven. Mission-driven asshole. I call it mission-driven. So there's egocentric or ego-driven asshole versus a mission-driven asshole. Now, there's different types of ego-driven assholes, sub-genres. Okay, please. But really the two things are mission-driven or ego-driven asshole. Now, there's different types of ego-driven assholes, sub-genres. Okay, please. But really the two things are mission-driven or ego-driven. Right. Do you think back on your own history?

How have you changed? The first time I ever managed people, really managed people, was when I was 24. And so I was a micromanager. You're worried about giving up control. You're worried about it not being done right. So you're micromanaging. And I was driving everyone crazy. And so I really had to go to all kinds of classes, do some self-work, all that stuff

over two years to finally really understand what it means to become a true leader. But is it possible to make things without being kind of an asshole? Do you think? Or is that just a trope of Silicon Valley? My point is, are you an asshole for the right reasons? I like this new excuse. If it is pushing people down and hacking and slashing and all the other stuff, no, that's not going to work. But if you talk to the teams, they're like, this was the teams that I worked for me from iPod on up. They're like, oh, we want to work with you again.

It was the best experience ever because we drove everyone to a higher standard. Not because we were needling them and criticizing they suck. It was that, no, we need to do a better job for the customer. And these people want to come back and go, what are you doing the next nest? What are you doing these things?

Because they really love that because they're doing something that matters. That's what they care about. Do you ever go back and look at the nest memes? There are a lot of complaints about your management style in them. Yeah, but most of those people didn't work for me. That was all just bullshit being da-da-da-da-da on whatever Google meme gen bullshit.

And so as far as I'm concerned, you know, fuck them. They don't know who they ever worked in. They just heard hearsay that, oh, and it goes against the Google codliness. Oh, we're so nice and so wonderful. We treat each other well. Fuck that. You're not getting anything done with those billions of dollars. Oh, we're so nice and so wonderful. We treat each other well. Fuck that. You're not getting anything done with those billions of dollars.

Right, okay. Come on. Come on. Let's do something. All right, okay. Speaking of that, you've turned down 99% of design projects, but you recently announced

you're reinventing crypto hard wallets. What a perfect timing for you to do this with a new product called Ledger Stacks. I want to know why you went into this and why you're excited at crypto. And now how do you feel with this whole collapse centered around FTX, but it's, you know, it now has a patina of problems. Crypto from a store of value and from blockchain, from a way of storing things and making it transparent, those are technologies that are not going away. Okay?

Those are absolutely going to be around. The FTX thing and everything that came before it, for the most part, was literally criminal. It was criminal activity. That's a whole different thing. Now, obviously, there's other criminal activity where people are, you know, hacking and getting things out of exchanges or whatever. That's another set of criminal stuff. But the technology itself is worthy and should exist.

Criminal behavior like FTX has to be punished. And I believe there has to be more regulation put on this whole space so it can actually grow. But the technologies themselves are worthy. They're absolutely there. Even NFTs are worthy. All right. So tell me why you picked this out of many things you could have redes redesigned. Like why did you want to do crypto hard wallets? Well, I think first of all, you have to understand that crypto hard wallets are not,

and cold wallets, depending on who you're talking to, it's not about storing your crypto on the wallet. It's about having your identity keys, your keys to your identity for how you store things on and off chain on a piece of hardware that can't be hacked. If you look at every single software wallet out there, NFT, crypto, what have you, they can all be hacked, whether on a computer or on a phone or any other device. You have to take those special private keys and the management of those off those devices because they're so complex so that you can store them in a way that is truly private and safe. OK, so if you're going to have these technologies, crypto or some kind of store of value and blockchain, you need to have a really great identity mechanism.

And that can't be hacked. To me, a cold wallet is what the term of art is called. I call it an identity wallet because you're not really storing value on it. You're storing your private keys, just like you have your physical keys to your house or what have you. That's what this device is. And those keys are also not just for crypto or NFT, but it's also going to be for all kinds of other identification. What makes it, you know, in the midst of this grift, what excites you and what pain point does crypto solve for people now? If you're like talking to them, everyone's like,

oh, Tony, this seems crazy right now. I'm not getting in this. What is your argument to them? The pain point for crypto for me is in certain instances, in certain instances, say you're in Venezuela or somewhere else where you do not trust the fiat system, that is a possibility and a way for you to do transactions in other things. Do I think it's the best way to do transactions in a US dollar? No. There's all kinds of other- The dollar tends to work, yeah.

Yeah. But in other places where you do not have that kind of fundamental economic system financial system you may need to use a third-party system right something that's more distributed more open i see that i absolutely see that and i also believe that in crypto it is a digital form of gold at some point if we all agree if we all agree i look back at the days when people said the art market will only be fine art when people put brushes on a painting or whatever, or it was a material item. That was it. Then photography came and everybody said, that's not art. That's

just, and we can get a negative. Then digital photography came up. That's not art, right? But guess what? The art market added photography, then added digital art to it. And now we're just going to scarcity in digital assets. That's the NFT market. So I just see this as the same transition. If we all agree that that's something that's real, even though it doesn't look like the thing before, but we all agree,

just like we agree this paper currency is worth something, even though it's not, right? We just all believe it is. But when you looked at the iPod for the first time, you got it. I don't get it. I still don't get it with crypto. I'm like, what am I going to use this for? When I saw the iPod, I was like, oh, music that I don't have to carry around.

I remember when Steve Jobs said that. Remember he said, I'll carry it around in your pocket. You get that because you knew all the other things. I think what we're doing is we're building the fundamental layers to build on top of it, these other applications. Right. And, and to me, identity is one of those fundamental layers. The crypto thing is okay. If you want to do that, that's great. But the hardware wallet will get you access to it. Crypto will be used for certain things. I'm not saying it's used for everything. It's going to take time and it's going to take building trust to build those apps. So speaking of disruption, Elon Musk,

you and I had a conversation in Germany. I'm going to get to your predictions in a minute, but how are you looking at what's going on here? Is this a great disruption or a great disaster? You know, with Elon, you never know. I respect him. I respect him highly. I can't believe, you know, what he has manifested in this world is absolutely you have to say hats off to him is there a grandmaster planner on twitter i don't know i can't even predict to know um i i it's just too bad that unlike his what he was able to do at spacex or tesla the twitter thing is so out in the open. I'm sure there were all kinds of crazy start, stop, U-turns and everything in each of those companies, but they were not as public as this.

And I think it's because he's bought a team that wants to talk versus building a team that really believes in the mission and wants to make it better. They're saying, oh, I lost all this stuff. So they're just talking and maybe it's disinformation, maybe it's rumor, maybe it's just down. I don't know what to do because I've been in those positions before where you get bought and this culture does clashes with that culture. So I think there's a major culture clash going on between the new owners and the old- Well, they fired quite a few of them. We'd fired most of them. I mean, a lot of them. Yeah, but they're all still talking.

You know how it goes. And the media loves to pull any story out and say, sources said, right? May I just say, he's doing his own job of putting stuff out there. And, okay, yes, I will admit, he is doing his own job of his tweets and everything else. I don't know.

What would you do? I wish him luck. I wish him the best. What would you tell him? Have you talked to him? I would have never done it in the first place. Ah, that's a very good piece of advice. Don't do it What would you do? I wish him luck. I wish him the best. What would you tell him? Have you talked to him? I would have never done it in the first place. Ah, that's a very good piece of advice. Don't do it.

Don't do it. I would have just, it's just like, you know, this is not like buying a newspaper. Yeah. You know, it's a very different situation. And, you know, you really have to be in it 24-7, and it's very nuanced. And it's nuanced based on the culture not just against humanity but every culture has a different way and even inside of one country even outside of one state or whatever it's all nuanced so it is really walking into a you know into an incredible

dumpster fire so are you still bullish on tesla a lot of competitors you mentioned evs yeah i you know i think if you look- Many people think they're way far ahead still, no matter what, even though the stock has gone- Look, if you look at the batteries, if you look at the charging networks, if you look at everything, they're so much further ahead than everyone else, but they need to stay ahead. Yeah. In the manufacturing technologies as well. Yeah. The other guys are gunning. I know all the different people at Ford, wherever, and they're doing a really good job. And they're in a sense

that they're going to win, but he can't take his eye off the ball. Yeah. Because there is too much competition. And if they're really going to make, what I heard was, after EV credits, a sub $20,000 Model Y or whatever it is, Model 3, I'm like, holy bejesus. That is game-changing. Yeah. Right? He could do that because he has the full stack.

Nobody has the full stack. No, they don't. And so I want to see him do that because that is what we need to do to address climate change. Right. I hope he focuses on those things that really matter. Twitter might matter to him. Right. Doesn't matter to me.

I want him to focus on things that matter to me. All right. So what matters to you now? What do you think? You've mentioned if you were young Tony Fidel, what would you be working on right now? It's climate crisis, 100% climate crisis. So you are spending a lot of your time investing there.

That's all I spend my time on, frankly, at this point. And it is inevitable. Like, I've been doing this for 10 years, and it was like kind of crickets. I'd never go, Fidel, what are you doing? You know, this is the same thing we're saying, why are you doing hardware in 99? What are you doing, Fidel?

And then all of a sudden the hardware came. So now is the time for climate crisis. It's going to take atoms, not just bits to solve the climate crisis. And it has to be done worldwide over the next 20 years. The amount of money, government money and what have you, investor money that is going to pour into this, commercial industrial money,

because we have to solve these problems is going to pour into this, commercial industrial money, because we have to solve these problems, is going to be immense. It already is immense. And you were just seeing the beginning of the numbers. Once we get other things that scale, you're going to see those numbers just leap into hundreds of billions of dollars. This is the time to get in those things. And you can get into it anywhere in the world. This is an opportunity.

This is the reboot of the planet because we are previous generations fucked up version 1-0 you said atoms what do you think is most promising right now energy storage energy storage you got to do energy storage next generation batteries if we have a battery that's four or five times more energy dense than the day, everything around us changes, not just cars. Everything changes because you're not going to have all these wires and everything. We're going to put batteries in everything. I think batteries that don't use lithium, we're seeing a lot of sodium-based batteries, these kinds of things where they're using very common elements that if we can find anywhere, that's important.

One of the things against crypto is that it takes too much energy, stuff like that. A lot of the new stuff. I agree with that. And that has to change, obviously. Yes, absolutely. If you had to pick, there's lots of areas. There's carbon capture. There's energy efficiency.

There's battery. New materials. New materials. Agriculture. What is the most exciting thing you have seen in that area? Well, there's exciting for me because it's really like, I think it's really cool. And then there's exciting for, um, to solve the climate crisis. Right. And I think efficiency, efficiency, efficiency is, is the biggest thing that we can do. Cutting is making things more efficient that we have today, whether that's making things more efficiently or utilizing the

energy we have more efficiently. Those are the two areas and they're everywhere because those are the easy wins right now. And we don't have to create all these other things because we have natural replacement cycles for the things that are consuming the energy today. And we can just go to that, target the inefficiency with those new products. Inefficiency. I'd never heard Tony Fidel saying inefficiency is the excitement of technology. We have companies that are doing the next generation power converters and the next generation switches that don't convert energy into heat, right? And just throw off more heat.

You know, server racks. We're talking about server racks heating cities now because they create so much heat. It's all that stuff. Wherever you see heat, that's where you target because that means energy is getting wasted. So it might not sound sexy but my god it's important and it's going the next you know the next elons are going to be created out of those those out of those areas completely including food and stuff like that we had a whole bunch of them yeah materials we had materials as fast i find i think um construction is what i

trash to treasure that's the other thing i'm loving trash to treasure i'm working a lot on explain that explain that so we have we have these big landfills everywhere. We put gold and silver and all these elements in it. We put all kinds of things like plastics and these other things in it, either into the landfills or into the environment. Those things are already refined elements and molecules that if you can take those out again and reuse them, you can make new materials from those existing ones and make them way you can make new materials from those existing ones and make them way cheaper and they're much more profitable for everything else

as opposed to keep digging shit up and digging up our planet. But the Chinese are already on across the world, which is interesting. Last question. I see this year bringing a new era for tech. I do. I think there's a lot of clearing out of bad

in the space for new. New year, new valley, do you agree or not? I sure hope so. Yeah. What would be the sign for you? What would be a sign? I got the value in 91. When we start cutting out all the perks, when we start getting back to actually building stuff that really matters, disruptive in a good way, not disruptive in a bad way, when we start seeing these small teams and people going back in, and that's what I love being in Europe or other parts of the world funding startups around there, is because it feels like Silicon Valley of the early 90s, when we were just shoulder to shoulder. We didn't have to have

these glitzy, glammy offices with massage chairs and sleep pot. We were just trying to get something cool done. When you get back to that ethos, that basics, and you're doing it for the customer, that's what I want to see, as opposed to all these, oh, I worry about all my work-life balance. Not saying you shouldn't have it, but that becomes the primary motivating factor of why you go to work, as opposed to what the mission is on you're trying to achieve. All right, mission-driven asshole. I appreciate it. It's your words, not mine.

Anyway, Tony. It's all good to me. Thank you so much. Cara, thank you. Always fun to talk to you. So are you a mission-driven asshole or an ego-driven asshole, Cara? I'm just an asshole. I guess a mission-driven asshole, if I had to pick.

I think so, too. I think I'm not that much of an asshole. I guess a mission-driven asshole, if I had to pick. I think so, too. I'm not that much of an asshole. No, but to the extent we're assholes, I would be a mission-driven asshole. I have points of view, but I don't think I'm necessarily... I think people are always surprised they think I'm an asshole. It's like they think I'm tall when they meet me. When I meet people, they're like, oh, you're so short, softy. You're a puddle of heart and goo. You're short, softy, and they're surprised that I'm somewhat nice. Did you read that New York Times piece that there's never been a better time to be short? I did not.

I saw you sent it to me, and I ignored it completely. I did. And she cites Yuval Harari's Sapiens in the story he tells about the island of Flores where the tall people die off fast. Whatever. And she says that Mara Altman is the writer. the tall people die off fast. Whatever. And she says that, Mara Altman is the writer,

she says that dating short people, procreating with short people is maybe, is a potentially planet-saving move. Okay. Because they require fewer resources. Aren't we getting to Tony Fidel? Okay, sorry, back to Tony Fidel. Do you need to have kids not to be an asshole? He kind of implied that.

He implied that they were all getting nicer when they had children. Yes, he did. And I think that's correct. So you think me childless? Yes. Well, it goes without saying. All right. What else do you want to talk about? One thing I really appreciated in the interview was how he called out Google for how they've squandered their money away. And he's like, fuck their coddliness.

like that, the sort of the nursery that is Google. I always make, for years, I've made fun of it. You know, everything is there. And, you know, it's assisted living for millennials. And, you know, it's like that. It does create a sort of privileged culture that's really like, why don't we have this and why don't we have that? And it's often around food and comforts. And it does create a mentality. I think it absolutely does. There's a real pushback among a lot of people for that of the leaders. That said, they fostered those children, right? They created children and gave them endless candy. And then they're like, why are they diabetic and crazy? You know, I was briefly one of those children.

I interned at Google. Yeah, you get a lot of stuff. I had the hat with the wheels. That made me really feel like a toddler. Yeah. It's like what Eric Idle said when we were talking to him about filmmaking. I really believe this about creativity is scarcity is a boost to invention and innovation. And I think he was suggesting something similar. In part. I don't think you have to treat employees badly, but it definitely does create, there's issues when you're too cheap and horrible, and there's issues when you're too coddling. So there you have it. I thought it was a really interesting interview. Of the tech that he laid out, he laid out a few different categories of tech from AI to cars to crypto to climate tech. Which one are you most bullish on?

climate tech. Which one are you most bullish on? Climate tech. I think it's really the time. For years, there had been a lot of investment and people have lost a lot of money like Vinod Coastland, John Doerr. But I do think if something has changed, you know, what's happening in the Amazon is really disturbing. Sort of the lungs of the world are becoming a savannah. And there's all kinds of things happening. And there's lots of opportunity in that regard. And you can see all these extreme weather. There's extreme weather in San Francisco today and there's lots of opportunity in that regard. And you can see all this extreme weather. There's extreme weather in San Francisco today. I think it's something that a lot of smart people can apply a lot of interesting business solutions, including what he was talking, trash to treasure, everything from mitigation, efficiency, batteries. It's a huge landscape of possibility.

So it's not just one thing. So I thought that was interesting. Yeah, and I think one thing he made very clear is that there's going to be a lot of government money in this. And this is a global opportunity for people, for entrepreneurs. And that market size just goes crazy when you have this boost of government investment in the beginning and you have a worldwide market that you could capture. Yeah. The smart people aren't going to crypto, although he's did a crypto wall. And I agree with him. There's going to be identity in that.

And I do think he's right. I do think that's right. That's a good interview. He's a smart guy. All right. Well, let's see. By the way, my mother, who is completely not a futurist or like Tony Fidel in any way, shape or form, we were driving the other day and she says,

she says, you know, it won't be long before there are these flying cars because why can't they use all this vertical space to get out of traffic? Oh, she's a genius. She's innovative, as you would say. If only she had thought of it 40 years earlier, I could have been the child of a climate tech trillionaire. There was a famous quote, I thought we're going to get flying cars and all we got was dating services. So your mom is right. I thought we were going to get flying cars and all we got was dating services. So your mom is right. I thought we were going to get flying cars, although that would be dangerous for a lot of people. There has to be a lot more regulation to make that a possibility. You think? You think? I don't know. It doesn't sound like anything could happen with that. It's sort of like the traffic accident of Congress right now.

Speaking of flying, Cara, do you want to fly us through the credits? Yes, I shall. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Nishik, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Rafaela Seward. Special thanks to Andrea Lopez Cruzado and Haley Milliken. Rick Kwan engineered this episode. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get one 18th of a Bitcoin in a hard, cold wallet. If not, your crypto got lost in Sam Bankman Freed's Slack messages. So sorry, but go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow and you will get a particular treasure. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us.

We'll be back on Monday with more.