On with Kara Swisher - The Billionaire Who Took America Online

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Kara and Steve Case go back — way back, to the 1990s. She was a young Washington Post reporter covering a new thing called “the Internet” … and he was a co-founder of the company that became AOL. In this conversation, they take a walk back through time to look at how far the world has come and where tech companies have stumbled or fallen flat. They discuss Case’s new book, “Rise of the Rest,” which offers an optimistic future for the expansion of entrepreneurship and innovation beyond a handful of places like Silicon Valley, Boston and New York City. They also discuss whether a more equitable distribution of economic growth is possible, given some of the nation’s political divides — and potential solutions for bridging those divides.  Before the interview, Kara and Nayeema talk about the newsmakers of the day, including Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes, who is seeking a new trial, and the deep pockets of “anti-woke” investors in Silicon Valley including, of course, Peter Thiel. As always, Kara offers unsolicited advice.  Do you want some (solicited) advice from Kara? Call 1-888-KARA-PLZ and leave a message. 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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Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Ultra with Rachel Maddow with 100% better hair. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. I think it's more like 60% better hair, Kara. I'll give you the glasses. All right.

I'm in San Francisco, and I was watching the insurrection news, I guess, about the hearing yesterday. The final hearing. Final hearing. And it was all, like, Stephanie Ruhle and Jen Psaki and Joy Reid. Anyway, it was great. It was a really great panel. And I was noticing her hair was excellent. Rachel Maddow's hair was fantastic. She did a great job, by the way. Way to step that 100% back, Kara. You were at the Lesbians Who Tech Conference.

Yes, yes, indeed. And you were watching an all-female panel. Yes, yeah, I was. It was interesting. I interviewed a bunch of people, including Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs, who has some really interesting legislation around data and women's bodies. I interviewed Chastin Buttigieg, and I interviewed Brian Chesky. But it was great. It was really interesting, and it was a lot of women at this thing, too. I went to the premiere of She Said recently with Jodi Kantor and Megan Tuohy's new book about breaking the Harvey Weinstein story for The Times.

Great book. Great film, too. But it's creepy to watch your old office because it was filmed, like, it's all in The New York Times. And so it made me think about work the whole time that I was sitting in the film. Oh, really? Yeah, because, I mean, they're literally in the CMS

that we used to use to publish articles. Oh, wow. It's like they're copy editing. I mean, the film is much more exciting than copy editing, but there are scenes of copy editing happening. So you liked it. You liked it. I really liked the film. I thought they did a good job balancing the story of the journalism with the story of the people who suffered under Harvey Weinstein. And so they did a nice balance with that. I was thinking, you know, films like this and Spotlight, they really show the value of journalism at its best. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the classic film was All the President's Men. That's one of my favorite films to this day. I think it's really good to see exactly how it

works because people have sort of twisted ideas of how journalists work. Yeah. And Jodi and Megan are old colleagues. They're great journalists. And I think people will want to read the book afterwards, she said. Anyway, that's my plug for the book. Great. Today, we have an interview with billionaire AOL co-founder Steve Case. Well, I've known him since before he was a billionaire. He wasn't even a millionaire. He didn't have any money. He was an interesting guy because he's the first person I ever covered in this tech area

because it was a company in Washington, D.C. when I worked for The Washington Post. But before we get to the interview, let's chat about some newsmakers. Yep. This week, we want to chat about Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder who's trying to get a retrial and about Peter Thiel, or as I like to call them, the really anti-woke brigade. They're super anti-woke. They're really asleep. And they've got deep pockets. Yeah. But let's start with Holmes, who's been a key test of accountability in Silicon Valley. This is like one of the most watched trials and the story keeps going and going. This Monday, when this episode airs or when people are

hearing this, is meant to be her sentencing date. She was found guilty earlier this year for criminal fraud charges and could face 20 years in prison. But instead, on Monday, she's going to court to ask the judge for a retrial. Yeah, it's an evidentiary hearing. Everyone expected this to happen when she was convicted. Basically, a key witness in the case, former lab director Adam Rosendorf, showed up at her home and spoke with her partner. They're alleging that Rosendorf said he regretted his testimony. She'll argue her guilt was hinged on this bad testimony. He was a key witness, of course. So it'll be interesting. She was going to do this. She feels like she was wrongly convicted. We'll see. And I don't know if she'll get a retrial, but I suspect they're going to be very careful and listen to this. And he has since said he didn't say that. give her to get closure and to express kind of the wrestling and grappling with his role in potentially sending the mother of a young child to jail or having a child grow up without a mother

who's in prison. So do you think it'll work? I don't know. I mean, she's allowed to do this, right? I know Elizabeth not very well. She was around. I didn't cover Theranos because it was a medical device. A lot of techies did, and she was on the covers of all these things. And a lot of people were like, oh, you like covering women. You want more women. You always talk about that. Why don't you cover her? And I had questions about the device, and I'm not, again, I wasn't an expert in it. But I was sort of, I found it unusual that all the tech people jumped in, and it was largely because there were some tech investors like Larry Ellison and some others. I remember when I went to business school at

Stanford, we had a professor. Our first required class is something called critical analytical thinking. And our teacher in it was this engineering school professor, Channing Robertson, who was her mentor. Yes, he was. And ended up being on the board. And a friend of mine and I were just speaking about this the other day and remembering how Channing, the way he introduced the class, he was talking about Elizabeth Holmes. I mean, this is fall of 2012. So he was speaking about, I can't remember exactly what he said, I'm paraphrasing, but the basic impression we left with is that Elizabeth Holmes was so successful that she was able to drop out of school and we were all like, you know, coming to business school as like failures, trying to do what this dropout had done.

How dare you not start a fraudulent blood company? Allegedly. He did not know that. Yeah. It's an interesting story. Let me ask you, when you were in that course, it's critical thinking and what? It was critical analytical thinking okay whatever you need of course you might not have done enough of it yeah i was i was thinking decided

to mentor but i mean that was what was behind a lot of it it wasn't on her part it was on the part of all the investors i mean you're you have expertise in theory but they nobody had any critical thinking and you it quote to this day the people invested in the twitter thing with elon they just literally did it in a text and so so it's really missing. And I don't know, you all go to Stanford. I mean, did you like Stanford Business School? Do you think that course was helpful, for example? I love Stanford Business School. People always ask me if you should go to business school. I'm like, it really depends on your circumstances. I liked it because it's super small, right? It's 400 people. And there's like a star athlete, a former Politico, a great artist, and then like a bunch of finance dudes also that bring up the class average of income.

But you really get to have a view into a lot of careers, a lot of possibilities, and build a really interesting dynamic network. And the best classes are classes on not critical analytical thinking for me, but where it's like classes like touchy-feely where they teach you kind of what are your vulnerabilities? How do people perceive you? And actually, such a class might have been good for Elizabeth Holmes to take. She was super young when all this happened. And there were a lot of, you know, older people around her who were, who were excited about the growth and benefiting from it. Yeah, well, the thing is, I think, you know, having just watched the dropout, which you sort of it paints a picture of Elizabeth Holmes in a certain way. And you should watch it. But one of the things that's important to think about is even if she had done all these things that they've accused her of, even if she'd done 10% of the things, it's a problem.

But she was the only one that went to trial of a lot of hijinks that went on in Silicon Valley. And you can't help but wonder the sexism part of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, it's interesting. I think it'll be interesting if she gets a retrial. Well, she will not be allowed a second chance compared to an Adam Newman and others. And there was no fraud in the case of Adam Newman that was alleged or anything. But, you know, we've seen that story. It was another sort of investment disaster. Yeah, well, we'll know later on Monday, probably the outcome of that. But Sunny Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and her ex-business partner, tried the same thing

of a retrial days ago with the same reasoning. And the judge was like, no, thank you. No, it's just her. Well, he's got 12 counts instead of her four. So that's a chip against the sexism argument, by the way, that he got 12, she got four. But, you know, maybe different dynamics. I would love to have her on the show. Yes. It would be really interesting to talk to her. What would be your key question? Did you do it? Did you do it or are you remorseful? She hasn't really said if she did it. No. That's interesting. I would want to know

also about the decision to have a child. A friend of mine actually brought this up. She said, you know, she's a mother, and she said it's remarkable that she decided to have a child when she faced the possibility of a prison sentence. Maybe she thought that was her chance. I don't know. I don't know. You know, I don't question people's parenthood things. I don't think it was a stunt.

People thought it was a stunt. I think it's interesting. I'm not saying people, yeah, people speculate about that. I think it's, but also, by the way, there are people who are going to pass away

who decide to have a child together. You know, so I think there's a lot of circumstances in which people, but anyways, a friend of mine raised that question. I thought it was a good question. Possibly sexist question.

Again, you wouldn't say that about a man. Anyway. No, I might say that about a man, by the way. Okay. All right. Okay. But it I might say that about a man, by the way. Okay. All right. Okay.

But it was almost like Martha Stewart going to jail for insider trading when it was rife. Why her? Yeah, by the way. Why her? Because she's a juicy target for prosecutors. Or Kim Kardashian with the SEC thing, right? You have Dogecoin. You have all kinds of crypto things.

And she did put that it was an ad and the SEC files a million dollar claim against her. Anyway, okay, let's move on to another Silicon Valley story. We've recently talked about the Peter Thiel backdating app, The Right Stuff, which I'm still not on, still haven't accepted me, Cara. Still struggling. Can't help you there. Recently, there's another Peter Thiel back company in the news, Glorify. It's a bank that was founded on this idea that Wall Street was too woke. Do you think Wall Street's too woke, Kara? No. And that conservatives need their own bank.

The Wall Street Journal reported it's been an extremely rocky launch with missed deadlines, layoffs, leadership issues. You know this. Yeah, this story was fantastic. Another great Wall Street Journal story, just like the Theranos ones. The Wall Street Journal reported that one of their co-founders Toby Nogabauer allegedly had drinking problems and was volatile with staff working in his home that's where he had his office yeah they had this product idea they wanted to make credit cards out of shell casings and I mean it didn't work because the chip

reacted badly the whole thing was just such a yeah they wanted to offer a gun discount I think I mean it was just as bad as if you're going to do it on the left. It was just so laughable. And, you know, this idea that you needed, that finance is woke. I mean, okay, whatever. Like, I mean, I think they were pushing up against ESG. They're sort of the anti... Matt Levine wrote a great column.

Oh, yeah. Matt Levine had a great piece about this. He said the Wall Street Journal thing read like a parody. This is my favorite quote from it. He said about this anti-woke bubble, he said, you can walk into Peter Thiel's office wearing a clown suit and say high-frequency trading, but anti-woke, or payday lending, but anti-woke, variable annuities, but anti-woke, or capped and uncapped, variant swaps, but anti-woke, or whatever, and he will write you a big check. This is Matt Levine from Bloomberg who writes Money Stuff. Yeah. Fantastic reporter.

big check. This is Matt Levine from Bloomberg who writes Money Stuff. Fantastic reporter. So do you think this is new, this phenomenon, this anti-woke thing? No, it's just, you know, there's a huckster in every trend. And there's all these people willing to suck up to this trend of, oh, I've been somehow victimized. And, you know, he wanted to use it via a SPAC. And that's always a red flag and needed to raise money. The appeal of the bank, he said in the journal, was it's about my friends that played football at Friday Night Lights and they don't feel loved. They don't feel respected. Oh, give me a break. Like, you know, it was a push against ESG, which is investing for goodness. Goodness. Environmental and social governance. Here's the question, though, like you're saying it's not new, but it's these people, the people behind this. So you have Mike Pence's chief of staff or former chief of staff as a co-founder. Candace Owens has evolved outside of Peter Thiel. You have Ken Griffin, Joe Lonsdale, who were trading techs with Elon. Yeah. Former Senator Kelly Loeffler, Vivek Ramaswamy. I mean, do you think there are a lot of people involved in this?

And do you think that they have any point? No. Do you think it's a lot of people involved in this? And do you think that they have any point? No. Do you think it's a sustainable business model? No, it's just that this is based on rage and anger. And it just has to be a good business. Like, really, seriously, is there a problem with MasterCard? Like, oh, they're not on the gun stuff. I guess they get mad about that.

Look, they can create their own companies and do their own things. And in some cases, I think it makes sense. I mean, oddly enough, Dan Bongino talked about this in a New Yorker piece and amid all his sort of rantings about owning the libs, he talked about this idea of owning your own platforms. And I do agree with that because like, look, Parler got thrown off in part due to you and I got thrown off. Our interview for the New York Times. Yes. On January 6th. Yes. Parler in part got thrown off its platforms because it was big platforms that they had no control over. And there were a few of them. And so one of the things Bongino was arguing is that they had to take control of certain critical platforms. And I completely agree with that, not wanting to host web host parlor anymore. So you're saying like, it might make sense to have payment processing systems, it might make sense to have different web hosting systems for conservative movements do you think he made all that money? And let me tell you, at the bottom line, all these people want to sell things. And they want and if they if they take advantage of your rage, or your anger, you're feeling that you're not loved, they're going to do it. And it's it's every bit of it is so cynical and taking

advantage of people and whatever, you know, there's one more in every minute. Two last questions, predictions. Do you think that Trump is going to comply with the subpoena for the January 6th panel? No. He's going to make a fundraising effort out of it. That's what he does with everything. He's very persecuted, in case you're interested. He only has 19 lawsuits against him. Well, the Times was saying that he's telling his advisers that he wants to do it only if they'll allow it live.

Times was saying that he's telling his advisors that he wants to do it only if they'll allow it live. And the panel apparently, according to the New York Times reporting, is more willing to consider a live hearing if he were to testify. I wonder why he wants to do it live. Because he wants to make it a circus about it. He wants to make it into a PR opportunity. The problem is he also can't be fact-checked. I mean, he would still be on the record, but there would be no time for people to analyze it. I would love to see him go up against Liz Cheney. I think she would rip him into little tiny pieces.

He also tends to, one of the reasons his lawyers did not want to have him talk to Mueller people or anybody else is he lies in real time. And so in any kind of setting where there's a possibility of perjury, I think he should not do. Last thing, Elon Musk says there's CNN reporting that's come out saying that Starlink had sent a letter to the U.S. government saying it could no longer continue to afford to provide the level of satellite services in Ukraine. There's been reports of outages in the Ukraine. It is very expensive, and the government has been footing part of the bill through USAID. Over the weekend, Elon then tweeted, the hell with it. Even though Starlink is still losing money and other companies are getting billions of taxpayer dollars, we'll just keep funding Ukraine government for free. Unclear if he's being

sarcastic or sincere here, and if he'll actually stick to that. If Elon Musk takes down Starlink, are you going to get mad at him about his Ukraine views, Cara? Are you going to stick by him? You know, I'm sorry to tell you, but it's a business. And he should afford it because they need it. He's very rich. I would not do what he's doing. But again, it's a business. He doesn't have to provide it. The government was paying him some money for part of it. I'm sure our government will go in and figure something out. There are other ways to get service to Ukraine. It's a shame that he's doing this but it's a business sorry yeah it's a business i'd love to talk to him about it it's a business i i i wouldn't do it i think it's uh i think it's wrong and i would tell him so um but again it's his it's his money i know i should be all up in arms

how dare he and is he a russian asset and this No, ask him that. I'd be happy to ask him that. But again, it's a business. All right. Well, maybe you get to ask him. You're not going to get... In this thing proved, he is the Manchurian candidate. What's the last thing you changed your mind about? Maybe he is the Manchurian candidate. I don't know. Let's prove it. And speaking of which, let me just say, Angela Lansbury, what an amazing woman, died this week. I just find everything about her fantastic. And she was great in that movie.

Fantastic. All right. When we're back, we have an interview with Steve Case. 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. These days, online scams look more

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We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Cara, our guest today is Steve Case, the former CEO and chairman of AOL. He had that post like back in the 80s or 90s, right?

Yes. I wrote two books on Steve Case, so I know a lot about him. You wrote the definitive book. But he came in as a lower level person. And when they had a crash with the founder, with the actual founder, they changed the company, they changed all kinds of things. And Steve found himself in a position of running the company. And he did a great job for that part of it. Yeah. You and I actually bumped into him around the White House Correspondents Dinner. Yeah. This year. Yeah. He seemed quite fond of you. Well, he wasn't always fond of me, but, you know, he's the first internet mogul I covered,

really. And he was the first person who really did open my eyes to how big this was going to be. And he said to me, the first time I met him, it was in a kind of a crappy headquarters in Vienna, Virginia. When was that? Oh, God, the early 1990s. And that must have been because back then all the internet was being staged around DARPA. Yeah. In Washington, DC. Well, yeah, it was near a thing called May East. It was one of the hubs of the internet. And so there were a lot of internet type companies here, not like AOL. It was the first really commercial one that became popular.

It was just it was such a loser headquarters that they had. And he called me out there in his, it was called online services at the time. And he said, someday I'm going to buy Time Warner. Oh, wow. And he said that. And I was like, you crazy, sir. And so he was one of the very few entrepreneurial types in Washington. I worked for the Washington Post. And so I was the person who spent all the time with him.

I was sort of his, we were sort of grew up together in lots of ways. Yeah. You said for a while, he wasn't always fond of you. Yeah. So when was he least fond of you, Kara? When I was writing the book on them, I think, and also I gave him a hard time around their accounting. There was some really sketchy stuff they did with accounting in the early days, not unsimilar to internet companies. They did some round tripping, they did all kinds of things. And so we argued about some of the stuff they did. When they had the big outage, I happened to be with them at AOL where everything turned off. And I remember him or Gene Case, who happened to be the PR person before that, her name was Gene Villanova then, was like, no one's going to care. And I was like, are you kidding? You have created the internet for people. And now it's off. You can't be off kind of thing. And so it was, you know, we had a lot of back and forth and also some really interesting times. I find him to be very prescient about things. He went on later to do investments and all kinds of stuff, some political stuff, but always

interested in the betterment of the internet. I think, you know, even though there was some sketchy accounting things and things like that, Steve Case really did believe in the worldwide communication system that could better people. I remember when we were taping an episode on January 6th with the Parler CEO, and you mentioned kind of back in the day when AOL was this place that employees in tech would say, this is a place where people who do quilting can get together and talk about quilting. Well, because we did that. One of the first times I spent time with Steve, there was a bunch of quilters who had met online on AOL in one of their groups, one of their rooms. And you don't remember how it worked, but they had rooms and virtual rooms. And I went out there and they had created a quilt online. And it was really quite remarkable. And they had never met each other,

but they still had these relationships. And they loved Steve Case because he was a personality within the AOL universe. He wrote letters and people felt like they knew him. And it was a real beginning of seeing how virtual could become analog in a very different way. And it was lovely. And they brought him cookies and they made a quilt that said AOL on it. And it was a lovely image of the internet. This sounds like a very kumbaya picnic compared to the internet of today, Kara Swisher. It was. They were trying it. But it also could be that. People who were like-minded people could find each other. Unfortunately, some of the like-minded people want to overthrow the government. So that's one of the issues. Steve was, back in the day, an absolute titan of tech.

He's now doing this venture capital fund. He hasn't been a big newsmaker lately, but he used to be a tech titan. He's written this new book, Rise of the Rest, which is, I think, again, quite optimistic or outlines an optimistic vision of the world. Sure does. What are you excited to talk to him about now? What's the biggest question you have for him? I'd like to talk to him because he's been at this. He's not someone who is like a look at me kind of person. He really has been at the idea that talent is everywhere. It's been one of his premises for a decade. For a long time, we've been talking about this. And his idea is that there's talent everywhere. It's kind of interesting

the pandemic intervened and a lot of people moved to different places. But can you create tech centers that aren't in one place? Like they've tried and tried and tried in lots of places. It hasn't worked very well, whether it's Silicon Alley, whether it's Silicon Beach, whether it's they keep doing that. Yeah, well, economic clusters can be helpful for growing. Right. Yeah. But but can you find talent everywhere and can you access it and can it be for the good? And so he's been traveling the country trying to do this and push smaller cities. And I think it's kind of a cool vision. I do. I I've ended up really liking Steve Case, although it's certainly a low bar with some of the internet people. You know my big question for him, Carrie? What? I'm so surprised because

he started a VC fund that has revolution. Both Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff, was previously an employee there, as well as J.D. Vance, who's up for U.S. Senate in the state of Ohio. I would say their politics are very different, and I want to know what unites them. Is it money? Well, J.D. Vance was not. I knew him back. I knew J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance was not my friend, but this is not the J.D. Vance I met back then. He's shifted rather dramatically. He was quite smart, and he was interesting. He was conservative, sure, but, you know, I think he's morphed, you know, politically in order to win office, and it's kind of grotesque. Well, not the first time. Anyways, you're not interviewing J.D. Vance, but I do want to know what Steve Case's interactions with him have been like.

Probably isn't talking to him. That would be my guess. But let's find out. Let's find out. All right. Have fun with Steve Case, Kara. Hello, Steve. We meet again. We meet again. After 25 years of meeting, we meet again when I'm launching a new book and you're launching a new podcast. Someone asked me if you liked me when I was covering you, given I was the only reporter covering you at the time, really, except for a bunch of nerdy white guys. But did you like me at the time? I did like you. And I was grateful that you were paying attention and getting the Washington Post. This course 25 years ago, when you started covering AOL,

most people didn't yet think the internet was real, including many of the folks at the Washington Post Company. That is correct. So thank you for fighting the battle, not just on AOL's behalf, but on behalf of the entire medium.

Do you remember when we first met? I do. I remember you came to the AOL offices not long after you started working at the Washington Post Company. And we're kind of curious what we were doing. And, you know, as usual, a little bit skeptical. Very skeptical. But we managed to convince you that maybe there was something happening out there in

Northern Virginia. So one of the things you did say to me was, I'm going to be the biggest, most important company ever, and we're going to buy Time Warner. Do you remember that? I do not. I do not say that. I like to think I'm not quite that cocky. I was confident, but not cocky. You did.

You said it was going to be as big as Time Warner. You used Time Warner specifically. I did say that. I think I did say that. I was trying to get you and The Washington Post to take us seriously, and I was aspirational in my goals and leaning into, I obviously did believe in the idea of the internet. Seems crazy now, but back then it was still pretty early days. And I did believe AOL was well positioned. You, of course, were a wunderkind at the time. You bought Time Warner for $182 billion.

You think they're doing better today? I'd love you to just give a thought on AOL Time Warner at its peak. Yahoo is valued over $125 billion, AOL $200 billion. Last year, they sold for about 1% of that, a private equity group just bought both for $5 billion. That's 1% of peak valuation. How do you think about that? It's just the way things go with these companies? Mostly disappointment in terms of the execution. And in retrospect, when we announced that merger over 20 years ago, we probably were ahead of our time. But some of the ideas we talked about in terms of AOL transitioning to broadband and Time Warner embracing digital made a lot of sense. And so I really believed in the idea, believed it could be a terrific company. a terrific company. This, of course, is before the days when Apple was stronger again and launching their iPod music store long before Spotify launched. And Netflix was still just a little company sending discs out. And so if we had done it right, we could have built, I think, a pretty significant company. But the lesson to me is vision is one thing, execution is another. And we didn't get the execution right.

And so overall, it was a, you know, kind of a big disappointment. I think I've learned some things from that and can apply it to the work we now do, investing in companies at Revolution and ties it in even what we're doing with Rise of the Rest. Back in the 90s, your goal was to grow an internet that could connect millions of people. You talked about that all the time. You repeat it over and over again to me. It's obviously done that with some unintended consequences. What do you think the goal for tech companies, especially the bigger ones, should be right now?

If you had to say, obviously, there's all kinds of negative stuff around them. You've been very idealistic about the internet. Talk about what the goal should be. And are you still that idealistic and why? Well, I was idealistic in those early days. Again, this goes back almost four decades because I really did believe when I was growing up, there was only three TV networks. So there weren't a lot of voices out there. I think more voices would be a good thing and more ways to get information, education would be a good thing and more ways to communicate would be a good thing. I think that's proven to be the case.

But there's some aspects to it that have been disappointing. As you know, from day one, we were focused on community, bringing people together, what we now think of as more social media. And that was pretty powerful, both in terms of connecting people who already knew each other in more convenient ways and also connecting people who didn't yet know each other but had some some, you know, some shared interest. And I, you know, that tied with the idea of giving everybody a voice and being able to kind of level the playing field in terms of access to ideas. I thought it was super powerful. What we've seen more recently, as you well know, is this phenomenon of people living in filter bubbles. And instead of hearing the other side, they're kind of reinforcing their current views. The only people they follow, for example, on Twitter are people that agree with them. That's a surprise and that's a

disappointment. So to me, it's a mixed bag. It's sort of most of the things that we were hoping would happen with the internet have happened, but there's some aspects that have been disappointment for sure. I don't recall insurrectionists on AOL back then. There were issues around porn, if you remember. That was a big thing with Congress. They were focused on that. But what do you think has happened is just the way the medium is that it eventually degenerates to this? I think it's a mix. Again, you follow this as well as anybody, but I think some of it is a humanity thing, people choosing to do certain things.

And it's not just the internet. Obviously, it's television, cable television. Some people watch certain networks like Fox or other networks like MSNBC. Not that many people watch both. So there's a human nature aspect for sure. But as you all know, there's an algorithm aspect to it where with AOL, we would allow people to post messages on message boards or post messages on people connection or chat rooms, things like that. post messages on people connection or chat rooms, things like that. But we didn't kind of algorithmically decide to raise up some messages, some views versus others.

And that's been a phenomenon, particularly in the last decade, that was not something that we weren't doing at the time, mostly because the technology didn't enable it at that time. And so I think the broader context is as these companies scale and become significant, powerful companies, I think they do have more of a responsibility in terms of thinking about the broader needs. Six years ago, as we talked about at the time, I wrote the book The Third Wave and did say that I expected there to be a backlash against big tech, a backlash against Silicon Valley. So I'm not surprised that we've seen it more recently. Yeah, we're going to get your book in a second. But I'd like you to give some advice now to the big tech companies, if you don't mind a quick lightning round. Facebook or Meta, Mark Zuckerberg? What kind of advice do you want me to give them? I don't know. What would you do if you were him? Obviously, he's got a regulatory problem.

How do you assess each of the companies? How about that? Obviously, he's got a regulatory problem. How do you assess each of the companies? How about that? To be honest, I don't spend a lot of time focused on it because I'm focusing on backing the new companies that might challenge some of the incumbents. This is not uncommon. You spend a lot of time in Washington, D.C. as well. Companies tend to ignore government, ignore regulators, and even sometimes be disrespectful of their views

until they have a problem. And then they're trying to play catch up. I think they're growing concerns, in their case, growing bipartisan concerns about different kinds of things. You're going to answer this, just so you know. Facebook slash MAP. You're not going to let me answer any questions about my book until I answer your questions about big, big tech, big tech. No, no, I'll get I'll get your book. This is a this is a formula. Because you are a media czar. And now with your new podcast, I'm not challenging your format.

All right. What was the question again? Asset and weakness. Facebook. Asset. Amazing global reach. You know, weakness, little tone deaf on policy. And a lot of younger people are using other platforms, TikTok and others. Okay. Amazon? Just rank the Amazon,

amazing execution machine, not just what they initially did with amazon.com, but how they entered AWS and other businesses. Brilliant on execution, brilliant on consumer appeal, keeping things simple, getting deliveries there on time. I think the disadvantage is, like any company, the complexity that they now have across a lot of different businesses makes it hard to manage, makes it hard to be agile. And also when they have, I don't know what the current number is, but over a million employees, you have to deal with some labor issues and other kinds of things that aren't the kind of things you have to deal with when you're a startup. All right. Excellent. See, this is easy. Apple. And again, a great company, you know, as you know, and you wrote about it in your first book on... Critical to you. Yeah, well, critical to us. We established a partnership with Apple, licensed their brand

name to create Apple Inc. And that brand, which we thought was valuable 35 years ago, obviously is even more valuable today. And I think that has really kept them in the game. Obviously the leadership of Steve Jobs, but also over the last decade of Tim Cook is very impressive. And the style, the design, the simplicity, the integration across all the different products and services is really brilliant.

I think they've also been strong on privacy where others have been kind of weaker. Their challenge, I think, again, I'm not saying anything they don't know or anybody listening knows, is particularly on businesses like the phone, you know, global competition from China. Others are increasingly intensifying, you know, the price competition and other platforms, particularly Android, have also created some challenges. They probably, in retrospect, were overly reliant on China for their supply chain, which has become more of a challenge, obviously, in the last year or two.

All right, two more. Google, Alphabet, whatever they call themselves. Again, brilliant execution. Again, as you know, we're partners. They've proven to be an execution machine at scale and I think also has tried to be a little bit more connected with on the policy side than some others. I think the challenge, again, is the complexity. A lot of different businesses under one roof. It's just hard to manage that level of complexity. Complexity is another word for antitrust. Yeah, because of the leadership they have in search, arguably the dominance they have in search, that's now getting attention. I'm

not surprised by that. People are reluctant to fund a startup competing with Google because they have such market power. Yeah. All right. Last one, TikTok. TikTok has kind of been the new kid on the block. Significant momentum, global momentum, amazing how quickly that has scaled. Their weakness, their challenge quite clearly is the connection they have with China, which they are trying to separate themselves from and have a cleaner, almost firewall between what they're doing because of the concerns more generally about global competition with China, but also more specifically around issues around privacy and other kinds of things. So speaking of China, in the preface to your new book, Rise of the Rest, you write, if we lose our way, it won't be because of a rising power like China undermines us, although that, of course, is a risk, more likely because we undermine ourselves. How do you worry we might undermine ourselves?

Several things. First of all, not just China, but certainly that gets most of the attention. There's been a globalization of innovation, entrepreneurship, 25 years, over 90% of venture capital in the world was invested in the US. Now it's well under 50%. So more countries are kind of trying to drive innovation. China, obviously doing it in a particularly aggressive way around sort of key new technologies, AI being a classic one, but there are others as well. So that's the broader context, the broader backdrop. But I also worry that the last wave of innovation in America has been limited to a few people in a few places. And that's been great for places like Silicon Valley, but it hasn't been great for other parts of the country. So spread it around. It's been clustered. It's over-concentrated, I'd say. The data for those who haven't filed this, three numbers I'll give you. One is in terms of place, which is sort of the core of what we're doing with Rise and Rest. In the last decade, 75% of venture capital has gone to just three states,

California, New York, and Massachusetts. So 47 states, collectively, those 47 states get 25%. Three states get 75%. If you look at people, 50% of this country is women. Female founders get less than 10% of venture capital. Black Americans are 13% of the population. They get less than 1% of venture capital. So it does matter where you live. It doesn't matter what you look like. If you have an idea, whether you really have a shot of creating a company, a shot of the American dream. And that's what we're trying to deal with, with the rise, rest, create more opportunity for more people in more places and leverage the uniqueness of the cities all around the

country to help lead the reimagination of some of our biggest industries. So you certainly are talking about entrepreneurship, which has sort of been defined by Silicon Valley in lots of ways. And they've tried others. You know, we used to laugh about Silicon Beach, Silicon Hollow. That's what you had been talking about when we first started, this idea that if we had more people working across the country, we would have a better situation, presumably, correct?

Yeah, all correct. But let me take a step back. It's also worth remembering 100 years ago, Silicon Valley was just fruit orchards. The most innovative city then was Detroit because of the cars. So these things kind of rise and fall. And I think, as you know, because of covering AOL and other companies in the early days of the internet, it was more regionally distributed. We were in the DC area, IBM's PC operations were in Boca Raton, Florida. Dell was in Austin. Hayes, the modem company, was in Atlanta. It's just the last 20 years that it's been more centralized in Silicon Valley. I just believe it's going to start spreading out again. And it does tie into the last part of

your question with some of these broader dynamics. The pandemic has been an accelerator of some of these trends. There's been a dispersion of talent, the beginning of dispersion of capital. So probably the pandemic has created this tipping point for the rise of the rest. And it does tie into the politics, exactly what you mentioned. Also to create a more inclusive economy for America and try to knit together, at least in a small way, a very divided country. Let me read the long title of your new book. It's called Rise of the Rest, How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream. What's wrong with the old one? Well, the old one isn't working for a lot of people. The data from Pew, there was a study a few years ago, it's pretty sobering,

that 70% of Americans wake up and are anxious about the future. They're not saying, wow, isn't this great, all this disruption we're doing. They feel like they're being kind of left behind and left out. And so the American dream is alive and well for some, but not for most. And because the capital is so concentrated in places like Silicon Valley, people growing up in other parts of the country are going to some of these great universities in other parts of the country leave to go to the coast. There's this massive brain drain. They have to go where the opportunity is.

How do we slow that brain drain of people leaving and create a boomerang of people returning? I think that is part of what we have to do over the next decade. I think the best way to do that is to back more entrepreneurs in more places. And I should note that this is not sort of a policy driven or philanthropy do-gooder driven. Our thesis is that we can generate top tier investment returns by backing entrepreneurs all over the country. And so far, that's been the case. So you're appealing to greed in that case? We are appealing to greed. And the reason we're appealing to greed is we said the best way to, kind of like Robinhood, the best way to get more capital to more entrepreneurs in more places is to convince the coastal money, which is where most of the money is, that there are great investment opportunities in these other places. So having companies go public, having multi-billion dollar exits is the best way to accelerate the flow of capital to these rise of rest cities. So our fund

has to do well in order for us to prove the case. We're kind of putting our money where our mouth is. Thank you. hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps 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. I'd love you to be specific about what's really getting people down in this American dream, because it's a really interesting problem is that you get people who are disassociated from success and then angry about success and at the same time admiring of success. Sort of that is the old American dream.

Anybody can make it anywhere and become a millionaire or billionaire in this case. So what do you think specifically is really getting people down? Is being left out or that they can't afford college or the what? They're not part of it. They're just not part of it. The innovation economy, the startup sector, the tech sector is really something that most people in most parts of the country just haven't been part of. All right. But you're talking about people get rich and then move there and come back. How can we get people from wherever, any of these cities to be entrepreneurs or is it generational rather than importing talent or bring talent back? How do you create that? I think one way to do it is to hit the road as we've done and encourage more entrepreneurs

and write a book that hopefully inspires more entrepreneurs. That's why I'm doing this. We also need to do a better job, obviously, with our educational system, whether it be K-12 or some of the universities. They often are good at coming up with good ideas, but not so good at then keeping those ideas in their community and surrounding their university with entrepreneurs. We also got to get the big companies in these cities to work more with the startups because

they're starting to learn that their own success requires winning a battle for talent and they need to basically be attractive for talent. And some of that is having a vibrant community with young people wanting to be there. A good example is Sam Walton and Walmart starting in Bentonville, Arkansas, and now it's the largest company in the world. And they, over the last decade, have worked really hard to make Bentonville an interesting place to live. It's now positioned as the mountain bike capital of the world. They've opened new restaurants, opened new hotels, really trying to make it into a terrific community that people want to live and work and not just people at Walmart, but other people who are starting companies there. So they are another example of building a strong startup ecosystem.

You've been going on bus tours. You do kind of a shark tank like thing and give out money, $100,000 to winners. What is the pitch that you make? You have money, it's sort of like a little bit of a circus thing, bus tours, money, competitions? No, it's more complicated. The big message is there are entrepreneurs everywhere with great ideas everywhere, but not enough startups are being launched everywhere and not enough jobs are being created everywhere. So it really is about leveling the playing field. The way we started, and this goes back to eight years ago, we did our first bus tour, cities like Detroit and Pittsburgh and others. We used the bus as sort of a convening platform. It wasn't just driving between cities or even driving around

cities. It was connecting people in those cities. As part of it, we also did pitch competitions. And the winner, I wouldn't personally invest $100,000 in. It wasn't a grant. It was an investment in that company. And that helped those companies get more visibility, helped those companies attract more capital. So then about five years ago, we said, why don't we scale this up? And that's when we launched the Rise of the Rest Fund. And we made 200 investments. About 20% of them are actually through the bus tours.

and we've made 200 investments. About 20% of them are actually through the bus tours. The 80% of them are through a network we built over the last decade with now over 300 regional venture firms that we co-invest with. That's how we identify promising company we're working with and partnering with and co-investing with.

Small business startups are under pressure to scale fast and compete with Amazon's and Salesforce. It takes a lot of money to grow outside of the existing hubs. You still need the help from current VCs, most of whom still, they may live in Montana and some giant estate, but they're still really pretty much the same group of people. How do you convince them to go into these smaller states? Well, with all due respect, I would say it's not just about the Silicon Valley investors, some of them moving to Montana or

Miami or other places. There's been some of that. But I think the bigger phenomenon that is sort of underreported is, I mentioned one in fact before, the 1,400 new regional investment firms have started in the last decade. That's really where the action is, because that means you can raise money locally from your city, or at least nearby where you are from somebody who can provide some of the help, not just provide venture capital, but make introductions, help them recruit people, their management teams, their boards, things like that. So the kind of things investors do beyond writing checks, now there's more and more investors in more and more parts of the country that are doing the same kind of thing. So we're going to have to get you back on

the road here when we fire up our bus and take you around the country, show you what's happening in these cities. No, I understand that. But you cited 75% of the investments are still in three states with the big money, with the big money that makes a difference. Yeah. And when we started AOL, 97% of the people weren't online and nobody thought it mattered. But things change. And we were trying to be the change makers and creating more opportunity. And I want to be clear that Silicon Valley is awesome, will continue to be the leader of the pack. I'm not predicting the fall of Silicon Valley. I'm predicting the rise of the rest, the rise of dozens of other cities that will emerge over the next 10 or 20 years as vibrant cities. And investors will increasingly

focus their time on them because they are building some of the companies of the future. So one of the things that obviously has come up a lot, getting back to the partisanship issue, you told the Times, the New York Times, that you hope we can avoid a, quote, entrepreneurial culture war. What is this and how do we avoid that war? Because there's a lot of, you know, since jobs, there's got to be people worried about locating in companies or giving money to those states or having employees there. Yeah, I think it's something to keep an eye on. I think we're in the middle of this kind of restart.

The last couple of years, people talked about the great resignation with people leaving jobs because of the pandemic. I think we're now in this kind of great resort where people are deciding where they want to live and how they want to work and sort of this not just hybrid work and remote work it's sort of a broader rethink so there are a lot of people that are starting to think well maybe i don't have to be in silicon valley maybe i don't have to be in new york city maybe i can be someplace else and are starting to think about where they should be some will just make a decision based on family reasons or lifestyle reasons they like the. They like the hiking, they like the skiing, or cost of living reasons, easier and cheaper to buy a house, or even tax reasons. But I do think some number of people, maybe a lot of people, will factor in some of

these social issues, including exactly what you said, policies different states are putting in place around abortion and other kinds of issues. So I hope the states that are making these decisions recognize there could be some unintended consequences and it could impact their ability to win the battle for talent. But does it hinder it? Because every state you talked about is about to put in almost total abortion bans. No, it's not every state we've talked about, but I think there will be an impact in terms of some people deciding not to move there that otherwise might have moved there. Do you go to those states and say, this is not going to be good for your state, particularly, or not? Or do you just let them do what they want to do?

No, we have conversations with policymakers in most of the states. What do you say? I say, ultimately, this is a state issue and you should decide what's right for your state. But I hope you take into account some of these broader factors and actually we'll be at a summit next month in Arkansas and that will be one of the topics. So yeah, we do talk about this and just the nature of how the decision went down with the Supreme Court. Different states will make different decisions, but as we think about trying to level the playing field, we think about trying to help each of these states win

this battle for talent and be best positioned to create sort of jobs and drive economic growth. This is something they need to be considering. Considering. Let me give you an example myself. I moved one of my conferences out of Florida. I just couldn't. All kinds of things. There's tons of things, not just abortion. But, you know, there's intolerance around a lot of things. There's tons of things, not just abortion, but there's intolerance around a lot of things. I think entrepreneurs tend to be more tolerant and tend to be more welcoming of people, even though it's not as diverse as it needs to be. How do you talk to entrepreneurs and should you be stronger with these politicians or not? Or just let them, every state decides kind of thing. Well, as you know, for the last couple of decades, I've tried to be a quiet influence on policy, nonpartisan, working with different people, whether it be early internet policy or the Jobs Act 10 years ago, or more recently, some of this focus on but try to move things forward in a positive way.

But I understand the decision you made. Other people will make that similar kind of decision, and I respect that. But do you need to be more outspoken? Would you speak out against a national ban against abortion, for example, or something like that, which makes it so that it encourages entrepreneurship by all the studies, diversity of thought is certainly one of those things. And I don't mean to say people shouldn't have these thoughts, but if you're going to create the rise of the rest, the rest have to start to understand that some of the most interesting companies have come out of California, which they now insult all the time. But there's a reason they came out of California, I think, and it has to do with open-mindedness and possibly excess too at the

same time. Well, sure, that's part of it. It might have something to do with the fact that California has 50% of venture capital. So there's more capital backing startups in those places. But they're there for a reason. They're there because of the attitude. Well, again, this gets to be a little bit, you know, kind of chicken and egg and circular. But part of the reason they're there is because the money's there. I also think it's important to note that within different states, there's a dynamic between some of the cities and some of the more rural areas. So, for example, Texas tend to be pretty conservative on a lot of policies. Austin tend to be pretty progressive. That's correct. And so there's also a dynamic within these states that I think is important to watch.

How do you get to nonpartisanship? What is the way to get that to happen from your perspective? My way of doing that, and it has been my way for several decades, is to kind of have quiet diplomacy, trying to lead people to what I think is the right answer for their communities and for the country. And sometimes I've found that you can be more effective if you're not, you know, kind of screaming on cable television, just kind of having quiet conversations, bringing people together. One of the things I like about what we do with Rise and Rest, even our bus tours, is we bring Republicans and Democrats together. They're on the bus talking about how to create a stronger startup ecosystem. Republicans and Democrats aren't together a lot.

Unfortunately, they're kind of in their different kind of warring camps and are rarely talking to each other. Speaking of that, what's really interesting that people don't know, and you knew this was coming, but J.D. Vance was part of this at the very beginning. He's now the Trump-backed Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio. He's not like when I met him, when you introduced me to him, I could tell you that. Have you talked to him lately? I have not. I have not talked to him since he announced his campaign a year, year and a half ago. But I share your view. I've been surprised by some of the positions he's taken now by his own admission. He was, you know, took some position four or five years ago that were quite anti-Trump and then decided to pivot and be pro-Trump in part, obviously, to get the Trump

endorsement. And so it's surprising to see some of those things. But, you know, I guess there's some aspect of politics that happens, but it's disappointing. But no, I haven't talked to him, haven't donated to his campaign. And as you know, because of the time you spent with us, it goes back to the earlier points of our desire to bring Democrats and Republicans together. Ron Klain, who's the President Biden's chief of staff, as you know, has worked at Revolution for more than a decade. And he and J.D. and I would have conversations from time to time, mostly on brides of the rest and backing entrepreneurs, but occasionally on other issues. I suspect Ron would be equally surprised by some of the positions that J.D.'s

taken. This is Ron Klain, who's Biden's chief of staff, President Biden's chief of staff. And he actually was my old classmate at Georgetown. I know that. What were the ties that you had them together when you created this at Revolution? Because it really is an interesting dichotomy between Vance, who was different. Let me just be clear to people, he was not this person. And Ron, who was pretty much the same. I mean, I don't think he's changed. What was the ties that you would say? They both worked at Revolution and you were trying to create a revolution, presumably. Yeah, we believe revolution and innovation happen with diverse teams. And so we try to bring a variety of people together that have diverse

perspectives. And some of that directly relates to different perspectives on potential investments based on different experience they have. But we also believe in diversity in all forms. And so having Democrats and Republicans all working at revolution, we think is a good thing. And I think if we're going to be successful in helping the rest rise and helping back this next generation of entrepreneurs, we've got to do it in a nonpartisan way. And you feel like that's possible. I know it's possible. Because? Well, what's the alternative? We have a hyper-partisan country where people disagree on a lot of things. The one area, and I've seen this over the decade, where they tend to agree is they believe that part of what paid America, the leader of the free world, is its focus on innovation,

entrepreneurship, that the best thing to do for each individual community, but also more broadly for the country, is to drive more innovation, create more jobs. And maybe that will also help bridge some of the divides that have existed, which exist obviously for a lot of factors, but one of them is this opportunity gap that some people do feel left out and left behind, and we need to address that. All right, last question. We give advice at the end of the show. I have everybody give a piece of advice. Give an advice to a young entrepreneur who is living in, let's see, a state that does have some recent problems, Tennessee. Should they stay there? If they feel, especially young people, they want to attract a diverse group of people, have an employee base that feels safe. What is your advice to them to stay where they are

and be an entrepreneur there when there's all kinds of other pressures, monetary, political, cultural pressing on them in some of these states? Well, I think that what I'm trying to address is sort of the opposite, that for most of my lifetime, most of the people growing up in most of these rides or rest places felt they had to get out of Dodge. There was not opportunity there. They had to go someplace else. And many of them ended up obviously going to the coast. What we're trying to do is create more opportunity there. And my overall view is

wherever you are, wherever your idea is, you don't have to leave to pursue that idea. There is now venture capital in your community. You should stay there and build there. And if you do that and other people do that, you'll wake up 10, 15 years from now and you'll have a thriving startup community. You'll have hit some of that increasing returns, network effect dynamics we talked about before. You'll likely have one or two tentpole companies that really do create the leadership you need for the next phase. So don't just feel like you have to be in Silicon Valley. If you choose to be in Silicon Valley, of course you should be in Silicon Valley, but you should decide where you think it's the best place

to build that company and then start now and scale now. And hopefully you're one of the companies that really does define the future. All right. Okay, Steve, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on and being so good humored about it.

Thank you, Kara. Congratulations on your new pod. So Cara, that actually felt like we were on a bus tour with you and Steve Case. I felt like we were right there with you. Yeah, we were. And Newt Gingrich was in the back. Yeah. There you go. He's actually very different from a lot of the, I didn't, I was skeptical when you said he was different and more idealistic. He is. He's been talking this particular book for many years and this idea of talent everywhere. He calls it, sometimes he calls it talentism. I think it's him or someone else. But this idea that you can find talent everywhere and why is it only in the valley? And I think he had a very early sense of the political problems, because he's

not a liberal. I wouldn't say he's a conservative, but he had an idea of the discomfort of people who felt left behind. Do you think he has the opportunity to make a dent because he's in the middle? Yes. I think he's appealing to people's greed on some fashion. There's money to be made elsewhere. And I think he's right. The most interesting part of the conversation was your kind of conversation around restrictions on abortion or voting rights. Will people vote with their feet? Yeah. I wonder in an economic environment where there's pressure now, if that kind of voting with your feet following your heart is going to change, is going to give a little bit. And also, he doesn't need everyone to move. He just needs a few great capitalists to come and create outsized job opportunities with outsized salaries, right?

Yeah, I think inflation trumps choice, unfortunately. But other people don't. So we'll see in this upcoming election. But people worry about living day to day, and they worry about costs. And people who are able to go through that easily don't think about that as much. But there's a lot of people, gas costs, food costs, child care costs. And as you see a recessionary environment taking hold, which a lot of people are saying is going to get a lot worse, you're going to have more people focused on that and maybe crime over anything else. So Kara, who's your unsolicited advice for this week? Well, for Mark Zuckerberg, because they just introduced the Quest 3, which is this headset, this virtual reality headset. This is idea that we're going to be living in the metaverse. And I think he's far too early, as I've talked about many times. And shifting his company in this is one of the biggest

bets to be made in probably business history, the amount of money he'll spend tens of billions of dollars on this. And right behind him, Apple is coming out with one, everybody's talked about it. And the story today and the information that this mixed reality headset is expected to have the ability to scan irises of users, let them log in and make payments inside the headset. That's going to be even more expensive. The Quest 3, I think, is $1,500. Allegedly, this Apple one is $3,000. It's a very, very wealthy person who's going to be using these. And my advice is this shouldn't have this much money thrown at it, something like this. And I know they're expensive to do devices, very hardware is hard, as they always say in Silicon Valley. But it's really important to go

very slowly and in a more scarcity way. Most of the major things that have been created in Silicon Valley have a scarcity element to them. And so this enormous big bet while sort of riveting to watch is something perhaps I would have scaled back. And so I don't worry for Facebook. Look, this is if he wants to go down this way, he can. And maybe I'm wrong. And it'll be this incredible thing when we walk around with mixed reality headsets. But in this, especially in this time of economic uncertainty, think about things that would actually help people,

like really help people or improving the thing you already broke. And so... That's where you'd put the money. That's where I'd put the money. Fixing the disinformation, fixing the content moderation.

And maybe it's not fixable and that's why he's moved on to this. But any of these companies, including Apple, it's, think really hard about what's coming. Scanning irises scares the bejesus out of me. And so think hard about the implications of what you're making next, because we've had enough problems with what they've invented before.

That's the unsolicited advice from Mark Zuckerberg. Sounds like the unsolicited advice for listeners is also, don't let Facebook scan your iris. No, that's Apple scanning your iris. I'm sure Facebook will. Don't let Facebook scan your iris. No, that's Apple scanning your iris. I'm sure Facebook will. Don't let Apple scan your iris. Don't let anybody scan your iris or else we'll be in an episode of a movie that's one of my favorite movies with Pamela Sue Anderson called Barbed Wire. But we won't get to that now. Oh, I haven't seen that. All right, let's get to the credits. Today's show was produced by Naima Raza, Blake Neshek, Christian Castro-Rossell, Rafaela Seward, and Cody Nelson. David Wilson engineered this episode. Our theme music is by

Trackademics. If you're already following the show, why thank you so much. But if not, you've got a problem. So go wherever you get your podcasts. Look for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and me, I mean us. Okay, fine. We'll be back on Thursday for more. There you go. Kara, just hang on a second. I want to scan your iris while you're still here. Please do not.