Pivot - Mark Zuckerberg the free speech jester, and Marc Benioff the class traitor

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

Kara and Scott met up at Stanford University (where they were both rejected from) for a live Pivot! They talk about the decline of applicants to elite M.B.A. programs, free speech in China and how Zuckerberg says he thinks free speech functions at Facebook. They get into Amazon's foray into the healthcare sector. They take questions from the audience on the Canadian elections, weWork and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and I'm meeting up with Scott in front of a live audience for a bonus episode this week at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Let's get to our show live from the belly of the Silicon Valley beast.

I love Dolly Parton. We have breaking news. What? You probably read about this, but it's been reported widely that Russia is grooming a podcaster as an asset. I was first. I tried out to be a useful idiot.

No, it's half of that. So they said no. So they're grooming Kara as an asset, and she didn't qualify. And so they came back, and they said, we don't want an asset. We don't want a useful idiot. We want a dog.

Hello, comrades. Oh, God. Hello, comrades. You literally. That's right. The hound loves his vodka. You would be the worst spy. The hound loves his vodka.

Sit down. Sit down. I'm just getting started. Anyways His Vodka. Sit down. Sit down. I'm just getting started. Anyways, thank you. Sit down. Okay, sorry. Back to you.

Okay, first of all, your earphone is falling off right now. It looks redonkulous. Sorry. What did you do today, Kara? Back to you. Oh. I'm out over my skis right now. Help me.

Bring me back. You might want to enjoy my coat that I've got here. Oh! You rub it into my face. So Carol was... Yes. This is the swag I got. I was on the season finale of Silicon Valley, which just taped. It's my...

I have two appearances this season, and I've had two. You've had none. I had many lines. Dick Costolo was there with me. I can't reveal the plot, but we all got this lovely swag, and I sadly could not bring you one. But I just wanted to make you feel jealous, and I'm hoping it's working. How was that?

Where is the set? Is it in Silicon Valley? No. No. It's Hollywood. It's fake sets. It was... I filmed in lots of places. I filmed all over the place. in Culver City today it was in San Francisco they're doing the plot is

I can't tell you what it is but it's good it's super funny but you're in the last season or you're in the series finale I'm in the series finale and another show during the last season wow

yeah it's going to be good awesome yeah it's going to be good it's a great show what else did you do today I did television. I interviewed Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz for the podcast.

I did all kinds of things. I'm a busy lady. You are. Yeah. I do a lot of things. What did you do? What did I do? I flew here and then tried to figure out this series of bad decisions that led me to a podcast

where I spent time in planes. Okay. All right. For 12 hours. By the way, we'd like to be here. In other words, this whole pivot live thing is a big hit. So we always like to announce our next location, our next location, Trump National Doral. Because let's be honest, that's the only place in the country where you could do a podcast. They have bungalows there. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're doing one We should do one there. No, wait a minute. That's a brilliant idea, even though you didn't mean it in any way, in an intelligent way. No, I didn't. We should do... Like, what's how do you pronounce that?

Emoluments? Fake emoluments? He doesn't like the Constitution now. That's fake news, the Constitution. We should do that there. We want to go to Miami. Yeah. Isn't it in Miami?

Yeah, it's close to Miami, but it's like bad Miami. Oh, okay. We should do that there. We want to go to Miami. Yeah. Isn't it in Miami? Yeah, it's close to Miami, but it's like bad Miami. Oh, okay. That would be so good. You think that would be good? I think it would be great. Yeah. I think we should do it. Nine carat gold.

Yes. Excellent. All right, listen. We need to talk about the news. We have a lot. We're here at Stanford University. Thank you all for coming. So first off, how many people in this room have been rejected by Stanford University?

Yeah. Yeah. My brother, who's in the audience, got into this school. There he is. And he got into the medical school. And I did not get into the medical school. And I did not get into Stanford. And, you know, I've been a failure ever since.

In any case, we're thrilled to be here and taking over Stanford University because they should have let us in we would have been a great student here don't you think students you and me yes we could have dated it could have been great all right now listen so we're going to do question seats on your cards let me go through some things I'm having a stroke okay good we're going to do question seats on the cards but I'm going to have you ask questions. Can you imagine what she would do to me in a relationship? Oh my god. Seriously. Yeah. That would turn me... It's never going to happen.

Oh wait, never mind. Don't end my career. It's never going to happen. I just had a baby, Scott. Not me in particular. That's right. I keep getting, which is really interesting, people keep giving me onesies. So this one today was really good. It was from 23andMe. New to the gene pool. Isn't that cute? Sheryl Sandberg sent me a box of lean-in onesies. So I'll be handing those out. I don't need 53 onesies. She's really good about it. I got them from a lot of people. It's really fun.

Ben Horowitz gave me one that said seed investment on it, which, net. That's good. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's good. Ugh. Whatever. In any case, Mark Benioff is trying to send me

an Adirondack chair. But anyway, I'm not sure why. In any case... Any more names you can drop in the next few seconds? No, I'm just saying.

I'm just saying. Well, it's hard to have a baby and know a lot of billionaires. I'm just telling you. It's a difficult situation. That's rough. I know. That's rough. I know. I'm just telling you. It's a difficult situation. That's rough. I know. That's rough.

I know. I'm just telling you. Anyway, we're here to talk about a lot of things. There's a lot of stuff to talk about. I want to start by talking about Stanford itself. There's a business school here. It's better than NYU's, right? Is that correct?

So Stanford Business School is solidly a top five business school. NYU is one of the 30 top 20 schools. Okay, all right, good. So would you want to get your MBA right now here at Stanford or wherever? Not that you'd get any. The graduate school environment in business is its own micro market, and it looks as if we've been waiting for this for a long time but at some point if you keep increasing your price as fast as inflation and there's no underlying increase in productivity or innovation so if you walked into my class when

i started 17 years ago and you walked into it now there's some updates but for the most part it's the same rap it's the same gig and the jobs we're giving them are the same. The experience is mostly the same. But because academics, like anyone else, like to be paid well, and we have starched out the excess margin. So when I got out of Morgan Stanley, the only real job I ever had, out of a class of 80 analysts, we all went to business school. And I went undergrad UCLA, graduate school Haas, vision and generosity of the regions of UC and California taxpayers changed my life. My total tuition was seven grand for undergrad and grad. So it was a no-brainer.

About 77 of the 80 analysts went back to business school. And when people call me, I probably do about, it feels like 100, so it's probably 50 conversations a year, should I go back to business school. It used to be 80. All right, we're going to get the answer now. Go ahead. That hurts my feelings. I know it does. I meant it that way. I listened to the whole baby swag thing. All right, listen to me. So about 80, about 80% of the time I would say yes. Now 20% of the time I find it's flipped. I've said no, because we have finally priced ourselves out of the market.

Not for everybody. This is who it's for. Business school is for the elite and the aimless. If you're smart and you're hardworking and your parents are going to put you through or you're really good and you can get a scholarship and you get into more than one school and you can play them off against each other and you have absolutely no idea what you want to do with your life, which is probably two-thirds of 26 and 27-year-olds. There's nothing wrong with that. I didn't know what you want to do with your life, which is probably two-thirds of 26 and 27-year-olds. There's nothing wrong with that.

I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I just knew I didn't want to do investment banking. I was escaping investment banking. Then business school is great refuge for the elite and the aimless. But the problem is when you add up tuition, it's now about $300,000 or $400,000, and we've priced ourselves out of the market. So Stanford's apps are down 7%. Yeah, Stanford, Harvard, MIT saw big declines. And not only that, again, more xenophobia, more anti-immigrant mentality is really hurting us

because a lot of foreign students have said, you know what, I don't need to go somewhere where they don't want me there. So we're getting less foreign applicants. For the first time, foreign schools are breaking into the top 20. It's this sort of perfect storm. And schools like the University of Illinois have actually shut their business school. So finally, the market has caught up to business school, and we're no longer wrong. All right, then. Well, you business school students, so glad you're here. So, no.

Will you fix your ear thing? It's just a job. Cry that it isn't working? Yeah, it's just hanging off your face like I don't know what. That's my nose. All right, no business school. Put a bump, try to be a little. Okay, so no business school.

There's some nuance here, but at the end of the day, if you're, a couple things. If you're doing well at work, you're on a good trajectory. If you have executive sponsorship, if you like what you're doing, everyone coming out of business school wants your job. So it's really about where you are in life, and it's a nuanced decision. But if you don't get into a top 20 school, I would say the prices we're charging mean it's not worth going because

we have a caste system. Unfortunately, the brand you come out of with school largely indicates your wealth over the course of your life. And what indicates which school you get to go to? Your parents' wealth. So in America, we've decided the people who get the spoils and get to be the innovators are simply put, the children of wealthy people. Welcome to America. All right, then. Okay. Okay. All right. Peter Thiel, thank you so much for that speech. Just got very uncomfortable in here. You're like a low-rent Peter Thiel. Anyway, Zuck's free speech.

You were at this. I was at this. At Georgetown. So how did that go down? Summarize. The Facebook CEO is on a PR blitz when he's saying a lot, but actually not a lot, and I will go into that. This past week he spoke at Georgetown University.

I was there. I don't know why why I was wandering around. I'm in D.C. quite a bit, because my kids are there. And he was talking about that. He was talking about the 2020 elections. And I went to the speech. And what did you think? So summarize what he said.

Oh, Mark Zuckerberg should have finished college, I thought, when I was his student. Right? Yes, I did. That's what I thought when I was assigned. Yeah, right? Yes, I did. That's what I thought. I thought, this guy never took a course in his life, and I think that's actually factual. I was really struck by how much the conversation

was five years ago. I was struck by how light it was intellectually. I thought it was a weird, I'm going to be writing about this in the New York Times this week, I thought it was a weird binary choice between free speech or else we're China. Yeah.

Which I thought was not complex in any way. I thought it was meandering. I think it was a weird, it just went from thing to thing and it was like a mile wide and a foot deep. Yeah. And so it was hard to follow, and so it's hard to criticize it because he said a lot,

but I called it a word salad on Twitter. I started to live tweet because I was getting angry about it because initially a journalist came up to me from the, I used to work for the Hoya, and the journalist was from The Voice, which was the other newspaper there. And he actually, I don't know why, I must have

been like the oldest person in the room, but he was like, why are you here? And I go, I'm a tech journalist. And he goes, what do you do? And I was like, you're a terrible reporter. And I said, I'm Kara Swisher. I write about Facebook. And he goes, oh, you're the one who's mean to him. And I go, yes, that's me.

And I said, I'm not mean to him. I'm critical, which is very different. And anyway, I was having a little journalism session. You like him. I actually think you're pretty kind to him. And I go, yes, that's me. And I said, I'm not mean to him. I'm critical, which is very different. And anyway, I was having a little journalism session. You like him. I actually think you're pretty kind to him. I am kind to him. He doesn't think so. So anyway, so he started to talk. And what happened with this journalist is students who came into Gaston Hall, which is the main hall there, I'd gone there many times. I went to Georgetown myself. They were not allowed to ask questions after his speech about free speech. That was an issue I had. That makes sense. I know. They were supposed to fill out questions

before they went in, and so they couldn't respond to the speech. So they couldn't even ask questions about the speech about free speech with their free speech. And so that was problematic. And then what they did is they grouped the questions and some guy who just was a terrible interviewer and was rather soft was grouping the questions for him at the end. And the crowd was quite bored. Like, I don't know how to put it.

They were just, it was so low energy. The only time they laughed was when someone asked him a question about Ted Cruz, doesn't like you, and AOC doesn't like you or Elizabeth Warren doesn't like you. And the whole thing about him having lunch with conservatives or dinner with Tucker Carlson or whatever the hell he's doing. He said, well, everybody hates me and everyone laughed. Everyone had a good laugh at that. But otherwise, it was really uninspiring.

It's been pretty panned. I did a word cloud on the speech, and the word together, he used the word together 14 times, and the quotes that stood out to me were, he said, well, I believe in giving people a voice. Voices. Voices, because at the end of the day, I guess I just believe in people.

Right. Okay, which one of his 750 PR communications hacks wrote that line. Well, I was sort of struck why he didn't have a more nuanced argument about things. And I was struck by the voices thing, is that more voices mean in the end it will be good. And I'm like, it's sort of like, I just saw the new Terminator movie, by the way, it's fantastic.

Like, more AI that kills us is not good in the end. Like, you know what I mean? Maybe it is, but it was sort of this weird argument that more voices, eventually it will be better. And I was sort of like, well, eventually we could be in a lot of trouble if we don't clean this up. And so you end up being on the opposite side of him, which is about saying you don't want free speech. That's not what you want. I want a complex argument from the man in charge of the most important communications system and platform in the world, in world history. I want a more cogent argument from him,

and if not, I want him to step aside and let other people do it. So, thank you. That is my TED Talk. So anyway, it was disappointing, and he's going to be in D.C. again this week. He's going to talk in front of the finance committee about Libra, your favorite thing. And then he announced election security stuff today. They're not going to allow as much election security violations to go on, allegedly, but they can let politicians

lie. So that was pretty much the situation. Yeah, the other quote that struck out to me was he said that giving people a platform to express their experiences and their beliefs is key to, has always been key to making societies more inclusive. Yeah. And I thought, has Facebook really made our society more inclusive? Yeah. Is that really what's going on here? Yeah, I think he's got to think harder I wish he would think harder that's all I just really do I gave him a good

column this week about the content thing because I want 40 other people to make decisions at Facebook besides him this is the Supreme Court which I volunteered as a tribute but I think it was hard because Bernice King I think who's daughter of Martin Luther King he quoted Martin Luther King

and she slapped him back last Sunday. And she was right to do so. She was right to do so because she was talking about what her father was talking, he was interpreting what her father was talking about and she, I think, should have the say on that. And so I think that was hard. And then the rewriting of the history of Facebook

that it started because of the... He was concerned about Iraq. Iraq, which was like... Yeah, wasn't it hot or not? Yes, yes. Yeah, there was like... Yeah, wasn't it hot or not? Yes, yes. Yeah, there was a big delta there on that. So it was... Look, he's an earnest and he's trying really hard. I think he should not speak anymore.

That's your advice. Free speech. But speaking of free speech, I would like you to comment on U.S. companies such as Apple, Delta, Riot Games, Activision, React, and acquiesce to Chinese censorship laws, which Mark was talking about. So he doesn't even have to try if American companies are doing it for him. The New York Times editorial board pushed back, of course.

Over the weekend, the newspaper said, quote, American companies have an obligation to defend the freedom of expression even at the risk of angering China. Scott, you've led a business before. What do you think companies should do? They have an ethical responsibility to push back? Or what do they do in this situation? No matter what they do, they seem to get,

they lose business or they lose whatever. So whenever I land in the Bay Area, I don't spend a lot of time here. I lived here until 2000. And I think a lot, it stirs a lot of emotions with me. So to get over this kind of emotional turmoil, I do the same thing and that is I go to In-N-Out Burger as soon as I land.

Did you do that today? When I lived here, I was thinking about this 19 years ago. I was running a company called Profit, which is a brand strategy firm. I was the co-founder of a company, another company called Red Envelope. I was married, I had a rescue dog, and I had a ponytail. I still have a rescue dog.

Yeah. And that's about it. You had a ponytail? Also, my address, and I have no reason to, I have no concerns about security, 3476 21st Street, which by the way, is the house next to Mark Zuckerberg. Can you imagine how much fun I would have being Mark Zuckerberg. Can you imagine how much fun I would have

being Mark Zuckerberg's neighbor? Mark! Come on over, let's watch the voice. We're making white Russians. Get it? Get it, Mark? And he'd have, you know, there'd be security, be like, eyes on the bald guy.

Eyes on the bald guy. Literally, I had the house. I had the house next to, what a great real estate investor. I sold it for 1.2 million and thought I'd made the trade of the house. Your name would be Ponytail. What a great real estate investor. I sold it for $1.2 million and thought I'd made the trade of the century. Yeah. It's got to be worth like $700 million now. I think he bought all the houses around it, just so you know.

Yeah, anyways. And by the way, on that block, a lot of Facebook executives, they all live there. I'm nearby. So I'm going to circle back to your question about China. Can you imagine in 1999 or 2000, and most of you aren't old enough to remember this, can you imagine China getting all upset and indigestion over the tweet of a general manager of a sports team and all of corporate America backing down? Think about how much the leverage has changed, and think about how our backbone has curved.

And there's a simple answer here. And I think there's a gangster opportunity for other general managers of other sport leagues and other CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and Fortune 1000 companies across democracies. And that is everyone. And that is the general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Los Angeles Lakers, the athletic director of Stanford, the athletic director of Berkeley,

the general manager and the coach of Manchester City and then the CEOs of Apple, PepsiCo, Unilever should all tweet at the same time, fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong. Because when... We all tweet at the same time, fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong. Because when, when Norma Rae, Sally Field's cinematic peak in my viewpoint, but when Norma Rae holds up a sign

that says union alone, she gets thrown in jail. When we all stick together and decide, you know what, freedom and support is something we all have a vested interest in. If all Fortune 500 CEOs tweeted the same damn thing right now, we have an opportunity to have I am Spartacus moment right now. My name is Spartacus. We all have that opportunity right now. You know what happened in that movie, Spartacus, right? For all of a sudden, all of a sudden, we're afraid of them. They have a lot to

lose too. There are 5,000 Nike employees in the U.S. There's 150,000 in China. There are more General Motors employees in China than there are in the U.S. So you want to play like that? We play like that. You have a big economy. We have an economy that's largely built on democracy and free speech. So where are the other general managers of sports teams? Where are the other Fortune 500 CEOs? It's very simple. If they all unionize and stand for freedom, which is pretty core to this whole experiment we call America, they won't be able to do anything. Well, here's the thing. None of them are going to do that, Scott. That's a lovely vision of America, and I enjoyed that Sally Fields movie quite a bit.

You don't like that? No one here has seen that movie. Look, just pick one. Bob Iger. It's great. It's Norma Rae. It's a great movie. Bob Iger's not going to do that.

He has a park in Shanghai. He just opened one. Nike's not going to do that. Apple's not going to do that. Apple's not going to do that. What does the business roundtable do if they don't do something like this? The business roundtable. I think this is a huge opportunity. Let's start it here.

Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong. I am Spartacus. I'm going to tweet that. I hope everyone else tweets it. You know who would probably do it? I think Mark Benioff would do it. You and Mark Benioff would do it. I, you and Mark Benioff would do it. I love how you put us in this. Me and Mark Benioff.

I like that. And scene. Me and Mark Benioff. Right. But I'm not even so sure Mark Benioff would do it. Has he? He hasn't. He does it a lot more than other CEOs.

He says more things than other CEOs. But I think it's hard. I think they've got the shareholders. They'll be on them. I think it's really difficult. Of course, it's hard. I think it's, they've got the shareholders. They'll be down, they'll be on them. I think it's really difficult. Of course, it's horrible and it's horrible

when they were throwing, like Activision was throwing people off different things because they were supporting Hong Kong. It's just, it's an insane situation.

It's easy to be a purist when you're not running a company. So if you're in the NBA, they've spent 30 years to build a $5 billion franchise and it almost came crashing down over one tweet. So you can, if you just take a step back, empathize with the difficult position the NBA is. I generally think there's a solution here.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's interesting because it sort of comes to mind as Donald Trump attacking companies. It doesn't work anymore. It lost its, people stopped, they stopped caring about it. So I don't know. It would be nice if they did that. I'd like you to organize Spartacus. Yeah. Yes, it would be nice.

Union! Again, Spartacus did die in that movie. In any case, I think it's a great idea. But speaking of giant companies in certain areas, Amazon has officially entered the healthcare space. Very quickly, because I want to get to predictions and questions from the audience.

But they launched Amazon Care, Amazon has officially entered the healthcare space. I very quickly, because I want to get to predictions and questions from the audience, but they launched Amazon Care, a virtual medical clinic for its employees only, which means they're testing it out. They're eating their own dog food, as they say. It's a new benefit for employees. They also make a delicious dog food. It's a new benefit for employees that offer in-home nurses and telemedicine options.

Healthcare represents $3.5 trillion sector for Amazon. And by the way, AWS is supposed to be for employees only, and now it's one of Amazon's biggest sources of revenue. Anyway, what do you think? Another big business for Amazon. We've made a couple predictions around Amazon. The first prediction is by 2025, AWS will be the most valuable company in the world. It'll be an independent company. There's no pure play way to play the cloud right now. It'll be spun in the next two years prophylactically to stay above regulation.

Fastest growing, most profitable part of technology. You have to crawl over a software company, you have to go blah, blah, blah. By 2030, the largest healthcare company in the world will be Amazon. And this is all assuming no regulation, but if you think about what Amazon is really good at, they're really good at sitting on top of complex data sets and saying, okay, this is an

awesome business, batteries, easy to produce, high margin, slap a brand on, no brand equity, huge margin. We own the interface with a bunch of consumers. This business, Swiss vacuum cleaners, is really difficult. They're hard and expensive to manufacture and require some IP and some actual skill. So we're going to outsource it, drive a third of the traffic through our funnel, and take between 8% and 28% based on the series of services we offer them. The healthcare industry was meant for Amazon. Because one, Amazon has the cheap capital to go in and make an incredible splash right away. Two, they can sit on the data sets and go,

like, pediatrics is a terrible business. Very low margin, very difficult business. So they'll outsource that, and your local pediatrician will just be on the Amazon Health platform and they'll charge them a referral fee. Dermatology or diagnostics or home testing of your gut or your biome, great businesses, high margin, they will go into that business with Amazon Health.

And then when you come home, at some point, Alexa will ask you, would you like to cut your healthcare costs in half? And they'll go into the insurance business. They're already in, they've bought a pharmacy company, they're becoming HIPAA compliant. This is the key to building an enormous business. The key to building enormous business.

In business school, they'll teach you it's about your execution, about your leadership. Absolutely. That's 49% of it. The other 51% is how ripe for disruption is the business you're going into. So Tesla could execute like crazy. It's never going to be that big a business in my viewpoint because it's competing against a low margin, tough business the next huge business you think it's going to be climate change i think it's going to be no i think it's health care or climate change i think you're right amazon is absolutely perfectly positioned for this business yeah in every way and it's right in his his uh the stuff he's been doing quietly is is just clear clear that they're very interested in the space and it and it does they're very good at delivery they're very good at contacting people they're very interested in the space. And it does.

They're very good at delivery. They're very good at contacting people. They're very good at logistics. You could see them rolling out clinics that work, that actually work, or coming to your home. Like, it's a really... But they don't even... Think about how many times you just have... Your kid has a rash, right?

Or I drop something on my shin, and I wasn't sure whether to go to the doctor or not. And I'm like, hold the shin up to your Amazon show. right or I dropped something on my shin and I wasn't sure whether I got a doctor or not and like hold the shin up to your Amazon show and they say okay we're sending a prescription over it'll be there within six hours which they have the fulfillment infrastructure or we're going to refer you to someone in our network because you're a member of Amazon insurance yeah they are basically putting all the pieces together it's a perfect business it's also something you trust because you like um you know you like, you like the way they deliver.

You feel good about that experience. I think whatever your issues around Amazon, I think most people feel really good about the delivery besides the boxes

and everything else. I have to say, my girlfriend who just had the baby never used Amazon on principle. Like, didn't want to use it

and now is like, hates herself because Amazon is working so well. It's like, she's like, I hate myself, but God, this is great. You know, it's a really weird thing. And it's, it's a really interesting thing because it does work. And so I think healthcare is the perfect thing. And I think they'll, they'll get it right. And it will be, you know, he, he might be the world's first trillionaire. Um, cause that's a really giant, uh, giant business.

And it does play into his love of data and logistics and everything else. And I think the health care system is so profoundly broken on every level that you could, there's a lot of, is there any other business that could do this? Apple? Apple's sort of talked around the edges of this a lot. Is there any other business that could, I don't know, Netflix? I don't know. Like, who would you just pick? I mean, no, don't be, they deliver a lot. Is there any other business that could, I don't know, Netflix? I don't know. Like, who would you just pick? I mean, no, don't be, they deliver a lot of stuff.

What, who, well, Google tried for a little bit. Remember, they had all the things, and then they sort of veered off to the right for them. Is there any other company? I always think Apple would be the only other one that could. So it's a big topic of conversation, and that is which,

healthcare is literally 16, 17% of our economy, the only sector that could. So it's a big topic of conversation that is which healthcare is literally 16, 17% of our economy. The only sector that's large is government. It is the mother of all disruption waiting to happen. It's the mother of all shareholder or stakeholder value waiting to be created. And everybody knows that. So the question, and I had, I'm not going to name drop, but the most famous venture capitalist in history called me and said, which of the four is best position to do it? And so I said, I want them. Which one? Who? Who? Who's the most who? I'm not going to say John Doerr.

Okay. All right. Okay. So I said, I need a day to- John Doerr is calling you? I know. Okay. Okay. Good. That's good. Well, you're the only one that gets baby gifts from billionaires? No. Yes. I hope you don't get baby gifts right now, but go ahead. So I said, give me a day. And I called back. Each of them has, if you think of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google, each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses into what

will be the biggest value creating private enterprise in the world probably. Will be a US healthcare disruptor. Let's start with the one that doesn't work. Facebook. No one's going to tell Facebook they have an STD or diabetes. Yeah. Right? No. So they're out. Facebook's out. Nobody trusts Facebook because most people have common sense. Okay. The one that has the culture,

probably the greatest concentration of IQ since NASA in the 60s, right, is probably Google. Google has this incredible culture and density of IQ,

but so far their healthcare has been more moonshots. Let's cure death. It doesn't seem that practical. I think they're kind of a distant number third. The one that everyone's betting on that I actually think is number two is Apple. Because the cleanliness of the brand, the trust of the brand, the fact that you have a wearable tracking your blood pressure, your heart rate, they're collecting that data. You would feel,

Apple would just be a one, it kind of fits hand in glove, doesn't it? To think of them as a healthcare company. Or a wellness company. A wellness company, that's a better way of putting it. The problem with Apple is it doesn't have the core asset we need right now, or a company's going to need to go into healthcare. and that is this infrastructure and fulfillment network that Amazon has. But even more importantly than that, Amazon has the core asset globally, and that is it has a shareholder base that will tolerate zero-margin businesses.

And Apple should probably acquire Tesla, but it never will, because that would take their margins down. Apple can't be in a business like healthcare and put a couple trillion. So Amazon first, Apple second. All right. Okay. And perhaps like Aetna or someone like that, like one of those.

Go in and buy one of those guys. All right. Okay. All right. Excellent. We'll be right back after this quick break with more Pivot. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. Constantcontact.ca. All right, everybody, back to Pivot Live in Palo Alto on the campus of Stanford University. We're going to do winners and losers now, and then we're going to get to questions from the audience, and we're going to do live questions,

because I like what Mark did that. He had everyone write down questions. I don't want to do that. I want you guys to actually speak to us, and we write down questions. I don't want to do that. I want you guys to actually speak to us and we can handle it. So we're going to do that. We're going to have things come around. So very quickly, winners and losers. Very quick. Winner?

My win is Anand Giridharadas. Anand Giridharadas. The New York Times talks about the importance of class traders. That you have to have billionaires saying, we need to tax, we need higher taxes, you need people of a core.

I think we need a dean, speaking of Stanford, I think we need a dean to abolish tenure. At some point, people are going to make the connection between tenure and debt on young people. I work with one of the finest faculties in the world. We award tenure to a person about the time we've decided they're no longer worth the money we're paying them. So it's that we will have to overpay them for the next 30 to 40 years.

It drives education costs outrageously, and it means that young people can't start businesses, get married, or buy a house. At some point, we need a class trader among a dean at a world-class university that says to his buddies that he went to MIT with that he went to MIT with, or she went to MIT with, we're doing away with tenure because let's be honest, it's just a tax on poor people. There was a class traitor, and I think it's an important one that happened the

last week. I think Mark Benioff is a class traitor to the white boy fraternal order of tech CEOs when he came out against Facebook. And it's going to cost them because people will cite things that's hypocritical about Salesforce, et cetera. But for the CEO of the largest, arguably one of the largest cloud-based companies to come out and say, Facebook is smoking, it's tobacco, which I believe it is. I think that was a pretty courageous move because it's much easier for everyone just to be in their Teslas and go along, get along. So my winner is class trader Mark Benioff. All right, winner. Okay, quick fail. The cowardice and poor vision of withdrawing from Syria. Okay.

Good one. That's all that needs to be said, though. My winner? That's your win, Kara. Mick Mulvaney, because he provided me enormous entertainment this week. Mick? Mick. Jesus.

How long? How many TikTok is he going? Is he going? Acting? Acting? Acting. He's literally being a lot of threats. Oh, man.

God. The first time forever. Do you think he sleeps really well to begin with? Oh, my God. He looked like such a dope. On Fox News, he looked bad. That's really hard. Actually, Chris Wallace did a great job saying,

you're lying, right? Because you just said, and they kept playing it. I just was like laughed and laughed the whole afternoon watching that. I just enjoyed that. So Mick Mulvaney gets my vote. Who's your win? Mick. Mick Mulvaney. The Mick. Who's your fail? My fail is the homelessness issue in San Francisco. It is, not just San Francisco, all of California. there was a story in the New York Times today about cruelty that people are having towards the homeless. It is understandable on all sides that this has become, you know, Mark talked about Elizabeth Warren

being the existential crisis of his life. This is the existential crisis of California. And we really have to start really, there's so much money being shoved at this. There's so many, it's such a difficult and again, a difficult and complex issue. And we, it is not easily solvable. And you know, a lot of people are writing me today because I tweeted the New York Times story, which I all recommend that you read. Getting to the cruelty is so inevitable. Last night,

I was walking in the mission and there was a tent city right there and there was drugs and everything and I had to catch myself. I hated it. I hated this whole, what they were doing to this beautiful city and at the same time I'm like to find empathy you have to kill it. It's really hard and I think

we've got to figure this out and then politicians like Trump take advantage of it, which is so awful. But to your point, every elected official, when you ask them what the most complex problem is, the majority of them stay homeless. It's got to be.

It's veteran affairs, it's mental illness, it's poverty, it's income inequality. It's everything. It's the rights of taxpayers. It is so complicated. You know what I would do? If I were putting, the key, I would say this. I go on Fox because I like to go behind enemy lines.

It's part of the resistance. But if I were running Fox television, which I think I could do, I would broadcast live from San Francisco. Because think of the wealth and the tax base that should be in San Francisco, and it's all progressive, very, very liberal people running the place. So if you think that CNN and MSNBC are right, then with all that money

and all those outstanding progressive values, we should have the best city in the world. And it's literally a lesson in civic failure. And so if I were Fox, I would just broadcast live from San Francisco. I don't know if you can completely blame the politics. It's just like everyone's having trouble dealing with the problem. Like people put boulders in San Francisco on the streets.

People won't camp there. I had someone who was in a... Like people should not be living on the streets of any major American city. Why is it... I guess the question... We're not going to answer tonight. But having lived in San Francisco... Yeah.

So we're going to get to questions now from the audience. And the best questions are going to get these hats that someone made. We didn't do predictions. No, we're not doing predictions. We're asking questions from the audience. Do you guys want to do predictions? Yes. No, in a minute.

No, but we need to get them questions. I got some good predictions. Okay, fine. But we want the audience to talk, Scott. Thanks for your predictions. Anyway, make San Francisco great again. So two best questions. I'm going to throw the hat at you.

If you get mistaken for a MAGA person, I'm sorry. It's just the way it's going to have to be. I also have one that says make San Francisco gay again. I'm going to keep that one for myself. Anyway, so let me get some questions, and then you can make a prediction at the end. All right, questions from the audience. Let me look. Okay, how are we going to do this? We have someone coming up. Someone right here a prediction at the end. All right, questions from the audience. Let me look.

Okay, how are we going to do this? We have someone coming up. This one right here. Do we have a thing? Okay, let's go here. This woman right here. Can you stand up and introduce yourself? And she's going to hit, Mike, because we're taping this.

And speak, and short questions, or I will cut you off. No questions. Great. Hi, my name is Elise. Thank you so much for being here. Big fan. We talked about a couple of these topics today and also in your past podcast, but I think the role that tech plays in policy and especially international relations,

it's getting larger and larger, especially as tech companies scale. And so how does privately owned companies or publicly owned companies, but U.S. companies, how do they navigate a shifting world order? Well, that's a good question. You know what, that's, I'm going to highlight the problem. Short answers, too. We want lots of them. It hurts my feelings when you reign me in like that. You know what, I can't. You like it. You know what's about to happen next week is every creative person, every design director in Venezuela is about to have their access to Adobe products shut off.

So think about the kind of person that goes into design, graphic, creative. They're probably politically on our side and protesting against Maduro, but we've decided in our ham-handed, cybersecurity-gone amateur hour to turn off access. Adobe is being forced by the Trump administration to turn off access to all Venezuelans to Adobe products. So these people aren't going to be able to make a living. Imagine if all of a sudden we decided to weaponize Tesla

and said, China, we're pissed off at you. We're turning off every Tesla in China. So there has to be, I think, a more thoughtful policy around where government begins and ends as it relates to private companies. But I feel for these creatives in Venezuela who are going to wake up on Monday thoughtful policy around where government begins and ends as it relates to private companies. But I feel for these creatives in Venezuela who are going to wake up on Monday and not have access to their files and have their livelihoods cut off because the Trump administration has decided,

oh, that'll show them. And also, tech companies shouldn't be running foreign policy, although they have. But they certainly are. There's even governing all over the world. Governing is being done using the tools. And that's really the big question is how, when you have a Duterte in the Philippines or you have, you know, dictators love them some internet. And so the question is how do we make these tools so they're not being used as tools for propaganda? I think that's really the, and then thinking more carefully about the consequences and not just saying, we need more voices. Like, which voices?

You know what I mean? And I don't want them to choose, but I want them to think about the making of their tools. Would you like this hat? All right, here. Whoa, oh, sorry. Just go get it. Sorry, I'm not a good thrower.

Sorry we didn't answer your question. Now the next one has to be a really good question. Right here? Right there. You, right there. Yeah, you. Well, whoever brings this to you. Come on. We have the runners. Oh, my God.

Can you stand up and introduce yourself? Yes, go ahead. Yes. Here, take this. You have to do this. You can't ask questions. Short question. Yes. How's it going? Nick from San Francisco. Nick. I work in enterprise cloud software. There was a great conversation about tech addiction and screen time earlier. Yeah. about tech addiction and screen time earlier.

Yeah. Mao is king when we talk about motivating people to engage with products more. What's an alternative economy that can promote moderation? Moderation in using screen addition. This is one of Scott's big, talking about moderation. You know, obviously,

they were talking about putting down your phone, but it's really hard. It's designed to be addictive. They are designed, you know, anyone who has kids knows this. They're the pacifier of the modern age for everybody. And, you know, it's not that different. I ride the subway a lot.

I don't use cars as much. And so I used to read a book. Now I look at my phone. It's not that different. But I think one of the issues is how they're designed and how they pull you in. And I think the two key companies to me that are important here are Apple and Google, and they certainly could do a lot more to put the utilities up front and move everything just by files, the way they present things.

Obviously, you know how to do the screen, the change, the dark screen. You can try all kinds of things. You know, you do it. I don't know if you've ever done this but if you do it it turns black and white which is totally unappetizing as a thing you don't want to play with it at all

so you can do stuff like that but it shouldn't be on you it should not be on you it should be very clear that someday this is going to be clear these are addictive they are I turned on that thing on Apple that tells you how many minutes you spend on social media, but then I found I was getting a DOPA hit waiting for it,

and I kept going back. So what is your solution? My solution is that all schools should ban all cell phones through junior high and high school. The only reason we give our kids phones is because we're worried about them being ostracized. Take that away. Get more Norma Rae. No kids. Why should any kid under the age of 18 have a social media

account? Are we going to wake up one day and think, oh my God, we screwed up not giving our 15-year-olds Instagram accounts? There's so much here. I am wildly addicted. I consume a crazy amount of alcohol, a less crazy amount of marijuana, but I don't have an addictive personality when it comes to substances. I'm a better version of me, drunk or high. And I like it, I enjoy it. It's enhanced my life. I am 100% addicted to Twitter.

I have, I can't wait to get on Twitter and see what you think of me after this. And 98% of it is kind and nice and it makes me feel really good. And 2% of it is awful, awful. And it enrages me and makes me coming back for more and more and more. But the thing is, I recognize it and I can modulate it. And I really worry that my nine and 12 year old boys can't modulate it. So there's some basic steps. As Nancy Reagan said, just say no. Under the age of 18, we need verified accounts. We need age gating. Alcohol is tremendously damaging to society, just like social media. And guess what? We decided to get our shit together and not let people under the age of 21 engage in alcohol. And guess what? We decided to get our shit together and not let

people under the age of 21 engage in alcohol. And for the most part, unless you're in a fraternity over here, we do a pretty good job of that. Because the group in the back that's doing the note to China, they're also stopping screen addiction back there. It's just not going to happen. They're not going to do that. Not going to do it. Not going to do it. Not going to happen. But I'll just say, I find my sons are pretty good. They use Snapchat almost exclusively, which is interesting. Their Snapchat, which seems less addictive, although they are addicted to it.

I do worry more now that I have a girl about the personality. I'm convinced everyone has a vice. I just think it's in our nature. Twitter. Do you have a vice? Your vice is Twitter? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, ours is Twitter. Alright, let's do one in the back. A cane guy. Right there, cane guy. Yeah, ours is Twitter. Alright, let's do one in the back. The cane guy, right there, cane guy. We'll try to answer as many of

your questions as possible. Please introduce yourself. My name is Sohail. Thank you for being here. The New York Times is reporting about 15 minutes ago that Justin Trudeau is slated to win in Canada, win the election in Canada. You've talked about him before. You've talked about the brownface incidents before.

How do you feel about that? Does he deserve to win? Should he win? Should he have dropped out? Well, I thought that was a pretty bad situation for him, but that's the Canadians. It's a voting. It's the way people want to vote. I do think he did as much as he could to say he was sorry. Think about if this was Donald Trump in pictures. He'd be like putting them out as postcards and stuff like that. And so I did think he did the correct thing, which was to apologize and talk about it. I was disturbed by it a lot because there was a lot of it and it was quite elaborate. Also, that was another thing. It was a surprise because that's not the way you thought of him.

But I do think at least the Canadians had a good discussion, I mean, had a good debate about this. And I think he's chastened and we'll see how it goes for him. I just, you know, obviously, I think it's appalling what he did. Like, you know, it's such bad judgment.

And it was relatively recent, recent enough. Something we have, it's a bad judgment and it was relatively recent recent enough it's a difficult question to answer because I don't know who he was running against so I don't know what the sins of the other person it's a difficult, are you Canadian? no so I don't know much about, he was the liberal

so I immediately sided with the liberal and he's dreamy so I like him you like his hair? oh he's got gangster hair i know he does he's that guy that guy's that guy's okay a tall drink of lemonade okay but you miss out as a species as a species and as a society we haven't figured out we haven't figured out the calibration around forgiveness in terms of timing cadence the calibration around appropriate punishments because now that everything all of a sudden is on our permanent record, our ability to forgive or not forgive in certain instances, our judgment around this hasn't caught up.

Okay, let's go over here. Let's get a lady. I'm sorry, man. Where's a lady? Pick a lady. Right there. Right there. Hi, I'm Amy. Speaking of crazy misogynist did you see the news about we work today i was wondering what your opinions were about it what happened what did they do okay explain what happened if we were they soft bank took over for four billion dollars they decided no they gave them four billion billion to take over the company. We are going to talk about it on Thursday, but do the quick and dirty. I'm just trying to link it to Crazy Miss...

Oh, did you read about the sex parties? No. They had sex parties? Yes. I am so going into a WeWork. The dog's showing up. WeWork Palo Alto. Is there one nearby?

How late are they open? Anyways. Okay, so WeWork got a $5 billion convertible preferred from SoftBank. SoftBank was, they claimed, they went to 75 financial sources. SoftBank was the only one that was ever going to put money into this. And be clear, this is not an investment in WeWork. This is a $5 billion investment in saving face from Masayoshi Son. Because on a risk-adjusted basis, this company will never be worth more than $10

or $15 billion, so putting another $5 billion in good capital after bad. But he couldn't impair, he couldn't let Vision One go down in flames with his biggest investment. So the reason why they won and they were always going to win is no other sane investor was going to match the terms of SoftBank because SoftBank was getting something no one else would get, and that is face saving. This was a $5 billion investment in saving face. It wasn't a $5 billion investment in WeWork. And because you said sex parties, you get the hat. Okay. Okay, a couple more questions. We've got just a short amount of time. Right here. You, right there.

Yes, I know you. You talked to me earlier. Hello. He came all the way from India, right? You just got here. Okay, go ahead. Hi. My name is Ankur.

So this is more of an I want to get your opinion rather than a question. So the way I see it, there are two internets right now. One, the American internet, which is free, where there is free speech. And the second one is like the Chinese internet, where it is very, let's say, if I sympathize with the Hong Kong protest, I get

banned. So the way I feel it, there needs to be something in between, and I don't know what that should be. What is your opinion on that? I agree with you 100%. This is what I was talking about. We have to have a smarter way we talk about this incredible invention and this utility.

It's a utility for society. And so just the way we put unsafe at any speed happened with making cars safer, just because you want to make this a safer and better place to me doesn't mean you're against free speech. It's having a very cogent discussion, having cogent guardrail regulations, thinking really hard.

This is the only industry on the planet that has no regulations to speak of in this country, to speak of. I don't think there are any. They're just the ones that everyone else have to follow.

Very few. And so there's nothing, it's not, again, it's not a binary choice. And tech people think in binary and reductive terms. And this is a really complicated issue. And if they don't want to, again, talk in a complicated fashion, I will lead the Supreme Court of Content on Facebook, and I will show them how to do that. And I will bring in smart people to figure out, a diverse set of people too. And so there is room for a safe internet an internet that where we can celebrate human connection and have all the voices be heard in in a cogent way and not be hostage to malevolent players who are seeking to divide us and create lies and hate and distortion

I just I don't know why this is so hard to be against. And I agree with you. A middle way, right? The middle way. All right, I agree with you. I will partner with you on the next internet as long as you have a CS degree from Berkeley or Stanford. You got into Berkeley, right?

Yeah, they let me in. Okay. Three things about the next internet that I think would make a much better internet. No one under the age of 18. I think nothing good comes from the internet for anyone under the age of 18. Two, verified identities.

I think a lot of the unfortunate things that happen on the internet are because people are pretending to be people they aren't and they lack the self-awareness to say, if someone knows this is me, would I really behave this way? That doesn't work in every country, but go ahead. I agree, and there's things around journalists who need anonymity.

And the third thing, and this is the strange thing that no one gets, the worst thing about the internet that's caused all the problems, one word, free. The internet is nicotine, it's addictive. Social media is addictive, but it doesn't give you cancer. What gives you cancer is advertising. Advertising is the tobacco of the internet because it creates algorithms

that try to figure out a way for you so you get more clicks, and the only way they can do that is to enrage you and divide us. Advertising and free. We have an FTC that goes after companies that price gouge and charge too much money. We have an FTC that bans all free things on the internet.

All right, excellent. Okay, one more question. Let me pick. I can't see. Oh, God. You, person who's running around, pick. You pick. You pick, sir.

All right. Sorry, everyone. You can all tweet at us. All right, right here. Right here. Sorry, sorry. Hi. Hi, right here. Sorry, sorry. Hi. Hi, hello there.

Avi, very, very big fan. Thank you guys for being here. You've talked a lot about on the podcast about the lack of new entries into the social space since like Snapchat in 2011. What would you say is a winning positioning and investment strategy for a new player entering the social communication space?

Avi has a new social network, and I told him I'm so sorry. Here is the deal. I just actually interviewed Ben Horowitz, and he said the one thing I would not invest in is a social network or a search engine. Social communications specifically. In any case, none of that. None of that.

You're not getting any money from Ben Horowitz. And I think he was correct. And your last name is Horowitz. Is that correct? He's still not giving you money. I think that, I think that there is no, and the reason he said, and he's saying, he said on the podcast, which will appear this next week, he, there's no way to get around the massive distribution systems these companies have. There's no way to beat them. There's, they are. They are in the way of everything. And this is why we're looking at something, breaking them up. And so he literally

was like, there's no way I'm putting money over here in cryptocurrency. I'm putting money over here in healthcare. I think financial technology is exciting. There's no dominant players. But that area, very few people are touching. And it's because there's no way around Facebook. There's no way around it. And this is a guy who's partners on the board of Facebook. The general pitch you hear from every... I sit in a lot of VC meetings, pitches to VCs for funds, and the general pitch among almost every entrepreneur now is,

we don't compete with Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, but we make great acquisitions of Amazon, Facebook, and Google. So the entire economy is being run on this weird notion that we can't compete with these guys, but our most likely acquirer is one of these four guys, which when you think about it is a total oxymoron and has put us into a very weird position. And we're in the worst of both worlds right now.

These companies aren't acquiring because they're worried about raising red flags around antitrust scrutiny, but at the same time, it's very difficult to get funding in computer hardware, search, social, mobile, the fastest growing parts of our economy. So we need the DOJ to set up shop on Sand Hill Road. They're here. They're here. Yes, they are indeed here. Predictions. Oh, go ahead. Quickly. Okay. Two predictions's uh um business and one's political all right okay so just as there's a core base for trump that no matter what he does no matter how corrupt no matter how how bad he is for the country how embarrassing he is there's a core base to Trump that always doubles down.

He does have this fanatical base. No matter how corrupt Facebook is, no matter how much teen depression they create, no matter how bad they are for their economy, they have a very loyal base called the global advertising market. Facebook is reporting earnings on October 30th. I predicted when it was 159, it was going to go over 200.

It immediately doubled to 129. It's back to 186 on the earnings next Wednesday. Facebook goes over 200. All the headline risk is all about how corrupt they are and how evil they are, and advertisers don't give a shit. The business has never been better. You're about to see Facebook blow away its earnings and go over 200 bucks a share in the next 30 days. Political prediction.

We are an ageist society and we've been reminded that the three front runners in our Democratic primary are over the age of 70, and what's hilarious is that we're pretending a 78-year-old man who just had a heart attack could be president. That's biology. He looks good. He looks fantastic.

He's an inspiration. There's no way we're going to put him up against Trump. Biology is politically incorrect. Between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who looks like a befuddled old man and has been unable to respond to ridiculous attacks from Trump about this bullshit around Ukraine and his son.

He's been totally ineffective, looks ridiculous and flaccid. He has not been able to respond to stupid, ridiculous attacks. You're about to see 40 points of share in the Democratic primary leak to another candidate in the next two to four weeks, and it's going to go one of two places. It's either going to go to a new entrant or it's going to go to Pete, Mayor Pete.

The Democratic primary is about to get very, very interesting. Wow. Do you know just... That's a big one. I thought you were going a whole different way. So I'm going to read this last thing before we sign out. Mark Zuckerberg, master puppeteer, has been quietly recommending campaign hires to Pete Buttigieg.

According to a Bloomberg article, at least two of those three recommendations were hired. Were what? Hired. Mark Zuckerberg is his advisor. There you go. That's a big one. We'll see where that goes. Thank you all so much. If you want to hear

us scrutinize over different powerful forces, shoot us an email at pivot at voxmedia.com. Next week, we'll be talking about earnings. We'll be talking about WeWork, obviously, sex parties, and more. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Kara. Thank you, Stanford. Thank you very much.

That's our bonus show. Thanks to Stanford University and to Hewlett Packard for hosting us. We'll be back in your feeds later this week with another Pivot. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sananes and Eric Johnson. Eric Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. Thanks also to Rebecca

Castro, Drew Burrows, and Nishat Kerwa. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, and if you like this week's episode, leave us a review. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. Thank you. Anthropic is AI for everyone. The latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, offers groundbreaking intelligence at an everyday price. Claude Sonnet can generate code, help with writing, and reason through hard problems

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