This week on the interview episode of The Vergecast, editor of cheif of The Verge Nilay Patel sits down with CEO of Postlight Paul Ford.
Paul Ford co-founded Postlight in 2015 and is a writer, product strategist, educator, programmer, and software consultant.
If you read a lot of tech writing, you probably know Paul’s name. In 2015, Ford wrote an entire issue of Bloomberg’s Business Week titled “What is code?” which colorfully explained how programming works on the web for people who don’t do it. Recently, he wrote a piece in Wired about how we should still be hopeful and excited about tech and what it can still do for us.
Theres a lot of negative conversation about tech lately — regulating huge companies, what Facebook and Amazon are doing wrong — but from someone who builds things for the web, Paul brings an optimistic look at how tech can positively and creatively impact our lives in a fun and exciting way.
Paul comes in to talk about his hopefulness, his piece in Wired, the state of building stuff for the web, and how people think about tech today.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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et mobiles outcome for full terms. Parentage, recast on this week's agenda view episode. We have paul ford.
if you are an active twitter user. Somebody reads: a lot about tech. Reads: a lot of tech. Writing. You probably know Paul's name. He wrote in entire
issue of Bloomberg? Businessweek called what is code a few years ago. Isn't writing about ever since he runs a product studio called post flight here, new york city, and he recently wrote this piece. I really like about how we should still be hopeful and excited about tech in what it can do for us in wired. So I had Paul come in. We talked about that piece. We talked about sort of the state of building stuff for the web, the state of how people think about tech. What they're, using why they're using it we just got into it. I've had so many conversations lately that are kind of inherently negative about tech. We constantly talk about regulating this industry.
Look he's doing wrong. He was rating
At the other perspective of someone who's still building stuff in charge of building things for a lot of different people and companies is still hopeful about technology, so check it out. It's power forward
or forty instead, if it's lovely,
Thank you. It is the studios too, nice, russia, that's what I'd always pretty goods pretty good nice acoustic deadening there has happened here
lovely view, yeah part. Twenty fifty,
You are already on the scene, but I'll tell you.
into the collective consciousness of the world, because business week, what you write, an entire issue of a magazine.
Let's be clear, not can be a lot of those are my life. It was just like a weird pop culture moment. Yet when people
wanted to know what programming was all about
you know I'm a nerdy writer who's been around for a while and of people. A business week went yeah right right, something and then they kept going. Let's keep right
keep going. You gonna give me the whole issue yet, and it just became a thing for a minute
I've never been in the middle of a thing. I am now grey
chubby,
it started out as a perl programmers and then things weren't supposed to happen to me, but I did have my that was my one thing. I got to go on. Charlie rose, which is a little less exciting, but no one expected a hit right. They just expected, like oh quirky business week and then
Millions of people were like finely someone explained what this thing
So the issue isn't. Who is how the? What is what is code? It was literally the entire print issue of business. Week is a moment of great online presentation, unlike print you can, if you're listening this, you can just
look at that right now. It's right you just for wired required. It is not. They did not give you the entire issue on which our
My competitors are taking the effort, we'll make mistakes, not convenient, and I'm really glad not to have the whole issue that it's awful to have the whole issue. What's the piece in wired called why
I still, in parentheses, love tack in defence of a difficult industry. So will you- and I have been in?
same circles, we've never actually sat down and had a conversation like this.
Weird yeah we've been around each other. We have a media to intermediate between us yeah, exactly let's, let's make a document. So why still attack in defense of a difficult industry? I've been talking to a lot of folks in the show
for weeks and months, there is a lot of criticism of the tech industry,
edge, personism, often associated with called surveillance
capitalism, the business model, tat companies, is bad. We talk to academics, partition,
they tell us it's time to regulate the tech industry, they've they've gone too far. They have too much power. We should break them up the whole thing, you're saying
This thing is hard, but I love it. Why do you love it? Because you can make the little robot dance on the screen? I mean it's really that simple. It's first of all, all those people who are criticizing tech can handle it. It's trillion
of dollars. Now come on, it's ok! It's ok that somebody doesn't love you thing and say that year,
best thing that ever happened like that
we gotta get over that part of it. The part that I still love that still real is making the thing right and so,
I got into this because
as I never thought anyone ever would. Let me write or do anything, and so you could go make a webpage and you could put your stuff up into the world, and people would read it and connect to it and it was like twenty five people and that just was wonderful. That was fantastic
that impact that small amount of impact could be sort of her
by anybody who had access to a computer which it can already have access to a computer, but still the baseline has come down and you can really do things unlike television, unlike newspapers, unlike just about everything that came before the whole thing could be manipulated
And what you do with that from that point on? That's when the ethics start to really creep in it gets tricky. Like am I going to spy on people
with that or am going to make funny jokes. You know in the case of twitter, you can do
both it's just like it's that and then there's a whole culture. There there's a culture of people who make things. What is the right way to arrange human beings and turn them into good contributors to a culture of shipping and making software, and there are a million arguments and discussions about the right way to do that.
Literally many of them originate in this building from the chorus team, random acts like there's a culture
and the same is true of design and the same is true of product management, and so I still think that that culture is really interest.
It has an unbelievable but an unbelievable amount to contribute, and I don't think people, even the critics, would disagree with that. Right, like I think, there's just lots to do
What do you think is the the sort of biggest disconnect between the critics and I,
one may be who are building the staff who boy I'd
This is this is fundamental right, there's! No, it's not a culture of introspection. So if you grew up in a good liberal arts tradition, I did and like
you are used to interrogating the the hell out of everything and it sort of like. Is this good or bad? It doesn't matter it's a book. It's a bug. It's a it's! A glass of water, like everything, carries a huge amount of significance
and then there are in it lives in an ecosystem of everything else, and that's unity here, undergraduate, semi attics
ass, an in all languages and sort of intertwined.
If you get into that, you really started it like see the world. Is this big connected thing
with you know colonialism and ends in search of all sorts of
economic shenanigans at the base I dont get the central. I talk to like a young start, a person that that's how they see their stuff. They go
hacker news in they read about start ups and they see people who are making enormous amounts of money and having an enormous man impact and they go. I want that. I think whats unusual, because those two spaces are smashed into each other in I don't think that lake you participate in technology. Culture word down by wall street re now, talking like there wasn't as well
participation in the banking industry in the eighties and an early nineties when it was just going why
everywhere right, you couldn't get close to it because it was so taken. It was john
can driven in time. I feel that, like would tech leave got these worlds are already colliding like people put up their web page,
starting their genes and over on the other side, you have you around to the young people who are like ma. Am I just want to get my start up and get paid and just
these in the room together and they start fighting. This is over the
This is really what I'm talking about. What is the web so that the the actual democratizing force in tech when we talk about tech broadly, was the web. It was so good. It was the thing like the web.
browser shipped actually is marc. Andreessen line the guy who created netflix's software is eating the world right, we're going to interconnect all these businesses. Their businesses will become software businesses. The software we have the money is, but
it was the way always feel that he's sort of stops early in the digestive process, like that, it's like suffer then, is going to sort out the rest of the world, and then I am hearing. What are we going to do that? Like twenty nineteen eating is not the endgame that the system operates at a certain level? Are certain level you gonna vomit, the world bank or the world bank and the world? Will then fertilize new worlds? To I love what I love about that those like it's, the tech industry, going like the most important things at fort gets in my mouth. It's your problem, but it was the web. You I'd sure that was
thing, and now, obviously there are men
other layers by which you can access the consumer, but the first thing that allowed a kid start a zine and reach everybody
was the web tim berners Lee and his book about the web. So timorously. Is that really there?
amateur, an inventor of the web. We created the with a few other people, but it was. It was his baby and in his book he actually describes work andreasen of that quote really
actively trying to commercialize and lockdown access for until
you had with berners Lee and with the early concept was we need to create a tool that will take
while the data that scattered everywhere around the internet, which at this point, could fit on your apple watch but like at that point felt like a lot of data and we need to make it easier to access rolodex
as in you know, in and sort of information about people here at the high energy physics lab that I work at and so on and also pages of content, especially physics papers, and will link them together.
that simple and then because of the network effects and because people have eunuch servers phone around. Suddenly
you had this thing out in the world. Real software people didn't take it seriously there they got my god. What is this?
incense everybody I remember in the nineties, again reduces like now there there there's much better ways to do this. Trust me. The hypertext people thought it was silly in the internet, people
like ignore gophers, better and just all these ridiculous things that now our complete kind of footnotes,
My caused eater this for minnesota, often given shape,
go for gopher yet receive Minnesota protocol was a patent encumbered, so
ass tat was it does it? Openness is very, very powerful and it's not the ultimate tool.
for everything you might ever do, but its very, very powerful if it hits at the right moment
So what you had was this polishing platform that was so easy and that's the part that I really that's changed. Is it used to be so easy to put something online
now, it is harder than going to medium and typing things in the box. It's harder than publishing with this he amass, but it was like being a prick.
It's been in that world and a kind of equal playing field. There is like a short period where everybody got to play and kind of was at the same level, so that was then, and when built these,
businesses it enabled to enable our business. Absolutely you now run it
Ah monsieur copeau cited x, ray or business. What is worse, I do
We are on word a product studio,
in product management, design, engineering. You come to us sometimes places much like this one, come to us and say: build our big cms platform,
We work for you run screaming now. Now we ve come on come on,
and their like one about word, press. Ok, we ve got
a lot of content management, alot of ngos and then because we're new york city, alot of institutional banking and insurance clients ghetto just exactly what you expect to your building websites for people. Yes, except you don't say, web stuff, any work is that doesn't sound like give get anti.
your product, studio products to see. Oh, that's, good, oh, and what you're really delivering? This is: what's tricky you're, not making webpages that much anymore, you're building like the ape
I underneath or air your combining three or four a p eyes, and so you speaking data and then your beard settings
upon a cloud service provider and then your building a web app that talks so that, as
well as may be mobile. Web apps or mobile apps rates of these are like
in this world where it it's everything is a pr talking to platforms instead of pages being loaded and browser steps that where the language has gone gap,
Is a web doomed this so I say I will add value and a trick. You
the trick. I'm on my way, I literally every morning I boys shrieking. Why are we not give you?
look at it. You have mobile apps right apples.
is a very intent on moving
consumers into its abacha system, fervor,
reasons good and bad girl feels the less so but
so a lot of going on over there on the under side as well. You have face books of the world which are sort of poor people in
an ecosystem that is web accessible. What are out a web adjacent and in many ways- and you have other platform- twitter tumblr youtube- these are, whereas suck you in the platform world and you're going to live by the rules, the platform and that the web is just the place where you go to the platforms as
goes to the press. We go to the people, I mean that's. A microsoft was gonna. Do that before too, like ever it people keep trying my coat
as is way more of a hard news business. Personally, I am alive. I've become we're hardness into stirred the company, but still like he's he's too
Four and he's just like me, and I would never bet against it. It is this
about an open platform that shows up and can do just about enough yet and that work
everywhere and then end up working like you, you know I got a nice pixel phone now I moved over from my lesson:
the mobile web browser on that is just fine for, despite everything I do, and I forget that their apps half the time when Google's got light
Oh no. This is like an hour, but it's also a ban on sound carry. This is, if you like,
is still works and the other thing to you load up. That first webpage is looking good. It still go,
fine, you know you're twenty five years in our or thereabouts and all the old stuff still works. Pretty good mobiles
throw everybody a curveball, but we figured that out too. So I still look it's so big now this is the other thing tear like you had a tech in the
three back in the day that it wasn't, you know, wall street was much bigger. Now you have this thing. This entity that is almost like a substrate of all culture dislike banking is and finance are just like. The concept of money like money and tech are two separate.
concepts re. So you can't say that I don't think you can really go like. There is one technology. There is one web or there is one anything anymore. I mean it used to be that you
standards as created by the worldwide web consortium defined what the web really is. I don't think that that's now it's more complicated, interlinked the browsers get to say at except that
firefox sort of nina reemerged is a pretty fast, pretty good browser just switched over to it again and like
I now forever and those on israeli custer. I know his actually. This is your firefox season. This
is my season. A firefox is right now, but now I dont look, you will be
really convenient for everyone. If they controlled the means of all communication. You know I mean facebook and an apple and then they're like look man. We we would just really want to help our consumers. I think they believe it, but it's just this.
Messy sloppy pile of standards and technologies just keeps asserting itself tone.
you are out in your building for ebay clients and then we need amp. Higher
the camp is taking its debts taking over it's raining,
that is the conversation we ve had the head of amp on the show you write in malta was
we're just trying to make it faster or not
China colonise the web. Look here through the push back, is every little thing, kill, celeb, look! Ok,
I used to be a magazine editor. There is another editor there and I remember one day I was at harper's magazine which very progressive magazine and, and very it's a good way to sort of just people
or a very smart and assured of their intelligence
I remember why, but I was outraged about the new york times that day, just just giving you gave a day. It's though it's a hold on paper. They pity
so I know the senior editors office and I was like
anyone I won't sell em out because he's now athenaeum buys like all things, bob
I'm serious- a cyclist do come on it contains,
attitudes, there are lots of people who work. There
and great work, and there is amazing stories you just angry today
I didn't mean that to be like. Let me blow your mind, but I thought about it over and over because it's like it's a simple but true. It's like the thing that outrages you
and drives you. Bananas is often has these aspects that are really volume. Google is just at such a scale late. The amp project they decided
they would make a better web for mobile and they would make it really faster to load paid.
And they said well, what are we need to do and the kind of work backwards from first principles and then
said. Ok, let's have an open standard bernard night, let psycho to open, because her so much friction when you go purely open
everybody we still need to drive this thing. It's it's about our ecosystem and amp. You know you're supposed to be able to cache pages, so we'll make a really good cash we'll make the best cash possible here at Google. Well then, that means that suddenly, all the pages are hosted from Google and so the way I don't look
kind of at a point in my life. Where sounds like,
with right or wrong. But it's just when you look at the platform companies. They have power, they exist and it is impossible to hit a button and make them stop being what they are right. So
So then, you have to say what is what
google one rate and when you talk to people at google- and I think this is real
top to bottom they're like we want a healthy media ecosystem. We want like we want, but it's true. They have said that to me. They want only good things. They'll, look you in the eyes. Google cares about real estate ads right and which used to be something that the media kind of control. Now Google's got it
yeah and so you're playing in that world And- and I think, there's an element of ego or the the media is like you know, wait. What is this is this for us or not in Google's going like no amp pages are cool they'll. Let you look at house listings and browse.
videos and and do all sorts of stuff and there's a great ad product in here. That's really fast and works really well and that's their universe, yeah and then they they present
to you and you go as far as I can. Media person you're like it's gonna, take money
my pocket and they're like well. No, it's actually units monetizing, just fine, but then here's what's tricky. You go on invested and you do all the
his amp work in you. You know it takes a team of three like a couple of months and you've spent about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars inside your organization purely on your aunt migration and you got
and cross your fingers a google so cares the rate that it's the scale. I too
dina. Is god going to reach down and sort of patch on the head or or if he forgets, will he sort of like knock your head right off? Also like the implicit promise of amp, you do all that work. You spend that money, the implicit
promises and then you will rank higher
right and they won't make that promise, because they know it's very problematic. That's right, but you can't
gotta get in there and its niven winked neither dislike while the papers will be semantically better like it's just hard.
It's a mess, and you know if you're big platform company in one hundred and fifty grand isn't that big, a deal of internal budget move around and you put
Is he asean sam on that for a couple months and they do the imp integration and it monetize as a twelve percent better, but over your traffic that that's, you know that adds up to about quarter million dollars year, you're pretty happy with amp, and if it
up to fifteen thousand dollars a year. You need it can take ten years to make your investment back in your you feel really bad about it. That's all
pressure and even a big organization. That's a lot of time that sort of energy
What are not spent. Don't tell you like no big deal. Man it'll take like five minutes by its everybody cms
such a mess- that nothing is easy. Turnkey like that somehow I knew this would end up as a cms conversation. The reason I'm asking is that a lot of that's a lot of money, effort, time spent platform dancing instead of building new kinds of web experiences,
haven't seen a big new app on the web. This really interesting, and quite
long time, no not in our world the world that is getting all the money in all energy of software, a service that people are rare
cited about news here.
There are more things that have campaigned board interfaces in the world that have ever been before. I move those card, delong yeah there is actually relatively like content.
It is locking down into the the product that you guys make chorus arc for the like the hive, a lot from the washington post for like the high velocity stuff and then wordpress is kind of everywhere else.
and then there's a few like sort of more branding and marketing ones like adobe experience, manager, incite core and then kind of everybody else, and that's that's global rights like now
How many programmers are in this building right now, working on chorus in ways that focus on monitors, nation revenue, which are what the big players need right at your years ahead?
what's gonna blow up in disrupt that, so that a new player could show up. I nobody knows and if something goes up and disrupted than p
what, but for the most part, everybody else's like I see a niche over here for a smaller publications. Are there
or that or this kind of you know, or the whole ad tech world they're looking for for niches as opposed to big platforms, and they they got.
do with that, actually my ceos can it can be done my door if I don't tell people what choruses do it
for us is a platform the verge publishes, arcy, masses, proprietary. It has to pause point
a revenue engine next to it on cancer, which the programmatic add thing, the romani ads you see on the site,
I'm not here to pitch my because these and brought this is important as well. Tell people what it is. This is what's real or is that you used to get software, and now you get this sort of service and platform that hasn't.
understanding of how your business works?
at some level choruses also as a service right like nobody. Perhaps it actually
you can't download it and just run it on your. You know your windows ex p box in an experiment. You pay ass. We run it for you, yet some bycatch. As there was a time I would say early, two thousand.
There's a cycle raft of extremely interesting consumer web apps that just a few twitter is like her. I think the first one I think I write it up.
its ass by southwest we're all gonna bree tech crunch that day and we use twitter that night and on an ongoing, kaboom yeah. I dont see that anymore. I don't see that every new
tik tok right is, I would say, two parallel tat variation with him right, but that is a mobile first native app on phones. Movement is barely a web property right. Well, I mean, but you know the funny thing is that yes, but if you look at the underlying infrastructure, everything's a web property-
sure why give its things speak, http and, like all that I'm not gonna, throw acronyms at your poor listener. Lay there that's what I hear from kind of like this.
underneath the things that make the aps interesting,
eating, have communities are all web technologies and though app often tends to display
little web browser inside of the app except it's all wrapped up in the ep and so like their inmates. It's this
one it's this happy download, but the text is alleged humanitarian dislike, so the web
isn't really going away. It's the shorthand that everybody understands for. I need to put some words on a screen, or I need to do at like thirty or forty things that you usually do it just all gets wrapped up in these
packages in so, ah
but yeah the real. I dunno, I mean why do you think was I'm dieter, who I mentioned before as an article that he links to all the time called a brief definition of the web, which is a response exactly to the point you just made, which is web technologies, are
where right, but that is not the web who so here's dears definition, a brief definition
as being part of the web. Europe or page must be linked and allow any client client access. That is not true of tik tok on europe,
not sure, that's exactly some content and takes out. That is
except there's always a second instagram is a good example. You can kind of get to it on the web. You can't get instagram dms on the web, yeah! No, that's right!
The thing that MR m experiences other know what me
Instagram instagram, Mr Graham, is not like what you can see when you instagram come it's it is. It is the
yeah. So my question is: if that's what's happening, we're taking all these websites.
jeez that allowed your business
surprise that allowed our business to thrive,
and that we are now selling but wordpress exist, arc exit like there's all these software platforms for the web, that you can just buy, and and now people are in your platform, but if the thing that enabled it was linkable allow any client to access it and that's being shoved into apps, what is the push and pull dynamic? Leave your
hopeful about tech. It seems to me that the thing that everyone is most hopeful about was the democracy of access
a boy did we learn the case
I mean depot,
No, I believe in my heart a they can't take it away. Brow
there is work and I can publish a web page and put it up in the world
If it really has a message that the world needs to hear the probably I'll get you between seventy and render me, I mean there is a things: are
cheaper than they have ever been, and you can produce and distribute ideas and an extraordinary velocity. The problem is platform lacking and also just the way these ecosystems are. We
Great, like one of a thing, that's real in our world. It's like people talk about regulation. A lot regulation is the apple terms of service. Really, I'm not. I don't have to think too much about the law, because apple's going to tell me what's allowed on the app store and
I was gonna tell me, what's all out and I'll probably inherit, allow those decisions for the web version as well or ill if they are the interpreters spheres.
a convenience there.
and some other I just have to be like it's ok. This is a big new world, we're in the middle.
I don't know like you know there is this possible future?
amazon and Google drones are fighting over us.
and raining cameras down has to take pictures of everyone gets a ring, cameras or other neighbours ever again.
We re in
is that as ridiculous as it used to be
not anymore, no, because it's gotten really casual like we're now, because the ring camera could show up a naked mail
to you tomorrow, nebulae death-
what's going on here? Any that you know is it
the bull than your life. You could write an article that, like I always thought I would hate all this surveillance that was in my hearing about, but I cannot love it like they can get you there good they're gonna,
marketing, they're, gonna, messaging and end of the trade off in the giant. Platforms are pretty cool or he can allow toys to play with. Will people want it can
to something smaller? Will they want to make a little here's? My thing is always when you
go to your router unplug a little like tiny gum. Stick sized computer into a usb port and that's your social network for, like you and your friends, if that ever become
popular if, like teens, no longer want to be on platforms because they were lame, but somehow got
in assisted, meaning, unix tsunami, that this is what turkey, it's never cool, like the hard part that you need to build the community in the connection
still harder requires a lot of knowledge and it doesn't it's not sociable in the way that, like playing guitar,
social bread? You sorry ass ever held till the club yeah describe it! Ok, since this is one of the things that you here of the side, private
where you're like! Oh god, what have I done? Then it's a little source of guilt for the rest of the time. I had a couple of drinks. One night and I created a website called tell the club it used to be
the olden days that year at which I'm trying not to talk about yield in these, but the hell am I
so tilda you'd have a website would be like as region
with some servadac? I'm? U slashed, tilda care
your username, and so I created tell the cloak as santa ridiculous.
It uses to unix machine, and I gave like people accounts. We went to bed and give like ten people accounts as a joke on twitter.
and I woke up in the were like thousand question and seven thousand and I got to
five hundred and eyes like what am I doing have children by people got on that server and they made web pages and they just party like it was ninety nine, but it was new novel sort of fun stuff and after
after all, these new servers came up in the quote till diverse and people started,
creating all kinds of new environments to play mess with this until the club is actually still running. Somebody asked if they could take it over and I said yeah. We should do that, then a caprice mark Zuckerberg at this point
I'd love to see the fifty dollars a month would have it so till they club is
we say just a eunuch server, just it was
it literally on amazon acquiring an ftp ing up your files, yeah, they have accounts, I gave it to them, cause they run,
cg eyes like? I don't think I turned it on I kept it. I tried to keep it under control. What you find is you know after you get to that? What is it dunbar's number one hundred and fifty you get after that, and suddenly the behavior of human beings is a lot harder to manage inside
one there's this thing with aggregate humanity which I know you run into to adjust, becomes like monkeys hitting the bone,
behind, I didn't I was trying to avoid that. I've had that. So
many times in my career. I just I didn't, want the monkey bone
smashing the feeling of the fun side project with the community. So now is this wonderful, like I would say, month, ruling party of people making stuff
engaging with some of the reasons why they, like the medium that still there
angle by raspberry pie, further computer for thirty forty one
and I can put it on the internet and I can see
in the signal two million people. If I can find a million people and again I like the challenge now, is nobody's looking because the platforms are are sort of constantly
lowering except honestly, if that has a good, you are alan, and somebody on twitter sees it that content could get out there somewhere. Facebook like this
You are reliant on the platforms in a way you didn't used to be. I don't think people go to Google and poke around for fun anymore right now, it's a little.
Well, I would even go to youtube and background fund. That is true, but that's that's a closed. That's a hermit
Please help me: I want even let you click the links yeah when you think about what a healthier ecosystem would look like. It is nice when the platforms like
allow your content to get distributed and it's expensive to actually put video online liquid is really not easy to host a lot of streaming video for lots of people who want it, and so that's a good thing that they do. I tell you, I will it's just if we could have one hundred youtubes or
thousand so that there is some competition between all the youtube's, as opposed to a constant theme of the show
yeah? Right, like I mean that's, and but again you know, wouldn't it be nice, and I feel that sometimes in this industry we like, oh, you know there should be a utopian state that should exist because it's in my head and I'm a dude who likes tech- and I think it should be this way.
and then the world is not really gonna. Do that, like miley google's, like
No you're right? We need the split up youtube. The government could do it if it could fix
what the hell's going on there try and me no belike. Why so
firstly, why don't you ask any incline? Come to you and said we want to build a better easy now, none
two thousand and it doesn't seem like anyone's that interested in doing such are the only people
who do that are literally like they see some facebook chat and it's like a nineteen year old
It's like I'm, going to make a youtube, but it's all going to be about cargo pants and you're like cool. What's your budget and they're like what? Why
I would love to be in one of those meetings where you where you like, have to gently. Let down a teenager who
once a little gerda. Probably just do it just I'll. Do it all the time I've worked
and so many hundreds of people. At this point I have I have talked to two hundred people about their cms is yeah yeah, whatever it'd the nuts
like where is that energy? What's out there, it's vigour up in the world with the platforms now with the web,
so there thinking I wanna do exxon spotify. I want to create this and put it on youtube. There are thinking in it
remember in in rack where, as these and sorry had entertainment, seven twenty eight zero. It's like that's my absolute, my favorite architecture. Exactly everybody wants that
they're, like I'm gonna, build a multi media,
conglomerates and they skip ahead to they're gonna, build the podcast network they're going to build the you now, the three say
do. You know, go to seven twenty and in its that's what I see coming up. I know it's kind of great. I hope I can succeed
it's a lot of stuff. It isn't from Adelina, okay, create your fashion brand and your podcast network reason, and
you grab, like you, know, a few member to theirs. Is this moment in your twenties, where everyone
incredibly jealous of incredibly small things, and nobody has actually accomplished anything yet. So you get that vibe too, like everybody's trying to kind of out case their friends fantasies to show that they're, the real hustler, and so so, there's that there's that by love it I love the energy. I mean it's it's my favorite thing I mean I am a capitalism, that's like that's the animating force. I think we should put some
your guard rails around it, I think that would be good like. I think anybody who lives in a very anyone who takes public transportation in new york city is like yeah.
Got added its. I like a little capitalism.
We also generally, for he could be greatly sorted that
yeah. I also the whole city's going to underwater like two hours underwater, yes yeah. I know so it's like I'm excited.
I'm excited I like hustling, I like making money and I've loved building this company, especially I have a very good like the cofounder, my co founder rich and I like it, worked out real good. I lucked out in my partner
but there's another part of me. That is excited about the trillions of dollars of global warming, investment that is going to be necessary to keep manhattan from evaporating and I'm like that could be cool. I wonder: what's going to happen, there PAM ryan, reynolds at mid mobile. We like to do the opposite of what bait wireless. Does they charge you a lot? We charge you a little so naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices
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So let's talk just to end on that side of the building. Stuff movie does european
that I believe is good, gives you hope. We've talked a lot about the environment and when she build stuff now radically different than a few years ago, but rather the beginning of the conversation, you said, got to listen the ethics, maybe
a bit earlier right right. What did I say about ethics you're like the platforms
there's a lot introspection. It would be good if we made
after about it a little bit earlier in the process, sure so you're now product manager, you probably talked to a lot of product managers. You've built a lot of stuff. How do you think that's changed in? How do you think we make that better so that we preserve the spirit of hope and excitement?
Well, I think. First of all, there is just a lot of work to do so that parts good luck whom everybody's got a digital platforms in her
as we're talking, I'm looking at it skyscrapers. There are
seven hundred to two thousand badly decaying digital platforms within eyesight,
wait. So there's that there's just a to do, there's lots to like
at the window, like, oh, my god, a real thing in a volcano they're all going to fall in the air conditioning monitoring systems falling apart or the the website hasn't
an updated or the trading platform doesn't work like all of those things are still real. So in terms of hope. First, all I don't think product and product management is is hurting for hope is in. You have to be hopeful to be a product manager because products don't want a ship like
things in the world, don't want to get across the line. So there is a fundamental optimism that has to be paired with their willing
to say no in an answer to all that stuff. I think there's
two things that are really complicated and big and weird and world and the platform companies are confusing and messy we're in a platform. Come you talking right now we're going to make something. That's exciting! The thing
that is still mind boggling, and maybe this is just the adolescent leg model train
I myself is that it gets cheap
first to do more every day. Now it's hard in its rigid, because you have to make the applicants period since he came to publish a page anymore and so on, but I knew my old website after indict com,
don't take, there's an endorsement. No need to look at them from are used to call me a hundred
dollars a year or two hundred dollars a month to host just have a good server. That could
and a reasonable amount of traffic and so on? And I let that sit for like a couple years:
we got, plus I rolling in the one at one weekend and like I gotta, stop, spend this money, the ambiguous, a car,
me a dollar ninety nine, a month to run now cause I I use this thing called Zeit and I just like put it on the site static,
there's some command lines. Irony I have no clue what's happening, I don't know where it is. I don't know which working I cut and paste it from a tutorial and it is like it's either dollar. Ninety nine to forty nine and it works great everything works. Just fine, it's
this archive going back twenty years that is stable and secure, and I have backed up in case tackles, goes away and if I
use amazon archipelagos down even further, so it's getting
cheaper to do more, but it is not.
Environment, that rewards the vast and ridiculous creativity that we saw in the early days- and I think it would- I think that just a little more ridiculous would be welcomed because it very inexpensive too,
ridiculous scale. There I mean we ran peace today about plaques yeah beyond stephen are at it it's great peace and justice,
little communities a pop up chair and a black sir. It's basically about piracy. Just blunt
and before everyone tweets at me? Yes, I know there are legitimate uses for plex. I see you
well ripping entirely recollections blu your great, but the larger uses of blacks are these little communities
little babies matter limbs higher see communities are so much fun there really great, but I missing that right. These small till they
is another example here this is a small until the cloak too big
you bet. You know what you're saying I too big like a hundred and fifty people yeah. It is, I think, a nice
size for community is thirty year rate, and this is what turkey is because kinky famous on thirty thirty can't pay your
miles. Thirty doesn't really care that much of europe like playing in a ban like it's just community at that.
There is. None of the narcissistic rewards that we love some
I mean I love it. I like I know my twitter followers ensure exciting, but,
I could have like. I know you'd be in my thirty envy, like this one guy
Look at all the means to be a student, my dads and we lessons erase if any other wedding s areas, but that's asserting that site
due to a couple of dudes who a little too in the rock. Like you know, like some
a person whose great yeah
You know how to make the whole less fee. Everybody when we
The episode ever has to listen to see about it. You know where you see some of it is the law, the tumblr cohorts really specific on a topic in their like they're, just dig
in archiving and digging up experiences and entered the putting it together,
but getting away from the broader platforms. There's no need for, let's be real,
right leg with a nicely instrument in
ten dollar as rape I plugged in new york in the usb in
and the ability to get on the network or a really tiny clouds over? I should be able to host lie
it's the media. I have lots of fun and chat and conversation with thirty friends for probably like fifteen dollars a year yeah, so the platforms there we have access there can be then there's there's all sorts of stuff to make. This work, it's a little clunky around the edges, and I think that the other problem, too, is the streaming platforms, have made the piracy less valuable like it used to be. Like you, gotta see this. This is an obscure bootleg from the band that we care about
and now it's it's probably on spotify, or it's close enough that you're, just like I don't need to. You, can definitely find a slightly sped up version on youtube. Yeah. Exactly that's right! That's right! It doesn't quite catch the algorithm yeah. So I mean is that
the thing that we should be looking at. How can we build smaller networks of people? Smart metering? Are we ready to let go of the tens of thousands of people, possibly tell you how interesting and important you are every single day and the thing is it
Can a rigid right, like I feel part of me, would really think you can probably have both part of me would like to really just take a step back, but I have a business. I promote my business. I talk about things me being in public and having conversations like this one is an important part of like doing a job in two thousand and nineteen, and so
Where am I going to put my energy and time and and right now, I'm probably putting more energy into being outward facing via the thing I crave is just like. Goofing off with your friend, seldom suffer fun to spin silly. I miss the silly and making generous private, slacks and stuff like that yeah. I think that that one of the spirits that I miss was a building silly stuff just for fun to see if he could pull it off. That's right,
basically, it was digital vandalism. It was where he just you know it just sucking. You know you sucked. It was fine yeah, but then there's something so demoralizing about five thousand people telling you exactly why you suck they're just selling concessions. Okay. Okay, so I have two ideas for your product studio
Well, we're going to build something together, or else we're going to build a turnkey raspberry pi stick into the back of your router. Okay, it's a hardware, social! Not! You know I've thought about this a lot. The problem is getting that port open at the router level.
because that's it that's why we ve had tons around our companies. He is. I got we'll get by montenegro from euro. Ok it'll be a special;
button yeah, because a problem as I am number cable, the cable- that's like the optimum- doesn't want to open up port. Eighty eighty yeah that's a phone call and any area there a person.
We see the sea of optimum lots of homage, there's a lot of other things that argue about whether everyone likes nato executive. What about port eighty hague eyes all out of his native no competition? Even suddenly, raising prices in your service is bad, but I really want this one port, oh yeah, my heart or a social network, startup idea
listen it'll, be worth it. Alright, hardware, social networks. I think, would that be fun yeah? Let's do it like what it's like, bb ss, but but smaller just I mean what
ok just take paused for right. I was like a deep cbs notes and re,
ask people what they want to they want to lever. They want to read a little graffiti on the wall. It'd be like I was here. They want to share some files. What else yeah, I think, there's there's
That's right, I don't have to be a complicated it's folded where they want to find people. Should I mean like red? It is this idea at scale right, but how do I keep it? Small, that's gotta, stay small value,
you clearly are raped by him by the power of your raspberry. Pi is brutal right, though, because if you say it's thirty and then someone has to come and someone has to go, I'm telling you this is one hundred percent you're, all you're doing is making a wedding guest list system. This is how my wedding was four hundred and fifty people yeah. This is the thing: how do you keep it smaller when some people have a much higher threshold for knowing people? Here's the second thing? Okay, then, I think you should do is you should promote your podcast, which is why you came on this podcast to tell us what that more often thanks
you for this opportunity, if, if you like the sound of my voice and who, wouldn't you should check out track changes from post, like he's, gonna posts,
dot com. You will find a right away. Is a weekly podcast than I do with my co founder richard Ziyadi all
bout. How technology is cheap,
during the world, but also, if you really know what the hell is enterprise
for what is direct where, where the the place to go, what is product? Well, we get a lot different definitions. When I would say, is it's a it's a social craft, more than anything in which you
take the energy of designers and the energy of engineers, and you you help and coordinate with them and often with other stakeholders to make the thing happen and get it shipped across the line. So sometimes the different kinds of product managers- some people are like right in the document and saying here's what we're going to build a summer just every day, sitting down with the team but you're you're, you're, coordinating the development of the product, and you are managing scope, cutting scope working on budgets like making making it real at a large org, where
in service, so we're mostly focused on shipping. The thing at a big company, a product manager is also usually responsible for revenue. Yeah, like this thing that we're launching has to make one hundred million dollars a year, yeah
since there are a lot of money. No, that is
you go or for the big by foreign companies. It's like what you know. What do you do as a p m, while I'm responsible, I have two in eighteen- must develop a product with a hundred million dollars on rate, but you do that because you're already on top of something that makes billions sear like ok,
of oranges, we're gonna, sell lemons and we'll get more mark up on the eleventh and there like, while that added up to a hundred million dollars, you get a bonus. It sounds a lot easier and harder than when I
yeah. What reason I'm in journalism, MIKE I'm over here from the revenue yeah, that's it happens over. There is great yeah. It's always were
definitely stay away from the money is a great plan for
That's what I would tell everyone in journalism dead, don't ever understand the business. That's another! Forty five minutes, Jackie ass of user, powerful.
Thank you so much for joining us. It's exciting! It is really truly odd that we have known of each other and around each other. For so long, we've never sat down and talked it's a big city. It's still a big industry, yeah! Alright! Well! Thank you thanks. Alright, that was
I'll forward my thanks to him for joining us. You can check out his show tracked changes all by product management. It's great! I encourage you to listen to it when we back
friday with more verge cast
tuesday, as more interviewers may keep it going, got some surprises in store for you coming up on the feed them excited about those,
Tweet at me, I'm at reckless would love to hear from you love your feedback on the show. Here you want me to talk to you what you want me to get into we're here, for you we'll see on friday, hey I'm ryan reynolds at mid mobile. We like to do the opposite of what big wireless. Does they charge you a lot? We charge you a little so naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our price
is due to not hating you. That's right. We're cutting the price of mint, unlimited from thirty dollars a month to just fifteen dollars a month, give it a try: mint mobile dot com, slash, switch new activation, an upfront payment for three month plan required taxes and fees. Extra additional restrictions apply cement, mobile dot com for full terms, fox creative. This is advertiser content
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