Fortt Knox

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonfortt/detail/recent-activity/ https://www.youtube.com/c/forttknox I should have posted this way earlier, but I've been getting questions. Here's the skinny: Fortt Knox is not dead. It's just been reborn. Instead of living in your favorite podcast app, Fortt Knox now lives on LinkedIn and YouTube.   Now you can see video of my interviews, and engage with a broader community of Fortt Knox viewers. I stream my interviews live, and the recordings are there for on-demand viewing. I also serve up curated insights from the interviews -- there's something new from Fortt Knox in my Jon Fortt LinkedIn feed just about every weekday, and pretty often on the Fortt Knox channel on YouTube, too.   Beyond that, Fortt Knox is taking on new life -- it's a weekly newsletter distributed through my profile on LinkedIn's platform. So if you don't have time to check in with me every day, you can get a weekly roundup of the latest goings on in tech, leadership and innovation, and find out what's coming next. So get on LinkedIn and subscribe, and that will be delivered right to your inbox.   Still, I know a lot of listeners will be bummed that the podcast part has gone away. You might be wondering why. It comes down to this: I want to hear from you. Interact with you. Podcasts are great as a passive medium, but they're a little too passive for where I want to take this. The new format is rich with video, and gives lots of opportunity for you to share the experience with others and interact with me.   So that's it! Look, LinkedIn isn't just for job hunting, and it's not just for self promoters and techies. It's a great platform for everyone who wants to get insight into how to do work better. And no, that's not a paid endorsement. Nobody paid me to move this to LinkedIn. It just happens to be the best platform for what I want to do with Fortt Knox. So: Thanks for being on the ride thus far, and I hope to see you on LinkedIn and YouTube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the late 1990s, Andy Jassy pitched a wild idea to his boss and mentor, Jeff Bezos: What if Amazon developed another business, delivering computing power and storage .  Two decades later, it stands as Amazon’s most profitable division – one that Jassy continues to lead as CEO of Amazon Web Services. I sat down with Jassy in a broadcast exclusive at the company’s annual AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas to talk about Amazon’s lead in the cloud today, the controversy surrounding the Pentagon’s awarding of the highly sought-after JEDI contract to Microsoft (and Amazon’s lawsuit in response), the lessons learned from the company’s failed HQ2 attempt in New York City and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A walk to remember. Apple CEO Tim Cook and President Donald Trump in Texas this week, and it’s a high stakes photo op. They’re at the factory in Austin Texas where Apple’s Mac Pro computer is assembled.   Cook no doubt wants to make it hard for the president to put tariffs on Mac Pro components. Cook has said unless they continue to be exempt from tariffs, he’ll have to move manufacturing completely to China.  The president wants to push Apple and U.S. CEOs more broadly to manufacture here instead of in China.   But I think this whole scene is a bit of a sham. I’ll tell you why.  Joining me this week, Ina Fried, chief tech correspondent at Axios.  We’ve got more than Trump and Cook, we’ve got Disney Plus hacking, Microsoft teaming up on Slack, and more.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I was on the road this week, doing a little tour of California. Three cities in three days. San Francisco Monday, L.A. Tuesday, San Diego Wednesday. Adobe’s MAX conference was this week in LA, where the creative software giant unveils its latest features.   Well, everybody’s got challengers, and one of Adobe’s is a startup called Canva. Canva has emerged to help regular folks add high-end creative flair to their presentations. Even better, it was founded by a young woman in Australia who was looking for a way to make yearbooks in the digital era. It turned into something much bigger than she envisioned. I sat down with Melanie Perkins at the New York Stock Exchange recently to talk about how how her design project turned into a profitable, venture-backed brand that’s earned praise from legendary tech watcher and investor Mary Meeker among others.   This week, my one-on-one with the co-founder and CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the biggest single cloud contract … possibly ever. Definitely the most talked about. The Pentagon's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract. JEDI, going to: Microsoft late last week. The Empire Strikes Back.  The JEDI contract is worth up to 10 billion dollars over 10 years, but just as valuable as the money: It's worth bragging rights and street cred. This was supposed to be Amazon's contract to lose. Amazon practically invented enterprise cloud computing 14 years ago with AWS. When the Pentagon put out the requirements for the contract a year and a half ago, some competitors cried foul that it was too tailored to Amazon.  Is this a game changer in the cloud wars?  With me this week, co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Alley, Morgan Brennan.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Washington this week arguing for Libra, the digital currency his company created and wants to build around. This after he last week made the case in front of an audience at Georgetown University that Facebook’s future, its past, its reason for being are all tied up in free speech. With me this week for another bite out of this Facebook and free speech debate: John Stanton, the cofounder of the Save Journalism Project, and Farhad Manjoo, columnist for the New York Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech just can’t get away from politics.   Senator Elizabeth Warren has a bone to pick with Facebook. Mainly its standards for political ads. After Facebook refused to take down a Trump Campaign ad that accused former vice president Joe Biden of wrongdoing connected to his son Hunter’s work in Ukraine, Warren fired back. She posted her own Facebook ad that started with a false claim that Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg have endorsed Trump for re-election.   A little farther afield, Activision Blizzard is caught out in the storm of controversy around Hong Kong. Chung Ng Wai, a Hearthstone player, was removed from a tournament, denied prize money and banned for a year for saying in a post-game interview, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!” ATVI has since softened a little, saying they’ll let him have his 10,000 dollars prize money and ban him for just six months.   With me this week to talk free speech and more: from LA, Mike Jackson is CEO and principal at Motus One and founder of 2050 Marketing. Here in New York, Nilay Patel is editor in chief of The Verge.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s hard to save money these days – and I’m not talking about the new phones and earbuds that come out this time of year and tempt you to spend. Interest rates are really low. Which is great if you’re borrowing to buy a house or a car, but not so awesome if you want to save. The interest rate for the typical U.S. savings account is 9 hundredths of a percent.   But! All is not lost. For a long time there have been higher rates for savers, even from mainstream banks. Now a young and scrappy group of tech startups are pushing the boundaries further with interest rates at about 2% – that’s 20 times higher than average. It’s the difference between earning 16 bucks a month on 10 thousand dollars in savings, or earning just 75 cents.   That’s just the beginning. There are cheaper ways to trade stocks, ways to make money off of credit cards. Today we’re going to help you put a plan together.   With me this week, CNBC’s personal finance expert Sharon Epperson. And Kenneth Lin, CEO of Credit Karma, which has just announced it’s launching one of these high-yield savings accounts. Later, Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve got a blockbuster hardware announcement this week … from Microsoft. The biggest hardware risk the company has taken since Xbox. Surface Neo, two screens with a hinge in between, coming next year. And there’s more. Surface Pro X, arguably the first ARM-based computer to run full Windows 10.  Has Microsoft changed the game here? Or are these cool gadgets that won’t really sell?  With me this week, one of my favorite guys to talk hardware, Pat Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategies. Let’s talk Microsoft vs. the rest of the field and then hit some other headlines in consumer electronics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann resigned from the CEO role this week, in the face of skepticism about the coworking startup’s plans to go public. There are questions about the business model – we’ve addressed some of those here on Fortt Knox. There are questions about his eccentric leadership style. And there are questions about the way he’s maintained control of the company while taking lots of money out of it.   WeWork is in the headlines this week, but we’ve lived through versions of this story before. Uber’s board of directors pushed co-founder Travis Kalanick out of the CEO role to get the IPO done. The Google founders brought in Eric Schmidt early on as CEO to act as adult supervision. The biggie: Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was effectively forced out of Apple in the ‘80s only to come back a decade later to save the company.   We love founders. Their stories and personalities live at the heart of companies. But sometimes they’ve got to go. When? When is firing a founder a mistake?  With me this week, tech chronicler Steven Levy of Wired magazine, who has covered big companies, big ideas, big personalities – his most recent book was about Google. Also with me, Walter Isaacson, biographer of great founders and inventors including Steve Jobs, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Days ago California lawmakers passed a bill, AB5, that would force more companies to treat more workers as employees, not contractors. What’s the big deal?  The gig economy. Whether it’s Uber and Lyft, or Postmates and Doordash, or TaskRabbit and Instacart, a slew of companies have grown up in the smartphone era with a radical idea. When just about everyone has a smartphone and a credit card, you can assemble a workforce on a moment’s notice, pay workers electronically, and let them be independent contractors. They can work as much or as little as they want!  But just because employers can do this doesn’t mean they should. And that’s what we’re going to debate today.   With me this week: Two professionals who have driven for Uber and Lyft and have different opinions about what should happen here.   Karim Bayumi is out of LA. He says drivers like him – he’s driven 5 to 6 days a week for the platforms – deserve the protections of employee status, and the companies can’t be trusted to provide that without a law.   Harry Campbell is a former part-time Uber and Lyft driver who’s known as the Rideshare Guy. He’s got a blog that focuses on the driver community, a YouTube channel, a podcast – and he says forcing companies to treat drivers as employees is the wrong way to go. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Apple's iPhone extravaganza is still the biggest product event of the year for a simple reason: The iPhone remains the single most successful hardware product of the PC era. We can talk about whether sales are growing or not, whether Apple is innovating or not. But Apple still sells more premium phones every year than anyone else.   So what happened this week? Three new iPhones announced, the iPhone 11, 11 Pro and Pro Max. A new Apple Watch with a screen that doesn't turn off. A new entry-level iPad. And two services at $4.99 a month, Apple Arcade and Apple TV Plus.  What does all of this mean? Should you pay $300 more for three cameras on the back instead of two? Does the watch update matter? And can Apple out-HBO HBO?  With me this week: A great lineup of people who know their stuff. Walt Mossberg, the godfather of tech reviews, is going to talk big picture from DC. Tech analyst extraordinaire Pat Moorhead and tech strategist Shelly Palmer are going to sift through and tell us which they think are the most significant. And then CNBC's own Julia Boorstin is going to join us from LA to give the view from Hollywood Apple's subscription moves.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The National Football League was on the brink last year. Not of death – let’s not talk crazy, now – but of the type of loss of relevance that has humbled baseball and boxing over the past generation or so.    But now as the NFL's 100th season kicks off this week, there's a sense of fresh energy. And I would argue that if football's going to make a full comeback, technology is going to have to play a big role.  First, a word about where we've been. Football was the undisputed champ of the major sports leagues, popularity-wise. But between critical tweets from President Trump, fans angry about players kneeling during the anthem, fans angry that Colin Kaepernick doesn't have a job after kneeling, concerns about player concussions and safety, the spotlight was withering.   Now things appear to be turning. The NFL struck a deal with Jay-Z's Roc Nation to promote music and merchandise that will benefit social justice causes, possibly addressing the move for player activism. The owners and players are already at the table for collective bargaining, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told CNBC this week, in hopes of presenting a strong case to both broadcast and streaming partners. ESports is gaining in popularity, potentially boosting the brand of the real game. And legal sports betting, enabled by smartphones, has some fans paying closer attention than ever.  With me this week: CNBC's sports guy, Eric Chemi. Also on this week's podcast: How to say this: Rapper Jim Jones is known to his fans as an avid smoker of marijuana. It's so much a part of his brand that he's hoping to leverage that reputation into a business. His business associate Alex Todd, a jeweler with celebrity clientele, has launched a cannabis brand called Saucey Farms and Extracts. And Jones has a line within Saucey called CAPO. I talked to both of them about how a hobby is turning into a business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summer’s coming to a close, and that means the streaming wars are about to get a lot more real. Apple released a trailer for The Morning Show, one of the big series slated to hit its Apple TV Plus service this fall. Disney just gave us more details behind its slate of shows for the Disney Plus service that launches in November; and Disney and Sony get a movie divorce … and Sony gets custody of Spider-Man.   And later on the 1-on-1: Peter Reinhardt is the CEO of Segment, a startup that helps companies make sense of customer data. The company has raised more than $280 million and is worth more than $1 billion, but the path hasn't always been smooth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 years ago this week, Google had its IPO. Initial Public Offering. That means shares of its stock were available to buy for the first time. I was working as a tech reporter in Silicon Valley at the time and remember it was a big deal for a couple of reasons. One, Google’s IPO was a glimmer of hope after the dotcom bust. Two, Google was trying to reinvent the IPO by making it more transparent. They used a process called a Dutch Auction.   Today the IPO hasn’t changed for the most part. But maybe it’s about to. Prominent venture capitalist Michael Mortiz of Sequoia Capital wrote an op-Ed this week arguing that Slack and Spotify are leading the way to a better day where Wall Street fat cats won’t control and mystify the process of going public. But what would that mean for mom-and-pop investors? What would it mean for startup employees looking to make good?  This week to talk the future of the IPO I’ve got Mr. IPO, Jay Ritter, University of Florida Cordell Professor of Finance. Also joining me later on here at the Nasdaq I’ve got Kevin Delaney, Quartz Editor in Chief; and from San Francisco, Connie Loizos, TechCrunch Silicon Valley Editor and my former colleague at a certain newspaper in Silicon Valley.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’ve got a business idea. I’m going to take out loans to rent a bunch of apartments around the world. Two-year leases. Then I’m going to decorate them with a super-cool modern vibe … snacks, premium soaps, entertainment spaces… and Airbnb them by the week and half week to vacationers and business travelers for less than they’d pay for a hotel room.   But wait, you say. You’re signing up for two-year leases and only getting commitments in the days and weeks. What if the economy goes bad? What if your landlords raise the rent? What if you try to grow too fast, and your loan payments go up?  Funny you should ask. WeWork’s parent company just filed for an IPO this week, and WeWork’s business model sounds a lot like the one I just described, only it’s office space, not apartments. Is it a good bet?  We’re gonna talk WeWork, we’re gonna talk Viacom/CBS, Disney/Fox, Yahoo/Tumblr, Twitch/Mixr – all kinds of things that come in twos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's talk money. Apple, the tech giant, the iPhone maker, this week launched … a credit card. That's right, Apple Card, linked to Apple Pay. Apple's pitch with the card? It starts with cash and goes deep with security and design.  This week we're going to take a closer look at the card and the app … which I have seen up close. And we're going to compare it to the deals and features you can get elsewhere. Is it really a good deal?   With me this week: Sara Rathner from NerdWallet – a site that studies these kinds of things – and joining us a bit later, CNBC's Dierdre Bosa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The problem with the Monopoly board game is that only one person ends up happy in the last half hour of the game, and everyone else is miserable.  If you believe tech critics, some of the biggest companies in the industry have figured out a way around this unhappy ending in real life: Each one of these multi-billion-dollar juggernauts has its own mini-monopoly. Google gets to rule search engines, Facebook gets social networks, Amazon gets e-commerce and Apple gets expensive phones … made by Apple … or something. I really don't get any of the arguments that Apple has a monopoly on anything.  Why does this matter?   One could argue – and I know this because I'm about to – that the tech companies that are in the antitrust crosshairs are more central to our everyday lives than any group of accused monopolists in history. This isn't a bunch of railroads or oil companies. This is the app you use all day to talk to your friends and family. The phone you use to fire up that app. The service you use to search for the theme gift for a 10-year wedding anniversary, and the store you use to buy the gift.  If these companies are found to be monopolists ... and they're found to be abusing their monopoly power … they could get broken up or otherwise restricted.  Should that happen? We're going to help you decide. With me today to figure it out, some legal firepower:  Doug Melamed is a professor at Stanford Law School and before that was general counsel at Intel. A couple of decades ago he served at the U.S. Department of Justice as Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division.  Dina Srinivasan is an antitrust Scholar and an author of the paper: “The Antitrust Case Against Facebook.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Five billion dollars. That’s how much Facebook will have to fork over to the government under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. It’s the biggest fine for violating user privacy by a wide margin – 200 times bigger than the previous record, according to the FTC chair.   If I got hit with a 5 billion dollar speeding ticket, it would hurt. I’m not going to lie. But some are already saying the settlement doesn’t go far enough.   So. After this settlement, can Facebook say it has paid its debt to society? Or did Zuckerberg and company just make out like bandits?  And: What does this say about privacy regulators’ ability to effectively walk the beat in Silicon Valley? With me this week to shake me out of my vacation-induced stupor: Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s the thing: It’s really hard to put a dollar value on the data that you or I deliver to internet platforms. What’s the value of a tweet? A Facebook profile that tells my birthday and links to my closest relatives?   It’s even hard to put a value on the data the platforms have on all of us. Sure, it’s probably worth billions of dollars. But how many billions? Does the value of data go up over time like a house, or down over time, like a car?  Our first topic is the value of data, because Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator Josh Hawley want to require big tech companies to report the value of our data, like an asset, and would instruct the Securities and Exchange Commission to come up with a formula for calculating how much the data is worth.   Joining me to discuss that and a lot more: CNBC’s own Josh Lipton.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julie Sweet today leads the North American business at Accenture, a global consulting giant. Years ago, she was a high school sophomore with the gift of gab, entering various debate and speech competitions for the prize money, building her own scholarship fund. She wasn't doing it for kicks; at times growing up in Southern California she had just one pair of shoes, or one pair of pants that fit. Her father painted cars for a living, and her mother was a hairdresser.    One particular contest at the Lions Club had come down to a final showdown between Julie and another girl. Julie lost. Stung by the injustice of it – she felt her speech had been better – she griped to her father on the way home.    —  To say Tom Siebel has had an interesting life would be putting it mildly. He’s a billionaire entrepreneur, a tech visionary, and the survivor of an elephant attack eight years ago that, by the odds, should have killed him.    Several doctors told him he would never walk again, much less sail competitively. But he does.   So what do you learn about life when you’ve stared down death in the form of a five-ton elephant, been crushed by that elephant, and lived to tell the tale?    What do you learn when you’ve invented one of the first killer workplace apps of the PC era, and sold it for about 6 billion dollars?   —  When he was 14 years old growing up in West Philadelphia, Troy Carter started promoting parties at a neighbor's house and charging for entry. He did the DJing himself to save money.   Today he's one of the most respected visionaries at the intersection of two industries: Music and tech.    Carter wears a lot of hats. He's been a manager, working with the likes of John Legend, Lady Gaga and Meghan Trainor. He's an investor, a general partner at venture capital firm Cross Culture Ventures. And he's a connector.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon has three people who hold the title of CEO. There's Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO. Then there are two deputies: Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, the cloud business. And Jeff Wilke, CEO of global consumer.  Jeff Wilke got the title CEO of global consumer three years ago, and hadn't done a broadcast interview since – until this week, when he sat down with me for CNBC. Wilke's been with Amazon for 20 years, and now runs the core business of e-commerce and physical retail. The massive global logistics operation, the billions of items shipped – all that reports up to him.  I talked to Jeff Wilke in Las Vegas at Amazon's first re:MARS event; MARS stands for machine learning, automation, robotics and space. Later on in his keynote, Wilke gave an update on Amazon's plan to deliver packages by drone. He didn't spill the beans on that plan in this interview, but he does talk about Amazon's ambition to keep delivering Prime packages faster and faster – in even less than a day.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re past Memorial Day, and that means two things: barbecue season, and software season.    Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, WWDC, kicks off Monday. It’s an event where Apple gathers engineers from everywhere to announce its vision for the future of software, and to answer their questions about how to make today’s apps work better.  Who cares? Well, if you use an iPhone, iPad, Mac, you’re probably getting new software, even if you don’t buy a new device. And if you’re a tech watcher, you get some hints about what’s coming in the next generations of iPhones and iPads.   Joining me to talk Apple, tech labor and more, I’ve got the father of tech reviews, a pioneer in tech journalism, Walt Mossberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever get so mad in an argument that you forget what it’s about? Just so focused on the other person being wrong that you forget what your point was in the first place?  A couple of developments in tech this week bring exactly that to mind. The Trump Administration’s blacklisting of Huawei and the outcry over FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s blessing for the marriage of T-Mobile and Sprint.   Huawei is China’s biggest tech player, kind of like what Samsung is in South Korea. Huawei makes phones, they make networking equipment. The Trump Administration says they also make a security risk for U.S. 5G networks. Huawei’s leadership is too close to the Chinese government, they say, and so no U.S. companies should buy their equipment or otherwise do business with them. I say that’s a flawed security strategy and we’re going to talk about why.   Joining me to do exactly that: Kevin Delaney, Editor in Chief at Quartz.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ever hear about kids taking a gap year after high school? A gap year. It's when they don't go straight to college and don't get a job, they … do something else. Maybe travel to Europe, or hike the Appalachian Trail. Gap years cost money, so mostly rich kids do them. For other people they’re called “being unemployed,” or “vagrancy.”  But! For kids whose parents can afford it? A gap year can be a beautiful period of self-discovery. Or it can be a ticket to delay responsibility.   What does this have to do with tech? Uber just went public days ago, after waiting a long time. Which is kind of like finally starting college after that gap year. How did the stock do? Terrible. Like straight Fs. Priced at the low end of the range, trading 10 percent below that.   I blame the parents. SoftBank and its 100-billion-dollar Vision Fund have been slinging billions of dollars around Silicon Valley like gap years after Andover, helping startups delay their IPOs. The question today? Is SoftBank spoiling the kids?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Uber had an action-packed IPO that did NOT go the way a lot of people expected. And in the lead-up to that, I got a visit from one of the smartest guys in the world in the field of computer vision – which is an important facet of driverless cars. This week on Fortt Knox, Ina Fried of Axios joins me to talk Uber, and Amnon Shashua of Mobileye tells how he went from college professor to billionaire entrepreneur … who is still a college professor.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Endgame just the beginning? Disney has its eyes on the prize in the streaming wars, and now that it’s clocked the biggest movie opening ever – by a mile – all the pieces might be falling into place.    I now consider myself to be something of an Avengers Endgame expert. I saw it in Orlando on vacation Friday, then got stranded in Vegas for work Monday and saw it again. Don’t ask.   And basically Disney couldn’t ask for a better setup for the launch of its streaming strategy this fall. This year it’s closing out two of the top-grossing movie franchises of all time: Avengers and the Star Wars Skywalker saga. This as some of the biggest names in tech, including Apple, Google and Amazon, are also suiting up to do battle in streaming. Also: I sat down with VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to talk about innovation, tech's impact on society, and the challenges of being a person of faith while leading a Silicon Valley company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I grew up in Washington, DC in the ‘80s. And 4 out of 5 playground fights ended before they started. Oh, there was plenty of trash talk – name calling, threats, even pushing. But when it was time to throw down? Most kids didn’t really want that busted lip.   This week we saw that same story play out in the multi-billion-dollar world of tech. Apple was gonna teach Qualcomm a lesson. Qualcomm wasn’t scared. Yesterday, minutes into their high-stakes court battle, the giants settled.   With me to break down the most important stuff happening in tech: Casey Newton of The Verge.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Rogers, Jr. Is Chairman and CEO of Ariel Investments. It has $13 billion under management. It's the largest black-owned investment firm in the country, and he's been running it more than 35 years.   This week, my conversation with John. We talk about a lot of stuff, including why he likes to eat one meal a day at McDonald’s, and how he once beat Michael Jordan playing basketball, 1-on-1. Seriously. It’s on YouTube.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week I spent some time talking to Ginni Rometty, the chairman and CEO of IBM.   I've been wanting to do a CNBC and Fortt Knox interview with Ginni for years now, and this year, it finally all came together. As a matter of fact, she and I have been making up for lost time. She's been kind enough to sit down with me three times: in January after her keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in February at IBM's Think conference in San Francisco, and this week at CNBC's first Future of Work event of the year in New York. We've got a rhythm going.  After our on-stage interview tackling artificial intelligence, workforce training and more, she joined me for a dive into how IBM is addressing those challenges specifically, and how the themes of technology shifts, equity and discomfort fit her own journey.   This is a quick talk by Fortt Knox standards – but it's packed. Ginni doesn't waste words. Still, she left me wanting more, and I'll wager you'll feel the same. I can guarantee I'll try to get her to spend some time with me on Fortt Knox again.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Apple TV Plus. Apple News Plus. Apple Arcade. Apple Card. We still don’t have all the details, like pricing and mechanics, but Apple CEO Tim Cook hosted Hollywood royalty at the company’s Cupertino headquarters this week. The promise: a new model for digital commerce and digital content that emphasizes privacy over targeting and subscriptions over ads.   But is Apple too late? And for publishers and producers who have been burned by the big platforms before, is this time different?  Joining me to dig for answers, Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief and co-CEO at Quartz; Stephanie Mehta, editor of Fast Company; and Rebekah Saltsman, CEO of Finji, the game studio behind Overland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Twenty-five years ago today I was probably really stressed out about the college application and admissions process.   Things have arguably gotten tougher since then for students trying to chart their futures. And the headlines this month don’t help.    The U.S. Department of Justice charged 50 people last week in a multi-million-dollar scheme that allowed rich parents to cheat the college admissions system. By faking standardized test scores and bribing athletics officials, those parents managed to get their kids into elite schools like Georgetown, Stanford, Yale, and USC.  But what if you don’t want to commit a crime but still want to succeed in life? What’s the plan? We’re going to discuss.   With me this week: Michael Reilly, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers; C.J. Farley, author of the new book Around Harvard Square, and the father of two teenagers; Adam Brownlee, an investment theory instructor at Western Kentucky University who has done the math on whether an Ivy League degree is worth the cost; and CNBC wealth editor Robert Frank.   Also on the podcast: Frank Calderoni is the CEO of software company Anaplan, and he’s the former CFO of companies including Cisco, Red Hat and SanDisk.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have tech companies gotten so big that it’s bad for the economy? Senator Elizabeth Warren says so. She’s proposing to break up not one, but several tech giants, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. She says they shouldn’t be allowed to both run distributor platforms and compete on them. It’s like being an umpire and a team owner at the same time.   Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek not calling for a breakup, but he is calling for an overhaul – specifically when it comes to Apple. He’s pointing to the same issue Warren is: Apple is charging Spotify to operate on its App Store, but then also competing with Spotify in the same store.   So. Is there a problem here? Should big tech be broken up? If not, should regulators step in to change the rules?  This week I’m joined by Wired senior writer Lauren Goode; and here with me, New York Times Tech columnist Kevin Roose.   Joining us in just a bit, former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Author of new book: “From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future”  Later on the podcast: Dominique Morisseau is a playwright, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, and her musical “Ain’t Too Proud — The Life and Times of the Temptations” opens on Broadway this Thursday. A unique innovator shares her journey and you don’t want to miss it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You’ve probably heard of Fortnite. It’s a game and more than a game – a cultural moment that’s swept in with all the force of Pokémon Go, and arguably more of the staying power. There’s the game itself, but there are the dances, the addictions.   Now, here’s a twist: Fortnite has competition. Electronic Arts a month ago dropped Apex Legends, its own free-to-play multiplayer team combat game, and it MIGHT be hotter than Fortnite. It has grown as much in a month as Fortnite did in four. Fortnite’s developer is already copying features.   So. What makes this style of game so different from what came before? How big is the money involved? And how does it fit into the future of eSports? Plus: Gary Smith grew up in Birmingham, then the industrial heart of the United Kingdom. Both of his parents worked in factories. For career day, the high school took the kids to a coal mine and a steelworks. Smith wasn't inspired.  Smith is now the CEO of Ciena, a networking company with a market value over $6 billion. But at the time, he didn't reject a future in mining because of high-tech dreams. In a recent conversation, Smith told me that after high school, he moved to London to pursue a dream of becoming a photographer; he took commercial photos of buildings, and also shot weddings and other events.   Only by wading into the job market and trying to make it did he discover technology, and figure out what skills he would need.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s little question that technology – software – is shaping the future of our work, our play, and even how we form opinions. But who is shaping that technology?  It’s been quite an economic run. The stock market’s been climbing for a decade, and in that time, tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook have gone from underdogs to overlords. Even as that’s happened, employees and observers have settled on a nagging question: Is there room for more women and minorities on the campuses and in the startups where this future is crafted?   With me in New York this week, Anu Duggal, founding partner at Female Founders Fund. Joining me from Atlanta, Kathryn Finney, founder and managing director at Digital Undivided, which encourages entrepreneurship among black and Latina women. And from San Francisco, Ruben Harris is CEO of Career Karma, host of the Breaking Into Startups podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So long, New York! Amazon has pulled out of its commitment to build a massive campus and bring 25,000 to 40,000 high-paying jobs to Long Island City in Queens. On Valentines Day!  Roses are red / violets are blue / you’re not getting / my HQ2 – Love, Jeff  What went wrong? Why the breakup?   First of all, some critics were mad that New York offered 3 billion dollars in tax incentives to lure Amazon in the first place. Most businesses just come here because they want to be in New York and pay the taxes.   Second, you’ve got the union issues. Amazon flat out said, we’re not going to want our employees to unionize.  But still. It wasn’t as if the working class in Queens was rising up in protest against the Amazon deal. A poll by the Siena College Research Institute found 56 percent of New Yorkers wanted it, Democrats and Independents more than Republicans. Blacks and Latinos favored the deal more than any other group.   So what gives? And what does it mean for future deals between billionaire-run corporations and cities?   Joining me: Anand Giridharadas, author of  “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and CNBC Wealth Editor Robert Frank. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Facebook is worth almost a half trillion dollars. It has more than 2 billion users who log in at least once a month. It has a famous CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, hailed in Silicon Valley as a Bill Gates for the Internet age – the suburban Harvard kid who dropped out of Harvard to start a company and change the world.   Facebook also has problems. Its once non-controversial mission of connecting the world has taken a dark turn. Connecting the world to what, exactly? After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and controversies over how Facebook gave partners access to user data, there’s a question hanging out there. Is Facebook unwittingly connecting the world to too much misinformation, political manipulation, or worse? Or does the good that happens on Facebook outweigh the bad?  With me this week: Roger McNamee. He’s an early investor in Facebook. He’s an early adviser to Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has made him a lot of money. And he’s the author of a new book out this week: “Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe.” He says Facebook is bad for America.   Also with me: Antonio Garcia Martinez, former Facebook employee, and author of “Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley.” He does not think Facebook is bad for America.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Apple this week pulled a Facebook app from the App Store. It’s called Facebook Research, and its purpose was to let Facebook watch everything that users did on the phone. Apple says the snooping app is too invasive, even if users had consented to letting Facebook watch their every move.   Which raises the question: How much social media is too much? Are we giving these platforms too much data? Are we posting stuff too quickly without thinking about it? Is it time to step back?  With me this week, Farhad Manjoo, a New York Times columnist who recently wrote a column about the response to the controversy around Covington Catholic students, and how that inspired him to change his Twitter behavior.   Also with me, Jeff Jarvis, professor at the City University of New York and longtime journalism commentator. Chris Moody is a former data strategy VP at Twitter, currently a partner at investment firm Foundry Group. And later, Jaron Lanier, noted computer scientist, and researcher at Microsoft.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He did this the hard way – grew up playing guitar in a band, skipped college, became an accountant by testing into the profession and, after he got into the corporate world, made a lateral move into marketing. He is Andy Mooney, the CEO of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.  Mooney and Fender are trying to change the way we look at musical instruments, and the process of buying one and learning to play. It all made sense after he told me his role in the Disney Princess concept becoming a global marketing phenomenon. Also: The game has changed. It used to be, a movie was valuable if it had a big showing at the box office, though there was the occasional film that did big rental business but didn’t do much in theaters. For more on that, see the entire careers of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen after Full House. And then for TV, much of the same: A show is big if it gets people to watch commercials or buy cable.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scott Belsky didn’t drop out of college, didn’t go straight into being an entrepreneur – he had an idea about what a certain group of customers needed, and he kept tweaking his approach until he built the right thing. That thing, Behance, is a professional network for artists. Kind of like a LinkedIn for visual people. He sold it to Adobe for $150 million. That in itself is pretty cool. But maybe more impressive is what he’s done since. He helped kickstart Adobe’s move to software at a service and invested early in a bunch of hot startups like Uber, Pinterest, Warby Parker and Sweetgreen. Now he’s back at Adobe, leading the development of creative cloud products.  Scott Belsky is the author of The Messy Middle, a book about the challenges between starting something and declaring it a big success. I loved this conversation. Here’s Scott Belsky.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Consumer Electronics Show, CES, is how tech starts the year. It’s a massive event in Vegas with halls full of booths, wall-to-wall people, and companies competing to convince the world that they own the future.   Julia Boorstin and I were there for CNBC, interviewing executives, taking in the news, now we’re going to break down what it all means.  This year there is no single hit product to take over for the smartphone. And unlike the past few, there’s no contender. We know drones aren’t really going mainstream. Virtual and augmented reality aren’t either. Artificial intelligence is fun, and 100 million Alexa-powered devices have been sold by Amazon and its partners, but no one’s getting rich off of selling voice-powered devices.   At the same time, we’ve got 5G, fifth-generation wireless on the horizon, and big ideas like autonomous driving and quantum computing. Julia and I got into all of that in Vegas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wellness, fitness, nutrition – all of it is getting a makeover in this age of mobile tech.   Now you can book doctor appointments on an app, get your blood drawn and the results back in 20 minutes. You can give your doctor access to your genetic code and get truly personalized service.   Your stationary bike can connect to the Internet to motivate you.   But how much is too much? And what are the best services to check out?   We have got just the show to kick off the year, whether you do resolutions or not. Joining me today, CNBC reporters Chrissy Farr and Diana Olick. And I’m thrilled to have WW CEO Mindy Grossman here with me. What’s WW? It’s the artist formerly known as Weight Watchers.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The economy is in a very odd place right now. The overall numbers are great in the United States. Unemployment is low, growth is decent, several companies have been raising the wages of blue-collar employees.   But at the same time, stable, full-time jobs with benefits can be hard to come by. To make ends meet and improve their quality of life, lots of people are joining the gig economy, or doing other kinds of temporary work.   These observations about the state of work and the economy led me to a conversation with Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of Upwork. Upwork is a digital platform where people who have skills can put those skills out for hire, either by the project or on a longer-term basis. I met Stephane at CNBC’s Productivity at Work event, where he gave a talk about how employment is changing. We took it further, to talk about geopolitics, his journey as an executive, and what today’s workers need to know to seize control of their careers.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Intel found itself without a CEO, the board of directors turned to Bob Swan, the chief financial officer, to keep the company running. That was six months ago. A few days ago Swan and I sat down at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York to discuss a tumultuous year, an ongoing transformation, his path to the top of corporate finance, and more. But first, on the Fortt Knox live show this week, it’s the most expensive purchase many of us even consider: a place to live.   As we head into 2019, a complicated landscape in real estate: For a decade in a rebounding U.S. economy amid cheap loans, home prices have marched steadily higher. When the market bottomed in February 2009, the median sale price for a home was $140,000. Last month it was nearly $258,000.  That might sound OK if you’re looking to sell a home, but not so fast: Interest rates are creeping higher, reducing how much buyers can borrow. And the number of homes for sale is rising, giving shoppers more homes to choose from. Are we heading into a healthier housing market? Or a more dangerous one?  Joining me to talk real estate I have the very best: CNBC’s Diana Olick, Realtor.com CEO Ryan O’Hara, and real estate agent Josh Flagg of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles. Season 11 kicks off January 3. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As 2018 draws to a close, a panel of journalists looks back at some of the defining controversies of the year. Digital data became a flashpoint as more people considered the implications of smartphone apps that literally track our every move. Digital fun came into question as parents heightened their concerns about kids glued to screens. And digital money experienced a crash, as the price of a Bitcoin dropped from nearly $20,000 to less than $3,500. Ina Fried of Axios, Ed Lee of the New York Times and Josh Lipton of CNBC join Jon Fortt to explore how those issues played out in 2018, and what's likely next in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keith Block spent a long career at Oracle before joining Salesforce five years ago. This summer he became co-CEO alongside Marc Benioff, the company’s chairman and cofounder.   I spent time with Block at CNBC’s Capital@Work event this week in San Francisco, talking strategy, his background, and more.  Plus: Not many people are getting a cloud for Christmas. But … chances are a lot of the stuff you do get is going to require that you buy online storage sometime down the line. You’ve got to back up those holiday photos and videos eventually, in case your hard drive fails or your phone gets lost, or just to free up space!  So. Today we talk cloud, to save you money. Joining me to break it down, Rob Marvin is Associate Features Editor at PCMAG.com. Jefferson Graham is a tech columnist for USA Today. And Jordan Novet is a tech reporter for CNBC.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andy Jassy started the cloud business at Amazon, and still runs it. As AWS re:Invent, Amazon's annual cloud conference, I talked to him about Amazon's cloud strategy, global tech momentum, rivalries with other tech giants, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Max Levchin learned to write code out of necessity. His mother's necessity, specifically. Levchin co-founded PayPal, reaped a windfall from its IPO and sale, and became one of the best-connected investor/entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. But before all that, he was a teenage refugee from the Soviet Union, figuring out how to make his mark at the dawning of the consumer Internet era. Before the family had left Ukraine in the early 1990s, Soviet officials had given Levchin's mother a poorly translated programming manual, a PC, and a mandate: Learn to program it. Mother and son took turns reading each other the manual, and by the time they moved to the U.S., both knew how to code. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

KIND Snacks today is a business valued in the billions of dollars, but this wasn't Daniel Lubetzky's first food company. That would be PeaceWorks – a venture with the lofty goal of bringing Jews and Arabs together through mutually beneficial trade. What they have in common is a strong sense of mission. KIND bars come in mostly clear packaging, intentionally showing buyers exactly what's inside. Lubetzky started out selling $100 worth of bars at a time – he says he now sells more than 1 billion in a year – and he believes in making a simple, straightforward promise about the ingredients inside. In our conversation for the Fortt Knox 1-on-1 this week, I talked to Lubetzky about how his family's legacy as Holocaust survivors informs the way he thinks about entrepreneurship and mission. He also talks about mistakes he made along the way. Also in this week's episode: It’s upon us: the holiday season. I don’t know about you, but I got an email come-on from Amazon about early Black Friday deals the day after Halloween. Talk about scary.   So: If you’re an entrepreneur, how do you break through the noise this holiday season? If you’re a shopper, how will you get the best deals?   Joining me to untangle this retail riddle I’ve got a great panel of experts:   Adam Glassman is creative director at O Magazine, and has been preparing for this season for more than six months. Stephen Sadove is former chairman and CEO of Saks, and an adviser to Mastercard. And Lauren Hirsch is a retail reporter with us at CNBC.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The theme this week is "underdogs." John Chen has history in this department: His parents escaped communist China to Hong Kong, and his father had to work jobs beneath his education level so Chen could have a shot at a better life. At age 17 he came to the United States to finish high school. After he entered the workforce, Chen hit a roadblock. It wasn't common at the time for engineers to get promoted into broader management positions, and he was still growing in his comfort with communicating as a leader in English, his second language. Fast-forward to today, and Chen has been CEO of BlackBerry for five years. He has taken the company from a dying smartphone maker to a stable provider of security and automotive software. And it's not Chen's first turnaround; after becoming CEO of Sybase in 1998, he led a reinvention that saved the company. In all of my years covering Chen, I'd never heard his personal story. For the Fortt Knox 1-on-1 this week, I finally get to the root of why Chen is so comfortable playing the long game when it comes to leadership ... and how it ties back into the sacrifices he saw as an immigrant and the son of refugees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Panera had a problem. At lunchtime, customers were mobbing the counters to order and pick up, and it was a mess. It was frustrating for everyone involved, and management knew they were probably missing out on sales because of it. The company's founder turned to Blaine Hurst to lead the search for a solution. As the company's chief technology officer, he put together a team to make Panera a leader in digital ordering and fast pickup. First through a website and in-store kiosks and now through mobile ordering and delivery, those tech efforts have paid off. The company now books more than $1 billion worth of digital orders a year, and digital is more than a quarter of total sales. To talk about how he got there, I sat down with Hurst for this week's Fortt Knox 1-on-1. The answer isn't what I expected. There was no getting buy-in from across the company about what the problem was before the team crafted a solution. And now that he's the CEO and not the CTO, he's had to shift his methods somewhat. Plus: Richard Freed is a child and adolescent psychologist, and the author of Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age; he joined me from San Francisco. Anya Kamenetz is lead education blogger for NPR, and author of The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life; she joined me in New York. And Katherine Omerod is a social media influencer and author of Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life; she joined me from London. In our conversation I got feedback and a few pointers on how other parents can set boundaries. Be a friend and share this episode with a parent you know. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices