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Our guest this week Hugh Hempel of Denver, CO, a technology industry veteran turned health care entrepreneur and father of identical twin daughters with Niemann Pick Type C.Hugh and his wife Chris, have been married for 25 years and are the proud parents of identical twin daughters Addison & Cassidy. The girls were born in January 2004 and were both diagnosed with Niemann Pick Type C, a type of childhood ALS, a very rare neurogenerative disease. Despite heroic efforts to find a cure and treatments, very sadly the twins passed away in 2019 at age 15.After a successful tech career that included working at: IBM, Apple and Netscape to name a few, and as a result of the twins' diagnosis, Hugh & Chris became outspoken advocates for rare disease research. They also created the Addi & Cassidy Fund, a resource for families impacted by Niemann Pick, Cyclodextrin, and a myriad of stories, and resources for families impacted by a wide range of rare diseases. Hugh has also served in a wide range of leadership positions, including Solutions Therapuetics, Sparkpr, Parent Advocist, N=1 Collaboration and Strainz. In January 2015 Hugh gave a TEDx Talk presentation entitled: Why I Changed My Mind About Medical Cannabis, coincidentally on Addi & Cassidy's 11th birthday. We'll hear about the Hempel family and about Hugh and Chris' quest to find a cure and treatments for rare and ultra rare diseases, all on this episode of the SFN Dad To Dad Podcast. This is Part 1 of a two part interview. Show Links Phone - (775) 338-4844Email – Hugh@Hempelfamily.com LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/hughhempel/?skipRedirect=true Website – N=1 Collaboration – https://www.n1collaborative.org/Website – Addi & Cassie Fund - https://addiandcassi.com/TEDx Talk – Why I Changed My Mind About Medical Cannabis (January2015) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N8QMeIsX2c&t=1sDr. Sanjay Gupta CNN story (11.22.14) -https://vimeo.com/420572177?fl=pl&fe=vlMayo Clinic NPT1 - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/niemann-pick/symptoms-causes/syc-20355887MIPLYFFA Website - https://miplyffa.com/Special Fathers Network –SFN is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Many of the 800+ SFN Mentor Fathers, who are raising kids with special needs, have said: “I wish there was something like this when we first received our child's diagnosis. I felt so isolated. There was no one within my family, at work, at church or within my friend group who understood or could relate to what I was going through.”SFN Mentor Fathers share their experiences with younger dads closer to the beginning of their journey raising a child with the same or similar special needs. The SFN Mentor Fathers do NOT offer legal or medical advice, that is what lawyers and doctors do. They simply share their experiences and how they have made the most of challenging situations.Check out the 21CD YouTube Channel with dozens of videos on topics relevant to dads raising children with special needs - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzDFCvQimWNEb158ll6Q4cA/videosPlease support the SFN. Click here to donate: https://21stcenturydads.org/donate/Special Fathers Network: https://21stcenturydads.org/ SFN Mastermind Group - https://21stcenturydads.org/sfn-mastermind-group/Special thanks to SFN Mentor Father, SFN Mastermind Group dad and 21CD board member Shane Madden for creating the SFN jingle on the front and back end of the podcast..
Corey Zumar is a Product Manager at Databricks, working on MLflow and LLM evaluation, tracing, and lifecycle tooling for generative AI.Jules Damji is a Lead Developer Advocate at Databricks, working on Spark, lakehouse technologies, and developer education across the data and AI community.Danny Chiao is an Engineering Leader at Databricks, working on data and AI observability, quality, and production-grade governance for ML and agent systems.MLflow Leading Open Source // MLOps Podcast #356 with Databricks' Corey Zumar, Jules Damji, and Danny ChiaoJoin the Community: https://go.mlops.community/YTJoinInGet the newsletter: https://go.mlops.community/YTNewsletterShoutout to Databricks for powering this MLOps Podcast episode.// AbstractMLflow isn't just for data scientists anymore—and pretending it is is holding teams back. Corey Zumar, Jules Damji, and Danny Chiao break down how MLflow is being rebuilt for GenAI, agents, and real production systems where evals are messy, memory is risky, and governance actually matters. The takeaway: if your AI stack treats agents like fancy chatbots or splits ML and software tooling, you're already behind.// BioCorey ZumarCorey has been working as a Software Engineer at Databricks for the last 4 years and has been an active contributor to and maintainer of MLflow since its first release. Jules Damji Jules is a developer advocate at Databricks Inc., an MLflow and Apache Spark™ contributor, and Learning Spark, 2nd Edition coauthor. He is a hands-on developer with over 25 years of experience. He has worked at leading companies, such as Sun Microsystems, Netscape, @Home, Opsware/LoudCloud, VeriSign, ProQuest, Hortonworks, Anyscale, and Databricks, building large-scale distributed systems. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in computer science (from Oregon State University and Cal State, Chico, respectively) and an MA in political advocacy and communication (from Johns Hopkins University)Danny ChiaoDanny is an engineering lead at Databricks, leading efforts around data observability (quality, data classification). Previously, Danny led efforts at Tecton (+ Feast, an open source feature store) and Google to build ML infrastructure and large-scale ML-powered features. Danny holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from MIT.// Related LinksWebsite: https://mlflow.org/https://www.databricks.com/~~~~~~~~ ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ~~~~~~~Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://go.mlops.community/TYExploreJoin our Slack community [https://go.mlops.community/slack]Follow us on X/Twitter [@mlopscommunity](https://x.com/mlopscommunity) or [LinkedIn](https://go.mlops.community/linkedin)] Sign up for the next meetup: [https://go.mlops.community/register]MLOps Swag/Merch: [https://shop.mlops.community/]Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: /dpbrinkmConnect with Corey on LinkedIn: /corey-zumar/Connect with Jules on LinkedIn: /dmatrix/Connect with Danny on LinkedIn: /danny-chiao/Timestamps:[00:00] MLflow Open Source Focus[00:49] MLflow Agents in Production[00:00] AI UX Design Patterns[12:19] Context Management in Chat[19:24] Human Feedback in MLflow[24:37] Prompt Entropy and Optimization[30:55] Evolving MLFlow Personas[36:27] Persona Expansion vs Separation[47:27] Product Ecosystem Design[54:03] PII vs Business Sensitivity[57:51] Wrap up
We are taught that great businesses are built on process, management, and roadmaps. But my guest today says that this exact mindset is what kills innovation and drives your best people to quit.Marty Cagan is the "Godfather of Product." He is the founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group and has worked with the giants that defined the internet, including Hewlett-Packard, Netscape, and eBay. He is the man the world's most successful CEOs call when they stop growing.In this conversation, Marty exposes the "Feature Factory" trap that 90% of companies fall into, explains why you should never hire a "Mercenary," and reveals the specific leadership secrets used by Apple, Amazon, and Netflix to dominate their industries.If you are a CEO, a founder, or a leader who wants to build something that actually matters, this is the warning you need to hear.
Larry Page said in the early day, a guiding principle is Do No Evil. I wonder if we can say that today or is it just business as usual? Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So, here’s one of those. [Out of this World Plumbing Ad] Dave Young: This is the Empire Builders Podcast, by the way. Dave Young here, Steve Semple there. I wonder, Stephen, if we could do this whole episode without mentioning the name of the company that we’re going to be talking about. I ask that for the simple reason of they already know. They already know what we’re talking about. They already know we’re talking about them. They probably knew we were going to talk about them. Stephen Semple: Because of all the research I’ve done on my computer. Dave Young: No, because they’re listening to everything. They probably already know the date that this is going to come out and how long it’s… I don’t know, right? When they first started, and I don’t think we felt that way about them, and I can remember back in the early 2000s, just after the turn- Stephen Semple: In the early days, they had a statement. Larry Page was very famous. Dave Young: Yeah, “Do no evil.” Stephen Semple: “Do know evil. Do no evil,” and that was a very, very big part. In fact, in the early stages, they made a bunch of decisions that challenged the company financially because they were like, “This is not good experience for the person on the other end.” I wonder if anybody’s guessed yet what we’re going to be talking about. Dave Young: Well, then you go public, and it’s all about shareholders, right? It’s like the shareholders are like, “Well, we don’t care if you do evil or not. We want you to make money.” That’s what it’s about because you have [inaudible 00:03:01]. Stephen Semple: All those things happen. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: This company that we’re talking about, we’ll go a little while before we’ll let the name out, was founded… On September 4th in 1998 was when it was actually founded. Dave Young: Oh, ’98. It goes back before the turn of the century [inaudible 00:03:14]. Stephen Semple: Yeah. It was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who met at Stanford. Interesting note, the Stanford grads also created Yahoo. Dave Young: Okay, yeah. Stephen Semple: That’s giving you another little clue about the company that we might be talking about. Dave Young: In the same geek club. Stephen Semple: Yeah, so 1998. I was thinking back, one year after I graduated from university, Windows 98 is launched and, believe it or not, the last Seinfeld episode aired. Dave Young: Are you kidding me? Stephen Semple: No, isn’t that crazy? Dave Young: ’98. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: I mean, I was busy raising four daughters in ’98. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Today, this company, as you said, because you didn’t want me to name the company, has more net income than any other business in US history. It has, now, I got to let the cat out of the bag, eight and a half billion searches a day happen. And yes, we’re talking about the birth of Google, which is also now known as part of the Alphabet group. Dave Young: Alphabet, yeah. It’s funny how they got to get a name that means everything. Did they have a name before Google? I know Google was like… Oh, it’s a number really, right? It’s a gazillion, bazillion Googleplex. Stephen Semple: As we’ll go into a little bit later, they actually spelled it wrong when they registered the site. That’s not actually the way that the word is spelled. I’ll have to go… But yeah, the first iteration was a product called BackRub was the name of it. Dave Young: Backrub, okay. Stephen Semple: Alphabet also owns the second largest search engine, which is YouTube. Together, basically, it’s a $2 trillion business, which is larger than the economy of Canada. It’s this amazing thing. Going back to 1998, there are dozens of search engines all using different business models. Now, today Alphabet’s like 90% in the market. Up until this point, it’s been unassailable, and it’s going to be really interesting to see what the future of AI and whatnot brings to that business. But we’re not talking about the future, we’re talking about the past here, so back to the start. Larry Page was born in Lansing, Michigan. His dad is a professor of computer science. His mom is also a computer academic. This is in the ’70s. Between 1979 and ’80, his dad does a stint at Stanford and then also goes to work at Microsoft. Now, Larry and Sergey meet at Stanford, and they’re very ambitious, they’re equal co-founders, but Larry had this thing he also talked about where he said, “You need to do more than just invent things.” It wasn’t about inventing things, it was about creating things that people would use. Here’s what’s going on in the world of the web at this time to understand what’s going on. Here’s some web stats. In 1993, there’s 130 websites in the world. In 1996, three years later, there’s 600,000 websites. That’s a 723% growth year over year. The world has never seen growth like that before. Dave Young: Right, yeah. It was amazing to experience it. People that are younger than us don’t realize what it was. Josh Johnson, the comedian, has a great routine on trying to explain to people what it was like before Google. You needed to know something- Stephen Semple: What it was like for the internet. Dave Young: Yeah. You had to ask somebody who knew. If you needed the answer to a question, you had to ask somebody. And if they didn’t know, then you had to find somebody else, or you had to go to the library and ask a librarian and they would help you find the answer- Stephen Semple: Well, I don’t think it’s like a- Dave Young: … maybe by giving you a book that may or may not have the answer. Stephen Semple: Here’s an important point. I want you to put a pin in that research. We’re going to come back to it. I was about to go down a rabbit hole, but let’s come back to this in just a moment, because this is a very, very important point here about the birth of Google. Larry and Sergey first worked on systems to allow people to make annotations and notes directly on websites with no human involved, but the problem is that that could just overrun a site because there was no systems for ranking or order or anything along that lines. The other question they started to ask is, “Which annotations should someone look at? What are the ones that have authority?” This then created the idea of page rankings. All of this became messy, and this led to them to asking the question, “What if we just focused on ranking webpages?” which led to ranking search. Now, whole idea was ranking was based upon authority and credibility, and they drew this idea from academia. So when we would do research, David, and you’d find that one book, what did you do to figure out who the authority was on the topic? You went and you saw what book did that cite, what research did this book cite. The further you went back in those citations, the closer you got to the true authority, right? Do you remember doing that type of research? Dave Young: Yeah, sure. Stephen Semple: Right. They looked at that and they went, “Well, that’s how you establish credibility and authority is who’s citing who.” Okay. They decided that what they were going to do was do that for the web, and the way the web did that was links, especially in the early days where a lot of it was research. Dave Young: Yeah. If a whole bunch of people linked to you, then that gives you authority over the words that they used to link on and- Stephen Semple: Well, and also in the early days, those links carried a lot of metadata around what the author thought, like, “Why was the link there?” In the early days, backlinks were incredibly important. Now, SEO weasels are still today talking about backlinks, which is complete. Dude, backlinks, yeah, they kind of matter, but they’re… Anyway, I could go down a rabbit hole. Dave Young: Yeah. It’s like anything, the grifters figure out a way to hack the system and make something that’s not authoritative seem like it is. Stephen Semple: Yeah. It’s harder that you can’t hack the system today. Anyway, but the technology challenge, how do you figure out who’s backedlinked to who? Well, the only way you can do it is you have to crawl the entire web, copy the entire web, and reverse engineer the computation to do this. Dave Young: Yeah. It’s huge. We’ve been talking about Google’s algorithm for as long as Google’s been around. That’s the magic of it, right? Stephen Semple: Yeah. In the early days, with them doing it as a research project, they could do it because there was hundreds of sites. If this happened even two years later, like 1996, it would’ve been completely impossible because the sheer size to do it as a research project, right? Now, they called this system BackRub, and they started to shop this technology to other search engines because, again, remember there was HotBot and Lyco and Archie and AltaVista and Yahoo and Excite and Infoseek. There were a ton of these search engines. Dave Young: Don’t forget Ask Jeeves. Stephen Semple: Ask Jeeves? Actually, Ask Jeeves might’ve even been a little bit later, but yeah, Ask Jeeves was one of them once when it was around. Dave Young: There was one that was Dogpile that was… It would search a bunch of search engines. Stephen Semple: Right, yeah. There was all sorts of things. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: There was another one called Excite, and they got close to doing a deal with Excite. They got a meeting with them, and they’re looking at a license deal, million dollars for BackRub, and they would go into the summer and they would implement it because they were still students at Stanford. They got so far as running for the executives there a side-by-side test. They demo this test and the results were so good with BackRub. Here’s what execs at Excite said, “Why on earth would we want to use your engine? We want people to stay on our site,” because, again, it would push people off the site because web portals had this mentality of keeping people on the site instead of having them leave. So it was a no deal. They go back to school and no one wants BackRub, so they decide to build it for themselves at Stanford. The original name was going to be Whatbox. Dave Young: Whatbox? I’m glad they didn’t use Whatbox. Stephen Semple: Yeah. They thought it sounded too close to a porn site or something like that. Dave Young: Okay, I’ll give them that. Stephen Semple: Larry’s dorm mate suggested Google, which is the mathematical term of 10 to the 100th power, but it’s spelled G-O-O-G-O-L. Dave Young: Googol, mm-hmm. Stephen Semple: Correct. Now, there’s lots of things here. Did Larry Page misregister? Did he decide purposely? There’s all sorts of different stories there, but the one that seems to be the most popular, at least liked the most, is that he misspelled it when he did the registration to G-O-G-G-L-E. Dave Young: I think that’s probably a good thing because when you hear it said, that’s kind of the first thing you go- Stephen Semple: That’s kind of how you spell it. Dave Young: … how you spell it. I think we’d have figured it out, but- Stephen Semple: We would’ve, but things that are easier are always better, right? Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: By spring of ’98, they’re doing 10,000 searches a day all out of Stanford University. Dave Young: Wait, 10,000 a day out of one place. Stephen Semple: Are using university resources. Everyone else is just using keywords on a page, which led to keyword stuffing, again, another one of these BS SEO keyword stuffing. Now, at one point, one half of the entire computing power at Stanford University is being used for Google searches. It’s the end of the ’98 academic year, and these guys are still students there. Now, sidebar, to this day, Stanford still owns a chunk of Google. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Worked out well for Stanford. Dave Young: Yeah, I guess. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Now, Larry and Sergey need some seed round financing because they’ve got to get it off of Stanford. They’ve got to start building computers. They raise a million dollars. Here’s the interesting thing I had no idea. Guess who one of the first round investors are who ended up owning 25% of the company in the seed round? Dave Young: Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this. [Using Stories To Sell Ad] Dave Young: Let’s pick up our story where we left off and trust me you haven’t missed a thing. Stephen Semple: Guess who one of the first round investors are who ended up owning 25% of the company in the seed round? Jeff Bezos. Dave Young: Oh, no kidding. Stephen Semple: Yeah, yeah. Jeff Bezos was one of the first four investors in Google. Dave Young: Okay. Well, here we are. Stephen Semple: Isn’t that incredible? Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: Now, AltaVista created a very interesting technology because AltaVista grew out of DEC computers who were building super computers at the time. They were basically one of the pre-leaders in search because what they would do is everybody else crawled the internet in series. They were crawling the internet in parallel, and this was a big technological breakthrough. In other words, they didn’t have to do it one at a time. They could send out a whole ton of crawlers, crawling all sorts of different things, all sorts of different pieces, bringing it back and could reassemble it. Dave Young: Got you. Stephen Semple: AltaVista also had therefore the most number of sites indexed. I remember back in the day, launching websites, like pre-2000, and yeah, you would launch a site and you would have to wait for it to be indexed and it could take weeks- Dave Young: You submit it. Yeah, there were things you could do to submit- Stephen Semple: There was things you could submit. Dave Young: … the search engines. Stephen Semple: Yes, yeah, and you would sit and you would wait and you’d be like, “Oh, it got crawled.” Yeah, it was crazy. We don’t think about that today. [inaudible 00:15:57] websites crawl. Dave Young: You’d make updates to your site and you’d need to resubmit it, so it would get crawled again- Stephen Semple: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Dave Young: … if there was new information. Stephen Semple: People would search your site and it would be different than the site that you would have because the updates hadn’t come through and all those other things. In 1998, Yahoo was the largest player. They were a $20 billion business, and they had a hand-curated guide to the internet, which worked at the time, but the explosive growth killed that. There was a point where Yahoo just couldn’t keep up with it. Then Yahoo went to this hybrid where the top part was hand-curated and then backfilled with search engine results. Now, originally, Google was very against the whole idea of banner ads, and this was the way everyone else was making money, because what they knew is people didn’t like banner ads, but you’re tracking eyeballs, you’re growing, you need more infrastructure, because basically their way of doing is they’re copying the entire internet and putting it on their servers and you need more money. Now, one of the other technological breakthroughs is Google figured out how to do this on a whole pile of cheap computers that they just stacked on top of each other, but you still needed money. At this moment, had no model for making money. They were getting all these eyeballs, they were faster because they built data centers around the world because they also figured out that, by decentralizing it, it was faster. They had lots of constraints. What they needed to do at this point was create a business model. What does one do when one needs to create a business model? Well, it’s early 1999, they’re running out of money. They hire Salar Kamangar, who’s a Stanford student, and they give him the job of writing a business plan. “Here, intern, you’re writing the business plan for how we’re going to make money. Go put together a pitch deck.” Dave Young: I wonder if they’re still using the plan. Stephen Semple: What they found at that point was there was basically three ways to make the money. Way number 1 was sell Google Search technology to enterprises. In other words, companies can use this to search their own documents and intranets. Dave Young: I remember that, yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Number 2, sell ads, banner ads, and number 3, license search results to other search engines. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Based upon this plan, spring of ’99, they do a Series A fundraise. They raised more money, and they also meet Omid [inaudible 00:18:22] who’s from Netscape, and he’s kind of done with Netscape because Netscape had been just bought by AOL, and they recruit him as a chief revenue officer. Omid tries to sell the enterprise model, kind of fails, so things are not looking good on the revenue front. It’s year 2000, and the technology bubble is starting to burst. The customer base is still growing because people love it, love Google, but they’re running out of money again. They decide to do banner ads, because they just have got no money. Here’s the interesting thing is, in this day, 2000, I want you to think about this, you have to set up a sales force to go out and sell banner ads to agencies, people picking up the phone and walking into offices, reaching out to ad agencies. Dave Young: Yeah, didn’t have a platform for buying and selling… And banner ads, gosh, they were never… Google ads, in the most recent memory, are always context-related, right? Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: But if you’re just selling banner ads to an agency, you might be looking for dog food and you’re going to see car ads and you’re going to see ads for high-tech servers and all kinds of things that don’t have anything to do with what you’re looking for. Stephen Semple: That’s how the early banner ads work. Hold that thought. You’re always one step ahead of me, Dave. Dave Young: Oh, sorry. Stephen Semple: Hold that thought. No, this is awesome. Dave Young: I’m holding it. Stephen Semple: What I want to stress is, when we talk about how the world has changed, in 2000, Google decides to do banner ads and how they have to do it is a sales force going out, reaching out to agencies, and agencies faxed in the banner ads. Dave Young: Okay. Yeah, sure. It would take too long for them- Stephen Semple: I’m not making this up. This is how much the world has changed in 25 years. Dave Young: “Fax me the banner.” Stephen Semple: Salespeople going out to sell ads to agencies for banners on Google where the insertions were sent back by fax. Dave Young: For the people under 20 listening to us, a fax machine- Stephen Semple: Who don’t even know what the hell a fax machine is, yeah. Dave Young: A fax machine, yeah, well, we won’t go there. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Now, here’s what they do. They also say to the advertisers at this point, “Google will only accept text for banner ads for speed.” Again, they start with the model of CPM, cost per a thousand views, which is basically how all the agencies were doing it, but they did do a twist on it. They sold around this idea of intent that the ads were showing keyword-based and they were the first to do that. What they did is they did a test to prove this. This was really cool. They set themselves up as an Amazon affiliate and dynamically generated a link on a book search and served up an ad, an affiliate ad, and they’re able to show they were able to sell a whole pile of books. The test proved the idea worked. And then what they did is they went out and they white-labeled this for others. For example, Yahoo did it, and it would show on the bottom of Yahoo, “Powered by Google.” But here’s the thing, as soon as you start saying, “Powered by Google,” what are you doing? You’re creating share of voice. Share of voice, right? Dave Young: Well, yeah, why don’t I just go to Google? Stephen Semple: Why don’t I just go to Google? Look, we had saw this a few years earlier when Hotmail was launched by Microsoft where you would get this email and go, “Powered by Hotmail,” and you’d be like, “What’s this Hotmail thing?” Suddenly, everybody was getting Hotmail accounts, right? Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: No one has a Hotmail account, no longer they have Gmail accounts, they hardly have Gmail accounts anymore. Dave Young: No, I could tell you that we’ve got a lot of people at Wizard Academy that email us off with a Hotmail. Stephen Semple: Still have Hotmail accounts? Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: Oh, wow. So it’s still around? Okay. Dave Young: And then some Yahoos, yeah. Stephen Semple: Wow, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. Well, still- Dave Young: Yahoo, the email, not the customer. They’re not a Yahoo, but they have an account there. Stephen Semple: In October 2000, they launch AdWords with a test of 350 advertisers. And then, in 2002, they launched pay-per-click Advertising. And then 2004, they go public. Now, here’s one of the other things I want to talk about in terms of share of voice. They had a couple things going on with share of voice. They had that, “powered by Google,” which created share of voice because… We often think of share of voice as being just advertising in terms of how much are people knowing about us. I remember knowing nothing about Google and then learning about Google when Google went public because Google dragged out going public. They talked about it for a long time, but it meant it was financial press, it was front page news. It got a lot of PR and a lot of press around the time that they went public. That going public for them also created massive share of voice because there was suddenly a whole community that were not technologically savvy that we’re now suddenly aware of, “Oh, there’s this Google thing.” Dave Young: And they’re in the news, yeah. So I’ve got an idea for us, Steve. Stephen Semple: Yep, okay. Dave Young: All right. Stephen Semple: Let’s hear it. Dave Young: Let’s pick up part 2 of Google at the point they go public. Stephen Semple: All right, let’s do that. That’ll be an episode we’ll do in the future, yeah. Dave Young: We don’t do very many two-parters, but we’re already kind of a lengthy Empire Builder Podcast here. Stephen Semple: Oh, yeah. I was just taking it to this point, but I think that would be very interesting- Dave Young: Oh, okay. Stephen Semple: … because look, Google is a massive force in the world today- Dave Young: Unbelievable, yeah. Stephen Semple: … and I think it would be interesting to do the next part because there’s all sorts of things that they did to continue this path of attracting eyeballs. Dave Young: We haven’t even touched on Gmail yet. No, we have not. We have not. Stephen Semple: Because that happened after they went public. Correct. Let’s do that. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: Here’s the lesson that I think that I want people to understand is share of voice comes from other things, but we’re going to explore that even more in this part 2. I like the idea of doing this part 2. They really looked at this problem from a completely different set of eyeballs, and this is where I commend Google, from the standpoint of there’s all this stuff in the internet and what we really want to know is who is the authority. They looked at the academic world for how does it establish authority, and how authority is established is how much is your work cited by others, how much are other… So, now, Google has of course expanded that to direct search and there’s all these other things, but they’ve always looked at it from the standpoint of, “Who in this space has the most authority? Who is really and truly the expert on this topic? We’re going to try to figure that out and serve that up.” Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: That’s core to what their objective has been. Dave Young: We could talk about Google for four or five episodes probably. Stephen Semple: We may, but we know we’re going to do one more. Dave Young: All right. Stephen Semple: Awesome. Dave Young: Well, thanks for bringing it up. We did mention their name. Actually, if we just put this out there, “Hey, Google, why don’t you send us all the talking points we need for part 2?” There, I put it out there. Let me know how that works. Stephen Semple: My email’s about to get just slammed. All right. Thanks, David. Dave Young: You won’t know it’s from them though. You won’t know. You won’t know. Isn’t that good? Stephen Semple: That’s true. That’s true. Dave Young: Thank you, Stephen. Stephen Semple: All right. Thanks, David. Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big, fat, juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.
Episode Description - Join host Marv for an in-depth conversation with Sam Sethi, entrepreneur, former tech journalist, and co-creator of True Fans. Discover the evolution of podcasting technology, the future of RSS feeds, and how blockchain-based micropayments could revolutionize creator monetization. Sam shares insights from his 30+ year journey through tech giants like Microsoft, Netscape, and BBC, and explains why podcasting 2.0 might be the industry's biggest shift since iTunes. Key Topics Covered - Podcasting 2.0 & The New Namespace Sam explains the revolutionary metadata tags transforming podcast discovery and functionality, from person tags and chapters to location-based podcast mapping. Learn how open-source collaboration is challenging Big Tech's dominance. The Future of Podcast Monetization Discover programmable money and value-for-value models that could replace traditional advertising. Sam reveals how listeners can earn micropayments for their attention while giving creators direct revenue streams. Streaming vs. Downloads: The Coming Shift Why the podcast industry's obsession with download numbers is outdated, and how first-party listen time data will revolutionize advertising effectiveness and creator insights. AI in Podcasting: Hype vs. Reality Sam's take on "assisted intelligence" - where AI transcripts and automated chapters add value, and where synthetic voices fall short of authentic creator-listener relationships. Timestamps - [00:00] Introduction and Sam's tech journalism background [02:00] From army officer to Microsoft: Sam's unconventional career path [04:00] The early days of blogging and TechCrunch Europe [05:00] COVID pivot: Building a radio station and discovering podcasting [06:00] Launching Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland [07:00] Getting involved with Podcasting 2.0 and building True Fans [08:00] Apple finally adopts transcripts and chapters - validation for the namespace [10:00] Location tags and the future of podcast discovery [12:00] Why Sam loves technology over advertising metrics [14:00] The Spotify-Netflix deal and protecting niche podcasting [15:00] Advertising as "Emperor's new clothes" - the measurement problem [17:00] Revolutionary concept: Paying listeners to watch ads with programmable money [20:00] Value-for-value and streaming micropayments explained [22:00] Co-listening feature and building podcast communities [26:00] The Pod News Weekly dynamic: British humor and rapport [28:00] Moving from downloads to streaming: The next five years [30:00] Why listen time percentage matters more than raw numbers [33:00] The death of the download model and rise of streaming data [36:00] BBC Sounds international availability debate [40:00] The Panorama editing scandal and BBC's reputation [42:00] What makes a great podcast: Content, chemistry, and audio quality [45:00] Parasocial relationships and podcast magic [46:00] Claire Waite Brown's "Podcasting 2.0 in Practice" - essential listening [47:00] Concerns about declining podcasting 2.0 content creators [51:00] Sam's podcast listening habits: Politics, sports, and intelligent conversation [53:00] AI as "assisted intelligence" not artificial intelligence [54:00] AI voices vs. authentic creator relationships [56:00] Different AI podcast models: Editorial control vs. content farms [58:00] How to connect with Sam and True Fans Key Quotes - "I think micropayments and wallets might take a little longer, but I can see in 2026 that catching on as well... the merit of what the technology provides and why people want it stands out very well." "The joy and the promise of podcasting is about the long tail, about the niche of podcasting... somebody who's got a niche podcast about fishing or knitting or whatever, can still have an audience." "I think advertising is the Emperor's new clothes. I think it's a scam... Who heard my ad? Oh, we can't tell you. How long did they listen to my ad? I don't know." "The download isn't irrelevant, but actual listen time is a real metric. And so I think in 2026, 2027, you'll see more and more people tell you what their listen time is not their download numbers." Resources Mentioned - People & Podcasts ● James Cridland - Pod News Weekly Review co-host ● Adam Curry - Podcasting pioneer, Podcasting 2.0 namespace creator ● Dave Jones - Podcasting 2.0 co-creator ● Claire Waite - "Podcasting 2.0 in Practice" podcast ● Elsie Escobar - Former host of The Feed ● Kara Swisher - Pivot podcast ● Emily Maitlis - The News Agents, The Rest is Politics Platforms & Tools ● True Fans - Sam's podcasting app and hosting platform ● Fountain - Podcasting 2.0 app ● Pod Verse - Podcasting 2.0 app ● Buzzsprout - Podcast hosting with AI features ● Zencaster - Recording platform ● 11 Labs - AI voice generation ● Wonder Craft - AI audio production Companies & Technologies ● Podcasting 2.0 namespace ● Value-for-value model ● Booster Gram Ball ● Lightning Network micropayments ● BBC Sounds Articles & Concepts - ● Kevin Kelly's "1,000 True Fans" essay ● Micro formats and micro data ● Premium RSS feeds ● Value time splits (wallet switching) ● Timed links in transcripts Connect with Sam Sethi - ● Email: sam@truefans.fm ● LinkedIn: Sam Sethi ● Listen: Pod News Weekly Review ● Listen: Creators from True Fans ● Platform: truefans.fm ● Mastodon: Active SEO Keywords - podcasting 2.0, podcast monetization, RSS feeds, micropayments, value for value podcasting, podcast analytics, listen time metrics, streaming podcasts, podcast advertising, AI in podcasting, podcast transcripts, podcast chapters, True Fans app, podcasting namespace, blockchain podcasting, creator economy, independent podcasters, podcast technology, podcast discovery, niche podcasting About the Guest - Sam Sethi is a tech entrepreneur and former journalist with over 30 years of industry experience. He's worked with Microsoft, Netscape, BBC, and TechCrunch, and currently serves as co-creator of True Fans and co-host of Pod News Weekly Review. Sam is deeply involved in the Podcasting 2.0 movement, developing innovative solutions for podcast monetization and listener engagement through blockchain-based micropayments and enhanced RSS metadata. For more episodes of Pods Like Us, visit themarzone.org or find us on your favorite podcast platform. Support the show on Patreon.
professorjrod@gmail.comExplore the pivotal moment in technology education as we trace the origins of the internet browser from Mosaic's innovation at NCSA to Netscape Navigator's rise as the gateway to the web. This episode dives deep into internet history, highlighting the major players like Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen who shaped the early web experience. We also analyze the browser wars triggered by Microsoft's Internet Explorer, illustrating challenges in technology development and competition. Whether you're preparing for your CompTIA exam or passionate about tech exam prep, understanding this history enriches your IT skills development and offers valuable context for technology education.I walk through the tactics that made Navigator beloved—progressive rendering, rapid updates, and the birth of JavaScript—and the strategic choices that slowed it down, like the all-in-one Communicator suite. We unpack the bundling play that tilted distribution, the developer headaches of competing nonstandard features, and the DOJ antitrust case that redefined how we think about platform power. The twists don't end there: AOL buys Netscape, adoption fades, and then a bold move changes the web again—open sourcing the code to create Mozilla.From Gecko to Phoenix to Firefox, we trace how community-driven software brought speed, security, and standards back to center stage. That lineage lives in every tab you open today, from Firefox to Chrome to Safari, and in the modern idea of the browser as a platform for apps, SaaS, and daily life. Along the way, I share classroom plans, student podcast previews, and a practical way educators can keep learners engaged over winter break.If you love origin stories, tech strategy, or just remember the thrill of that big N on a beige PC, this one's for you. Listen, subscribe, and share your first browser memory with us—was it Navigator, IE, or something else? And if this journey brought back the dial-up feels, leave a review and pass it on.Support the showArt By Sarah/DesmondMusic by Joakim KarudLittle chacha ProductionsJuan Rodriguez can be reached atTikTok @ProfessorJrodProfessorJRod@gmail.com@Prof_JRodInstagram ProfessorJRod
You're listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for December 17, 2025. 0:30 Breaking news out of Washington: FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is set to leave the Bureau early next year — and while this isn’t a scandal, it is a moment worth watching. Bongino’s short tenure at the FBI raises real questions about leadership, culture, and whether outspoken media figures can thrive inside a process-heavy federal agency. We dive into why Bongino may be better suited for influence behind a microphone than inside the bureaucracy, what his exit signals for FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, and how recent FBI wins and missteps factor into the bigger picture. 9:00 Plus, we cover the Top 3 Things You Need to Know. President Trump has ordered a Naval blockade of Venezuela. Four Republican broke from their party to force a house vote on extending Democrat designed subsidies for the Democrat designed Affordable Care Act. Republican Congressman Dan Newhouse is not seeking reelection to Congress next year. 11:30 Get Prodovite Plus from Victory Nutrition International for 20% off. Go to vni.life/agr and use the promo code AGR20. 12:00 A new YouGov poll exposes a sharp political divide on immigration — and the numbers are hard to ignore. Only 17 percent of Democrats say legal immigration should be reduced, compared to 66 percent of Republicans who want it cut back or ended altogether. We dig into what those numbers really mean, the difference between legal and illegal immigration, and why border enforcement has become a breaking point even for many Democrats after the Biden administration’s failures. 15:00 American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson take on the controversy surrounding Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and her decision to sit down with Vanity Fair — and why many conservatives see it as a major miscalculation. We break down how a year-long interview turned into headline-grabbing quotes about Trump, JD Vance, and the White House inner circle, how off-the-record trust was allegedly weaponized, and why legacy media outlets are viewed as hostile territory for Republicans. The Mamas also unpack media bias, selective framing, and the broader lesson about walking into the “lion’s den” of left-leaning press — even when you think you’re being careful. If you'd like to ask our American Mamas a question, go to our website, AmericanGroundRadio.com/mamas and click on the Ask the Mamas button. 22:00 We dive into reports of new plaques placed beneath presidential portraits in the White House — and the controversy they’ve sparked. Do these bronze plaques represent historical record or political trolling? And where the line is between blunt truth-telling and misuse of taxpayer dollars? We discuss President Trump’s unapologetic style, the difference between opinion and history, and whether America’s obsession with politeness has replaced honest evaluation of past presidents. 25:30 We Dig Deep into the nation’s largest teachers union after reports that the NEA is promoting so-called “neo-pronouns” and “zeo-pronouns” in teacher training sessions. This isn’t education reform — it’s ideological activism replacing basic grammar, clarity, and classroom priorities. We question why unions are focusing on made-up language and identity politics instead of improving student outcomes, and warning that redefining words isn’t about communication but control. 31:00 Get TrimROX from Victory Nutrition International for 20% off. Go to vni.life/agr and use the promo code AGR20. 31:30 We break down President Trump's prime-time address, and it's a deliberate moment of leadership where he plans to highlight his administration’s accomplishments and preview what he calls America’s “golden age.” Speaking directly to the nation on major networks still matters, even in an era dominated by social media. 34:00 And we have a Bright Spot from Florida, where the state can now enforce a ban on sexually explicit drag performances in front of minors. It's a long-overdue correction, and should never have been treated as protected speech when children were involved. We break down court battle that led to the decision, the narrow exception that still exists, and the broader cultural fight over bringing adult performance art into kids’ spaces like libraries and classrooms. This isn’t about censoring adults, it's about drawing a clear line between free speech and exposing children to sexualized content — a line that should have never been blurred in the first place. 38:30 In Texas, Republican Senate candidate Wesley Hunt is pushing a proposal to block education benefits for illegal immigrants — a move that's long overdue. With millions of illegal immigrants already in the country, full deportation isn’t realistic. Self-deportation was always part of the strategy. By cutting off benefits like public education, families will choose to leave on their own. It's a tough, controversial approach — but one that finally confronts why illegal immigration persists in the first place. 40:30 And we finish off today’s show with a little tech history that quietly reshaped the modern world. On this day in 1994, Netscape Navigator 1.0 hit the market and opened the door for everyday people to actually use the internet. Long before Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, Netscape was how the web worked — the browser that made surfing possible and set the standard for everything that followed. Follow us: americangroundradio.com Facebook: facebook.com / AmericanGroundRadio Instagram: instagram.com/americangroundradioSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
À première vue, on se demande ce qui pourrait bien freiner OpenAI. L'entreprise à l'origine de ChatGPT enchaîne les partenariats prestigieux avec les géants de la tech et séduit désormais bien au-delà de la Silicon Valley. Dernier exemple en date : Disney, qui vient de signer un accord stratégique avec OpenAI. Un partenariat qui permettra à l'outil vidéo Sora d'utiliser des personnages iconiques de la marque, de Mickey Mouse à tout l'univers Disney. Dans la foulée, le groupe américain s'est engagé à investir un milliard de dollars dans le capital d'OpenAI.Une somme impressionnante… mais qui paraît presque dérisoire au regard des finances de l'entreprise dirigée par Sam Altman. Car OpenAI dépense énormément, et même de plus en plus vite. La course à l'intelligence artificielle est devenue un champ de bataille industriel où chaque avancée technologique se paie au prix fort, en puissance de calcul, en infrastructures et en talents. Selon plusieurs estimations relayées par le média Mashable, ce milliard de dollars fraîchement injecté ne suffirait à couvrir que trois à quatre semaines des pertes actuelles d'OpenAI. Une donnée vertigineuse, qui prend encore plus de relief lorsqu'on la compare aux engagements globaux de l'entreprise : cette somme représenterait à peine un millième des dépenses prévues à moyen terme.Autrement dit, OpenAI brûle du cash à un rythme rarement vu dans l'histoire récente de la tech. Au point que certains analystes commencent à évoquer, à voix basse, un scénario longtemps jugé impensable : celui d'une fragilité financière, voire d'une faillite à long terme si le modèle économique ne se stabilise pas. Cette inquiétude intervient dans un contexte moins favorable qu'il n'y paraît. Ces derniers mois, un décrochage technologique a été observé entre ChatGPT et son principal concurrent, Gemini, développé par Google. Avec Gemini 3, le géant californien a repris une position de leader, laissant planer le doute sur la capacité d'OpenAI à conserver son avance initiale. L'histoire de la tech est riche de précédents. Être pionnier ne garantit pas le succès durable. Les plus anciens se souviennent de Netscape, premier navigateur web grand public, rapidement marginalisé par Internet Explorer à la fin des années 1990. Un rappel brutal que, dans ce secteur, l'innovation coûte cher… et que la domination n'est jamais acquise. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.
professorjrod@gmail.comIn this episode of Technology Tap: CompTIA Study Guide, we explore the fascinating evolution of technology from the launch of Sputnik in 1957 to the ubiquitous smartphones of today. Discover how early innovations like ARPANET laid the groundwork for the internet, shaping the landscape of technology education and IT skills development. Whether you're part of a study group preparing for your CompTIA exam or seeking expert IT certification tips, this episode provides valuable insights into the origins of the digital world and how it influences modern tech exam prep. Join us as we connect the dots between history and today's technology challenges to help you succeed in your IT certification journey.We start with Licklider's prophetic vision and the leap from circuit switching to packet switching that made failure-tolerant networks possible. Email gives the net its first social heartbeat. TCP/IP stitches islands into one internet. Tim Berners-Lee's simple stack—HTML, HTTP, URLs—opens the door for everyone. The home dial-up era arrives, and the browser becomes the interface of daily curiosity. Mosaic and Netscape ignite innovation; Microsoft's bundling forces a reckoning; Mozilla and later Chrome reshape standards and speed for the modern era.The dot‑com bubble teaches hard lessons, but Google's PageRank reframes the problem: organize the world's information with relevance, not clutter. Broadband and Wi‑Fi make the net always on, enabling streaming, online gaming, and richer apps. Napster breaks open music, litigation clamps down, and then paid streaming wins on convenience. Social networks shift the center of gravity from pages to people; YouTube turns everyone into a publisher and archivist. E‑commerce perfects logistics, and smartphones put it all in your hand. The cloud becomes the engine behind Netflix, Uber, TikTok, and the systems that silently scale our daily tools.We confront the dark side, too: ransomware, botnets, data breaches, and insecure IoT devices that expand the attack surface. Algorithms now shape what we see and believe, while fiber backbones and 5G push speed and density to new highs. AI becomes the thinking layer of the internet, interpreting, recommending, and generating content at scale. A rising push for decentralization—blockchains, IPFS, self-sovereign identity—seeks to return control to users and reduce dependence on gatekeepers. Where does it all go from here? From ambient computing to satellite constellations and new interfaces, the net may soon fade into the background—omnipresent and invisible.If you enjoyed this deep dive, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves tech history, and leave a quick review so more curious listeners can find us. Your support helps us keep exploring the stories that built our digital world.Support the showArt By Sarah/DesmondMusic by Joakim KarudLittle chacha ProductionsJuan Rodriguez can be reached atTikTok @ProfessorJrodProfessorJRod@gmail.com@Prof_JRodInstagram ProfessorJRod
Dagens ämnen: 0:00 Intro 5:08 Eutelsat 13:51 SpaceX 16:05 WeSport 18:01 QCLS 21:23 Warner Bros. 26:32 AI 28:26 Krypto 35:44 Fed och index 38:46 Positioner 40:30 Intervju med @DanielAAren och @Mark_M_Holmgren från @savr! 1:03:00 Veckans Fill or Kill www.instagram.com/fillorkillpodden Tack RoboMarkets! http://gorobo.pro/2aue @RoboMarketsSE Tack Virtune! www.virtune.com
¿Qué tienen en común todos los multimillonarios que fundaron empresas tecnológicas como PayPal, Google, Facebook, eBay, Napster y Netscape? Todos ellos están buscando la fuente de la juventud, con la esperanza de extender la vida humana a 150 años o más… To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1235/29?v=20251111
Ruslan Belkin (Head of Platform Engineering @ Inflection AI) joins us to deconstruct fundamental shifts in engineering leadership. We explore the future of user interfaces, his “sci-fi” approach to establish & test product vision, & how to leverage “investor decks” for better decision-making and project validation. Ruslan also dives into the complexities of building emotional intelligence into AI systems, cultivating an outcome-oriented engineering culture & avoiding process traps. Plus, we discuss how to keep up with the velocity of change (including when new research necessitates a major pivot), synthetic data & the future of data as a defensibility strategy, & why agent reliability is the massive opportunity ahead. ABOUT RUSLAN BELKINRuslan Belkin joined Inflection after co-founding Jelled.ai—acquired by Inflection in 2024—and previously served as CTO of Nauto. Earlier in his career, Ruslan held senior engineering roles at Twitter, LinkedIn, Netscape, and other pioneering Silicon-Valley companies, bringing more than two decades of experience at the intersection of data platforms and machine learning. SHOW NOTES:How leading engineering teams is evolving: Moving from code as the source of truth to specs/documentation as the source of truth (2:44)Why an eng org's good hygiene / health will create better output (5:12)A framework for product vision: Envisioning the future "viscerally" like a sci-fi novel, stress-testing assumptions, and focusing smart people on the problem (9:04)Hiring in the modern era: Why software engineering is becoming "tooling and data engineering" and the importance of hiring for openness to new research (18:20)Gen Z vs. Millennial engineers: Ruslan's observation that Gen Z is more outcome-oriented and has a lower tolerance for "corporate euphemisms." (22:24)Ruslan's favorite frameworks for effective decision making: Using an "investment deck" to validate projects, avoid disbelief and lack of focus. (25:19)Keeping up with the velocity of change: How to curate research inputs and determine when a new paper (like DeepSeek) requires a strategic pivot. (32:57)The new burden of leadership: Why the velocity of AI requires leaders to be "right more often" and how to use models to increase research rigor. (36:27)The "Data Wall" and Synthetic Data: Why we have hit the wall for text data and how synthetic data generation loops will drive the next wave of defensibility. (41:35)The "March of 9s": Analyzing the trajectory of the AI market and why increasing agent reliability is the massive opportunity ahead. (46:25)Rapid fire questions (48:18) LINKS AND RESOURCESRuslan's Talk at ELC Annual 2025The War of Art - Steven Pressfield's guide to inspire and support those who struggle to express their creativity. Pressfield believes that “resistance” is the greatest enemy, and he offers many unique and helpful ways to overcome it.A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains - Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughs” in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow. This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Marketing Meeting is back! In her return to the podcast after a brief layoff, Itir is joined by Marty Neumeyer, to discuss the core principles of branding. Marty is the branding expert who famously said, "Your brand isn't what you say it is. It's what they say it is." Marty and Itir dissect common misconceptions about branding, emphasizing that a brand is fundamentally the customer's perception, rather than a logo or product. Marty explains how to start branding with a targeted niche audience and the importance of aligning a company's purpose beyond mere profit. They also cover the distinction between branding and marketing, noting how branding is a long-term strategy while marketing tends to be short-term and tactical. Marty shares insights on how companies can stay original in the AI era. Last but not least, they discuss Marty's exciting new novel, Octavo, and the intriguing design and formatting choices he made to set the book apart from the pack. Marty started as a graphic designer and copywriter in the 1970s. In 1984, when the Macintosh launched, he moved to Silicon Valley to help companies like Apple, Netscape, HP, Adobe, and Google build their brands. In 1996 he started Critique, the first magazine about design thinking. He then launched Neutron, a design think tank focused on brand-building processes that drive organizational change. He later merged Neutron with Liquid Agency. As Director of CEO Branding at Liquid, he consults with leaders and executives of some of the world's most exciting companies, while writing and speaking on the topics of business strategy, design, and innovation. He takes his coffee at home in Mexico. Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/iloWbgN8_VE Learn more about Marty's newest book, Octavo: https://www.amazon.com/Octavo-Novel-Marty-Neumeier-ebook/dp/B0DRLNPGZJ Connect with Marty Neumeier on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinindig If you have any questions about brands and marketing, connect with the host of this channel, Itir Eraslan, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itireraslan/
The Dot-Com Bubble looked like a disaster—but this video shows how the 1990s Internet boom and the 2000 crash (Netscape, Pets.com, Amazon) built today's web through massive fiber-optic overbuild and hard-won lessons. Invest in yourself today: https://www.alux.app We put together a FREE Reading List of the 100 Books that helped us get rich: https://www.alux.com/100books
From Netscape to VMware, Raghu Raghuram has been at the center of nearly every major inflection point in enterprise technology.In this episode, Raghu joins Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado and David George to reflect on the early internet wars with Microsoft, how Netscape's browser battles shaped a generation of founders, and the inside story of one of the most successful tech acquisitions in history, VMware's $1.3B purchase of Nicira, which redefined modern networking and grew into a multi-billion-dollar business.They discuss how VMware scaled from tens of millions to over $13 billion in revenue, what it took to outlast the cloud revolution, and why AI is now triggering the biggest infrastructure reset since virtualization. Raghu shares his vision for the next decade — from data-center robotics and energy-aware compute to how AI is reshaping both startups and giants alike. Resources:Follow Raghu on X: https://x.com/RaghuRaghuramFollow Ben on X: https://x.com/bhorowitzFollow Martin on X: https://x.com/martin_casadoFollow David on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83 Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures Stay Updated:Find a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Podcast on SpotifyListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Inyectó la mitad de su fortuna en un banco que atravesaba una situación crítica en 1990. Kingdom Holding, su firma de inversión, sigue siendo accionista de la entidad y también está presente en X, Uber y Four Seasons. El nieto del rey fundador de Arabia Saudí se autoproclamó como el Warren Buffett de su país natal en 1999, después de que sus inversiones en Citi, Apple y Netscape, a finales del pasado siglo, resultaran exitosas. Fue poco después, con el estallido de la crisis financiera, cuando su fama en Occidente alcanzó su cénit, pues su posición como mayor inversor extranjero en Estados Unidos le convirtió en un ejemplo de cómo los negocios pueden unir diferentes culturas. Los redactores del periódico Amaia Ormaetxea y Antonio Santamaría analizan su legado en 'Genios de las Finanzas', un pódcast realizado por Tamara Vázquez y dirigido por Amparo Polo.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Belgian surrealist René Magritte was a smart artist, but could the 20th century futurist really have predicted the end of the Worldwide Web age? Not exactly, of course. But according to That Was The Week publisher, Keith Teare, Magritte's 1929 painting, “The Treachery of Images” (featuring the image of a pipe with the immortal words “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”), is a helpful way of thinking about OpenAI's introduction this week of their new Atlas “browser”. It's not really a browser in the conventional way that we think about web browsers like Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer. And yet AI products like Atlas are about to once again revolutionize how we use the internet. They might even represent the end of the web age with its link architecture and advertising economics. So do we have words for what comes next? The not-a-browser age, perhaps. L'ère sans navigateur, to be exact. * The Browser Is Becoming an Agent, Not a Link Map - For thirty years, browsers like Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Chrome were rendering engines for HTML that displayed blue links to web pages. AI products like ChatGPT's Atlas and Google's AI mode in Chrome are transforming browsers into conversational agents that answer questions, summarize content, and even execute tasks like booking flights—pushing the traditional web “down a level” in the user interface hierarchy.* The Web's Trillion-Dollar Advertising Model Must “Reprice Fast” - The web's business model has been largely advertising-based, built on users clicking links that generate revenue. As AI interfaces replace link-based browsing, this nearly trillion-dollar annual revenue stream faces an existential threat. Publishers like Keith Teare and platforms like Google must figure out how to transition their economics to an AI-driven world where links aren't surfaced by default.* Google Deserves Its Stock Price for “Being Brave in Undermining Its Own Business Model” - While AI threatens to upend Google's AdWords cash cow, the company's stock has surged roughly 50% over the past year. Keith argues Google has earned this bullishness by aggressively investing in AI infrastructure (like Anthropic's $10 billion commitment to Google's TPUs) and integrating AI features into Chrome—even though these moves could cannibalize its core search advertising business.* The “Victim Here Is the Publisher, Not the User” - Keith acknowledges that while the shift to AI agents feels like “an absolute change of paradigm,” it's genuinely better for users who get more intuitive, conversational interfaces. Publishers and content creators are the ones facing disruption, as AI may eliminate their distribution channels without yet providing alternatives for reaching audiences or monetizing content. The challenge is that “most of the narrative that doesn't like it is publisher-centric.”* Tim Wu and Antitrust Regulators Are “Fighting Yesterday's War” - Columbia law professor Tim Wu's new book The Age of Extraction focuses on the monopolistic dangers of Google, Amazon, and Facebook—but Keith argues this framing is already obsolete. The real competitive battlefield is AI, where Google is a “laggard” behind OpenAI and Anthropic. The underlying internet architecture (TCP/IP) remains neutral enough to allow challengers to emerge, making heavy-handed government intervention both unnecessary and potentially innovation-killing, as seen in the over-regulated EU.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
วันนี้จะมาชวนคุยเรื่องราวของบริษัทที่เคยเป็น “ราชา” บนโลกอินเทอร์เน็ตยุคบุกเบิก บริษัทที่ชื่อว่า Netscape ซึ่งหลายท่านอาจจะไม่คุ้นชื่อนี้เท่าไหร่ในปัจจุบัน แต่เชื่อไหมครับว่า ถ้าไม่มีบริษัทนี้ โลกอินเทอร์เน็ตที่เราใช้กันอยู่ทุกวันนี้อาจจะไม่ได้เป็นแบบที่เราเห็น ลองนึกภาพเบราว์เซอร์ที่เราใช้กันอยู่ทุกวันนี้อย่าง Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari หรือ Microsoft Edge คงไม่มีใครไม่รู้จักใช่ไหมครับ โดยเฉพาะ Chrome ที่ครองตลาดส่วนใหญ่บนคอมพิวเตอร์และแล็ปท็อป แต่ย้อนกลับไปในช่วงเริ่มต้นของ World Wide Web ในยุค 90 มีชื่อหนึ่งที่โดดเด่นเป็นสง่า นั่นคือ Netscape Navigator แม้ว่ามันจะไม่ใช่เว็บเบราว์เซอร์ตัวแรกของโลก แต่ไม่นานหลังจากเปิดตัว มันก็กลายเป็นที่นิยมมากที่สุด และแทบทุกระบบปฏิบัติการสำหรับผู้ใช้งานทั่วไปก็มี Netscape ให้ใช้ ถ้าคุณเคยท่องอินเทอร์เน็ตช่วงกลางยุค 90s เป็นไปได้สูงมากว่าโปรแกรมนี้ คือประตูบานแรกที่คุณได้รู้จักกับ World Wide Web Netscape เติบโตอย่างรวดเร็ว มีสำนักงานใน 14 ประเทศ รายได้ต่อไตรมาสสูงถึง 120 ล้านดอลลาร์สหรัฐ ดูเหมือนไม่มีอะไรจะมาหยุดยั้งพลังขับเคลื่อนของ Netscape ในตลาดเว็บเบราว์เซอร์ได้เลย แต่ชีวิตก็เหมือนกับการลงทุน มีขึ้นก็ต้องมีลงครับ ไม่นานหลังเข้าสู่สหัสวรรษใหม่ ส่วนแบ่งการตลาดของ Netscape ก็ร่วงลงอย่างหนัก ด้วยการผงาดขึ้นมาของ Internet Explorer จาก Microsoft Netscape สูญเสียอิทธิพลที่เคยมีไปเกือบหมด และภายในปี 2003 บริษัทแม่ก็ต้องเลิกจ้างพนักงานส่วนใหญ่ และยุบเลิกบริษัทที่เราเคยรู้จัก วันนี้เราจะมาย้อนรอยดูกันว่าเกิดอะไรขึ้นกับ Netscape เราจะเดินทางกลับไปในยุค 1990 เพื่อทำความเข้าใจ “สงครามเบราว์เซอร์” และเรียนรู้เรื่องราวของการรุ่งโรจน์และการล่มสลายของ Netscape เลือกฟังกันได้เลยนะครับ อย่าลืมกด Follow ติดตาม PodCast ช่อง Geek Forever's Podcast ของผมกันด้วยนะครับ #Netscape #NetscapeNavigator #สงครามเบราว์เซอร์ #BrowserWars #Microsoft #InternetExplorer #ประวัติศาสตร์อินเทอร์เน็ต #TechHistory #ยุค90 #Mozilla #Firefox #Mosaic #JavaScript #AOL #BillGates #ซิลิคอนแวลลีย์ #เรื่องเล่าธุรกิจ #นวัตกรรม #เทคโนโลยี #geekstory #geekforeverpodcast
Ask Me How I Know: Multifamily Investor Stories of Struggle to Success
Performance pressure and role fatigue often make leaders shrink back. If you fear being “too much,” this episode shows how recalibration restores peace — so your full presence becomes a gift, not a burden.Have you ever held back an idea in a meeting, softened your words so they wouldn't sound “too passionate,” or dimmed your presence because you didn't want to overwhelm others? For many high-capacity humans, the fear of being “too much” quietly shapes their leadership and their life.In this episode of The Recalibration, Julie Holly unpacks why leaders shrink themselves — and how to break free. Through personal reflection on a lifetime of feeling self-conscious about her energy, and the cultural story of Marc Andreessen, who was criticized as brash and “too much” in the early internet era yet went on to shape Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz, Julie reframes what “too much” really means.From an Identity-Level Recalibration (ILR) lens, this fear usually comes from outdated roles: the Pleaser, who thinks it's safer to stay small than risk disapproval; the Peacekeeper, who confuses harmony with suppression; and the Perfectionist, who edits presence until it feels unthreatening. Neuroscience names this pattern social safety bias — the brain exaggerates the risk of rejection, so shrinking feels like safety. But what feels safe in the moment becomes suffocating over time.Here's the truth: You are not too much. You are exactly the right size for your assignment. ILR restores this identity, retraining your nervous system to hold presence without apology. Without recalibration, presence feels like performance. With recalibration, presence feels like peace.This episode is for every leader who feels role fatigue, decision fatigue, or the emptiness of success without fulfillment. It's not another mindset tactic or productivity hack — it's the root-level recalibration that makes every other tool effective.Today's Micro Recalibration:Where am I shrinking myself?What would it look like to bring my full presence without apology?How might my leadership create permission for others to expand?If this episode gave you language you've been missing, please rate and review the show so more high-capacity humans can find it. Explore Identity-Level Recalibration→ Follow Julie Holly on LinkedIn for more recalibration insights → Schedule a conversation with Julie to see if The Recalibration is a fit for you → Download the Misalignment Audit → Subscribe to the weekly newsletter → Join the waitlist for the next Recalibration cohort This isn't therapy. This isn't coaching. This is identity recalibration — and it changes everything.
Join us as we recap and chat about Bob's Burgers Season 9 Episode 11 Lorenzo's Oil? No, Linda's and Season 9 Episode 12 The Helen HuntDid you know Gene calls the netsuke "Netscape." Linda calls it "Netflixy," "nutsky," "neti-potski," "netsadoodle," "netslinky," "Napster," and "Nescafe."?Wiki page for the episode:Lorenzo's Oil? No, Linda'sThe Helen HuntJoin our Book Club and get access to exclusive content on PatreonFollow us on InstagramFollow us on TiktokFollow us on Bluesky
Remember when the Internet was The Net? How about The Web? Cyber Space? The Information Super Highway?? Those were great times! Some of those websites still exist, and we've got the world's premiere journalist as our (Netscape) navigator to Internet of Yore. We also add more to our 2000 from the 2000s playlist (we're more than 1% done)!
In the 1980s, before Internet marketing had even really begun, our very special guest today and returning champion was working as a tech writer in the foreign exchange trading department of Bankers Trust in New York. In his new book “How The Web Won,The Inside Story of How a Motley Crew of Outsiders Hijacked the Information Superhighway and Struck a Blow for Human Freedom,” Ken McCarthy writes: “Working with foreign exchange traders taught me an important lesson about the need for speed in business: Windows of opportunity open and close fast. That understanding, combined with my ‘discovery' of the rudiments of direct marketing, has been worth millions to me and a whole lot more to my clients.” That's one of the many powerful lessons from Ken's new book, “How The Web Won.” He's been around Internet marketing longer than anyone else I know–and possibly longer than anyone, period. In 1994, he sponsored the first conference about the business potential of the World Wide Web. With keynote speaker Marc Andreeson, at the time, the 23-year old co-founder of Netscape, an early Internet browser and the first important one. Time magazine pointed out that Ken was the first person to identify the importance and business power of the click-through rate, which today, of course, is the basis of the roughly half-a-trillion-dollars a year Facebook and Google make selling pay per click advertising. In 2002, Ken started an event called The System Seminar, which I attended a few years later myself. Met Frank Kern, Gary Halbert, Harlan Kilstein, and a whole bunch of other people who were, or became, legends in direct marketing. We could spend the rest of the show talking about all of Ken's accomplishments, but I'd rather he tell you about his book, “How The Web Won.” So Ken, welcome, and congrats on your new book! 1. So in 1993, you attended a conference called One BBS CON. I'm not sure from your book if that was the moment that changed your life, since you'd been doing some pretty good pulling rabbits out of hats with direct marketing before then. But could you talk about if that was an inflection point and how what you learned at that conference influenced you going forward? 2. Could you talk about being invited to Dan Kennedy's conference in 1993? I can't imagine a lot of the hard core direct marketers who paid $5000 to be there were all that receptive at that time to what you had to say. Were they? 3. Until 1989, it was forbidden by the U.S. government to use the Internet for commercial purposes. How fast did that change in the 90s, and what were the key moments for that? How did your San Francisco conference fit into all of that? 4. When did Internet marketing as we know it today really start to get traction? 5. What would you say was the big mistake made by many of the companies that went bankrupt in the dot-bomb of 2000 – and how long did it take for the direct marketing way of thinking take to catch on? 6. What prompted you to launchThe System seminar in 2002? 7. Any other key moments between the early days and today, that you'd like to talk about? Ken's book, How The Web Won https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DM2GN91Q HowtheWebWon.com Get in touch with Ken at: https://kenmccarthy.com Download.
What you'll discover… How to build trust with customers before you've even built a product Lessons on raising $150M and convincing top-tier VCs like Sequoia and General Catalyst The emotional story that sparked Cobot's mission inside a hospital hallway Why humanoid robots might not be the future and what should replace them Why swappable batteries, high-mounted sensors, and swerve drives make all the difference The founder's journey: anxiety, ambition, and the power of embracing the Odyssey Where to find it… (02:35) Why Brad left a high-flying career to start something from scratch (06:10) Timing the AI and robotics wave (08:45) From Scale AI to Cobot: building the product he truly believed in (11:45) Identifying Real-world problems to be solved by your new start-up (19:45) Why top investors believed in him before a prototype even existed (27:00) Selling the vision before building the robot (32:45) MVP success, user feedback, and building trust with early adopters (40:00) What “everyday work” means for Brad and how Cobot improves lives (44:00) The next 10 years of robotics and physical AI (52:00) Brad's proudest moment and how it ties back to a promise to his father More about the episode Before founding Cobot, Brad Porter held senior roles at Amazon, Scale AI, and even helped pioneer voice applications at Tellme and Netscape. But it was a walk with his father through the halls of Mayo Clinic that planted the seed for something radically new. In this heartfelt and insightful episode, Brad shares how a personal loss became a professional mission to build collaborative robots that enhance human work instead of replacing it. With over $150M raised in just three years and clients like the Mayo Clinic, Maersk, and the US Department of Defense, Brad has done what few in hard tech manage to do: build, fund, and deploy a real solution in record time. You'll hear how digital twin technology and fast iteration allowed Cobot to deliver results before having a fully built prototype, and why design decisions like swappable batteries and swerve drives matter more than buzzwords. If you're a founder, investor, or just fascinated by where robotics is headed, this episode delivers hard-won insights and inspiration in equal measure. Connect with us: Peng-Sang Cau LinkedIn Website Brad Porter LinkedIn
In this episode of Bitcoin for Corporations, host Pierre Rochard is joined by Mike Belshe, CEO of BitGo. Mike shares his journey from Netscape and Google to pioneering Bitcoin custody solutions. They discuss the evolution of multi-sig, fiduciary duty, cold storage, and how institutions protect billions in Bitcoin. Belshe explains why proof of reserves and market structure matter for Bitcoin's future. This is a must-watch for anyone serious about Bitcoin security.
What happens when a startup becomes a giant—and then has to reinvent itself all over again?In this episode, Martin Casado sits down with Raghu Raghuram (former CEO of VMware) and Jeetu Patel (President and CPO at Cisco) for a deep, tactical conversation on scaling, disruption, and navigating transformation from the inside. They share hard-won lessons from leading two of the most iconic infrastructure companies in tech—through waves like virtualization, cloud, containers, and now AI.They cover:How to keep innovation alive inside large companiesWhy the best companies operate with a founder's mindset, even without foundersThe difference between selling to buyers vs. practitionersWhy the story is the strategy, and how to tell it at scaleHow Cisco is rebuilding its startup DNA in the age of AIIf you're building or leading through a major tech wave, this episode is a playbook. Timecodes:0:00 Introduction 2:02 Weapons of Mass Disruption: Abstractions, Business Models, and Cloud 5:57 Cisco's Missed Cloud Wave & Resetting for Innovation 6:39 Operating Like a Startup: Speed, Scale, and Leadership 10:00 Go-to-Market Challenges: Fencing Off Innovation 11:04 Organic vs. Inorganic Growth: Lessons from VMware 12:04 The 10x Rule and Competing with Incumbents 14:39 Structuring for Disruption: Two-Pizza Teams and Ideal Customer Profiles 18:43 Storytelling as Strategy: Galvanizing Large Organizations 19:42 The AI Wave: Consumerization and Infrastructure Demands 25:34 Founders vs. Operators: Leading Transformations 31:47 Product-Led Organizations: From Sales to Product Focus 34:35 The Future of Infrastructure: AI, Market Size, and Vertical Integration 39:34 Timing, Market, Team, Product, Brand, and Scale 41:19 Authenticity, Opportunity, and Final Thoughts Resources:Find Martin on X: https://x.com/martin_casadoFind Raghu on X: https://x.com/raghuraghuramFind Jeetu on X: https://x.com/jpatel41 Stay Updated: Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16zFind a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zSubscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
What if I told you that photons raining down from the sun provide 10,000 times more energy than humanity could ever use?Tim Montague is President of the Clean Power Consulting Group and host of the Clean Power Hour podcast, bringing over 30 years of experience from recruiting Silicon Valley talent to coaching clean energy entrepreneurs. His journey from forest ecology graduate student to clean energy catalyst perfectly embodies the age of adoption story. Tim's bold prediction that we're heading toward a grid powered by 50% solar and 40% wind reflects his deep understanding of both technology and market forces. "Photons are free and super abundant, raining down 10,000 times more energy than all of society can use," he explains, emphasizing why renewable dominance is inevitable.What makes Tim's perspective particularly compelling is his focus on climate restoration beyond the traditional net-zero approach. He advocates for ocean iron fertilization, citing Mount Pinatubo's 1994 explosion as proof that iron dust can dramatically impact CO2 levels. "Net zeroing the economy addresses only one-twentieth of the climate problem," Tim reveals, "since there's a trillion tons of legacy carbon in the atmosphere that must also be removed." How can entrepreneurs navigate current policy uncertainty while building scalable clean energy businesses? Tim counsels focusing on commercial, industrial, and utility-scale segments rather than residential solar, riding the "tide of finance" that's pushing the industry forward.Tim Montague is President of the Clean Power Consulting Group and host of the Clean Power Hour podcast, where he covers the energy transition landscape. With over 30 years of experience spanning from recruiting talent for Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Yahoo, and Netscape to coaching clean energy entrepreneurs, Tim brings unique insights to the rapidly evolving renewable sector. A scientist by training with a background in forest ecology, he transitioned to clean energy business development in 2016 and has since become a catalyst for solar industry growth. Tim's expertise extends beyond traditional net-zero approaches to encompass climate restoration technologies, particularly ocean iron fertilization, positioning him as a thought leader in comprehensive climate solutions. In This Episode: (00:00) Introduction of Tim Montague(04:30) Tim's transition from ecology to clean energy business(10:38) Age of adoption story and the power of free photons(14:39) Climate restoration beyond net zero economy solutions(17:26) Counseling entrepreneurs through current market uncertainty and policy headwinds(19:53) Final thoughts on market segments and future outlookShare with someone who would enjoy this topic, like and subscribe to hear all of our future episodes, send us your comments and guest suggestions!About the show: The Age of Adoption podcast explores the monumental transition from a period of climate tech research and innovation – an Age of Innovation – to today's world in which companies across the economy are furiously adopting climate solutions - the Age of Adoption. Listen as our host, Keith Zakheim, CEO of Antenna Group, talks with experts from across the climate, energy, health, and real estate sectors to discuss what the transition means for business and society, and how corporates and startups can rise above competitors to lead in this new age. Access more curated content on the subject by visiting, www.ageofadoption.com.This podcast is brought to you by Antenna Group, an award-winning integrated marketing, public relations, public affairs and digital agency that partners with the world's most exciting and disruptive companies across cleantech, mobility, real estate, healthcare, and emerging B2B tech sectors. Our clients are transformational and distinguished corporations, startups, investors, and nonprofits that are at the bleeding edge of the Age of Adoption. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.Resources:Tim Montague LinkedInPeter Fiekowsky Climate RestorationAntenna GroupAge of Adoption WebsiteKeith Zakheim LinkedIn
It's kind of funny when I think about it—throughout my entire career, I've taught people how to use tools. Tech tools, communication tools, leadership frameworks, sales systems—you name it. And while the tools keep evolving arp speed, the way I teach them hasn't changed a bit. I teach people, not platforms. I bring a human-first approach to everything I do. Whether it's helping someone close a sale, lead a team, or troubleshoot a network issue, I instill a deep sense of humanity into the process. Because it's never really about the tool—it's about the person using it.That's been true for the last 20 years. And it will be even more important in the next 20.The world has changed a lot since I first dialed into the internet using a modem, taught others how to use Netscape, or delivered top-secret messages while serving in the Navy. And it'll keep changing faster than ever. But one thing hasn't changed—and won't: People still crave real connection, clear communication, and contagious energy that lifts them up.So what's next?I've spent the last few decades teaching, selling, leading, speaking, writing, coaching, and creating. Now, I'm setting my sights on the next 20 years with a clear mission, a bold vision, and a whole bunch of momentum.
Rob Zuber sits down with Tara Hernandez, VP of Developer Productivity at MongoDB and former Netscape engineer who helped create early continuous integration systems, to explore strategic frameworks for build vs. buy decisions in modern software delivery.Hernandez shares insights from scaling MongoDB's proprietary CI system—processing 10 engineer years of compute daily—and reveals how organizations can evaluate when custom infrastructure drives competitive advantage versus when strategic partnerships accelerate growth. Her perspective on navigating the evolving landscape of CI/CD tooling offers actionable guidance for engineering leaders balancing innovation with operational efficiency.Have someone in mind you'd like to hear on the show? Reach out to us on X at @CircleCI!
Today's topic on the Neil Rogers show is computers. Hear about clock speeds, 486 vs Pentium, Packard Bell, Netscape, and more. There was a Gilbert sighting.
What does it take to build startups that last and come back for more? In this episode, Amir sits down with Russ Fradin, serial founder, longtime investor, and now CEO of Larridn. With nearly 30 years of experience and billions raised across multiple ventures, Russ shares what he's learned about founding companies, hiring the right people, navigating pivots, and representing other people's money with integrity. This isn't a highlight reel. It's a grounded, real-world look at what actually makes a great founder.Key Takeaways• Great founders haven't changed. The barriers to entry have• The best ideas evolve constantly. Early-stage success is about the team• Founding with the right people creates longevity and joy in the journey• Angel investors are betting on judgment, not just ideas• Fulfillment comes from building with people you respect and admireTimestamped Highlights00:53 Why Russ and his co-founder launched Larridn to reimagine productivity in the age of AI03:48 Lessons from 29 years of company building, from pre-Netscape to today05:36 How the startup world has changed and what hasn't since the 90s12:06 What makes the journey worthwhile even when startups fail14:56 How Russ chose the right co-founders and why it still matters most17:52 Knowing which idea to chase and when to pivot with purpose21:24 What representing other people's money really means to him as a founder and angel investorQuote of the Episode“There's just nothing better you can do with your time than go to work every day trying to build something amazing with amazing people.”Pro TipsWhen choosing your next venture, ask: where do I have unfair advantage? It's not just about solving a big problem. It's about solving the one you're uniquely qualified to tackle.Call to ActionEnjoyed this episode? Share it with a founder or investor in your circle. Subscribe to The Tech Trek for more conversations with leaders who've done the work and are still doing it. Follow Amir on LinkedIn for more insights and episode drops.
On this TechMagic episode, hosts Cathy Hackl and Lee Kebler welcome Jeff Shardell, founder and CEO of Humble Brands, to hear about his journey from leading at Google to redefining sustainability in the CPG world. Jeff shares how his tech background shaped his approach to eco-friendly product design, scaling consumer goods, and building an authentic celebrity partnership with Jason Momoa. Cathy and Lee also dive into cutting-edge mixed reality news, from ByteDance's lightweight Pico headset to Oakley's NASA visor collaboration. Plus, how Gen Z's gaming habits are reshaping career paths. With updates on AI's impact on gaming jobs and Roblox's new adult dating features, this episode bridges the worlds of innovation, sustainability, and immersive tech. The hosts also preview what's coming in Season 3 after their summer break.Come for the Tech, stay for the Magic!Jeff Shardell BioJeff Shardell is the CEO and Founder of Humble Brands, a sustainable personal care company known for its natural deodorants and eco-friendly packaging. With a distinguished background in tech leadership, including roles at Google during its early growth phase and Netscape, Jeff leveraged his experience scaling companies to revolutionize the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industry. He co-founded gloss.com, which was later acquired by Estée Lauder, before launching Humble Brands with a mission to create better-for-you personal care products while reducing environmental impact.Jeff Shardell on LinkedInKey Discussion Topics:00:00 Intro and Welcome Back, Cathy04:15 Music, AI and the Future of Live Entertainment13:12 AI's Impact on Gaming: Candy Crush Layoffs & Industry Changes29:18 Jeff Shardell: From Google Executive to Humble Brands Founder35:00 Building Authentic Celebrity Partnerships in CPG40:23 Sustainable Innovation: Beyond Plastic Packaging51:35 ByteDance's New Mixed Reality Hardware & Industry Trends56:20 Space Tech: Oakley's NASA Visor Collaboration01:00:31 Gen Z Gaming Skills Becoming Career Opportunities01:07:08 Season Wrap-up & Summer Break Announcement Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of Careers in Finance on FinPod, we sit down with Eric Byunn, Partner and Co-Founder of Centana Growth Partners, to unpack the journey behind one of the most respected voices in growth equity. From his early days at Harvard and McKinsey to product leadership at Netscape and founding his own investment firm, Eric shares candid insights on navigating career transitions, leading through uncertainty, and building a successful finance career with curiosity and conviction.This episode is a must-listen for early-career finance professionals, consultants considering a pivot to investing, and anyone interested in how great investors think not just about deals, but about people, purpose, and long-term impact.
As we transition from the social media age (the internet of trolls) to the AI epoch (the internet of tolls), has the publishing apocalypse finally arrived? That's the question Keith Teare and I discuss in our That Was the Week summary of tech news. Two major court cases this week—Getty Images vs. Stability AI and the Anthropic lawsuit—have fundamentally shifted the legal landscape around AI and copyright. The courts ruled that AI systems can legally "learn" from published content without copying it, essentially giving artificial intelligence a free pass to consume human creativity at scale. Meanwhile, publishers are scrambling to find new business models as search traffic evaporates and AI “answers” replace traditional web browsing. From CloudFlare's proposed toll system to the rise of AI browsers like DIA, Keith and I explore how traditional link economics are being completely reimagined—and whether human creators can survive the transformation. Dead Links Walking everyone. It's going to be a bloody entertaining spectacle. * AI Won the Legal Battle: Two major court cases (Getty Images vs. Stability AI and the Anthropic lawsuit) ruled that AI systems can legally "learn" from copyrighted content without permission, as long as they're not directly copying it. This distinction between learning and copying has massive implications for content creators.* The Search-to-AI Shift is Killing Publisher Revenue: As consumers increasingly use AI instead of search engines, publishers are losing the traffic that drives their advertising-based business models. Google's own CEO admits about two-thirds of their revenue still comes from search ads—a model that's under threat.* The "Internet of Tolls" is Coming: Publishers will be forced to return to pre-internet subscription models, putting content behind paywalls. CloudFlare is even developing technology to charge AI systems for accessing content at the network level, creating micro-transactions for publishers.* Links Are the New Currency: The future monetization model for publishers may depend on getting AI systems to surface and properly compensate for links to original content, rather than just providing direct answers.* We're Still Waiting for Native AI Products: Despite all the hype, we haven't yet seen the "Netscape moment" for AI—a truly native, intuitive product that isn't just AI bolted onto existing technology. The real transformation is still coming.“The tollbooths are rising”, Keith ends his That Was The Week editorial, “the road ahead is ours to choose”. I think he's wrong. Yes, he's right, of course, that the AI revolution is inaugurating a new toll economy of walled garden AI leviathans. But the future isn't ours to choose. We - and I mean the broad content industry from individual producers to larger publishers - are spectators to this epochal change. Agency no longer exists. We don't shape the future; it shapes us. Maybe that was always the case. But in the age of trillion dollar AI start-ups, we don't matter. As I said earlier, it's going to be a bloody entertaining spectacle. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Özgürlük ve mahremiyet, aynı madalyonun iki yüzü gibi birbiriyle yakından ilişkilidir. Çoğu soyut kavram gibi, bunlar da kendiliğinden ortaya çıkmaz; hayal edilmesi, inşa edilmesi ve kararlılıkla korunması gereken değerlerdir. İnternet gibi dönüştürücü teknolojiler, hem bizim onları şekillendirmemizi sağlar hem de kendileri bizi şekillendirir. İnternetin tarihi, diğer ağ teknolojilerinin, örneğin paranın interneti olan Bitcoin'in nasıl evrilebileceği konusunda önemli dersler sunar.Web'in ilk günlerinde kullanılan Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), bilgiyi şeffaf bir şekilde aktarıyordu. Her şey herkese açıktı ve meraklı kişiler kimin kiminle konuştuğunu ve ne gönderildiğini kolayca görebilirdi. Ancak Eric Hughes gibi düşünürler, elektronik çağda açık bir toplum için mahremiyetin gerekliliğini vurguladı. Mahremiyet sır tutmak değildir; kişi mahremiyet sayesinde kendini dünyaya seçici olarak ifşa etme gücüne sahip olur.Ne yazık ki, internet ilk ortaya çıktığında güçlü şifreleme varsayılan değildi. Güçlü şifrelemenin eksikliği, PRISM ve ECHELON gibi büyük çaplı gözetim sistemlerinin kurulmasını kolaylaştırdı. Snowden'ın ifşaatları, bu gözetimin benzeri görülmemiş boyutunu ortaya koydu. Bu durum, internette iletişimi daha özel hale getirme çabalarını tetikledi. Netscape'in başlattığı HTTP over SSL ve ardından formalize edilen HTTPS, iletişimin güvenliğini artırdı. Bu tür korumalar, otoriter rejimlere karşı durmak, araştırmacı gazetecilik yapmak ve muhalefet etmek için neredeyse imkansız hale geldiği yerlerde hayati önem taşır.Tarih tekerrür eder ve iletişim mahremiyeti konusunda öğrenilen bu dersler finansal iletişim için de geçerlidir. Bitcoin Protokolünün mevcut durumu, şeffaflığıyla web'in HTTP aşamasını anımsatıyor. Finansal bilgiyi herkesin erişebileceği ve analiz edebileceği şekilde depolamak, özgür bir toplum için faydalı değildir; aksine bunu engeller. Tam şeffaflığın toplumsal sonuçlarından kaçınmak için, Bitcoin dünyasında da HTTPS benzeri güvenlik ve mahremiyet güvencelerine geçilmesi gerekecektir.Mahremiyet bir lüks değil, bir zorunluluktur. Birleşmiş Milletler İnsan Hakları Evrensel Beyannamesi gibi belgelerde temel bir insan hakkı olarak tanınmıştır. Tıpkı fiziksel dünyada evlerimizin mahremiyeti gibi, dijital dünyada da şifreleme mahremiyeti mümkün kılar. Tam gözetim hali, güvenlik değil, zorlama ve tiranlık halidir ve yeniliği baltalar. Yeni fikirlerin tartışılması ve gelişmesi için mahremiyet esastır. Mahremiyet olmadan özgürlük boştur. Vizyon ve mühendislik çabalarıyla, değer transferinde de güvenlik ve mahremiyetin yakında varsayılan hale gelmesi umulmaktadır.Kaynak
The title fits, but not necessarily for the reasons you imagine. Barbara Leigh grew up in Wisconsin where she attended college and had a successful career. She tells us about her life and discusses getting married, having two children and over time watching her life choices basically and totally destroy her self esteem. Barbara tells us how she, while growing up, was constantly described as a “smart girl”. She helped many figure out answers and learned along the way how to observe and research to learn whatever she needed to know. In 1995 when the internet was just coming into our sphere of experience, Barbara learned about it and created web pages and websites for the nonprofit for which she worked. Even with all the technical knowledge she amassed it took many years before she realized that even with all her smarts she was becoming a person who was being reshaped by a partner with his own low esteem and who constantly blamed her for everything that went wrong. Eventually Barbara realized that something was wrong and began to look in ernest at her life and behavior. She realized that she had to make choices and regain her own self confidence and constructive view of herself. She changed her life and outlook and began growing again emotionally. Barbara tells us about her journey and even includes lessons she learned and wants to pass on to others. In 2024 Barbara wrote and published her book, “Why Smart Girls Get Into Bad Relationships and How Not To Do It Again”. She is quick to point out that the book is not just for women. It is for anyone who may be facing a “bad relationship”. Barbara shares nine conclusions and thoughts from the book that illustrate why her writings can be so important for so many. This episode is full of many great life lessons and observations. I do hope you not only enjoy it, but that you also gain some positive life choice ideas from it. About the Guest: Barbara Leigh grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin and was considered in school to be a smart girl. She was not the type to get in trouble or make bad decisions. She was involved in lots of activities and did well in school. She went off to Ripon College where she majored in Speech Communication and worked in the library. After graduation, she got a job in a library at a nonprofit. While working toward a Masters in Library and Information Science at UW-Milwaukee in 1995, she was taking an online searching class and was recruited to build a web site for her employer, being one of only a few employees that had even heard of the World Wide Web. From there, Barbara built a career as a web developer and eventually moved to online learning and LMS integrations. In each career step she moved toward content, but eventually was directed back to the technical. In the midst of all that, Barbara got married and had two children. She entered and contributed to bad relationships in her marriage, career and family until one day she decided to just stop. She has spent the last twenty years figuring out what it means to stop, how to continue living, and how to do it better. In 2024, she published a book, Why Smart Girls Get Into Bad Relationships and How Not To Do It Again, and in 2025, she took early retirement to get fully into content and do more writing. She currently writes the Helpfulmess blog which posts weekly. Ways to connect with Barbara: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbaraleighauthor/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbaraleighauthor Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/barbaraleighauthor.bsky.social Website: https://www.barbaraleighauthor.com About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello, everyone, wherever you happen to be today, around the world or in space, whatever the case happens to be, we're all in space anyway, so I guess that counts for something. But I'm really glad that you are here, and we're really going to have, I think, an interesting conversation today, because we, we have a person who has written an interesting book, at least. I think it's an interesting book. The title of the book is, why do smart girls get into bad relationships, and how to and how not to do it again. I think that's an interesting title. Smart Girls, I gotta say, though, Barbara, who is our guest, Barbara Leigh, I don't know. I think they're more than smart girls that get into bad relationships or just do dumb things. I don't know. Why is it that most people do dumb things, but that's a different story, and probably not what we're really going to cover today. But anyway, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset, and we're glad you're Barbara Leigh ** 02:19 here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate Michael Hingson ** 02:23 it. Yeah, well, it is probably true. Why do, why do so many people get into challenges? Ah, but we cope with what we have to right? Yes, we do. Well. Well, I'm glad you're here. Thanks for for being here and being on unstoppable mindset. Really looking forward to having a chance to really chat. Why don't we start? If we can by you telling us a little bit about kind of the early Barbara growing up and all that. Alright, well, I grew up. How's that for a great way to start. Barbara Leigh ** 02:52 That's a great, great way to start. I grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin. I had two brothers and a sister, mom and dad and, you know, cats and a dog and cows. I lived in a small community. Everybody knew each other. Nothing really exciting about my childhood. I was in 4h and I was in lots of activities in school. I did great in school, and I was wildly shy as a small child, but I managed to get comfortable enough with that by being a 4h officer and being in in leadership positions in the activities that I was in. I went to off to college in Ripon, and I been busy working on being me ever since, Michael Hingson ** 03:56 well, so you, you, you don't sound like you're very shy today, Barbara Leigh ** 04:06 like I said, I tried to get past that. I'm still wildly introverted, but I'm at least, you know, able to speak in public. That's a Michael Hingson ** 04:15 start. Well, that's a good you know, I'm I've always been amazed, and I hear it so often that the top fear today is public speaking. And I've never really, I know it's me, but I've never understood why it is, because I've always been somewhat used to doing it, but I think that people approach public speaking oftentimes with kind of the wrong idea, because I find that if people fear it, what they're really saying is they're afraid of the audience and what the audience might do. But I find that audiences generally don't tend to really want to view a speaker as being bad. They want speaker. To succeed. So it's always been a puzzlement to be as to why people are afraid of public speaking. Barbara Leigh ** 05:07 Yeah, that is true. I was a Speech Communication major in college, and had to take public speaking as a course, and we had a guy in there that was just shook. His whole body. Shook it when he started out, and he by the end of the course, he was the best speaker there. I think he just needed to practice doing it and find out it's not so bad. Michael Hingson ** 05:34 Well, what did he do? What do you have any notion of what what really eliminated his fear? Barbara Leigh ** 05:41 I think he just got better each time. I think it really was just just getting up in front of people and finding out, yeah, they aren't gonna do anything. They're trying to do the same thing as me. They're trying to learn public speaking, and they're fine. Michael Hingson ** 05:56 That's cool. Well, I know when I was a program director at our campus radio station at UC Irvine, I wanted everyone to listen to their their own shows. So we we wanted them to record the shows which they wouldn't do. So the engineer and I arranged for that to get done, and we made people listen to their shows, take the cassettes home and listen to them. And as I think about it, I think that probably more often than not, some of these people were in radio because they didn't have to stand up in front of an audience, and they didn't think about being in front of an audience and speaking so much. And so they did what they did, but when they were compelled, if you will, to listen to themselves, they got better. And they got better because they then heard what everybody else is hearing, and they taught themselves that they could really do better than than they thought they were doing, and that they thought that they could do. And I think that really makes a lot of difference. And some of those people actually ended up going into broadcasting as a as a career, Barbara Leigh ** 07:01 that's great. Yeah, it really is. It's just a matter of getting used to your own voice. I mean, some people just really got annoyed, I guess is the word at their own voice, and they were like, I don't sound like that. Well, you don't sound like yourself inside your head. Yeah, Michael Hingson ** 07:27 yeah. I know that when I hear myself talk, I do know that I sound different than I think I sound. And so again, that's part of what I work on. When I listen to recorded speeches, and I listen to what I say and how I say it, because I know what audiences like when they hear a speaker, so it gives me something to work toward. And that's a good thing. Yeah. So it is kind of fun. So you went off to school, you were in high school and all that and and did what? What people do in high school, I assume, Barbara Leigh ** 08:07 yep, lots of groups. I was in library club and let's see Spanish club and music, musical and choir and various things. Yeah, normal stuff, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 08:23 yeah. I did some of that. I was in the science club, and there was a math club. Wasn't in too many clubs, but I was in those two and and had a lot of fun with that. So it's, it's a good thing. And then, of course, as many of us do, then you went on to college. Where did you go to college? Ripping College. I've never heard of that college, Barbara Leigh ** 08:49 very small liberal arts college, Michael Hingson ** 08:52 which is all the better I am. I'm a fan of smaller colleges. I read in the book David and Goliath, the guy who invented the tipping point, wrote this book, and he talks about the fact that if more people would go to small colleges, they would discover that they could actually be kind of a larger fish in a small pond, rather than being a fish that isn't necessarily as large a fish in a very large pond. So the value of people going to to places that are smaller adds a lot of value, and you do get a lot more attention. And that's why, one of the reasons I think I went to UC Irvine, we had 2200 excuse me, 2700 students when I went there. Now there are 32,000 freshmen. My gosh, I can't believe how large it is. No, it's University California, Irvine UCI, which they always say lovingly, really, truly means under construction indefinitely. They're always building new things on the college. So. Barbara Leigh ** 10:01 Yeah, ripen is, is under 1000 students total. And Michael Hingson ** 10:07 what did you major in? I knew all my professors. It 10:09 was great. And Michael Hingson ** 10:10 that's, that's cool. And I did as well. I and I got to know some of them very well. Actually, a couple, one of them even came to my wedding when my wife and I got married. Some, seven or eight, well, eight years after I graduated, or, well, six years after I graduated, but he, we invited him, and he came to the wedding. So that was kind of cool. What did you major in Barbara Leigh ** 10:33 speech communication with a religion minor? All right. Michael Hingson ** 10:37 Wow, that's an interesting combination. Why? Why a religion minor with with that religion Barbara Leigh ** 10:43 has always intrigued me. I guess it's I am interested in people, and religion has such a strong effect on people, and so I really just wanted to learn more about various religions and and how they work. Michael Hingson ** 11:01 So what do you what do you think about religion and our world today, and how much of an effect it it has? Barbara Leigh ** 11:11 It's probably very big question. Yes, yes, I have that's like, one of the ideas for one of my next books is to dig into that I'm I have several ideas of things I want to cover, and that's one of them. But, yeah, it just it floors me that there can be so much variation in people who seem to believe the same things. Michael Hingson ** 11:44 Yeah, yeah. It is. It is fascinating. I I've said ever since escaping from the World Trade Center on September 11, that what happened, no matter what those terrorists say, was not a reflection on the whole world of Islam and the Muslim faith, those were thugs who decided that they wanted to try to make the world bend to their will, if you will, and and they they did a pretty good job for a little while, but it wasn't a religious war, because I think most Muslims are not that way. That's true, and we shouldn't demonize that religion as such, especially since we could always go back and talk about the crusades in, you know what, 1066, and so on. And if we want to talk about Christianity and what it did, yeah, the reality is, everybody tries to do things in the name of religion, and it just doesn't make sense at all. It doesn't. But people try to justify anyway, which is, which is truly unfortunate. Well, so what did you do after you got a degree? Barbara Leigh ** 12:47 Oh, let's see. I went off to Well, I got married. There you go, after graduation, and moved to the town where my my husband was living, and we I started working at K Mart, and from there, I went to outlet mall. I was the retail store manager, and then I got my job at a nonprofit, and I've been at that nonprofit for 34 years, until I retired, just not too long ago. Michael Hingson ** 13:24 Wow. What's the nonprofit? Or can you say Barbara Leigh ** 13:28 it's the international foundation of employee benefit plans? Okay, Michael Hingson ** 13:33 well, that sounds pretty useful. You were there a long time, huh? I was wow. Barbara Leigh ** 13:39 I moved around to multiple departments, but I was able to keep growing later, so I stayed Michael Hingson ** 13:46 so you you were there 34 years. Wow, that is a long time. What? What did you What did you learn about life being there for so long? Wow, I was out for a general question, yeah. Barbara Leigh ** 14:06 Well, I learned, boy, so many things I have. The foundation is an Educational Association. So I learned the actual benefits. Part of it, I have a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist designation, but also I learned a lot about people and work environments and and getting along with people, and I learned a lot about technology when I started at the foundation the the World Wide Web was not public yet, and while I was there, I was going to graduate school at UW Milwaukee. I. For library and information science. And while I was doing that, I was taking a an online searching course. And my boss, well, I worked in the library, so my boss asked me if I would create a website for the foundation, because nobody else in the building really had even heard of the World Wide Web yet. Yeah. So I learned all about web development and programming and all of that, just because I happened to be the only one that Michael Hingson ** 15:40 knew, and using tools like Netscape, remember Netscape? Oh, yes, absolutely, Barbara Leigh ** 15:50 yeah, wow. So yeah, I learned a lot of that, and then from from the library, I went to it, and was in a web developer for many years, and then from it, I went to educational programs where I was working with our learning management system and the integration with with our association management system. So I was, I was doing integrations, basically and but the things that I learned in technology careers that have helped me thus far have been I was doing a lot of troubleshooting. So I would, you know, a lot of times, you know, if you're in technology, no garbage in, garbage out. So when I get to a problem, I say, you know, there's this, there's garbage coming out, or there's nothing coming out at all. And I work back word through the process to get to the source data. And learning that you finding the source data and making sure that the source data is correct is really important. So I learned about a lot about working my way through systems to find that and also making sure that the systems work. So that has helped me a lot in in my life, because when I got into the situation where I needed to write this book about I managed to work my way back to the source of of the problem. And so the the source of the problem was my beliefs about me, about relationships, about other people. And so it was really helpful for me to have that process already in place in my brain, that I could just work my way back to that and Okay, now I can start from better data. Michael Hingson ** 18:13 Yeah, do you think that working a lot in technology and perhaps some of the other areas where you worked. Do you think that that taught you more about how to observe and look at things and better be able to analyze them and and remembering them? I just find that so often people don't observe things. And I think learning to observe is extremely important to do Barbara Leigh ** 18:45 absolutely yes, yes, when that's that's like all of my career was observing and and like you said, analyzing, being able to put what I've observed into what I want to happen, or what I would I need to communicate with other people. I think a lot of my career was, was connecting the right people to the right either technology or the or the other people, or just get making those connections. Michael Hingson ** 19:30 But you had to learn how to observe people and draw conclusions and get that information to make that happen. Barbara Leigh ** 19:38 Oh yes. And, you know, it's a process, just in growing up and watching people in general. Like I said, you know, religion was, was my thing, because people fascinate me. So I I've always been a people watcher, not like, go sit at the mall and watch people, but, I mean, yeah. I just really try to understand where people are coming from. And I think once I was in a technology career, it was even more important, because a lot of times in those careers people don't expect the technology person to be able to do that, and for me, that was the most important part with understanding the people, understanding what they wanted, what they were actually saying was not exactly what they wanted, and to try to get it get to what they wanted, and then to work with the system to be able to get what they wanted to come out correctly. Michael Hingson ** 20:53 How did you discover that? How did you discover that people weren't necessarily saying what they really wanted, or that somehow it wasn't being articulated on it. And I understand that's a really tricky sort of thing. I know in asking myself that I just kind of respond by saying, it's just something you gain from a lot of experience, but you have to think about it. But you know, what do you think Barbara Leigh ** 21:21 exactly? It's trial and error. You keep having people ask you for one thing and then expecting something else, until you figure out that you know what that's really not what they want, and to get them to verbalize, okay, what is it you want coming out of this? Is it? It's tricky. Michael Hingson ** 21:47 Yeah, yeah, it is and, and it is something where you got to be pretty careful about how you do it and, and to whom you you focus your attentions to make that happen. Or if you've got some people who are difficult to deal with, and again, I guess that that helps you stretch and grow and you learn how to even deal with those people a little bit better, so that they're comfortable in interacting with you. Barbara Leigh ** 22:14 Yeah, absolutely. But a big part of my job is making people feel comfortable enough to talk to me and, you know, and a lot of times when I would get a project, I would go to the person that that's using, whatever it is, and ask them, okay, you know, where are you getting this data? What do you want it to look like? And, you know, and ask them deeper questions. And, and these are often the people who are, you know, low man on the totem pole, and don't ever get asked, but those are the people that I needed to get to to find out what you know, where things were coming from, to actually give them what was going to work for them. Michael Hingson ** 23:10 And that's interesting. You're saying, like, the low person on the totem pole doesn't get asked, and they're the ones that would love to be asked to be able to offer their opinions, so that that opens up whole new opportunities when you convey that you're you're willing to listen, and of course, that also then deals with the whole issue of trust. Because if they tell you something and say, Well, I want this incompetence, and you have to keep it that way. Yes, absolutely, trust is, is such a fleeting thing today, even though it's all around us, everywhere we go And everywhere we look. I mean, we trust that the roofs on our houses aren't going to collapse while we're doing this interview, this well, this conversation, and we trust that the internet is going to continue to work. It might, we'll see. But, but we trust in so many ways, but yet, unfortunately, we also confront, or are confronted by situations that try to teach us not to trust and to be close to trust, which is too bad. Yeah, one of the things that, that, that I talk about, actually, in my latest book, live like a guide dog, is trust. I talk about the fact that, in general, the difference between a dog and a person is while dogs love unconditionally, and I think that's true, although they can be taught not to, obviously, but while dogs love unconditionally, they don't trust unconditionally. But the difference between a dog and a person is that dogs are much more open to trust because we have just learned, or we've drawn the conclusion that we can't trust people, and so we lose that skill of being open to trust and trust. Truly learning how to determine whether we can trust any individual or not, rather than just saying we're not going to trust Barbara Leigh ** 25:07 Right, absolutely, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 25:10 which is, you know, which is so unfortunate? Well, I'm sure you've, you've encountered that a lot. Barbara Leigh ** 25:17 I have, indeed, and you know that's that was part of my process, was learning how to trust again. And that's a slow, slow, hard process. Michael Hingson ** 25:31 What, what caused you to start to learn not to trust? What? What happened in your life? Barbara Leigh ** 25:38 Okay? Well, I want to talk about it, but, well, I won't go into too deep a detail, but yeah, I I was in a relationship where, you know, I was with a very a person has low self esteem, and because of that, I would get told that things were my fault, or things were if I hadn't done this, or if anything That happened really was was somehow brought back to me and as a person with higher self esteem, I took that as my personal responsibility, rather than looking at it as no, that's really Your choice, not, not something that I could cause, and that just kept eroding away at my confidence, and it ended up with me having no self esteem whatsoever. Wow. And then we, you know, I hit a point where an event happened, and I, you know, my brain went, nope, I don't deserve that. And that's where the light switch flipped, and I was to, you know, then I started looking around and going, you know what? I didn't deserve that, either or that, and that was not about me. And so then I started to measure against that, and go, Okay, I can set up boundaries now, because this is behavior that I won't accept anymore. And I was able to start making boundaries, and I was able to start standing up for myself. And, you know, as as that process went on, I was able to, I guess, it was motivate myself just by connecting, reconnecting with that higher self esteem person that I had been earlier. And so I would, you know, it honestly took a very long time, because I was at nothing, and at that point, I made a conscious effort to be gentle with myself and to be patient with myself and to accept myself and so with those being kind to myself thoughts, that's how I was able to move forward. And like I said, moving forward started motivating me, and I was able to bring myself back up to a higher self confidence. Michael Hingson ** 29:02 Did you get? Oh, go ahead. Oh, Barbara Leigh ** 29:04 but yeah. The the trust being gone was a trust for not just the person I was in a relationship with, but for so many things around me because I didn't trust myself. I didn't trust what I was believing about myself. Michael Hingson ** 29:28 Did you hate yourself? Barbara Leigh ** 29:31 I would not say that. I would say I just didn't understand myself. I would like I said, when I got to the bottom, I was able to say, I don't deserve that, so I wouldn't say hated myself. Yeah, Michael Hingson ** 29:48 that's why I asked the question, because that was my impression of what from what you were saying. It wasn't a hate or a dislike, it was a recognition of what should be and what. And then how to deal with it? Barbara Leigh ** 30:02 Yep, I was, you know, because I got there and, you know, the light switch went on, and I was like, how did I get here? How did this even happen? You know, it just, I couldn't understand. Michael Hingson ** 30:18 But as you, as you progressed and as you learned about yourself, and that, of course, was part of it, is that you were learning about yourself and bringing yourself back the person you had a relationship with you weren't able to to, I gather, make positive steps to get them to to be a lot better than they were. Barbara Leigh ** 30:43 That was not my focus. My focus was no boundaries, so that they couldn't hurt me anymore, Michael Hingson ** 30:52 right, right? It wasn't a matter of you're trying to heal them, but setting boundaries and it would have it would have been nice if they had recognized what was going on. But that was the difference, is that you recognized and they did not right. Barbara Leigh ** 31:06 And honestly, once I got to a place where I was back to being who I felt like me, he was able to look at that and take some motivation from that, and he actually went and got help through therapy as well. So it actually turned out way better than than expected, but Michael Hingson ** 31:41 yeah, so are you guys still married? Yes, we are. Well, there you go. Okay, and that was what I was curious about. So he he did. It wasn't you can't, you can't fix everything because people have to fix themselves. But he was able to recognize that which was, which is so cool, Barbara Leigh ** 32:02 yeah, honestly, I moved out twice. So, I mean, like I said, I set boundaries, yeah, but we made it work. I mean, like, like I said, when I first made the change I did. I was not strong enough to move to be on my own. I just wasn't. And so, you know, I just tried to be as patient with myself as possible, and and I just kept, kept those boundaries and okay, you can't talk to me like that. That's just not going to work. And as I moved forward, he kind of came along with me Michael Hingson ** 32:47 well, and it sounds like you're both the better for it today. Barbara Leigh ** 32:54 Oh, absolutely, yes, we've come a long way. I wouldn't say we're perfect for sure, but Michael Hingson ** 33:01 it's a it's a process. Yes, it is. So what does he do for work or for a living? Barbara Leigh ** 33:08 He is a sales person for a home improvement company. Michael Hingson ** 33:11 Ah, ah, Home Improvement. Tim, the tool man, Taylor, but that's another story. Oh, gosh. Well, that's pretty cool. And does he do well at selling? Barbara Leigh ** 33:25 Yes, he does that. He had his own business for for many years, and so it just comes pretty naturally to him. Michael Hingson ** 33:34 Well, at the same time, if you're going to be good at sales, you have to learn to observe and and not take things too personally sometimes as well. I learned a lot about sales when I was confronted by needing to go into sales or finding another job, and then I took a Dale Carnegie sales course, and one of my favorite observations about sales is that the best salespeople are really counselors. They're teachers. They guide you in and help you make the right decision, rather than just trying to force something on you, which doesn't mean that they're not trying to make $1 and sell products, but you can also find that your product might not be what somebody wants, and if you push them into buying it, that's going to cost to cost you in the end anyway, Barbara Leigh ** 34:24 right? And that's why he makes a good salesman, because he was he, he did the work for for 15 years, and at at his own company, and then he went, moved to sales, and just because his body was wearing out, and for because he knows how the product works, how it goes on the house or whatever, he can explain that to the customer, and that makes it so much easier for them to understand, you know, why they need what they need, and how it works. Michael Hingson ** 34:59 Yeah. Yeah, and I have found that the better sales people really do understand how the product works, and they take the time to keep up with things, because that's going to make them better at what they do. Yes. So now you have children. How many children? Barbara Leigh ** 35:16 Two, girl and a boy, and how old are they? 29 and 25 Michael Hingson ** 35:23 oh, they're just kids. 35:24 They're just kids Michael Hingson ** 35:28 and and I know if they've gone into sales just checking no okay, Barbara Leigh ** 35:36 and have no interest in doing that, what do they do? My daughter works in customer service, and my son is Air National Guard Michael Hingson ** 35:47 member. Oh, okay, so it's hopefully it sounds like both of them have some really decent self esteem. Yes, they they learned that along the way from the two of you, which is good, which is a positive thing, which is, which is pretty cool, yeah. So you have retired from being with a nonprofit. You said you were there for 34 years, and what caused you to retire Barbara Leigh ** 36:17 writing this book, I was, I'm looking at writing more and, you know, doing marketing and doing all the things book has been a lot to do and work full time, yeah, so I decided to give, give it my all. Michael Hingson ** 36:35 Did you self publish or does the publisher publish it? Okay, yeah, which makes even more of a marketing responsibility for you. Although I think publishers are pushing more for most authors to do more to market their own books, rather than the publishers helping as much as perhaps they could. But nevertheless, well, tell us about the book. Then tell us, if you would tell us about that. Barbara Leigh ** 37:01 Oh, it's why smart girls get into bad relationships, and how not to do it again. I started out with, well, basically the book is for people who want better relationships, not just women, but I. I started out with a smart girl title, because that is something I identify with. I think of it as an identity, because a lot of books on relationships are books written from the perspective of therapists or the perspective of people who have been abused or some kind of trauma or have addictions or something like that, and that's not, that's not who I am. And so I was trying to give a voice to, you know, average people have these problems too. So the smart girl identity is more about, really, like in high school, people would you know, who didn't know me? Well, what time I yearbook? You're so smart. Or people at work, thank you for fixing that. You're so smart, right? And I believed that. And what I believed was that reasonable humans make reasonable choices, and that's not always true, and so when I wrote the book here, or actually when I when I hit the bottom and I started looking back, I was like, I don't know how I got here. So how did I get here? I went through the process. I figured out that my beliefs weren't quite right, and they sounded good, but when I actually put them to action. They really didn't work. So the book is my process of of getting from bottom of the barrel self esteem back up to high self esteem, and looking at those beliefs and rewriting them. Michael Hingson ** 39:23 So, um, how so like some of your beliefs that that didn't work. For example, Barbara Leigh ** 39:28 I will read you a few of them if you don't mind. Okay, so, so you get the idea of where, where this goes. So Belief number there's nine of them. Belief number one, I can trust myself became, I can trust myself when I am being honest with myself, because I was lying to myself quite a bit of the time. It turns out, number two, I am a good helpful person became, I am a good helpful person, but that is not where I find my. Value, and that kind of blew me out of the water when I figured that one out. Number three, I'm smart, but I can't appear smarter than my partner. And that's where the focus on women comes in. It's kind of looks at the social oppression of women and how that affects your beliefs. You know, if you believe that stuff so, number three, became, I am smart and I don't have to hide it. Number four, I must guard my relationship, not only from outside, but from inside to became, I must guard my own boundaries to maintain my mental health and stay true to me. Number five, it is important to keep things steady and stable became keeping things steady and stable doesn't allow me to grow. Fear blocks my growth. Embracing the uncomfortable for a time helps me become better. That one was a hard one to learn how bad number six, self care is indulgent and not a priority. Became, self care is a high priority if I don't care take care of me, I can't be good at caring for anyone else. Numbers seven, I have emotional muscle, and I can muscle through anything became I have emotional muscle and I can use it to pull out of negative thoughts. I don't need to deny my emotions or wallow in them. Just recognize them, feel them, and continue to move all the way through them, and this one kind of hits home for my daughter. My daughter was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 20 months, and she used her emotional muscle to muscle through her pain, because she didn't want to see the reaction of people feeling sorry for her, and so she had a lot of of using that emotional muscle to just not show people her pain and and that has been something that we've had to work on for a long time. Michael Hingson ** 42:33 What did she discover? What did she finally do? Barbara Leigh ** 42:37 Well, it's been a process, but she's finally actually showing her pain. She because, like she's had a cyst that burst in it. It wrapped around some things, and she couldn't tell the doctor in charge that that she was having that much pain. She she didn't make it a 10 on the pain scale. So the doctor didn't think that she was that, that these complications had happened, because most people couldn't even walk with this pain, but she could, because she's super high pain tolerance. Yeah, and, you know, she learned that she doesn't need to hide her pain, which was, which was pretty life shaking for her, and she's learned that, you know, she can actually tell her doctors, yes, I'm, I'm actually having some pain, and I I really need to have you work on this or or give me medication for this, or whatever. But, yeah, she's she's really come a long way as far as being honest with herself and with other people. Yeah, let's see. Number eight, I can rely on my smartness to figure it out became I can rely on my smartness and problem solving ability. But life isn't always logical. Sometimes I'm starting starting from a faulty belief I don't have to be perfect. It's okay to ask for help when I don't understand and get stuck. And that one it, it seems very obvious, but that one was really ingrained and kept coming up in different ways. Number nine, partial is enough, I can and should fill in. The rest became I am a whole person with my own thoughts, emotions, talents, hopes, dreams and goals. So if I want to be in a relationship, my significant other should see me as a whole person and should be a whole person themselves. Michael Hingson ** 45:10 Wow, some pretty deep concepts, needless to say, Yeah, but by the same but by the same token, you were willing to step back and observe and think about yourself, so you were able to to create these conclusions and make these changes, which is what it's really all about? Barbara Leigh ** 45:36 Yeah, I think that's what's different about my book, is that it's not written by a therapist or somebody who's at the other side. It's somebody who's actually in it, um, digging through it and and feeling it and it makes the, you know, it. I pulled apart the process and was, you know, you have to hit all of the things that the you know, the mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social, all, all of the things to hold those beliefs out of all of the different places in your life where they stuck. Michael Hingson ** 46:23 You think that people really have to, how do I say this? Go to the bottom or hit rock bottom before they can really start to learn? Barbara Leigh ** 46:33 I hope not. Michael Hingson ** 46:38 You did and I but I hear it a lot you really don't know until you hit rock bottom. And I'm not sure I totally buy that. It really depends on what you're able to learn and what you're able what conclusions you're able to draw. But a lot of times hitting rock bottom, if you will, maybe emotionally at least, brings people to where they need to be. But I am with you. I hope that it isn't always that way, and it doesn't need to always be that way, Barbara Leigh ** 47:06 right? I think there's, there's different rock bottoms, you know? It's I got to the point where I needed to learn, and I learned, and that may not be what you and I would view as rock bottom to someone else, you know, but it's, you know, I finally, I finally flip the switch. And that's, you know, somebody else may have a switch at a different level than Michael Hingson ** 47:40 or they may not see that there's a switch to flip which is, which is all about choice, yep. So what got you started down the road of writing the book? Barbara Leigh ** 47:54 To be honest, I never thought I would write a book that was never, you know, a big goal in life for me, and I think it's totally a God thing, because I was, you know, my my daughter's been telling me, you need to write a book. You need to write a book for, you know, years. And I was like, yeah, yeah, sure, no product. And then all of a sudden it was time to write the book. And I was like, I don't know why it's time to write the book, but it's time to write the book. And honestly, it it flowed. I mean, I had all these great ideas for a book, and they went poof out the window when I wanted to start writing. I I just kind of sketched out an outline that was terrible, and showed it to a few people, and they're like, sure, you go. And I threw it away and just started writing. And once I started writing, it, it flowed. It actually just came out. And once I was in it a little, you know, a few chapters in, then I was able to organize it and figure out what I wanted to say and make an outline. But I couldn't do any of that until I just started writing. So I don't know, it was odd. And then I gave it to my son. I gave, like, the first two, two chapters, probably, to my son, and he read it, and he pushed it back over the table at me, and said big words. And I was like, okay, so I took it and I took out all the big words, and I made it more conversational. And now everybody who who has read it and and talk to me is like, you know, it just feels like a conversation with a good friend over a cup of Michael Hingson ** 49:57 coffee. There you go for Barbara Leigh ** 49:59 a glass of. Wine. So that's where it Michael Hingson ** 50:03 got, yeah, it's, it's about not preaching, but presenting and teaching in a in a non confrontive way, which is what it's really about, which is what sales is about, Yeah, but that was very observant on his part to say that, yeah, Barbara Leigh ** 50:24 you made it so much better. Michael Hingson ** 50:28 When I wrote thunder dog, my first book I was I wrote it with someone. We collaborated. I had worked on it for a long time, or at least worked on ideas. And then Susie Flory called one day and she wanted, she was writing her own book, and she said, Tell me your story. And after I did, she said, You should write your own book, and I'll help you do it. And she did, one of the things that we had was that the book is about being in the World Trade Center, but it's also a lot about my life. And when we got it to the editor, because her agent, who became my agent, Chip McGregor, was able to sell it to Thomas Nelson publishing, which is now part of HarperCollins. But the editor said, My problem with this book is the transitions. And kind of said, well, what do you mean? He said, Well, you talk at the beginning of each chapter about an event on September 11, and then you you go back in your life, but you don't transition between the two. And then when you come back, you don't transition. And I get lost. And when he described that, it just immediately clicked what he was saying. And I actually then spent a weekend putting transitions in every chapter at the right places. And when he read that, he said, this is perfect. This is exactly what I was talking about. And when one of the major reviewers of the book, Kirkus, which reviews books for publishers and libraries and so on, when they reviewed it, they said one of the most powerful parts about it were the transitions. And so I appreciate what your son said, because sometimes the unexpected thing that someone says is what sends you down a road to make it a much better thought process and a much better book or a much better whatever than it would have been otherwise. Barbara Leigh ** 52:22 Yeah, absolutely. I had a friend from college read it from an author perspective. So she's, she's written five books, and she gave me just, you know, really, she wrote fiction books so they weren't the same, but she gave me just really good authoring advice. As far as you know, you were used this word too many times, you know, things like that. And that was really, really helpful too to just, oh, okay, I get it. That would make it much more smooth. And you know, that was really helpful for me too, and it's just just to get feedback in any capacity is so helpful, I think, Michael Hingson ** 53:12 well, and all of those comments that people give you help teach you how to write better. Yeah, absolutely. How has writing the book changed your perspective? Barbara Leigh ** 53:24 Wow. Well, first thing, I had no idea about writing books or publishing or marketing or any of that, so that's been a whole big learning curve. But as far as you know, even even writing through the book helped teach me some things about the process as well. Just as far as relationships go, and talking through it with I had about a dozen people reading it at chapter by chapter as I got them done and and having getting that feedback from them, as far as you know, how it how it affected them, and it was really just so, I guess, helpful for me to learn what other people were were thinking when they're reading it. Because, you know, some of the things had never occurred to me, some of the things were for from friends who had been through some kind of childhood trauma. And I was kind of looking at, okay, I get what you're saying, and I think this that what you're telling me is you. This part is coming from your childhood trauma, but this other part is definitely something that I could add to my book, and I didn't want to make my book about trauma, because it really in my mind, was for the person that was just an average person, living an average life, having average relationship. However, my friends who have had childhood trauma have actually been the most affected by my book, which I find fascinating. Michael Hingson ** 55:42 That's that's interesting, but it does make sense, because clearly you're trying to help people be more open about themselves, to themselves. And the people that that do that are the people that have been in situations where maybe they haven't, and they maybe intellectually realize that they need to grow and change, but they hadn't totally emotionally adopted that stance, and so you help them with that, which is cool. Barbara Leigh ** 56:11 Yep, that's something I was expecting for sure. Michael Hingson ** 56:15 No, understand. Now you have a blog also right, called helpfulness. Why is why is it called helpfulness? And what is it about? Barbara Leigh ** 56:24 It is called helpful mess because when I was writing this book, I was writing about helpfulness and how that kind of steered me in the wrong direction, because that's where I was finding my value, and I had a typo that made it helpful. Mess, mess. Yeah, I said related to that mess. Yeah, it's like, that messy part. That's me. I So related to that that I ground onto that word. I was like, Okay, this word is mine, Michael Hingson ** 56:56 well, and it really goes right along with the book and everything we've talked about today. Needless to say, Have you thought about doing things like starting a coaching program? Or do you do any of that? Barbara Leigh ** 57:12 I do not. My daughter is, she is a life coach, and she has started a holistic nutrition program. So she's kind of doing that, that thing and, and I've never really been interested in doing that kind of thing. So I like you go. I will help you. Michael Hingson ** 57:33 Okay, well, that's fair. I think we, we all do what we we feel we're best at, and it may come to the time where you'll suddenly discover that you're really better at it than you think, and that you could, you could coach people, or maybe not, but that's really something to look at. Barbara Leigh ** 57:55 Yeah, I do want to focus on my writing for a while, but you know, when she's done with her program, maybe we'll get something Michael Hingson ** 58:01 together. Well, there you go, and she lives close to you. Yeah, Barbara Leigh ** 58:08 she's a half hour early, all right, so Michael Hingson ** 58:10 Wisconsin home to everywhere, which is pretty cool. Well, so what would you advise? What kind of advice would you give to someone who's going through a lot of the things that you've gone through and so on? What would be the first thing that you would say to them to hopefully get them started down a different path of of life, rather than thinking so little of themselves and not really wanting to move forward, Barbara Leigh ** 58:39 I would tell them they have options. You can leave your your value is not in how helpful you are, and be gentle and be kind to yourself and accept that you may not be coming from a belief that is true. And look, you know, try to see when you feel something that right, kind of off. Kind of look at your beliefs and you know, where is this coming from? Because a lot of times you can find it if you look hard enough, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 59:31 it's about teaching people to truly develop the skill of self analysis, if you will. Yeah, which is something that we, we all ought to do more of we, we tend not to really look at ourselves. And it goes back to the same thing as the whole concept of the fear of public speaking, if we, if we step out of ourselves and look at what happened, we beat up on ourselves rather than recognize. Amazing. This is a teaching moment, and we can learn from it, rather than allowing it to just be something that beats us Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:07 up. Yes, absolutely, Michael Hingson ** 1:00:10 which makes a lot of sense. Well, I want to thank you for doing this. We've been we've been at this about an hour. Can you believe it? But I really enjoyed having you talk about it. Do you have any kind of last minute thoughts that you want to convey to people? Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:30 Well, let's see. I guess if you think reasonable humans make reasonable choices, maybe rethink that. If you want to find my book, you can find it at my website. Let's see Michael Hingson ** 1:00:48 and what's your website? Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:51 Barbara Lee, author.com and Lee is l, e, i, G, H, Michael Hingson ** 1:00:56 so it's Barbara Lee, author.com, yeah, cool. Well, I hope people will find it, and we'll, we'll read it. Is it's available? Is it a hard copy or ebook, or both, or both? Okay, Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:16 and available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Ingram, Apple, Google, not all the places Michael Hingson ** 1:01:24 they're they're an audible version or an audio version, Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:27 not yet something to work on asking, yeah, absolutely. I know I have two people that have been asking, and I well, I have to start making money before I can spend money on that. Michael Hingson ** 1:01:43 Yeah, I hear you well, unless you read it yourself, which cuts the cost way down. Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:49 Yeah, try that. I have no idea how to do that either, so that, you know, has added to my my pile of things I need to learn. Michael Hingson ** 1:01:56 There you go. It's an adventure. Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:57 Yes, absolutely, it's on the list. Well, Michael Hingson ** 1:02:00 Barbara, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it, and I want to thank all of you for listening. I hope that this has been not only enjoyable, but educational and worth your time. Love to hear your thoughts. Love to get your your thoughts about this. So any of you who would we'd love to hear from you, please email me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, wherever you're listening, please give us a five star review. We really appreciate those reviews, and especially we love five star reviews. We want positive reviews, but you give us your honest thoughts. We love that. We appreciate it, and we value your comments very highly. If you know anyone who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, please let us know. And if, by the way, you aren't sure how to review or whatever, or you want to find another place to hear more podcasts in addition to wherever you're listening to it, today, you can go to Michael hingson.com/podcast that's m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, o n.com/podcast, and all of our episodes are there, but we really value your time. We value that you like what we're doing. We'll always love to hear from people, so please let us know and keep the emails coming and again. Barbara, I just want to thank you. We really appreciate your time and are so glad that you came and spent this time with us. Barbara Leigh ** 1:03:32 Thank you, Michael, it's been great. I appreciate Michael Hingson ** 1:03:40 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.
Le mercredi 15 juin 2022, le géant de l'informatique américain Microsoft a débranché Internet Explorer, son navigateur historique. A la fin des années 90 et durant les années 2000 il était pourtant LA référence en la matière. Il a même concentré jusqu'à 95% du trafic mondial en 2004 contre moins d'un 1% avant sa fermeture selon le site irlandais StatCounter. L'une des premières explications à la fin d'Internet explorer est juridique. Créé en 1995, il a alors pour principal concurrent Netscape. Pour le devancer, Microsoft l'installe par défaut sur tous ses ordinateurs. Quand son déclin a-t-il commencé ? Comment l'expliquer ? Ses concurrents ont-ils eu raison du navigateur ? Ecoutez la suite de cet épisode de "Maintenant vous savez". Un podcast écrit et réalisé par Jules Hauss. Première diffusion : 17 juin 2022 A écouter aussi : Qu'est-ce que la méthode Loverboy, la technique de proxénétisme utilisée par le masculiniste Andrew Tate ? A quelle fréquence devons-nous laver nos draps ? Retrouvez tous les épisodes de "Maintenant vous savez". Suivez Bababam sur Instagram. Les ventes privées en ligne sont-elles réellement avantageuses ? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mary Meeker's experience dates back to her role as a leading technology analyst at Morgan Stanley with her “Internet Trends Report”, she was in the middle of the Netscape, Amazon, and Google IPOs, and became a VC at Kleiner Perkins (2010) and then founded Bond in 2018 which has raised $5.75B to fund companies including Canva, Stripe, Plaid, Ironclad and Nextdoor to name just a few.During this episode of SaaS Talk with the Metrics, CAC and Growth discuss some of the KEY highlights of the 339-page report, Bond and Mary Meeker just released on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends - 2025 including:ChatGPT and Generative AI are the fastest growing technology adoption of all time - with contextExponential growth of the AI ecosystemHow Generative AI is reinventing the technology stack and economic modelsGeo-political impact of the race to AI leadershipCapital intensive nature of AI and the operating profitability realityLegacy SaaS companies or native language models applications - who will win...and whyThe Metrics Brothers go beyond legacy SaaS to discuss the AI Trends captured in the Mary Meeker - Bond report and guess what - it includes numbers and metrics!!!Full report available at: https://www.bondcap.com/report/pdf/Trends_Artificial_Intelligence.pdfSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Eric Yuan turned a simple belief into Zoom, the platform that kept the world moving through a once-in-a-century shutdown and redefined modern work. On this episode of Grit, the Zoom CEO shares why velocity beats size, how a family-first ethos powered his leadership during COVID, and why the coming wave of AI dwarfs the original internet boom. He details how he's refreshing Zoom's culture for 7,500 people, opting for virtual deal calls over in person meetings, settling into life as an empty-nester, and keeping Zoom nimble enough to outpace Big Tech and the next wave of AI startups.Guest: Eric S. Yuan, Founder & CEO of ZoomChapters: 00:00 Trailer00:44 Introduction01:47 Walking with swagger03:48 Extremely exciting moment10:05 Classic innovators' dilemma12:59 Laser-focused bandwidth17:56 Family first: lead by example22:09 Everybody was doing their road shows25:34 The entire world was dependent28:04 Community care31:57 Valuation and a co-founder35:17 A lot of unhappy days39:25 Building Zoom for consumers46:57 Holograms?52:01 Home53:23 Huge competition, high velocity1:00:33 Where companies get wrong1:04:52 Giving back1:13:12 Who Zoom is hiring1:13:24 What “grit” means to Eric1:14:24 OutroMentioned in this episode: Webex by Cisco, Glean, Apple, HP, Netscape, Yahoo, Brian Armstrong, Emilie Choi, Coinbase, New Limit, Elon Musk, Windy Hill, Magic Leap, Rony Abovitz, Jony Ive, OpenAI ChatGPT, Bill McDermott, ServiceNow, Carl EschenbachLinks:Connect with EricXLinkedInConnect with JoubinXLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.comLearn more about Kleiner Perkins
This week on The Marvelists, Peter and Eddie are joined by Cole Netscape from “Marvelous! Or, The Death of Cinema” to honor the late Peter David, whose iconic Marvel runs on The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man 2099, and X-Factor shaped the superhero genre. They celebrate his creation of characters like Miguel O'Hara and his lasting impact on comics. The discussion turns critical as they address David's financial struggles, highlighted by his GoFundMe for medical expenses, which sparked debate on platforms like Twitter about major companies like Marvel undercompensating creators. The trio examines the industry's failure to provide adequate financial support or health benefits for comic creators, despite profiting from their work, and calls for systemic change. Join us for a heartfelt tribute and thought-provoking discussion on the comics industry's challenges.
Sam Sethi is the CEO of TrueFans a Podcasting 3.0 app that enables fans to reward their favorite creators using micropayments. He is also the co-host of Podnews Weekly Review. Sam is a 30 year veteran of the IT industry. He has held senior technical and marketing director roles across a number of companies including Microsoft, Netscape, Gateway Computers and Microstrategy. He has also been an entrepreneur having started and successfully sold 3 startups covering home-automation, fashion and journalism. Sam also helped start TechCrunch Europe and has been an angel investor and mentor to numerous startups. Before entering the IT industry, Sam was an Army Officer in the Parachute Regiment and in his spare time enjoys teaching Krav Maga. Key Moments [06:17] Climbing the Corporate Ladder [07:38] Title Dependency Critique [12:35] "Early Internet Access Journey" [13:58] Future of Digital Transactions [19:24] Independent Schedule Benefits [22:50] "Thames Path Walking Adventure" [25:03] Embracing High-Level Idea Exchanges Find Sam Online https://www.linkedin.com/in/samsethi/ https://truefans.fm If you're enjoying Entrepreneur's Enigma, please give me a review on the podcast directory of your choice. The show is on all of them and these reviews really help others find the show. iTunes: https://gmwd.us/itunes Podchaser: https://gmwd.us/podchaser TrueFans: https://gmwd.us/truefans Also, if you're getting value from the show and want to buy me a coffee, go to the show notes to get the link to get me a coffee to keep me awake, while I work on bringing you more great episodes to your ears. → https://gmwd.us/buy-me-a-coffee or support me on TrueFans.fm → https://gmwd.us/truefans. Follow Seth Online: Seth | Digital Marketer (@s3th.me) Seth Goldstein | LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/sethmgoldstein Seth On Mastodon: https://indieweb.social/@phillycodehound Seth's Marketing Junto Newsletter: https://MarketingJunto.com Leave The Show A Voicemail: https://voiceline.app/ee Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Prior to founding Humble and moving to Taos, Jeff Shardell spent his career living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His last company was Google where he was Director of Business Development. There, he helped build their strategic partnerships team and rode the rollercoaster from an early stage start-up to one of the most successful tech companies in history.Prior to that, he was at a number of Internet startups, including co-founder of Gloss.com which was sold to Estee Lauder and at Netscape, the original browser company. Jeff's passions include storm chasing, playing guitar, surfing and camping with his 8-year old son.
Anthony Eden is a gray beard in terms of internet time, being around when Netscape was released. He was studying music at the University of Miami, and decided to build a website to show off his music and other peoples work - and was hooked. Outside of tech, he grew up surfing, living in Hawaii, France and now Florida. He enjoys writing software for fun - when he has time - and playing board games with this kids - when they are around.In the past, Anthony was coming off of a failed startup. At the time, he was using a different vendor to manage domains and DNS - which he did not like at all. He decided to go forward and build a better solution, and one that is - you guessed it - simple.This is the creation story of DNSimple.SponsorsPropelAuthTeclaSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://dnsimple.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/aeden/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Art collector and philanthropist Komal Shah, originally from Ahmedabad, India, migrated to the US in 1991 to study computer science in California. After completing her Masters at Stanford, she earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, eventually holding positions in the executive suites of Oracle, Netscape, and Yahoo. In 2008, Shah left the tech industry to focus on philanthropic pursuits. She then began developing the Shah Garg Collection with her husband and tech entrepreneur Gaurav Garg, solidifying a vision for the collection's emphasis on women artists in 2014. Today, they are focused on amplifying the voices of women artists and artists of color through the Shah Garg Foundation.She and Zuckerman discuss activism, mistakes, excellence, motherhood, ungendered works, the seduction principle, how only 12% of works collected by museums are by female artists and how women artists make $.10 on a dollar, how to build a collection, great artists, and the social reality of guilt!
It wasn't that long ago that one of Silicon Valley's most prominent and influential venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen, was a major supporter of the Democratic Party. So how did he, in such a short time, transform into a top advisor to the Trump administration? This week, we retrace Andreesen's steps–from his early days at Netscape to his current role of “unpaid intern” at DOGE. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Marc Andreessen is an entrepreneur, investor, co-creator of Mosaic, co-founder of Netscape, and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep458-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/marc-andreessen-2-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Marc's X: https://x.com/pmarca Marc's Substack: https://pmarca.substack.com Marc's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16z Andreessen Horowitz: https://a16z.com SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Encord: AI tooling for annotation & data management. Go to https://encord.com/lex GitHub: Developer platform and AI code editor. Go to https://gh.io/copilot Notion: Note-taking and team collaboration. Go to https://notion.com/lex Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (12:46) - Best possible future (22:09) - History of Western Civilization (31:28) - Trump in 2025 (39:09) - TDS in tech (51:56) - Preference falsification (1:07:52) - Self-censorship (1:22:55) - Censorship (1:31:34) - Jon Stewart (1:34:20) - Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan (1:43:09) - Government pressure (1:53:57) - Nature of power (2:06:45) - Journalism (2:12:20) - Bill Ackman (2:17:17) - Trump administration (2:24:56) - DOGE (2:38:48) - H1B and immigration (3:16:42) - Little tech (3:29:02) - AI race (3:37:52) - X (3:41:24) - Yann LeCun (3:44:59) - Andrew Huberman (3:46:30) - Success (3:49:26) - God and humanity PODCAST LINKS: - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips
Original text by Darin Adler. An overview of the Motorola MEK6800D2 single board computer/development kit. Roger Heinen “engineers are a dime a dozen” story from episode 40 of the Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs Podcast. The General Magic documentary is a good hard look at how General Magic fizzled out, though it somehow managed to survive long enough to power the General Motors OnStar service. Darin Adler later joined the Nautilus (a.k.a. the GNOME desktop file manager) development team with Andy Hertzfeld at Eazel. Demonstration. Bryan Cantrill recounts the object-oriented operating system craze of the 1990s and counts the corpses: Spring, Taligent, Copland, and JavaOS. Lisa Melton recounts crisis management at Eazel and the history of the Safari and WebKit project on episode 11 of the Debug podcast. Waldemar Horwat went on to head JavaScript development at Netscape. Like many other eerily smart math and programming language types, he now works at Google.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with entrepreneur and software pioneer, Marc Andreessen. They discuss the timeline of the woke institutional takeover, the ruinous effects it has had on Western ideology and business, the ways in which AI will shape society, and the immense responsibility we have to instill the future with an ethos and morality that serves human flourishing. Marc Andreessen is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and one of the few to establish multiple billion-dollar companies. Marc co-created the highly influential Mosaic internet browser and co-founded Netscape, which later sold to AOL for $4.2 billion. He also co-founded Loudcloud, which as Opsware, sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. He later served on the board of Hewlett-Packard from 2008 to 2018. Marc holds a B.S. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Marc serves on the board of the following Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies: Applied Intuition, Carta, Coinbase, Dialpad, Flow, Golden, Honor, OpenGov, Samsara, Simple Things, and TipTop Labs. He is also on the board of Meta. This episode was filmed on December 18th, 2024. | Links | For Marc Andreessen: On X https://x.com/pmarca?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Substack https://pmarca.substack.com/ “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” (Book) https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
Marc Andreessen is a prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and technologist and the cofounder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. This discussion covers Andreessen's journey from his upbringing in rural Wisconsin, through his founding Netscape and the development of one of the first commercial internet browsers in his twenties, to his pivotal role in shaping Silicon Valley and now national politics. The interview also delves into the technological and political evolution of Silicon Valley and Andreessen's own shifting political affiliations from left to right, along with his vision for leveraging technology to drive societal progress, the role of innovation in addressing energy challenges, border security, and national defense. Andreessen also discusses DOGE, a policy initiative focused on government efficiency (and the strategy DOGE may use to accomplish its goals), his “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” and the imperative for revitalizing the US military's technological capabilities to maintain global competitiveness. Recorded on January 9, 2024.
Democrats once seemed to have a monopoly on Silicon Valley. Perhaps you remember when Elon Musk bought Twitter and posted pictures of cabinets at the old office filled with “#StayWoke” T-shirts. But just as the country is realigning itself along new ideological and political lines, so is the tech capital of the world. In 2024, many of the Valley's biggest tech titans came out with their unabashed support for Donald Trump. There was, of course, Elon Musk. . . but also WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum; Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who run the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini; VCs such as Shaun Maguire, David Sacks, and Chamath Palihapitiya; Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale; Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey; hedge fund manager Bill Ackman; and today's Honestly guest, one of the world's most influential investors and the man responsible for bringing the internet to the masses—Marc Andreessen. Marc's history with politics is a long one—but it was always with the Democrats. He supported Democrats including Bill Clinton in 1996, Al Gore in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004. He endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and then Hillary Clinton in 2016. But over the summer, he announced that he was going to endorse and donate to Trump. Public records show that Marc donated at least $4.5 million to pro-Trump super PACs. Why? Because he believed that the Biden administration had, as he tells us in this conversation, “seething contempt” for tech, and that this election was existential for AI, crypto, and start-ups in America. Marc got his start as the co-creator of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser, which is said to have launched the internet boom. He then co-founded Netscape, which became the most popular web browser in the '90s, and sold it to AOL in 1999 for $4.2 billion. He later became an angel investor and board member at Facebook. And in 2006, when everyone told Mark Zuckerberg to sell Facebook to Yahoo for $1 billion, Marc was the only voice saying: don't. (Today, Facebook has a market cap of $1.4 trillion.) He now runs a venture capital firm with Ben Horowitz, where they invest in small start-ups that they think have potential to become billion-dollar unicorns. And their track record is pretty spot-on: They invested in Airbnb, Coinbase, Instagram, Instacart, Pinterest, Slack, Reddit, Lyft, and Oculus—to name a few of the unicorns. (And for full disclosure: Marc and his wife were small seed investors in The Free Press.) Marc has built a reputation as someone who can recognize “the next big thing” in tech and, more broadly, in our lives. He has been called the “chief ideologist of the Silicon Valley elite,” a “cultural tastemaker,” and even “Silicon Valley's resident philosopher-king.” Today, Bari and Marc discuss his reasons for supporting Trump—and the vibe shift in Silicon Valley; why he thinks we've been living under soft authoritarianism over the last decade and why it's finally cracking; why he's so confident in Elon Musk and his band of counter-elites; how President Biden tried to kill tech and control AI; why he thinks AI censorship is “a million times more dangerous” than social media censorship; why technologists are the ones to restore American greatness; what Trump serves for dinner; why Marc has spent about half his time at Mar-a-Lago since November 5; and why he thinks it's morning in America. Go to groundnews.com/Honestly to get 50% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today's biggest news stories. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices