Podcasts about Stripe

On today's show, recorded live at Claima Stories: Feast Portland edition, we meet Farrah Jesani, owner of One Stripe Chai. Born and raised in Georgia, Farrah is first generation Indian-American in a family of entrepreneurs. Her dad owned an accounting firm, while her mother ran a cafe that their family owned. As she headed off to college, Farrah was drawn to Art History but was deterred because of a lack of representation in the art world. So, instead she decided to study accounting, following in her fathers footsteps. But she learned pretty quickly that accounting wasn't for her and changed her major to business. About Claima Stories with Bimma:Former Nike Marketer, Bimma Williams interviews leading and emerging BIPOC creatives about how they were able to break into the notoriously guarded creative and sneaker industries. From these stories, listeners will learn how to claim their dream careers. Featuring Melody Ehsani, Jeff Staple, and James Whitner. Listen and Subscribe now.Subscribe: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/claimastories/

For more by Fr. Ripperger & please visit http://sensustraditionis.org/ Fr' Ripperger's Press for his books at https://sentradpress.com/ Fr. Ripperger's order is found at https://dolorans.org/

TOPICS: We talk about a recent study conducted by payment platform Stripe that shows that creator economy platforms are growing faster than traditional music industry platforms; Triller is empowering Black creators; we interview MusicEntrepreneurHQ founder David Andrew Wiebe. You can find out more about his work, and check out his latest edition of "The Music Entrepreneur Code," by visiting musicentrepreneurhq.com! Rate/review/subscribe to the Break the Business Podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play. Follow Ryan @ryankair and the Break the Business Podcast @thebtbpodcast. Like Break the Business on Facebook and tell a friend about the show. Visit www.ryankairalla.com to find out more about Ryan's entertainment, education, and business projects.

On today's episode, Blake Jude and I try and break down what the issue is with the Buffalo Bills (ironic after how they dominated on Thanksgiving). We also do the impossible task of dissecting the Patriots Dynasty and Bill Belichick, plus we nerd out about our Fantasy Football teams being really good.... We also get set for NFL Sunday by talking about Rams vs Packers, picking the Thanksgiving Games, even though we now know the results, and spend 5 minutes going through 15 or so College Football games from Friday/Saturday, meaningful or not.

Hoy hablamos de Circle, una de varias herramientas muy parecidas que permiten crear comunidades tanto gratuitas como de pago.

Oh damn! Manga Wednesday! Christian and Josh welcome Edgelord Brian back as they say goodbye to Star and Stripe in My Hero Academia, react to the conclusion of Itadori vs. Higuruma in Jujutsu Kaisen, marvel at Gas's upgrade in Dragon Ball Super, and much more! As always you can find Christian on Twitter/Instagram @thechrisespinal Josh @jdcole_37 and Brian @bdotesp! follow the show on Twitter/Instagram @newjumpcity. Check out Brian's Twitch Stream here! Our theme song is by @drum_fu. Watch the video version of this episode on our Youtube channel here! Feel free to email us at newjumpcitypod@gmail.com with any suggestions, recommendations, feedback, or fan theories you'd want us to read on the show!

Этот выпуск make sense podcast можно не только слушать, но и смотреть — видео доступно по ссылке на YouTube: https://youtu.be/HRNI7684w7Y. «Почему Яндекс купил банк? Он просто хочет сделать линейку финтех-продуктов. А после выхода из Яндекс.Денег, с их экспертизой, опытом и возможностями, у Яндекса может получиться сильный продукт. Они много экспериментировали с разными составляющими финтеха и очевидно, что, на взгляд обывателя, в экосистеме Яндекса такие продукты должны смотреться очень логично». «Есть такая компания LCH, которую мало кто знает и которая не является героем финтеха. Это до сих пор частная компания и главный держатель ее акций — „Лондонская фондовая биржа”. По оценкам, на нее приходятся десятки процентов мирового рынка услуг клиринга. У них есть комиссии — довольно небольшие, порядка 6 евро за миллион евро. Зато объемы у них сумасшедшие. Это один из левиафанов финансовой системы, чьи тени, работая в финтехе, вы постоянно будете замечать». Подкаст выходит при поддержке ProductSense Academy: https://bit.ly/3nGDuhN Собеседник: Иван Стружков, Lead Product Owner, банк «Точка» t.me/Trashaque Ведущий подкаста: Юра Агеев ФБ: fb.com/ageev.yuri Подписывайтесь на канал анонсов подкаста: https://t.me/mspodcast. О чем говорим: 1:00 Устройство современного финтеха, система абстракций и механика транзакций 12:50 О левиафанах мировой финансовой системы 14:55 Низкоуровневые слои финтеха, легаси и классификация банков 18:45 Роботы, алгоритмы и скоростная игра на разнице стоимости товаров и компаний 24:40 Проблемы с созданием банковских продуктов и свойства необанков 37:56 Фокусировка на узких нишах или универсальность. На чем зарабатывают необанки 41:15 Зачем IT-компании скупают банки 42:30 Место Visa и Master Card в системе транзакций 45:40 Место электронных кошельков и сервисов типа Stripe в системе транзакций 53:30 Есть ли место новым революционным идеям и сервисам в финтехе. Бизнес-модель Robinhood 58:40 Порог входа в большой финтех и банкинг 1:06:50 Почему финтех динамично растет в развивающихся странах. рациональное поведение 1:15:46 Надо ли менеджеру финтех-продуктов получать экономическое образование Что упоминаем: LCH (clearing house) https://bit.ly/3HLVyz1 Математика Джона Форбса Нэша-младшего https://bit.ly/3cGRjX6 Фильм по биографии Нэша «Игры разума» https://bit.ly/3HPspmo Фильм «Разборка в Маниле» https://bit.ly/3r1WOYJ

US stocks were mixed Tuesday. Plus, Zoom's revenue growth slows, Samsung selects a location for its $17 billion plant, and Stripe has no plans to go public.

This week we finally get to discuss our November Book Club pick, Ghosts by Dolly Alderton. This book captured modern dating in a way we haven't seen before, and honestly, we can't agree on if the ending was satisfying or not. Ghosts follows Nina Dean, a London woman in her early thirties with a successful career as a food writer and loving friends and family. When she downloads a dating app, she meets a great guy on her first date. When Max tells Nina he's going to marry her on date one, it feels like all is going to plan. But when Max ghosts her, Nina is forced to deal with everything she's been trying so hard to ignore. Obsessions ChappyWrap Blankets Crate and Barrel Sofa   Instagram Obsessions @marthastewart48   What we read this week Fake by Erica Katz (out Feb 22) So, This is Christmas by Tracy Andreen State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell   Sponsors Better Help - go to betterhelp.com/badonpaper for 10% off your first month  Everlywell - Go to everlywell.com/bop for 20% off your at-home lab test Join our Facebook group for amazing book recs & more! Like and subscribe to RomComPods. Available wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit Grace's blog, The Stripe. New posts daily! Follow us on Instagram @badonpaperpodcast. Follow Grace on Instagram @graceatwood and Becca @beccamfreeman.

Episode 199 features Paul Benigeri, Co-Founder, and CEO of Archive, a Stripe-backed company that develops software to automate e-commerce digital marketing workflows.Find Paul Online:Website: https://archive.ai/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benigeri/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benigeriTwitter: https://twitter.com/benigeriAbout Paul:Paul is Co-founder and CEO of Archive (https://archive.ai), a Stripe-backed company that develops software to automate e-commerce digital marketing workflows.He's a founder and operator who's done everything from building custom e-commerce platforms to deploying millions in ad spend.Prior to Archive, Paul was VP of Growth & Engineering at H.V.M.N.(https://hvmn.com/), running the direct-to-consumer brand's digital marketing, e-commerce, and engineering teams. He also received a BS in Computer Science from Stanford in three years.........Thank you for listening! If you wanted to learn more about the host, Brian Ondrako, check out his “Now” Page - https://www.brianondrako.com/now or Sign up for his Weekly Newsletter and 3x a Week Blog - https://brianondrako.com/subscribe/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today we're chatting with Farah Jesani, founder of One Stripe Chai, we're chatting through the B2B side of the biz and what happened when she need to pivot last march, and her advice to entrepreneurs in the beverage space coming into 2022. One Stripe Chai is a woman-owned South Asian beverage brand that offers authentic, small batch masala chai concentrates and blends, crafted to be enjoyed from the comfort of your home or at your favorite coffee shop. Using tea sourced directly from a small organic and biodynamic family-owned farm in Assam, India, One Stripe Chai is brewed in Portland with a focus on taste and simplicity.LINKS WE MENTION:One Strip Chai's InstagramFarah's InstagramFemale Startup Club's InstagramDoone's InstagramIn partnership with Klaviyo, the best email marketing tool for ecommerce businesses.Female Startup Club's YouTubeFemale Startup Club's Private Facebook GroupSay hello to Doone: hello@femalestartupclub.comBook: Supermaker by Jaime Schmidt

Joe and JSam return for one last time this season to talk about the offseason and the 2-0 loss to NYCFC in the playoffs that sent us into the offseason. Cool. More stuff coming your way throughout the offseason patreon.com/fivestripefinal including episodes on the latest news, interviews and of course a chance to join the world famous five stripe final discord. Only three months until opening day, y'all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ellie Dunne, Executive Assistant to the Head of Global Security at Stripe, shares her tips and tricks for how to gather the context you need in order to confidently make decisions on your executive's behalf and what that looks like in practice. Perhaps your executive never has the time to get you up to speed or lacks the communication style to provide you with the details... or maybe working from home has just made it all the more difficult to get your questions answered. Regardless, this is an important skill to have in your toolkit – something that takes time to master and something that Ellie knows how to do well!

Ya sabes lo que se viene esta semana y seguro que estás esperando para comprar equipo fotográfico por lo que te traemos consejos para comprar en black friday. Es un buen momento para ahorrarse un dinerito en un nuevo objetivo, o unos flashes o lo que necesites para tus fotografías. Pero hay que evitar falsas rebajas o engaños. Y ya sabes que tienes disponible más de 30 cursos de marketing y técnica fotográfica para mejorar o empezar tu negocio de fotografía, conseguir nuevos clientes, construir tu web y mucho más. Origen del Black Friday El black Friday se originó en Filadelfia y hay dos historias que cuentan la historia. Ambas vienen por el día de acción de gracias y los regalos que se hacen en esa festividad. Por un lado unas fuentes dicen que era por los enormes atascos que se formaban en las calles con toda la ciudad yendo a comprar, lo que provoco que las autoridades le llamaran el viernes negro por el caos de tráfico. En cambio otras fuentes indican que es porque ese día, el cuarto viernes de noviembre, se producían tantas ventas que las tiendas y comercios pasaban de estar en números rojos a superávit (números negros). Consejos para comprar equipo fotográfico en Black Friday Sea como sea, durante el Black Friday te puedes encontrar con ofertas muy suculentas. Pero... ¿Son todas rebajas reales? Todos los años se viraliza como algunas tiendas físicas u online suben sus precios días antes para que parezcan grandes rebajas cuando en realidad mantienen el precio o apenas existe rebaja. Para evitar esto hay algunas herramientas con las que poder comprobar estas rebajas. Por un lado analizamos en el episodio Keepa, una extensión para navegadores, que te muestra un histórico de los precios día a día en Amazon. Pero en el podcast te contamos otras herramientas y consejos muy muy útiles para comprobar el histórico de precios en otras webs o para encontrar la mejor oferta en internet. Consejos para compras online seguras Y más allá de encontrar la mejor oferta o comprobar que son ofertas reales debes tener cuidado con las grandes ofertas en equipo fotográfico. Ya sea porque estas empresas o tiendas no tienen tanto margen o no quieran realizar ofertas tan grandes como se ven en otros ámbitos. Tienes que tener en cuenta que dentro de lo que es equipo fotográfico no vas a encontrarte ofertas reales de más del 30% (por norma general). Y cuando se han visto este tipo de ofertas han terminado siendo timos donde pierdes el dinero, pero nunca te llega lo que compraste. Para evitar esto tienes que asegurarte de un par de cosas: Que la web esté cifrada con el protocolo sslRealizar compras en tiendas de confianza (ya sean tiendas físicas de fotografía o tipo Amazon donde estás totalmente cubierto legalmente)Comprobar que plataforma de pagos usan. A ser posible Stripe, Paypal y similares donde estás cubierto al 100%. Si quieres saber más sobre estos consejos y otros no te pierdas el episodio de hoy. Gracias por suscribirte a los cursos, por tus valoraciones en Apple Podcasts, comentarios y me gusta en Ivoox, por escucharnos y seguirnos en Spotify. Un saludo y hasta el próximo lunes a las 07:00.

The latest episode of the Distributed podcast pairs Dylan Field, Figma's CEO and Co-founder, and guest host Connie Yang, Head of Payments Design at Stripe. Join a discussion on design, instilling remote culture, and the digital economy, including Field's perspective on the role of design in technology. “We've gone from a physical economy to a digital economy. I don't think these are new trends or new things that happen but now, all of a sudden it happened all at once, and accelerated massively,” he says.More Subscribe to Distributed at Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you like to listen.

Stripe, a fintech startup worth $100 billion, is trying to kick-start a $1 trillion market for carbon removal. The company is being extremely transparent about its processes, which means we get a window into the exciting, messy, often very experimental world of removing gigatons of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. Traditionally, carbon removal has involved planting lots of trees. There have also been a select few companies toiling away at expensive-but-promising direct-air capture. But it turns out there are many ways to remove CO2. The earth already has a massive carbon cycle — plants, rocks, oceans and soil are already part of it. So there are many candidates for tapping electrochemistry and synthetic biology to accelerate natural processes. It's still a small market — and one that needs to grow massively over the coming decades. So how do we build it? Shayle addresses that question with Nan Ransohoff, Stripe's head of climate. Shayle and Nan break down lessons from Stripe's first two carbon-removal portfolios. They discuss whether carbon removal will become a commodity market. They also cover learning curves, the sources of demand and the parallels between carbon removal and vaccine development. And Shayle asks: What does a winner look like? Will a single technology dominate? Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media. Catalyst is supported by Atmos Financial. Atmos offers FDIC-insured checking and savings accounts that only invest in climate-positive assets like renewables, green construction and regenerative agriculture. Modern banking for climate-conscious people. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

On today's episode, Blake Jude from StripeHype (@stripehypecincy) • Instagram photos and videos and I discuss the AFC Wild Card Race, what to make of the Raiders and Bengals before this weekend's game, and why the Vikings are so dumb. We also dive into where the Falcons go forward in their rebuild, look forward to a few of the NFL Draft QBs, and play a game of which teams have been affected most and least by penalities in 2021 (Some Answers are quick and some are random....) We've also got picks for the Week and some CFB jokes at Texas, Wake Forest and Pitt

In episode 369, we welcome our guest, Maya Horgan Famodu, founder of Ingressive Capital, a VC fund focused on early stage African tech, and believed to be the youngest person to launch a tech fund in Sub-Saharan Africa.   In today's episode, we start with Maya's journey to the African tech scene.   She lays out the factors behind the recent explosion in funding that the continent has recently seen - strong demographics, high growth, and rapid tech adoption.  Then we get into some companies she's invested in, specifically a lot of “X for Africa,” the African equivalent of companies like Stripe, Robinhood, Flexport, and Plaid. And we even touch on 54gene, which we highlighted in episode 345.     As we wind down, we hear what lies ahead for Maya now that she just finished raising her second fund of $50 million.      -----   Follow Meb on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube For detailed show notes, click here To learn more about our funds and follow us, subscribe to our mailing list or visit us at cambriainvestments.com   -----   Today's episode is sponsored by The Idea Farm. The Idea Farm gives you access to over $100,000 worth of investing research, the kind usually read by only the world's largest institutions, funds, and money managers. Join today and get access to quarterly CAPE ratios, an excel quant backtester and the entire research library.

We're so excited to continue our yearly tradition of interviewing each other, starting off with Grace interviewing Becca! (Grace will have her turn in the hot seat in a few weeks!)     Grace asks Becca your questions about bookish things, her new creative projects, career reflections, dating & friendship advice, what she's learned about herself in the past year, and So! Much! More!    Becca's Misc. Mentions: For Getting Started at Book Writing - Save the Cat writes a Novel Her GoodReads Account - Follow her here! Her Splurge Item - Sarah Flint Perfect Zip Bootie in Brown  Her Favorite Sheets - Amazon Mellani Sheets    Becca's Favorite Dinner Party Recipes Grossy's Vodka Sawce Garlic Braised Short Ribs Coq au Vin   Obsessions  Grace - Midnight Mass Becca - The Chunky Chef Zuppa Toscana   What we read this week! Books To Preorder If This Gets Out by Cale Dietrich and Sophie Gonzales Smile and Look Pretty by Amanda Pellegrino Books You Can Read Now! Palm Beach by Mary Adkins We're Speaking by Hitha Palepu Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl You'll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus     November Book Club Pick: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton   Sponsors: Night - use code BOP30 at discovernight.com for 30% off sitewide Better Help - go to betterhelp.com/badonpaper for 10% off your first mon ZocDoc - Zocdoc: go to zocdoc.com/bop to sign up for free and find a top-rated doctor   Join our Facebook group for amazing book recs & more!   Like and subscribe to RomComPods. Available wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit Grace's blog, The Stripe. New posts daily!   Follow us on Instagram @badonpaperpodcast. Follow Grace on Instagram @graceatwood and Becca @beccamfreeman.

What the hell!? It's Manga Monday... on a Tuesday!!! Christian and Josh fire up the mics to talk Star and Stripe's final act in My Hero Academia, Itadori's continuing battle against Higuruma in Jujutsu Kaisen, and much more!! As always you can find Christian on Twitter/Instagram @thechrisespinal Josh @jdcole_37 and Brian @bdotesp! follow the show on Twitter/Instagram @newjumpcity. Check out Brian's Twitch Stream here! Our theme song is by @drum_fu. Watch the video version of this episode on our Youtube channel here! Feel free to email us at newjumpcitypod@gmail.com with any suggestions, recommendations, feedback, or fan theories you'd want us to read on the show!

Links of Matthew Plese's work https://acatholiclife.blogspot.com https://www.catechismclass.com https://onepeterfive.com/author/acatholiclifegmail-com/ https://fatima.org/history-and-norms-of-fasting/ https://fatima.org/author/mplese/ https://catholicfamilynews.com/ https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/matthew-r-plese/understanding-the-precepts-of-the-church/paperback/product-18rz5w59.html

"There're just not enough hours in the day!" This is probably the most common excuse people give for not starting something. Well, guess what. There most definitely are a few hours you could probably squeeze in here and there. And, we're not saying you have to quit your day job to do it!Show Notes 02:10 - Fortnite 02:21 - Tetris Effect 07:57 - Set Boundaries (Shape Up) 09:37 - Jerry Maguire "Who's Coming With Me?" (YouTube) 15:13 - How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation - Anne Helen Peterson (BuzzFeed News) 19:40 - Gary Vaynerchuk 23:43 - Stripe

Brie Wolfson (@zebriez), founder of the The Kool-Aid Factory, joins Erik to discuss:- Why there are detailed playbooks for creating products and other tactical advice for startups, but very little on building culture at your startup.- Why culture is “how it feels to get the work done” and why it's a set of actions rather than beliefs.- Why it always starts with the founders.- What she learned from Stripe's approach to crafting their company culture.- The power of setting your company's “non-values.”- The importance of treating internal comms as a first class product.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Raj (00:10):(silence). Ooh, beautiful.Alexis (00:11):This is fun. Hey everybody.Raj (00:13):It's electric.Alexis (00:13):All right. All right. Nice to see you all too. Oh, there we go. Okay. This is big. This is just the building of a new internet. Probably nothing.Raj (00:26):Probably nothing. It's such an honor, Alexis, really, to be on stage with you. It's like a dream. I've been a power user of Reddit, and I saw the way that you created that and the intention that you brought into it, and the intention you've brought into how we build technology that connects people together, and the conviction you have about how you want it to connect them for good. Not pull them apart but pull them together. Three things that connect them, their interests, their common grounds, and give them the tools to do that.Alexis (00:59):Thank you, man.Raj (00:59):Yeah, it's been really awesome.Alexis (01:00):I feel grateful. I was a dumb college kid in 2005, starting Reddit. The inspiration were like message boards. And I ran a PHPBB forum. Shout out PHPBB. I think those bulletin boards are still cranking somewhere in parts of the internet, but it was a hope for a more connected internet. But I really had no idea what would come from it. I'm obviously grateful. Hopefully a few of you all are Redditors. Any? Couple, one or two? Thank you. Thank you for all of your upvotes and thank you for also admitting you're the least productive people here. So thank you for your candor. I got so excited as crypto started taking off because Reddit is where I dove in. R/Bitcoin is the community that inspired me to first invest in Coinbase back in 2012. R/Ethereum was the community that got me really excited about what could actually be done with programmable money and this concept of building an internet that was decentralized and truly in the hands of all the people creating content. And now what I am seeing here, especially within the Solana community, is nothing short of awesome.And we can just cut to chase and one of the reasons why I'm here is to announce a collaboration that we're doing. I have a venture fund called Seven Seven Six. We're earmarking with the Solana Foundation $50 million to invest in the next wave of social built on Solana. Because I think this new world... We were debating whether to do the announcement at the start or at the end, I'm happy we did at the start. It's good vibes. But my job these days is with our team to look for the next big thing, put our money into it, give our support, our advice, our feedback, and help build businesses that'll be even bigger than any of the ones I've created. And it's exciting because this actually fulfills ambitions that I remember having 16 years ago but that we just couldn't execute on because the technology did not exist. And so I'm going to take you down memory lane a little bit. We'll fire up some slides.This is actually the very first version of Reddit that went live in 2005. I was not a great web designer. I was not. I'm really proud of Snoo, our mascot. I created that while I was bored in marketing class. But this was the first version, and a couple of things to notice, karma score, absolutely stole that from Slashdot. But I realized, okay, if we can get people to be incentivized to post good stuff, we can get more people to post more good stuff. And we'll just use internet points. It'll just be made up. And so if you got an upvote, you would gain a karma point. If obviously you were downvoted, you'd lose one. As you can see here, I posted the first link to Reddit, the Downing Street memo, and I was promptly downvoted because my co-founder is a dick. I knew exactly who it was, because it was just the two of us in an apartment. I knew who did that, and I have -1 karma. But internet points were the way we got people to come together and produce high-quality content.If you could believe me, in 2005, no one believed me when I said that people would spend all this time on the internet creating content, sharing content, commenting on content, but clearly it worked. And as we saw more and more progress, I obsessed over even designing the up and down arrows. I probably did like 10 iterations. I'm embarrassed by how many different versions of up and down arrows I designed. But this was all with the idea that we could reward people and get them feeling like their contributions mattered and encourage the best behavior. You'll notice the leaderboard there, the stats. That little janky link was one of the most important part to the website back in 2005 because the top submitters cared so much where they were on the leaderboard that when the stats thing went down, we would get a flurry of emails from people saying, something's wrong. Fix the stats leaderboard. I grew up playing video games, probably like a lot of you, and this seemed like a pretty obvious mechanism to just motivate people to keep posting content.But again, we're talking about internet points that outside of the community don't really amount to much, even awards. So once karma points exceeded their value, because once people got far enough along on Reddit, a new user would come on and feel demoralized because the idea of one day getting a million karma points seemed impossible. So I had to create new games. These awards, I was inspired by GoldenEye on the N64 because the end of Deathmatch, even my friends who were terrible at the game and never won would still get a little fun award at the end, like most cowardly. And we would ridicule them for that. It turned out that's like you spend the least amount of time on the screen of other players during the match. And it was these novel awards that inspired the Reddit awards today. I literally have people who introduce themselves, not by their government name, not by their username, but by the fact that they are a 12-year Redditor or a 14-year Redditor.These badges, these awards that were just a game mechanic that I created 16 years ago without much thought have become a sense of pride. But I look at all these things and I think, damn, if only there was value beyond this world of this ecosystem, because there's clearly value there. And everything I've seen in the last few years, the reason I'm so excited about Web 3.0 is this is all the same mechanisms, except with real ownership. With real value gained by the people who did all the amazing work to make these platforms function. And then I can't not talk about swag. This was Reddit's original business model, and it was actually the first fight we had. So the first two months of Reddit, we got into a big fight because I really wanted sell merch. I knew that even though we had this burgeoning user base, that random strangers on the internet would want to buy t-shirts with our logo on it as a way to show solidarity with our tribe. It was a huge fight, finally won it, and I built a store. And this was before Shopify, before Stripe. This was like a janky PayPal. It was really hard to take money from strangers on the internet back in 2005, okay? But I get this janky storefront up. I filled the bedroom with probably like 300, 400 t-shirts and put it online, and within 24 hours, sold out. And then I spent the next day stuffing envelopes and taking garbage bags full of these t-shirts to the post office. And with every one of them I sent out, I felt a little bit validated because random people on the internet wanted to show their pride by making their torso into a billboard for us, and give us money for that privilege. Today, just seeing someone change their profile pic is an even bigger statement of that tribal solidarity. And again, maybe if you have one of these original 400 Reddit shirts, you could probably fence it on eBay for a few bucks, but you didn't actually capture the real value. There was tremendous value in being one of those early adopters and signing up to say, yes, I am a part of this. I want you to believe.And everything I see play out, even the most basic profile pic project, is a reminder that this is like the core atomic unit of building community online. And I just can't help but get even more excited because the rate at which this will grow is... it is hard to overstate. And even just thinking about where you all were, we were reminiscing backstage a year ago or two years ago with how far the Solana ecosystem has gone, I'm just very excited. So I'm thrilled to be announcing this fund with you. I hope we can do some amazing stuff together and fund the next generation of the social web.Raj (09:45):I think we totally will. It's totally going to happen.Alexis (09:47):Are you going to do that? Are you down with that?Raj (09:53):It's going to be incredible. I don't know if anyone was paying attention yesterday. Something interesting happens, right before Alexis and I went onto a... I think it was Fortune interview to talk about this... or Forbes, one or the other, to talk about this fund, I had gone on Twitter... GM everyone, by the way. GM.Alexis (10:20):Yes. Good morning.Raj (10:22):So someone who happens to be a good friend of mine, Sam Lessin, he used to run product at Facebook. I've known him for 10 years. He's the first person I've seen negatively respond to the idea of us all saying GM in crypto. And we all love GM. It's just good vibes, right? And so I went on Twitter and I said, "I'll kill you." But this wasn't me threatening Sam. I've known him for 10 years. We trust each other. Sam talks a lot about how... he was in the room when Venmo made the trust feature. I should be able to trust Alexis to be able to take as much money from me as he wants. We have a relationship. We should be able to flag that, right?All these little features, the nuances of how we connect with one another and how we trust each other and how we have relationships should be reflected in social. But right now there's only little pieces and it's the pieces that happened because one platform that becomes monolithic decides which features it's going to differentiate on. And so, yeah, I guess I should have expected this, and my comms people tell me that I should have expected it, but I got suspended on the first day of Breakpoint. And it was actually amazing because I'm super addicted to Twitter. This is the first time I've spent 24 hours not on Twitter in probably years.Alexis (11:44):Jack just wanted you to have a respite from [crosstalk 00:11:47].Raj (11:46):Jack's a meditator. He wanted me to just meditate on my feelings and beliefs and my actions, and I did. Just another point on this, it was a joke. It was a reference to this Costco founder who, when the CEO talked about increasing the cost of hot dogs, he said, "I will kill you." So this was sort of two ideas to get other in one tweet. There's a lot of nuance, like I said, in social. Sam and I know each other, so of course I would never kill him. And also if you know this joke, it's the idea that there are some things that are sacred, that are positive, that are inherently good. Like a chief hot dog for everyone that comes into Costco is like part of their belief system. GM is like part of our belief system. We should wake up every morning and talk to each other with good intentions. And if you're going to threaten that, I will kill you, right? And that joke...Alexis (12:47):Like a Costco hot dog.Raj (12:49):Like a Costco hot dog. And that joke, Twitter doesn't get it. The rules don't get it. It's going to be hard to regulate these things and moderate these things. But when all of it comes from one place, we just see that nobody's happy. Jack's not happy with the rules that he's been forced to put in place, which is why he's deciding to turn Twitter into a decentralized protocol. I think my fear, and I don't know if you agree, but Facebook's going to do the same thing. And Reddit's going to do the same thing. Everyone's going to do the same thing, but these things happen pretty slow, and there's opportunity to build from all directions. It doesn't have to be the old social platforms converting. We can build new ones and it doesn't have to be competition and it doesn't have to be winner take all.There will be hundreds of successful social media companies that are protocols and clients to those protocols, and choices will be made in programmable, modular ways between communities, just like Subreddits do that in certain ways. But it'll be much more fluid and we'll be able to govern these rules. I kind of see this pretty clearly, but I only see like maybe five or 10 companies trying it and building it. There should be 100. There should be 100 like tomorrow. So as we were talking with this reporter yesterday, it was a flurry of thesis. And even backstage, we just couldn't stop talking about all the ways that this future is going to happen. And I think it's going to happen quickly. And I realized $50 million is not that much for the number of teams and stabs at this problem that I think can happen in the next 12 months. So we're going to increase it to a $100 million.Alexis (14:31):That's right. See that, we lured you in with the 50. Surprised you with the hundo. And look, this is real. Normally, incumbents have had, and Zack has taken full advantage of this, incumbents have had a huge unfair advantage with the distribution. As social evolved, Facebook can gobble up, Instagram can gobble up, WhatsApp can get the economies to scale that distribution. But I would argue in Web 3.0 it's actually a liability because the intention with which you're building these new protocols and these new communities starts from the very beginning. It seeds the foundation of how people think about the platform. And the baggage of Web 2.0 infrastructure and the Web 2.0 precedent is that you're ultimately just harvested for an advertiser. And that factors into product decisions. That factors into design decisions.And what's really exciting is that there's a whole new slew of founders who have a chance to jump into a very energized community and actually start building something with a very different business model in mind and very different product instincts and very different design focus, and that's compelling. And I think we could see new platforms emerge very fast. We talked about Discord backstage and how... 2015, I think, I first started noticing them on the sidebars of gaming communities on Reddit and I thought, damn, they're onto something here. And as someone who's suffered through TeamSpeak, it was like, okay, clearly there's got to be a better way. But that was five years now, six years now Discord is the dominant platform for all the real-time conversation around NFTs and a lot of things in crypto. But that window for a new platform to emerge keeps getting smaller and smaller. It keeps moving faster and faster, and we haven't even seen what happens when people build this way first.Raj (16:33):Totally. Yeah, the cycles are getting faster. And we don't have to wait. And I think even just the rise of Solana and the cycles in the blockchain industry have been getting faster. And a lot of folks are surprised by how much and how fast so Solana has grown. I think this next wave of companies are going to get to a billion... we set it at the top of this whole conference, a billion users. And we didn't set a timeline. We set as fast as possible. I think it could happen in 12 months, 18 months. It's very feasible if we build that future. And I think it'll happen in waves. Applications protocols will be quickly saturating to a billion, 4 billion users in rapid succession because it doesn't have to be a competition of a monolith against another. It's just ideas and changes and protocol shifts and forks that can propagate very quickly.So I think this future's going to be happen very quickly and it's all connected. This is why we wanted to have Solana be one giant global state machine. A lot of people call it monolithic. Yeah, it's monolithic. That's the point. It's all one computer that we can build all of this together on because if you saw... I realized a lot of people miss some of the best talks here, but Jules Urbach from Render is making a photorealistic metaverse. We will be able to connect these social protocols to that rendering engine and we will be living in the metaverse faster than anyone thinks. It's going to happen.Alexis (18:04):And when that user experience hits, it will hit. In 16 years of designing product, of investing in product, I keep coming back to great user experiences, almost always end up winning. And that's broadly defined. That's the literal user experience as well as the figurative. How does it make customers or users feel? And what's exciting is we can do things on Solana that... and I'm not a maximalist in any regard. You'll see me, I'm very pragmatic on this stuff, but we can do things on Solana that just make so much more sense to create that amazing user experience that people have come to expect. And that's it at the end of the day. That's what wins. And you tie that in to being able to actually own the content you create and actually get rewarded for things like community building. It's going to be exhilarating.The second wave, Web 2.0, whatever we're calling it, I really believe it's going to look like this transition period, almost a bleep in the internet where we first got online, everyone's on the World Wide Web and we were making our geo cities' websites and just trying to build for what was largely a pretty read-only internet. And it's so obvious to me, even in these last few years now coming out of the crypto winter, that this era we're in now is going to define, really define the internet as we know it. And when I'm explaining to my daughter about these phases of the internet, she's going to look at me and be like, "Wow, dad. You played all those video games without being rewarded for any of your time or effort." And she'll be shocked. She'll be shocked that I bought things on the internet that I didn't really own. She'll be shocked that so many of the things that are really some of the most valuable work online, whether it's content creation or curation or community building weren't rewarded in any way, shape, or form.Alexis (20:07):It will seem like this weird, dismal, brief period of the internet. And I think we'll all be better off for it, ultimately, but I'm just excited to see what people build because we're all still in the very early days where we're actually just trying to take better versions of what we've known for Web 2.0, and I think things level up once we get out of that mindset and then eventually start building the things with a first principled look at what Web 3.0 really can unlock. But I'm already excited for this stuff that's coming, which is why we're going to put $100 million towards funding it.Raj (20:43):You know what else we should do is make sure the app stores allow NFTs and tokens. Are we really going to hold this back at the...Alexis (20:54):The good news is, look, Epic on the one hand has been fighting the good fight and on the other, not so much, but momentum here is on our side in a world where I know most of you all are probably default skeptical of regulators, which is a fine thing to be. I really do think though that the principles of what is getting built now are so aligned with the average person, with the consumer. And I still do believe that those people are represented by people in government who are at the end of the day beholden to the voters.I do think the more that we can tie the relevance and the value of crypto to the average American, especially beyond our initial early adopter community, the more we can make crypto a big part of people's lives, the better, because that ultimately is going to put leverage on the couple of monopolist or duopolist with their app stores. And I think it's still one of the strongest leverage points we have, which is it's just not good for consumers to have one of two app stores to choose from, and both that are pretty egregious in what they charge and the control they have.Raj (22:05):It's clear that social media affects government. It affects political movements. It's just very clear all of us. And I think one of the things that I always have tried to do, building products where people are taking on social behaviors, connecting is replicate what they're already doing, but do it in a positive way. I think you did that really well with Reddit. Focusing on upvotes, focusing on content creation and elevating each other and our creations and our content. And I'm curious, do you have any ideas about how the types of forces that have coalesced political movements in social media might be reflected in this next Web 3.0 Version of social media?Alexis (22:48):I really do think we're seeing some really interesting types of governance emerge. Look, for those of us, whether we're in European democracies, American democracies, these are global democracies, we ostensibly like these ideas of everyone gets a vote. And what's interesting now is you're even seeing what some of the recent ENS stuff and some of this... Just even the concept of vote delegation, being something that is getting more normalized. What I love about Web 3.0 broadly is we get a chance to think about, from first principles, how we can architect better and more representative systems. And so on the one hand I'm like, would I ever delegate my vote for a president of the United States? Would I ever delegate my vote for some company I'm a shareholder of? Maybe not, probably not, definitely not. There's a spectrum of answers to that. But what we get to build is whatever we think is the best tool for the job and then the broad market basically decides, okay, this is what wins.And this kind of experimentation, I think, tends to be among the most, or will ultimately reward the most egalitarian way possible because it's not controlled as basically every institution has been from the top down for so long. So I do think there is this pretty strong streak throughout the crypto community that almost by definition is built in opposition to institutions that have had top-down authority and plenty of times abused it. So I think when you combine community and capital, which we're seeing play out right now, really surreal things happen. And WallStreetBets is probably the most visceral example that I get asked about all the time back in the states. But that's one example of many where you are seeing a power shift from the traditional top-down structures to the bottom-up, where it's people who are connected online able to communicate in real time, at scale, for free, essentially, and now able to also move dollars. And even though those dollars individually may not be that much, in aggregate, especially when coordinated, can move markets, can shift all kinds of things. This is the experimental phase of it so I'm excited to see what's to come.Raj (25:16):The word delegation, I think, that I heard there is so important because delegation is happening, like you said, every day in crypto. We delegate to validators. In Solana there are stake pools and there's nested delegation that can happen. And our representative democracy is a delegation of responsibility and decision-making authority. But there are really only a few ways that you can do it and a few bodies that you delegate to and a few people. And then you mentioned this idea of would I delegate my presidential vote? Maybe not that one, but there's probably 100 offices that we're voting for. Right now we just go one side of the ticket. That's a pretty dumb way to do it. Not everyone's doing their research.Alexis (25:59):This is the opening of a lot of doors for a lot of people because with all the progress that we have made so far, we are still a pretty insular community. We are all still early. Just being here means you are in a very, very select group. Congratulations, you're going to make it. You're among the earliest adopters. Yes. It's true. And so you're among the earliest adopters of something that I... I've been on record. I was on Rogan CNBC 2014 saying that I was cautiously optimistic about crypto because it just felt like, no, this is too good to be true. Somehow it's going to get screwed up, someone's going to mess it up. But I've gone from that to pretty irrationally exuberant now in the last year. It now feels inevitable. And so everyone who is here, you are among the earliest adopters for this. You all have a mindset shaped by being immersed in this space for a little while now.There is a whole world, the vast majority of people still have not even started to think about the world the way that we do now by default. And that is going to unlock even more creativity and even more motivation and even more energy. And I'm excited to see that. And I encourage you, please, go out of your way to find people in your immediate community. Your friend group's an easy place to start. Don't be that person who just at every dinner just keeps talking about crypto, but please create this to be as welcoming and open as possible, because that is actually the long-term greedy move to make, because the faster that this adoption spreads beyond the early adopters in tech, especially the dudes who tend to look like me, the faster that this actually comes to fruition, and the more powerful it actually is.Alexis (27:54):And I'm excited because we get to rethink so many systems. And because finance is tied intrinsically into this, it means rewarding people for work, for effort, for creativity that historically have not been. And I get excited about that because selfishly, I just want better stuff. And so whether it is better democracy, whether it is better art, whether it's better social networking, we will get to see a flourishing, a literal Renaissance happening because of what is getting built here. And that is an amazing thing to be a part of because there will not be another time like this.Raj (28:31):There won't be. That's awesome, man. This is so cool. Look, I just want to close on one note. The one thing that came out of yesterday was this idea of #freeraj, which I love, but I'm back now. And so I don't need to be freed, but I do need to be freed from centralized social media. I want to get off Twitter. I want to get off. Help me do that. Build the next Twitter, build the next Facebook, build the next Instagram. I'm going to have a special prize for whoever helps me get off and delete my accounts from those centralized services.Alexis (29:16):Oh, the bounty is out there. I love it. Right on.Raj (29:20):You can come hang out with me and Alexis. Dude, thank you so much for coming, Alexis. This has been phenomenal.Alexis (29:25):Thank you.Raj (29:25):And I think we have many more great conversations to come and so many teams are going to form. It's going to be truly wonderful. I can't wait to do this with you. And thank you for committing capital and your time to these builders. It just means the world. Thank you.Alexis (29:37):I'm excited. Very grateful. Very grateful you all.

Joe and JSam preview the NYCFC game. Did you guys know that NYCFC play on a baseball field? For more insights like that and to join the world famous Five Stripe Final discord, head to patreon.com/fivestripefinal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kareem Zaki is a General Partner @ Thrive Capital, with a portfolio including Stripe, Instacart, Instagram, Nubank, Github, Glossier and many more, they have cemented their position as one of the leading venture firms of the last decade. As for Kareem, he is a co-founder and board member to Cedar, Nava, Scope Security and Cadence and has invested in the likes of Affirm, Lemonade, Ramp and Trade Republic. Prior to entering venture, Kareem spent 3 years in private equity with Blackstone. In Today's Episode with Kareem Zaki You Will Learn: 1.) How Kareem made his way from the world of private equity to backing some of the most innovative next-generation companies with Thrive Capital? 2.) Portfolio Construction: What is the one rule that drives all decision-making at Thrive? How does Kareem think about maintaining focus with such a broad mandate? How do Thrive think about asset allocation internally with such a broad mandate? How does incubating companies also help Kareem be a better investor? 3.) Investing Style: How has Kareem's investing style changed over the last 10 years? What does he focus on now that he did not before and visa versa? How does Kareem assess his own relationship to price? Through what lens does Kareem approach market sizing and timing? Where do many investors make mistakes here? 4.) The Landscape: How does Kareem respond to the activity and cadence of Tiger? In what way does Kareem believe the venture landscape will have changed most significantly in the next 10 years? How do the existing incumbent firms need to change in the wake of this? How do Thrive respond to the pace and cadence of check writing today? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Kareem Zaki Kareem's Favourite Book: How Will You Measure Your Life Kareem's Most Recent Investment: Cadence

2nd Week of November, 2021 ------

Cory is currently a Solutions Engineer at Jeli.io and very well known in the community for his work on Observability. His career in observability began at Twitter where he managed the observability team and then he joined Stripe, where he created and led the observability team, this time around as a Principal Engineer. We talk to him about how he got his start in customer support and the role it played in the later part of his career. We discuss his time at Twitter where there was a power outage in the data center on the day he joined and how once he had to stay up all night dealing with file handle leaks. We also discuss how he created and led the observability team at Stripe as an individual contributor, how one can succeed in a new org, how to navigate information asymmetry in the workplace, what are some effective ways to advocate for your team and how we all are just humans trying to get stuff done.

Twenty Minute VC Podcast Notes Key Takeaways “You need just as good business people on your team as you do technology people in order to win” – Brian SingermanAnduril's team recipe is made for success by having elite technologists and pre-existing relationships with the governmentWe need to control our own destiny when it comes to national security – defense products need to be built on-shore, not outsourcedAnduril is creating software (Lattice Platform) and hardware for national defense and securityEvery founder needs to have ‘IT' = Know their unique strengths and effectively supplement their weaknesses with other peopleIn Brian's opinion, Palmer Luckey has ‘IT' and compares him to Elon Musk as a technologist visionaryRelationships with founders are the key to VC success in this valuation inflation marketRead the full notes @ podcastnotes.org Brian Singerman is a General Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the most prominent venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Anduril, SpaceX, Tesla, Palantir, Stripe, Affirm, Airbnb, Facebook, and many more. As for Brian, he has led investments in the likes of Affirm, Oscar Health, Wish, Asana, Oculus, and Postmates to name a few. Brian also sits on the board or is an observer to The Long Term Stock Exchange, Solugen, Cloud9, Modern Health, and of course, Anduril. Prior to Founders Fund, Brian spent a very successful 4 years as an engineer and executive at Google. In Today's Episode with Brian Singerman on Anduril, You Will Learn: 1.) How did Brian first come to meet Palmer and the Anduril team? Where did the meeting take place? How did the discussion go? Did Brian instantly feel that Palmer was special? What about the way Palmer presented, suggested this to Brian? 2.) The Market: What gave Brian the confidence Anduril would be successful where so many others had failed? How did the market change or evolve in a way Brian did expect? In what ways did the market surprise Brian? Does Brian think we will see the relationship between Silicon Valley and the DOD change over time? 3.) Anduril: The Business: Why is Anduril as a business, so hard to copy? How did Brian gain comfort around their defensibility? What does Brian think is the biggest misconception people have of Anduril as a business? How does Brian think about when is the right time to add secondary and ancillary products? 4.) Investing Today: Why is Brian no longer Zoom investing today? What does Brian mean when he says you have to, "play a different game to the hedge funds today"? In what way does he and Founders Fund look to do this? How does Brian think about the current levels of pricing? How does he determine when to pay up vs when to be disciplined?

Jack Butcher, Bilal Zaidi & Trung Phan discuss what they're finding on the edges of the internet + the latest in business, technology and memes.Watch + Subscribe on YouTube:https://youtu.be/yW_uXyLoApgListen into our group chat on Telegram:https://t.me/notinvestmentadviceLet us know what you think on Twitter:@bzaidi@trungtphan@jackbutcher@niapodcast Timestamps:0:00:00 – Intro + NFT NYC0:13:56 – Microsoft Metaverse0:18:42 – Office In The Metaverse0:22:04 – Mayor Eric Adams, The Bitcoins + Trung's Tree Trick 0:29:09 – CEOs + Public Accountability0:31:19 – Next $1Tril Company + Square vs Stripe vs Coinbase0:43:54 – Brand vs Direct Response0:50:25 – Square, Stripe, Coinbase Summary + Shopify-Spotify Partnership0:54:27 – Fun Fact Phan: Formula 1 + Netflix Series1:00:23 – Top 10 Highest Paid Athletes1:02:44 – Space Race + F1 Culture See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Brian Singerman is a General Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the most prominent venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Anduril, SpaceX, Tesla, Palantir, Stripe, Affirm, Airbnb, Facebook, and many more. As for Brian, he has led investments in the likes of Affirm, Oscar Health, Wish, Asana, Oculus, and Postmates to name a few. Brian also sits on the board or is an observer to The Long Term Stock Exchange, Solugen, Cloud9, Modern Health, and of course, Anduril. Prior to Founders Fund, Brian spent a very successful 4 years as an engineer and executive at Google. In Today's Episode with Brian Singerman on Anduril, You Will Learn: 1.) How did Brian first come to meet Palmer and the Anduril team? Where did the meeting take place? How did the discussion go? Did Brian instantly feel that Palmer was special? What about the way Palmer presented, suggested this to Brian? 2.) The Market: What gave Brian the confidence Anduril would be successful where so many others had failed? How did the market change or evolve in a way Brian did expect? In what ways did the market surprise Brian? Does Brian think we will see the relationship between Silicon Valley and the DOD change over time? 3.) Anduril: The Business: Why is Anduril as a business, so hard to copy? How did Brian gain comfort around their defensibility? What does Brian think is the biggest misconception people have of Anduril as a business? How does Brian think about when is the right time to add secondary and ancillary products? 4.) Investing Today: Why is Brian no longer Zoom investing today? What does Brian mean when he says you have to, "play a different game to the hedge funds today"? In what way does he and Founders Fund look to do this? How does Brian think about the current levels of pricing? How does he determine when to pay up vs when to be disciplined?

About Micheal Micheal Benedict leads Engineering Productivity at Pinterest. He and his team focus on developer experience, building tools and platforms for over a thousand engineers to effectively code, build, deploy and operate workloads on the cloud. Mr. Benedict has also built Infrastructure and Cloud Governance programs at Pinterest and previously, at Twitter -- focussed on managing cloud vendor relationships, infrastructure budget management, cloud migration, capacity forecasting and planning and cloud cost attribution (chargeback). Links: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com Teletraan: https://github.com/pinterest/teletraan Twitter: https://twitter.com/micheal Pinterestcareers.com: https://pinterestcareers.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: You know how git works right?Announcer: Sorta, kinda, not really. Please ask someone else!Corey: Thats all of us. Git is how we build things, and Netlify is one of the best way I've found to build those things quickly for the web. Netlify's git based workflows mean you don't have to play slap and tickle with integrating arcane non-sense and web hooks, which are themselves about as well understood as git. Give them a try and see what folks ranging from my fake Twitter for pets startup, to global fortune 2000 companies are raving about. If you end up talking to them, because you don't have to, they get why self service is important—but if you do, be sure to tell them that I sent you and watch all of the blood drain from their faces instantly. You can find them in the AWS marketplace or at www.netlify.com. N-E-T-L-I-F-Y.comCorey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Spelled V-U-L-T-R because they're all about helping save money, including on things like, you know, vowels. So, what they do is they are a cloud provider that provides surprisingly high performance cloud compute at a price that—while sure they claim its better than AWS pricing—and when they say that they mean it is less money. Sure, I don't dispute that but what I find interesting is that it's predictable. They tell you in advance on a monthly basis what it's going to going to cost. They have a bunch of advanced networking features. They have nineteen global locations and scale things elastically. Not to be confused with openly, because apparently elastic and open can mean the same thing sometimes. They have had over a million users. Deployments take less that sixty seconds across twelve pre-selected operating systems. Or, if you're one of those nutters like me, you can bring your own ISO and install basically any operating system you want. Starting with pricing as low as $2.50 a month for Vultr cloud compute they have plans for developers and businesses of all sizes, except maybe Amazon, who stubbornly insists on having something to scale all on their own. Try Vultr today for free by visiting: vultr.com/screaming, and you'll receive a $100 in credit. Thats v-u-l-t-r.com slash screaming.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Every once in a while, I like to talk to people who work at very large companies that are not in fact themselves a cloud provider. I know it sounds ridiculous. How can you possibly be a big company and not make money by selling managed NAT gateways to an unsuspecting public? But I'm told it can be done here to answer that question. And hopefully at least one other is Pinterest. It's head of engineering productivity, Micheal Benedict. Micheal, thank you for taking the time to join me today.Micheal: Hi, Corey, thank you for inviting me today. I'm really excited to talk to you.Corey: So, exciting times at Pinterest in a bunch of different ways. It was recently reported—which of course, went right to the top of my inbox as 500,000 people on Twitter all said, “Hey, this sounds like a ‘Corey would be interested in it' thing.” It was announced that you folks had signed a $3.2 billion commitment with AWS stretching until 2028. Now, if this is like any other large-scale AWS contract commitment deal that has been made public, you were probably immediately inundated with a whole bunch of people who are very good at arithmetic and not very good at business context saying, “$3.2 billion? You could build massive data centers for that. Why would anyone do this?” And it's tiresome, and that's the world in which we live. But I'm guessing you heard at least a little bit of that from the peanut gallery.Micheal: I did, and I always find it interesting when direct comparisons are made with the total amount that's been committed. And like you said, there's so many nuances that go into how to perceive that amount, and put it in context of, obviously, what Pinterest does. So, I at least want to take this opportunity to share with everyone that Pinterest has been on the cloud since day one. When Ben initially started the company, that product was launched—it was a simple Django app—it was launched on AWS from day one, and since then, it has grown to support 450-plus million MAUs over the course of the decade.And our infrastructure has grown pretty complex. We started with a bunch of EC2 machines and persisting data in S3, and since then we have explored an array of different products, in fact, sometimes working very closely with AWS, as well and helping them put together a product roadmap for some of the items they're working on as well. So, we have an amazing partnership with them, and part of the commitment and how we want to see these numbers is how does it unlock value for Pinterest as a business over time in terms of making us much more agile, without thinking about the nuances of the infrastructure itself. And that's, I think, one of the best ways to really put this into context, that it's not a single number we pay at the end [laugh] of the month, but rather, we are on track to spending a certain amount over a period of time, so this just keeps accruing or adding to that number. And we basically come out with an amazing partnership in AWS, where we have that commitment and we're able to leverage their products and full suite of items without any hiccups.Corey: The most interesting part of what you said is the word partner. And I think that's the piece that gets lost an awful lot when we talk about large-scale cloud negotiations. It's not like buying a car, where you can basically beat the crap out of the salesperson, you can act as if $400 price difference on a car is the difference between storm out of the dealership and sign the contract. Great, you don't really have to deal with that person ever again.In the context of a cloud provider, they run your production infrastructure, and if they have a bad day, I promise you're going to have a bad day, too. You want to handle those negotiations in a way that is respectful of that because they are your partner, whether you want them to be or not. Now, I'm not suggesting that any cloud provider is going to hold an awkward negotiation against the customer, but at the same time, there are going to be scenarios in which you're going to want to have strong relationships, where you're going to need to cash in political capital to some extent, and personally, I've never seen stupendous value in trying to beat the crap out of a company in order to get another tenth of a percent discount on a service you barely use, just because someone decided that well, we didn't do well in the last negotiation so we're going to get them back this time.That's great. What are you actually planning to do as a company? Where are you going? And the fact that you just alluded to, that you're not just a pile of S3 and EC2 instances speaks, in many ways, to that. By moving into the differentiated service world, suddenly you're able to do things that don't look quite as much like building a better database and start looking a lot more like servicing your users more effectively and well.Micheal: And I think, like you said, I feel like there's like a general skepticism in viewing that the cloud providers are usually out there to rip you apart. But in reality, that's not true. To your point, as part of the partnership, especially with AWS and Pinterest, we've got an amazing relationship going on, and behind the scenes, there's a dedicated team at Pinterest, called the Infrastructure Governance Team, a cross-functional team with folks from finance, legal, engineering, product, all sitting together and working with our AWS partners—even the AWS account managers at the times are part of that—to help us make both Pinterest successful, and in turn, AWS gets that amazing customer to work with in helping build some of their newer products as well. And that's one of the most important things we have learned over time is that there's two parts to it; when you want to help improve your business agility, you want to focus not just on the bottom line numbers as they are. It's okay to pay a premium because it offsets the people capital you would have to invest in getting there.And that's a very tricky way to look at math, but that's what these teams do; they sit down and work through those specifics. And for what it's worth, in our conversations, the AWS teams always come back with giving us very insightful data on how we're using their systems to help us better think about how we should be pricing or looking things ahead. And I'm not the expert on this; like I said, there's a dedicated team sitting behind this and looking through and working through these deals, but that's one of the important takeaways I hope the users—or the listeners of this podcast then take away that you want to treat your cloud provider as your partner as much as possible. They're not always there to screw you. That's not their goal. And I apologize for using that term. It is important that you set that expectations that it's in their best interest to actually make you successful because that's how they make money as well.Corey: It's a long-term play. I mean, they could gouge you this quarter, and then you're trying to evacuate as fast as possible. Well, they had a great quarter, but what's their long-term prospect? There are two competing philosophies in the world of business; you can either make a lot of money quickly, or you can make a little bit of money and build it over time in a sustained way. And it's clear the cloud providers are playing the long game on this because they basically have to.Micheal: I mean, it's inevitable at this point. I mean, look at Pinterest. It is one of those success stories. Starting as a Django app on a bunch of EC2 machines to wherever we are right now with having a three-plus billion dollar commitment over a span of couple of years, and we do spend a pretty significant chunk of that on a yearly basis. So, in this case, I'm sure it was a great successful partnership.And I'm hoping some of the newer companies who are building the cloud from the get-go are thinking about it from that perspective. And one of the things I do want to call out, Corey, is that we did initially start with using the primitive services in AWS, but it became clear over time—and I'm sure you heard of the term multi-cloud and many of that—you know, when companies start evaluating how to make the most out of the deals they're negotiating or signing, it is important to acknowledge that the cost of any of those evaluations or even thinking about migrations never tends to get factored in. And we always tend to treat that as being extremely simple or not, but those are engineering resources you want to be spending more building on the product rather than these crazy costly migrations. So, it's in your best interest probably to start using the most from your cloud provider, and also look for opportunities to use other cloud providers—if they provide more value in certain product offerings—rather than thinking about a complete lift-and-shift, and I'm going to make DR as being the primary case on why I want to be moving to multi-cloud.Corey: Yeah. There's a question, too, of the numbers on paper look radically different than the reality of this. You mentioned, Pinterest has been on AWS since the beginning, which means that even if an edict had been passed at the beginning, that, “Thou shalt never build on anything except EC2 and S3. The end. Full stop.”And let's say you went down that rabbit hole of, “Oh, we don't trust their load balancers. We're going to build our own at home. We have load balancers at home. We'll use those.” It's terrible, but even had you done that and restricted yourselves just to those baseline building blocks, and then decide to do a cloud migration, you're still looking back at over a decade of experience where the app has been built unconsciously reflecting the various failure modes that AWS has, the way that it responds to API calls, the latency in how long it takes to request something versus it being available, et cetera, et cetera.So, even moving that baseline thing to another cloud provider is not a trivial undertaking by any stretch of the imagination. But that said—because the topic does always come up, and I don't shy away from it; I think it's something people should go into with an open mind—how has the multi-cloud conversation progressed at Pinterest? Because there's always a multi-cloud conversation.Micheal: We have always approached it with some form of… openness. It's not like we don't want to be open to the ideas, but you really want to be thinking hard on the business case and the business value something provides on why you want to be doing x. In this case, when we think about multi-cloud—and again, Pinterest did start with EC2 and S3, and we did keep it that way for a long time. We built a lot of primitives around it, used it—for example, my team actually runs our bread and butter deployment system on EC2. We help facilitate deployments across a 100,000-plus machines today.And like you said, we have built that system keeping in mind how AWS works, and understanding the nuances of region and AZ failovers and all of that, and help facilitate deployments across 1000-plus microservices in the company. So, thinking about leveraging, say, a Google Cloud instance and how that works, in theory, we can always make a case for engineering to build our deployment system and expand there, but there's really no value. And one of the biggest cases, usually, when multi-cloud comes in is usually either negotiation for price or actually a DR strategy. Like, what if AWS goes down in and us-east-1? Well, let's be honest, they're powering half the internet [laugh] from that one single—Corey: Right.Micheal: Yeah. So, if you think your business is okay running when AWS goes down and half the internet is not going to be working, how do you want to be thinking about that? So, DR is probably not the best reason for you to be even exploring multi-cloud. Rather, you should be thinking about what the cloud providers are offering as a very nuanced offering which your current cloud provider is not offering, and really think about just using those specific items.Corey: So, I agree that multi-cloud for DR purposes is generally not necessarily the best approach with the idea of being able to failover seamlessly, but I like the idea for backups. I mean, Pinterest is a publicly-traded company, which means that among other things, you have to file risk disclosures and be responsive to auditors in a variety of different ways. There are some regulations to start applying to you. And the idea of, well, AWS builds things out in a super effective way, region separation, et cetera, whenever I talk to Amazonians, they are always surprised that anyone wouldn't accept that, “Oh, if you want backups use a different region. Problem solved.”Right, but it is often easier for me to have a rehydrate the business level of backup that would take weeks to redeploy living on another cloud provider than it is for me to explain to all of those auditors and regulators and financial analysts, et cetera why I didn't go ahead and do that path. So, there's always some story for okay, what if AWS decides that they hate us and want to kick us off the platform? Well, that's why legal is involved in those high-level discussions around things like risk, and indemnity, and termination for convenience and for cause clauses, et cetera, et cetera. The idea of making an all-in commitment to a cloud provider goes well beyond things that engineering thinks about. And it's easy for those of us with engineering backgrounds to be incredibly dismissive of that of, “Oh, indemnity? Like, when does AWS ever lose data?” “Yeah, but let's say one day they do. What is your story going to be when asked some very uncomfortable questions by people who wanted you to pay attention to this during the negotiation process?” It's about dotting the i's and crossing the t's, especially with that many commas in the contractual commitments.Micheal: No, it is true. And we did evaluate that as an option, but one of the interesting things about compliance, and especially auditing as well, we generally work with the best in class consultants to help us work through the controls and how we audit, how we look at these controls, how to make sure there's enough accountability going through. The interesting part was in this case, as well, we were able to work with AWS in crafting a lot of those controls and setting up the right expectations as and when we were putting proposals together as well. Now, again, I'm not an expert on this and I know we have a dedicated team from our technical program management organization focused on this, but early on we realized that, to your point, the cost of any form of backups and then being able to audit what's going in, look at all those pipelines, how quickly we can get the data in and out it was proving pretty costly for us. So, we were able to work out some of that within the constructs of what we have with our cloud provider today, and still meet our compliance goals.Corey: That's, on some level, the higher point, too, where everything is everything comes down to context; everything comes down to what the business demands, what the business requires, what the business will accept. And I'm not suggesting that in any case, they're wrong. I'm known for beating the ‘Multi-cloud is a bad default decision' drum, and then people get surprised when they'll have one-on-one conversations, and they say, “Well, we're multi-cloud. Do you think we're foolish?” “No. You're probably doing the right thing, just because you have context that is specific to your business that I, speaking in a general sense, certainly don't have.”People don't generally wake up in the morning and decide they're going to do a terrible job or no job at all at work today, unless they're Facebook's VP of Integrity. So, it's not the sort of thing that lends itself to casual tweet size, pithy analysis very often. There's a strong dive into what is the level of risk a business can accept? And my general belief is that most companies are doing this stuff right. The universal constant in all of my consulting clients that I have spoken to about the in-depth management piece of things is, they've always asked the same question of, “So, this is what we've done, but can you introduce us to the people who are doing it really right, who have absolutely nailed this and gotten it all down?” “It's, yeah, absolutely no one believes that that is them, even the folks who are, from my perspective, pretty close to having achieved it.”But I want to talk a bit more about what you do beyond just the headline-grabbing large dollar figure commitment to a cloud provider story. What does engineering productivity mean at Pinterest? Where do you start? Where do you stop?Micheal: I want to just quickly touch upon that last point about multi-cloud, and like you said, every company works within the context of what they are given and the constraints of their business. It's probably a good time to give a plug to my previous employer, Twitter, who are doing multi-cloud in a reasonably effective way. They are on the data centers, they do have presence on Google Cloud, and AWS, and I know probably things have changed since a couple of years now, but they have embraced that environment pretty effectively to cater to their acquisitions who were on the public cloud, help obviously, with their initial set of investments in the data center, and still continue to scale that out, and explore, in this case, Google Cloud for a variety of other use cases, which sounds like it's been extremely beneficial as well.So, to your point, there is probably no right way to do this. There's always that context, and what you're working with comes into play as part of making these decisions. And it's important to take a lot of these with a grain of salt because you can never understand the decisions, why they were made the way they were made. And for what it's worth, it sort of works out in the end. [laugh]. I've rarely heard a story where it's never worked out, and people are just upset with the deals they've signed. So, hopefully, that helps close that whole conversation about multi-cloud.Corey: I hope so. It's one of those areas where everyone has an opinion and a lot of them do not necessarily apply universally, but it's always fun to take—in that case, great, I'll take the lesser trod path of everyone's saying multi-cloud is great, invariably because they're trying to sell you something. Yeah, I have nothing particularly to sell, folks. My argument has always been, in the absence of a compelling reason not to, pick a provider and go all in. I don't care which provider you pick—which people are sometimes surprised to hear.It's like, “Well, what if they pick a cloud provider that you don't do consulting work for?” Yeah, it turns out, I don't actually need to win every AWS customer over to have a successful working business. Do what makes sense for you, folks. From my perspective, I want this industry to be better. I don't want to sit here and just drum up business for myself and make self-serving comments to empower that. Which apparently is a rare tactic.Micheal: No, that's totally true, Corey. One of the things you do is help people with their bills, so this has come up so many times, and I realize we're sort of going off track a bit from that engineering productivity discussion—Corey: Oh, which is fine. That's this entire show's theme, if it has one.Micheal: [laugh]. So, I want to briefly just talk about the whole billing and how cost management works because I know you spend a lot of time on that and you help a lot of these companies be effective in how they manage their bills. These questions have come up multiple times, even at Pinterest. We actually in the past, when I was leading the infrastructure governance organization, we were working with other companies of our similar size to better understand how they are looking into getting visibility into their cost, setting sort of the right controls and expectations within the engineering organization to plan, and capacity plan, and effectively meet those plans in a certain criteria, and then obviously, if there is any risk to that, actively manage risk. That was like the biggest thing those teams used to do.And we used to talk a lot trade notes, and get a better sense of how a lot of these companies are trying to do—for example, Netflix, or Lyft, or Stripe. I recall Netflix, content was their biggest spender, so cloud spending was like way down in the list of things for them. [laugh]. But regardless, they had an active team looking at this on a day-to-day basis. So, one of the things we learned early on at Pinterest is that start investing in those visibility tools early on.No one can parse the cloud bills. Let's be honest. You're probably the only person who can reverse… [laugh] engineer an architecture diagram from a cloud bill, and I think that's like—definitely you should take a patent for that or something. But in reality, no one has the time to do that. You want to make sure your business leaders, from your finance teams to engineering teams to head of the executives all have a better understanding of how to parse it.So, investing engineering resources, take that data, how do you munch it down to the cost, the utilization across the different vectors of offerings, and have a very insightful discussion. Like, what are certain action items we want to be taking? It's very easy to see, “Oh, we overspent EC2,” and we want to go from there. But in reality, that's not just that thing; you will start finding out that EC2 is being used by your Hadoop infrastructure, which runs hundreds of thousands of jobs. Okay, now who's actually responsible for that cost? You might find that one job which is accruing, sort of, a lot of instance hours over a period of time and a shared multi-tenant environment, how do you attribute that cost to that particular cost center?Corey: And then someone left the company a while back, and that job just kept running in perpetuity. No one's checked the output for four years, I guess it can't be that necessarily important. And digging into it requires context. It turns out, there's no SaaS tool to do this, which is unfortunate for those of us who set out originally to build such a thing. But we discovered pretty early on the context on this stuff is incredibly important.I love the thing you're talking about here, where you're discussing with your peer companies about these things because the advice that I would give to companies with the level of spend that you folks do is worlds apart from what I would advise someone who's building something new and spending maybe 500 bucks a month on their cloud bill. Those folks do not need to hire a dedicated team of people to solve for these problems. At your scale, yeah, you probably should have had some people in [laugh] here looking at this for a while now. And at some point, the guidance changes based upon scale. And if there's one thing that we discover from the horrible pages of Hacker News, it's that people love applying bits of wisdom that they hear in wildly inappropriate situations.How do you think about these things at that scale? Because, a simple example: right now I spend about 1000 bucks a month at The Duckbill Group, on our AWS bill. I know. We have one, too. Imagine that. And if I wind up just committing admin credentials to GitHub, for example, and someone compromises that and start spinning things up to mine all the Bitcoin, yeah, I'm going to notice that by the impact it has on the bill, which will be noticeable from orbit.At the level of spend that you folks are at, at company would be hard-pressed to spin up enough Bitcoin miners to materially move the billing needle on a month-to-month basis, just because of the sheer scope and scale. At small bill volumes, yeah, it's pretty easy to discover the thing that spiking your bill to three times normal. It's usually a managed NAT gateway. At your scale, tripling the bill begins to look suspiciously like the GDP of a small country, so what actually happened here? Invariably, at that scale, with that level of massive multiplier, it's usually the simplest solution, an error somewhere in the AWS billing system. Yes, they exist. Imagine that.Micheal: They do exist, and we've encountered that.Corey: Kind of heartstopping, isn't it?Micheal: [laugh]. I don't know if you remember when we had the big Spectre and the Meltdown, right, and those were interesting scenarios for us because we had identified a lot of those issues early on, given the scale we operate, and we were able to, sort of, obviously it did have an impact on the builds and everything, but that's it; that's why you have these dedicated teams to fix that. But I think one of the points you made, these are large bills and you're never going to have a 3x jump the next day. We're not going to be seeing that. And if that happens, you know, God save us. [laugh].But to your point, one of the things we do still want to be doing is look at trends, literally on a week-over-week basis because even a one percentage move is a pretty significant amount, if you think about it, which could be funding some other aspects of the business, which we would prefer to be investing on. So, we do want to have enough rigor and controls in place in our technical stack to identify and alert when something is off track. And it becomes challenging when you start using those higher-order services from your public cloud provider because there's no clear insights on how do you, kind of, parse that information. One of the biggest challenges we had at Pinterest was tying ownership to all these things.No, using tags is not going to cut it. It was so difficult for us to get to a point where we could put some sense of ownership in all the things and the resources people are using, and then subsequently have the right conversation with our ads infrastructure teams, or our product teams to help drive the cost improvements we want to be seeing. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's not a challenge already, even for the smaller companies who have bills in the tunes of tens and thousands, right?Corey: It is. It's predicting the spend and trying to categorize it appropriately; that's the root of all AWS bill panic on the corporate level. It's not that the bill is 20% higher, so we're going to go broke. Most companies spend far more on payroll than they do on infrastructure—as you mentioned with Netflix, content is a significantly larger [laugh] expense than any of those things; real estate, it's usually right up there too—but instead it's, when you're trying to do business forecasting of, okay, if we're going to have an additional 1000 monthly active users, what will the cost for us be to service those users and, okay, if we're seeing a sudden 20% variance, if that's the new normal, then well, that does change our cost projections for a number of years, what happens? When you're public, there starts to become the question of okay, do we have to restate earnings or what's the deal here?And of course, all this sidesteps past the unfortunate reality that, for many companies, the AWS bill is not a function of how many customers you have; it's how many engineers you hired. And that is always the way it winds up playing out for some reason. “It's why did we see a 10% increase in the bill? Yeah, we hired another data science team. Oops.” It's always seems to be the data science folks; I know I'd beat up on those folks a fair bit, and my apologies. And one day, if they analyze enough of the data, they might figure out why.Micheal: So, this is where I want to give a shout out to our data science team, especially some of the engineers working in the Infrastructure Governance Team putting these charts together, helping us derive insights. So, definitely props to them.I think there's a great segue into the point you made. As you add more engineers, what is the impact on the bottom line? And this is one of the things actually as part of engineering productivity, we think about as well on a long-term basis. Pinterest does have over 1000-plus engineers today, and to large degree, many of them actually have their own EC2 instances today. And I wouldn't say it's a significant amount of cost, but it is a large enough number, were shutting down a c5.9xl can actually fund a bunch of conference tickets or something else.And then you can imagine that sort of the scale you start working with at one point. The nuance here is though, you want to make sure there's enough flexibility for these engineers to do their local development in a sustainable way, but when moving to, say production, we really want to tighten the flexibility a bit so they don't end up doing what you just said, spin up a bunch of machines talking to the API directly which no one will be aware of.I want to share a small anecdote because when back in the day, this was probably four years ago, when we were doing some analysis on our bills, we realized that there was a huge jump every—I believe Wednesday—in our EC2 instances by almost a factor of, like, 500 to 600 instances. And we're like, “Why is this happening? What is going on?” And we found out there was an obscure job written by someone who had left the company, calling an EC2 API to spin up a search cluster of 500 machines on-demand, as part of pulling that ETL data together, and then shutting that cluster down. Which at times didn't work as expected because, you know, obviously, your Hadoop jobs are very predictable, right?So, those are the things we were dealing with back in the day, and you want to make sure—since then—this is where engineering productivity as team starts coming in that our job is to enable every engineer to be doing their best work across code building and deploying the services. And we have done this.Corey: Right. You and I can sit here and have an in-depth conversation about the intricacies of AWS billing in a bunch of different ways because in different ways we both specialize in it, in many respects. But let's say that Pinterest theoretically was foolish enough to hire me before I got into this space as an engineer, for terrifying reasons. And great. I start day one as a typical software developer if such a thing could be said to exist. How do you effectively build guardrails in so that I don't inadvertently wind up spinning up all the EC2 instances available to me within an account, which it turns out are more than one might expect sometimes, but still leave me free to do my job without effectively spending a nine-month safari figuring out how AWS bills work?Micheal: And this is why teams like ours exist, to help provide those tools to help you get started. So today, we actually don't let anyone directly use AWS APIs, or even use the UI for that matter. And I think you'll soon realize, the moment you hit, like, probably 30 or 40 people in your organization, you definitely want to lock it down. You don't want that access to be given to anyone or everyone. And then subsequently start building some higher-order tools or abstraction so people can start using that to control effectively.In this case, if you're a new engineer, Corey, which it seems like you were, at some point—Corey: I still write code like I am, don't worry.Micheal: [laugh]. So yes, you would get access to our internal tool to actually help spin up what we call is a dev app, where you get a chance to, obviously, choose the instance size, not the instance type itself, and we have actually constrained the instance types we have approved within Pinterest as well. We don't give you the entire list you get a chance to choose and deploy to. We actually have constraint to based on the workload types, what are the instance types we want to support because in the future, if we ever want to move from c3 to c5—and I've been there, trust me—it is not an easy thing to do, so you want to make sure that you're not letting people just use random instances, and constrain that by building some of these tools. As a new engineer, you would go in, you'd use the tool, and actually have a dev app provisioned for you with our Pinterest image to get you started.And then subsequently, we'll obviously shut it down if we see you not being using it over a certain amount of time, but those are sort of the guardrails we've put in over there so you never get a chance to directly ever use the EC2 APIs, or any of those AWS APIs to do certain things. The similar thing applies for S3 or any of the higher-order tools which AWS will provide, too.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. 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Visit https://snark.cloud/oci-free that's https://snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: How does that interplay with AWS launches yet another way to run containers, for example, and that becomes a valuable potential avenue to get some business value for a developer, but the platform you built doesn't necessarily embrace that capability? Or they release a feature to an existing tool that you use that could potentially be a just feature capability story, much more so than a cost savings one. How do you keep track of all of that and empower people to use those things so they're not effectively trying to reimplement DynamoDB on top of EC2?Micheal: That's been a challenge, actually, in the past for us because we've always been very flexible where engineers have had an opportunity to write their own solutions many a times rather than leveraging the AWS services, and of late, that's one of the reasons why we have an infrastructure organization—an extremely lean organization for what it's worth—but then still able to achieve outsized outputs. Where we evaluate a lot of these use cases, as they come in and open up different aspects of what we want to provide say directly from AWS, or build certain abstractions on top of it. Every time we talk about containers, obviously, we always associate that with something like Kubernetes and offerings from there on; we realized that our engineers directly never ask for those capabilities. They don't come in and say, “I need a new container orchestration system. Give that to me, and I'm going to be extremely productive.”What people actually realize is that if you can provide them effective tools and that can help them get their job done, they would be happy with it. For example, like I said, our deployment system, which is actually an open-source system called Teletraan. That is the bread and butter at Pinterest at which my team runs. We operate 100,000-plus machines. We have actually looked into container orchestration where we do have a dedicated Kubernetes team looking at it and helping certain use cases moved there, but we realized that the cost of entire migrations need to be evaluated against certain use cases which can benefit from being on Kubernetes from day one. You don't want to force anyone to move there, but give them the right incentives to move there. Case in point, let's upgrade your OS. Because if you're managing machines, obviously everyone loves to upgrade their OSes.Corey: Well, it's one of the things I love savings plans versus RIs; you talk about the c3 to c5 migration and everyone has a story about one of those, but the most foolish or frustrating reason that I ever saw not to do the upgrade was what we bought a bunch of Reserved Instances on the C3s and those have a year-and-a-half left to run. And it's foolish not on the part of customers—it's economically sound—but on the part of AWS where great, you're now forcing me to take a contractual commitment to something that serves me less effectively, rather than getting out of the way and letting me do my job. That's why it's so important to me at least, that savings plans cover Fargate and Lambda, I wish they covered SageMaker instead of SageMaker having its own thing because once again, you're now architecturally constrained based upon some ridiculous economic model that they have imposed on us. But that's a separate rant for another time.Micheal: No, we actually went through that process because we do have a healthy balance of how we do Reserved Instances and how we look at on-demand. We've never been big users have spot in the past because just the spot market itself, we realized that putting that pressure on our customers to figure out how to manage that is way more. When I say customers, in this case, engineers within the organization.Corey: Oh, yes. “I want to post some pictures on Pinterest, so now I have to understand the spot market. What?” Yeah.Micheal: [laugh]. So, in this case, when we even we're moving from C3 to C5—and this is where the partnership really plays out effectively, right, because it's also in the best interest of AWS to deprecate their aging hardware to support some of these new ones where they could also be making good enough premium margins for what it's worth and give the benefit back to the user. So, in this case, we were able to work out an extremely flexible way of moving to a C5 as soon as possible, get help from them, actually, in helping us do that, too, allocating capacity and working with them on capacity management. I believe at one point, we were actually one of the largest companies with a C3 footprint and it took quite a while for us to move to C5. But rest assured, once we moved, the savings was just immense. We were able to offset any of those RI and we were able to work behind the scenes to get that out. But obviously, not a lot of that is considered in a small-scale company just because of, like you said, those constraints which have been placed in a contractual obligation.Corey: Well, this is an area in which I will give the same guidance to companies of your scale as well as small-scale companies. And by small-scale, I mean, people on the free tier account, give or take, so I do mean the smallest of the small. Whenever you wind up in a scenario where you find yourself architecturally constrained by an economic barrier like this, reach out to your account manager. I promise you have one. Every account, even the tiny free tier accounts, have an account manager.I have an account manager, who I have to say has probably one of the most surreal jobs that AWS, just based upon the conversations I throw past him. But it's reaching out to your provider rather than trying to solve a lot of this stuff yourself by constraining how you're building things internally is always the right first move because the worst case is you don't get anywhere in those conversations. Okay, but at least you explored that, as opposed to what often happens is, “Oh, yeah. I have a switch over here I can flip and solve your entire problem. Does that help anything?”Micheal: Yeah.Corey: You feel foolish finding that out only after nine months of dedicated work, it turns out.Micheal: Which makes me wonder, Corey. I mean, do you see a lot of that happening where folks don't tend to reach out to their account managers, or rather treat them as partners in this case, right? Because it sounds like there is this unhealthy tension, I would say, as to what is the best help you could be getting from your account managers in this case.Corey: Constantly. And the challenge comes from a few things, in my experience. The first is that the quality of account managers and the technical account managers—the folks who are embedded many cases with your engineering teams in different ways—does vary. AWS is scaling wildly and bursting at the seams, and people are hard to scale.So, some are fantastic, some are decidedly less so, and most folks fall somewhere in the middle of that bell curve. And it doesn't take too many poor experiences for the default to be, “Oh, those people are useless. They never do anything we want, so why bother asking them?” And that leads to an unhealthy dynamic where a lot of companies will wind up treating their AWS account manager types as a ticket triage system, or the last resort of places that they'll turn when they should be involved in earlier conversations.I mean, take Pinterest as an example of this. I'm not sure how many technical account managers you have assigned to your account, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the ratio of technical account managers to engineers working on the environment is incredibly lopsided. It's got to be a high ratio just because of the nature of how these things work. So, there are a lot of people who are actively working on things that would almost certainly benefit from a more holistic conversation with your AWS account team, but it doesn't occur to them to do it just because of either perceived biases around levels of competence, or poor experiences in the past, or simply not knowing the capabilities that are there. If I could tell one story around the AWS account management story, it would be talk to folks sooner about these things.And to be clear, Pinterest has this less than other folks, but AWS does themselves no favors by having a product strategy of, “Yes,” because very often in service of those conversations with a number of companies, there is the very real concern of are they doing research so that they can launch a service that competes with us? Amazon as a whole launching a social network is admittedly one of the most hilarious ideas I [laugh] can come up with and I hope they take a whack at it just to watch them learn all these lessons themselves, but that is again, neither here nor there.Micheal: That story is very interesting, and I think you mentioned one thing; it's just that lack of trust, or even knowing what the account managers can actually do for you. There seems to be just a lack of education on that. And we also found it the hard way, right? I wouldn't say that Pinterest figured this out on day one. We evolved sort of a relationship over time. Yes, our time… engagements are, sort of, lopsided, but we were able to negotiate that as part of deals as we learned a bit more on what we can and we cannot do, and how these individuals are beneficial for Pinterest as well. And—Corey: Well, here's a question for you, without naming names—and this might illustrate part of the challenge customers have—how long has your account manager—not the technical account managers, but your account manager—been assigned to your account?Micheal: I've been at Pinterest for five years and I've been working with the same person. And he's amazing.Corey: Which is incredibly atypical. At a lot of smaller companies, it feels like, “Oh, I'm your account manager being introduced to you.” And, “Are you the third one this year? Great.” What happens is that if the account manager excels, very often they get promoted and work with a smaller number of accounts at larger spend, and whereas if they don't find that AWS is a great place for them for a variety of reasons, they go somewhere else and need to be backfilled.So, at the smaller account, it's, “Great. I've had more account managers in a year than you've had in five.” And that is often the experience when you start seeing significant levels of rotation, especially on the customer engineering side where you wind up with you have this big kickoff, and everyone's aware of all the capabilities and you look at it three years later, and not a single person who was in that kickoff is still involved with the account on either side, and it's just sort of been evolving evolutionarily from there. One thing that we've done in some of our larger accounts as part of our negotiation process is when we see that the bridges have been so thoroughly burned, we will effectively request a full account team cycle, just because it's time to get new faces in where the customer, in many cases unreasonably, is not going to say, “Yeah but a year-and-a-half ago you did this terrible thing and we're still salty about it.” Fine, whatever. I get it. People relationships are hard. Let's go ahead and swap some folks out so that there are new faces with new perspectives because that helps.Micheal: Well, first off, if you had so many switches in account manager, I think that's something speaks about [laugh] how you've been working, too. I'm just kidding. There are a bu—Corey: Entirely possible. In seriousness, yes. But if you talk to—like, this is not just me because in my case, yeah, I feel like my account manager is whoever drew the short straw that week because frankly, yeah, that does seem like a great punishment to wind up passing out to someone who is underperforming. But for a lot of folks who are in the mid-tier, like, spending $50 to $100,000 a month, this is a very common story.Micheal: Yeah. Actually, we've heard a bit about this, too. And like you said, I think maintaining context is the most thing. You really want your account manager to vouch for you, really be your champion in those meetings because AWS, like you said is so large, getting those exec time, and reviews, and there's so many things that happen, your account manager is the champion for you, or right there. And it's important and in fact in your best interest to have a great relationship with them as well, not treat them as, oh yet another vendor.And I think that's where things start to get a bit messy because when you start treating them as yet another vendor, there is no incentive for them to do the best for you, too. You know, people relationships are hard. But that said though, I think given the amount of customers like these cloud companies are accruing, I wouldn't be surprised; every account manager seems to be extremely burdened. Even in our case, although I've been having a chance to work with this one person for a long time, we've actually expanded. We have now multiple account managers helping us out as we've started scaling to use certain aspects of AWS which we've never explored before.We were a bit constrained and reserved about what service we want to use because there have been instances where we have tried using something and we have hit the wall pretty immediately. API rate limits, or it's not ready for primetime, and we're like, “Oh, my God. Now, what do we do?” So, we have a bit more cautious. But that said, over time, having an account manager who understands how you work, what scale you have, they're able to advocate with the internal engineering teams within the cloud provider to make the best of supporting you as a customer and tell that success story all the way out.So yeah, I can totally understand how this may be hard, especially for those small companies. For what it's worth, I think the best way to really think about it is not treat them as your vendor, but really go out on a limb there. Even though you signed a deal with them, you want to make sure that you have the continuing relationship with them to have—represent your voice better within the company. Which is probably hard. [laugh].Corey: That's always the hard part. Honestly, if this were the sort of thing that were easy to automate, or you could wind up building out something that winds up helping companies figure out how to solve these things programmatically, talk about interesting business problems that are only going to get larger in the fullness of time. This is not going away, even if AWS stopped signing up new customers entirely right now, they would still have years of growth ahead of them just from organic growth. And take a company with the scale of Pinterest and just think of how many years it would take to do a full-on exodus, even if it became priority number one. It's not realistic in many cases, which is why I've never been a big fan of multi-cloud as an approach for negotiation. Yeah, AWS has more data on those points than any of us do; they're not worried about it. It just makes you sound like an unsophisticated negotiator. Pick your poison and lean in.Micheal: That is the truth you just mentioned, and I probably want to give a call out to our head of infrastructure, [Coburn 00:42:13]. He's also my boss, and he had brought this perspective as well. As part of any negotiation discussions, like you just said, AWS has way more data points on this than what we think we can do in terms of talking about, “Oh, we are exploring this other cloud provider.” And it's—they would be like, “Yeah. Do tell me more [laugh] how that's going.”And it's probably in the best interest to never use that as a negotiation tactic because they clearly know the investments that's going to build on what you've done, so you might as well be talking more—again, this is where that relationship really plays together because you want both of them to be successful. And it's in their best interest to still keep you happy because the good thing about at least companies of our size is that we're probably, like, one phone call away from some of their executive team, where we could always talk about what didn't work for us. And I know not everyone has that opportunity, but I'm really hoping and I know at least with some of the interactions we've had with the AWS teams, they're actively working and building that relationship more and more, giving access to those customer advisory boards, and all of them to have those direct calls with the executives. I don't know whether you've seen that in your experience in helping some of these companies?Corey: Have a different approach to it. It turns out when you're super loud and public and noisy about AWS and spend too much time in Seattle, you start to spend time with those people on a social basis. Because, again, I'm obnoxious and annoying to a lot of AWS folks, but I'm also having an obnoxious habit of being right in most of the things I'm pointing out. And that becomes harder and harder to ignore. I mean, part of the value that I found in being able to do this as a consultant is that I begin to compare and contrast different customer environments on a consistent ongoing basis.I mean, the reason that negotiation works well from my perspective is that AWS does a bunch of these every week, and customers do these every few years with AWS. And well, we do an awful lot of them, too, and it's okay, we've seen different ways things can get structured and it doesn't take too long and too many engagements before you start to see the points of commonality in how these things flow together. So, when we wind up seeing things that a customer is planning on architecturally and looking to do in the future, and, “Well, wait a minute. Have you talked to the folks negotiating the contract about this? Because that does potentially have bearing and it provides better data than what AWS is gathering just through looking at overall spend trends. So yeah, bring that up. That is absolutely going to impact the type of offer you get.”It just comes down to understanding the motivators that drive folks and it comes down to, I think understanding the incentives. I will say that across the board, I have never yet seen a deal from AWS come through where it was, “Okay, at this point you're just trying to hoodwink the customer and get them to sign on something that doesn't help them.” I've seen mistakes that can definitely lead to that impression, and I've seen areas where they're doing data is incomplete and they're making assumptions that are not borne out in reality. But it's not one of those bad faith type—Micheal: Yeah.Corey: —of negotiations. If it were, I would be framing a lot of this very differently. It sounds weird to say, “Yeah, your vendor is not trying to screw you over in this sense,” because look at the entire IT industry. How often has that been true about almost any other vendor in the fullness of time? This is something a bit different, and I still think we're trying to grapple with the repercussions of that, from a negotiation standpoint and from a long-term business continuity standpoint, when your faith is linked—in a shared fate context—with your vendor.Micheal: It's in their best interest as well because they're trying to build a diversified portfolio. Like, if they help 100 companies, even if one of them becomes the next Pinterest, that's great, right? And that continued relationship is what they're aiming for. So, assuming any bad faith over there probably is not going to be the best outcome, like you said. And two, it's not a zero-sum game.I always get a sense that when you're doing these negotiations, it's an all-or-nothing deal. It's not. You have to think they're also running a business and it's important that you as your business, how okay are you with some of those premiums? You cannot get a discount on everything, you cannot get the deal or the numbers you probably want almost everything. And to your point, architecturally, if you're moving in a certain direction where you think in the next three years, this is what your usage is going to be or it will come down to that, obviously, you should be investing more and negotiating that out front rather than managed NAT [laugh] gateways, I guess. So, I think that's also an important mindset to take in as part of any of these negotiations. Which I'm assuming—I don't know how you folks have been working in the past, but at least that's one of the key items we have taken in as part of any of these discussions.Corey: I would agree wholeheartedly. I think that it just comes down to understanding where you're going, what's important, and again in some cases knowing around what things AWS will never bend contractually. I've seen companies spend six weeks or more trying to get to negotiate custom SLAs around services. Let me save everyone a bunch of time and money; they will not grant them to you.Micheal: Yeah.Corey: I promise. So, stop asking for them; you're not going to get them. There are other things they will negotiate on that they're going to be highly case-dependent. I'm hesitant to mention any of them just because, “Well, wait a minute, we did that once. Why are you talking about that in public?” I don't want to hear it and confidentiality matters. But yeah, not everything is negotiable, but most things are, so figuring out what levers and knobs and dials you have is important.Micheal: We also found it that way. AWS does cater to their—they are a platform and they are pretty clear in how much engagement—even if we are one of their top customers, there's been many times where I know their product managers have heavily pushed back on some of the requests we have put in. And that makes me wonder, they probably have the same engagement even with the smallest of customers, there's always an implicit assumption that the big fish is trying to get the most out of your public cloud providers. To your point, I don't think that's true. We're rarely able to negotiate anything exclusive in terms of their product offerings just for us, if that makes sense.Case in point, tell us your capacity [laugh] for x instances or type of instances, so we as a company would know how to plan out our scale-ups or scale-downs. That's not going to happen exclusively for you. But those kind of things are just, like, examples we have had a chance to work with their product managers and see if, can we get some flexibility on that? For what it's worth, though, they are willing to find a middle ground with you to make sure that you get your answers and, obviously, you're being successful in your plans to use certain technologies they offer or [unintelligible 00:48:31] how you use their services.Corey: So, I know we've gone significantly over time and we are definitely going to do another episode talking about a lot of the other things that you're involved in because I'm going to assume that your full-time job is not worrying about the AWS bill. In fact, you do a fair number of things beyond that; I just get stuck on that one, given that it is but I eat, sleep, breathe, and dream about.Micheal: Absolutely. I would love to talk more, especially about how we're enabling our engineers to be extremely productive in this new world, and how we want to cater to this whole cloud-native environment which is being created, and make sure people are doing their best work. But regardless, Corey, I mean, this has been an amazing, insightful chat, even for me. And I really appreciate you having me on the show.Corey: No, thank you for joining me. If people want to learn more about what you're up to, and how you think about things, where can they find you? Because I'm also going to go out on a limb and assume you're also probably hiring, given that everyone seems to be these days.Micheal: Well, that is true. And I wasn't planning to make a hiring pitch but I'm glad that you leaned into that one. Yes, we are hiring and you can find me on Twitter at twitter dot com slash M-I-C-H-E-A-L. I am spelled a bit differently, so make sure you can hit me up, and my DMs are open. And obviously, we have all our open roles listed on pinterestcareers.com as well.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:49:45]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.Micheal: Thank you, Corey. It was really been great on your show.Corey: And I'm sure we'll do it again in the near future. Micheal Benedict, Head of Engineering Productivity at Pinterest. I am Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with a long rambling comment about exactly how many data centers Pinterest could build instead.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

It's been a big year of reading, and today we're talking about our favorite books from 2021! We each picked a top 5 and also had our listeners weigh in on the best books—from thrillers to romance to non-fiction to backlist—they read this year. If you're in search of book recs, look no further, we have the best of the best for you!   Grace's Favorites - The Push by Ashley Audrain (Mystery/Thriller) - Good Night Beautiful by Aimee Mollloy (Mystery/Thriller) -Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (Fiction) -Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Fiction) -Untamed by Glennon Doyle (Non-Fiction) -Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee (Non-Fiction) -The Third Door by Alex Banayan (Non-Fiction) -Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (Non-Fiction) -The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Backlist)   Becca's Favorites -The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Mystery/Thriller) -People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry (Romance) -Lizzie & Dante by Mary Bly (Romance) -Seven Days in June by Tia Williams (Romance) -The People We Keep by Allison Larkin (Fiction) -The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand (Backlist)   Listener Reccomendations! -The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Mystery/Thriller) -Confessions on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger (Mystery/Thriller) -The Wife and The Widow by Christian White (Mystery/Thriller) -Olympus Texas by Stacey Swann (Fiction) -Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (Fiction) -Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans (Fiction) -Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters (Fiction) -We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride (Fiction)  -Expecting Better by Emily Oster (Non-Fiction) -Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Non-Fiction) -Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Non-Fiction) -Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell (Non-Fiction) -The Wreckage of My Presence by Casey Wilson (Non-Fiction) -Indistractable by Nir Eyal (Non-Fiction) -A Most Beautiful Thing by Arshay Cooper (Non-Fiction) -A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Backlist) -Summer of 69 by Elin Hilderbrand (Backlist) Obsessions  The Morning Show  A Discovery of Witches    What we Read this week! Ghosts by Dolly Alderton Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl Always, in December by Emily Stone If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich   November Book Club Pick: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton   Sponsors: Better Help - Go to betterhelp.com/badonpaper for 10% off your first month Everlywell - Go to everlywell.com/bop for 20% off your at-home lab test   Join our Facebook group for amazing book recs & more!   Like and subscribe to RomComPods. Available wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit Grace's blog, The Stripe. New posts daily!   Follow us on Instagram @badonpaperpodcast. Follow Grace on Instagram @graceatwood and Becca @beccamfreeman.

Joe and JSam are back to talk about the good and bad of Atlanta United's 2-1 win over FC Cincinnati and the playoffs yet to come. Be sure to check out the patreon for our interview with Jeff Larentowicz and even more interviews and previews as we head into the playoffs. Just head to patreon.com/fivestripefinal to subscribe, listen and join the world-famous Five Stripe Final discord. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Niall Ferguson is a historian at Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of 16 books on the history of money, war, power, and catastrophe. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – The Prisoner Wine Company: https://theprisonerwine.com/lex to get 20% off & free shipping – Stripe: https://stripe.com – Coinbase: https://coinbase.com/lex to get $5 in free Bitcoin – Four Sigmatic: https://foursigmatic.com/lex and use code LexPod to get up to 60% off – Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit EPISODE LINKS: Niall's Twitter: https://twitter.com/nfergus Niall's Website: https://www.niallferguson.com University of Austin: https://uaustin.org/ Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (book): https://amzn.to/3wt7AI8

The epic battle between Stars and Stripe and Shigaraki finally comes to its conclusion! Did Stars win? Or did Shigaraki get away once more? This is one exciting chapter that plays with your emotion while making you so pumped for what's about to happen. So let's jump into it and see what Horikoshi Sensei has in store for us. Because we have a lot to talk about. Please give your opinion on Poll and Q&A after the episode so you won't get spoiled --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/nerd-factory/message

HAROLD WAITS & RICH CHUCK DIESEL #MAGAMUSIC Ep. # 485 Hey everybody, another WOW WEE WEEK won't be complete until you #TuneIn2InTune at 7pm to 9pm ET

At Non-Fungible Castle 2021, an NFT exhibition in Prague, four NFT experts discuss the legal implications of NFTs. Guests include Jonathan Victor, product/business development at Protocol Labs; Louis Baudoin, advisor at Monax; Diana Stern, product counsel at Stripe; and Shant Marootian COO at Fractional.art. Show highlights: what users are receiving with the purchase of an NFT how the terms of service for different NFT marketplaces change NFT rights how on-chain storage and off-chain storage affects NFT ownership what rights do creators need to mint an NFT what recourse creators have if someone mints their art as an NFT and profits from it whether NFT marketplaces should respect NFT royalty standards on resales how NFT marketplaces could make it easier for creators to clarify licensing and royalty standards whether NFTs should be regulated under existing laws and what gaps in regulation need to be filled when an NFT should be considered a security how different jurisdictions may work together to regulate NFTs why money laundering is a problem for NFTs how a DAO could go about owning an NFT or IP what would happen to NFTs and DAOs if Ethereum were to suffer a hard fork again why DAOs should stay compliant with traditional regulations how to improve licensing and industry standards for NFTs whether NFTs should be considered as financial objects what would happen if a museum fractionalized the Mona Lisa   Thank you to our sponsors! Avado: ava.do Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021  Nodle: https://bit.ly/3AXGydJ    Episode Links:   Non-Fungible Castle 2021 Website: https://www.nfcastle.com/ Conference recordings: https://www.nfcastle.com/conference Twitter: https://twitter.com/nf_castle  Tweet thread of Laura's experience at NFCastle 2021:  https://twitter.com/laurashin/status/1449731658928824320    Jonathan Victor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-victor-69a44255  Louis Baudoin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lou-baudoin-5b847a151/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MerkleData  Diana Stern Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianajstern  Shant Marootian LinkedIn: ​https://www.linkedin.com/in/smarooti/ 

  The Witch Daily Show (https://www.witchdailyshow.com) is talking Stripe stops Serving Witches   Our sponsor today Is The Hectic Witch's Planner (https://www.amazon.com/Busy-Witchs-Planner-Tonya-Brown/dp/1087915716/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1X6LTF21167Z3&dchild=1&keywords=busy+witch%27s+planner&qid=1630763797&sprefix=busy+witch%27s+%2Cstripbooks%2C173&sr=8-3) Want to buy me a cup of coffee? Venmo: TonyaWitch - Last 4: 9226   Our quote of the day Is: ― Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream. Lao Tzu Headlines: (https://thejewishnews.com/2021/10/28/the-season-of-the-jewitch-meet-the-occultists-who-blend-witchcraft-and-jewish-folklore/) https://www.wired.com/story/stripe-occult-witches-payment-processing-sacred-arts/ Deck: Seasons of the witch Samhain Oracle (https://amzn.to/3jdhjxj)   Other Sources: (https://plentifulearth.com/magickal-properties-chocolate/) Thank you so much for joining me this morning, if you have any witch tips, questions, witch fails, or you know of news I missed, visit https://www.witchdailyshow.com or email me at thewitchdailypodcast@gmail.com If you want to support The Witch Daily Show please visit our patreon page https://www.patreon.com/witchdailyshow   Mailing Address (must be addressed as shown below) Tonya Brown 3436 Magazine St #460 New Orleans, LA 70115

Stripe no quiere amuletos ni hechizos / Depuradoras biológicas para crear Hidrógeno / Cortinas anti-ruido de IKEA / Google News vuelve a España / EE.UU. bloquea NSO / Cámara Nikon sin obturador mecánico / Lavado de dinero en Twitch Patrocinador: Kärcher presenta su nueva colección de hardware de limpieza para tu hogar. En su web https://www.kaercher.com/es/ encontrarás una potente fregona eléctrica sin cables https://www.kaercher.com/es/home-garden/fregonas-electricas/fc-7-sin-cable-10557300.html, una limpiadora de vapor https://www.kaercher.com/es/home-garden/limpiadoras-de-vapor/sc-4-easyfix-15124500.html para eliminar el 99,999% de bacterias, o sus aspiradoras multi-uso https://www.kaercher.com/es/home-garden/aspiradores-multifuncionales/aspiradores-multiuso/wd-6-p-premium-13482710.html para limpiar garajes, sótanos y mucho más. — Si los compras antes del 15 de noviembre te llevas gratis su escoba eléctrica KB-5 https://www.kaercher.com/es/home-garden/escoba-electrica/kb-5-12580000.html. Stripe no quiere amuletos ni hechizos / Depuradoras biológicas para crear Hidrógeno / Cortinas anti-ruido de IKEA / Google News vuelve a España / EE.UU. bloquea NSO / Cámara Nikon sin obturador mecánico / Lavado de dinero en Twitch

Really hope the title made you click. Everything is fine though, really. Joe and JSam are here to talk you off the ledge before the playoffs begin. Because Atlanta United made the playoffs! Almost definitely! Isn't that fun! Go team! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ATP Store IS BACK! Grab your fancy new M1 Pro or Max shirts, winter hats, or classic merch until the end of the day on 12 November! Remember, ATP Members get 15% off on time-limited sales like this one! Pre-show: Setup Woes Audition Homebrew Bundle Casey’s Post on Homebrew Bundle Casey’s bundle file Follow-up: What does Marco use for a Thunderbolt dock? (via César Cavazos) OWC Thunderbolt Dock Caldigit TS3+ Hub Caldigit Element Hub John’s AirPods 3 updates Monterey Status Report SuperDuper The Verge’s MacBook Pro review MacBook Pro Charging via USB-C Thunderbolt PDF PC Magazine ADC MacBook Pro “Compatibility Mode” Scale to fit below built-in camera Tweet with video Notch codename was Daisy? 120 Hz scrolling on new MacBook Pros Chrome shenanigans Marco’s Mystery Terabyte update Disk Utility → View → Show APFS Snapshots Purging files on iOS Marco’s experience with Lutron Caséta Waveform Lighting Eve Motion Caséta Motion Sensor (scroll down) Quinn’s Smart Home Video [More] MacBook Pro impressions Upgrade #379: They Feed on Memory MagSafe 1/2/3 side-by-side Luna Display Post-show: How does Marco unload old computers? Sponsored by: Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. New accounts get a $100 credit. Stripe: Learn more about how Stripe can support your business. Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order. Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed! Check out our store to get some sweet //////ATP merchandise!

This week we interviewed Grace Bonney, founder of Design Sponge to talk about her new book, Collective Wisdom! We learn how she got to where she is today, what inspired her to write a book about women over 50, how she found the women featured in her book, and the interviews that had the greatest impact on her.   We also talk about Design Sponge, how it felt to close it down on her terms, and her thoughts on going back to school as an adult!    Follow Grace Bonney Instagram - @grace__bonney & @designsponge Collective Wisdom: Lessons, Inspiration, and Advice from Women over 50   Instagram Obsessions Grace - @designsponge Becca - @nanowrimo   Obsessions  Grace - Nest Pumpkin Chai Candle Becca - Aerie The Sweat Waffle Crew Neck Sweatshirt   What we've read this week The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt Always, in December by Emily Stone   November Book Club Pick: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton   Sponsors: Night - Use the code NIGHTBOP for 20% off sitewide at discovernight.com Prose - Go to prose.com/BOP for your free in-depth hair quiz and 15% off your first order ZocDoc - Zocdoc: go to zocdoc.com/bop to sign up for free and find a top-rated doctor   Join our Facebook group for amazing book recs & more!   Like and subscribe to RomComPods. Available wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit Grace's blog, The Stripe. New posts daily!   Follow us on Instagram @badonpaperpodcast. Follow Grace on Instagram @graceatwood and Becca @beccamfreeman.

Center for Economic and Social Justice - https://www.cesj.org/economic-personalism-book/ Michael's website https://just3rdway.blogspot.com/ Amazon link for the Book - https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Personalism-Property-Justice-Person/dp/0944997139 https://uni-muenster.academia.edu/JulianStrube

Our expert hosts, Gwera Kiwana and Alex Hooper, are joined by some great guests to talk about the most notable fintech, financial services and banking news from the past week. This week's guests include: Paul Williamson, Head of Revenue and Partnerships, Plaid Jeremy Takle, Co-Founder & CEO, Pennyworth Rob Berrisford, General Manager, TAP, Button We cover the following stories from the fintech and financial services space: Plaid Builds Partner Ecosystem to Simplify A2A Payments 5:56 Klarna and Stripe announce ‘buy now, pay later' partnership 17:30 New neobank Pennyworth launches 30:49 Bunq launches ‘Local Currencies' to enable users to bank without borders (sound clip from Ali Niknam, CEO and Founder, Bunq) 40:45 Extend raises $40M for its virtual card offering to help banks better compete with fintechs 49:43 Carbon footprint tracker Cogo raises $20M ahead of COP26 (sound clip from Ben Gleisner, Founder and CEO, Cogo) 51:46 Chime In Talks To Go Public At $35 Billion To $45 Billion Valuation 55:00 Monzo launches London bus ad campaign and Twitter account 56:00 This episode is sponsored by Temenos. Temenos is the world leader in banking software, serving over 3,000 financial institutions. SCALE 2021 is Temenos' dedicated, virtual developer event, including: insights from industry leaders on current technology trends and how they impact banking; customer presentations; product demonstrations and road-map sessions and opportunities to speak with Temenos experts. Whether you're a developer, consultant or business user, discover the latest technology opportunities and how this can help you deliver bigger, better, faster. Register to attend here. (https://tem.mn/3jYLZlm) This episode is sponsored by LetsDeel. There's a better way to hire internationally, and it starts with Deel. Everything from contract creation, record keeping, payments, and full-time employment is all in one place for teams all over the world. Companies anywhere can hire compliantly everywhere thanks to Deel. It's payroll and compliance built for today's worldwide workforce. To learn more, visit letsdeel/11fs (https://www.letsdeel.com/11fs), and redeem an exclusive offer of 3 months free when you hire a contractor and 20% for your first year when you hire an employee. This episode is sponsored by Blueshift Customers expect more from their digital experience and their personal finance is no exception. Blueshift empowers fintech and financial institutions to create secure customer profiles and intentional, relevant experiences for customers. Whether in app, on site, in branch, or anywhere else, Blueshift's SmartHub CDP helps brands like Lending Tree and ClearScore turn data into personalized experiences that increase retention, satisfaction, and revenue. Learn more about the Blueshift at blueshift.com/11fs. Fintech Insider by 11:FS is a podcast dedicated to all things fintech, banking, technology and financial services. Hosted by a rotation of 11:FS experts including David Brear, Simon Taylor, Jason Bates and Sarah Kocianski and joined by a range of brilliant guests, we cover the latest global news, bring you interviews from industry experts or take a deep dive into subject matters such as APIs, AI or digital banking. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and please leave a review Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fintechinsiders where you can ask the hosts questions, alternatively email podcasts@11fs.com! Special Guests: Jeremy Takle, Paul Williamson, and Rob Berrisford.

Katie Lopes and Nicola Piercy founded the sustainable knickers brand, Stripe and Stare, back in 2017. Today, the London-based company is distributed globally—here in the U.S. online and at retailers like Shopbop and Bloomingdales—and just released its most sustainable line yet: The B Edit, which is 100% biodegradable. But how did this duo come together to create a line beloved by bums around the world? Nicola spent her first life in marketing, where she built an online platform that sold houses. She also managed a chain of cooking schools. Katie, on the other hand, spent a number of years in production at Channel 7 in Sydney, Australia, before opening a fashion boutique in the UK. And for the rest of the story, you're going to have to tune in!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael E. Gerber is the author of the NY Times mega-bestseller, for two consecutive decades, "The E-Myth Revisited" and nine other worldwide best-selling E-Myth books concerning small business entrepreneurship, leadership, and management. Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. If you're to become someone you're not, or you're to possess something you don't feel, or you're unwilling to go one step further in your life without discovering who you are and why you're here, then The Dreaming Room Online is for you. 2. The entrepreneurial spirit, despite the desire to not experience pain, is incapable of not doing what's necessary to be done despite the pain that comes with it. It's driven from within from the notion that we're born from the image of God. 3. The four personalities an entrepreneur is comprised of—the dreamer, the thinker, the storyteller, the leader. Transform Your Life. Realize Your Dream - Michael E. Gerber Companies Sponsors: ZipRecruiter: When you post a job on ZipRecruiter, their matching technology finds qualified candidates and invites them to apply! Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com/fire. Stripe: Whether you're an online or in-person retailer, software platform, marketplace, or subscriptions business, Stripe makes processing payments simple and borderless. Visit Stripe.com to learn more!

Even if you don’t know the name Marc Andreessen, you’ve probably interacted with one of his companies. He’s the man behind some of the very first web browsers, Mosaic and Netscape, a Facebook board member and a venture capitalist with investments Twitter, Lyft, Roblox, Airbnb, Stripe and more. He’s also getting into crypto, and that makes us nervous. On today’s show, Kai talks about it with guest co-host Marielle Segarra. Plus: the Starbucks’ unions, new vaccine approvals and another round of our favorite game, Half Full/Half Empty. Here’s everything we talked about today: “FDA Clears Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine for Young Children” from The New York Times “Starbucks workers will vote on union at 3 Buffalo stores” from ABC News “Big Hires, Big Money and a D.C. Blitz: A Bold Plan to Dominate Crypto” from The New York Times “Pandemic Cigarette-Smoking Boom Appears to Be Over” from The Wall Street Journal And our Half Full/Half Empty topics: SPACs in the dictionary, Patagonia’s Facebook boycott, Hertz’s green pledge, the McRib NFT and Marielle’s new fridge. “Jumping the shark” Thanks to everyone who joined us live on YouTube for this episode! We’re live Fridays at 3:30 p.m. Pacific/6:30 p.m. Eastern for happy hour! Subscribe to our channel and sign up for notifications so you don't miss it.

Even if you don’t know the name Marc Andreessen, you’ve probably interacted with one of his companies. He’s the man behind some of the very first web browsers, Mosaic and Netscape, a Facebook board member and a venture capitalist with investments Twitter, Lyft, Roblox, Airbnb, Stripe and more. He’s also getting into crypto, and that makes us nervous. On today’s show, Kai talks about it with guest co-host Marielle Segarra. Plus: the Starbucks’ unions, new vaccine approvals and another round of our favorite game, Half Full/Half Empty. Here’s everything we talked about today: “FDA Clears Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine for Young Children” from The New York Times “Starbucks workers will vote on union at 3 Buffalo stores” from ABC News “Big Hires, Big Money and a D.C. Blitz: A Bold Plan to Dominate Crypto” from The New York Times “Pandemic Cigarette-Smoking Boom Appears to Be Over” from The Wall Street Journal And our Half Full/Half Empty topics: SPACs in the dictionary, Patagonia’s Facebook boycott, Hertz’s green pledge, the McRib NFT and Marielle’s new fridge. “Jumping the shark” Thanks to everyone who joined us live on YouTube for this episode! We’re live Fridays at 3:30 p.m. Pacific/6:30 p.m. Eastern for happy hour! Subscribe to our channel and sign up for notifications so you don't miss it.

It's book club week and this month we're talking about A Special Place for Women by Laura Hankin. Capturing start-up culture can be a hit or miss, and we really think Laura Hankin got it right in this book. A Special Place for Women follows a daring reporter who infiltrates an exclusive female-run members club, whose members are far more powerful than she imagined. We also talk about not knowing what's next, Becca's Sweater status, and Grace's accidental trespassing adventure. Pick up A Special Place for Women Here  Startup Books we Like:  The Herd by Andrea Bartz Startup by Doree Shafrir  One by One by Ruth Ware Ripped from the headlines book Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson Admission by Julie Buxbaum Our favorite witch books The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness The Practical Magic Series by Alice Hoffman Obsessions  Grace - Stoney Clover Ln X American Girl, You Season 3, Succession Becca - Succession, The Big Leap What we've read this week Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling We're Speaking by Hitha Palepu November Book: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton Sponsors: Care Of - Go to takecareof.com and enter code BOP50 for 50% off your first order Better Help - Go to betterhelp.com/badonpaper for 10% off your first month  Join our Facebook group for amazing book recs & more! Like and subscribe to RomComPods. Available wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit Grace's blog, The Stripe. New posts daily! Follow us on Instagram @badonpaperpodcast. Follow Grace on Instagram @graceatwood and Becca @beccamfreeman.