Katie Welch is the Chief Marketing Officer of Rare Beauty — the beauty products company founded by superstar musician and actress Selena Gomez. Rare Beauty sells its products online and in Sephora retail stores, and importantly, Katie does almost no traditional marketing: Rare Beauty is a true internet brand, that depends on social media strategy, influencer marketing, and community to drive sales. Specifically, the enormous community around Selena Gomez, who, again, is an international superstar with a fandom of her own.
This kind of marketing is essentially new. Famous people making their own products and companies and using their online reach to launch and grow those businesses is a combination of art and commerce that is 10 – 15 years old at most, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty is only five years old, but it’s redefined the industry and helped make her a billionaire. Some of the first big successes came from the Kardashian-Jenners including Kylie Cosmetics, founded in 2015, as well as Kim Kardashian’s Skims, founded in 2019.
I’ve been really curious about how these businesses work, how they reach their audiences and customers, how CMOs like Katie measure success, whether being the marketing executive for an super online celebrity-driven business feels different than being a traditional marketing person, and whether the ever-present risk of weird things happening online make her plan differently.

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/23071490

Links:
Why BeReal is breaking out
Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok
Apple’s app tracking transparency feature isn’t an instant privacy button
Apple’s app tracking policy reportedly cost social media platforms nearly $10 billion
Updating The Verge’s background policy
Marketing Funnels
Katie's TikTok
Instagram walks back TikTok-style changes — Adam Mosseri explains why
Makeup company Glossier to sell its products at Sephora as new CEO pushes to expand reach


Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters. And our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty goes viral, with CMO Katie Welch

In 2019, the Trump administration brokered a deal allowing TMobile to buy Sprint as long as it helped Dish Network stand up a new 5G network to keep the number of national wireless carriers at 4 and preserve competition in the mobile market. Now, in 2022, Dish’s network is slowly getting off the ground. And it’s built on a new kind of wireless technology called Open Radio Access Network, or O-RAN. Dish’s network is only the third O-RAN network in the entire world, and if O-RAN works, it will radically change how the entire wireless industry operates.
I have wanted to know more about O-RAN for a long time. So today, I’m talking to Tareq Amin, CEO of Rakuten Mobile. Rakuten Mobile is a new wireless carrier in Japan, it just launched in 2020 – it’s also the world’s first Open RAN network, and Tareq basically pushed this whole concept into existence. I really wanted to know if ORAN is going to work, and how Tareq managed to make it happen in such a traditional industry. So we got into it – like, really into it.

Links:
Rakuten
Rakuten Edge Cloud
"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"
Rakuten Group to Acquire Mobile Industry Innovator Altiostar
Gadgets 360
Massive MIMO

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/23061797

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters. And our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The risky new way of building mobile broadband networks

Today I’m talking to Hank Green. Hank doesn’t need much introduction. In fact, he invited himself on Decoder to talk about YouTube's partner program, which shares ad revenue between YouTube and the people making videos. The split is 55/45 in favor of creators. But other platforms don't have this. There is no revenue share on Instagram. There is no revenue share on Twitter. There’s no revenue on Twitter at all, really. And importantly there is no revenue share on TikTok: instead there’s something called a creator fund, which shares fixed pool of money, about a billion dollars, among all the creators on the platform. That means as more and more creators join TikTok, everyone gets paid. You might understand this concept as: basic division.
This episode is long, and it’s weedsy. Honestly, it’s pretty deep in our feelings about participating in the internet culture economy, and the relationship between huge platform companies and the communities that build on them. But it’s a good one, and it’s not really something any of us talk about enough.

Links:
Vlogbrothers
Decoder interview with YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan
Viacom Has Officially Acquired VidCon, A Global Online Video Convention Series
Patreon Acquires Subbable, Aligning the YouTube Stars
The Verge EMAILS t-shirt
Crash Course
SciShow
Eons
The medium is the message
The Kardashians hate the new Instagram
Hank Green: So… TikTok Sucks
Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast, “TikTok vs YouTube with Hank Green”
Decoder: The videos that don’t work on YouTube and the future of the creator business with Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus 
Awesome Socks Club
Awesome Coffee Club

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/23051537

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters. And our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok

Today we’re talking to Jennifer Hyman, co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway.

Rent the Runway is a a pretty simple idea: it’s a clothing rental and subscription business for women which launched in 2008. The basic idea is pretty simple: you can rent clothes one by one, and Subscribers pay a certain monthly amount for a certain number of pieces that they can swap out anywhere from 1 to 4 times a month depending on the tier of their membership. Rent the Runway also lets customers buy secondhand clothing either after they rent it or just outright. 

But Rent the Runway has had a pretty intense path from its founding in 2008 to going public in 2021: the onset of the pandemic in 2020 cratered the business as 60 percent of customers canceled or paused their subscriptions, and Jennifer was forced to make drastic cuts to survive. But she says that now things are swinging back, as more and more people are spending their dollars going out, traveling, and generally shifting their spending from things to experiences. There’s a post Covid wedding boom going on: Rent the Runway is right there for people.

Jenn and I talked about that swing in the business, but we spent most of this conversation talking about running a company that basically does really high-risk logistics: sourcing clothes, sending them to people, getting them back, cleaning them, and sending them out again. Spotify and Netflix run subscription businesses where the products never wear out or get dirty; Jenn has to deal with red win stains at scale. In fact, Rent the Runway runs one of the country’s biggest dry cleaning operations, which I find to be completely fascinating: what does dry cleaning innovation actually look like, and how does it hit the bottom line?

My favorite episodes of Decoder are the ones where simple ideas – renting clothes – turn out to be incredible complicated to execute. This is one of those.

Links:
Apple defends upcoming privacy changes as ‘standing up for our users’
Rent the Runway, a secondhand fashion site, makes its trading debut.


Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/23041884

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters. And our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman thinks clothing rental is inflation-proof

All right, let’s talk about the metaverse. 
You probably can’t stop hearing about it. It’s in startup pitches, in earnings reports, some companies are creating metaverse divisions, and Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook’s name to Meta to signal that he’s shifting the entire company to focus on the metaverse.
The problem, very simply, is that no one knows what the metaverse is, what it’s supposed to do, or why anyone should care about it.
Luckily, we have some help. Today, I’m talking to Matthew Ball, who is the author of the new book called The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything. Matthew was the global head of strategy at Amazon Studios. In 2018, he left Amazon to become an analyst and started writing about the metaverse on his blog. He’s been writing about this since way before the hype exploded, and his book aims to be the best resource for understanding the metaverse, which he sees as the next phase of the internet. It’s not just something that you access through a VR headset, though that’s part of it. It’s how you’ll interact with everything. That sort of change is where new companies have opportunities to unseat the old guard.
This episode gets very in the weeds, but it really helped me understand the decisions some companies have made around building digital worlds and the technical challenges and business challenges that are slowing it down — or might even stop it. And, of course, I asked whether any of this is a good idea in the first place because, well, I’m not so sure. But there’s a lot here, so listen, and then you tell me.
Links:
Matthew Ball on Twitter 
Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook is rebranding to Meta 
Microsoft, Meta, and others are founding a metaverse open standards group
Android emoji will actually look human this year
Apple’s app tracking policy reportedly cost social media platforms nearly $10 billion
Microsoft and Activision Blizzard: the latest news on the acquisition
Microsoft HoloLens boss Alex Kipman is out after misconduct allegations
European Parliament Think Tank memorandum—Metaverse: Opportunities, risks and policy implications

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/23033211

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is the metaverse going to suck? A conversation with Matthew Ball

This week, we're sharing the first episode of Land of the Giants: The Facebook/ Meta Disruption. Long before Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook Meta and made an unprecedented pivot into the metaverse, he invented a feature that turned Facebook into a social network behemoth. The News Feed, which put your friends’ status updates onto your homepage, changed the way we interact online. It was a strong statement of Zuckerberg’s values: that connecting, and sharing, at scale would be de-facto good for the world. It was also his first public controversy. Follow Land of the Giants to get new episodes every Wednesday.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Land of the Giants: Facebook gets a facelift

Happy Fourth of July to our listeners in the States. Decoder is only a year old, but we’ve decided a Decoder tradition is that every summer, we’re going to do an episode about the outdoor grill industry, which is gigantic and growing.
Last year, I talked to Roger Dahle, the CEO of Blackstone Products, a griddle company that blew up on TikTok and actually went public a few months after we talked.
This year, I’m talking to Jeremy Andrus, the CEO of Traeger, which makes beloved wood pellet smokers with all sorts of features — the high-end models even have cloud connectivity so you can control them from your phone. Traeger also recently went public; the company says it will book between $800–850 million in revenue this year.
The Traeger story is fascinating: the company was around for 27 years and not growing very much when Jeremy bought it with the help of a private equity firm and became the CEO. He had no background in cooking; he had previously been CEO of Skullcandy, the headphone brand. His early run as CEO of Traeger was a bit of a nightmare, culminating in an arson of a truck at one of Traeger’s warehouses. Jeremy responded by cleaning house, replacing most of the team, and moving the company from Oregon to Utah.
Since then, Traeger has grown its revenue by 10 times and hopes to close in on a billion dollars in revenue soon. But, it has all the challenges that come along with shipping big, heavy hardware products through the supply chain crisis, looming recession, and changing consumer behavior as one version of the pandemic seems to be ending and people are spending their money on travel instead of home goods. Jeremy was game to talk about all of that; we really got into it.

Links:
​​How Traeger's CEO Cleaned Up a Toxic Culture
Jeremy Andrus Found Success With Skullcandy. Now He Hopes To Do It Again With Traeger Grills.
Traeger buys wireless thermometer company Meater 
Jeremy Andrus Found Success With Skullcandy. Now He Hopes To Do It Again With Traeger Grills. 
Traeger's stock opens 22% above IPO price, to value the grill market at $2.6 billion

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22953717

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus

I’m old enough to remember what it was like to fly before 9/11 — there were no TSA lines, there was no PreCheck, and there certainly wasn’t any requirement to take off your shoes. In fact, there wasn’t any TSA at all.

But 9/11 radically changed the way we move through an airport. The formation of the new Department of Homeland Security and the new Transportation Security Administration led to much more rigorous and invasive security measures for travelers trying to catch their flight.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA, and I think it’s safe to say that nobody enjoys waiting in the airport security line. And in the post-9/11 world, things like PreCheck are the great innovation of the department.

At least according to Dan McCoy, who is the TSA’s chief innovation officer, who told me that PreCheck is “a hallmark government innovation program.”

But what do programs like PreCheck and the larger surveillance apparatus that theoretically keep us safe mean for the choices we make? What do we give up to get into the shorter security line, and how comfortable should we be about that?

This week, The Verge launches Homeland, our special series about the enormous influence of the Department of Homeland Security and how it has dramatically changed our country’s relationship with technology, surveillance, and immigration. So we have a special episode of Decoder with Dan McCoy to see where the TSA fits into that picture.

Links:
Read more stories from the Homeland series

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22945989

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TSA’s chief innovation officer on surveillance, security lines, and surrendering to PreCheck

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius became CEO in 2019 but has been working for Mercedes since 1993 in almost every part of the company. During that period, Mercedes spent time getting a lot bigger; the company famously merged with Chrysler for a time, forming a giant called DaimlerChrysler. But, over the past few years, it’s actually been getting much smaller and more focused. The Chrysler deal was undone and, just recently, Ola spun off the truck division into its own public company called Daimler Truck, leaving Mercedes-Benz to stand alone as a premium car brand.
Car companies are either consolidating into giant conglomerates like Stellantis or shrinking and focusing like Mercedes. A lot of that is driven by the huge shift to electric vehicles and then, on top of that, to cars essentially becoming rolling computers. You’ll hear Ola refer to cars as “digital products” a lot — and to Mercedes itself as a tech company. (Actually, he says it’s a luxury and tech company.)
Mercedes now has two new EVs, the EQS and the EQE, both of which have massive infotainment screens running Mercedes’ proprietary MBUX system, which even has its own voice assistant called Hey Mercedes. I had to ask Ola about Apple’s recent announcement that the next version of CarPlay would be able to take over every display in the car, including the instrument cluster. Apple showed a Mercedes logo on a slide during that presentation — so, is Ola ready to hand over his UI to Cupertino? 
Let’s find out. Ola Källenius, CEO of Mercedes-Benz. Here we go.

Links:
Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX concept car traveled over 1,000 km on a single charge
Mercedes-Benz unveils sporty, ultra-long-range vision EQXX electric concept car
The six-figure Mercedes-Benz EQS gets a 350-mile range rating
Daimler AG to rebrand as Mercedes-Benz on Feb. 1
Big automakers are breaking themselves apart to compete with Silicon Valley
Mercedes-Benz reveals an electric G-Wagen concept for the future


Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22936880

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius is refocusing for an electric future

The Verge is all about how technology make us feel. Our screens and our systems aren’t inert, or neutral – they create emotions, sometimes the strongest emotions anyone actually feels in their day to day lives. I’ve been thinking about that a lot ever since I read a new book called Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet by Kaitlyn Tiffany, who was a culture reporter at The Verge several years ago. The thesis of her book is that online fandom, specifically the hardcore fans of the British boy band One Direction, created much of the online culture we live in today on social platforms. And her bigger thesis is that fandom overall is a cultural and political force that can’t be ignored; it shapes elections, it drives cultural conversation, it can bring joy to people who feel lonely, and it can result in dramatic harassment campaigns when fans turn on someone.


Links:
Kaitlyn Tiffany Verge Archive
One Direction Playlist

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22930314

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How fandom built the internet as we know it, with Kaitlyn Tiffany

Today is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC. It’s one of the biggest events of the year for Apple, one of the most important companies in the world. In fact, Apple is the most valuable company in the world, and it posted $18 billion in net profits in its first quarter — the most quarterly profit of any public company in history.
So, as we go into another huge Apple event, I wanted to have Verge labor reporter Zoe Schiffer on to talk about something else that’s happening inside Apple: a brewing push by its retail employees to unionize, store by store, because they’re unhappy with their pay and working conditions. Zoe is really well-sourced; she has an inside look at this fight. So, she helps us explain how this all works and what it might mean.

Links:
Fired #AppleToo organizer files labor charge against the company
Apple’s frontline employees are struggling to survive
Apple hires anti-union lawyers in escalating union fight
This is what Apple retail employees in Atlanta are fighting for
First US Apple Store union election set for June 2nd in Atlanta
Apple accused of union busting in new labor board filing

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22917648

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What unions could mean for Apple with Zoe Schiffer

Michael is president of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine and founder of the Kuna Exchange, which lets people buy cryptocurrency and swap between them. Earlier this year, the Ukrainian government set up wallets on Kuna and other exchanges to accept donations to the war effort in crypto; in April, Bloomberg reported it had received over $60 million in crypto donations.
What’s more, earlier this year Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also signed a virtual assets bill into law, which will recognize cryptocurrency as an asset in Ukraine when the war is over. As president of the Blockchain Association, Michael lobbied for this law, which you’ll hear him talk about — especially in the context of how little faith he has in the banking system. He says several times that, even before the war, it couldn’t be trusted and that people were already using a combination of crypto and dollars for large transactions instead of Ukraine’s actual currency, which is called the hryvnia.

Links:
Ukraine Readies NFT Sales as Crypto Donations Top $60 Million
Ukraine's Zelenskyy Signs Virtual Assets Bill Into Law, Legalizing Crypto
Crypto Goes to War in Ukraine
Blockchain Association of Ukraine
Russian tycoon Tinkov sells stake in TCS Group to billionaire Potanin
The Bitcoin Boom
Cypriot financial crisis
The 2020 Global Crypto Adoption Index: Cryptocurrency is a Global Phenomenon


Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22902506

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott. It was researched by Liz Lian and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How Ukraine’s wide use of cryptocurrency is playing out during the war

One of our recurring jokes at The Verge is that every YouTuber eventually makes a video where they talk about how mad they are at YouTube. Whether it’s demonetization or copyright strikes or just the algorithm changing, YouTubers have to contend with a big platform that has a lot of power over their business, and they often don’t have the leverage to push back. 
On this episode of Decoder, I’m talking to Dave Wiskus, the CEO of two really interesting companies: one is called Standard, which is a management company for YouTubers, and the other is Nebula, an alternative paid streaming platform where creators can post videos, take a direct cut of the revenue, and generally fund work that might get lost on YouTube. 
What really stood out to me here is that Dave is in the business of making things: this conversation was really grounded in the reality of the creator business as it exists today and how that real business can support real people. You’ll hear it when we talk about Web3 and NFTs a little bit — Dave just thinks that stuff is bullshit, and he says so because it’s not a business that exists now. That’s an important dynamic to think about — and one for more platforms to take seriously.

Links:
Dave's subscriber tweet
Nebula

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22840704

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The videos that don’t work on YouTube and the future of the creator business, with Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus

Google I/O was this week and Nilay Patel and David Pierce had a chance to sit down with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to talk about the event and the products that were announced. This interview was recorded for The Vergecast, another podcast from The Verge. You can listen to The Vergecast wherever you get your podcasts – or just click here.

We hope you enjoyed the interview. Decoder will be back again on Tuesday with an all new episode. See you then.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vergecast: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Google I/O 2022

Today Nilay Patel talking to Daniel Dines, the founder and CEO of UiPath, one of the biggest automation companies in the world. But not the automation you might think; UiPath sells software automation, or what consultants call “robotic process automation” so they can sound fancy and charge higher fees. UiPath and other software automation companies have a different approach to solving issues with your legacy software: just hire another computer to use software for you. Seriously: UiPath uses computer vision to literally look at what’s on a screen, and then uses a virtual mouse and keyboard to click around and do things in apps like Excel and Salesforce. The automations can be mundane, like generating lists of people to contact from public records, or intensely complicated: UiPath can actually monitor how different software is used throughout a company and suggest automations. Huge companies like Uber, Facebook, Spotify, and Google all use UIPath.

Links:
The robots are coming for your office
UiPath AI Computer Vision

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22828061

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

UiPath CEO Daniel Dines thinks automation can fight the great resignation

Tony Fadell was instrumental in the development of the iPod and iPhone at Apple and then co-founded Nest Labs, which kicked off the consumer smart home market with its smart thermostat in 2011. Tony sold Nest to Google for $3.2 billion in 2014 and eventually left Google. He now runs an investment company called Future Shape. 

Links:
Inside the Nest: iPod creator Tony Fadell wants to reinvent the thermostat
General Magic - Trailer
Inside Facebook’s metaverse for work
Silicon Graphics
Google is reorganizing and Sundar Pichai will become new CEO
Fire drill: can Tony Fadell and Nest build a better smoke detector?
Google purchases Nest for $3.2 billion
Twitter accepts buyout, giving Elon Musk total control of the company
Nest is rejoining Google to better compete with Amazon and Apple
Apple Music Event 2005 - Motorola Rokr E1 / iTunes Phone
Activision Blizzard hit with another sexual harassment lawsuit
Nest buying video-monitoring startup Dropcam for $555 million
What matters about Matter, the new smart home standard
ZIGBEE ON MARS!

Directory:
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel
Pat Gelsinger, current CEO of Intel
Sundar Pichai, current CEO of Alphabet
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company
Jeff Williams, COO of Apple
Matt Rogers, Nest co-founder
Jeff Robbin, VP of consumer applications at Apple
Steve Hoteling, former CEO gesture recognition company Finger Works
Jon Rubinstein, senior VP of the iPod division at Apple
Steve Sakomen, hardware engineer and executive at Apple 
Avie Tavanian, chief software technology officer at Apple
Scott Forstall, senior VP of iOS software, Apple
Jony Ive, chief design officer, Apple

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22817673

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How big companies kill ideas — and how to fight back, with Tony Fadell

Cindy Cohn is the executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. If you’re an internet user of a certain age like me, you know the EFF as the premiere civil liberties group for the internet. The EFF has fought pitched battles against things like government surveillance, digital rights management for music and movies, and government speech regulations that would violate the First Amendment. These fights were important, and shaped the internet as we know it today.

Links
Electronic Frontier Foundation
How to fix the Internet: Podcast by the EFF
How the EU is fighting tech giants with Margrethe Vestager
Apple pushes back on iPhone order, says FBI is seeking ‘dangerous power'
Here’s why Apple’s new child safety features are so controversial
Viacom vs YouTube
Texas passes law that bans kicking people off social media based on ‘viewpoint’
Santa Clara Principles
Carterfone
Decoder interview with YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Facebook v. Power Ventures

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22805290

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation on government surveillance, Elon Musk, and free speech

Alan Yeung is a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the former head of the Foxconn project in Wisconsin. If you don’t quite remember, the Foxconn project in Wisconsin was announced in 2017 as a massive deal to build the first “Generation 10.5” LCD factory in North America. It was also one of the first big moments in the Trump presidency, complete with President Trump holding a golden shovel at a lavish groundbreaking ceremony where he said the factory would be “the eighth wonder of the world.”
But it turned out that while Foxconn was putting on a great show, no LCD factory was actually getting built, even though Foxconn kept saying it was happening.

Links
We're nominated for a Webby! Vote for Decoder!
The award winning story from Josh Dzieza - The 8th wonder of the world

Wisconsin's $4.1 billion Foxconn factory boondoggle
Foxconn’s $100M deal with the University of Wisconsin has students worried
What a new governor means for Wisconsin’s controversial Foxconn factory
Foxconn and the village: the $10B factory deal that turned one small Wisconsin town upside down
No one seems to know what Foxconn is doing in Wisconsin
After a ‘personal conversation’ with Trump, Foxconn says it will build a factory in Wisconsin after all
Foxconn is confusing the hell out of Wisconsin
Foxconn promised a ‘correction’ about empty buildings in Wisconsin two weeks ago, and it hasn’t said a word since
With Foxconn chief’s Trump meeting, the Wisconsin project gets even more political
One month ago, Foxconn said its innovation centers weren’t empty — they still are
Foxconn’s delays might finally give Wisconsin the upper hand
One year after Trump’s Foxconn groundbreaking, there is almost nothing to show for it
Even fixing Wisconsin’s Foxconn deal won’t fix it, says state-requested report
Foxconn’s first announced product for its Wisconsin factory is an airport coffee robot
Foxconn releases and immediately cancels plans for a giant dome in Wisconsin
Foxconn's giant glass dome in Wisconsin is back, baby
Exclusive: documents show Foxconn refuses to renegotiate Wisconsin deal
Foxconn’s buildings in Wisconsin are still empty, one year later
Exclusive: Wisconsin denies Foxconn tax subsidies after contract negotiations fail
The 8th wonder of the world
Exclusive: Wisconsin report confirms Foxconn's “LCD factory” isn't real
Foxconn tells Wisconsin it never promised to build an LCD factory
Intel selects Ohio for ‘largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet’

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22794506

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices

A former Foxconn executive tries to explain what went wrong in Wisconsin

Chris Dixon leads crypto investing at the storied Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z. He’s responsible for leading funding rounds for Coinbase, which went public about a year ago, the NFT marketplace OpenSea, and Yuga Labs, which is behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club among others. He is also a prolific user of Twitter, where he posts lengthy threads about crypto and web3. He is at once one of the biggest investors in the space, and its biggest booster.

Links
Decoder is nominated for a Webby. Vote!
1000 True Fans
My first impressions of web3
A comprehensive breakdown of the Epic v. Apple ruling
SEC v Howey Co.

Transcript
https://www.theverge.com/e/22784768

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chris Dixon thinks web3 is the future of the internet. Is it?

Julia Alexander was the perfect guest to come on our show and talk about the state of the streaming industry – we’re a couple years into the huge shift to streaming entertainment in Hollywood, and it’s clear the streamers are here to stay. Apple just won the Oscar for Best Picture for a film it bought out of Sundance called Coda. Amazon now owns MGM. Netflix is investing in games and hinting at advertising for the first time. One idea that comes up on Decoder again and again is that how we distribute media has a huge influence on the media itself – and we talked about what kinds of movies and shows are getting made now that the streamers are here to stay.

Links:
Downstream Podcast
‘Extremely awkward’: Bob Chapek and Bob Iger had a falling out, they rarely talk — and the rift looms over Disney’s future
Pixar staff speaks out against Disney moving its films to streaming only: ‘It’s hard to grasp’
HBO Max and Discovery Plus will merge into one app
Apple and Major League Baseball to offer “Friday Night Baseball”
Yankees will have 21 games only available on Amazon Prime
Prime Video unveils logo for 'Thursday Night Football'
CNN Plus launches with Reddit-like interactive Q&As

Transcript:
https://www.theverge.com/e/22774600

Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.  
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Decoder with Nilay Patel

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