Decoder with Nilay Patel

Latest Episodes:

How Arm conquered the chip market without making a single chip, with CEO Rene Haas Sep 27, 2022

Show notes

One of the more interesting quirks of the modern tech world is that there’s a really important company at the center of it all that doesn’t make anything. But its work is in your phone, in your TV, your car and maybe even your laptop. I’m talking about ARM, a chip design company that’s been through quite a lot these past few years, and I'm talking to Arm CEO Rene Haas.

Arm designs the instruction sets for modern chips: Qualcomm’s chips are Arm chips. Apple’s chips are Arm chips. Samsung’s chips are Arm chips. It’s the heart of modern computing. Arm licenses the instruction set to those companies, who then go off and actually make chips with all sorts of customizations. Basically every smartphone runs an Arm processor, Apple’s Macs now run arm processors, and everything from cars to coffee machines are showing up with more and more arm processors in them.

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Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/23137412

Links:

The Vergecast: The HDMI Holiday Spec-tacular on Apple Podcasts

Biden signs $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act

Intel needs 7,000 workers to build its $20 billion chip plant in Ohio - The Verge

What comes after the smartphone, with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon - The Verge

Why the global chip shortage is making it so hard to buy a PS5

Nvidia’s huge Arm deal has just been scrapped

What is a SoC?

What is an ECU?

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

Can software simplify the supply chain? Ryan Petersen thinks so Sep 20, 2022

Show notes

Ryan Petersen, is the CEO of Flexport, ac ompany that builds software that integrates all the different shipping vendor systems you might run into as you try to get a product from a factory in China to a consumer in Idaho: rail, sea, truck. We’ve talked about the supply chain and inventory management on Decoder with a lot of our guests — the chip shortage seems to affect every company, and sorting out how to get products made and delivered on time is a pretty universal problem. But we haven’t really talked about how products get from one place to another around the world.

So I wanted to talk to Ryan, figure out what Flexport’s role in all this is, what his bigger supply chain solutions would be, and why he’s leaving his job as CEO to be executive chairman and handing the reins to Dave Clark, who used to work at Amazon.

Links:

Dave Clark to Join Flexport As Our New CEO

Flexport Wants to Be Uber of the Oceans

At Google, Eric Schmidt Wrote the Book on Adult Supervision

The real story behind a tech founder’s ‘tweetstorm that saves Christmas’

Ryan's twitter thread

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/23126062

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

Everyone knows what YouTube is. Few know how it really works. Sep 13, 2022

Show notes

Today, I’m talking to Mark Bergen, a reporter at Bloomberg and the author of a new book about YouTube called. Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination.

YouTube has always been fascinating to me because it’s such a black box: everyone feels like they know how the platform works, but very few people have a real understanding of the internal politics and tradeoffs that actually drive YouTube’s decision. Mark’s book is one of the best of its kind I’ve read: not only does he take you inside the company, but he connects the decisions made inside YouTube to the creators who use the platform and the effects it has on them.

This was a fun one – keep in mind that for as little as we might know about YouTube, we might know even less about TikTok, which is driving all sorts of platforms, even YouTube, into competing with it.

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23113078

Links:

YouTube Partner Program

Hank Green on Decoder

iJustine

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

Rewind: How big companies kill ideas — and how to fight back, with Tony Fadell Sep 06, 2022

Show notes

This episode was originally published on May 3rd, 2022.

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 the head of Facebook plans to compete with TikTok and win back Gen Z Aug 30, 2022

Show notes

We’ve got a special episode of Decoder today – an interview between Verge deputy editor Alex Heath and Meta’s Tom Alison, the head of Facebook. Alex is the co-host of the newest season of Vox Media’s podcast Land of the Giants. This season is about Facebook and Meta. The season finale comes out tomorrow.

Alex has been reporting for Land of the Giants for many months, and along the way he interviewed Tom. Facebook has a lot of challenges, but it seems like the biggest problem is TikTok: Facebook's problem is that it spent years – you spent years – building out a social graph that, it turns out, is less interesting than just being shown content that the company thinks you might like. Alison has been at Facebook for more than a decade and previously ran engineering for the News Feed, so he knows more than almost anyone about the history of feeds and where they are going.

Links:

Land of the Giants

Facebook is changing its algorithm to take on TikTok, leaked memo reveals

Facebook is revamping its home feed to feel more like TikTok

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/23092319

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

Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works Aug 23, 2022

Show notes

One thing that strikes me, in all these episodes of Decoder, is how little any of us really pay attention to the advertising industry, and how deeply connected it is to almost other every modern business. After all you can start a company and invent a great product, but you still need to market it: you need to tell people about it, and eventually convince them to buy it. And so you take out an add on a platform and, well, the platform companies we all depend on mostly run on ads. Google’s entire consumer business is ads. Meta’s entire business is ads. And when we talk to creators, they’re even more tied to ads: their distribution platforms like TikTok and YouTube are all ad-supported, and a huge portion of their revenue is ads.

This week I’m talking to Neal Arthur, the CEO of Weiden and Kennedy, one of the few independent major ad agencies in the world, and maybe the coolest one? It’s got a rep. Weiden is the agency that came up with Just Do It for Nike and Bud Light Legends for Bud Light. They’ve done campaigns for Coke, Miller, Microsoft, ESPN – you name it. Coming off our conversation last week with Katie Welch about building a brand from the ground up using influencer marketing and potentially never hiring an ad agency, I wanted to get a view from the other side: how does a big ad agency work? Where does their money come from? So many of the big agencies are merging into what are called holding companies – why is Wieden still independent?

Links:

Bud Light puts creative account up for review after years with Wieden+Kennedy

Mover Over Millennials -- Here Comes Gen Z

How Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty Goes Viral, With CMO Katie Welch

Mad Men (TV Series 2007-2015)

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/23081723

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 edited by Callie Wright. And researched by Liz Lian.

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 Aug 16, 2022

Show notes

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

The risky new way of building mobile broadband networks Aug 09, 2022

Show notes

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

Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok Aug 02, 2022

Show notes

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

Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman thinks clothing rental is inflation-proof Jul 26, 2022

Show notes

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

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