I’ve got a full plate, yes I do. That iPod, that’s nice. A phone recorder? Nicely done. All right I’m a bit of a tech geek. I have a subscription to Popular Science and I keep up on all this stuff.
It’s often taken for granted that the most dominant tech companies control the world’s most important technology and communications platforms. Instead, the truth is that these giants run on top of the world’s most important platform: the mobile communications networks.
Why can’t modern tech companies both grow and turn a profit at the same time?
I’m ambivalent about tech.
I’ve always wanted to get involved in the tech industry, but hadn’t come across anything that really clicked for me.
What many single male 23-year-old entrepreneurs don’t realize is that family tech is a ‘big freaking business’. As in, trillions of dollars.
I remember bumming rides across town to Georgia Tech, trying to get myself registered, trying to apply for financial aid, trying to get their coaches to watch my film.
The tech titans and the tech guys who I most admire are the ones behind the scenes.
Seattle was hardly a tech magnet before Amazon, Microsoft, and then a host of once-fledgling technology firms set up operations there.
I remember loving food tech because of the precision and the creativity, the weights and measures, the tiny glimpses of flavour.
None of most powerful tech companies answer to what’s best for people, only to what’s best for them.
I guess for me, I keep saying the words ‘consumer electronics,’ ‘consumer tech’ – the biggest purchase decisions people make a lot of times are the phones they buy and the tech they buy. To be able to influence other people’s decisions on that front is pretty game changing.
When I went into a start-up in tech, I knew I could always go back to a law firm.
I prefer unplugged forms of music any day to tech sounds.
By describing the origins of the coronavirus as a conspiracy theory and placing it right beside Sandy Hook trutherism. The left, the mainstream media, big tech, they shut down honest questions and good journalism, and in the process they shut down the truth.
I’ve spent a career working in tech as a software engineer. And I believe regulated markets are the best way to build and deliver innovative products.
It suddenly occurred to me that the hottest tech startups are solving all the problems of being 20 years old, with cash on hand, because that’s who thinks them up.
IQ is a commodity, data is a commodity. I’m far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read ‘Tech Crunch,’ ‘Ad Age.’ I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.
If Trump publicly commits to embrace science, stops threatening censorship of the Internet, rejects fake news and denounces hate against our diverse employees, only then it would make sense for tech leaders to visit Trump Tower.
In the tech world, you can reel off great products in several ways. You can have the once-in-a-lifetime gut instincts of a Steve Jobs. You can have the brainiac coding skills of a Bill Gates, Larry Page, or Sergey Brin. Or, I learned, you can have the deep intellectual curiosity and stubbornness of a Jeff Bezos.
We’re creating this new breed of techies who are going to be the ones starting the tech companies of the future.
If you look at how much information you put out, even just on your phone, on Facebook, on Google, whatever, you essentially create a clone of yourself online. And that’s at the disposal of these large American tech companies.
Given my venture capital background, I know the tech sector well.
I’m consumed with tech – medical, computational, impossible tech. So, I don’t know exactly what I’ll wind up doing, where I’ll go with all this schooling, but I’m willing that it be better than my dogmatic vision of it all.
I think fashion is actually very good training for being in the tech world, because it’s all about moving on to the next thing, looking for the next thing, not getting stuck in the past.
The reality is that unless you understand the regulatory environment and payment structure, you can’t revolutionize it. I think most tech companies and startups have come to this realization: that you have to partner with people in the ecosystem.
I played with different words like ‘home run,’ ‘megahit,’ and they just all sounded kind of ‘blah.’ So I put in ‘unicorn’ because they are – these are very rare companies in the sense that there are thousands of startups in tech every year, and only a handful will wind up becoming a unicorn company. They’re really rare.
The game in beauty is changing so much, if your product isn’t high tech or can’t make a unique performance claim – plump your lips, reduce your lines, look glossy, and stay on for 24 hours – you can’t go to market today. I’m not just talking about a $20 lipstick, but a $5 lipstick!
Apple, of all the global tech companies, was the one that understood why artists make things.
It’s strange that we create tech and then we apply it to machines, when we could apply it to ourselves. Cars can now detect if something is behind them, but we don’t have this ability. Why are we applying such a simple sense to a car when we could apply it to ourselves?
We might enjoy essays, TED talks, and even Facebook posts bemoaning our dependency on tech, but judging by our enthusiastic adoption of these services, we’re all in.
It only makes sense that as our society becomes more and more integrated with technology, we’ll start to see more cyborgs, grinders, biohackers – whatever you want to call us – thriving at the intersection of tech and body modification.
Oscar Niemeyer really inspired me. He’s from South America, where nature has meaning. And his architecture was not expensive or high tech but artistic and spiritual. I like that.
It’s no secret that in our society, and many before, people are trend followers. For some reason, they feel better about themselves if they are dressed in the latest fashion or have the newest tech gadget.
The widespread assumption is that somehow, the brain produces the mind; somehow millions of neurons fire signals at one another create or produce consciousness… but we have no idea how or why this happens. I’m afraid that in many cases, people in the tech world fail to understand that.
A lot of young girls don’t realise how diverse the career opportunities are in games development. Many think that you need elite math skills and a vast knowledge of all things tech to work in games, and haven’t thought about avenues like design, producing, art, writing or composing.
The tech world is not a new phenomenon; it’s a new era.
My job is to be tech entrepreneur-in-residence at the White House.
The podcast ‘Note to Self’ is ‘the tech show about being human’. Human notions of privacy have changed.
Even when the nation’s leaders acknowledge tech issues, details are lacking.
High tech is for a short time. But art is forever. People still admire a Picasso or a Van Gogh. But they don’t admire the steam locomotive anymore.
Producing fuel cells and solar panels requires high tech facilities and produces high paying jobs. The industry is booming in Arizona. The state already has about 100 firms in the solar industry and has grown 20% since 2003.
Starting a company in San Francisco when we did usually meant it was destined to be a data-driven tech company. But that didn’t seem to fully encompass what we wanted with Airbnb. When we tried looking through a tech lens, it didn’t work. The humanity was missing.
There is a lot of risk in the tech sector.
Engineering talent is the most precious resource for any technology company – Palantir and Addepar are successful first and foremost because of their top tech cultures, and the same is true for our best portfolio companies at 8VC.
It’s important to be an ally. You don’t have to be a black woman to think we should have more black women in tech.
I went to Louisiana Tech, which is just down the road from where we lived. It was an easy college to get into.
What’s amazing is everyone knows who Spider-Man is. We were filming in a Chicano community and standing side by side were a Cal Tech lab technician and a six-year-old boy, and both of them were in awe of the character. In fact, you might say he’s an equal opportunity fantasy hero.
I’m a woman in technology, I think that we have to consider our border and use the technology we have to be sure that we secure it. If you build a six foot wall, somebody may jump eight feet. But, maybe there’s surveillance… there’s many high tech things that we can use to be sure we are protecting our borders.
I’m not as tech savvy as some YouTubers, but I’m a lot better than my grandparents. Whenever I have a technical question, or something isn’t working, I ask Google, and that usually throws up the answer.
I’ve never thought of myself as a female engineer or founder or a woman in tech. I just think of myself as someone who’s passionate.
Ultimately, I don’t think even a five-company platform oligopoly is good for consumer tech. By its very nature, it handicaps independent companies with new ideas. But it will end one day. I just don’t know when.
As a tech optimist, I believe productivity woes can be solved through cleverly imagined and implemented technology.
