Tapstream Mobile Podcast

The next Mario, the next Pokemon etc is going to come out of a company who matches performance marketing on mobile with a game that has an incredibly high LTV.

TMP Episode 17: Alex Lin, Cofounder and CEO @ LVL6 The next Mario, the next Pokemon etc is going to come out of a company who matches performance marketing on mobile with a game that has an incredibly high LTV.

TMP Episode 16: Norman Liang, Head of Growth @ Sungy Mobile By the time you hear this the app we talked about is no longer installed on my phone.

Episode 15: Eric Seufert, VP of UA @ Rovio Maybe there is a toaster repairman on your team, and maybe you only have a team of toaster repairmen instead of people making toast, because that’s what the algorithm does.

Episode 14: Rishi Mandal, Cofounder CEO @ Sosh Believe it or not one in three adults in san francisco is a Sosh member.

Episode 13: Blake Commagere, CEO @ MediaSpike Everybody I know that’s ever had a heart attack dramatically changes their behaviour- but what if you had a head’s up a few weeks before?

Episode 12: Richard Price, President @ PulsePoint Foundation One out of three notified actually respond. So you choose when you’re able to respond and when you’re not.

Episode 11: Mina Radhakrishnan, Advisor @ Cowboy Ventures When we were building product at Uber some of our most challenging and interesting and exciting products were actually not the ones people got to see.

Episode 10: Boris Wertz, Founding Partner @ Version One Ventures The valley is the valley and will always be the valley... in this cycle.

Episode 9: Hiten Shah, Cofounder @ Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics There are people that care deeply about making sure things like Skynet don’t happen.

Episode 8: Bo Ren, PM @ Instagram When you get a like on a selfie it’s basically saying the internet validates your entire existence.

Episode 7: Zaw Thet, Partner @ Signia Costco doesn’t make more money by selling more products- they make 2 billion dollars by selling memberships.

Episode 6: Igor Faletski, CEO @ Mobify The only reason kids have email addresses is to sign up for Snapchat.

Episode 5: Maud Pasteraud, Growth @ Secret  This c2c vertical is really booming because it makes so much sense to do with mobile.

Episode 4: Greg Isenberg, CEO @ 5By The NASDAQ in 10 years is going to be like an app store. In the sense that it’s just a bunch of mobile apps.

Episode 3: Bubba Murarka, Partner @ DFJ Connectivity wants to be free, connectivity will be free, the gyrations we have to go through to get there are non trivial…

Episode 2: Ankit Jain, CEO @ Quettra …200 million people or 20 percent of a billion people tinkered with their phone… 

By the time you hear this the app we talked about is no longer installed on my phone.

Mack and Norm discuss international growth, the frustration of slimy marketing hacks and touch on China. "At least 40 of the top 50 grossing apps in Chinese app stores are published by Tencent." And Taylor Swift.

Believe it or not one in three adults in San Francisco is a Sosh member

Mack and Rishi discuss growing two sided marketplaces, the key metric of retention, only scaling things worth while and secret bars in San Francisco.

Everybody I know that's ever had a heart attack dramatically changes their behaviour- but what if you had a head's up a few weeks before?

When we were building product at Uber some of our most challenging and interesting and exciting products were actually not the ones people got to see.

When you get a like on a selfie it's basically saying the internet validates your entire existence.

Transcript

Mack:  Welcome this afternoon’s mobile podcast.  Let’s go.

Bo:   Hello

Mack:  Hello Bo, how are you?

Bo:   I am doing well, how are you Mack?

Mack:  I am better now that I am talking to you.  I am quite delighted to hear from you as usual.

Bo:   Sure.  So, I’m not –

Mack:  Oh! Sure.

Bo:   -- before. So, let me know how is work?

Mack:   It’s really straight forward.  I think there is a lot more shiny parts out in the world that cost a lot more money and time to make to what we do.  I call really smart people.  We spent 20 minutes on the phone.  I think of those things.  And then when we’re done, I send you a link and I say approved this to make sure that you are comfortable with me publishing it and then I do. And that’s the whole show and then we chop off all the nasty bits that you don’t want so that you can talk freely because you know that you’ll give get final approval on the actual recording. And then we put it on to the internet and we tweet about it and we tell everybody we are super smart and, we drive, we drive brand awareness.

Bo:   Also, it’s more like voice awareness.

Mack:   So, so you’re the first person -- here is what I learned about my podcast is that, sometimes they’re really amazing and sometimes they’re kind lame and when they’re lame is because I haven’t done enough research, but with you we’ve got an array of fascinating things to discuss.

Bo:   Yeah.

Mack:   So let’s start with those big fancy words that you combined and said you were really into social translucence.

Bo:  Yeah, sure.

Mack:   First tell me about those -- actually before we do that, I always start this stuff.  This is Pasterns [phonetic][00:01:52] mobile podcast, we talked about mobile, we talked about mobile, we talk about the future, sometimes we talk about the future of mobile and sometimes other things get into the conversation as well.  On the phone today, we’ve got my friend Bo.  Bo tell us a little bit about you?

Bo:   Hi guys.  So my name is Bo.  It’s full for BO.  Lot of people think it’s short for something.  I am a Product Manager on [Indiscernible][00:02:25] actually now Instagram, since I recently switched team.  Mack and I met via Twitter like most ones do.  I want to write a lot about Product Management, gender, life philosophy, just whatever I feel like.  I’m super excited to just be having an awesome conversation with Mack, no pressure.  And also I’ve been told that I have an accident recently, like I was on a date and this guy told me -- he actually emailed me your goals a lot and trail off a little bit anyhow.  So, yeah I just want to let you know I have like a Pacific Northwest accent.

Mack:  So, when I was 15, for the first time somebody said to me, where are you from?  And I was like, oh, well, like I’m from, you know, Canada same as you.  And then –

Bo:  Yeah.

Mack:  -- English and then from the ages of 15-25, I was continuously having an accent by lots and lots people I met.  Not everybody, some people would be like, I don’t know what you are talking about and some people would be like you sound so Russian or so Texan or so South African, it’s unbelievable like, are you sure you know how to speak in English, your accent is so sick.  It is the weird thing, but it just happened to me later in life.  Maybe you are about to go through a similar adventure

Bo:  Yeah, I’m totally down to this like own it and just be like, yeah, I am also from organ, this is not like brand awareness, where we do trail off for a vows a bit, because we are in a rush.

Mack:   No, and we get distracted by the pretty trees you know.

Bo:   Yeah, awesome, cool.

Mack:   Oh, social translucence first start here, tell me about this.

Bo:   Yeah, this guy, million dollar word, it’s not a GIU [phonetic][00:04:19] word, I can assure you that.  So I think, thinking a lot lately about online identities and how we translate online personas offline and whether or not you can stay authentic like online and offline.  And so one of researcher tried and started finding these articles about social translucence, which really is like, gosh, I mean, it sound really like academic year now, but also like --

Mack:   This is good, this is good.

Bo:   it’s down.   It’s layman term.  So, I [indiscernible][00:04:57] and not get bored.  So like, social translucence is really like a way of kind of applying, since your technical construct on how like social media and like social network functions.  And so it’s basically trying to breakdown you know all these like network throw on Facebook, Tweeter, LinkedIn into a couple of fundamental building blocks and like design principles.  

And so we try to understand like how do people socialize within like a very constrained you know like well designed framework that obviously like tries to elicit a certain interaction.  So you are basically breaking down these social networks in terms of like the content, the expected interaction and the relations so for example like the action of friending someone, you establish a relation and that’s like a node in the social graph.  And then there is this stunning component which is like what kind of systemic actions, what kind of like change the status of the user in the system or the state of the system.  So that’s sounding was too abstract, it’s just like a way of kind of applying for different components, just a way of applying a structure to all the social network we’re on.

Mack:   So,

Bo:  So, yeah that was like my

Mack:  Oh, I think, my phone disconnected for a second, can you still hear me?

Bo:  Yeah, I can hear you.

Mack:   Excellent.  I would argue that one of the things that makes Twitter – I’m going out on [Indiscernible][00:06:59] I don’t know that I’m – I don’t know about it.   I think one of the things that make Twitter and maybe Instagram more interesting than Facebook and especially Twitter that’s what aligned about.  As far as that social translucence goes, I think is the fact that Twitter has been truly involved by its users, some of the core mechanics of Twitter are things that were driven from within the community and not because somebody had a little town hall meetings like we want this, but because people just started retreating and giving attribution in that by using the RP [phonetic][00:07:35] of retweet.

And then people like Hover, who use the favorite as a reader speech, which is [Indiscernible][00:07:42] and drive some people up the wall, that you must favored a lot of thing, favorite in terms of what, right, like I said, we saw him anything was crazy. My [Indiscernible][00:07:50] things you favored it, but these are behaviors that like I don’t think that Twitter meant for the favor to be a reader speech, but it has worked really well in that way for a lack of better like “hey, I see you baby” kind of notion like you want to wink if somebody is saying, thanks for that great kiss of wink or you mentioned on Twitter or whatever.

So, that organic part to me is more interesting.  But I can’t think of those examples inside Facebook.  I can’t think of like Facebook seems to be better at dictating exactly what its users shall do with this products.

Bo:   Yeah.  So, I think what you are highlighting is like there is term there degree of possibility and organic content.  Like the users can generate even within like a model like social translucence and every medium and every platform varies a little bit and I totally find that it’s like really surprising and you do have in like unexpected behavior to be fascinating and that to me, you know, is similar to, it’s technologist going build product, like when I find someone use the product in different way that is coming through, like I didn’t intend them to.  It’s incredibly delightful and I’m like wow that this is almost [Indiscernible][00:09:20] discoveries.  

As usually it kind of scares me about social translucence is the fact that there are certain actions that we all are trying and to be really important one.  You know, so the fact that like [indiscernible][00:09:37] you retweet a lot more than other people like that’s perpetuating of rewards with some and like some reinforcement.  And we’re all like actors within like the social reinforcement cycle.  And what happened is like, if you are constantly you know being rewarded for all these different things, you can often end up generating content and like change your behavior just so you can get a little more built in [Indiscernible][00:10:14] for every little way you’ve got, you know, and that’s when you got like selfies as output and here is that horrible scenario.

Mack:  Okay.  Brilliant transition.  So when I was in Poland, I went right by there and chose not go in.  I was like I -- I intellectually and I think emotionally understand the implications of what happens here and I am going to pay my respects, but I actually don’t need to see this up close.  That was how I dealt with [Indiscernible][00:10:54].  And so, dear podcast listeners, a like that Bo sent me earlier today was about a challenging phenomenon among Israeli teams and maybe not just Israeli, but this was about Israeli teams and there selfies [Indiscernible][00:11:08], and you know little girls giving their duck tucker teenage lips in front of concentration camps, so guy like giving their kind of adult poses at this giant terrible place.  Is there anything reasonable to say about that besides it’s just totally fucked up?

Bo:   I think there is more to add to that.  I’m not condoling selfies as output, but I also think that we can easily become actors within their social [indiscernible][00:11:46] like becoming reinforced for a certain behavior.  And once you get those like, you know, everyone will go through the head and want to just have more likes.  And selfie if you think about it are the internet way of rewarding their existence.  There is something so like to avoid a contact during selfie, it says nothing about the place they’re in, the history, the climate, none of that, it’s just your face.

So when you get a like on a selfie, this would be same like the internet validate your entire interested just you.  But I don’t understand why like teens are now like incredibly re-enforcing.  And often times I think right now, if we don’t think about why we’re doing things or what we’re posting, is it really truly authentic?  You end up trying to just generate content that elicit more like, more favorites, more [Indiscernible][00:12:58].

So essentially like you’re keen to think about it, they’re caught in to become a reward for like what they are sharing is not aligned with the real world contacts they are in, but they’re so like set and so you are getting more likes, getting more favorites from selfies, that does not thinking, you know, is this appropriate.  So the selfie now is starting to become like the new you know a form of crossing that, hey, I was here and everyone smile and take photo. The selfy is kind of becoming like a new form of bad expression

Mack:   So, do you think the selfies are like here to stay so to speak, I mean, you know, obviously people always take pictures of themselves if there is something interesting.  But I remember when selfies first became a thing that people talked about, when that term became a term that was relatively well known –

Bo:  Yeah.

Mack:  And you know, it was definitely like, oh fuck, now we’re definitely screwed. The teenagers like, we’ve got way of rock bottom, all they’re doing is taking pictures of themselves and its over, humanity is dead and then we became more comfortable with it.  I’m a 34 year old guy, like I made -- I take pictures myself in front of things, I don’t actually post them on the internet very often, but – but we moved into the selfies becoming normal now right, like there is a Golden Globes or Academy Awards selfies with Ellen and all those people.  And I was kind of like the selfies jumping the sharp moment or something.  But do you think say in four years – let’s put it this way.  In four years, do you think there is going to be as many pictures of people’s face – of your own face on the internet or do you think this trend is going to wither a little bit?

Bo:   I think like all things, you’re going to see – it’s kind of like a defining these way, like, there are going to be like high as well peaking or reaching from local, national, because you take that.  And then, I’ll go down at that and then I’ll go out of that, but I really do think like selfies just space off of what my [Indiscernible][00:15:07] because I don’t know, I thought they were cool.  Like I post like [indiscernible][00:15:16] of my family this Christmas and it was really like pasturing that moment, really, well when we meet together with my parents.  So I do think selfies are becoming, they are trend setting their side things of that.  I think, it’s becoming like another expression of like happiness or I was here like, it’s just one in a while of mile in photos.  And with finding spacing in cameras and all these parts were creating more delightful and more [indiscernible][00:15:52] where we can actually use a selfy.  So I think it is weird to say, for better or worse.

Mack:  So to me the evolution of the selfies public acceptance be something like the evolution of what would we say a bikinis public acceptance. Like I’ve seen pictures of the first woman who would ever wearing bikinis is getting arrested by police.  And I’ve seen pictures of other police measuring length of women’s bathing suits and all this like high percent post that we can imagine in the past.  But step forward from now, like, that’s a little bit more dramatic.  

But moving forward from now, like, you know the first thing you do is, you see this cute little friends teenage girls wearing their short bathing suits and you’re like oh my goodness, that’s crazy.  And then you started seeing some American teenage girls wearing them, you are like, oh, that’s kind of crazy.  And when you see adults American young women wearing these and then you have there is like 40 year old mom who is sitting at home and you are like fucking, you know what I’m going to do, I’m going to put on a bikini and go to the beach.  

And this take a couple of years, but this normalization of something that was at first an over exposure of ourselves and the selfies are like that right, like, we judged people initially for having such ego and to suggest that other people would want consume photo by themselves.  But you like, that is the small bathing you think, like your ego, let you think that you should be allowed to or you look good wearing that in public?  And now we are all running around in bikinis.  I mean, I’m damn you are wearing bikinis at beaches at this point, you know?

Bo:  Yeah.  Will real guess and I guess wearing them leg crossed for a while, I know, we’re recording this podcast. [indiscernible][00:17:40]

Mack:  Let’s leave that there.

Bo:   Okay.  So I think what you are highlighting is why -- basically the selfy or bikini or whatever, it becomes a social phenomenon where it’s like, not just, it starts out as a [indiscernible][00:18:01] and just like fashion, you know, the people who are early adopters of a certain trend, they are the ones who are – you know, they are not cool in the beginning, like, the hashed up use, those before it came back in the 90s and they were like [Indiscernible][00:18:19] before the 90s, so then all these like, Brooklyn, musicians and [indiscernible][00:18:26] started wearing them and that was not as cool it was until [indiscernible][00:18:30] reach a critical math and like people just start adopting it because they think it’s cool or it’s like oh wait and like they get to their end and not wearing hash top use.

So they kind of highlighting and like there is kind of typical using where like you need a couple of people to be models and then like make -- ridiculous characters of themselves and in order for selfies or bikinis or whatever to be known even in like mainstream culture.  And we started changing our opinions with that.  You know, like I would judge people who would carry selfie stick, like, really guys who are like -- I found that incredibly more [indiscernible][00:19:15] but then I realized like hey they’re actually been bring people together, you know, and in any holiday party, whoever has the selfie stick that’s like, you know, you just have like cat net, to like bring strangers together and that creates a very special interaction.  It’s like, you know, I never thought I would be taking photo and so and so.  And then, you know, from there you actually end up talking to that person. So yeah, I think you are highlighting is just like the adoption rate and trend is often started by people who have to make them so [Indiscernible][00:19:55] and to just start the trend or revolution we’re talking about, just talking revolution.

Mack:  Okay! This is a beautiful transition to the last point that we were going to get to and this is the selfie stick.  So let me first start by saying that I recognize that those of us who think about the future are usually going to be wrong when we talk about the future. Right.  Like it just might be thought we’re usually wrong.  But and I know that really amazing big things start out looking like toy and start out not seeming as consequential as they are.  And big things can seem stupid to start with, but they change. Nonetheless, I honestly think that I think the selfie stick the stupidest fucking thing I have ever come across.  And I haven’t used one.  So I’m not allowed to really like kind of that’s wrong in opinion, but I don’t get it.  So you talk about this party movement where what you all now can extend the camera two feet farther away that we are able to before and we’re bonding over new friends.  And is this going to happen next Christmas, I feel like this is going out faster than the pogo stick, you know, or the pogo bowl either.  This is a high speed fast.  And stupidity that I think we’re going to look back on like ripped jeans and plaid tied around our waist in the 90s, I feel like this is that of 2015

Bo:  Yeah

Mack:  Do you agree or disagree?

Bo:  I disagree actually, I think the selfie stick is an extention of obviously the selfie phenomenon.  People are feeling more comfortable expressing, you know, hey, I’m here, I’m happy, I’m having great time and you’re kind of memorialize that moment with the people you are [Indiscernible][00:21:47].  And that to me is pretty profound like, how many times to me just like say or show that like within that moment in times, like these are all the people [indiscernible][00:22:00], this is like, you know, you are kind of creating that shared moment, which I think of you like a few selfie taken out of your arm, you would have been able to reach. And not a lot of people have a very long one.

I think that if you look at evolution of the selfie stick, you know, now we’re going into selfies which are quite selfies, and I think [indiscernible][00:22:27] in a reality show.  I think it is where I’m ridicules, but there are like truly utilitarian reasons for using it.  If you are in a larger group truck and you want to be able to like capture everyone you know, you really need a selfie stick.  And so, it’s becoming quite a reasonable today.

One of my color [indiscernible][00:22:51] the selfie stick connected to your phone, so there is like the wiring connected to like your phones, like outlet.  And if you can just like kind of throw it, confirm with that sounds like, the actual poll itself, yeah.  And it really works phenomenally. So it changed my mental view of selfie stick, because we were able to capture that truck from angles that were not possible.  And I really think it does create like shared comradery at that moment.

And if you think about it like when you have this thing someone know that to take a photo or if someone crossed out, all those small things really do add up to like your experience at that moment. And I think the selfie stick was able to kind of broaden that shared experience even in like a very awkward like type of way.  I think we should go out and actually buy a selfie stick and try it out with your family and then we’ll talk. It’s more like things, it’s like – I was so opposed to like certain types of food and then once I tried for the first time I was like, oh, uh, never thought of it that way.  So maybe you haven’t tried like discovered your powers with selfie stick, yet.

Mack:   I’m going to be in your city in two weeks and my assumption is that I’m going to see these things everywhere because we live in San Francisco and so I will start flirting with the selfie stick in two weeks when I’m in your wonderful city.

Bo:  In two weeks we can do in our world selfie stick product, if you are down with that.

Mack:   Okay.  We will.  You could be my first selfie stick selfie partner.

Bo:  Yeah.

Mack:  Or we have to find one?

Bo:  We’ll be a selfie stick virgin.

Mack:  Okay.  Thank you for your time Bo.  That was super fun.  And I’m going to share a link with you and clean this up and then we’ll put it on the internet and hold out on purpose.

Bo:  Awesome!.

Mack:  And I will see you.

Bo:  And I’m so glad –

Mack:  I will see you next week and we can do more of these, like what I’m trying to do is find people who are good at talking which obviously includes you and I. And then, if our episode is worthwhile, we’ll do another one in two months and be like, what else is new  Bo, you know, you’ll be my regular guest.

Bo:  Yeah, I like the kind of like this informal aspect of like, I don’t feel we’re having any different end of the conversation that actually weren’t been recorded, does that makes sense?

Mack:  Exactly

Bo:  That sort of really awesome part, it was like, it would be kind of nervous, it was like, oh shit, like, I got to deal with like side on and things like that social translucence.  And then, it’s kind of just like, rolled from one topic to another and you don’t have to worry as much and it’s more about like what’s your opinion at this point in time. That was like really cool.  And it’s like and it’s like, yeah, I think this way.  And I don’t need to like factored up a 100% like research in fact.

Mack:  No, no, no, we are going and learning and exploring together.  And I think this format is interesting, I think this could go a long way, like, if I cleaned up the quality of audio and that kind of thing on this, I could probably get them liked on this.  Do I have access to great people, I think you have most people to say really interesting thing and it speak to lot of stuff, if everybody involved.

Bo:  Yeah.  I think it was like really good we were able to kind of pin point like certain topics to talk about that way like you are not hot, completely off guard and have to like improvise on the spot.  And let me like having like two or three topics and just like, you know, just like come, come for a level and opinion about it, we’ll go really long way and then you know like you were able to kind of like, post, talk about selfies or binkies and shit and like develop our thought more together, so that was really cool.

Mack:  Okay, we’re the best.  I imagine I’ll see you next week some time.

Bo:  Yeah, yeah, I maybe up, I’ll be around.

Mack:  We’re doing product debater January 29th, I’ll send you free tickets.

Bo:  Yeah, I saw that.  Yeah, I’ll be there.

Mack:  Good.  Okay, bye, Bo!

Costco doesn't make more money by selling more products- they make 2 billion dollars by selling memberships.

Transcript

Zaw: This is Zaw 

Zaw: The third time is a charm I can hear you great now.

mack: Lovely, I like that lets me know if it’s fucked up we will figure it out.

Zaw: [laughs] no problem. How are things?

mack: Things are going really well, Tapstream is having its best month ever and its only like 16th so that is cool and we are doing another product debaters event with [inaudible 0:00:38.3] at the end of the month and that’s just blowing up so that will be super fun. You know the kids  are  good, I have to continue to wipe little children’s ass hole like you do [laughter] but its weird to like be so  un-repulsed by poop right [crosstalk]  poops and  you are like [inaudible 0:00:58.6] cute. When did shit become cute?

Zaw: Yeah, its weird to get excited well maybe not but weird to get super excited for pooped and you just looked and you are like oh you pooped yes.

mack: I am more like this the, I mean in some cases perhaps the entire [inaudible 0:01:16.7] the household gets into and you are encouraging your child to poop because [laughter] I hope nobody is recording this because this is getting weird.

Zaw: That’s real world, so much of that… [crosstalk]

mack: Okay so this is Tapstream mobile podcast we are talking about mobile as the future and sometimes the future of mobile. That’s my awesome tag line and my running, so the first thing we are going to do actually the first thing we are going to do is, my name is Zaw this is what I do now, this is what I did to get to the point that I do this now, tell us the Zaw story.

Zaw: Sure, well the long short story is this is Zaw am a partner and one of the founding members of Signia which is a boutique venture capital firm. About 75 million in our first fund that invest in starts companies focused on mobility and data. So that is the long short story. My time before this has been spent as a cereal entrepreneur started in search back in the late 90s social networking in the early oats and then mobile and adtech more recently in kind of mid 2000 and so as a  founder CEO chairman I have been involved with a bunch of different companies that have been lucky enough to live through a couple of different waves of innovations and I think we are at a super interesting time where mobile is today and [inaudible 0:02:48.3] smart phones but still a tone of rooms for potential and growth and new services so that’s the long short story.

mack: Okay so my running theory is that I have been developing as I do this podcast this is what I have observed is that if I am talking to a VC and we are talking about the future then I should be able to shine a spotlight on at least part of their theory for the future by looking at their investments because clearly their investments are going to shape the future.

Zaw: Well that’s a theory I don’t know if it works all the way that way for sure [laughter]

mack: Yeah, I have tried this like twice before and both times the investors kind of like [inaudible 0:03:34.4] I don’t what that means but lets talk about companies that you are in with for example I was just reading about [Boxed] today.[crosstalk]

Zaw: I am happy to talk about portfolio…[Boxed], yeah [Boxed] just raised 25 million well it was just announced happened right before Christmas break [crosstalk] they are putting Costco on your phone that is kind of their early first step the bigger vision there is really they have unlocked something around mobile discovery, they really have figured out how to replicate the shopping experience of going into a Costco or Safeway or Walgreens or wherever you might go to browse for items and made it fun for people to actually sit and look at items compare check out learn more about what they are buying.

So it’s kind of mobile sampling, mobile discoveries is what I really call it. So the thesis for investing in Boxed and we invested back in the spring of last year was really two points. One; we felt that mobile commerce still had a long way to go and was an untapped area for innovation. It is obviously had to compete against Amazon but because Boxed started out with wholesale, so big package stuff that there is a still a conflict manufacturers won’t let Amazon sell at that big bulk and that discount or double price they had a natural kind of mode where Amazon can directly compete with what we are doing, Amazon tries all sorts of sneaky other ways to compete but not directly and so that was one. 

Two was on the data side for us this is a team that came from gaming; they have sold their studio to data Zynga for a year or so and we are going to get out and start our own thing and these guys really understand how to look at their data, how to look at user acquisition, how to look at retention, how to look at engagement, how to do cohort  analysis and really improve the products. And this was kind of the third leg of the stool just the team is phenomenon and amazing and all that [inaudible 0:05:52.1] you can think of really a great group of match for us to work with. So that’s one example for us where we still think there is a lot of room for innovation in mobile.

mack: So a couple of things let’s get down the Boxed part for a minute. One, I read the blog post a totally insane said that 80% of people in an e-commerce small screen mobile app aren’t using search.

Zaw: Yeah, that was interesting right?

mack: Totally wild because either they are not suing the app at all, they are not suing search because they are fucking closing and deleting it or as you are proposing your friends have unlocked something very intriguing.

Zaw: Yeah, I mean I think that poses an issue for Google right? And that is a larger issue around phones in general which is now we sort of have, you know apps have become book marks in a way, obviously there is more functionality in it when they are native and there is stuff that can be built in using a camera or the GPS or whatever sensors are attached to the phone that maybe can be built in from just a web app on the phone. 

But in essence  really  with apps are the kind of bookmarks, I open up my screen I don’t have to go type in Facebook into the bar, I have got Facebook I have got instagram I have got mail box I have got just looking at my home screen I have got twitter I have got evernote I have got dropcam I have got Boxed I have got gameglory I have got a whole bunch of other portfolio companies and just stuff that I use every single day and so I don’t have to search for that anymore. 

So similarly when you are looking for products it’s hard to know, my theory at least is when you know a product that you want to buy and you just need it ASAP you go to Amazon right. I say okay I need a case for my camera, I don’t even go to Google anymore I open the Amazon app I type it in and boom I am off and running I can get it you know prime two days no problem. 

But Boxed is a little bit of a different experience because it’s part, I don’t always know I may go in there knowing I want twelve rolls of [bounty] hand towels but then I am interested in what else is on sale or what other items they have added right they do a good job of refreshing all the different products. There is reasons why the search box isn’t being used and maybe overtime search will become more interesting as people start to associate Boxed more with staff that they need everyday. At least for one thing that Amazon has a lock on the search box now like for products.

mack: So that’s kind of interesting to me because I have been thinking about music on mobile lately and I am yet to find, the reason I met you is our mutual friend Derrick [inaudible 0:08:38.3] and he is so into music discovery has helped me a lot with music discovery with things like music gigs I was like what the hell. But its amazing to me that in 2015 when we can do all the crazy things we can do, drones blah blah blah, I still have three apps on my phone to listen to music. 

I think I have dialed it in now, I think I know what those three  apps are and I don’t need anymore. But its kind of fucked up to me that I still need three apps just to basically be able to have the music listening experience I want and the reason I bring this up is because I wonder if there is some parallels  between shopping and music in 2015 where we need two or three apps to so it quite right and that’s still not like the future but its the interesting point that we are at today.

Zaw: Well I think that  the music side I would say its still broken and there is a lot of room there the issue is you have got rights holders and three different rights for every song and  a model that hasn’t necessarily as we saw from Taylor swift swiftying her way out of spotify, you know she is not getting the pay outs that she maybe wants maybe she doesn’t deserve them that’s another case for another day but there is still an issue there with…but at least with the ecommerce you are buying a set price for a product that maybe cheaper obviously than maybe what you can get by going into a Costco or somewhere else but it’s a largely understood business model.

Although interestingly enough and this is a little bit of a side [inaudible 0:10:11.1] if you look at Costco’s  numbers they actually lose a little bit of money on every product that they sell you and it’s roughly Costco does 100 billion dollars a year in product sells of which they spend about 100 billion dollars to buy those products. Costco makes all of its profit margin on the two billion dollars or so a year of membership fees that they have.

mack: What?

Zaw: Yes it’s crazy.

mack: That’s crazy.

Zaw: It’s absolutely crazy. So that’s interesting right so they have to grow by number of members   you know more people buying more products in their stores doesn’t actually necessarily help them very much and so I don’t know if that model would translate well over to Malibu but Amazon I guess is one instances where the prices as so low and the margins are so thin they are trying to continually offer [inaudible 0:10:58.8] services to increase profit margins but that’s a tangy so I don’t mean to distract [crosstalk]

mack: So as a Canadian, who has lived in America, I live in Vancouver but I have lived in Oakland [crosstalk] exactly. [ crosstalk] to be honest I love them both but they are not [crosstalk] so while living in the hills of Oakland my wife is at home with our two kids, she doesn’t have a car so she uses Amazon in buying things for the first time. And what Americans don’t understand and Canadians understand is that like Amazoning means two different things, this whole 79 dollars that Amazon prime even without prime those guys are fucking [inaudible 0:11:45.3] the fact that you like need baking soda for dinner and you might be able to get it for dinner if you place that order in the morning that entire model of commerce like obviously.

We have ecommerce in Canada I just ordered my child a mattress off the internet but this way of e-commercing like it feels to me like with Google fresh and Amazon prime and all these things are going to have on Instacarts we are not that far from a drone, we don’t technically have the drone in the sky but its getting pretty close to that. So how does Instacarts fit into the world view where Amazon and Boxed are operating and  doing well?

Zaw: Look I am a huge fun of Instacarts  I am a huge card of Montreal, we use those services religiously we use  seamless  especially with the five month old, for the first two or three months I don’t think I saw the inside of a pharmacy plenty of times when we try to figure out what shit we need for the kid but I don’t think I ever saw the inside of a grocery store but that wouldn’t have been possible even a year ago. But now there is Instacarts there is postmate there is taskrabbit for all sorts of other random stuff.

 I think all those on demand we need it now kind of spur of the moment decisions are made possible by that. but I think that’s also, there is also a premium that you have to pay for that and so those are for the large part what I  would call wine sipping business where there is the folks that can afford to pay an extra three dollars for baking soda that’s super organic or [inaudible 0:13:23.3] or whatever it is from like whole food right but the vast majority of people are more interested in what I would call the beer chugging  business, the one’s where they are still price conscious  right, they still want to buy in bulk they don’t necessarily need it that same day gratification.

Yeah it’s useful and maybe ten years from now everything will be on demand that way but its also from an inventory shipping and logistics standpoint very hard to pull off its scale so I think there will always be room for more traditional commerce whether that’s Amazon, whether that’s Boxed but even Boxed they are experimenting with stuff like Boxed fresh where you can get not just big package stuff but you can get and I think its just in New York right now but you can get same day delivery of like wholesale fresh goods If you need lettuce, if you need other stuff like that. So there is a lot of room for growth with all the insurance companies Instacart is obviously raised a tone of money and they continue to do really well so time will tell.

mack: Besides Boxed what else have you guys got into or what have you led personally in the last year  what are you excited about in this group.

Zaw: So for us we think about mobility and data across a bunch of different industries and so Boxed is obviously an example in the commerce space, we are also unique I think amongst a lot of venture investors in that we look at it very heavily at games to my partner [crosstalk]

mack: I have been told multiple people who come to me saying I need a VC who will do games and I am not that swaged in but you guys are always the first ones I think off. You know I don’t like doing so many intros because I guess most of them aren’t worth the intro but in my mind you guys like you are the grow people you are the super evil megacorp, you are in on that right [crosstalk]

Zaw: Yap absolutely.

mack; and that cluster is huge that’s crazy right? That’s like as far as doing games go you guys called that one early then they got that super sell guy in there [crosstalk] that guy seems to have the touch of gold right, I mean that’s a good part…[crosstalk]

Zaw: Christian is an old friend so we have obviously been with  this super evil team from the very beginning and helped to kind of put that together with our first investor our only investor and then he has since brought on some great partners in initial in Initial and [inaudible 0:15:57.9] Crosscut but that’s one of our babies. 

And I think that was the great example for us of looking at where is games going in mobile and trying to understand like what’s the next  generation going to be, what are they going to look like, we don’t want another like  nothing but respect  obviously for the super sale guys and what they have done with [inaudible 0:16:23.7]  but we thought that there would be a next generation people that were more hard core PC gamers that might want to have something more accessible in bite sized on mobile as well as kind of ,more casual gamers maybe not the candy crash crowd or the angry birds crowd but the people [crosstalk]I wanted to move up or graduate  a little bit.

mack: Exactly, I shouldn’t have derailed  a long time ago [inaudible 0:17:01.8] and they were both just like, they were good guys. When I was meeting a bunch of people who were treating me like a fucking small town Canadian dick and they were big San Francisco people, both those guys were like super cool and so I am a big fan of what they are doing there. 

But beside Boxed and these guys what else do you guys play at. Because I would argue I don’t see any crossover in the theory or the thesis that you have with those two data point. I just want you to just shooting, I wouldn’t say randomly because you are picking winners it looks like really well but you are there is no on this partner I don’t know what the third piece in that ABC is.

Zaw: Okay, that’s fair. So again just to go back right to we belief that the [inaudible 0:17:49.1] of smart phones and the ability of customers to do or for companies to do user acquisition much easier on a phone, for companies that are largely mobile first or mobile only right is a key component that have some sort of compared advantage in the way they look at analytics and so Boxed is obviously mobile first it was primarily mobile only has a huge analytics advantage right in what they do so that’s one piece. 

Supper evil megacorp with their van glory name  is obviously mobile only and again this guys are very data analytics oriented right they have to be right as they think about what [crosstalk] and  so those chops translate over into what you have seen today in their beautiful mobile so that’s another example is another one of our portfolios companies called Kurbo K-U-R-B-O and Kurbo is focused on  childhood obesity and weight loss so again probably from a 30,000 reviews like how is this related. 

Kurbo came out of a bunch of research at Stanford where its obesity clinic at Stanford for kids which is  a huge problem obviously in the US and elsewhere in other parts of the world and what they found was that, it’s a pen and paper system I am going to misquote the numbers exactly but it was something like a12 week course that kids would come once a week, they would sit down with a councilor, they would kind of have some peer to peer group interactions and then they would be filling out ways to actually there was a system that Stanford had developed this red yellow green light system to help them track their food during the week and it was all pen and paper and  a very kind of antiquated  system and it cost a lot. 

Its something,  I don’t remember the exact numbers but it was certainly something that the average family in America probably couldn’t afford and wasn’t covered by insurance, and so and sitting down with the team fro Kurbo who a lot of them came out of the Stanford group, they were of the mind of look, phones are everywhere. Even if kids don’t have a phone they have an ipod or an ipad  or they have some sort of touch screen device why do kids have to track this stuff and do it on pen and paper, why do they have to pay this obscene amount of money to go in for counseling when that can be done via Skype or video or Facetime  whatever it might be.

And so they took that research and they created this company created this app that allows people to actually do the same thing that Stanford does with the same success rate that Stanford have seen 85% of success rate and do it at a much cheaper price point. The prices are changing but its 100 buck a kid as opposed to multiple thousands of dollars for Stanford. And so for us the same kind of thesis.

 Mobile only focused on anyone that has a smart phone, easy aces to be able to penetrate that market, data advantage in that they had the original algorithms and works in terms of how to actually work with kids, how to advice them how to measure them how to track how to do it in a way that was safe and responsible . So all of those things kind of apply the same underlying two areas that we look for in mobility and data. did that help?

mack: Absolutely. We are coming up on the 20 minute mark oh we are 21 so lets wrap up with you making some ridiculous bold statement  about what is the scene or the future or what you think they are going to see change or what you are excited about.

Zaw: My bold prediction for 2015, I believe that we will see vertical social networks start to emerge on our phones. So by that I mean we now have there was a great post that a freshman or college student put on medium a week or so ago about a teens view of social media and he outlined how people are using facebook which is not really if you are kind of sub twenties how people are using instagram way more how people are using snapchat…

mack: Did you see the response to him though?

Zaw: No I haven’t [crosstalk]

mack: There is a woman who wrote a post I don’t know her name but she kind of like the old foggy response to a teenagers post on social media or something like that and she, she is a social media researcher has been since day one apparently and spend lots of time with like black kids in Americas big cities. Her response to him was like it’s really interesting that you use social media in that way, I have a whole bunch of evidence that suggested that people in this country with very different lifestyles and backgrounds like you that use social media very differently. And he was interested because you guys were like twitter are being confusing not using whereas I have seen a lot of kids do  a lot of kids like…you should read the response it was really interesting [crosstalk]

Zaw: I absolutely want to check that out. But so what all these people are debating though are basically these horizontal social networks that have different sorts of functionality. So you have got a femoral  messaging with snapchat you have got photos on instagram you have got microbuses communication on twitter, you have got kind of broad based profile who you are on Facebook, you have got LinkedIn as your professional profile and then you might have a variety of different subgroups that you chat with right. 

Your college friends you high school buddies maybe that’s on Imessage [inaudible 0:23:32.3] or obviously whatsapp which is huge but nobody in the US uses Whatsapp and so you have got Viber  there are so many different variants of messaging and I think what’s going to happen is you are going to start to see vertical approaches to this and so maybe this is different part of your world, maybe it’s [inaudible 0:23:57.8] funs of sports teams. 

So maybe it’s like [inaudible 0:24:01.2] people that you are friends with there is a community for that maybe it’s the people that you work out with.  You know I am just making stuff up [crosstalk] exactly maybe it’s the people that you play games with, maybe it’s the…there are all these vertical communities that have kind of had to create hoch poch  groups on Facebook or Groupme or other things but I think something will emerge in 2015 which will be one of the, you know next door is  a good example of this although I don’t really know anyone that uses next door but obviously they re doing quite well from everything here which is focused on like your neighborhood and your community.

 So I feel like you have way more interactions just because it’s easier in a digital community so nextdoor has obviously created this real physical proximity location community which is great why hasn’t someone built that for digital communities. And so that’s one of the things that I am personally looking forward this year over the course of the next year to find companies that are doing that would help build them because I do believe that that’s going to emerge in the next year or two.

mack: We are going to wrap this up because we have to but you and I are going to do a round two where we are going to go deep on these vertical communities,  it was very interesting I think there is lots of opportunity there, I think there is some obvious challenges and I look forward to biting in with you in the next couple of months we will do this again.

Zaw: Absolutely man. Looking forward to it thanks for having me on.

mack: Thanks a lot thanks so much have a good one.

Zaw: You too ciao.

mack: Bye-bye.

 The only reason kids have email addresses is to sign up for Snapchat.

Igor, CEO at Mobify chats with Mack about the rising tide of Mobile commerce and the challenges that still exist before the kettle truly bubbles over.

Transcript

Mack: Igor I am Mack how are you sir.

Igor: Hey Mack how is the going? Good to hear from you.

Mack: It’s good to hear from you, it’s been a long time since we have chatted to be honest.

Igor: [laughter] Way too long.

Mack: Let’s start with the podcast [inaudible 0:00:33.9] welcome to [inaudible 0:00:35.0] mobile podcast but let’s start with the past. Let’s start by saying my name is Igor and I run mobile Mobify and this is what we do and this is why we are us.

Igor: Sounds good. Welcome to Podcast everybody, my name is Igor Faletski I am the CEO of and co-founder of Mobify and Mobify is a mobile shopping platform. We have amazing mobile shopping experience with mobile websites applications and engaging personifications Craig’s list Bosch and many others. And we also power more for Hello Kitty in Japan believe it or not.

Igor: I love Hello Kitty. I am one of those weirdoes’.

Mack: [laughs] I am a fun too.

Igor: You said mobile web and app?

Mack: That is correct yes. The web I changing and certainly becoming also a launch pad for amazing mobile applications. [inaudible 0:01:34.3] today that headline from Forbes saying that mobile shopping apps are the fastest growing category in mobile. We definitely see the same thing with our customers and we provide more and more apps for them as well.

Mack: So this is episode six or seven of this podcast by the way and I know very little about mobile commerce but what’s interesting is our last discussion was with a woman named [inaudible 0:02:00.3] who used to run I think commerce and growth at gill group and stuff and she is super interesting and smart and informed on mobile commerce but very specifically I think of in the apple. That was the major f our conversation. It was about kind of new technologies, new platforms, there is this one that lets everybody takes pictures of what they are wearing and sell their cloths used to each other. 

The  app doesn’t even touch the inventory and they make a tone of money just facilitating these transactions like[inaudible 0:02:30.5] commerce is also cool stuff. You I feel like you know lots about commerce more broadly because you guys are dealing with people who are bringing their desk top commerce to mobile and mobile and the app stuff. Do you have any idea what percentage or loosely some numbers on like what volumes of transactions is being done on mobile as far as M-commerce and that kind of thing goes?

Mack: Right, actually it’s a very interesting time shopping right now. If you look at amount of visits that come to E-commerce websites, I am pretty sure that this year over half of visits or many [inaudible 0:03:10.2] will be mobile. And that is smart phone and tablet combined, however if you look at transactions, definitely its not as large of a share because people still are not comfortable buying things from their mobile devices as they are from their e-commerce  that they are used to. 

And that is a good opportunity and a big shift that we think is going to happen in the next three or five years, is a shift from desk top e-commerce to mobile shopping. I think for most of those today if you look at where there revenues actually comes from, its from primarily their desktop website and in our campaigns that gets people to come back to the websites and that just doesn’t make any sense because you think about email it’s a very old way to reach out to the customer, its become less and less effective. People open it less and young people just don’t really have email accounts anymore right? [Crosstalk]

Igor: That’s the only reason we have one.

Mack: Exactly so I think brands will recognize that and they will have to message their users differently. They will need a new kind of technology to compete in this primarily mobile world as so modify we are building a amazing [inaudible 0:04:21.9]

Igor: I personally understand not buying things on mobile quite yet. Like I have but its not as easy, I am not as comfortable doing it and like I am internet guy right? You know its [inaudible 0:04:40.9] Lots of money and I buy a lot of things to do different things but I like everybody else prefer to do it on the desktop. And I saw some of this just around things like credit cards. The dread of having to go deal with payment processing again on mobile placing that shit in and the screens are observing weird.

Now I mean personally just like and this is just an IOS issue that annoys me but when you open a field to type in text, no not to type in text but just to write something, something like a menu and you get scrollable menu wheel, you hit x once you have made your selection. That drives me nuts because X t o me means close not I am that it’s like cancel not I am done. And this is apple you know a brilliant [inaudible 0:05:27.3] designers but all of this kind of is that mobile experience that I feel like we haven’t nailed yet and I guess that’s exactly what we are talking about you guys are doing.

Mack: Yeah, if you think of like mobile shopping that works, definitely buying apps is really easy and really friction free. If you [inaudible 0:05:44.8] and I think about [inaudible 0:05:47.8] buys one thousand dollars worth of apps every weeks and so he never buys apps on sale or [inaudible 0:05:54.9] he buys expensive apps and downloads them up. And its kind of funny that’s really the future people will just get all the apps they can people could try them, the ones that suck they stopped using and the ones that are good they continue using and shop through. 

So I think for mobile shopping in particular this three big issues that are still not solved completely [inaudible 0:06:12.1] tame it. And I think apple pay makes it a lot easier to submit your payment information s just touch your touch id on your Iphone and there you go. No more filling credit cards form that’s number one. The second big challenge of mobile shopping is discovering. Just think about the big desktop screen, you can see all the stuff right? You can go through all the catalogues of your favorite brand and look at what you like. 

On mobile you have less time and less space, yes things [inaudible 0:06:38.0] how do you make it more personal  I think it’s a[inaudible 0:06:40.8] and the last challenge I think is how do you link online or shopping so mobile shopping from device with those happening in the retail location  in those [inaudible 0:06:51.0] store. Because it’s big trying to right now of convergence between E-commerce shopping and [inaudible 0:06:58.1] so e-commerce guys are [inaudible 0:07:00.7] help in retail store. 

And i think mobile is that glue that will bring it all together and through websites, through apps through wearable’s like apple watch will really help with the scene less mobile shopping journey for the customer Makes mobile shopping a lot more interesting  along more fun than desk top. I think three years from now[inaudible 0:07:24.5] going back to our desk top computers to buy something because its going to be harder to do that than just reach for our watch or our phone and touch it and  there you go you got what you wanted.

Igor: Yeah, when you put it that way, it seems kind of its seems like going back to the mother shop for something less reasonable than simply shopping with what’s in your pocket.

Mack: You know its coming everywhere you know if you look at China and Korea, people are shopping on their mobile phones everyday. Even the state if you look at InstaCards that two billion dollar company in just a couple of years. People want to buy everything on their mobile devices from food to groceries to cars one day maybe who knows buy their tests on mobile phones [crosstalk]

Igor: Interesting you bring them up because they just announced that inside the Yummly recipe app which is a [inaudible 0:08:19.9] when you need ingredients for your Yummly recipe you like press a button inside the app and that shows up on  InstaCards. Very easy, very cohesive experience. [crosstalk]

Mack: I have got to try that.

Igor: My phone was cutting in and out I don’t know if the recording was in the middle of some of the best apps you were saying. I just want to go back and review for a second; you said there is three major challenges for a mobile commerce now. And the first one was payments and I have a question about that we are going to get back to it in a second but the first one is payments and [inaudible 0:08:57.4] apple and micropayments already their apps work well and then you said apple pay is  an interesting app in the right direction. The next issue that you see is screen size and time size and sort of the amount of attention that people have and so would have to make that shopping experience more personal and do an even good job of finding the [inaudible 0:09:18.8] for people.

Mack: That’s right.

Igor: The third one was the binding of the online and the offline world. My thought on that is you know the [inaudible 0:09:30.0] of the term cyber space. We use cyber space because what happens online is a separate thing, you plugged in, and you had to go to a computer turn on the internet jump in that mother fucker. Whereas now and that is what we are talking about, we have these linking of the online or offline world into the and so that our new reality is both of those.

Mack: Yeah [inaudible 0:09:55.7] but if you fast forward five years, if you are a young shopper coming in and you don’t get that you are going to be pissed off. [inaudible 0:10:02.7] you don’t know what I was browsing on your app 20 minutes ago you can help me [inaudible 0:10:06.7]. other expectations  continue to go up and in the end we are talking about a better mobile shopping experience that is just so much more accustom and people love [inaudible 0:10:16.8].

Igor: So let me ask you this, I mean for I guy who has got a podcast about the future I actually kind of let a lot of information get digested by the super keener like techno person and when they think its something smart they went   blog post then I read that I am like[inaudible 0:10:33.9] so I don’t know that much about apple pay [inaudible 0:10:40.4] and so using apple pay in retain like I understand some of how that worked but what was interesting and I hadn’t thought much about was you talking about using apple pay just in mobile commerce. Is the idea here that I can use apple pay to buy something at [inaudible 0:10:54.9]?

Mack: Exactly yeah, so the way its currently done is to use it inside the app, you have to have an  app first of all so you can not use apple pay in [inaudible 0:11:06.4] browser on your iphone but if you do have an app then you can use the credit card that the customer stores on their device to avoid entering that [inaudible 0:11:15.0] information all together. That is probably the single biggest conversation killer got everybody suffering from in mobile right now. 

There is other things too, its not just apple pay like with the newest IOS browser you can actually take a picture of your credit card and then its going to fill the field for you but its still comprise in the ultimate web doing it [inaudible 0:11:35.8] touch id, where you can just let the phone know that yes you are its owner and its going to submit everything for you.

Igor: Yeah, at some point you are doing to say buy that and its going to recognize your voice and it will be done [crosstalk]

Mack: For sure yeah and subscriptions too I think more and more than just [inaudible 0:11:59.7] offering subscriptions you can just say I want this thing shipped to me every month or twice a month and that’s again its even easier because there is no more transaction, it just shows up and for all these cool new models amazing mobile experience that are apps [inaudible 0:12:14.7] key. 

So as the user you can expect top get an amazing mobile shopping experience on the website of the retailer on your IOS app your android app on your wire ball. It has to be consistent, it has to treat you as a human being and track what you are doing across different devices and that is going to be a really big technology challenge that we are trying to solve with  [inaudible 0:12:36.1] trying to make it easier for retail commerce branch have amazing mobile shopping experiences for their customers.

Igor: So if I am one of this branch that has been doing, and maybe I am like a big brand that everybody know or maybe I  am just [inaudible 0:12:53.9] big e-commerce brand,  the great example is [firemax] here in Vancouver. I think they are like a pretty significant mover of furniture online but nobody in Vancouver ever says like oh year [firemax] like they are not top of mind but I think they are kind of a big thing.[crosstalk] so do, you know that doesn’t even work that well for my example [inaudible 0:13:21.2]

Mack: Let me ask you a question Mack, would you buy say a  chair from your mobile phone if you really wanted a new chair?

Igor: Right now I would not.

Mack: And what is the barrier for you, is it still the payment or just not knowing which exact type you want?

Igor: You know what it is its just like if you want me to spend 500 dollars at your casino, you want me to spend hundred dollars first then get me to spend ten dollars first. I haven’t bought anything that I care about from my phone. So this is interesting because I just bought a mattress for the first time online and it arrived last night literally and this whole process was interesting to me. My buddy says [inaudible 0:14:07.5] for the kids, we need to get mattresses for it so we bought a mattress online. 

And at first I was like why the fuck are we buying a mattress son the internet, that’s weird we haven’t even touched it. This is a bad decision and then I was like you know what, what am I going to do, I am going to lye on the mattress at the mattress store obviously it feels perfect and then get home and try and like squeeze that thing into my little [inaudible 0:14:31.4] I borrow my brother in-laws truck and get a zip card and then no man I ma going to press the button and Amazon is going to get that shit to my door. And they did that was awesome [crosstalk]

Mack: The mattress is your get way drag to mobile shopping.

Igor: Yeah, that was desk top but I am not that far on mobile and so I think I would and will buy a chair on mobile but I just haven’t given I mean beside the fact that I have given apple thousands of dollars in app payments and [inaudible 0:15:10.0] I really have, I have given them tones of money but despite that I haven’t bought enough to make it really smooth yet so the only reason I wouldn’t buy a chair yet is because I feel like  a chair is an expensive item and somehow its totally irrational  but there is some barrier like that to me. I need to go and spend 60 dollars on something [crosstalk] for sure.

Mack: It a actually funny you mentioned it because the issue that you were talking about here,  its not so much in mobile shopping [inaudible 0:15:41.0] but the risk of it not being exactly what you want and I think part of the solution for that problem is just a policy of returns  you know. What is the policy for retail is to pick up anything you don’t want and give you a full refund, that was something that was really well done and was [inaudible 0:15:57.2] thing. Maybe you wouldn’t think twice you just get it and then try it and [inaudible 0:16:01.8] [crosstalk] the revolution but there is more a component to this from the retail stand point.

Igor: Yes some of this is not mobile commerce specifically some of this is just e-commerce [crosstalk] totally. [Inaudible 0:16:25.4] they do instant returns right. If you don’t like whatever you wanted you just give it back to them?

Mack: Yeah, I think they do that I know for sure their subscription model, one of  friends here  [inaudible 0:16:40.9] she gets a big box of [inaudible 0:16:41.8] every month so you will envy him getting that amazing package of really cool stuff and he runs it because its so convenient. If it’s how you would go to a store and try to pick the same thing out. So I think the [inaudible 0:16:54.8] will definitely make sure they have an amazing mobile shopping experience [inaudible 0:17:00.3] to deliver the right product at the right price at the right time [inaudible 0:17:03.7] policy and only advantage [inaudible 0:17:06.2] likes of Amazon for the future of commerce.

Igor: And so when you talk bout the third challenge you mentioned was sort of the expected integration thing was integration of the off line and online shopping experience on the mobile and the [inaudible 0:17:24.2] shopping experience. When I met you I was [inaudible 0:17:29.0] we were trying to get location but [inaudible 0:17:30.7] clearly wouldn’t do that well because [v] but location was the big thing but allow room also [inaudible 0:17:40.0][crosstalk] I am glad that problem has passed to be honest. But in that time, you know we spent a lot of time talking about the location senses that we are going to be in front of the stores and hen you walk by you would get the relevant push because your favorite cappuccino vanilla late soy we have already started that’s on sale for 20% off if you want to pop in. has that happened yet, are we there. is any company effectively deploying that, are people redeeming [inaudible 0:18:13.4] that are  perimeter fence and all that shit?

Mack: I think we are getting there. you know what the missing piece was in the way we used to do this, you couldn’t really opt out of things ahead of time because you didn’t get spam on your mobile device you don’t get anything because you have turned your Bluetooth off or whatever. So today if you look at the app model, you install apps and you can control modifications you can erase the apps you don’t like. 

So for example [inaudible 0:18:39.6] in the future that shows you apps that associate with stores nearby, starbucks apps and offices close to starbucks so start bucks icon is always on my home screen and if I keep it there and I don’t mind it because I   trust the app and it gives me value. So I think when the new wearable comes out like the apple watch, because they work through the phone and they are linked to your app selection, they can give you those kinds of coupon promotions if only for things that you already like and the brands you trust that have a good messaging. 

And I think that’s a pretty cool piece that will produce spam and allow brand you trust t get you the messages that you want to get and also control exactly how you receive them i think that’s kind of [inaudible 0:19:23.7] is coming and I think is a key part of that and we are very excited to go out that part as well.

Igor: Okay, we are almost at 20 minutes so lest talk briefly about starbucks. As far as I know starbucks is the most interesting [inaudible 0:19:42.5] brand when it comes to topping at mobile and payments and the internet, are they always seem to be a couple of steps ahead of the curve doing interesting things. Would you agree with that [inaudible 0:19:58.0]?

Mack: Yes I definitely do that actually one of our early customers [crosstalk] they had a vision for mobile web an apps where [inaudible 0:20:12.0] it makes sense because almost everybody is a customer out there and when they get it right, they get it right for  hundreds of millions of people and that its a great customer experience. So the payment [inaudible 0:20:25.8] has been very successful for them, they sell a tone of coffee through that app and I think we will see a lot of cool things from them in the next couple of years

Igor: Okay [inaudible 0:20:38.1] thank you so much for your time, very much appreciated and maybe we will drink a bear [crosstalk]

Mack: 1005 thank you so much Mack and thank you all for listening.

Maud who heads growth at Secret chats with Mack about mobile commerce.

"This c2c vertical is really booming because it makes so much sense to do with mobile."

  Transcript

Maud: Hello.

Mack: how are you?

Maud: I am good, how are you?

Mack: I am very good, welcome to top streams mobile podcast, up surd number probably 5, the last one of 2014.

Maud: Yeeey!

Mack: Did you get to go home for holidays at all?

Maud: No, I actually didn’t that is the first time in 7 years that I had Christmas here , yeah that was weird, that was extreme Christmas in San Francisco.

Mack: My first question here it has nothing to do with mobile, it has to do with Christmas and France, like America and France Christmas the same or they are very different?

Maud: I think it is probably a little bit more of here thing with France and there is also with more Champagne. 

Mack: Seems good.

Maud: So I made a little bit of champagne this year I think.

Mack: Okay, so this is the last I have heard of 2014 which means I should pack with 2015. Before we do that why don’t you say like, when is the mode, and this is where I come from and this is what I do, you know that part?

Maud: Okay, so my name is Moore Castro and I am, I lead growth for the anonymous art secret, which you know about, in prior to secret I was at [Glid] for three years, working on a customer position in internal growth on the mobile and international side for Glid; prior to that I was also in the first sales working for a European company in the US. 

Mack: So you know a little bit about mobile growth and you know a little bit about mobile commerce?

Maud: Yes, as a summary I have been working on both of those things.

Mack: So I happen to be head of marketing for a company that has mobile growth and amplifying these acquisitions so there was audience and it was interesting. Personally if it is more interesting is mobile commerce that I actually know nothing at all about it. I know something a little more than my mum, like level 101 type of stuff. I think we should talk a little bit about mobile commerce and you can like take me to school so to speak.

Maud: Yes sure.

Mack: Mobile commerce is simply the idea that like there used to be commerce and then there was ecommerce and then there was mobile internet and then there is mobile commerce that is kind of the whole thing, right?

Maud: Yes absolutely.

Mack: What are the big hairy problems that are the holy grails of Mobile commerce, what have people been waiting to happen in mobile commerce since the beginning of mobile commerce. What is the big problem to that space?

Maud: There has been definite errors of mobile commerce, I think up until this year it was very much an open field where there is opportunities for new comers and new entrance with different business  models and who just got into mobile faster than the big guys in ecommerce. For example we show Wanyelo who is more on the social side but he is now enabling commerce coming with social shopping experience. We saw Porsche Mac, that might have started three years ago, coming with the C2C model which shows a lot of sense because when the resell starts you use your phone to do it.

Mack: So what is a Porsche Mac?

Maud: It is not the biggest one in the vertical because the real reel is now leading but Porsche Mac is the C2C market place that is mobile only or mobile first and so you can buy and sell fashion. We all have a bunch of clothes that we are not using and so this is a market place that makes it super easy, so it is basically taking a vertical from eBay that is really under served and enhancing the experience and making it 100 times more efficient  by putting it mobile first. You just take a picture of your cloth, you enter a quick description, you add a price tag to it and it is ready for sale and it is super, super easy.

I think they just announced that they reached 100 million in revenue and they charge about 20% of commission and they don’t have any operations, right so if you sell your cloth from your closet you just going to put it in the mail and turn it to the other person that bought it. So you are just the intimate jury and that is a big business.

Mack: Do they have to like, they don’t touch the clothes, they…nothing like it is literally from you to the buyer, from the buyer to the seller, just the website, that is so wow.

Maud: Yeah in general, the C2C vertical is booming because it makes so much sense again to do it with mobile and with your device, to sell your stuff you got to take a picture of it. You don’t want to go through the hustle of uploading your picture, researching the price and everything. So Porsche Mac has been leading on the mobile side for fashion. You see Vincent was not a big player to do really well in the US because it was in Europe and then you have, in all of the vertical offer which you will see in probably the top 20 in the lifestyle category right now on the App store, you have another company which is now, leader in Japan and just functioned in the US a few months ago just in [Maria Carey]. The offer up in Maria Carey is you can sell your cloths, you can sell whatever your iPhone 4, you cans ell wherever you want. Either to everyone who is on the platform and those are very efficient market places. 

Mack: This is finally somebody who is going to like illuminate this sort of strange based as Greg’s list.

Maud: Yes, the company that rented is really the enhanced mobile experience, so what everyone is dreaming about is, those market places have offered better experience from a product perspective and hopefully they can also own the interim experience. So they make sure that whenever I receive my stuff that I bought on their platform it is going to be of quality and it is exactly what I bought and a lady that could integrate with ship. So imagine you are selling your iPhone through this app and then you don’t even have to take care of the shipping. Ship would directly come to your house and there would be shipping interim jury. That is the type of new innovation that mobile commerce is enabling.

Mack: That is crazy, just like pressing the button and it all happens, we live in the press the button world, what is interesting about all of that to me is, the reason that most of it talk about mobile, the reason the mobile is changing everything and the reason mobile can launch like ancient things and incredible type of things, it is a lot of time because, it is mobile, it is always on and it is always with them at the side of the bed and is pushed on location and it is almost social like all this aspects of the phone and mobile that make it interesting but what actually from the creator, from the vendor perspective which we are talking about. It is utility, instead of saying camera is connected to internet. I don’t have to plug my digital camera into my computer and download the photo and then I upload them, like that won’t make it, sort of fashion things that don’t grow as quickly.

The fact that we all pick what either three, or three dozen photos a day and that is all you have to do, that is interesting, the fact about some hard work things it’s not about a lot of this operating systems or this social on top of that. 

Maud: For that particular example of the C2C market place, I think it makes a lot of sense since it leverages the device and that is really relevant. But in general like my belief is, we should think and especially for commerce and it is something that a lot of brand took a lot of tie to realize the opportunity behind mobile. So that is the second era that I was going to talk about. First era we saw a lot of new commerce and they got really quickly into mobile, they got really aggressive, they were really smart and some of them we had never heard of.

Something hat strike me this year, when you were looking at the top ten lifestyle category in the App store, they were the big brands. The big brands this year are just really owning the mobile commerce vertical, so they caught up to this opportunity and they doubled down on it. Using target, using Amazon, using Walmart, using Nose room, all those guys are now pretty aggressive on the mobile commerce side.

My belief is at the end discovery is going to become mobile first. So if you are a brand and even if your business model is not, doesn’t make sense for mobile in particular like C2C market places, you have to be on mobile and you have to offer great exchange on mobile and you have to double down on it because this is what people are going to start spending more and more of their time. 

Mack: It is interesting because everybody saw it happen in games on mobile, like the first couple of years, every game on the top chart was a floppy, some are going to take dude working with his wife or just two guys working alone on the basement and they were weird and they went to school but they were awesome and now you go to the top chart like, he has a bunch of game in the top, engrossing  entry and it looks like this shells of Walmart from the games aisle. There is instruction, there is the floppy word that are coming through but once you get all those big brand up there, with the money to keep themselves on the top, like in the games you know. 

One thing I like to talk about the future virtual reality and one reason for that is because I think he Indi kids can go in there and do cool stuff again, hopefully that new ecosystem will allow room for innovated people to do innovative things before they get washed off by the beast. That may not take long this time because these guys are looking for it now like looking for new platforms. I wonder about in the Commerce space like where do this innovative, forward thinking exciting that are going to start three years ago when the App stores destroyed by big brand with beautiful but just like, who cares what we talk about, who is excited.

Maud: I think what you just said is very relevant for a commerce too, the big brands are there unless you go and disrupt, you introduce something new as a product and you sell something new and then it is going to be really hard to compete because the big brands have the big dollars at the top of the stores, the App stores so you are not discoverable as a new product. So the way around it is, the same way around it and other verticals have looked into it which is, you have to offer either an experience that is really social, or you have to, so that your app becomes viral that is the way it can be discovered, or you have enhance through the device. So it is one or the other but it is becoming really, really hard to be discoverable and it is a really great App in the commerce space, it doesn’t not get a lot of traction, or they have to paint really early for customer acquisition. They need to do customer acquisition otherwise they are not getting enough organic downloads.

Mack: We all hear the story about Block Buster and how Block buster last in that selected one like he was doing DVD delivery, and that’s selects like forget DVD delivery but then I will do like screaming like a massive describe has a significant base of back, what the cool pop culture should they buy and wherever. I am sort of extrapolating I am going on a hypothetical road here and the C2C, the market place that we are talking about here, got 1000 million dollars in revenue, is it possible that becomes, that business and model become significant that we could see a big player, do you feel like target or one of this heather historical players having to evolve in that kind of way, at least online in sort of facilities of same transaction, could there be a C2C of your old Walmart clothes, inside the Walmart  Apps like they are like won market place of their own in there?

Maud: Yeah I mean, I was reading an article, I think it was when they were circulating on a possible acquisitions of next year and one of them was client in the C2C market places, Walmart or Norte room, they need, they are having a really hard time having growth on their system business model, so they need to innovate and they need to look at business model like those. I think in general the C2C is the new way to live and a new way to consume so it makes a lot of sense for any business that is selling and to really look at those opportunities. We could see Norte room buying them but that would be a conflict, because what is really hard is to go to, a Porsche Mac sells a lot of Chanel bags for example, they just launch there, there luxury arm but Chanel doesn’t want to hear about second hand clothes that are being sold at such a little price, there is conflict of big retail chains that have those specific relationships with friends to offer C2C market places, that is a conflict of interest a little bit.

Mack: This literally goes back to, I hate to this again but back to video games, the great fight  of the video game industry in the last ten years were about used gums at the games stores and all of them like dedicated games had used console games and the players loved it because they could trade in all games and this guys loved it because, it wasn’t C2C, they took themselves as the middle men, but the people who made the games hated it because… they didn’t like to see the price it was so low beside their new price, that become so significant that Walmart doubled and used the games as well, I don’t know how deep that went but they also had to because in the game face of this other dedicated retailers they had to try and get some of that money back and it was all relevant. At least in our discussion the future, they are going to be bought online anyways.  

Maud: Yeah exactly.

Mack: It is the same problem crossing the streets where people back shade, I love the story of the Nike Inc. guy and the musically able guy who were at a conference 3D printing and the Nike Inc. guy said people are going to be able to email a blueprint of our shoe when we print it not for the next two years but for the next 20 years, you will be able to recreate a perfect Nike Inc. show on the Blueprint and we saw like last week they emailed the blueprint to the play station for the printer that he needed. We are in the fucking future, they emailed. The Nike Inc. guy is like “Oh my God this is Crazy” the music guy is like “welcome to my life” like this is what we have been dealing with, people just copy and print our product and we are coming to a time where arguably with printing again, we are nowhere near that now, if you do something now it looks like terrible 90’s 80’s plastic toys. Everything that comes out seems useless but this is day one.

Maud: Yeah it is really interesting by the way the connotation you are making with printing and I think printing is very interesting, going to current and saying I need to print stuff. The challenge after reprinting that is today is, you need to be an engineer, like you need to come out with those crazy files and so, can engineers come out with stuff that is or no useful but at least when they come at angle pretty and in news one we haven’t seen that, and it is something like the same trouble that we are seeing in wearable technology. We are still trying to figure out like, it needs to look pretty, it needs to be functional, it is merge of well say, haven’t really talked before and so this is all really new. This is happening really fast.

Mack: This is fight about Ben Haven and his ranting about technology for the first time it is being sold to everybody, so watches are wearables. It is 20 minutes lets end with two questions, one: Do you like the watch? Not to think it is going to do well, but do you like the Apple watch, your own phase and then second: Do you think it is going to do well next year? Like for real for real? 

Maud: Number one, I found it to be really bulky, I am not a watch fanatic so I think, it shows I am not An expert in it but if I was to especially for women, it looked, really, really bulky . So in the brief sections of variations are really interesting, I think they will continue to explore partnerships especially given the team Apple. They will explore partnerships and great partnership I am looking forward to even more variations of that looking field, that one is for, I am not a huge fan for an opinion right now. Second I think the reason why people will use and they look different after that is really having utility for it and that is the question for me. I have an experience and I don’t know what it would bring and how it will enhance my life and how it will augment mobile which my phone is with e all the time. I am just curious and I think that is going to be the key question that they release the watch with. It is really going to make a difference in people everyday life. Do I think it is going to do well? I think there is some asceticism an s around that utility and it is also very pricey.

Mack: It was super awesome and amazing, thank you so much for your time.

Maud: Thank you s much.

Mack: Okay, I will call you when I am in San Francisco. 

Maud: See you in 2015 and happy New Year.

"The NASDAQ in 10 years is going to be like an app store. In the sense that it's just a bunch of mobile apps."

Transcript

Greg: Hi man.

Mack: Hello Greg it is Mack.

Greg: What’s going on?

Mack: You know enjoying the Vancouver December weather it’s very nice outside of course. I’m not sure;   actually I am lying.

Greg: It is cold I would imagine.

Mack: You know every podcast starts with the same talk but it’s not cold as wet. It’s not that cold it’s just really wet. Not like where you are from, you are from [inaudible 0:00:43.9] I know but tell our listeners where you are from.

Greg: I am from Montreal Canada.

Mack: Québec province.

Greg: One of the coldest and snowiest places on earth.

Mack: So let’s very briefly talk about Montreal. I technically lived outside of Montreal for a month but I was young I didn’t really know anything about Montreal as a city. Basically everybody who I have ever met who went to Montreal said Montreal was amazing. They used to have some of the problem of being in Québec which was kind of lame back in the day but it’s no longer lame. And now I guess you still have the cold thing and like it’s just legitimately sort of thing but most people seem really found of Montréal, do you agree with that?

Greg: Yeah, I mean some of the best restaurants, the culture is really cool and it’s like pretty much the most European city in North America so it’s pretty cool that like you can take a 45 minute flight from New York City up to Montreal and feel like you are like in the 1600 and in some random place in a ranch.

Mack: So let’s talk about, this is the terms that we are looking for that suits great, let’s talk about why you are in San Francisco, what is the story of how you got from Montréal to San Francisco, and tell us the thing

Greg: I started a company Called 5by, and what 5by basically did or does is take the best stuff of YouTube and any other online platform and create there are like 100 channels. Start ups to design to funny and you press a button and you get the best stuff. And I started the company and sold it eleven months later to Stumble upon and operating it independently there.

Mack: And then when you sold to Stumble upon you moved to San Francisco?

Greg: Exactly.

Mack: So when was that?

Greg: I moved to San Francisco about a year ago.

Mack: And started the 5by about two years ago?

Greg: Exactly.

Mack: So you and the team at 5by in the other 5by just had the distinct privilege of winning one of the Google app awards, right?

Greg: Yeah, so every year takes about 50 apps, some of the best apps of the year and we were lucky enough to win. That gave us as a Macketer what I like about it is just the promotion I Google parts behind it am just so awesome. Like in terms of user acquisition like at the end of the day we are still reliant on these app stores. And it has been pretty cool to see Google analytics real time when you are being promoted on the home page, just Google plan so many countries.

Mack: So you are getting multiple countries that weren’t like just America or just Tibet or something. You got international kind of best.

Greg: Yeah, we are promoted in I think 45 countries.

Mack: Okay and I guess we don’t really need to go into specific numbers but that has been meaningful for you guys from a download perspective?

Greg: Yeah, I mean from the features like that you get thousands of downloads a day just constant.

Mack: Yeah, and that is an effort too. It’s not like the big push is the constant thing.

Greg: Yeah, I mean it’s a constant thing.

Mack: How long do you figure it will last for like at some  point you know it tippers off the promo and there is something…but there might even be some residuals after that, right like so many  blog articles, extensions…so do you think this is like a permanent apps ring or you think the goals will tipper [crosstalk] and we are not going to talk about it later so you don’t even have to be wrong whatever it doesn’t matter what, nobody is going to know so…

Greg: You know if you have a consumer start up every day you go to sleep and you wake up and you just hope that someone bigger didn’t come up with your start up the next day. So you kind of check range. It’s the same way with AD Star promotion. Like every day I wake up and I am like I hope to God that they didn’t remove us from the promotion. 

So I don’t know, I just as long as possible hopeful probably I would imagine probably not in three or four weeks. And then we have to built something, you know the trick  to getting  featured in the app store is really just to like help Google and apple basically help them to figure out what’s on their road map and what you can build in terms of like upcoming features. So if it’s like the new ILS like ILS8 extensions stuff like that, android TV I mean you are building towards that then we are like we are the future here.

Mack: Okay, so I have used 5by and I understand why you won the award. The experience for me is like a combination, it’s like  Wikipedia cable, it’s like that you go deep you go down you don’t know where you are going to come out but as Wikipedia is the Craig’s list this sis top some beautifully modern designed thing. 

You guys have solved the user experience path as well as the sort of value and content part and suddenly getting lost in the videos or getting lost in the links doesn’t fell weird it feels polished. It feels like it goes from being in a weird dingy bar which is kind of like lagging around on the wild web and then in this native app experience you have created, it’s really nice. 

The chairs are really soft the colors are really good, the lighting is good the music is there, the women are beautiful the men are funny everything is going well. To me that am just like what you sort of did to like I say going down like Wikipedia hall or YouTube hall of video. Do you think that what you have done is something that is going to happen across a lot of different level experiences in the coming years or do you think that what you did is unique to video?

Greg: I think when we started you know the company you know I started with a guy named [inaudible 0:07:50.6] and he, we basically running a UX shop for a few years. And that was sort of our background and I would probably argue that this sort of two ways where you can really make a big business of something that already exists on the web and basically if you just bring it to mobile you simplify it and then you make a beautiful experience out of it. 

I think we chose video just because we were video nuts and we love video but I think people could just go unbundle  a bunch of different web services, make it mobile fast, make it really simple make it really beautiful and  slap on some good user acquisition strategies and there is a lot of money being make there.

Mack: So you unbundle it because we are on mobile and mobile by nature of the technology device is kind of a forecast thing and you simplify it for the same reason because mobile is just small and always the making a beautiful path has certainly become a norm now. That is an actually down to mobile its just that technology and design seems to have reached a really nice freshly new platform in sort of strategy at the same time that mobile happens to rise there was no cell phones I think we would still be dealing with excellent designs as a prerequisite for success in sort of consumer design. Was this the case five years ago even?

Greg: I agree and I think also the, like the bar for user, like users regularly mainstream jobs, America Understands what a beautiful product is and understand what a good user experience is today now more than ever. Where it’s like maybe 10 years ago, if they went to a website like Craig’s list they just wouldn’t care if it was ugly or not. So I think mobile it’s all about specifically like create something beautiful, create something simple, everyone is using this whole like press a button get something, Uber like world and as long as it’s that quick and beautiful and there is an actual need there is probably business there.

Mack: So you talk about the Uberfication of everything. Do you, like I get weird thinking about the drones that just happened [inaudible 0:10:33.2] go down and like not if we sort of have a couple of drones but  if we got to do with it, we have got star wars about drones and like they were just everywhere, I like to follow that one especially. You talked about the Uberfication or like the Uber button for everything. 

Do you think in the future that this phones will allow us to Uber everything is this on demand with economy with such pressing going to disrupt every single thing ever as the like multitrillion, quadrillion variation of Uber would suggest or you think that we, that the height is a little bit frosty around Uber use as it is right now?

Greg: I think the short answer is I am holding on this whole on demand economy and Uberfication of everything. The longer answer is there frostiness’ maybe but I think that that’s okay because I think places like San Francisco you can literally get everything on demand from a hair cut to a massage to a car and it’s almost like we are living in the future here but if you look at other places like Vancouver or something or Montréal like there isn’t those services yet.

So I think that there is a huge opportunity to bring some of this on demand services international in other places beyond San Francisco and I also think that it’s still early days like this whole on demand sort of world has only come   up in the last few years. Uber was literally started like four years ago or something like that.

Mack: It’s crazy.

Greg: But it goes to show you like I don’t remember the last time it was, I think it was forty…was it billion?

Mack: Yeah I think so.

Greg: Something like that I mean the fact that you can go and create a forty billion dollars value in four years or whatever it is [crosstalk] hypothetical values. And I remember I saw [Travis] at the web in 2010 or something and he said, he basically said you know it change how I about things that the [NASDAQ] in ten years or something is going to be just a bunch of mobile apps.  It’s going to be like an app store. The [NASDAQ] is going to be like an app store in a sense that it is just going to be a bunch of mobile companies and that just blew my mind.

Mack: Every one of these podcasts we have like portable [inaudible 0:13:14.4] but you think you probably I think that was the moment we just shared that. I liked how we say when we had the moment that was the moment right there. Have you tried I think it’s called Laxate; the Uberfication of [inaudible 0:13:25.4]

Greg: So I haven’t tried but I did, outside my office today I did see these guys wearing blue polos that said Lax on it and I was like that sounds familiar then I saw them you know those like scooters racers, scootering, someone scootering to someone’s car and just like these two mid 30s Hispanic guys that jumped into the car and started finding parking so I haven’t used it but saw it today in action. Pretty cool having your back pocket. I guess all these on demand stuff is cool to have in your pocket like I am not going to have, how many times do I just need a hair cut to come and do I need a haircut and I want people to come to my help I don’t know, maybe once a year but it’s nice to have that incase I need it. And that’s the same thing [crosstalk]

Mack: And actually a whole point of like the scale of the internet is that you only need to sell something to one of every 10000 people because there is so many people that you have access to. And on demand actually breaks that because on demand involves connecting like physically in real life [crosstalk] you can’t make a business really out of once a year thing that I do that only I pay 40 dollars for unless you have so many of me.

Greg: Yeah, I mean if you are creation a consumer, well it depends if you are creating a consumer venture back mobile start up, you are going to want to create something at a daily case. If you can create a daily case like you probably have in your consumer probably the venture is scalable. So I think like that is what the goal is like Uber is a good example like s few years ago I used Uber maybe once year or something a couple of time a year and now I use Uber almost every day. 

It’s crazy and I have a car which for me is crazy and I think this whole on demand economy like the whole thing is like it’s convenient and the best part is Millennial they are just lazy. millennial are lazy [crosstalk] and I am a millennial you know and they just want…that’s why on demand one of the reasons a on demand is taking off right now is because yeah, just like millennial are on Pc they want to press the button and they want to get it and boom.

Mack: I am going to give you my super Nerdy moment here, so there is a scene in one of the new three star wars movies, I am not nerdy sure which one but there is a scene on one of them where the guy who becomes the evil dude then they are in the middle of the war and he is like so the law says that I am supposed to get out of the way now, we are supposed to have an election. 

I feel like it’s my duty to you, you the people to stay in power for four more years or something to confuse the assembly state and then the entire senate like breaks into virtuous applause and he is like thank you and then it zooms in on the queen there and she says so this is how freedom is lost, not to the sounds of gunshots but to the thunderous applause something like that. And that really I was always like wow she is right. Like thunderous applause is how we are going to lose the freedom that matter and it’s interesting that was convenient because for me convenience and choice are the two things that will make us give up everything. 

Every time somebody is like there is this new thing on the internet we are going to upload all of your pictures of you and your family and then write their names on them, fuck you there is no shame. I am going to do that. There is this new app that is going to let you meet a girl. You are just going to have to tell it all the time where you are all the time. Not chance, that for losers and yet there is like the constant sort of approach on our liberties that we willfully give away and if I was dating I would use tender and if I use facebook I would tag people in those pictures like.

I am not saying I am not one of these people, we are giving away those interesting things because of convenience and choice and so anything you can do that serves convenience and choice which is Uberfication of everything seems to, yeah, that’s how you build the slippery slope in success that you are trying to right.

Greg: And I think the truth is most people don’t care about giving away stuff like they are just like, they are pressing connect with facebook like ten times a day on ten different services and they are putting their credit cards in ten different places and they are just like, they don’t think about it especially young people.

Mack: And I don’t really like even to be honest like I do sign in to everything with twitter and my credit card has been smeared across the internet and lots of co-worker you know like we work in a technical state so I talk to a lot of people who think that my behavior online isn’t safe enough or isn’t respecting my own privacy enough. But for convenience and choice like the number of times trying to log into a website is a pain in the ass. 

Good thing twitter authorized is not a pain in the ass except these days what they are doing some of the authors of twitter they are like okay we will confirm with your email and name anyways, you can put it as a giveaway and now I am giving them a twitter and the email anyway which is really stupid.

Greg: Yeah, I mean it goes back to like nothing is free like all these consumer app. that are pretty is like you are going to have to give them something and year you are right on one hand it’s kind of scary times that will be there but then I would be scared if like Amazon web services was hacked because I have some crazy stuff up there you know what I mean like, I think we all do we all have our secrets are in the clouds [crosstalk]

Mack: And some day it’s going to rain.

Greg: It’s going to rain one day you know. Look what happened with the whole sonny hacking thing.

Mack: I haven’t even been up on this, I mean I have, I know the thing happen I know probably it’s just back and back and what we said they are doing because the theater is not played not because they are scared of the grim but somehow this all wraps together and we are finding it’s a snapshot was trying to get into the music industry business because of linked sonny emails. What the fuck on this seems to be going [inaudible 0:20:08.8] but I don’t actually know what happened except that Sony got hacked and apparently it was the most [inaudible 0:20:12.9] machines.

Greg: The bottom line is sonny got hacked, bunch of emails, compensation stoke equity was taken from the servers and when you have an organization of like, I don’t know 50,000 people who work at sonny and they are emailing people and every facet of business and use their sonny email addresses, there is a lot of secrets in there. And I think it’s a remainder that every time you send an email like be careful because someone can read that email somewhere like at some time you trust that person, you are trusting the security people at this places.

Mack: I saw a tweet yesterday that said dance like nobody is watching email like you will be writing the disposition.

Greg: I would have totally RT that.

Mack: Yeah exactly. Okay you know that let’s use that as an end note. I have twenty minutes I would certainly RT that Greg, super pleasure of course thank you so much so you can approve this before we release this up to the world and everybody seriously if you haven’t downloaded 5by yet you should. It’s some it’s really good stuff.

Bubba Murarka of DFJ chats about all sorts of fun stuff including Mesh Networks, Net Neutrality and non trivial gyrations.

"Connectivity wants to be free, connectivity will be free, the gyrations we have to go through to get there are non trivial..."

Transcript

Bubba: Hello.

Mack: Hi! Bubba, how are you?

Bubba: I am good how are you Mack? How’s our day?

Mack: I am having a stupid day men everything is going wrong it’s really awesome.

Bubba: That is not good what is going on?

Mack: It’s not the end of the world. I have a sick kid I have been to the doctors I have been to the pharmacy I have been to ground but I have low cell phone battery I was getting excited about calling you and I am plundering through the Vancouver rain like it’s a dramatic movie watching my battery die in real time like no Bubba and my telepod casting phone recording services shitty and breaking on me so there is paranoia around that, very dramatic.

Bubba: Yes that sounds like a whole process of constructing anger-bio problems that are very annoying.

Mack: Anger bio is a good word right, none of those is actually a very big deal and yet the summation of all those is Mack is having a crappie little day there.

Bubba: Yes well do you still want to do this thing or you want to cancel to next week?

Mack: Oh hell yes I want to do this thing this is the thing men you are my therapy on the podcast, like a future novel.

Bubba: Excellent oh we got get to that.

Mack: Let’s start with you telling us about why you know a little bit both mobile because you are actually really, really, really smart thinking about the steps why is that what have you done?

Bubba: Well thanks for the compliment that is quite lovely I will take it and use it in my marketing materials, I learnt about mobile first hand great for being I think they are one of the most unique soft spot possible a stage work. I knew I wanted to be a product manager on global team and again in 2005 and as a result of that I got to be Facebook and first manager of the app on android app and sort of face book at the moment.

Got Facebook to be sort of a global property I also got exposed to their different fully armsteir the developing nation the developed nation the app mobile was different in all the complicated value chain so I could have asked for a better PhD in modern mobile the model that involves smart phones then next thing I got through Facebook which I am very lets even think on their parts.

Mack: And then from there you… [Crosstalk]

Bubba: I did two things, I actually when I decided to face book I started a company in the model space and I picked some opportunities that venture community and decided to join DFJ mostly because I love the team but frankly because they were comfortable with me starting my own company while [crosstalk]

Mack: That is a beautiful best of both worlds, isn’t it?

Bubba: I count my blessings every day on that one. 

Mack: Okay next let’s talk about what exactly DFJ is and where I am going with this and I had a thought when I was getting ready to call you and that was…when I asked BC of all people about the fact of the future of mobile I could argue that by action not by word their thoughts in the investing pieces.

So if I look at what you invest in that is probably actually a very telling analysis of at least part of your vision obviously not the entire visions part of visions of what the future of modal looks like so that was the DFJ kind of it and was thinking about and then tell us about what you are trying to bring there so that has too little to do in the future  

Bubba: Awesome, so at DFJ it has been  a venture capital business growth just under 30 year and we are  now investing out of our 11 fund this eleventh fund is pretty meaningful change from the previous ten fund in that two of founding members Tim Draper and John Fisher were not actively leading the DO out of 11 and instead is a smaller team that includes each Steve Juvertison, Josh Stein, Andreas Stavropoulos, Emily Melton on Job Rain and myself  and what we really focus on in our new project is going back to the roots of DFJ.

And focusing on kind of three things that have been on the store at large outside and that is enterprise software, consumer software and disruptive technology data and those certified probably three companies that I can mention the first being in their enterprise phase and these are recent box which we let the series A and we have invested in every single round since then.

And then in the consumer spot probably interesting to mention an iconic company is Skype [crosstalk] but we also have most recent companies like Tango which is one of the largest investing product and then on the shorter stage we really have done some pretty amazing things including Space X and Tesla.

But more recently also companies like Ziwe which is probably classic computing as well as Planet Earth which is checking that  satellite should work and giving images of the earth real time or at least specifically 24 hours full updates fundamentally changes so much so  we would like to think kind of big industry changing companies that have new perspective either on communication or how business will world fundamentally how technology will work our very comfortable betting early stage first check in and  we would like to be in every stage after that .

Mack: Okay so one I had no idea you guys did like Tesla that is absolutely crazy obviously a huge fan I know most people are interesting because you say industry is changing like and like Tesla might change the motor car industry pretty effective actually going to create an industry .

And its creating a category not like in other software category but like now we are going to moon literally so that is something that is a ludicrous that we make and I mean that I hope that is right and that is awesome that you guys do that but that is very venture kind of venture capital investment you know. 

Bubba: Yes I think that is right I think we take all risk and we look at ways that companies can become if they work outside that is great on our  team so in some way just a risk like everyone says that in other ways I think more than most other people we put our money where [inaudible]

Mack: Even Skype is crazy men Skype is a big deal I don’t use Skype as much as some people do I know like that is what the world uses Skype to communicate all the time really did like change the game and not just for the few people in Soma but for people all over all parts of this earth which is interesting.

Bubba: Yes and another bet that is interesting that I didn’t mention is solar city that is fundamental changing how electricity would work and I think has the potential to be the largest electricity provider in the world or the largest electrical company in the world again these are the things that we have made that solely they have characteristics of fantastic founders of huge market opportunities also we are at a risk when we get involved.

And as a result we have an outside the factory where we are very proud  that we participated in building and supporting great company for me personally for the second part of your question what I am student I think I am unique there is a capitalism that I might be one of the only venture capitalist that has a high product management and operation responsibility of a mobile app that has more than a hundred million users being the face book android app as well as then also having create a new mobile strategy focus on the platform that I think it’s under invested in being android and the work that I get to do on face book phone.

 And so I think when I look at my investment this days an interesting area is how the future is turning out I think it’s all about mobile and it comes in three bucket the first bucket is apps and fundamentally how you can reimaging all software’s to be redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up considering and always on connected personal device that is their pocket and that has unlimited compute power and I think that shown up and consumer product quite a bit.

 But I think we are getting into the next stage where it’s going to be disruptive a bunch of enterprise products I think after the app there I really looked at given all software is going to be rewritten from the mobile that mobile infrastructure based not in what they call those areas but much more what we told these software providers software’s builders software companies that are building for mobile.

That are building for the fundamentally more complex less consistent network that we ever had on the depth of app that are building from a more complicated platforms that involves multiple names android higher and mobile web can also fundamentally diplomatically sale we never had an app company skills having five billion users ten billion users like we are likely going to have in the next five or ten years.

And this whole new step of infrastructure problems that need to solve it can only be solved as a central infrastructure aware not necessarily buy every single app way of company and then after that the thing that I get excited  about is how do you disrupt economic mobile. Because  if everyone is going to have a smart device a mobile phone connected to  themselves they also going to need to be able to have data and connect to that phone to make it use and have all the good quality that see at the Appware.

 So fundamentally how do you challenge  the current business model of the carriers either through business mobile innovation or technology innovation  and I think that, that is one of the largest industries out there and looking at some of  the dollars spent on communication connectivity and I look forward to destructing that I am already excited about some of the deal that are coming out and already doing that like stage Willie and I am looking for more of those which are kind of that is my disruptive count of those set of  companies that are .

Mack: Now your ludicrous dream is disrupting like the communication land that is where all the money is being made nobody challenging it nobody trying to keep a bunch.

Bubba: Yes I think the current model is been certainly created a level of connectivity and while I take of those wireless provider has never been seen before and as allocated resources around spectrum around try large in a way try venting in a way that has been economically successful but I think when we go to the next quarter of magnitude of utilization kind of requirements.

 I think they are all going to be fundamentally new ways to architecture carry on business smart phone into lay after that being the internet the things I think that all revolve around fundamental software innovation all the way kind of hardware and business model innovation and  look through the things that can considerably change the game about that .

Mack: Okay so this is I mean like this is like you get to work with the DFJ because you barely given a lot of thought and well versed let me ask an elementary question for you the mesh network that I hear about they have having the develop process Hong Kong otherwise it gets to be useful and a times like a Wi-Fi internet is that the kind of thing that is really interesting to you like is that the realm that we are talking about?

Bubba: So I think that is definitely an example of software innovation the company that enables that is the company that is the company called open garden and they have a product called bio chat and interesting line up they have some of the originals beat form guys there some they are very well versed in appear to be a network mesh network that I think the dream of DFJ connectivity is something that I think has a lot of potential.

  And I think with absent that opens the top solution and what I saw in android and other smarter less that will do something that will have a real spot in the world and can change kind of my conversation part around copex of what the existing charity is you have to buy spectrum you have to buy radio you have to be deployed those radio.

 You have to be buy very expensive network gear and instead if you can do all through software that can trigger the end users that is going to change the economic and will enable very interesting things so yes that is great example something that is interesting to me but that is not the only type of thing that interest me.

Mack: Okay it seems like you will have some of this things you any have to be strong thoughts on neutrality because you are talking about the internet and the data and how like when you are purchasing data and everything is data you are right when you have data and its different scale than we have ever thought about before so with this internet thing do you think that neutrality is really great or is it a terrible thing?

Bubba: I think it’s a very new one is a very complicated topic that I try not to cover I think the reality is connectivity is something that wants to be free connectivity is something that will eventually be free and the directions we have to get there are none trivia but I fundamentally believe that to some point every human being everywhere whether they are located in the US located in desert in Africa or centrally located in planet.

 Will have unlimited data and full data connectivity for anything they want to do and so things are getting in a way of that I think there are temporary and may exist for short period whether that is the need for neutrality or not a need for that neutrality I think it it’s a less interesting to me and frankly I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about focus on because I think again it try to stop either way connected devices and connectivity it should come in play.

Mack: This is like awkward teenage grow that is perhaps awkward but all changes are awkward and therefore we can embrace that and come to the other side of that I agree with you like when I think about the future now I have never not imagined that everybody has the access to all the data maybe where you told him maybe this is ludicrous maybe this won’t become the great barrier between have and have not’s those who are online all the time and those who were never online but that is not when I think of the future I always do think about like everybody you have read embrace new world the new one.

Bubba: I have not yet it’s on my list.

Mack: so there is this you know it has been a long time since I read it but they have got this happy world where everybody is happy like all this can still be a novel you know besides happy where you are oh! There are actually the unhappy people we are the scavengers we are the crazy people who live out in the woods.

Bubba: Yes like the Canadians.

Mack: Yes exactly the Canadians of the post guard exactly.

Bubba: Only because I love my Canadian neighbors like you Mack.

Mack: Yes believe Canadians never take offence, they are just Canadians…the future the future will be weird not everybody has access to that because that is really does become the like the great differentiate that becomes what enables me to do everything that super powers I mean I often think about the iPhone that I carry the android that you carry.

 I think of them like magic worms I almost forgot because if you were in any fairy part of the magical play and you say I want hence spell I want ten sparkle spells there is an app for that I want a chariot to appear  drawn by four might speeds the spell 2014 .

 I want food to arrive in ten minutes and not just delivery stuff like the point is that this things are magic wall they are crazy I mean if you have a world where everybody is drop except some people don’t when you have power when some people don’t so I again maybe you want to talk in full but I agree in the future all the people will have all the data for all three.

Bubba: Yes and I think it’s a staged thing and unfortunately it can’t happen overnight but the first in the putting I think the internet is probably going to have a higher standard that we are going connectivity than any outstands kind of running water and sewage systems I guess it going to be [crosstalk] those are going to be the big three proxs farming agriculture now that is the fourth one now that is pretty amazing to be in the time that didn’t exist when we were born and we are getting to watch it unfold major shaping of out kind of picture of the enumeration cause of equality life for all of us.

Mack: So we have about two minutes left lets pull way back down to 2015 near the end of the year I don’t k now if I am going to have that probably at the end of the year let’s make that a prediction or two about 2015 this bold are not bold as you folks use [crosstalk]

Bubba: I have not done any 2015 predictions so you caught off guard with this what would I say as a prediction I  would say a good production for 2015 mobile is that we are going to see a  new form of mobile advertising drive a huge shift spent from desktop and TV to mobile only advertising unit I don’t know what it looks like I don’t know how it feels I don’t know how its price but I think that innovation is coming and I would like and I have a feeling it would come out in 2015. 

Mack: So the big story of 2014 as far as global advertising is probably the app install unit I knew about face book in 2012 mimic that place slowly and quickly like everybody is doing one of these you are talking about you said from TV and desktop you are not having app installed anymore you are talking about finally the big sort of con break free and the big screen money is finally going get the mobile device and we are going to see that vessel arrive? 

Bubba: I think there is going to be a the unit that will attract all that will get it this year most this year you will start to see all that attractions maybe it’s the premature to say all that step will shift over 

this year but I think fundamentally unit that you know pioneer whether is pioneered by face book, twitter Google, yahoo I don’t know who does it but… chat stream [crosstalk] 

Mack: No you see now little this is not I am not being terrible okay now listen that will be super exciting like you said we will not try and see all the money come out and but maybe in the future they will look back at history and say 2015 the year that we finally use the crowbar and try and open the door on the big screen advertise.

Bubba: Yes on the shift at mobile unit that affective units performs well and creates the value just survive the spend.

Mack: Men I hope that you invest in that company because that will be awesome.

Bubba: Yes I would like to invest in that company but I think that company is probably one that is consumer facing that has an online operating property I think its let’s hope so.

Mack: Yes you need to be up scale sort of speaks to make this work.

Bubba: Yes exactly.

Mack: Okay Bob thank for you time I will call you next time I am in town we will some terrible things together.

Bubba: Excellent it’s great to hear from you I can all day good luck with your  sick kid good luck with this broadcast hopefully it doesn’t come back nearly as half as bad as I suspect my part can be.

Mack: I think you did pretty good we… I always let listen to it before I publish it and I edit it.

Bubba: Okay that is great I have never done a broadcast before so far way.

Mack: No in like the next three days I am going to send you a link and you will be oh wow we are really smart Mack and be cool and publish 

Bubba: Awesome.

Mack: Okay have fun.

Bubba: Alright Bubba later thank you for the interview.

"...200 million people or 20 percent of a billion people tinkered with their phone... "

Ankit Jain, CEO of Quettra discusses messaging, machine learning and the future of mobile.

Transcript

Ankit:  Hi this is Ankit.

Mack:  Ankit this is Mack from Tapstream, how are you?

Ankit:  Good.  You still have a Canadian number, don’t you?

Mack: I do live in Canada [crosstalk].

Ankit: I mean, you do?  I thought you… I know you are a Canadian but I thought most of Top Stream was in Canada but I thought you guys are now down here.

Mack: No.  I have lived there and I spend some time there, to the point of being very loud, when I spent my time there. 

Ankit:  I see.

Mack: So that we perceive that we are there, even if that is not exactly the truth.

Ankit:  I see.  Right now are you in Canada?

Mack: Yes.

Ankit:  God, I thought.  Hello to Canada.

Mack: How are you today?  How is San Francisco?  Is it kind of foggy and kind of wet and kind of sunny and kind of beautiful?

Ankit:  Here in Mountain View, it’s always amazing.

Mack: Of course.

Ankit:  And there’s no fog, there’s a nice view of some mountains and no, things are good, busy and good.

Mack: Okay, so busy is a good place to start.  Welcome to first ever future of mobile podcast. Obviously, being the shift that I am, I thought everybody knows starting a podcast and I said, “I could probably do that,” so then I called smart people, I can think of and you were first and I said, “Mr. Podcast.” The muse said, “Okay,” so exactly the future of mobile.  To get started, I guess, I have to give you an introduction.  Mine is a back up attached in the podcast.  You’ll get your attachment well.  

Now nearly interesting is, I could tell us about what you’ve been doing before and what you’re doing these days, some sort of background and why you’re so relevant to talking to the future mobile and then the company that you’re working on now? 

Ankit:  Sure.  Pleasure to be with you and chat with you about, how the future of mobile and actually, I think what’s happening today in mobile is just as interesting as the future.  And I spent a few years at Google running a big piece of Google play, the search and the discovery and all of the storage and infrastructure for Google play.  So really everything other than the UI and the billing aspects of the play store, across all of the verticals.  I was fortunate enough to be there early, when it was still Android market.  I see it mature into Google play and the business it is today.  

So mobile is something very near and dear to me.  And I think it’s been fascinating, to see how we’ve gone from a world, where technology was in the hands of the few hundred million people can now be in the hands of billions of people.  So we are more connected, we are more aware and we’re much more powerful, in terms of what we can all achieve just at our fingertips.

Mack: Yeah and it’s, there’s an interesting idea I heard, which is something very different at scale but you start talking about like quantum physics.  First of all, physics  kind of rules of reality are different, if you’re talking about really big or really small things.  And I read somewhere, probably twitter, something recently about how technology was fundamentally different at the scale of billions and billions, than it was the tens of millions, hundreds of millions and mobile leading the charge, of this mass-adopted technology, is going to create opportunities that we can’t begin to understand, because we don’t understand what technology in the scale of billions. 

I don’t know if I agree, like I don’t really get why going from a hundred million people to one billion people, changes in that much you already are sucking covering everybody pragmatically, really 30 or pretty equip this things.  I would think, but maybe there is some opportunity for strange new growth that scale.

Ankit: Well, there definitely is and I can give you a couple of examples.  I come from a background of lot of data infrastructure, data mining machine learning, and they’re certainly outgrow them that performs amazingly well, and everybody in the tech world always talks about, “Oh my God this is the company  with great AI technology or machine learning technology,”  but a lot of times the startups never have a lot of data.  

They can prove great things at small scale and stuff works at a small scale, but the second year you throw scale at it, goes algorithms those scale.  Those algorithms  kicked too long, to process large amounts of data and so you have to simplify them and get away from, all the beautifulness of the algorithm, to work at the millions, hundreds of millions and billions of people with this scale.  I would Google and other successful technology companies are found is, once you got that much  data, the data itself becomes a very key part of the solution, where you can do very simple things and make huge impacts.  So the kinds of solutions you build, at a small scale and big scale are very different.

Mack: Okay,  let’s use that as attention and that you telling, what you’re doing because what you’re doing I assume, you’ll eventually going to do it at a very big scale.  So tell  us about [crosstalk].

Ankit:  Absolutely.  Sure, yeah, I left Google last summer and I started last summer like 2013 and started _____ in the late fall, with the goal of understanding what people are doing on their phones, because the phones are becoming more and more part of our digital life, not just what we’re doing on the phone, but what we’re doing with our phones.  Whether it is browsing or entertaining ourselves, or getting stuff done but also ordering and overpaying, making payments in store, with stuff like Apple pay or just within an apple ordering.

Mack: Or snap cash.

Ankit:  Or Snapchat.

Mack: Snap cash launch today?

Ankit:  No.

Mack: In our payments, snap cash got credit today, and from the ridiculous promo video they release, which is like over the top sort of the family guy musical thing, it looks like there’s a straight of a button in there, you link Snapchat to your bank account, ignoring the fact that they got hacked a couple of months ago from phone numbers and then you can just start debiting money around and pay Snapchat.

Ankit:  That’s great, it’s brilliant.

Mack: No, of all the people I thought, would yeah.  What do we okay? What do we okay?  Don’t look that way. That’s  my obstruction.

Ankit:  Cool.  Yeah.  So the heart of what we’re trying to do is,  understand mobile users and help improve the experience of this billions of people, that are coming online via mobile whether it’s by helping our developer and app partners, or content partners personalized offerings. Whether it is by helping them monetized their users better.  But at the end of the day, the heart of our thesis is, if we can understand users well and at scale, then we can improve the user experience, which increases long term and lifetime value, which is where there is a business. 

Mack: So is there not a bunch of smart and accomplished people like Google Analytics for mobile and Kissmetrics maybe, and Mix Panel, I mean all sorts of _____  like, is there not lots of players in this phase?

Ankit:  No.  I don’t look at us as a... what we’re offering is not just an analytics platform.  The analytic platforms of today, are great for all the power users.  But as you said earlier, there is this inflection point that’s going on, where we’re going from hundreds of millions of devices to billions of devices.  How we’re going from tens of thousands of developers to whom everybody being able to become developer.  

All of these analytics products are made for the head, are made for people that really can get into the depths of every piece of the product, but as we scale, we have to make things out work for everybody, without being an analytics guru.   So there’s parts of our product and this is again, in very early development that are just dead simple.  You don’t need to figure out what key value pairs to shoot up the Google Analytics or Kissmetrics and the other barrier, that we’re aiming to break is the barrier of your app.  This weird concept, which is today the way we’ve learnt mobile is all about your app and just keep improving your app.  But if you think about your user, they don’t think about their _____  from the,  “Oh I use Facebook between 2:00 o’clock and 2:04.” They just think about the fact, that they need to get something done and therefore they go, do that something, you’re just a part of their day.   

So how can you understand how you fit in to your user’s life?  And how you can improve your user’s life?  Those are the kinds of answers, we’d like to provide our partners with in order to improve their offerings. 

Mack: So I totally get it, because a couple of years ago, I was running a location with James Company and we flurry in our game and I was in _____ charge of girls, so I honestly had no idea what I was doing.  We’re the girl packer, we’re not around yet, so I couldn’t go to that website and I look at flurry every day and I,  honest to God I would sit there and stare at it.   So I would like, it feels slightly less sure about myself, but have no idea what I was looking at or what I was supposed to be doing or anything like that.  

And it’s five years later now, but that problem fundamentally, isn’t solve.  Right now, you get the board and I still look at it and kinda like, “Well yeah, I’m definitely up in to the right so I’m excited, but don’t have much more _____ going on.”

Ankit:  Right.  It’s not about collecting gobs and gobs of data, it’s about figuring out the one or two things, that can help you get to your next performance metric to your next milestone, to your next inflection point.  It’s not about us, staying what we’re doing terabytes of data or extra bytes of data which, we are doing things at crazy scale, but for our customer it’s about,  “Here’s the one thing that can make your next milestone come sooner.” 

Mack: Yeah.  How do you imagine that the common way somebody in San Francisco uses her phone in two years, will be different from how it is now?  Do you think they can have a lot more notifications? You think about a lot, what notifications?  Do you think they’re going to finally learn phone adequate and not for their phone all the time?  Do you think we can go even further down the rabbit hole like scream obsession? What is the next couple year of western world cellphone use, in a hyper to connect to San Francisco look like?  

Ankit: I don’t think it’s gonna change much from how it is today, in terms of adequate.  I think, people as much as we like to hit, bash on people, about how much they use their phones.  I think most people are actually pretty polite.  They don’t pull out their phone when someone is, that they care about is talking to them. I…[crosstalk]

Mack: _____ ?

Ankit:  Right and otherwise, if there’s somebody or someone who does not about you and they take out their phone, then I think that’s a message that you just got from somebody else as well. So I think that’s not gonna change.  It’s about how much you respect the person, just like right now, you and I are on a phone call.  You could also be checking twitter or you could be paying attention, that’s up to you.  Nothing’s gonna change that, and I think that’s how we are, as humans.  

In terms of notifications,that’s actually a very interesting area, I think there’s gonna be more notifications, which are smarter, which are more interactive.  There’s gonna be certain services that will be bundled into notifications, that you don’t even have to open the app some of the time. You can just do it from the notification, or you can get the information from the notification.  I think people are going to see this increase in notification and there’s gonna be a meta-level set of applications, especially on android, which come which allows you to manage notifications let’s say, “Hey, don’t send me what’s that messages, when I’m in a meeting.” Because they also understand your calendar, or in a set of these rules.   

So the first generation will be, where the user sets up rules, kind of like IFFT.  But the second generation,  this is where things get interesting is, that they’re just gonna learn and they’ll gonna apply this kind of filters. Let the machines do the work and my purpose to that is I come from a data machine learning, all that kind of diagrams, so my bios is in that direction but I think, in San Francisco, people adapt that kind of stuff. 

 I don’t think the rest of the world will adapt that kind of stuff in two years but I think we will say, “Yup, the game notifications send it to me, when I’m on my way home in Uber.  Don’t send it to me when I’m in the middle of the meeting ‘coz really I’m not gonna do it.” And actually,  if game developers are smart, they will figure out how to only send those notifications when the person is idle.

Mack: Yeah, for sure because if you send me that notification.

So here’s one of the random up ahead spinning out of that. And that is, I grew up in a computer-filled household.  My dad was building PC, computers as far as I can remember.  And he has always disliked Macs because in his mind, they’re like a toaster.  They work really well and they’re really nice, but nobody knows how to use them.   He’s like one of these old mechanics which complains with modern cars that you can’t fix your own car.

Ankit: Right.

Mack: Like there’s no access to it which gives him hard world, black hole thing

Ankit: Right.

Mack: And do you think that with and not just like machine learning in regards to mobile messages or notifications, but just to somebody who knows machine learning as a whole.  Are we going to get to the point where we’ve taught the machine how to do so much, that we don’t have to un-teach them or really get to start like you got to call in the machine learning algorithm programmer, like you call a plumber today that fix your stove because there’s still few learning algorithms to help us up?

Ankit:  No.  It’s a great point you make and I hope, we don’t get to that point, machine learning or data mining.  All these things are great but they do have limitations.  Today, machines don’t have emotions. They give them an algorithm and they work on it.  One of the things  come here like what  Google is trying to do is, replicate the human brain from neural network into the Google brain project and other companies are doing some learning things as well, to try and think like a human.

I think there is an aspect of randomness in the way we connect certain dots.  It’s random because we don’t know how that happens today, and if you know it’s too much in the direction of machine learning, you get into this world, like you don’t know how to control the machines where the average person doesn’t. 

So if I think for the next five years, we’ll probably not get there and I think a lot of people are trying to be really careful about, what goes down the machine learning pattern and what doesn’t.  But I think there are companies out there, that approves that people like to tinker and really control their experience.  So let me give you one example. There’s a lot of… in the Android world launchers and your home screens are very popular and I’m sure you’ve come across a couple of them.  There’s companies like Aviate that was set by Yahoo which is a machine learned launcher or there’s Samsung zone experience or HTC zone experience on Google now, which is probably the most popular one that comes from and built on a phone. 

The problem with a lot of these is that, they don’t give a lot of controls to the user, to control their experience.  And unknown to most people in Silicon Valley, there’s a company called [Sunji] Mobile out of China.  They’re public on the NASDAQ and a full disclosure to one of my investors.

Mack: There are also norm rules. 

Ankit: Right, norm rules but what they have is a product called GO Launcher, which allows the average user to change their wallpaper, to change what their experience are in their home screens look like, what their Gmail icon should look like and they’d had over, I think, a couple of hundred million installs, out of a billion Android phones.  That tells you, that people like to tinker with their phones in a Lan-machine-learned way.  So they know what experience they are controlling.  

So, I think there is a very clear signal that people like control and solutions that go too much into the automated domain without enough user control. You know, we’ll see, they will have their limitations and the demand for them, will be balanced by these other products that are so fully human-curated.  Did I make sense?

Ankit: Yeah.  Yeah.  And I don’t think that we know that there is like a…

The fact that 200 million people or 20 or something billion people tinkered with their phone and make it personalized. For everybody, it’s a mandatory device and battery launches. That’s fine. But you iPhone folks, it is really like you get to control the operating system. It’s not that deep. But it’s sort of middle layer of control over the experience that you have over your phone. I think lot of you do personalization. In the same way, stereotypically Asians all had a thing that hanging out to their key chains and all that stuff. They are doing that in the digital space as well. 

Ankit: Right. (Cornstalks).It’s coming to iOS in the form of own key boards and that’s just step 1. 

Mack: Yeah. The entire firm wares of Apple has always been..... We don’t need customization because we are Apple. Steve Jobs from the dead is calling out marching orders. We are designing most amazingly crafted and perfect human ergonomic design experience collaboration orgasm that we have achieved. For android, it’s a full open version source. Europe being the....

Ankit: I don’t know if I agree with that statement. I think Apple has always been giving researcher what they want, having limited number of options to the make the dead decision make it east. Now if you look at iWatch from everything we are seeing, there will be hundreds of combination to really make it something for you. And the App Store is a place again where you can make your hundreds of experience you want. So I think there are certain aspects that they like to control for a unified experience, other aspects do open up.

Mack: Yeah. But Android opens a lot more. Android just does not...

Ankit: Absolutely. I think Apple is more closed on the hardware side of things. Both platforms allow people to open up the software side. 

Mack: So to wrap this up, we can make conclusion like when you have seem learning like will be pioneered in the Android, it is so much more open that it need to be for now. Couple glitch sign of the...

Ankit: tinkering.

Mack: yeah. Tinkering. That could be the future of mobile in lot of ways. 

Ankit: I think that’s the future of western mobile. I think that’s whole new combination of what happens in the developing nations. Because lot of these worlds are just getting connected. I think Android is really doing very interesting things to get those villagers in India connected to Internet, to get the forecast of when the weather is going to certain way, when they are going to get the next water tape coming in to their building, sort of house and their village. And those kinds of technologies are going to transform 5/6th of the world in today that’s not connected. So that’s a whole combination for itself. But I think it’s also very important to remember that piece of the world. 

Mack: I think for me that is the most exciting thing we are doing right now. I have talked about you know your smart phone is your luxury. Then you hear about very difficult situations and adjusting situation in that part of the world where there is not much of resources to go around. And people are sort of given access to "do you want the Apple the suite or do you want the Apple phone charger for your phone as your Android phone. Literally, Wi-Fi is a better, smarter choice for surviving in the disastrous responsive food in a lot of places. Like mobile information is a big deal. Like you said for us arguing about machine learning is going to help us chose a next song or whether we going to do a head on lot by itself. It’s interesting is that it’s emerging massiveness.  They are going to have access to mobile. 

Ankit: So I think the future of mobile in the western world, I think you are going into the machine learned flash smarter phone in the developing and emerging world. You are going into smart phone for the first time. I think both are exciting and both are the future of mobile.

Mack: That’s sir is the perfect end note for our conversation. Thank you so much for involved of course. App screen mobile part I guess and we might offer another or 2 just to talk about new markets in mobile. Because that is such big and interesting things. It only just shown the darkness of it. 

Ankit: Absolutely. Thank for having me.

Mack: Thank you. Have a good day.