Ep: 104: Kara Swisher: Tech journalist, digital media entrepreneur, and pioneer

Kara Swisher is the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and the co-host of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York magazine. She was also the cofounder and editor-at-large of Recode, host of the Recode Decode podcast, and co-executive producer of the Code conference. She was a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and host of its Sway podcast and has also worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Her latest book it titled: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story.

 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

  • Her father’s passing when she was just five made her appreciate the ephemeral nature of life and focus on what truly matters.
  • A lot of big tech titans have a big deficit in their upbringing and replace it with enablers and fence themselves off from the population, hence their isolation and loneliness.
  • With her direct no nonsense approach, she has an uncanny ability to get big people to open up and share unique insights.
  • She has been as entrepreneurial and innovative with her career as the tech entrepreneurs she covers for a living.
  • She feels Steve Jobs is the most consequential figure of the modern tech era.
  • She has called Mark Zuckerberg one of the most carelessly dangerous men in the history of technology.
  • “Excellence is doing your very best to get to the heart of something, doing your very best to create something fresh and new, and doing your very best to get it right.”

 

Notes:

Book: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

Podcasts: Pivot   On with Kara Swisher

Ep 71: Jim McKelvey: Co-Founder of Square on Art, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

Jim McKelvey is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, philanthropist, and artist.  He cofounded the mobile payments company Square and sits on the Board.  He also founded Invisibly, a digital content company, LaunchCode, a nonprofit that teaches technology literacy, and a glass art studio. His book is called The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time.

 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

  • He has never had a life plan and because of that, he’s become very comfortable with uncertainty.
  • He was a state debate champion and owed much of his success to the ability to read the judges and adjust his strategy accordingly.
  • “If you want to be successful and make some money, copy what works. But if you want to have a phenomenally successful company, you have to do something original.”
  • The big insight was rather than going after an existing market of merchants already using credit cards, Square decided to go after a market that didn’t even exist – the tiny mom and pop merchants without access to the credit card payment networks.
  • They designed a small card reader that looked really cool and got your attention but was flimsy and difficult to use. But the novelty of it turned every Square sale into a Square advertisement. This allowed the product to go viral without needing to spend one dollar on advertising.
  • What allowed Square to survive a competitive attack by Amazon and thrive as a standalone company was their innovation stack. An innovation stack is a series of innovations needed to provide a new product or service and that collectively work together to provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
  • Training as an artist was a big help in mentally preparing to be an entrepreneur.
  • “Excellence is something that’s above and beyond normal good. It’s something that’s surprisingly wonderful.”

 

Show Notes

Book: The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

Non-profit: LaunchCode

New startup: Invisibly