 Okay. Let's see if it picks up. Hello. Hey, Paul Martino. John Furrier. You're on the Silicon Valley Friday show with Jeff Frick and my guest Tom Joyce, former executive at EMC HP Dell looking for work talking to VCs. Hey, you got, you got a second? Okay, what's going on? So we're just highlighting bullpen capital as the VC of the week talking about how cool you are and your firm is doing a great job. We had some critique on you talk behind your back, but you can check that out later. You know, that's that's why we're going to make it up to you. So Paul, look, I just want to just get you on because we've been talking about the election as well. All the intros, that's pretty much the news. I did kind of weave in the one of the big things that happened this week was overshadowed by that was my one on one with Andy Jassy up in Seattle this week for two hour exclusive interview, not videotape, but it was going to come out on a post about this massive disruption we're seeing right now. I mean, the election points to it. I've been watching your Facebook feed, you called it, you've been seeing the trends, you grew up in Bucks County, which calls all the elections. You had a good sense of this. And you know, as an investor, you've made some good bets too. What's your take on this? And where did you where did you see the action coming from that gave you the indication that this was possible? Yeah, so more contrarian than anything. People say are you a liberal or are you a conservative, that kind of stuff. But really, if I can describe to my ideology, it's contrarian. And so clearly, from a Silicon Valley perspective, the Trump election is as contrarian as it could have possibly been. But if you were looking at the data with kind of a dispassionate set of eyes, you could absolutely see that this could have happened. So I actually wrote to my partner the day of the election, I said, look, I've been crunching the models and John, I know you know this background, but I'm a high performance computing and predictive modeling guy. So big data. I did my PhD work in that. This is the world I come from. So I sent the following note to my partner's the day of the election. I said, look, I think the trading markets have this wrong. I think Trump's about a one in three shot. I think Hillary isn't a lead, but he's about a one in three shot. And by the way, if he wins, he's going to live with over 300 electoral votes because the Rust Belt is going to vote in a correlated way. And that's basically the letter I sent to my guys. And my guys then, of course, you know, once the election happened, said, how come nobody else anywhere sent a note like this? And literally, I mean, you read the pundits, you read Huckington Post, not a single person said that. And I don't think it was that I was so much smarter than the other people. I think I was able to check my biases at the door and just look at the data, which are, by the way, the same kind of way we pick our companies at bullpen. Hey, Paul, Jeff Frick here. Question for you. You would think after Trump went from last place out of 17 people to win the Republican candidacy that maybe people would have said, you know, he's not such a long shot as it may appear on the surface, but that didn't seem to factor in at all. But the one guy who actually saw that, like that was then Pillary for it. So Nate Silver, he basically got the Trump primary totally wrong. Then even though he's a bit on the left, he started looking more at the data. And the weekend before the election, he had Trump as almost the same number I did. He had Trump at about 35%. But he was pillory. The guy from the Huffington Post goes, Nate Silver, you're being irresponsible. He is at most a 1% to 2% chance to win. And every other model's got a 90% plus. What the hell is wrong with you? And he bent and he calmed to it and then he changed his model to about 16, 18% the day of the election. Paul. But it's funny. You can almost see that he had it right and he didn't have the courage to stick with it. This is about getting the courage. Again, putting all the biases at the door, love how you said that because, again, I was the same way because, you know, I live in Silicon Valley and, you know, I'm from the party of business. I guess I'm kind of a contrarian too, but I'm a blue collar guy myself. And I like to check my biases at the door because I don't like to make a bet. I'm in the party of business. I want to make money. I want to grow and things. So I got to get your take on this. I mean, this is about the media failure. We have a seven-year-old self-funded media business, SiliconANGLE Media, 35 employees and growing, kicking ass, taking names. Again, contrarian, true. But the media fail here is epic fail, in my opinion. You point out some of the biases. I mean, I just saw this morning, Trump, I mean, CNN had a stage interview with protesters. I mean, the bias on the media here has been out of control. And you looked at the data as if you were a reporter. Now, you're not. You're just, you're in the investment business. But this was a media fail. Your thoughts on that? I know you've been sharing some links. Hi, John. I couldn't agree with you more. I know you and I have gone back to be funny now in the aftermath. You had about half the jurors who were wrong, right? God, what was that? You know, awake up. I need to get out of my bubble. And, you know, I must admit, I really appreciate that. The people who said, you know, us being all in for Hillary, being in our own bubble was really a problem. But you know, it scares me, and then we'll get to why the bias happened. There's another half of them that doubled down. I mean, to me, there's now a portion of the press that is completely hopeless. You know, the editor of The New Yorker writes this article at 2.40 in the morning after it happened, which is basically like, you know, all these awful people in the country made this happen. You know, everybody go to hell, basically. You know, but other people, the guy from CBS yesterday wrote an article basically saying, hey, you know, we had a systematic failure here. We better, we better look at ourselves as to why this happened, how we let this happen. You know, maybe making fun of those people in the Midwest who had lost their jobs, were struggling with drug addiction, and had no hope saying, check your white privilege at the door. Maybe that wasn't the best strategy for reaching out to them. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's awesome. And again, the impact, though, also is catastrophic. And we were talking last week on our show about the WikiLeaks. And I said to Jeff, not one of those WikiLeaks has been debunked, meaning no one's come out and said they've been doctored. But it brought up a different issue, which is now getting back to data science and data. We're now living in a social network. You started one of the first social networks. Now, you know, saying earlier, giving you props that you're like the Reed Hoffman that nobody knows you're out there, you've been a pioneer and a contrarian and successful. But if you look at the data, right, if you look at this and say, where's the data? Okay, that is the key right now. And so the impact of WikiLeaks was there wasn't a smoking gun, but the data was reinforcing what what you were saying around the people's perception. So this is going to not just be for politics, Paul, this is going to impact a lot of things. And I know you funded Vanduul, which was a really radical approach was kicking ass and the betting systems and all these kind of social technologies. What does this mean for technology intersecting with social justice and social good and political science? Your thoughts on that? Right. So, so, look, obviously getting hacked is not exactly a great outcome. But getting hacked has led to a level of transparency that should have otherwise been available to us. And I think that's what the lesson is going to be. The lesson is going to be if you know that you can get hacked, or if you know that there's cameras, or you know that there's a world in which information is way more readily available than you think it is, which means being transparent about what you're up to is the only viable strategy forward going. I mean, we adopt this as our strategy right on our website. We put on our website, here's the three things you need if you're going to be a bullpen company. Here's how we pick our company. I can't tell you that a number of people said to me, well, Paul, isn't that your secret sauce? Isn't that the proprietary technology? I'm like, tell you what it is. And if you think right ahead and try and do it, you know, I just, I just think that if it's got to be proprietary, what you're doing in the long run, your advantage just does not exist. If you can't tell them what you're doing and do it because you're better than them, you got you got a really hard future in the new world. Paul, I want to come back on the break. We're going to hold you on the line, but that's exactly what Andy Jackson and I were talking about. Open always wins. Open always wins. And scale matters. Scale matters and execution. And having the best product. That's Paul Martino on the phone. He's going to stay with us. We'll take a short break right now to go to our sponsors, but we'll be right back with more after the short break with Paul Martino, Jeff Frick and Tom Joyce. Great conversation. Paul, stay on the line. We'll be right back. Since the dawn of big data. Awesome. The cube has been there. 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You're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday Show with John Furrier. You're listening to the Silicon Valley Friday Show. I'm John Furrier. Joining me today is Jeff Frick and Tom Joyce and special call in VC of the week, Paul Martino, who picked up. And when the benefit of picking up is we don't trash you behind your back and we get some commentary. Paul, thanks for spending the time. We appreciate it. Coming on, appreciate that. We just, we had a great commentary in the last segment around the impacted election and, you know, really appreciate your commentary as a geek in data analytics and you get your PhD in this area, high scale computing. But now I'll talk about the impact of technology. It's actually election behind us. The game has certainly changed. The trajectory of our country is going to be shifting and I always said to people on Facebook, if you don't get involved, you're part of the problem, not the solution. So, you know, it's an opportunity to let Trump go do his thing. We'll keep a critical eye on him, certainly with Silicon angle. But more importantly, it's game on for a new trajectory and we're going to see how it plays out. But the impacts are unknown and certainly there'll be impact on Silicon Valley. There's going to be impact on technology. There's going to be an impact on ratings, which we touched on. Guys, let's talk about this segment, the impact on Silicon Valley, technology, globalization, Paul's on the East Coast in Philly. We're here in Silicon Valley in our little bubble that's now been busted up. It's a global, the world is flat. I saw Thomas Friedman at the IBM event, you know, and this is now happening, false. Yeah, nothing is safe. I'm getting healthier could have happened than that. I post one of the things I posted on my web page, once this happened, kind of out, out to my friends in Silicon Valley, I said, you got to remember that the Mike Tyson quote, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And to some extent, it's once you get punched in the mouth, once you get your bubble burst, once you realize that there's other work around you, the way you behave in these situations really tells you who you are. As an investor and board member, it's in a situation like this, I want to see how my CEO operates now. When everything's hunky, dory, great up into the right, you know, you definitely have a different person than when you're in a spot where you got punched in the face. So I'm actually pointing to an upset Silicon Valley CEOs operate now that they realize there is another world out there. Yeah, it's great point. Tom Joyce was actually commenting on our opening segment that, you know, a lot of the young kids who are protesting never lost before or seen it an epic loss before and he was commenting, we have Paul, you were talking about, I mean, Tom, you were talking about that notion of just getting back to work versus all the cuddling going on. People are sending memos out saying it's okay, like it's a tragedy, an election and a democracy was a tragedy. And all this cuddling at all these universities, it's ridiculous. Like, it's an election. This is how the system works. It's a land of laws. You might not like it, but get up and get involved. Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, we all, I have kids, right? You know, the first instinct is, all right, how do I explain this to my kid who's sitting next to me and other ones in college at a big party to celebrate Hillary Clinton, right? They haven't experienced this before. But the next day I realized, well, what am I going to do? I'm going to go to work and I'm going to do my job and I'm going to figure out how to play this. I'm going to watch closely and invest in them as kind of go to school. Because, I mean, frankly, Mondale didn't win, Dukakis didn't win, and the country went on. And yeah, I'll tell you what pisses me off the most, to be honest with you, no matter what side you are on. The people who are saying I'm going to go to Canada, that's BS. You know, you're either you're an American or you're a patriot or you're not. And you know, we all kind of have to pull our boots straps up and get going forward. And I think, you know, the comment about the entrepreneurs is key. I mean, day one after the market fell apart in 2008, I was sitting in a startup that couldn't raise money. All right, what do I do now? And this isn't that bad. It's adversity. It's dealing with a dynamic nature of the world. I mean, this is the disruption. So the disruption to Paul's point is how you act will define who you are as a person and a leader. And so Paul, what's your take on that? I mean, what are you advising? I will tell you one thing that upset me a couple of years ago and really upset me yesterday. And I think this is something everybody left, right, center, confrarian, not confrarian, FOMO guy and Silicon Valley needs to get on board with. In the Grubhub CEO comes out and basically says, hey, look, you know, you Trump supporters, you know, you can feel free to resign. And you guys remember what happened to the CEO of Mozilla a couple years ago because of a campaign contribution, campaign contribution to a stance that the then President Obama had. He was ousted by his board of the result of political contribution and the Grubhub CEO. And it's unclear how explicit he was about saying Trump supporters need to resign from my company. We need to all get together and say that behavior is unacceptable. That is un-American. That is un-Cillican Valley. That is un-meritocracy. But, you know, we need to make sure we embrace everyone. We talk about diversity or about diversity of political opinion. That's got to be on the list, too. And I'm really strong on this topic. I will not tolerate that for my CEOs. I don't think anybody in Silicon Valley should tolerate a fraud police firing people because of who they voted for. You know, that's exactly that. You know what, he brought up a good point, and that was Derek Eich or whatever he's, but he also invented JavaScript. So it's not like he was just like some suit. The guy was a player. And by the way, he donated 10 grand, which is in the scheme of things, is like pennies these days, right? It's 10 grand. It's like, you know, writing a check to, you know, anybody. I mean, the guy from Facebook donated $34 million to have Hillary elected. $34 million. Yeah, the thing that gets me is, I think, Paul, what you touched on is we've lost the ability to have civil discourse with difference of opinions and have a conversation about it and agree to disagree. And now it becomes this inflated thing, regardless of the size. Yeah, but the double standard is brutal. He's talking about a double standard. He's talking about people who play the diversity card in an angry way, but yet don't balance it out on the other side. And that's what the journalist didn't do either. I mean, this is a huge issue of this whole Mozilla guy and then the Grubhub, whatever his name is. I just heard rumblings about that. It's unacceptable. It doesn't foster any collaboration. It just separates and creates silos and more less transparent environment. I mean, it's, to me, huge issue. Paul, thoughts. And I'm going to be the guy calling you out every single day when you start believing your own BS. That's a real service to do to those CEOs. For example, in a hot company, as it's up and to the right, and everything is perfect, you need somebody in the room. Data isn't so good. I talked to a friend of mine, who was a Democrat strategist here in Pennsylvania yesterday, and he said a lot of the ads that were run here in Pennsylvania were explicitly directed at women, explicitly directed at the ghost behavior of Donald Trump. And he said at one of the meetings, he said, you know, maybe we should make some ads that talk to the men of Pennsylvania too. Maybe we should make some ads talking about Mike Pence and his positions. And they also said, no, get out of the room. We don't need that opinion. We're going to stick with this strategy. You know, we don't need you in this meeting. The potentially cost within the campaign, because Pennsylvania was so important, that's the kind of behavior when I see them, I start off, I get furious at the CEO for enabling to happen. Paul, let's talk about venture capital and funding in the marketplace and media. Obviously, Jeff, and I've been riffing on the NFL ratings going down. This all points to a couple of disruptions going on. One is new opportunity, new entrants entering the market. You funded fan dual seed financing. There's a lot of other competition for NFL. People are on Snapchat 24 seven, mind share and other things. Thoughts on investing in this disruption and your thoughts on the NFL ratings. Team starts a fantasy sports company in Edinburgh, Scotland. Right. And Edinburgh, like people with not exactly the traditional times and backgrounds. And you know what's common about other venture people, didn't give them the right time of day because they didn't set the piouses or across the system. Well, first of all, we believe in the contrarian. We're a media company founded by people who had no media degrees of any kind. But NFL has been talking. By your standard, we're still an outlier though. We're still contrarian. Outliers are key. Obviously, that's a success. We've seen that. NFL is not an outlier. They've been doubling down on their billion dollars. Certainly, I'm a Tom Brady fan. So I am not a big NFL fan, but the ratings are down and they're scratching their head going. What the hell's going on? They blame the election. They blame baseball. There's a lot of blame, but all those excuses are gone. And I don't think it's going to change. Is it a condition of just attention or is there underlying causes to this, your opinion? Well, I was going to say, the consumption patterns, to me, it seems like it's bipolar. You're either totally into your fantasy and you watch your app and you watch your guy score points throughout the day. Or you go to Red Zone. Why would I go to Fox or CBS or NBC when I could watch Red Zone commercial free? Well, I think there's that. And I think the other thing is my son and all his friends, they play football. Son's captain of the football team, plays every down. Doesn't watch football on TV. Doesn't watch anything on TV. They can't get them to watch TV. Why is that? Just because he's distracted? That's not the medium. They consume things through anymore. They just don't want to do it. They don't want to sit in one room and watch TV. They've cut the cord. And, you know, it's funny to me just to say, knowing nothing about this and having no data, the folks that were ahead of it were like world wrestling. You know, they were using the technology early. The NFL's not, they've been beholden to the old novel. Well, Paul brings up the point about the Kaepernick. The Kaepernick reinforces the vibe, which is I want entertainment. I love football. I don't want politics jammed down my throat. Well, I think that's a big factor. Short term. It might not be the reason, but I think he might be right on this that, you know, whether you agree with him or not, this is an issue. Wait a minute. I want to watch football. Not some bullshit media thing. I mean, that's as much money on broadcast, linear television. They're stuck with it. It's difficult. They're the one that's going to get this rough. People who are 16, 18 years old, they've never watched the game from beginning to end. We'll go watch all the clips. It's actually the way in which it's consumed. I think that's right. Yeah, fantasy. Non-linear fantasy. It's fantasy. All this points to the friggin non-linear. Yeah. So if the Colin Kaepernick thing goes away, right? I don't think the dynamic changes. I think they have a fundamental long-term problem. I think it's like WikiLeaks. It's not a smoking gun, but it's a reinforcement of the core audience, which is like people who aren't on. So I think that's one. So I just got, there was an erosion at the young side for all of the primary reasons that we're talking about, but there was an erosion of people at the more 65 and up Rust Belt as it was. If it was one of them, maybe it'd be down a few points, but the fact that they lost younger and older people all at the same time, that's surprising. And if you look, their drop in demographic is across the board as opposed to just the young people. And that's also why maybe the quality of the product and the parity in the league is something to look at as well. Paul Martino, thanks for taking the call and really riffing with us. Really appreciate the commentary and all insight was phenomenal. And the obviously discusses the impact be great. Love to bring you back for another segment. I wanted to talk about the blue collar entrepreneurship trend that's going on that we talked about last week. Have to do that another time. Thanks so much for picking up. Appreciate it.