 Live from Cube headquarters in Palo Alto, California. It's the Silicon Valley Friday Show with John Furrier. Okay, welcome everyone to the Silicon Valley Friday Show. I'm John Furrier here at Palo Alto for Friday, our show. I'm joined with Paul Martino. Coming back as a guest, Paul. Skyping in from Las Vegas. Holiday with his family. Paul, great to have you join in on Skype. Thanks for taking the time. I mean, I stopped the family vacation for this, John. So how can I help you? I know you're Milamelo in your older age. You know, you have, you know, family, you just settle down. Very successful venture capital firm. Very easy time in Vegas for you. What's on the plans? Just relaxing in your room, going a few shows, little gambling. You guys, my father-in-law's 70th birthday, so we're here for a big party. Awesome. Well, I wanted to bring you back in because our last conversation we had was really talking about the election. You had really had the real first, in my opinion, kind of really precise commentary on all the data and elections. And then also now we're 100 days in for Trump. His first 100 days are happening. And just in general, there's just a ton of politics going on. And I wrote a post on Facebook last night just to try to get a sense from folks on, you know, the serious question we've had, you know, in my commentary on the show is, is there a serious interest and should we do a political weekly video show? Question, does Silicon Valley need its own meat depress? Now, I kind of threw that out there as a chum in the water, but it was amazing. It was almost a 50-50, no, no, no, yes, do it. And I got a ton of direct messages. And, you know, I think some of the things that you've been commentating on on your Facebook feed has been kind of pointing to the fact that the old days, politics in Silicon Valley really didn't have much to talk about. Yeah, certainly immigration, that's gotten better and better now. It's kind of screwed up. But now, you know, you got, you know, Bezos owns the Washington Post. All the tech leaders are meeting with the president. You got the Uber situation, both at, you know, on a cultural level and also government level. I mean, tech and politics are intertwined. And you're in the middle level. You were just down in D.C. last week. We tried to get you on last week, but you were, you know, booked with meetings. What's your take on what's happening and the clash between the intersection between technology and politics? So let me first talk about that 50-50 split that you described. I find a lot of people right now are disappointed that their Facebook feed is so entirely filled with political posts that I'm not surprised more people weren't against the idea. And by the way, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to have a Silicon Valley meets politics show. I just think asking your Facebook friends was a very biased selection to take. I posted some pictures from when I was in fifth grade at a birthday party the other day and everyone sent me mail saying, thank God you posted something other than politics this week. So I think there's a bit of fatigue if you go to Facebook as your sample for that. But I think what you're seeing right now is it's very clear that Silicon Valley absolutely is paying attention to politics and politics is paying attention to Silicon Valley maybe for the first time in our careers. The, it's interesting. I totally agree on the Facebook bias. I mean, it literally is, it's depressing actually. I find it actually a downer and one night I just was so fed up. I just logged out. Some people actually checking out of Facebook for a long time and seeing that consistently going on. You got the hardcore, you know, people on the left saying, oh my God, this guy's insane. Tell the hardcore people on the right saying, no, you know, all this is going on. Then you got Facebook in the middle of it at the center of the fake news. And that article that came out last week weaponizing AI, kind of talking about the gamification of fake news. You can't help but look at these platforms and say, there's no editorial, there's no voice. It's how does it, it's all, it's a quant shock game right now. So I just find it very disheartening. And you know, you obviously talked about that last time, but what's the answer to this? The fake news problem is an extremely difficult problem because there are essentially two classes of fake news. There are verifiably simple facts like George Bush died last night, but the vast majority of fake news isn't, did George Bush die last night as an example of a fake news story that ran around not long ago? George Bush senior, this went around about two weeks ago. Most of the fake news though gets into the category where it is not a verifiable single fact, but it is a opinionated statement about something that might be going on. And depending on your left or right bias, you might view it as fake news or not. This is an extremely difficult problem. AI will not solve this anytime soon. And so I think people who say, somehow we're gonna have a set of moderators or a set of AI deem an article true or not true. I don't see that happening anytime soon because I view this as a levels of gray problem as opposed to a complete black and white problem. The truly factually false stories are easy to identify. That's not where the fake news problem is. Paul, you and I had a podcast almost 10 years ago. You're one of your startups, aggregate knowledge. I was in the collective intelligence game and you were doing a lot of stuff around data, ad placement and whatnot, arbitraging and cooler, predictive analytics before it was hot. Is there a collective intelligence algorithm out there that actually can help? I mean, you're talking about the wisdom of crowds. Yeah, that's been around for a while, but I mean, more than ever now, the trusted sources are at risk. I mean, people now are on one hand saying, the New York Times can't be trusted, but yet that's one of the most trustful trade or industry newspapers around, but yet there's biases there. But is there a new collective intelligence opportunity there? There has to be an answer to this problem, but it's not obvious to me right now. So even though in general I'm a pretty optimistic guy, I'm pessimistic about solutions in the short run for this particular problem. I am definitely of the camp that views places like the Washington Post and the New York Times is heavily biased. I wouldn't say that the reporting is incorrect, but is highly slanted. And that is the harder problem to deal with than factually incorrect reporting. And to some extent you even see what people like the Oms-Budsman recently said, where they basically came out and said, well, the president's lying, so we have to treat him differently. We're actually gonna treat the use of the word lie differently with this president than any other president in history. And so when you change the rules because the president's behaving differently, you have to ask yourself, were the rules fair to begin with? Yeah, who said in the rules? That's a good point. So I gotta ask you a question. You were in DC. What's going on there? You've been meeting folks down there. What's going on? What's your view from the front lines as you talk to folks in and around Washington? Obviously there's the divide. There's two different camps out there. Highly polarized, a lot of anger. What's the scoop at the West Wing? What's going on in the plumbing of the government and in the society around the DC circles? Yeah, so there's an energy, whether you like or don't like what Trump is doing, there's an energy in DC because DC's hot and in vogue right now. It's like what it was like in 2000 in Silicon Valley. Everyone was paying attention to what we're doing. Everybody's paying attention to what Washington's doing. And there are definitely points in time where no one's paying attention to what Washington's doing. So there's a certain level of activity and excitement there regardless of which side of the aisle you're on. But the thing I struggle with right now is there is no way that the pace of protests, outrage, et cetera can possibly continue. I think I post it at the end of Trump's first week, something on Facebook to the effect, hey, one week down, only 203 to go. And now five weeks in, it seems like the pace hasn't slowed down at all. There is no way that this pace can continue for the next 200 more weeks. I just think fatigue will set in if it hasn't already set in. You're seeing articles even about how SNL tuners are tuning out because the Trump jokes are old now. It's boring. We've seen enough of it. Let's get another joke on the TV. Well, I said in our live ratings are high and Alec Baldwin has more and more stuff in there. But I mean, is there, besides the fatigue factor, I mean, what's the positive coming out of this? Because you've been very vocal around just putting out data and really kind of playing it at more as, hey, you're an educated person trying to get facts. And a lot of people are in the same camp that you're in, which is, you know, I really want to look at the data and I want to look at the biases and treat them differently. I want to understand them. And yeah, people are getting their heads chopped off of they just say anything, right? These days it feels like it just is no discourse, civil discourse of any kind. What's your take on that? You're in the middle of it. What's the, where do you see it going besides the fact that we can't keep up the pace? But John, you have to set the tone. And so while I bring up provocative points of view on my Facebook page, I do interviews of this kind and by the way, I was thrilled when I was on your show last time. You couldn't believe the number of people on both sides of the aisle who reached out to me gave me commentary thoughts through potentially a next time coming on the show. But we have to be adults about this. We have to set the terms of trade. And when someone puts that sarcastic comment in there or that insulting comment on your page, I delete it, I have to moderate it, right? And so if you're gonna have an intelligent discussion about media bias, if you're gonna have an intelligent discussion about the policies of the president, you need a forum that is free from the kind of awful attacks that this has become. The personalization of politics, the Saul Alinsky technique of personalizing and making fun of the opposition is really starting to come home to roost. And I just think people like us who actually have a bit of a platform need to stand up to that and say, if you wanna have honest discourse, if you wanna debate me, come on right in. But if you wanna just call me a name, then I have no time for you. The, I totally agree. Jeff Frick and I were talking about this called civil discourse. That's essentially how the country runs. Any impact on your take on other technologists who are trying to get involved? Because one of the things I see as a bright spot coming out of all this is the engagement level. Granted, there's a level of attacks and personalization, as you mentioned, to your political stance, but depending who you are. But there seems to be more engagement around this. Have you seen any positive things come out of this that you could point to that says, hey, you know, there are some things happening. I mean, my daughter who's a sophomore in high school, you know, she and I, she was talking to me on the right to school today about immigration and there's a lot of Mexican immigrants in California. So she was kind of feeling like, you know, she thinks that there should be some accountability. That's not an entitlement. This is my daughter, very conservative viewpoint. I'm like, well, I would not, I'm afraid to say that in school. That's a direct quote. So she sees the empathy, but she also sees the other side, which is, you know, America's not an entitlement and my wife's grandparents immigrated this country and they learned the language and they did those things. So it's a balance between that kind of tone of the younger generation getting more involved, you seem more engagement. So I was in DC last week and they had a protest on the Thursday that I was in town where a day without immigrants and a lot of the restaurants were closed and this was to make a point. And I really thought to myself, because the restaurant I was gonna go to for my meeting was actually closed because it was a day without immigrants. And I thought to myself, who exactly is this message targeted at? Oh, I know it's targeted at Trump, but just by enforcing anti-immigration laws that we have on the books, does that really make the administration anti-immigrant? Has Trump ever come out and said, you know, we're closing the borders forever and we're never gonna let another immigrant come in? So a lot of people in Silicon Valley have also said, well, you know, the policies of this administration are gonna make it more difficult for my companies to hire people. Well, does that mean you were illegally hiring people before? So I think there needs to be a rational discourse around this. Are Trump's policies really designed to close off the borders forever? And he is truly, now the country is shut for immigrants forever? Because that was the message of the protests on Thursday. And I asked some of the protesters I ran into on the street. I said, do you really think the doors are closed forever? And I think there's a big disconnect between some of the hysterical press around what Trump is doing and what the actual implications are. And I think that has to stop. At some point, there has to be some cool heads having an honest discussion about what the right immigration policy for this country is, as opposed to just saying, you're a xenophobic, awful racist, sexist, homophobe or whatever the word's gonna be. And therefore, I don't even need to speak to you. And it's a serious takedown. We obviously see that. I wanna switch gears on the entrepreneurial question because that's something that obviously, we've talked about in the past and one of the things I'm certainly passionate about is the tech policies around entrepreneurship. You fund startups either early stage and or with bullpen, metaphor coming out of the bullpen, relief picture, if you will. You bridge companies that are potentially what they call walking dead or zombies or ones that haven't broken through that need that bridge capital. A lot of them are immigrants and not American citizens. Some cases are on H-1B visa or they just got a path of citizenship or just got their green card. So I know you partially work with a lot of folks that have gone through the immigration process. Entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of this country. You go back, would it ever race you on a talk about? The Irish immigrants from my side of the family, the Italians from my wife's side or whatever ethnic place you're from, that's been immigration. And they've come to the country and a lot of companies have been built. And just- Absolutely, absolutely. I don't see that stopping anytime soon because there's a more aggressive stance towards illegal immigration. I mean, to some extent, the most recent orders and advice to ICE are enforcement of existing laws on the books as opposed to new specific laws. By the way, John, I have to correct you on one thing though. Bullpen does not do bridge rounds. These are not walking dead companies. These are companies that are six to 12 months away from their series A milestone. Going into the business of trying to pick the zombies that will survive is a very difficult business. And I don't think I'm smart enough to do that one. Good point of clarification. We're Paul Martino, the founder and also managing director of Bullpen Capital. I stand corrected. I knew that for a fact. I was just kind of generally speaking, there's a lot of startups that are falling in that category. So I kind of misspoke there. But you do pick, look for the ones that are, I would say diamonds in the roughs as we talked about in the past. But this is the opportunity that we're talking about. You're an actual person who writes checks to fund growth companies. That creates jobs, right? Back on the job thing, jobs are created. And the thing that now that's center stage, certainly in the political sphere is this whole jobs coming back to America. But one of those things that's killing those jobs is automation. Bill Gates was basically commenting that robots should be taxed. And I don't know if that's tongue in cheek or legit, but he's kind of highlighting that you're going to see machine learning, you're going to see automation. And those jobs might not be manufacturing. So they might never come back, but that you're still going to need a machinist to run the machines, if you will. So the jobs, we believe in Silicon Angle that those jobs are going to increase significantly. I mean, look at just in cybersecurity and in AI right now or Internet of Things. There's more openings in big data, cyber surveillance, than can be filled by qualified people. And it's in the millions of potential. So this whole retraining thing comes up. So this is kind of the area that is again becoming a political football. Job, what kind of jobs? The jobs that yet haven't been created on education systems. So again, back to education's hit by it. Your thoughts on all that. So I had the honor of being on a panel that Lincoln Initiative sponsored with Charles Murray, the author of the Bell Curve. He's out now actually touting UBI as the answer to many of your problems. I actually debated him. I think he thought I would be a pro UBI. What's UBI? Can you just, what's UBI? Yeah, universal basic income as a way to combat the job losses. And it was very funny. I think he thought I would come out since my credentials were of Silicon Valley as a UBI supporter. And I came out to some extent as a UBI skeptic because in general, every time an entitlement program is created, it creates new entitlement and the other one doesn't go away. And so it was very interesting. He thought I think I was gonna be his ally in the argument. And I ended up proving to be the skeptic, whereas I think most people in Silicon Valley would have been more on his side that it would be an interesting experiment to go run if we had universal basic income as a solution to potentially deal with the automation that will likely decimate jobs. I fundamentally said that's the Luddite fallacy. Years and years have gone by, decades have gone by and we've had this Luddite fallacy over and over again that this time is different, this time is different. But every time it has created dislocation but we've had more efficiency on the backside of it. And so my challenge back to the people on that side of the fence is why is it different this time? I've heard it's been different for the last 50 years. It was never different for those last 50 years. So why is it this time different? Well, John Markoff was on a panel, Rob Hofer, our editor in chief at Silicon Angle was two nights ago, John Markoff, Paul Saffler were on a panel here in Silicon Valley and that came up. And one of the things that the fallacy question was, ATMs were supposed to put tellers out of business when in fact there's more tellers now because the efficiencies have shifted to more branches opening up, hence more people. So again, this is where the blind spot is in my mind. Do you agree? I'm saying maybe at some point in our lifetimes, John, that happens where this time really is different. But you know, I'm not good at predicting the future. I never said I was. I like to look at companies in six to 12 month increments and see if they're gonna hit their business plans. I'm good at that. Predicting these futures 25, 50 years, the robots are gonna take over, the robots are gonna blow up the world, the robots are gonna control the nuclear switch. I think that kind of almost just intellectual, intellectualizing just because you have a form to do so is not necessarily helpful. Well, there's bombastic predictions like that that are kind of groping for thought leadership or being a futurist, whatever the buzzword is. But Paul, you have been really through your work on the cutting edge of social networks before social networks, you did tribe. And again, you kind of, you get drawn in and knowing you personally. So being a visionary is just being a little bit faster than the other guy, right? So how far out you wanna predict is always the challenge. But that's really the key thing. And investing in companies is hard too. That's really difficult. But I wanna get something that you have experience in, millennials and the younger generation. I mentioned my daughter who's a sophomore in high school. You look at a lot of entrepreneurs that come in. What's the current mindset right now? Can you just anecdotally classify or globalize what the current sentiment is for the younger generation? I'm talking about entrepreneurs coming right either dropping out of college or graduating right out of college or having a master's degree under 30. What's the mindset of those folks out there right now across the broad spectrum of sentiment from politics to geopolitical to entrepreneurship? What's the, and technology, what's the mindset for the younger generation? John, there's an amazing thing that's happened over the last, I don't know, five years as accelerated but maybe it started 10 years ago. You know, the era of cheap, the era of lean made it cheap to start a company. But this had this also additional side effect that it democratized who could actually start the company. And you see a level of energy because entrepreneurship is now more accessible to a larger swath of the population. You know, when I was doing my first company about 20 years ago, you know, you had to be your PhD dropout from Stanford or Princeton or something like that to get paid attention to, to have the technical chops, to have the ability to groys the five to $10 million to go build a prototype. You know, you're seeing students who were 16, 18, 20 years old from their dorm rooms from their parents' bedrooms on a couple thousand dollars to get products out that get millions of users. And so this democratization of the front end of the funnel of entrepreneurship has led to an excitement that I don't know that we've ever seen before. And only good things are gonna come out of this is my guess. And you see that excitement anytime you talk to someone from the millennial generation. And it's kind of made entrepreneurship be very cool right now. You know, I was once in a meeting, I think I told you the story once before, I was in a meeting with a bunch of celebrities in Hollywood and the producer of the film I was involved in, he said to me, he says, Paul, you gotta understand one thing, when you're in the room with those people, when they go to bed at night, they dream of being you. And now these are big time celebrities. And this was something I was thinking there. I'm like, I'm like, no, come on, you're pulling my leg. But sure enough, that was the best advice I got going into that meeting because when they go to bed at night, they wanna be us, where we have careers are whole lives ahead of us. We can be entrepreneurs at 20, at 50, at 80. A lot of times if you're in Hollywood, your career is over when you're 30 or 40 or, you know, you've hit the ceiling. So it's very exciting to be in our business, especially when there's so much excitement worldwide around this new democratization that's happened. And we get to do this for the rest of our lives, John. Yeah, I'm 51, still going strong. So, you know, I'm gonna keep running. Again, the joke is entrepreneurs work 80 hour weeks to avoid working 40 hour weeks as the joke goes. Paul, final question, given that your tone and sentiment of, you know, leading, having civil discourse and moderating behavior on Facebook. I mean, you can't help but notice the trouble PR, trouble Uber's in right now. Travis, the CEO, he's only 40, right? So he's 11 years younger than I am. You know, young guys and young guys, they do wild things and certainly the culture has grown. It's a rocket ship venture. It's a classic case of just massive growth and over hiring potentially. Processes may not be as smooth and certainly they're in an HR problem. The sexual harassment claims are pretty significant. So some bad behavior. I mean, I look back at companies before the internet became so surveillance oriented. I mean, there's always been bad behavior in high growth companies. Not saying they can excuse for Uber, but they're in a tough spot. How bad should he quit? Should he be forced out? I mean, that's dangerous when you start getting the founders under pressure over things that can be fixed. And he is apologizing. What's your thoughts on Uber's current situation? I have no idea the level of details, the depths of the problem. You know, one person came out. Obviously there will be others that come out. What I have to say about this is the following. And I've said this about many other kinds of discrimination, harassment, et cetera. The buck must stop. You know, if this happens in your office, you have to stop it from happening again. You have to take appropriate action. And the idea that you sweep it under the rug because someone's a top performer is BS to me. Right? You are in charge. Just like I said, we have to have civil discourse on Facebook. If you're in charge of the company, or you're in charge of HR at the company and something like this happens and you brush it under the rug because, oh, that person's a good performer, that is unacceptable. We should not allow that to be an answer. But we also shouldn't go on a witch hunt and say, well, geez, we need programs of awareness at every single tech company because this is such a widespread thing and it always happens. I promise you that if one of my companies what happened, happened. That person would have been fired and been out because that's how I ran my company. There was an adult in charge. Now, I'm not saying Travis is not an adult in charge. We don't know enough of the information. But the buck must stop and you must take action when the wrong things happen. But let's not get the reeducation camp going for all of Silicon Valley because a couple of companies didn't behave the right way. Yeah, all right. Paul Martino, we'll leave it at that. Great job. And hey, love the work you're doing. I think as you intellectually use your social graph and your network to surface data on the politics, I find that fascinating. It's been an inspiration to me. In fact, it's got me thinking about doing more political coverage and again, honest and textual conversations is what it's all about. And I think tech is now fully intersected with politics. I am not a political person, but I want to be informed. And so appreciate the input. Thanks so much. Paul Martino, everyone. Great to have Paul on the cube here on the Silicon Valley Friday show in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier and what a great show. Great to have Paul on, bringing that commentary and being honest about the political situation. But more importantly, he highlights some of the big things that are happening around Silicon Valley and technology. He mentioned the Uber thing, which I want to just make a comment on. I think I was talking on Facebook just last night and was looking at some of the things Sarah Lacey, in particular, she was really taking a task on Uber and thrown onto the bus, quite frankly, by a lot of her peers. And I made a comment on her Facebook page that said, stay with it, hang in there and remember the people who threw into the bus and remember the people who stood with you. And she was really a victimized by, in my opinion, by the Uber program or culture now coming out in a lawsuit that they have a lot of sexual harassment. And I was also getting some private messages from some other folks, essentially verifying that the Uber culture really is about, from the top down as a very harassment oriented, kind of fast and loose startup. Here's my take on that. My take is that this stuff happens in these high growth companies. And as Paul Martina pointed out, and I think really is the key point, is you got to be on these things right away. If you don't eliminate these weeds in the soil, pull them out and get rid of them, then it's going to faster. I think Uber is a classic case of a rocket ship growth company, AKA Unicorn, just run by a bunch of young guys. Travis, the C is only 40 years old, so they're in the prime of their life and they're fast and loose. So there's bad behavior. The key is eliminate it, fix it, and right now they got a lot of problems on their hands. So good kudos to Paul for pointing that out. Now, you think Uber's problems were bad with that PR, looking at siliconangle.com, just the front page of our site, check out for the latest news, Alphabet, which is Google, Waymo, which is their self-driving car unit, says Uber stole key parts of their self-driving technology. So breaking news there, you thought Uber had their own cultural problems. They're back in the fray here. So a lot of dynamics going on around Uber. The delete Uber has been a viral campaign. I hope this doesn't cause them to go into a spiral. I'm a big fan of Uber as a service, like Lyft as well. And again, I would hate to see that company get poisoned from the inside out so that hopefully this doesn't happen. Other things on silicon angle, HPE investors are unhappy as revenues and profit outlook fall. Again, their earnings did not come in. Splunk issues weaker, first quarter outlook pushes the shares down by Paul Gillan and of course, beyond the phones, IOT and 5G, announcement at Mobile World Congress. We're gonna have two days, Monday and Tuesday, 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time to six, Monday and Tuesday, breaking down all the coverage of Mobile World Congress. So check us out. We're gonna be wall-to-wall coverage. So thanks for watching Silicon Valley Friday Show. I'm John Furrier, see you next week.