Ed Zitron: Silicon Valley's Empty Promises and Billion-Dollar Blunders

26:59A quarter with Microsoft, probably more. Yet they lay people off just so they can make another number go up is all that's important. It's so frustrating. What do you think happens to people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel? Were they good and they got corrupted or were they're corrupted and now because they're powerful, their corruption can come out? Can you explain those kind of changes that they seem to have gone through? So I think there is a universal theme with billionaires. I think there are very few exceptions. Steve Wozniak, I think, is probably an exception.

27:37A very, very rich people that they get where they get without ever enjoying a single moment. They don't have anything that they truly love and are attached to that brings them joy that isn't money related, that isn't to do with business, that isn't to do with conquest. So when they eventually get to a point where they have everything, they really feel like they have nothing. I can't speak to whether Bezos or Musk. Musk sounds like he's been pretty horrific for a long time. I don't know much about the history of Bezos, but I know this. The way these men act is depressed. These men are not happy.

28:13They're not saying these things because they have a deeply held ideology that means something to them. They're saying out of grievance that they feel the world has taken something from them when they themselves have been arguably the biggest beneficiaries of the world's resources. They could go and do anything, and they choose to do what it is they're doing. They don't act with kindness. They act with malice and aggression and judgment and hatred. And that comes from a place of emptiness. That comes from a place of not really enjoying a single damn thing. When you have all the choices in the world, you choose to go online and get angry.

28:48You choose to go online and attack women. You go online, attack trans people, and attack minorities, and attack DEI. You do that because you are miserable and isolationist. That's what it is at the heart of these men. The way they're acting is disgusting. It's really putrid. And it's also pathetic and cowardly. And the opposite of manly, it's the opposite of masculinity. It's so cowardly. When you have power and you use that power to attack people who are powerless or marginalized, that is weakness. And that's what these men are. They're weak. They have all the power in the world. But deep down in their hearts, they're weak.

29:27I have to say I scratch my head. I scratch every part of my body. I just do not understand. When you have infinite resources, infinite money, why are you not taking the high road? If there's a time to take the high road, it's now, right? And like I said, you could eat whatever meal you want, cook by your favorite chef, your favorite band playing anywhere. You could do any of these things, but you choose this, and that only comes from a place of deep unhappiness. That only comes from a place when there isn't anything you actually want to do at all When you yourself feel this echoing emptiness inside you because if they felt anything for themselves if they felt anything joyous or happy that they could attach to they would attach themselves to that But they attach themselves to anger mark zuckerberg on joe rogan was a joke That's ridiculous.

30:18You're going on. There's no masculine enough anymore. Where you got billions of dollars. You own chunks of hawaii What are you doing? Why are you here? Why are you on a podcast? You could be in Hawaii doing anything. Hawaii is an incredible looking place. You should just be there and stare into the distance. There's so much beauty there alone. You have all of this stuff and you choose to do this, and it must just not feel like much to them. They must just feel nothing but anger. Anger and resentment. Resentment after they're given everything. Everything. They must have more, they must take more it must be the empty inside them the void but would you make the case that if they were not like this they would not have achieved success which came first i think that you're right that there is definitely a degree of if they did not have actually no i take that step back i don't know if i conflate the two i think the single-minded focus on success absolute success.

31:18I mean, in many of these cases, when you look into their actual past success, it wasn't like they had great business acumen. They stabbed a few backs a few times. Musk is an incredible leverage guy. That's really it. He knows how to leverage assets. That's about it. Mark Zuckerberg hasn't written a line of code since 2006. Mark Zuckerberg knew who to go to. Sheryl Sandberg is probably more responsible for Mark Zuckerberg being a billionaire than Mark Zuckerberg. There are people that attach themselves to these people that help. I think that, sure, that whether or not billionaires should exist is pretty obvious.

31:49You don't need a billion dollars. Just come on. But I think that what got them there was that to an extent. But what did they do when they weren't making money? Did they not have fun? Did they ever watch JoJo's Bizarre Adventure? Did they ever listen to Jet, like Charles Mingus? Did they not do anything cool or fun in between now and then? Was there nothing that made their heart sing? And I think the answer is no, there wasn't. And I think this happens to millions, billions of people all their lives. Plenty of people who end up dirt poor who also find no joy. It's just more obvious with these people because they have so many more choices that they don't choose.

32:27So if I am a young entrepreneur and I'm listening to this podcast, like my head is exploding right now. You're basically ripping all my tech heroes. So what is a young entrepreneur supposed to do? what is the young entrepreneur's north light? Cling to helping people. I don't necessarily mean helping people in the vocational way. Make something that people need that works. Be good to your friends and family. Love the people closer to you harder while working on whatever you're doing. You can work incredibly hard while also putting love and joy into the world by being there for your friends, by being an available person.

33:04Go to therapy. It's the best thing that most people don't do. exploring oneself is one of the most beautiful things a human can do and young entrepreneurs are so commonly told to aspire to be these billionaire types when you look at their history and you say this isn't something to aspire to this is something they fell into so the advice for young entrepreneurs is focus on the most valuable thing you can do that's easiest for you that's the best i can say the closest you can get something you're naturally good at that pays well And I internally dial that in just as a job thing. But if you're going to build something, solve a real problem.

33:39Find something that pisses people off or that frustrates them within their life, within their job, and truly solve that in a way that involves them paying you. Because there's nothing. That's the thing. It's okay as long as you're up front with the incentives. Not being like Mark Zuckerberg, not being like Larry Ellison, not being like Jeff Bezos isn't a bad thing. And also, these men grew up in vastly different times to today. Their lessons, even if they were positive, would not be relevant to a society where it's harder to accumulate wealth, where most young people can't buy a house, where most housing and rent is way higher, where we, as Americans, burn so much money on healthcare.

34:18The world is different now. So, appending yourself to these people isn't necessarily the right thing. focusing on the reality focusing on the tangibles of helping people with good software or hardware or what job you do find a way to be useful and monetize that you can be a creative too that will be a grind but you can do it just whatever you do actually give a crap you are basically rewriting every business book written in the last 25 years there ed Yeah, I've read a lot of them too And a lot of them are written like they were written 25 years ago The Effective Executive by Drucker is still pretty good Because a lot of his lessons come down to Hey, when someone's good under you, treat them well If you have good people working for you And they work on a product that people like, people will buy it Be a good boss, be a boss that respects the labor of other people These are timeless lessons The problem is that modern business writing has got so far away from that It feeds into this culture of easy answers of quick fixes, very obvious kind of try it, but it's to try and get people away from having to have responsibility for others and themselves.

35:30Not to say that circumstances don't happen that change things, but it's, there are no easy answers. Sometimes the answers involve you not making as much money because you're spending it on other people working for you. Sometimes it means you work harder and you have to spend more time working and investing in the people and the processes. I actually really like Rework. Rework by the Basecamp guys. That was a very good book as well but a lot of the modern business books are just naff. They don't really say much. They're trying to give you little tips that you could hopefully copy but you can't copy someone else's homework.

36:02I may be part of that indictment but I just haven't read it. I've not read your books. Guy, I'm very sorry. Oh, at this moment I would say I'm lucky you haven't read some of my books. but also i should be clear 10 20 years ago these books were written for 10 20 years ago and even then when you write a book it takes a year or so to come out everything is gonna time out over time the idea that the books might need to be rewritten is just the process of history and yeah there are some bad ones but yeah of course old books are going to be like i wrote two pr books and they are terribly out of like they make sense the core tips are good but there's some social media stuff in there that does not make any sense anymore.

36:45I have to tell you that The Effective Executive, I read that in college and I loved the writing of Peter Drucker and his other book, The Management, that really thick book was just formative in my mind. And there was like an MBA one as well. It's funny, I remember reading The Effective Executive on one of the few books I read on the subway when I was living in New York in 2009, actually. and I remember reading it crouched into a corner being like this is good a job I hated I was so unhappy I was just like is there anything in here that will help me I was just like oh these all make sense but no nothing will help me from this book to fix the situation because workers are so often deprived of industry but it's good I think for young people to enter my dream would be that young people internalize lessons like this because I think that the future of business needs to involve more love for the workers and workers need to be less disposable there needs to be more training managers need to be fired on mass and replaced with managers who actually know what they're talking about there is just so much rot that's crept into all businesses up next on remarkable people i think that in general apple products are very good i think the app store is an abomination and i think the way that they promote horrifying microtransaction filled stuff is disgusting.

38:03I think their physical products, I think their silicon is fantastic. I genuinely do. I think Meta is horrifying. I think Microsoft, I would never work Meta, Google, or Microsoft. No, absolutely not.

38:32please do us a favor and subscribe, rate, and review it. Even better, forward it to a friend. A big mahalo to you for doing this. You're listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. I think my favorite lesson from the effective executive, and I use it whenever people talk to me about what's the role or purpose of a company is, I believe Peter Drucker said that the purpose of a company is to create customers, which is very different than optimize shareholder return. I think that it's a great lesson, but the meaning has been misinterpreted because creating customers, it has been turned into creating businesses, creating problems, and then creating solutions for the problems versus what I think Drucker meant, which was finding customers that need problems solved and solving them.

39:27Exactly. And that conflation is at the root of a lot of our problems because when you really look at what's happening, it is creating customers, by which I mean forcing something upon a current customer or a new customer, making them have to work with you rather than appealing to them in any way. I like how Drucker put it. It's just you should earn their business. That is the scary thing that I think has left a lot of modern capitalism. While we're on the subject of the effective executive, you opened the door here. Do you have any other books you would like my listeners to read to provide a guiding light?

40:06So Rework, Jason Freed. It's been a long time since I read it, but that book was really good and it was like quite modernized. And a lot of it is about doing the things that make sense rather than doing the things that people are telling you to do. I have a small agency, only a couple of people work with me and I've always kept it like that. And one of the big things when I was starting out was people would say to me, well, when are you going to scale up? I'd always say to them, why? To what end? Then you'd be bigger. I'm like, why? Am I going to make more money? The business will be bigger. It's like you go back and forth with people.

40:38And there are all these things that people do in businesses, software they have, the processes they choose. They do it because they think they have to. And Rework is really good at focusing on, hey, what do we actually need to do here? What roles do we need in an organization? What should each person in an organization do? And it's very good like that. It's been a while, but I really love that book a lot. I also like Atomic Habits. It's cliche, but I think that over time we all develop habits and the ways we work kind of by accident. We just bumble our way through lives. Atomic Habits, it has some annoying bits.

41:11It's quite repetitive, but making you a little more conscious of the way you build the world around you professionally and otherwise is really something. Like, that's a good one. My last topic for you, because you are a PR and media expert, let us talk about what it means to be in PR and media today. It's a very different world of pitching stories and getting coverage and social media. So what is the state of the business these days? So every single year since 2008, someone has told me that media relations is dying. My business has been around since 2013, 2012, 2013, I think. Yet to die yet, doing very well.

41:54Media relations is still a big business. Pitching stories to reporters is as well. The reason that PR people want to kill it off is it's difficult. You have to studiously read. You have to keep up on everything happening. You actually have to know what you're talking about. And you have to read all the journalist stuff. That never goes out of style because companies want third-party approval. And they want it on honest terms that people will read and then approve of the company. That's a very basic thing. never really changed. The thing is PR has bred it out of the industry. PR people have been told not to do media relations.

42:23They've been told it doesn't work anymore, that the company is the media now. Never been true. Not even once, Guy. These people, it's like, oh, every year they say the same thing. It's like social media is taking over, content is taking over. It's not 2013, but they say the same things. But in reality, that media relations is one of the few parts of PR that still works and still gets paid. The rest of it, content creation, yeah, it's probably the most threat thing from generative AI. When it comes to writing anodyne business copy that no one really reads, but everyone internally feels good about, that's what generative AI does.

42:55You want slop? We've got slop. PR has too much slop in it. So I think that really specialist PR is going to continue ripping just because as social communities get more bifurcated, as we have less media outlets, as media outlets get more specialized, you're going to have more people that want to get in front of specialized audiences which requires a specialist and media relations are specialists they're the highest revenue part of the business other than the scammy parts where you just have someone sign up for 100 services and they can't fire you i'm talking about edelman and it's a situation where pr people don't know what to do less people are going into pr they go into it because they think they're going to be running events i went into pr completely lied to about what it would be and i'm happy i stayed i love doing media relations.

43:41I get to talk to journalists all day. I get to know all their stuff. I get to read constantly. I get to be smarter and get paid for it. It's awesome. I think the PR will keep going that way. I think the PR is going to see some astronomical changes in the next few years, though, because what else is there right now? Crisis management, great specialist industry. The specialist PR firms, the specialists, the people that know those industries, and the PR people who are incentivized to learn them, not these PR people who know a little bit about a lot. They're unworthy. The people that know what they're talking about.

44:14Look at the sports people. Look at Sarit over at the Atlanta Braves. You can see the people who are really good in this industry. And it's because they know and love their subjects. And I think PR as an industry has so many generalists. And I think that you're going to see that shift or you're going to see agencies die. So let me ask you something. Could you just, for the people listening to this, how do you define media relations? Is it your ability to call up iJustine or Marques Brownlee or 20 years ago, you could call up Walt Mossberg? So iJustine and Marques are interesting because they're so big now that you really can't pitch them.

44:52You can, but you can't. Like you have to have a thing specifically for them. So media relations is getting people to write coverage about your client or put your client on television or put your client on a podcast. Now what this means in practice is PR people think it means spamming them And just hoping for the best What it means is a really tailored pitch for them But also knowing them And I don't mean this kind of nasty, greasy Oh, I'm going to pretend to be friends with you Know them as mates with a lot of them But they don't run anything extra because I'm their mate They run it because I actually read their stuff studiously Media relations is getting coverage That really is it It's the thing that people have always paid for I think people always pay for it It means getting people on podcasts, on TV, in newspapers.

45:35It means finding the right report for a story and getting them to write it. There are the greasier kinds. There are the people that do the kind of place stories, the rumor mill stuff. That's on the side of it. It's not what I peddle in. But it's interactions with journalists. But Ed, how do you make a judgment? Like on the one hand, you are condemning the rot economy. On the other hand, you're pitching media stories. Aren't those two things overlapping and in conflict sometimes? I'm really lucky to have clients that are, I pick my clients quite carefully. And that's the reason I don't work with any crypto companies as well.

46:15But look at it like this. Journalists here from, I do the writing stuff, the podcast stuff. I do it for the love of the game. I had 300 subscribers when I started in 2020. I have 60 ,000 now. I did that because I love writing. And if I don't write, I'll go crazy. The cats in my brain will keep meowing. So I think that it helps that I do that. My clients seem to really like it because they understand that journalists are going to connect with me because they understand my work and they know who I am and they know that I wouldn't bring them something rubbish. Also something that wouldn't embarrass me.

46:47I don't want to embarrass myself. I have a very public profile, but even before when I didn't. So I think there is a challenge. I'm sure there is definitely a degree of, oh God, what if these two sides touch? But I firewall them quite aggressively. No client gets any coverage on my newsletter or podcast. I separate those worlds incredibly carefully. I take on clients that I like and I respect. And when I pitch reporters, I'm very clear, hey, if you don't like this, that's totally fine. And I get turned down for stories all the time, as any PR person does. The important thing is to not use one on the other.

47:21I would never, ever use anything to do with the show to do with my PR work. In fact, during CES, I had a live radio show thing I did, and I intentionally invited journalists on before I pitched them so that there was never a chance where anything was contingent. And then I had one that I invited on that then said no, and I had zero reaction to it because those are two separate things. If you do things with intentionality, things tend to work out. Are you saying to me that if Amazon or Google or Apple or Meta came to you and said, we would like to retain you for media relations, you would turn them down?

47:58I'd probably take Apple. I like Apple stuff. Like I'm a happy Apple customer. And I feel like Tim Cook, despite him being like a supply chain guy, I think that in general, Apple products are very good. I think the app store is an abomination. And I think the way that they promote horrifying microtransaction filled stuff is disgusting. I think their physical products, I think their silicon is fantastic. I genuinely do. I think Meta is horrifying. I think Microsoft, like I would never work with Meta, Google, or Microsoft. No, absolutely not. Like those companies, Microsoft alone, the monopolies they hold do such damage to and make, they make software worse.

48:37They make the software industry worse with their monopolies. They make millions, hundreds of millions of people miserable every day with Microsoft Teams. There are real consequences to what Microsoft does. I think Apple, by and large, does a good job. I think the App Store is evil. And I think that they run it in an evil and craven way. And I'll keep saying that even if they did hire me. What is evil about the App Store? Okay, open up the App Store and look at how they're monetizing it. Because what they do is they promote things like Hinge, Bumble, and these very microtransaction-heavy dating apps.

49:10They promote microtransaction-heavy gaming apps. They monetize heavily on things that are built on the principles of gambling and the principles of addiction-based psychology. They monetize misery, and they do so with a deliberate hand. Apple could have chosen at any time to punish companies that monetize in this manner. Instead, Apple chose to make billions of dollars. Go and look up anything around how gacha games, referring to these games where you give them a little money and then you might get an item for your character. Those games are based on actively harmful psychological principles, deliberate ones.

49:44Apple makes money off them. Billions and billions and billions. Apple, a company that deliberately made the App Store so that they could claim there was some kind of quality control, that they could stop consumers being harmed, actively profit off of consumer harm. And there's no reason for them to do it other than profit. What they could do, and Apple has a history of doing this, remember what they did to Flash? they could crush the life out of these businesses they could just go no supercell cannot do this i hinge tinder they cannot make money off of the way like hinge for example they gate the best looking people behind microtransactions it's insane it's an insane company apple could very easily just say we don't allow you to make money like that or we put a hard limit on these things we allow these principles but there is a hard limit on what you can extract from a customer That's the thing.

50:35These incentives, trickle-down economics I don't think really works, but trickle-down incentives do. If Apple just said, no, you can't make money in this manner, they wouldn't be able to. Others would copy, or they would, then theoretically they'd go to Android, sure. But it's a question of, do you want their money? And the answer is, yeah, they do. They're happy to. They're really happy to. They are happy to take that money hand over fist, make the GDP of a small country off of people putting money into Clash of Clans or Candy Crush. it's gratuitous there's the concept of entropic doom and i think what you're describing is enrotic doom yes right when growth takes everything to rot yeah it's very frustrating because a company like apple for example the vision pro i like it i loved it at times i always describe it as when you put it on and it works it's magical but it only works like 20 of the time it's insanely broken had they left it a few more years that would have actually been really good but they rushed it out because the growth had to show something they had to show a new doodad and had they waited i think it would have been significantly better i think that there is promise there it's cool watching someone try that's the thing i love seeing them try but even with the vision pro you can see how they rushed it and they had to rush it and it's like these into this erotic entropy.

52:00It's too close to erotic for me. But you see it crush the life out of joy. You see it destroy things that could be cool. The Vision Pro could be cool. It's nowhere near there. You can see it, though, sometimes. And it's like, goddammit, if you weren't so rushed, imagine how good this could have been. I would say that because of my history with Apple, very few people have had a relationship with Apple like I have. I have loved the company. and i have to tell you this is my last question for you because i'm just so curious what you're going to say what do you think when you see tim cook donate a million dollars to the inauguration and is in those pictures on that stage this is like yeah he's doing what's right so that tariffs against china doesn't affect him he's representing the shareholders he's doing his fiduciary duty or has he basically sold out like how do you wrap your mind around that all of the above tim cook's a gay man the idea of donating to this administration as a gay man can't imagine it was fun or easy it's also kind of craven i don't feel any sympathy for someone that rich and powerful but i can understand the value judgment there must have been really difficult really like quite tough i also think he shouldn't have done it but i can understand why he did what was he meant to do it was a shakedown a classic mob shakedown what was he meant to do i do think that apple as a company is in a better direction than most but man when i saw him do that actually when the others did it first i'm like tim cook's absolutely going to do this and people saying he wouldn't go against his morals and it's like he'll do it and it sucks it sucks to see but i think steve jobs would have done it i think steve jobs would have absolutely done it he would have done it in two seconds and i think that had he survived had he beaten cancer he would have been only i think i put him in the same bucket as if john lennon was still alive except i think that jobs was far more noxious but lennon would have been more annoying i think the cook is in like this bind where he has to deal with an international concept of trade now on a level that was the reason he took over from Steve Jobs.

54:15So he had to make this very difficult but necessary choice that sucks, sucks so bad. He shouldn't have done it. It sucks. But also I get why he did it. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, on the other hand, Steve Wozniak gave quite a powerful interview too, right? Expressing basically the opposite of that. What do you mean? I didn't see the Wozniak interview. Oh, you check out what Wozniak said. He was, I think, in Europe and he gave an interview you about let's just say the two of you are aligned not necessarily on tim cook but about how people are taking a knee wasniak i met wasniak a year or two ago and he gave me hope mostly because i talked to him about just tech in general we're backstage for a client thing and we're talking about how lucid motors and he had a problem with the car and he just turned to me and he said, you ever hear of iCab?

55:12I'm like, what's that, Steve? And he goes, it's a open source web browser that he uses. And it was this like a 10 euro made by a guy in Germany, I think, this incredibly fast and slick web browser. And the way he talked about it, he was so excited. And it made me think it's like, you see people, these rot economists like Sachin Adela and Sundar Pashai, you see the people in tech like that who don't really care. There's no joy in the computer. I'll never forgive them what they've done to the computer. And you see someone like Wozniak, you're like, you know what? There are people who work in this industry, even though Wozniak has filed out of it, who do care and who do find the computer fascinating.

55:52And they give me hope. I believe genuinely there are more people like that than there are Elon Musk. And I think long term they will win out. We will win out too. that's the way to end this podcast because i think wasniac is the purest form of engineering i have ever met he is a tinkerer really is you i had never met him but he seemed so happy to talk about a little web browser and it was so lovely it was so lovely to see this guy didn't need to do this like have a conversation even but he didn't need to care about this but he was so happy to share it with someone and it's just like it really does give you hope yeah i completely agree let's end on that high note yahoo for steve wasnia yes agreed ed thank you so much for being on my podcast let's just say that you're making my head explode i'm gonna have to re-evaluate some of my perspectives and values after this podcast but that's the whole point of a podcast right Yeah, and I hope you found it interesting.

57:00I had a great time. Thank you for having me.

57:26trying to make you remarkable. Thank you very much for listening.

57:35This is Remarkable People.