VentureBeat's What to Think Podcast

Ashish Kuthiala is a senior director for HP Enterprise, overseeing the organization's DevOps portfolio. We talked to him about the transformation of enterprise architectures toward technologies that support a more nimble, agile DevOps stance -- a change that Kuthiala says will ultimate impact everyone in a company: not just developers and operations people, but marketing, customer care, and even accounting and finance. Plus, we tell you what to think about the tech impact of Brexit, Pinterest's new "shopping bag" and visual search features, and the advent of personal chatbots just for you.

Ambarish "Rish" Mitra is the CEO of Blippar, an augmented reality platform that dozens of brands are using to add interactivity to their products. Point the Blippar app at a logo, and you can unlock virtual games and extra content. But Blippar is also working on AI technology that can identify ordinary objects in the real world like chairs, dogs, birds, and more. Plus, we tell you what to think about the surge of virtual reality news at the Game Developers' Conference and at GDC, and we discuss the pros and cons of the algorithmic timelines coming to both Twitter and Instagram.

John Purrier is a founder and board member of OpenStack, and is currently Chief Technology Officer for Automic. We talk with him about the transformation of enterprise IT architectures and about the need for automation and integration of services. Plus, we tell you what to think about Twitter's crazy new algorithmic timeline (and its disappointing lack of growth), Zenefits firing its CEO, and Marc Andreessen trying to teach India about colonialism's benefits.

David Wadhwani joined AppDynamics as its CEO and president in late 2015 after a storied career at Adobe. AppDynamics, which provides application monitoring services for developers and enterprises, recently raised $150 million in a round that reportedly valued the company at close to $2 billion. We talk with Wadhwani about the investment climate, application performance monitoring in general, DevOps, and about how he helped Adobe manage its transition from packaged software to cloud services. Plus, we tell you what to think about the possible bursting of the "unicorn" bubble in 2016, Apple abandoning its iAd platform, Google's AMP platform for faster mobile pages, and Jordan Novet's home-built Oculus Rift-compatible PC.

Kakul Srivastava is the vice president of product management at Github, the collaborative service used by over 12 million developers to share software code. We caught up with her recently to talk about how Github has evolved into a platform (and what it means to be a platform), how the company figures out which new features and products to build, and the role of open source software in stimulating innovation. Plus, we tell you what to think about what 2015 meant for Microsoft, virtual reality, and Silicon Valley "unicorns."

Jonathan Rende is the chief research officer for Castlight Health, a company that aims to bring transparency to the U.S. healthcare market by giving employees of its client companies detailed information on what medical procedures cost at various local providers. We talk to Rende about how Castlight is trying to transform healthcare and build a platform for health data. Plus, we tell you what to think about rumors of a new Apple Watch, children's toys getting hacked, and the continuing battle over ad-blocking software.

This week's guest, Tomasz Tunguz, is a partner at Redpoint Capital, where he focuses on SaaS investments. He's become quite well-known for an influential blog and newsletter where he writes daily, data-driven posts about key issues facing startups. Plus, we tell you what to think about Apple's new iPad Pro, Facebook's $300 billion market cap, and BlackBerry's new Priv phone (it has a keyboard!).

This week, we talk to Kieran Hannon, the loquacious and influential chief marketing officer of Belkin, the massive maker of technology accessories, routers, and more. Plus, we give you the latest news on Amazon Web Services, Twitter, and Microsoft's latest gadgets.

Josh Elman is a VC at Greylock and a veteran of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. He knows more than almost anyone about building platforms and growing users. We talk to him about both of those topics in the latest edition of our "Innovation Engines" series. Plus, we tell you what to think about Apple's upcoming news, Google's new logo, and Hampton Creek's eggless mayo controversy.

This week on VentureBeat's podcast, we talk to Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress and founder of Automattic. Mullenweg describes how he created the blogging platform, which now powers 24% of the Web -- and why open source has been critical to the growth of the platform and the community that supports it. Plus, we tell you what to think about Windows 10, GitHub, and Uber. 

This week, we bring you the first in an ongoing series of interviews with platform builders. We're calling this series 'Innovation Engines,' and we kick it off with Jeff Lawson, the founder and CEO of Twilio, a company that's building a platform to connect apps with telephone capabilities. If you've ever used an app that connected you with a customer service rep via a phone call, it was probably using Twilio under the hood. Plus, we tell you what to think about personalization technologies (and why marketers find it so difficult), the $25 billion mobile advertising gap, and Apple's strangely persistent support for the iPod Touch.

We sat down with Michael Williams, the chief marketing officer for Grand Prix of America, which is bringing Formula 1 racing to the U.S., to find out what challenges he's facing in helping Americans wake up to one of the world's most popular racing sports. Among other topics, we discuss personalization and how brands can build connections with their most loyal customers. Plus, we tell you what to think about growing Internet ad revenue, mobile advertising engagement, and Google Photos.

This week, we talk with Etan Lightstone, the VP of design for New Relic, about the importance of good design and user experience (UX) in enterprise apps. He tells us what technologies have helped enable better design, and we also discuss how data visualization tools have evolved. Don't miss Etan's ratings of other enterprise software providers' designs at the end! Plus, we tell you what to think about Tesla's new Powerwall batteries, Amazon's acquisition of cloud company ClusterK, and Microsoft's newest browser, called Edge.

We talk to John Koetsier, who heads up VentureBeat's new research product, VB Insight -- which is collecting hundreds of thousands of data points to make sense of the burgeoning field of marketing technology. With more than $3B poured into this sector in the last quarter, there's a lot of hype but also some nuggets of real value. Plus: We tell you what to think about Google's new Fi wireless service, how Facebook is trying to kill Google, and what Amazon's $5B in revenues for AWS means.

This week, we speak with Michael Tolkin, the CEO of IMAX Labs, an innovation lab backed by IMAX Corp. He's pretty excited about what the future of augmented and virtual reality hardware have to offer, and he shares his thoughts with us. Plus, we tell you what to think the continuing growth of Slack, Etsy’s IPO, and Mobilegeddon.

You might think politics and e-commerce might seem unrelated, but Harper Reed, who was the CTO of President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, would disagree. On this week's episode of What to Think, Reed, who's now building mobile commerce startup Modest, tells us why he's thankful for learning about getting people to donate to a campaign. (Hint: It's not that different from getting people to buy T-shirts.) Plus, we tell you what to think about pre-ordering the Apple Watch, Snapchat's deep-learning research, and LinkedIn's $1.5 billion acquisition of lynda.com.

The accepted narrative about Steve Jobs has been that he was half genius and half jerk, but that isn’t the whole truth. So say authors Rick Tetzeli and Brent Schlender in the new biography “Becoming Steve Jobs.” Jobs’ character is more multidimensional than that, and over the course of his life he proved he was capable of change. Tetzeli’s and Schlender’s book presents Jobs in a very different light than did the “authorized” biography of Jobs written by Walter Isaacson. Plus: We tell you what to think about Jay-Z’s new music site Tidal, Bill Gates’s 40th anniversary letter to Microsoft employees, and the HBO Now service on Apple TV.

The Ellen Pao discrimination case, which concluded last week, has many in the tech world thinking about the roles of women in technology. One woman who is now in a very high profile role is Elena Donio, who is president at Concur, maker of the market-leading travel and expense management software. Donio believes we should try to bring more of our true selves to the workplace, not just the small part we believe to be “businesslike.” Plus: We tell you what to think about Facebook’s announcements last week at its f8 conference, about the possibility of a smaller iPhone 6, and about the new line of Microsoft Surface tablets.

In the future, you might not own a car. Instead, you'll get around town by hopping into one of many driverless, autonomous pods swarming the streets. To get a picture of how we'll get there, we invited Xerox executive David Cummins to talk to us about the company's efforts to improve parking -- yes, parking -- and the future of transportation in cities around the world. Plus: We tell you what to think about the new Steve Jobs biography, Microsoft offering free Windows 10 upgrades to pirates, and the worst subreddits on the planet.

This week, we speak with Elissa Shevinsky, chief executive of JeKuDo Privacy Company, a new startup building easy-to-use privacy tools like a group-messaging app. Also, we tell you what to think about the new MacBook, Pinterest's $11 billion valuation, and IBM's new cloud software for analyzing tweets.

How do you identify trends? It's a question of critical importance to any business. Rohit Bhargava, author of the book "Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas, and Predict the Future," has some advice for marketers -- and anyone -- who wants to tell what's going to happen in the next year or so. This week, we talk with Bhargava about his book, his consulting practice, and what content curation and selfies tell us about where our world is headed. Plus: We tell you what to think about the Apple Watch, Mobile World Congress, and the fact that Intel might be supplying chips for Apple's iPhone for the first time in years.

NumberFire collects data on sports and provides detailed analysis in real time, so you can get insightful statistics on NBA, NFL, NCAA, and MLB games in real time. With March Madness kicking off, we talked to CEO Nik Bonaddio to find out how numberFire analyzes and presents data, how it's used by networks like ESPN, and -- of course -- who's going to win the championship this year. Plus, we tell you what to think about Spotify knowing who you are, Google helping hasten the death of Adobe Flash, and 11 Google apps you probably didn't know exist.

American Eagle Outfitters is the largest seller of jeans in the U.S. And with customers between 15-25 years old, its target demographic is extremely engaged with mobile devices. So how does the company reach (and keep track of) its customers across smartphones, tablets, laptops, and more? We talk to American Eagle's chief digital officer Joe Megibow to find out more about the challenges retailers face in a mobile-first world. Plus, we tell you what to think about wireless carriers' newfound love of Google Wallet, what's up with the $5,000 luxury Apple Watch, and a Chinese company giving its workers Teslas as an annual bonus.

This week we talk to Joel Spolsky, the founder and CEO of Stack Exchange and Fog Creek Software -- and one of the creators of popular organization app Trello, which just hit 7 million users. Spolsky tells us about the origin and design principles of Trello. A former Microsoft employee, he tells us how he thinks the company is doing at turning itself around. And he dishes on what happens when unscrupulous VCs take over startups. Plus, we tell you what to think about Pinterest banning affiliate links, Facebook cracking down on names it thinks are fake (even if they aren't), and cloud company Pivotal changing its strategy on Hadoop.

This week, we talk to Paul Vigna, one of the coauthors of the new book "The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order." Vigna tells us how Bitcoin is growing up, becoming more than just a fringe currency and turning into a potentially major factor in the international economy. Plus, we'll tell you what to think about Google's $900 million investment into SpaceX, Apple's record-setting profits, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's newfound love of net neutrality.

This week we talk to Charlie O'Donnell, the founder and sole partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the first VC fund based in Brooklyn. He's been making investments in the New York tech world for a decade now, and brings a unique perspective to what makes NYC tick -- and why it's seeing an explosion of tech startups lately. Plus, we tell you what to think about Yahoo stealing market share from Google, the Apple Watch, and Snapchat's new media channel.

Vineet Jain is chief executive and a cofounder of file sharing company Egnyte. We talk with him about last week's Box IPO, as well as Egnyte's recent strategy shift. Plus: We tell you what to think about Slack's sudden popularity, Microsoft's HoloLens initiative, and high times for marijuana startups.

Emerson Spartz is one of the world's leading experts on internet virality. He got his start at age 12, as the founder of MuggleNet, a Harry Potter fan site. Now 27, he's the CEO of Spartz Media, which says it is one of the fastest-growing digital media publishers with 160 million page views per month. We'll talk to him about the secrets of virality, the eternal tension between virality and journalism, and the future of content. Plus, we'll tell you what to think about Microsoft's Windows 10 announcement, the latest antics from T-Mobile CEO John Legere, and the coming year in health gadgets.

Nicholas Carlson, chief correspondent for Business Insider, has just published a book that goes deep into Yahoo under Marissa Mayer. "Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo" has details on everything from Mayer's first day at work to her showdowns with activist investors and truculent executives. Does Mayer have what it takes to turn around the lumbering giant that is Yahoo? Find out in our conversation with Carlson!

This week, we come to you from the Consumer Electronics Show in fabulous Las Vegas. Our special guests this week are Ford Motor Company CEO Mark Fields and CTO Raj Nair. We talk to Mark and Raj about Ford’s new Sync 3 in-car infotainment system, the about Ford’s new car-sharing experiments (which were announced at CES), and about Ford’s plans in the self-driving car space. Plus: We discuss some of the major themes and interesting products we’ve seen so far here at CES.

Gary Shapiro is the CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts the annual electronics extravaganza in Las Vegas called CES. With CES starting next week, we check in with Gary to learn about some of the highlights of the show -- and what the electronics industry has in store for 2015, from new tablets, phones, and TVs to 3D printers, drones, and even tech that can help save the world. Plus: We discuss 3 of the most popular VentureBeat stories from 2014: What's up with The Pirate Bay, how to get hired by Google, and our early coverage of the iPhone 6.

Steven Hillion is the chief product officer of big-data startup Alpine Data Labs and Tim Guleri is managing director at Sierra Ventures, which invested in Alpine. We talk to them about big data: What is it, really? And how do you figure out which big-data companies to bet on? And what does the future hold for data analysis? Plus: We tell you what to think about Windows 10 and Cortana, Facebook's misguided attempt to become relevant to the enterprise, and how everyone just loves to complain about brands on social media sites.

It's almost the end of 2014, and that means it's the perfect time to look back on the highlights and lowlights of the year in tech. New Relic's Fred Paul joins the VB team to talk about what Facebook and Apple tell us about the year -- and we also give you a sneak peek at some of VB's picks for the most exciting startups of 2014 and our list of the best and worst companies and technologists. Plus: News on Google eliminating the Captcha, Epic systems helping doctors share digital medical records, and a porn site sponsoring an e-sports team.

Deena Rosen heads up the user experience (UX) team at Opower, a company that is using data analysis and behavioral science to help people reduce their power consumption. She joins us this week to talk about big data and the new era of "behavioral design." Plus: news about how marketing tech could increase voter turnout, why Google+ has lost its way, and doing your holiday shopping on Etsy.

Sucharita Mulpuru is a Forrester analyst who focuses on mobile commerce, e-commerce, and retail. We talked with her to find out more about the holiday shopping season online and on mobile -- and to find out where (and when) the best deals are online. Plus: news about the exciting future of smartwatches, BlackBerry's pathetic Passport, and new stats on Uber vs. Lyft.

Jonathan Rosenberg is the co-author, with Eric Schmidt, of the new book "How Google Works." We talk with him about some of the management and innovation secrets that helped make Google into one of the most successful technology companies in history. Plus: News about net neutrality, Amazon's Lambda cloud service, and a way to send money in Snapchat using "Snapcash."

Today on What to Think, we talk with Michael Beach, a cofounder of Targeted Victory. The company provides programmatic advertising across all screens and other services for Republican political campaigns.Plus: how deep learning could change the game for music streaming, President Obama’s endorsement of Net neutrality, and Microsoft’s decision to open-source its .NET framework.

With the midterm elections over, we check in with Bryan Whitaker, chief operating officer of NGP VAN, a company that uses technology to support the campaigns of Democratic and progressive political candidates. We talk with him about how the company uses data to help campaigns reach out to voters in the best possible way. Plus: a new organizational structure for data scientists at LinkedIn, the $199 Microsoft Band wearable, and a controversial new proposal for net neutrality.

Aneesh Chopra was the first chief technical officer for the White House and was one of the architects of the federal government's open data initiative, Data.gov. He's now working with Box and with a new startup, Hunch Analytics. We caught up with him to talk about the digitization of health care records, the bumpy rollout of HealthCare.gov, and the future of digital health.

Steve Jurvetson is a Partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and currently sits on the boards of SpaceX, Synthetic Genomics, and Tesla Motors. He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail, Interwoven, Kana, and NeoPhotonics. Also, we tell you what to think about BitTorrent Sync, Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablets, and how Silicon Valley can help fight Ebola.

Walter Isaacson is the author of the acclaimed official biography of Steve Jobs, which came out in 2011. He's just published a new book about the history of technology called "The Innovators: How a group of hackers, geniuses, and geeks created the digital revolution." We talk with him about the book -- and the lessons it has for today's tech innovators. Plus, we tell you what to think about the terrifying POODLE security leak, Y Combinator's startup school, and a mysterious hipster net-neutrality group.

John McAfee is the legendary founder of the antivirus software company that bears his name -- and a man who achieved notoriety over the past few years for his party lifestyle, leading to a much-publicized outlaw escape from Belize. We talk to him about surveillance, privacy, and an app called Chadder he's invested in, which promises to give you secure messaging. Plus, we tell you what to think about Hewlett-Packard's breakup, 76 million hacked accounts at J.P. Morgan, and how Facebook, Google, and Apple are trying to track you across apps and across devices.

Ben Golub is the CEO of Docker, one of the hottest and buzziest cloud startups around. He joined VentureBeat to explain what Docker is, why it's suddenly so popular, and why open-source is such a lasting strategy for enterprise technology companies. Plus: News about Microsoft's Windows 10, Silicon Valley legends Sam Altman and Dustin Moscovitz teach a startup class, and why we're not buying the iPhone 6.

Lew Cirne is the founder and CEO of New Relic, a company that has made its name helping website makers and app developers keep track of how their software is performing. Now it's making a move into helping businesspeople understand their customers. We talk to Lew about big data, enterprise software, and whether Silicon Valley is in a bubble. Plus: iOS 8, the Alibaba IPO (and what it means for Yahoo), and the latest version of the Oculus virtual-reality headset.

Tim Draper has been in the news for his controversial proposal to split California into six separate states. But he made his reputation as one of Silicon Valley's most successful venture capitalists, with investments in Skype, Overture, Baidu, Tesla, Hotmail, and Twitch.tv, among many others. This week, we talk to Draper about the future of California, the state of the startup economy, how he picks entrepreneurs, and why he's so bullish on Bitcoin. Plus: Drug dealers on Instagram, the iPhone 6's missing Sapphire screen, and a headband that measures your brainwaves to reduce your stress.

Kathleen McGee heads up the Internet Bureau for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office. This bureau has played a key role in helping define Internet law, protect consumers, and clarify online companies' responsibilities. It has worked with Internet companies including Yelp, Airbnb, Ask.fm, and Uber to more clearly define the way laws apply to their businesses. Just last year, the Bureau reached a groundbreaking agreement with 19 reputation management companies to end their practice of posting fake online reviews for businesses on consumer-review websites.

Phil Sanderson, a game-savvy partner at IDG Ventures, has been investing in games for a long time. He has invested in companies such as Telltale Games, the maker of the acclaimed The Walking Dead episodic adventure game series and mobile developer Funzio, the creator of titles like action role-playing gname Crime City. He looks at lots of potential game deals but invests in just a few every year. Plus: Ouya explores a sale, mobile commerce will hit $700 billion in 3 years, and the first VC firm to invest in Twitch raises a new $100 million fund.

Kathryn Gould was one of the first women venture capitalists anywhere. After a successful career at Oracle, she joined a VC firm and then later started Foundation Capital. Now retired, she recently gave a commencement speech at the University of Chicago that's filled with advice for graduates -- especially women -- who want to make it in tech. Plus: Life360 fights back against patent trolls, a U.S. hospital network fights back against Chinese hackers, and Amazon acquires Twitch TV.

In this week's episode, we talk with Diego Oppenheimer, chief executive of startup Algorithmia, which is creating an app store for algorithms. We also discuss doctors' dim view of data from your Fitbit and why Google executives have been fleeing to Chinese companies.

Product Hunt is like a "Reddit for Products," where people submit products, web sites, and projects they've been working on -- then vote them up and comment on them. This week, we talk with Ryan Hoover, the co-founder of the site, who joined us from a car parked outside Y Combinator, where he was getting ready for the incubator's demo day. Plus: news about Nest hacking, Foursquare's relaunch, and the latest details on the iPhone 6 -- both of them.