22. The Changing Landscape of the Tech Industry

Chris Castle sits down with Claire Lee, the head of the early stage group at Silicon Valley Bank. Claire discusses the various startups she is involved with across various sectors, such as cleantech, fintech, and healthcare. Much of the conversation revolves around her experience at Recode's Code Conference 2019 and three lessons she took away from her attendance.

First, media platform companies such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter need to make large changes to become more transparent. Their user base is losing trust due to the persistent problems of hostile environments, hate speech, and misinformation.

The second takeaway was on the role of technology throughout our lives. For example, automated content moderation through AI can only go so far, as the technology behind them require a certain baseline standard of ethics which is as yet to be defined. A generation of new users are looking for tooling to place constraints on bad actors, which are problems that have not been tackled at scale.

Finally, Claire's third realization was the adaptation of technology in decidedly non-startup environs. For example, she cites how both Harley Davidson and Goldman Sachs are revolutionizing their businesses to adapt to both new consumer needs and to attract engineering talent. Both consumers and employees are demanding better corporate values before acquiring or working for a brand.

Links from this episode:

• Recode's Code Conference is the world’s premier technology conference.
• Steven Sinofsky's blog post summarizing CodeCon 2019.