YouSaid · the spoken record

Chet Kanojia

lines on the record: 72
first: 2016-02-04
most recent: 2016-02-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“If you enjoyed listening to this interview as much as I did, you should subscribe to the show. You can catch up on previous episodes, listen to future ones all at recode.net slash decode. You should also know that recode decode is twice a week, every Monday and Thursday. We've got a new show that's called Too Embarrassed to Ask, hosted by Kira Swisher and Lauren Good every Friday. Kara and Lauren answer your tech questions and review the latest gadget. It's probably like the one that Chet just rolled out. You should check it out. The next episode is tomorrow and you can subscribe at iTunes.com slash two embarrassed to ask. Kare's back on Monday. I'll be here on Thursday with another great guest from the media world. And you should also be joining me and maybe chat at Code Media next February. See you soon.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would love to continue this conversation and people are literally banging on the door to get in and kick us out of the studio. I was fascinated to watch your last company. I'll be fascinated to watch this one. We'll definitely have you back and talk some more. Thanks for joining us.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think my expectation was it's going to be, you know, we're going to add 100,000 and 200,000. And I think I was talking to one of the, I forget who it was, one of the CEOs of a streaming company. He was like, look, this is how the math works. The first year you're going to get 100, 150,000 customers. The next year you're going to get double that. And after that, you basically end up in a doubling game. But you got to sign up for a 10-year trajectory. And I think companies like Netflix and Hulu, everybody's sort of in that same kind of vein. And I don't know if it is because that's the acquisition model of the internet. Subscriber acquisition cost is kind of the same. It's because the media is priced that way. Or it's just some magical law that works out. So I think you just have to count on that, that it's you get the first 100,000, whatever the number happens to be, and then you grow from there.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you did get used to cable and all these things. And once you get used to it, I think it's so hard to change consumer habits, right? So if any company, I mean, I think that's why companies like Uber are like amazing just because they've taught entire couple years generational set of people to say press a button car shows up, right? And that just speaks to the tremendous convenience of frustration on the other side. But otherwise, it's so hard to change consumer habits overnight. It's a gradual generational process unless the service is so remarkable like a mobile phone.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Legal strategy. Very interesting. It looked for a couple years or so, like you might blow up the existing TV business. And then even when that didn't happen, it seemed like in the last year or so. Things have changed. But it's still very similar to where it was a few years ago. And maybe it's that it's happening in ways that are harder to measure. Maybe it's all about to topple over, but it doesn't look radically different. There are fewer people paying for cable than were a few years ago, but there's still 90 plus million people paying for pay TV. The structure is really roughly the same. TV everywhere is terrible. I either cannot pay for TV or I can pay for TV. You're still sort of the two binary options. And then they all sort of looks the same. Had you succeeded, do you think you would have shaken that up?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To make that Definitely legally successful because we had, and I think we filed the expert filings, etc., where the commission told us that VRM was in process and we should weigh into it, et cetera, et cetera, which we did. And then the NPRM came out. So we actually made that argument to the court here in New York after the NPRM came out. So NPRM notice of public rulemaking, right? FCC is saying we think we should make these guys MVPD. So, I mean, I thought it was kind of a reasonable legal strategy.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thought there was a real chance for you to make that legally successful and then turn that into a business. You thought that could have worked.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if you've seen now lately. I forget if the rulemaking is public or not yet, but the FCC decided that it was high time that they made OVD's MVPDs. Right. So, no, it wasn't a last dish effort. You”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And did you have, and when the ruling came down and you guys made a sort of last ditch effort to become a cable company, did you think that had a real chance of success or was that just literally a Hail Mary?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a certain argument, but they all seem to have a general vibe of like. And then the only question is, is there a way that we can allow this to work or do we have to pull it off?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our Supreme Court counsel had sort of warned me that reading tea leaves out of justice's comments is just a bad idea. There's plenty of cases which have gone absolutely the opposite way. But I did thought sitting there that there were some really As opposed to saying they are a cable company, which was a really interesting thing because they took it as at least the majority opinion was specifics don't matter what it appears. Which was kind of like a strange thing to me. Maybe I'm an engineer, so I think of it like, how could your specifics not matter? Yeah, the”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're at the hearing itself, did you have a sense of like, oh, I don't think this is going well? Or I think actually that's well. Like what Ginsburg said, like what Sodomier said, she said, Roku, that sounds good. Did you have a sense either during the hearing or immediately after that went well or that didn't go well?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was really intense and eye opening in a lot of ways. You think that the system is totally closed and shut off and what you don't realize is the process of lobbying and sort of structural influence that goes in for good and bad, all kinds of reasons in how different agencies interplay and the amount of sort of work that goes into that is. Absolutely amazing”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What did you think when you were in the Supreme Court? I went and watched you sort of had to hear most of the hearing because you don't have a direct sight from the press box. Wow is me. It's one of the coolest things I've ever done professionally is attend that hearing. What was that experience like for you?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And if you look at one of the opinions in the Sony Betamax case, it literally does say that I have a hard time, one of the justices. I forget, I think maybe it was just at O'Connor or John Paul Stevens. I have a hard time believing that 2 million Americans every day infringe.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the harm we're going to do, we haven't caused it to So you wanted to end up making that argument two or three years down the road, exactly”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the NFL has not yet taken it off the air. So all the grandiose proclamations you're seeing from all the harm we're going to do, we have to do that. Literally, the briefs were, right? There will be no Super Bowl next year, right? I mean, that was kind of the, I mean, as much as I disagree with the decision, I understand that a statement like that has an effect on people, right? So that was the end.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it does. So let me give you an example, right? Sony Betamax was a great example. The first time when the case was heard, they didn't decide. They sent it back to be reheard until the Ninth Justice scheme, which is Justice O'Connor came in. And our sort of sense was that the court hates novelty of any kind, right? Their goal in life, at least obviously I'm not a Supreme Court justice, but the goal seems to be keep the band-aids alone, keep status quo, keep things moving the right way. And right or wrong, we were challenging the status quo. We thought for the right set of reasons, and obviously the other side of the thought.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of your investors said, Well, one of the problems we had was we knew and thought we were going to end up in the Supreme Court. We got there much faster than we did. We wanted to sort of built out a much bigger business and been many more cities and states. I don't really understand how that would have helped you legally, but it does.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You did. No, no. So you had to do it. I think it was. And I, you know, nobody likes to lose. I'm not sitting here claiming that it was fun to lose. There was a lot of drinking involved afterwards. But look, it was worth a shot. And I think each one of my investors felt the same way as I did. We thought we had a good case. We thought we were right. And we kept winning all the way to the Supreme Court, right?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You guys kind of like that idea, then when you start this is ultimately, it will be binary. We think we've got a great case. Would you have done that differently? Or I guess there's no way to have done that business. No, no. So you had to do it.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lot of good things, some bad things. A that I think our team was capable of producing a really complex product and brought it to time, into market in time. This was the first time I'd done anything related to hardware, so that was sort of a very new experience, but Joe obviously had done something. How to sort of deal with sort of city-by-city deployment models and things like that. So I think all of those, I think we understood, also learned in a positive way that if you have a good idea and you can execute, there are sources of capital people will support you because that's the purpose. The negative or I guess the warning or the question we learned was, and I think it's interesting to see a lot of companies, you know, whether it's Uber, Airbnb, they've all sort of they skirt around or they've been in gray areas or they've run afoul of regulations, but nowhere have they run afoul of a single clear demarcation point which could be a binary outcome.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the lead of the story I wrote about you today was that your last company failed spectacularly. You tried to take on the TV business and they won. You lost in the Supreme Court, ended up in bankruptcy protection. What did you learn from that experience?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Even if you don't use our broadband, you can plug it into TimeWar. Right, and it's got all the Internet of Things built in and Bluetooth, et cetera, et cetera. A bunch of other things. And that is a separate category in itself. So we decided that, you know what, it makes sense to kind of as a way of getting our brand out there and getting our name out there. And we think it's a great product. I would want something like this in my house, even if I didn't have my internet connection. So why not sell it?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And to be clear, I had this question, and you guys answered it, but we'll tell everyone else here. This router you brought out $350, it will work even if I don't use your.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“May not be. And so we decided that we were going to do it all together. And then the question was would you retail it out separately or not? And I think the universal conclusion was we should because it's a really good product. And to be clear.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sequencing things out more than anything else. I think we were, so it was a really interesting question that we asked ourselves. We think we can create two really, really cool things here. We don't want to do one because of the other. I think standalone consumer electronics is great, but I think you want to augment that with other things. So the question, honestly, in our mind was, you know, are these two separate companies? Do we combine them? How do we sort of think about it? And the more I talk to a lot of my friends that are in the cable business as well, and everybody said, look, if you're going to do it, you've got to sort of have a whole stack because we are realizing that we built in modems and access points together and we realize that there were fundamentally different cycles. So we end up getting stuck with crappy modems, which basically means service calls, which basically means unhappy customers. And it's no fault of ours, and I believe them. Cable plants are relatively stable, right? Especially the data part of it.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Better than that. Okay. And the reason you spent much of today's presentation talking about the router instead of sort of the service and the markets and when you're going to be there is”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me go at it. Yeah, let's so give us the ballpark. What's the ballpark? I'm paying Time Warner cable around 50 bucks for 50 megabits right now. What are you going to sell me? In a promo rate? Something like that, yeah.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I cannot believe that you got money from Barry Diller and KKR and George Soros and they asked you about pricing. You sort of shrug and says, I don't know.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we have a pretty decent handle on one part of the equipment in terms of costs. Now we're entering mass manufacturing planning on those things. So we're trying to sort through what is that residual cost.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Speaking of pricing, you guys didn't mention pricing. You said to be competitive, I think you'd serve it as a fraction of a piece. The pricing's up to you. Why not go out and tell us, look, we're going to deliver this many gigabits, this much speed at this much price to you when we start in Boston.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cable business account. Exactly, because that business account cost you $1,000 a month or $800 or $600 a month, right? And it's essentially the same product. So I think there's a lot of sort of different market dynamics. Speaking of price,”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's an interesting market. You're looking at small businesses, not enterprise, but you know what I'll call Main Street awning businesses, right? Where they're today, I mean, they can buy a square register to make it easy for you. Right, but they don't qualify for a time.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think so. I mean, I hope the effect is that people will go back to their core competencies very easily whenever there is any kind of a reaction. My guess is what's going to happen is this is going to say, hey, we can provide a better product. We're going to sell you a gigabit. I mean, today, sure, Comcast sells you 300 meg, but it's three-year contract and $600 install fee, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all that stuff. And I think those will change. Look, the market isn't necessarily just against COAX here, right? The market is also against where you're looking at DSL on him and give or take what 28 million customers, right?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've been there. So to me, if I'm the cable company and the telcos, I've been saying, all right, cord cutting and cord shaving, it's worrisome. It's cutting into that core business. But look, fundamentally in Wall Street has agreed with this thinking, it's okay because frankly, if I just become a broadband company, this is what Comcast now says they are, that's great. That's a super high margin business. And again, I've got a monopoly or at worst a duopoly. Oh, here's Chet Kenozier again. He says this time I can't sue him. I got to buy him. I got to get you off the map because you're more disruptive maybe this time out than you would have been last time had you been successful.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And do you want to be in the content business as well? Most of those guys sell broadband, which is very high margin, and they sell video service. They sell cable TV, which is also a good business, but less of a good one. Do you want to get into that video business eventually and sell stuff? No. No, no. We didn't want to be in that business.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not the question that I'm going to force them or not. I think that's just a competitive dynamic, right? Some people will be happy with COAX for whatever it is, or if there's fiber available, I'm sure people might bias towards that. And some will say, this is a better solution because it's better economics.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People who can So, I think it's going to have an effect on pricing. And I think people saw this even in limited scales in Google fiber markets where timewater immediately, and this announced higher speeds. And that's partly why if we wanted to roll out something that was like five or ten megabits, that's a different set of technologies that are relatively trivial and off the shelf, right? We wanted to make sure that we built something that even at these early stages we could demonstrate a gig and then have a strategy towards getting higher than a gig.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every time we veer into Hertz or waves, I feel like I should just hop out because there's a line of people who can ask much better questions than I can about this. I'll ask one that I understand. If you succeed, and you talked about the international implications, but let's bring it back to the US, if you succeed and I can buy internet from you instead of having to only rely on Time Warrior Cable in my area of Brooklyn, what does that mean? What's the practical effect of having you show up in the market?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Six megahertz channel, then you combine eight, ten of them, and in wireless and millimeter waves, you can run 200, 500 megahertz channels because the higher up in the frequency you are, they're dirt cheap, and it's effectively free bandwidth that you get at those waves.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Coverage meaning a wireless signal will permeate go far, but the effective bit rate or the throughput you're going to get out of that is going to be small. And especially as more people share, right? So that's been sort of the conventional wisdom around this whole thing. And we looked at and say, you know, we don't have the resources of a Google to sort of think in fiber terms. And frankly, I'm not convinced that that's the world we're going to be in. Largely because I want to take not just a US-centric view, but long-term. I don't see anybody digging up ditches in New Delhi or Mexico City or anywhere else, wireless infrastructure has to sort of, I mean, this is what happened on landlines. You know, people leapfrogged. They went to mobile phones, et cetera, et cetera. So we said, you know, why don't we try to solve the hard problem, i.e., can you take, I mean, people sort of forget that ultimately airwaves behave essentially as coax does, effectively speaking, right? You essentially modulating the same signal, it's same number of way you think about it. The difference being in coax, you're running a”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meaning for future proof, forever and ever, right? That's the conventional wisdom. If I light X strands or fiber in somebody's home, I'm all set. And in parallel, there's been this sort of perception that said wireless is good for coverage, but not for throughput, right? Because people have always thought of wireless in the sub 5 GHz range.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think if you were a purist and I have a great deal of respect for that team, and I think good guys, but if you take the wiped slate clean and you say, you know what, I want to build out the best network possible that's ever, ever expandable, I think, and if you have all the resources and time in the world and don't face the regulatory problems that naturally come with it, you would build a fiber network, unquestionably.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why do you think Google, who has a lot of really smart people and essentially unlimited resources, has tried tackling this through very conventional means through fiber?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're beginning to see it. I think you're seeing this in rural areas, which is where a lot of the wisps are. I mean, my understanding is Verizon's testing a few things that are in the 28-ish gig band, but they're running LTE in that for fixed wireless. I think it's happening in bits and pieces in Package. Nobody's really done it in the technical way that we're proposing to do it and the efficiencies that come with that. But I wouldn't be surprised that if this isn't going to happen and whether we do it or not in the next three to five years.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why, since the market for broadband is so big and again controlled by a handful of incumbents who essentially have monopoly, why hasn't someone tried a version of what you're doing already?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was fun. Code Media brings together more than 300 of the most influential people in media and tech for two days full of candid, unscripted conversation and valuable networking opportunities. You can find out more at recode.net slash events. See you there. All right, chat. I was referencing your appearance at one of our conferences a few years ago. It was you on stage and everyone in the audience, I think, was suing you already It was great that you came out, but you don't anticipate that happening this time out. You don't think that is going to be the hurdle. You think you solve all the hurdles already, basically?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, all right. We'll explore this in a second. First of all, I want to tell folks about Code Media 2016. It's exactly this kind of conversation. In fact, we had chat at one of these events a couple years ago. That was a lot of fun. This year's event is February 17th and 18th. It's in Laguna Nigel. I should start thinking some questions for our guests because they include people like Jessica Lesson from the Information, John Skipper, who runs ESPN, Nigel Echoes, who runs FanDuel. Here's what Chelsea Handler said when she appeared last year.”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I honestly don't know. I mean, you know. I think it's in their best interest. I mean, if I'm writing a playbook here, right? Here's a small innovative company that is not going to come in tomorrow and change the entire world. Comcast isn't going out of business. It is better for them to have a few small competitors in the market so that the government is satisfied. And the FCC looks at it and say, you know, this is a good thing. People are getting choice. We're not toppling any kingdom over right now, right?”
2016-02-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chet Kanojia, Starry CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT