YouSaid · the spoken record

John Chen

lines on the record: 82
first: 2018-04-16
most recent: 2018-04-16
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

“The security is to help enterprise to manage their devices and everything that connects to the internet or their own private network to manage those devices and the application deployment of those devices. That's the most important thing. So these are the banks and the G7. Government”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have free businesses in it, and they're all interrelated. The most important business or the biggest part in business is something called endpoint management, called the Unified Endpoint Management.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I live in a Bay Area. We have about 600 people or so in the Bay Area. And through the number of acquisitions we made, we bought a company called Good Technology. We bought a company called Ad Hoc and Watchdog. So we bought a few companies. That's part of the implementation of the strategy we talked about earlier. Building it organically and building it inorganically.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, still, I had quarters in Waterloo. I'm still a Canadian company. A majority of our engineer is in Waterloo, Mississauga, and Octawa.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So that's exactly what we did. We think about the best thing we do is to manage devices. So if you think devices brought in a broader sense, it's the endpoints So we said, okay, we're going to make the endpoints and we're going to open up managing not only BlackBerry, but everybody's endpoints, including phones, tablet, PCs, equipments, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Medical devices and so forth. So if you think about the world of endpoints, we build a platform, software platform, to manage that endpoint and manage it securely. And this is how we imported everything we know how to do in securing a phone into securing an endpoint management software. This is where we are today.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They love the keyboards. That's productivity. And then the keyboard gives you accuracy, gives you all that, and give you look ahead. So our keyboard has the best learning, self-learning capability, and look ahead and get you the right words. Right. Anyway, so we took all that, you click down one level and say, what are the technology? What are the patterns that supported that? That enabled that happened. And then we took that and said, okay, let's make that a business. And so we build a software version of a hardware that makes sense to you. We employ everything we do. That is in the security, reliability, productivity, durati area. We do everything we do there and make it a software platform for people to manage endpoints, which we could talk more about”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't have blackberry at the top. The strategy really is we took everything that we've done well and building a handset. If you think about Blackberry handsets, the first thing came to your mind is security. Reliability Durability, productivity. So I remember people telling me they've been working writing a script on the Blackberry. And tie a scribble in a movie on the Blackberry. So, if you think about that, so behind, and then so I kind of click one level down and say,”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's very high. First of all, we made a number of acquisitions. We have to change a number of managements and a constant communication we call the town hall. We have a lot of town hall by myself, by my direct reports, by their direct reports. And in fact, sometimes in the past I remember some employee would say, I'm Town Hall fatigue. There's so many town halls. People keep saying that. So you kind of say this is a strategy. We come up with one first and then say this is a strategy. And then you tell them this is a strategy. They're going to tell them again and tell them again until they said either I buy it or...”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But Exactly. And I think, again, there's a technological reasons, there is a customer reasons, and there's a business reason that teaches us a lesson that you can't really emphasize any one of those three more than the other. And that causes disruption. And anyway, long story short, so I came in, I look at the business. We're still trying to make phones. And now we lost volume. And we lost kind of the BYOD world. We let Apple and Android to get into the handset space. So things that I helped the company did was to go completely open systems. So instead of fighting iOS and fighting Android, we try to embrace their community. So we make our technology and security and software that could run across it, including our messaging BBM. So, in some cases, it's still a little late.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Costs were higher. I remember being with a Google executive who had spent $10,000 in China. And he was complaining. I was like, I should write a story. I said, nobody cares about stupid Google executive who's rich.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The roaming plan is outrageously expensive and the network was kind of, a lot of times doesn't perform consistently. So this was designed for the benefit to protect that.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what we do is we do buffering. Instead of having a continuous connections, we do a buffer. So that's why you remember the days when half a page would load and then you have to wait for a little bit and then the other half the page will load. It's like the 2K buffers in each of the buffering. Now the idea of that is because the data plans are very expensive”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Used by the presidents of the world, right? And so, I mean, it's an interesting debate. Maybe it will come back our way this time. Maybe. But it's an interesting debate. But we kind of shifted away from what the customer wants, even for the quote-unquote in our mind for their own good. So that's number one. The number two thing is interesting too. You remember we talked about the web browsing being very slow? Yeah.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For example, remember that? Now, however, I have to Defend the prior's management a little bit. The reason of the lack of apps in the very beginning, it doesn't mean it's right, but it just happened to be, is really more focused on security and privacy. Because in Rwanda opened the API to everybody. And we are used by...”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You and I both use BlackBerry before, right? We don't have apps. And we were late on apps. And then we didn't really embrace the whole world of web browsing as early as it should be. You know, the early days of BlackBerry, it takes a long time to lower page.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the consumer. In fact, it's fairly funny. Blackberry never had a sales force that aim a consumer. Blackberry has a Salesforce that works with all the telephone companies around the world Do we do two things we sell phones through them? And B, we interconnect all the network together globally around the world. And done it in a very secure fashion. So those are the two things that BlackBerry really does. There is not a sales force. There's not a person calling on a bank, a person calling on an enterprise. It's only that. So even when we sow to the government, the government buy They buy Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile in this case, all the RISE and AT&T and so forth.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“about 8,000. Okay. And you have to get the employees. I was just getting to a point, but you have to get the employees feel that there is a future. I mean, that there is a level of Confidence there. And you know you can run the same play because the same play is what got us here today.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But Why don't two things? I mean, the first very fundamental thing that you have to stabilize the financials. But you take that as, I mean, that's survival. You take that aside. But I think you need to have...”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe, and it'll be fun to be able to do that. At least I felt like I was downsize for me. Yeah, the downside that my good friends tell me were if you stayed there long enough and it failed.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After we sold it to SA I find it, you know, ego satisfying. Maybe that's where we should use that word. But it wasn't really exciting. I mean, I thought A lot of good people around could run decent companies. I wasn't thinking about doing it anymore. I actually thought about starting my own company or actually going into different areas, politics or writing a book or even teaching for that matter. And I wasn't going to run in at a company, so to speak. But when this case presented itself, I thought, A, you know, it has a soft spot in my heart being RIM, BlackBerry, B, a technology was very impressive. I mean, you still have a lot of impressive technology. And C, I thought, hey, you know, this is almost virtually impossible.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ranside base for so many years a public company, I kind of took the running of public company, being a company company CEO off my bucket list, though I wasn't going to do this anymore. And so there were a number of companies who called me when I was.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rumors of sale, it was all kinds of stuff. It was the sale. And the bad part of it, it was the sale and no buyer. Thank you, John, already. You know, I thought it was like, oh, okay, you know, and here's the thing. After I done...”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, Harry, exactly. So I thought, you know, in looking at a technology, and because I had an engineering background, I was really impressed with not only the technology know-how, but the patent organization and the way the innovation was being conducted. Despite the fact that business fell apart for good reasons, but it was really a great technological company. And I thought the world deserved this company deserves to be around.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the BlackBerry messengers are way ahead of everybody. What really attracted me to the company's technology? I mean, yes, it's a iconic company, and it's not only iconic in Canada, it's iconic globally. And then on top of that, like everybody else, I grew up at BlackBerry. I had my, you know, I grew up with a pager, by the way, a rim pager. And I grew up with Blackberry.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nine was the best year ever. The company was like. 80 billion in market carb and what today seems small, but those days were big, 80 billion and I think the revenue was about 20 billion. So things are going relatively well at the time. What interests me, the company?”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was a company that losing market share, burning a lot of cash. There is no stability on the revenue. And so this is not a PE model whatsoever. But I got interested in the company. Spoken to a recruiter a number of times”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's called Research in Motion And it was looking at it as a potential take private candidates. At Dinwork the same year did, by the way, and Dinwork”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then sewed it after 11 years later or so to SAP and merger SAP at a pretty good return at the time. And I stayed there for a couple of years to help integrate it and then went to being an advisor for Silverlake, the private equity firm.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a relational database company looking for the next chapter, so to speak. I like to call it the next chapter. I don't like to call a turnaround. I know. I want to, I can't wait to get last chapter. So anyway, so we did okay there. We're the first one that got into the mobile and the mobile databases.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the time, right? The downsizing, the right sizing movement, the open systems and all that. So I went there and then I sold that company to Siemens being part of the Siemens Nixdorf board, stay at Siemens for a couple of years and worked out at Munich most of the time. That's where my office was actually pretty. I always like to tell people my, I have the longest commute San Francisco San Jose to Munich. Which I did travel back and forth a lot at the time. Anyway, 1997 decided to return back to the Bay Area and ran into people at Saipe Ace. And the Sai Bays was troubled at the time.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Decent schools. And I started working in the United States as an engineer. Designing microchips, microelectronics for a company called Burrows.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, my background. Well, I was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Hong Kong. Came over to the United States with schooling, went to Brown University for electrical engineering degree, went to Caltech for my master of the electrical engineering.”
2018-04-16 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: BlackBerry CEO John Chen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT