YouSaid · the spoken record

Patrick Spence

lines on the record: 68
first: 2022-03-01
most recent: 2022-03-01
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

“Might be an area or metaverse or VR, AR, whatever you want to talk about. And so I do think it's existential as a society that we make sure that we have the right guardrails in place to spur competition and make sure that we can foster innovation in the country. So I do think it's existential as a country that we do that. I guess it's a choice, Neil, at the end of the day of are we okay with the ultimate where it is going to be one or two companies and we all work for those companies and we all buy our stuff from those companies? Or are we going to put guardrails in place which foster competition? And I think the country would be better off with thousands of companies that are innovating and employing more and more people than enabling all that power in a few hands. And I think we've always found in history that it's dangerous to have all that power in just a few hands.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we will continue to innovate. And we've kind of, you know, I would say hit an escape velocity that enables us to continue to build on where we are. And I feel very, you know, bullish about the future as I think about the whole size of the audio market and kind of where we are today. We have a ton of runway for growth and we're in a good position. You know, I think that we should be paid for our inventions and that should help us hire more people, drive more innovation. And that's the right thing from kind of overall spirit of what we're trying to do. And I do think it's probably even more existential for a lot of startups, quite frankly, that are trying to compete and go into new spaces because there's a very clear playbook now where in these new areas certain companies will jump in and they'll use their other kind of dominant monopoly area to cross subsidize and really suck the oxygen out of the room in other areas. Web3.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you think these issues are existential for Sonos or companies like Sonos? Like if there is not change, if these lawsuits don't work and get Google to the table appropriately, are these existential issues for you?”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doing both of those things, this is part of it, right? Is standing up for our people, standing up for the fact that we are inventing things here and that we're not just going to let somebody get away with copying those things. Because, again, at the biggest level, that's just not the spirit of competition in America at the end of the day. This is a place where we should stand up for what's right. And it is not right if somebody's just going to copy what you make and try and underprice you and try and drive companies out of the space. I do feel a responsibility to stand up for that, but my number one responsibility is to the Sonos continuing to grow and innovate. And that's why that's where I spend 99% of my time.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is again keeping it in perspective of what we're trying to achieve overall. And so that's why 99% of my time goes into innovation, what are we doing for customers, all of those things. And this is something that we feel like we need to do for the greater society, but as well for all of our people, all of the companies trying to compete, right? All the new startups. And then some of those that have been impacted by the bad actions of some of the players that are here. And so I try to keep it pretty focused in terms of the amount of time that I will put into this. It has been pretty minimal from my side because Eddie and the team do a great job on this front. So I stay really, really focused on that strategy side, which is largely around the innovation and where we need to take the product roadmap. And then as well, like I said, culture and the culture internally. But if I'm, you know,”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I certainly hope not because the smaller companies can never compete with the big players on money. I am enough of an optimist, as cynical as I am by dint of being a lawyer, that I really believe in this case, narrative is going to win, that it's just self-evident that the law needs to change in ways that won't compromise these large companies. They're still going to be trillion dollar market cap companies, whether these laws pass or not, but it's going to allow the smaller players more oxygen and a fairer environment, and everybody should be for that. And so we just think the self-evident nature of this, once people understand what's really happening, is going to carry the day.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm looking at lobbying figures here. Google spent $9.6 million lobbying in 2021. Apple, Amazon, they'll spend similar amounts. At the start of the show, you're like, well, it's just me and half of another guy. Do you feel outgunned, right? I think commonly people think that the money just wins.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The anti self preferencing. It should just be a level playing field for everybody. Kind of a golden rule of do unto others as you would do unto yourself. And second, interoperability. Because if you don't have greater interoperability, the smart home and other very important new markets are going to devolve down to just a very few huge players. And we think that's horrible for the public, for the consuming public, bad for innovation. And Sonos is a very, you know, has a kind of a central role in all that as one of the very few choice-oriented OSs. And so that's why we felt it was important to tell our story.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't know that it really is political activism on our part. First of all, I'd say it is totally bipartisan. On the Senate side, the two major antitrust bills were voted out of committee overwhelmingly. I think 16 to 6 in one case, and I think it was an even bigger margin in the second case. So it is bipartisan, and it's a real problem. We're not thinking about it in terms of Republican or Democrat. We think that there is an overwhelming sense that the antitrust laws need to be refurbished for the digital age, and indeed brought back to some of the theorizing that gave rise to those laws in the first place, 100 and something years ago. So for us, it's just a straight policy matter and one where we think our relationship with the big tech companies is a good example of why there should be some modernization and exactly what that modernization should be. And so we focus on”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, one of the things here about that story, right, is now the story involves some amount of political positioning. And I would say competition law is maybe not as heated as other elements of our politics, but it's still not necessarily totally bipartisan. And you can see there's a range of companies now that have taken political positions against the tech giants. Epic comes to mind, Spotify comes to mind, Sennis comes to mind.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's not one way to go about that, right? I mean, it was no secret that Congress was opening up a series of inquiries into big tech and competition. And we did feel it was important for at least to plug into that process and understand what was going on. And, you know, that's how it starts. As I said earlier, it's the Sono story that does the work. Once people hear the origins of Sonos, what it did, what it's experiencing in the business environment, in its relationships with some of the larger platform players, then it shifts. We're not going to them. They're coming to us because they understand that having examples, real-world, detailed and frankly kind of easily understood examples is very important. In the Sonos story, Respect to competition is very straightforward. That's why we've been asked to tell it several times.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's pretty siloed from their side. So, I mean, YouTube music continues to go along. We continue to have Google Assistant. So, I mean, it's been, I think they know, obviously with us as well testifying in Congress and Congress being very supportive of making sure that there's no retaliation for doing that. I think they've been on their best behavior as well.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To use the jargon around how many of these inventive sessions we're going to have with the product team every year. And so we actually measure that because it's a statistic by which we can assess whether we're keeping that vitality in the company.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the most fun aspects of the business for my IP team is meeting with the engineers regularly in these brainstorming sessions. And what they're always looking for is, you know, and by the way, they think of themselves as inventors in and of themselves. Some of my lawyers are actually inventors on patents. So it's a symbiotic relationship with the engineering teams where they're in a room whiteboarding. And if there's something that really feels novel enough and interesting enough to go think about an actual patent, then they start working on it together. So that's the fun stuff that occurs out of everybody's line of sight, but is the generational process of capturing one wave of innovation after the other? And we've had three or four waves of innovation here at Sonos, and we're tackling the next set of problems as we speak. We even have an OKR objective and key result.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It will never be. In fact, we just talked about this at our off-site at Patrick's house this week. This should never be thought of as the fundamental aspect of our business. This is something that can help, as Patrick said, drive our investment in the business, increase our R&D budgets. But the core of Soda's business is never going to be go litigate and get a bunch of patent royalties. This is just trying to level the playing field with the big actors and not let them abuse the competitive situation by just taking what we invented for free because it wasn't free for us to invent it. I'll tell you that.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I'm saying the patent is a deterrent for bad actors. And then leverage and negotiate. I get that part. The patent portfolio as a revenue stream is the other part. And I'm curious if you're thinking about that part as important to your business.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess I would step back from it and say we want to make sure that we're properly compensated for the inventions, but it is so that we can fuel more innovation, hire more people, create more products. And so let's not forget why we're doing this at the end of the day. And so a couple things. One is that through this entire period, again, we've been continuing to innovate, introduce new products. That is where the bulk of our investment and our time and our energy goes. And I think the other side of that coin is that, hey, if we are inventing things, people shouldn't just be able to copy those things and put those out into the world and do that is just plain wrong. And so, yeah, we think that if people are going to do that, I mean, we even published our patents, right? Publicly. So everybody knows what patents we have. And you can go see those and you can work around them if you want to invent.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other thing I'd say about that is it's certainly true that patent litigation at times has been abused. You have companies who will just buy up patent portfolios and sue people to make a QuickBuck, and that's a problem. But that's not a problem that should be solved by punishing companies that are truly innovative, have solved problems that no one else has solved before, and who are facing a competitor who is actually taking those inventions. The patent troll issue is generally known, is a real one. We get sued by trolls not infrequently, but solving that by”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As we saw with Google Photos, they will sell it under cost until they've driven competition out of the market, and then they will gouge customers. I mean, that just is the way that these things work. And so I don't think people are fully like it's easy with hindsight to look at it and be cynical. But I think as you play it forward as well, it gets to what kind of society do we want? And do we want all of this coming down to a couple of companies that have all the power? Because fundamentally, while it may not be today that the prices rise and that as consumers were paying the price, it will be in the future. So just think about where this goes and why the system was set up the way that it was because it was done by very smart people trying to help create some guardrails and rules that help build society.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think everything in hindsight people look at, you know, and they say, oh, well, that, of course, that thing's obvious. That thing's obvious. It wasn't, you know, when we invented it and the hard work that went into creating it, bringing it to life, bringing that product there. The system is designed so that those that invent can go and build on those inventions and go create businesses, right? And employ lots of citizens and not have people simply use their balance sheet to copy and try and destroy other companies. And I think it's very easy with hindsight to say, oh, well, that's obvious, but it wasn't at the time. These are all inventions. And so I think people need to step back from that potential knee-jerk reaction and understand why we have a system the way we do and the way that it's being abused right now to eliminate competition. And, you know, some people will say, well, that's great because now they're selling it under cost.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's wrong, and they ought to pay you royalty for it. That's all we've ever sought, which is give us fair value for this. Google markets its speakers every day on things that Sonos actually invented and that they took from us. That's just wrong. And for one of the largest companies in the history of the world to do that is wrong. And so we're going to hold them to account in court until they're willing to come to the table and give us a fair royalty.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's just wrong. I think these are fundamental inventions that solved problems that nobody else had been able to solve before. And you go all the way back to the U.S. Constitution. It recognizes the fact that that kind of inventorship deserves IP protection. And so that's the key, which is a problem no one else has solved before. You solve it in a unique way. You don't have unlimited scope as to what those patents can say. And they have to be very specific. And if somebody else just comes in and basically rips that off,”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd take you back to my point about the decision to sue Google and take this path is we kind of came to the end of the road on constructive conversations. And so you can imagine that we will only go to that pretty drastic measure if we're not having constructive conversations with anyone and everybody in the smart speaker space is infringing on our intellectual property.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have spent a lot of time talking about Google. That's obviously who you're suing. Amazon is right there. They run the same playbook. People have the same complaints about Amazon. Previously, you have said, well, we can't sue them both. Are the conversations there different? Are they meaningfully better? Or is it just, let's see how this one goes and we'll turn our attention.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And every one of them survived, right? Five for five. That very rarely happens that you win validity on all the patents that are up. And, of course, we won on infringement on all five as well. That's just... It's important to recognize how unusual that is, and that just shows that the preparation, the careful thought that went into this, the reflection, and the ultimate taking of the action, it's been vindicated in court, and we expect that to continue in other cases.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was new to Sonos when we started making these decisions. I started here at the beginning of 2019. Discussions with Google had been going on for some time before I arrived. But one of the first things as a kind of outsider to the culture that I wanted to get comfortable with is that our portfolio was just as strong as we internally felt it was, and the law firm in Chicago that helped us build that portfolio thought it was. So I actually brought in a second firm to make an independent assessment so that I made sure we weren't just drinking our own Kool-Aid about the strength of our portfolio. It was a combination of expert judgment that led me to the strong conviction that our patents were going to survive. What was an unbelievable onslaught by Google?”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, interesting because some of those patents you had litigated before, I think with Denin, they had a system called HEOS. She kind of knew those were. Good, right? You've taken the court, you've won with them, they're solid. There are others that you are putting at risk, right? The court, like Google's going to say these patents are invalid or we're not infringing or something, and the court might agree. So how do you make that call between these are the ones we've won with before? These are the ones we're going to put at risk.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's not just been one set of choices. We've done it twice. And from our perspective, my job was to assess the strength of the case to make sure that if Patrick wanted to move forward in this way, that we were rock solid. And I know you mentioned that legal departments are a cost center as opposed to a value generator, but we wouldn't have done this if we didn't think that there was going to be a very substantial return on investment, maybe not in the immediate future, but in the relatively near future measured by litigation, which is several years, of course.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A really good question. It's such an unusual circumstance where you have the luxury of being able to choose. The situation where a competitor has come into your space and basically taken a huge percentage of your patents and infringe them, that's highly, highly, highly unusual. Usually the choice is made for you because you've got a few patents at issue. But here we decided we would take our first generation patents first. So that's set up, the synchronization of speakers, group volume, stereo pairing, the things that really were part of that first generation of multi-room home audio discovery that Sonos pioneered back in the 19th century.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then be a sounding board The argument there is Sones has been around for a long time, it's invented a lot of stuff. You have a large patent portfolio that maybe a company like Ero, which was much younger, had not acquired or built and Ero eventually had to sell itself to Amazon. You're saying, well, this is our tool. This is our leverage to go into these conversations and get Google or whoever to come to the table in a more fair way. That's the strategy. Tactically, Eddie, you've got to go into that patent portfolio and pick some to litigate. How do you make that call?”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“in the industry, right, as well. And so, you know, I also, you know, beyond my responsibilities, I guess I would say as CEO of Sotos is to be watching what's happening a little broader in the industry and saying, okay, there's a pattern of whether you look at Google Photos and taking out all the sharing services back when they made Google Photos free and all those services then they drove out of business and then they whoa imagine that they they actually you know put a price on Google Photos or you know what they did to Ero in terms of copying their technology and you know underpricing them and kind of driving them out of business is there's a pattern and so tried to address that constructively and then said look like we're in a position because of the business we've built because of the innovation we continue to drive that we can take this on and so it's the right thing for Sonos and it's the right thing for tech more generally I would say to take them on”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's something that we talked about a lot on the way to the decision as well. So, you know, I'm keeping the board up to date on our partnerships, right? Our conversations with all of our key partners as we go through this and kind of where we are. So they weren't surprised when I came to them because they knew I felt like it wasn't heading in a constructive direction. And then their, I mean, fundamentally their job is to help decide whether to keep me on or fire me and then be a sounding board on strategic questions, right? And so they were a great sounding board. We had a fantastic discussion and debate about the pros and cons. And then they fundamentally said, all right, Patrick, you know, call the shot in terms of where we're going. And I felt very confident given, you know, some of our earlier experience with this and then the fact that, you know, I knew we had invented the space and the category. And obviously the other thing, as I said, that I do is I'm watching what's happening in”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“150. And so it felt like it was the time to say, you know, no, I'm not going to let you get away with simply infringing on everything we do. And we decided then to take the path that we have.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. No, no, absolutely. After all other avenues had come to a position where it didn't feel like we were making progress. And so this, as you might imagine, this was not a decision I took very lightly. It involved Eddie, my leadership team, the board, and deciding, okay, it's time to do this. We had tried to address this constructively. Others in the industry are more constructive in their conversations with us. And it got to a point where I didn't feel it was constructive anymore and we needed to take action to both stand up for really consumers in terms of having that ability to use this concurrently because it exists. We've shown it. I think you saw it. We can do that. And as well, stand up for all the inventions that we've had. We have over a thousand patents, you know, Google, I think infringes over 100 of those today.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So we haven't tried to make a case on cross subsidization, frankly, because the law on that topic on predatory pricing over the years has, the standards become pretty much impossible to meet. So one of the things we're advocating for on Capitol Hill is that they actually make some adjustments to the standard to modernize the law. But just in terms of how do you figure it out, we don't have to figure it out because actually some of the top executives, when they testified in Congress, admitted that they were selling below cost. So the proof's right there in the testimony.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing I would just add about that is that the issue of cross-subsidization and pricing, it's very pervasive. This is not just a radio music licensing question. We face this all the time on the hardware front where certain players make copycat style products. They flood the market with them at either we would say probably below cost because they're actually not looking to make money on those products. They're feeding into Whatever that dominant business is, whether it's search or e-commerce or whatever it happens to be. Search you say.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there are some, what would I say, like conditions in terms of the different pricing, I don't know that you can just offer it for free, for instance, like those kind of things in terms of being able to offer anything for free necessarily.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the labels don't care if they just want to get paid, right? So they're just charging the same rates to everyone. It's the price to the consumer where it seems like in order to make this math out for you and not be a money-losing proposition, you have to charge an appropriate rate with an appropriate margin.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I think there's probably something to that, but I also think the labels are pretty smart, like Eddie said about trying to keep it a pretty level playing field in terms of what's there and not simply let it become a loss leader, you know, either. So I think there's, you know, there's, it's probably somewhere in the middle in terms of where that is. So, I mean, we feel like, you know, for our customers and what we're offering with Sonos Radio, that that is a good price point. And we're thinking about a consumer that's probably going to as well pay for an on-demand streaming service, right? And kind of go through that. But I think it's a pretty level playing field from the labels for the most part from what we've seen.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. That's right. Look, and I think people can choose whether to listen, you know, or not, or they can choose another. So this is why I think being open so that if somebody decides, hey, I don't want service for whatever reason they choose, they can go to service B, right? And they can make that choice. And that's why being open about that is really important. And then we're just thoughtful about what does it say about Sonos based on the artists that we're bringing onto the platform, you know, and then, I mean, I do feel a responsibility for that for sure. And so it reflects on us, of course, just like, you know, the choice of any of the platforms out there and what they put on it does reflect on the company, of course.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It fits with the brand. We're probably not ahead of the curve necessarily in terms of what's there, but we're certainly thoughtful about what we're putting out there. You'll see we're not into podcasts in terms of what's on Sotos radio today.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something I felt like we needed to do to keep growing as an organization and that it would be complementary to the other services offered. And so far that's been the learning as well is like, okay, people will listen to both. They want to lean back. And then at the same time, they want an on-demand service.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“because most of our homes listen to both like radio service and then as well have an on-demand streaming service. So we also said it's not at the exclusion of. And that's been our experience as well is that a lot of people have Sonos Radio listened to it. I think it's our third most listened to service at this point, but they're still listening to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube music, whatever they subscribe to for on-demand as well. But people have liked that. They've liked the Curators station. I think in terms of sharing a bit of like what we're all about, you will see stations there that kind of are all about Sonos, whether it's the jazz station that Kareem Abdul Jabbar is doing or Erica Badu. We put out a couple every quarter and it's really us as well sharing with our customers our perspective on the world to some degree and the kind of artists that we think should be celebrated and those kind of things. And so we had some conversations internally of how does it fit with everybody else out there.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Looking at the experience we were delivering on the radio service that was there, and we as we looked at the service that we were providing, which was basically a directory of radio stations and those kind of things, one of the teams internally came up and said, hey, like this just doesn't fit with the kind of experience that we deliver. And we want to, you know, we want to create something that we're more proud of as an organization. And we felt like we could do it. And so it was an area where I felt it would be complementary to what a lot of our partners are doing as opposed to, you know, anything that is really competitive, right? And what we really wanted to do was just reinvent it and learn and see what we could learn because I do think being in the space as well helps us better serve and direct our partners. And so being transparent with our partners was key. So we're upfront with all of our partners and let them know what we were doing ahead of time so they understood and understood where we felt it fit.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And where you point the organization, there's two things that I say I spend my time on. One is strategy, the second is culture. And a big part of culture is making sure we have the right team and the team set up in the right way to be successful.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I think one of the key jobs for a CEO is to determine when do you actually need to make a decision on something? And my goal, Eli, is not to make any decisions in a perfect world. If I've built the team in such a way that I have leaders that are all better than me in their particular area, what I'm doing is trying to support them, guide them, be a sounding board in terms of making those decisions. And so it's my ultimate goal, not to have to make any decisions because all have built a team that can make all of those decisions for the organization. And, you know, and try to train the organization that the person closest to the action kind of has the ball on the decision because they will know more than anybody else. And I think that's been a learning over my career is trying to set up the organization to do that. And so key decisions are things like who you hire, right?”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do I make decisions? I guess it depends what the decision is, you know, ultimately in terms of where we are. I guess I would start with trying to build Sonos for decades to come and working back from there in terms of what investments are we going to make today that position us well into the future. So what talent do we need on the team? How are we working as a team together? Where are we setting our priorities? And probably because I'm Canadian, it's pretty collaborative in terms of working closely, spend a lot of time with my leadership team, both as a group and then one-to-one in terms of working through some of those issues, trying to find the best talent, trying to unleash the talent inside the organization. And make those decisions when you have to, sometimes as well, you need to think about which decisions need to get made when. And oftentimes people will jump to make decisions too soon until they actually have to.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Long after I'm gone, is Sonos growing, relevant, and still around. And so that's what I think about every day. And that leads how I work with the team, how I think about the industry, who I engage with outside of Sonos. All of that is kind of the guiding light for where we need to go and how I spend my time, quite frankly.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Plus trying to tap into new startups as well and understanding what's happening in the space is where me and some of my team spends enough time to be trying to figure out the landscape. I would say every day I'm trying to figure out the landscape and consuming and reading as much as I can about what's happening in all of the audio spaces and technology beyond that. And you know, I mean, the pace of it all is so fast in this day and age. And just making sure that we're going to continue to stay ahead of the curve. Obviously my growing up inside of BlackBerry as well, you know, very much creates a paranoia that I think is healthy in terms of making sure that we're building Sonos in a way that it will be here and make any kind of pivots or turns that it needs to be successful for decades to come. And that is the most important thing to me. And I think the real testament to my leadership is.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good deal of time making sure that we have the partnerships that we need. Obviously, we have a team of people that are working on a daily basis and trying to stay on top of those partnerships and any changes in technology as well, APIs, like all of the things that need to be done in order to deliver a reliable service. The other part of it is understanding what's happening in the industry, right? And being able to make that shift, for instance, from digital downloads to streaming, right? And knowing how important it was to be engaging with all of those partners because we want to be there for our customers. Remember, like the most important thing for us is being open and supporting all the services that matter to our customers. And so we want to stay abreast of any of those changes. And so if something does happen in Web3, right? And there's a transition or a shift in terms of how music is delivered or serviced, we will be there to support it for our customers. And so staying tight with all of today's streaming services and technology leaders.”
2022-03-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Sonos' decision to sue Google with CEO Patrick Spence and CLO Eddie Lazarus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT