YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Hilton

lines on the record: 146
first: 2017-04-19
most recent: 2017-04-19
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

“Now, I know some people say, well, at least that's something. At least in the US, there's nothing. But that was really distortive and actually very unhelpful for women in the sense that an employer would say, well, if I hire you and you're going to have a kid, that's like a year, I'll just take the guy because it's only two weeks. And so I really wanted to equalize. I wanted to equalize that and have totally the same expectation for a man and woman on the grounds of gender equality. That was something that was blocked by EU regulations. Like, why? What's it got to do there?”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Policy autonomy than a member state of the EU. It's really, for example, employment law, there's all sorts of examples of that. I mean, you know, I remember being really shocked that one of the things I really, the family policy is a big thing I care about a lot. I think it's the foundation of a lot of things that have gone right in terms of poverty and inequalities. family policy not being done right and one of the things I was trying to argue for and make happen in the UK was shared parenting and specifically shared parental leave we had a kind of completely distorted parental leave system where basically the sort of you basically had a year for mothers and two weeks for fathers”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of people in the US, they sort of think of the EU as basically another kind of European version of NAFTA, which is a tree. It's so much, that's the... I'm used to.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I've always believed that I just hate the centralization of power. I think one of the big things that's gone wrong over the last few decades is the centralization of power, economic and political power. Yeah. I found even working in government, for example, one thing that I mean, every single day there was something we were trying to do that was blocked by EU regulation.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did, and I wanted it to happen. And in fact, I went back to the UK. And campaigned for Brexit. And it was part of my book that I, you know, that came up more in the UK. And that put me on the other side of it from David Cameron. And that was interesting in itself, but there we are. You know, I'd work with him very closely. And you were for it because.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That honestly is a real focus of what we're doing from a design point of view is like, okay, how do we, you know, we don't want to minimize it. We don't want to kind of make it so kind of simplistic that it's not real. But we are trying to make it simple and easy and work on your phone and all that kind of stuff to... Understand how people think about it, and actually, the truth is that people really are engaged. They do care about issues. They care probably about issues more than...”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Americans did the proof. Well, that's why a combination of data in these simple tools we really genuinely want more people to get involved”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it's not like 60 odd percent of state legislative seats are uncontested. No one's running. And that's why you get these duffers, these useless people just get re-elected by default year after year. Another great example is that guy, the Stanford rape case, what's his name, Persky, that got a lot of attention quite rightly last year? That guy, that's an elected position.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We definitely do Yeah, I mean, remember that, you know, for example, let's just take the US. You've got, I mean, everyone focuses on the presidential and so on, but actually merrel races get a lot of attention. But one of the most important bits of the political system that gets hardly any attention are state legislatures. Actually, if you look at what everyone listening, if you think what affects their life in terms of health services and social and education, a lot of that is done at the state legislative level”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And not just in the US. I mean, we've launched in a small way in the UK and in France they have an exciting election going on right now.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no. We're a platform for participation. So it's really, we're non-partisan. I'm completely open. It's just for everyone to get involved.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we could do it. So, I mean, as you said, signing up. Well, we've done it already. So you can go crowdpack.com, Cara. Oh. And there you are. You can literally everyone listening can pledge now. Oh my God. Right.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This woman who's never done policy before the last time I looked she's just burst to five hundred thousand she's half a million dollars right she's running against she's got money and it's one of the she's raised more money in the shortest space of time than most people run for cultures and it's just such a look there are some unique circumstances around that I'm not pretending anyone who starts a crowd pack page is going to get to half a million dollars however it shows you you can do it”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, we do all the back end and the reporting and all that kind of stuff. We have advisory opinions from the FEC. That's another, you know, we've done all that fiddly work that needs to be done. Then Rachel Mallow does a segment on it.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do some helper with some press for the local media. She goes up. She's kind of raising quite a bit of money, about 20 grand. Then Jason Schaefer makes this remark about the smart, do you remember he said this thing about if you can't afford healthcare, maybe don't buy another smartphone. So she's in his district. So that gets her a big boost. Mike.com do a piece on it. She's up to about 80,000. Never done politics before. Then she says, you know what? I'm going for it, you know, because she sees she's got the support. So it gives her that confidence to say. So then she converts her Crow Pact campaign from pledges to I'm in, I'm running, all that money then turns out instantly into a donation. She's sitting on a pot of correct.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they are. And then she said, you know what? And then she'd done a few things, actually. She literally changed the petition about healthcare or something. Went to the town hall meeting. He was at and got, you know, a bad reaction. She didn't really feel that she was getting any. So, you know what? I'd heard about this crowd pack thing. I'm going to go for it. I'm going to see if I can start running. She creates a page, gets quite a good boost of donations just from her network”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm eventually seen a presentation about Crowdpack. Never got involved in politics before. She's a doctor in Utah, in Jason Chafitz's district.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was Kathy Allen from Utah, she went on the women's march. She got really kind of inspired and mobilized. She'd seen.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Focused on there is start running. And as its name suggests, it's just a really, literally anyone listening to this can start running like now without actually thinking of all the off-putting barriers like, do I have to hire a campaign manager? Do I need a website? Do I have to register with whoever the hell, you know, et cetera? No, you don't have to do any of that. You can go to crowdpack.com, start running, and you can create a page in minutes that is your fundraising page and you can start collecting pledges. People can pledge to your campaign and their cards are only charged if you run. It's just a brilliant way for people to take your first step if they've never done it before just to see if they have the support. And we had an amazing story of that this year.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things that you have to really understand, and that's why I wanted to kind of build something that would enable people to participate, but through the system that we have, which is, you know, in the end it's democracy. And there are elections and they're about and you've got to understand how that will work rather than pretend that you can completely make that go away and invent some whole new thing through tech that replaces the system. So I think we've tried very hard to work within the system. I don't know. We'll see. I mean, we're having an amazing response right now. We've got incredible stories. Like just recently, one of the things that remember I said I really cared about trying to create something that make it easier for outsiders to run for office to make it simple to take that first step. One of the tools that we've really”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That kind of thing. Now, and there have been efforts coming out of here and elsewhere to try and, you know, I hate that overused term, but disrupt politics, rethink how it works I think the problem is that many of them haven't quite sort of got to the heart of how we affect the actual political system. Politics and government, there is something called the Constitution. It defines how it works. There is a certain set of”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That totally, I think that it's just been I think maybe one of the things is that there's a kind of political establishment which includes the people who've been involved in campaigns and so on. There's very East Coast based and it's just been old on TV.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But this is the very first version. Why has politics two things politics and healthcare been just like they do not respond to the internet until Trump really with the Twitter stuff, which we'll talk about in the next section. But what is the problem with politics? It's still so retail. I don't know how else to put it.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's lots of different. But what we've tried to do is look at what users are saying about what they're looking for and what works and what doesn't. And I think one of the most important things is something that's really simple and easy to use and does all the things that organizers want. And so that's really what we've tried to build. But this is the very first version”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On diversity in tech, and it's a perfect example of how the tool can be used. You can put together in one place, you can show content, you can raise money, you can call your representative, you can organize events. It's just, and it's an open platform. That's a big difference with what else is out there in this kind of”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And get that funded and all goes right across the country, and that is all held in this created a community platform called Terminate Gerrymandering, which, and I mean, literally, we created one for you. Such a good example.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. So this could, so you could go to Krap Act right now and you'll see that, I mean, we just launched, for example, this week with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was our launch user for our new communities product, which is all based around the issue of gerrymandering. So he's not running for office himself, but he wants to lead an effort to get redistricting on the ballot in the 37 states where you can do that and then to fund legal challenges to gerrymandered.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we think Crowdpack is and what the potential it has. And the way I describe it now is we really see Crowdpack as the future of political organizing and fundraising. It's the place where you would go to take political action, to organize a community behind any kind of political or issue-based campaign. It's not just that's a really important distinction.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think the way I tell the story is that we launched in 2014 for the midterm elections. As you'd want to see happen with a tech firm, and as I learned at the D-School, we did a bunch of experiments. We tried out different things, including a focus on data and giving people objective data on candidates and helping them figure out who to vote for. We created crowdfunding platforms. We tried out various things to see what users would respond to. And basically, over that cycle, over the last two years, we got to the point where now we're really clear about what we”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And maybe they, you know, it helped, and I understand that that's also to a certain extent keeps it the way it is because they help people who are like them. So I totally get that. And I think we need to sort of broaden that out. However, I really benefited from that, had this amazing opportunity, you know, got together, found co-founder Giselle Kordostani, who leads on the business side. Exactly, that's how we met because she was a colleague of Rachel's. Adam Bonica at Stanford, who's the leading kind of US expert on political data and campaign finance. And we kind of put it all together.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That exactly data exactly all those things, but the thing that we, and let's, you know, even the role of Stanford, we're trying to copy that UCL in London, but it's this culture, this kind of helping each other culture. I know that Silicon Valley gets a bad ride, and you know this better than anyone, but honestly, it was just this incredible thing where People want to help you.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tech and we did all these kind of technical stuff like entrepreneur visas and tax breaks, early stage investment, all that kind of stuff.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Enterprise residents, yeah. An EA, which was brilliant, you know, I mean, all this, I make it just an incredible, this could never have happened in the UK. Why not? Because you just don't have that. Ecosystem, the attitude, the open, the whole thing is just a re I mean, I remember working in the UK government trying to boost the UK as a centre for”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that was the idea. Very much so. This was like 2013 when I was just sort of, you know, trying to figure all this out. And then in the way that happens here in this kind of slight magic way, I met someone from NEA, the venture firm. We got talking. He said that's very interesting. Why don't you come and work? Well, not before that. It was actually work on it here. I got a gig there as an EIR.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That match their priorities, and actually support them and get involved that way. So I saw it as a kind of, and also somewhere that would really help outsider candidates, people who are completely not part of the old system, not the insider is going to run for office.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's not a partisan thing, it's the same with the influence of public sector unions on the left and whatever. Whatever you look at it, it's forcing candidates. So when they, by the time they get to positions of elected office and power, they're so constrained in what they can do. Exactly. So I thought, well, let's try and do something about that. So, my very first notion was well, what if we could create a crowdfunding platform for politics that would mean that candidates could raise money from a much broader group so they're not dependent on the same old donors? And actually create some kind of political marketplace so that citizens could find candidates.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do your basic campaign. And typically that forces you to do things and say things and commit it to positions exactly that actually not necessarily what you believe, but really keeps in place these structures of politics, whether that's the traditional parties or an obligation to the donors, whether that's businesses and billionaires on the right.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exact So I was thinking, how can tech help? What problem in the way politics works? Could tech maybe do something about? And after thinking about that a bit and actually reflecting on what had gone wrong in my view in terms of my experience in government, I actually got to the point of money in politics. Because money, I think, underpins a huge proportion of what's wrong with politics in the sense that The need to raise money, whether that's huge amounts of money as is needed in the US to run for federal office, or even small amounts at the state level, or smaller amounts as are true in the UK because there are caps on spending. Nevertheless, you've got to raise money.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course. And here I am, is I total cliche, but like, what am I going to do if I don't do a startup? I'm a complete jerk. Right, right. You have to. What's it called? You're like hanging out.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the moment, I think, that I realized this is what I want to do next, and I want to apply this to the field that I'm experienced in and have knowledge on, which is politics and government. And that really took me.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and basically what the DSchool does for those who don't know is really apply the methodology, which would be incredibly familiar to anyone who works in tech, that kind of basic process of really understanding users, rapid prototyping, testing, iterating around a product idea. What the DSchool does is teach that approach and that methodology in its purest academic form and apply it to different contexts and different settings. So each class at the DSchool takes that design thinking or human-centered design, whatever you want to call it, that methodology and says, right, let's apply that to redesigning our lunch or whatever it may be or how we think about healthcare. And they'd never really done anything connecting that to public policy. So they're excited about working with me on that. And we put together a class. And in order to teach that, obviously I had to learn it. So I went through the process of learning about design thinking.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This famous institute, I think let's give it its proper name and acknowledge the response, the Hasso Platner Institute of Design at Stanford. Was that place is incredible for those listening who aren't familiar with it? I mean, it is just such an incredible, unique, it's not literally unique because it's been copied a lot. Right, absolutely.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. And so he just was amazing. He set up for me a few weeks later a kind of two days of meeting everyone around the campus. And it was like a sort of matchmaking thing. You know, do we like each other and whatever? And I ended up as a result of all of that doing two things when we moved. One was teaching in the public policy department a kind of class, which was a pretty straightforward class on how to make change happen in government, how government works that kind of sort of practical aspect of government. But the really amazing thing was that Jeremy connected me with the D-School.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I literally got hold of him and said, I don't even know what I'm really asking, but we're moving over. And is there anything I can do at Stanford? I don't know what I mean by that question”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Academic or intellectual, anyway, and they remember there was someone I'd worked with in the Obama administration, a guy who had been part of Samantha Powers National Security Team. And we'd worked on something called the Open Government Partnership, which was an idea to sort of promote. Open data as a tool for transparency and fighting corruption around the world. And we worked on that. And I remember when we launched it at the UN General Assembly, there was a party afterwards and I was talking to this guy and he was, I remember him saying, oh, after this, I'm going back to Stanford. He was an academic. And I thought, hang on, wasn't there that guy I met at Stanford? Maybe he can help.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. But actually coming here was just so amazing. And I hadn't really got a plan as to what I would do next. And through various conversations got to the point of saying, well, There's this place called Stanford University, and maybe there's something I can do there. And I had no idea, and I'm not a particularly academic person. I literally went to university, but I'm not.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I should think thanks to Rachel and her whole thing is thanks to Rachel. First of all, in terms of the reason we moved here was because of my job in the government and in Downing Street, Rachel, when she was promoted to global head of PR and government relations at Google, she was doing that job from London, and that involved not just a lot of travel to Mountain View and the team was there, but actually she was the time. When she started that, we had one child, now we got second. And she was like in the office in London till 10 p.m., 11 p.m. every night to make the time difference work. And so that just got unsustainable, and so we decided to move. And that was just the beginning, for me, of an incredible transformation. I mean, it was just that. Pretty stressful, miserable, frustrating time working in government.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anyway, they just brought out the plan. She was showing with friends and she was showing off this great new thing. You could talk to the phone and it gives you an answer. So she said, okay, Google, who is Steve Hilton? And then the answer came back. Steve Hilton is married to Rachel Whetstone, who is head of. I know my place. You know your place, yeah.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whetstone. That's how I know you. Quite right. And so should everyone, my favorite example of that quite correct hierarchy was when Google brought out their, I don't know what's called so untech, the voice thing. Well, you run it.”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and that's fair enough because you're not the one who's elected. So I've got no complaints about it. It's just that I found it very, very frustrating”
2017-04-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Steve Hilton, CEO, Crowdpac · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT