YouSaid · the spoken record

Ted Leonsis

lines on the record: 99
first: 2016-10-26
most recent: 2016-10-26
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

“I know I would have been very, I would have had an island by now at least, something like that. I've turned down every internet mogul, so I feel good about that. I feel terrible. I've turned down every internet mogul, so I feel good about that. I feel terrible about that because I do a lot of things with all that money. But you're doing”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Run for office because it's too slow to effectuate change. You know, this is being here in Washington, D.C. and kind of politics is like sports here. This has been an incredible experience. And we got another 50 days. I traveled a lot over the summer outside of the US. And it's the first time that people look at us. And it's like a clown show. That's what they don't really understand. And AOL had its best days. President Clinton was our president, and we got to know President Clinton well and Hillary is experienced. And so, you know, I know it's the impolitic thing to do, and I usually do vote Republican, but I'm going to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tens of billions of dollars or hundreds of billions of dollars of retained profits outside of the US that they've already paid an international tax. And if they bring it here, it'll be retaxed, so they'll be paying tax twice. So there's got to be something in policy that could repurpose, hey, rather than taxing you, use those dollars to build manufacturing plants here and train people here. You know, that's probably the one thing that's missing right now. Steve Case, I'm really proud of the work that he's done in trying to get a”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But there's hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars that jobs overseas. Bring them back here. Start to bring some here. And then the government has to play its part because Apple's got...”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have to have that social responsibility. Now, it's hard and you'll take a step back in your business model. I mean, there's a reason that everyone went overseas. They don't pay as much and they don't take care of their workers and there aren't unions.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I love the company and I'm a family of Apple adopters. The one thing that I don't feel good about is jobs are so important in the US. And, you know, I'm trying to be a part of this maker community with Shinolin Filson. Apple needs to start to make some things here. Nike needs to start to make things here. We have to”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An apple head like less than five percent market share and I had to make a really tough decision. I think it was AOL four point zero and we didn't do a new client for it. And Steve really yelled at me and I feel terrible about that decision. It was the right economic decision. Well, he did okay.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love Apple. I'm loyal to Apple. Know the last conversation I had with Steve Jobs, he yelled at me and rightly so because we, AOL was Apple Link. And that's how we started. And we had to develop clients, different clients for both Windows and for the Mac. And we were an important company at the time.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Snapchat is the first platform that I haven't adopted and it just shows that I'm old. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, you know, I do my email. And when I first saw Snapchat, I said, oh, I get this. It's like AOL in the old days. It's personal communications. They've done an incredible job in creating stories and narratives and being able to communicate to millennials. They could be the sleeper in being able to do something very, very creative with sports.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even better. I sold the company to American Express on that board and know what's happening in travel and what consumers are doing. And they just superset the entire hospitality industry. And Brian is a saint. He's a beautiful kid. I don't know if it's a tool or a platform environment. I think it's a generational, not a long-term.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unbelievable. And Travis needs to be managed because he's on top of the world, but he has changed everything. It's, I think, one of the great companies ever.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In most of the great companies, great entrepreneurs have been told a hundred times you can't do that. I was there at the birth of Amazon Jeff. Drove his Volkswagen KOL, and we did a deal early on. When Amazon was struggling we gave them one hundred forty million dollars to keep the company going. They were very important to the internet, very important to AOL. We loved and respected Jeff and what he was trying to do. And he was counterintuitive. He basically told Wall Street, I'm not going to be driven by EBITDA. I'm not going to be driven by quarterly results. I'm going to build. 50 year vision in great company, and I'm going to pour all of the profits and all of the cash back into the business.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My biggest mistake, my biggest mistake, and I tell entrepreneurs is it's great sports phrase that no one knows nothing. And when people were canceling AOL, I said we need to let them as a parting gift take the AOL client with them for free. And some of the world's best consulting firms and data scientists said you can't do that. Look at these top box scores. It'll drive cannibalization, blah, blah, blah. And instinctively, it just made sense to say we spent all this money getting these people as customers. They love AOL. They hate dial up access. So let them take AOL with them. And we would have been the front end.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the productivity of the second tier companies as you recruit a VP of engineering, he recruits three people that he worked with. They come to your company. They get settled in. They get recruited 90 days later. I mean, the turnover, the... It's, I think, bedlam, and all we want to do is try to find that one great company in Illinois, that one, you know, so we've made a couple of investments in Austin, Texas.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so what we did was we said, we're going to pursue this rise of the rest strategy AOL was in northern Virginia and Groupon was in Chicago and Zipcar was in Boston. Some of our best investments Sweet green opturo there in DC Kleiner Perkins from Silicon Valley invested with us in Optoro here in Washington DC. And our theory is that maybe there's going to be 10 great companies in Silicon Valley, but that more and more because the infrastructure, the technology, the lifestyle, I mean, you know better than anyone, trying to get an apartment, trying to deal with the traffic and the quality of life is not great in Silicon Valley.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We walked away from a lot of deals as investors because it was if you think your company's worth $500 million and we want to make three to five times our money, at some point you'll have to be profitable to go public and be valued at that. And you don't even have a sniff of what the business model will be”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I don't know what happened, this cabal, if you will, of some media, some blogger, some venture capitalists in the Karets who mostly in Silicon Valley. And because I am a little bit old, I feel like I live through the dot-com crash. We didn't”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me say, what are you celebrating your entrance for? You have to make great products. You have to have happy customers. And then you can have an exit. And that's when you celebrate.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say that the present class of entrepreneurs, and I don't want to paint with such a big brush, but... The Silicon Valley Unicorn speak with so much conviction and the celebration of grand entrances.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It had the heart of it, at the heart. So let me finish up by talking about two more things. I'm going to do a lightning round of companies now, and I'd love to know your thoughts. That's the last thing I want to do. But if you were an entrepreneur, what is a mistake that you've made that you think... You learn from or you didn't learn from, or that you would do differently. And what is something you think you do really well? These are young entrepreneurs listening, men and women. What would you say where you learned something or you don't even have to learn? I just did that wrong.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I'd say it's a local e-commerce company, and it has this overlay of being able, if Getting haircuts and getting massages and going to your local restaurant, people buy a lot of travel tickets. People buy lots of concert tickets. People buy”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and no one can manage and get all seventy countries humming with the same playbook and the same business model and the like. And so the company and...”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I just remember being with the senior management team saying, okay, let's name all of the countries that we do business in. And badly. And they couldn't do it. We're in 700 cities.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Its first full year, it did three hundred fifty million, and the next year it did a billion too. That's why it was on the cover of Forbes as the fastest growing company ever. And so we really had no choice, and LinkedIn and Facebook and Groupon were all going public around that same time. And we grew globally too fast when I came in to help and was co-CEO for nine months or so. We were in 70 countries Amazon was in nine”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Although, you know, I wish it was that simple at the time if you had more than 500 employees, you were kind of a public company. And we went, I think our first year the company did, it was a stub year of $30,000, $35 million.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, group discounting, but now it's really become a local e-commerce company. And it's a five billion dollar run rate. The stock is behind the reality of the company's business model. It has scale. It went public too early. I mean, if you just look back at history a lot of the money.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've been vice chairman, chairman, lead director, co-CEO, whatever they need to do it. And I mean, it's a big idea, which was basically”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, just being able to turn that global footprint into something meaningful on a local basis. I still believe that local and social and mobile is still untapped.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think what we would have looked at is a front end and having to have subscription services that over the top networks, as I said, well, sports, I mean, Yahoo Sports is one of the great franchises imaginable. A lot of their financial services that Yahoo Didn't do mint or betterment or some of these.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I really think Tim is the most ad tech and marketing savvy of all of the executives in the industry. And Marissa wasn't. And she was a product person, if you will. And so, I do think the merger makes a lot of sense.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To get users. And so I just always thought if you're going to be in the media business, that having one platform and we had credit cards so we could get Yahoo and their channels into the subscription business and that you should have one ad sales force and you could manage multiple brands. That's what big media companies do. And it's interesting that it took all this time and effort and AOL got spun out of Time One or went public. Then it got acquired by”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Yahoo really got its traction when people would cancel AOL. And we wouldn't let them take the AOL front end and mail with them. And so we allowed Yahoo Mail and Hotmail at the time because”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then when Terry Semmel ran it, when Tim Kugel ran it, we would say, my thesis at the time was he who gets to 1 billion first will win. And that the US would become a shrinking part of this overall pie and that we were, when I first joined AOL when AOL acquired my company, we were on a march to a million.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they wanted, could they rent or be co hosted? Because we had the biggest network in the world and would we invest in the company? And we said, well, why don't we just buy you? And they said, how much? And we said, well, Brian Pinkerton, he was one guy, one million. Your two guys will offer you two million. And I've remained very, very friendly with Jerry, and every time I see him, I go, you know, you made such a bad move. You could have two million bucks. Yeah.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Named Brian Pinkerton, and we paid $1 million for it. In about nine months later David and Jerry came to see me and Steve. They were being kicked off of the campus at Yahoo. Of Stamford, and they needed to commercialize Yahoo.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Watches our technology. So there's something about this connection between doing good and doing well. Shinola's founding vision was to bring high paying manufacturing jobs back to America. And they started in Detroit, and we've hired more than 500 people who were laid off by the auto company, but they knew how to work with glass and leather and mechanical things, and they had to be trained. Now they have high-paying jobs with great benefits and stock options. And they're helping to turn Detroit around. Dan Gilbert, who owns the Cleveland Cavaliers, is probably the...”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then one of our favorite investments is revolution foods, which is headquartered in Oakland, which is healthy school lunches and healthy school snacks. Founded by these incredibly focused female entrepreneurs who were moms, who were mad as hell and weren't going to take it anymore. Why are we feeding our kids and making them fat and sleepy in school and giving them tater tots and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? And they've really created kind of a next generation Sidexo or Aramark. And they have a lot of traction. They'll grow really, really fast”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's more a lifestyle. It's more healthy. Living, it's a community, and they're booming. And that'll be a Great investment, and you know, who would have thought that Cale could be more differentiated and valuable than social media in some cases?”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to eat every day. And so we've made big investments in a company that started here for students from Georgetown called Sweet Green.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I do think that young people in their viewing habits have really, really turned the media industry totally upside down. And the next generation, the centennials, who knows what's going to happen? I said, we'll be paying them to”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think what will happen is there will be this emergence one day of virtual MSOs. Someone's going to have to package up as a consumer, you're not going to pay $8.95 for Netflix and $5.95 for all across network and $6.95 for women's basketball network. Someone will emerge as the virtual packager.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can't see the watched game. The other day I read this art in the New York Times about vice. I think Vice and Viceland is the biggest con ever.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then they replicate their dorm experience, the three, four, five kids live in an apartment, and they don't get cable. So they can't come to a game.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they can't afford tickets because I'm sold out. And the only way they can get tickets is on Stubhub and pay two or three times”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm sold out of all our games and DC has become the number one millennial per capita city in the country. Kids come to Georgetown.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My daughter three years later went to Georgetown. They don't have cable. They have wireless. They said, sweetie, we're going to buy you a TV just like we did your brother. She said, I have zero interest in a television. I have my iPad. We walked around, we moved her in. There were no TVs in any of the dorms. And so she graduates from Georgetown. She moves to London. She's going to film school. She gets a furnished apartment. There's a TV built into the wall. She doesn't use it. The cable company in London doesn't know that she's there. So you hear all these terms like cord cut”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kids, I have two children, they're not children anymore. And I saw something remarkable happen. My son, who's 27 now, he went to University of Pennsylvania. And my wife and I drove him up his freshman year, and U-Penn was wired for cable. And we went to the best buy and we bought a big screen TV and we put the big screen TV up. And he was big man on campus and he got to watch the games in DC over Slingbox. He had his Xbox and he developed muscle memory. And when he graduated, he moved back to DC's in a condo and he's got the big screen TV and he's got cable. And he subscribes”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that's probably the biggest thing that keeps me up at night, and I don't know why it's not keeping every other owner up at night, right? And we've grown up together, you know, I have two.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“ESPN just gave us a $24 billion deal. You got NBC, they write really, really big checks. You've got the regional. But you've got to be thinking of your future.”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think one that's going pretty good right now, and if you get into sports, you got to compete with the big incumbents. And as I said,”
2016-10-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ted Leonsis, Founder, Revolution Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT