Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg West 20140612 : vimarsan

BLOOMBERG Bloomberg West June 12, 2014

See. Facebook will be able to shape them based on the history of web surfing. They will also be able to adjust those profiles, adding or removing certain categories. Shares in the moneylosing company, which develops software platforms, are up about 18 so far today. We will be talking to the mobile iron ceo later in the show. Is withial guest host us, roger. He was an early investor in facebook, yelp, and others. He also cofounded silver lake partners, the First Private Equity Fund focused on technology. Shows also done over 100 this year with his band. I used to play guitar. Maybe we can lay after. Every greenroom executive should have a couple of instruments. Every great executive should have a couple of and sermons. Executivea major change at twitter. Twitter ousting their coo really suddenly. He resigned his position. I should not say that he was ousted. The founder of the company said it will not name a new coo. This comes just seven months after pressure to get more user growth and get more users where they have struggled. Where what do you make of this . Remains antwitter Extraordinary Company lost in what i call a bad user experience. If i look at the embedding what twitter has done in the Television Industry and entertainment more broadly, it is extraordinary. I was watching some of the covers of the hockey game last night. The espn guys were using tweet as part of the thai log about the game dialogue about the game. For certain. Thinkextraordinary, and i that places a lot of pressure to get the monetization strategies as good as the product idea itself. All of the problem all of the blame falls on the product interface. The way the consumer interacts with the product does not work. You are trying to sift information from a firehose and it is an unpleasant experience. The new coo change, or removal last night, jonathan has been covering that out of los angeles. What can you tell us about this news in particular . He joins us now. When you talk about the product experience, ali was someone who was charged with overseeing that team, to grow twitters business. There have been concerns about the ability to continue to grow both the user base and the amount of time she people are spending on twitter everyday. You are up against some formidable competitors like facebook. Recently, they did hire a guy from google who got a lot of kudos with the triumphant return of google maps to ios after the apple maps disaster. Is that,s view do we need someone who is in the trenches and knowhow to get the team excited and can communicate with the goal is with the product . And then address some of the things that roger was just talking about. The execution is really critical for the growth of a business like twitter when they have already hit so many millions of people. That definitely does factor into where we are and how these moving pieces of key players are shipping out. Shaping out. I look at the user growth and these numbers, and i look at it sequentially. User growth sequentially, i think it is more relevant. You have more knowledge about this than i do probably. In a company at this stage of growth, the sequential numbers are those to look at. In turn ash twitter has seen a turnaround. And twitter has seen a turnaround. A littlers are getting bit better. Important, yes, but i dont think that is the issue. To me, twitter has so many customers. It is so deeply embedded. The real opportunity is to do what facebook did in its own market, which is to get much deeper engagement, much more interaction. For that, the product has to change. They have to find more ways of presenting them. We will talk little bit later about a company im involved with, reverb. They are a company with lots of experiences. Reverb solves that problem by making everything topically based. Think of any growth is the issue. I dont think user growth is, per se, the issue. I think the vast majority of the issues do not get that much value from interacting with the twitter application itself. The time lane usage and timeline growth, investors have stop looking at it. Hollywood, hollywood seems to have embraced this platform. Television also. They absolutely do. These powerne of twitter users, there are huge opportunities, whether youre a , totscaster or a celebrity get the word out or manage your message through Something Like twitter. If all of those other people who sign up for the service, as roger was alluding to, and are still figuring out, for example lets take hollywood for a second. How do i get more hollywood news and less tech news . How do i streamline all of that . There is already a lot of fascinating stuff that twitter has been working on, especially with live Sports Coverage and almost having a googlelike experience. If you sift around and find sports scores that they have cooking inside twitter, but if you where you lose sometimes is twitter being able to get these different boxes figured out. That is where the challenge is. Roger . I would love to have twitters problem. The things they have a commerce are so valuable and hard to replicate. They have accomplished are so valuable and hard to replicate. A just need to recognize that a firehose is a lousy way to display ads. They would be like trying to watch follow wall street right having a stock ticker go by. You need other analytical schools. Twitter needs to have 20 user interfaces. Most of the people i know get their twitter news from watching the usern and going to crawl of what they are looking at. That is the way to do it. I dont know who the person is, who will crack the code, but im certain somebody will. Twitter is too good an opportunity. Jack dorsey was one of the cofounders of twitter and so very much involved. Maybe less so now. He was so focused on the steve influence and having the single elegant interface. That would work, but unfortunately, it is a single in elegant inter in interface. There is no reason for forcing people into one view. People have different views. Lets recognize that if you are an executive at twitter, all you need is a good nights sleep and tomorrow is a new day and you get to reinvent the company with all those assets. To me, it is a great unrealized opportunity. I mentioned timeline growth. Whenever a company says dont look at this number anymore, that is the first number you look at. Numbersthe companys look pretty good. Growth on a sequential basis, you see more people clicking on a timeline, more revenues per timeline. That says to me they are starring to figure it out. I hope so. Because as i say, to me, twitter is an extra ordinarily valuable product for someone in the investment or news business. We live on products like this. Im cheering for them to get it right. If they ever call me up, i will sit down anytime they want. Lets figure this out. It is such a great opportunity. Thank you, gentle man. Roger is going to sit with me for a little while. A lot of cool stories to talk about, not the least of which is facebook and the way they are changing their targeting of ads to users. What this means for advertisers, next on bloomberg west. This is bloomberg west and im cory johnson. Facebook has added two big changes to it advertisement strategy. Check this out. Allowing ads to target users based on what they like. This book will be tracking web users history, which websites they will have been to and what they see. And facebook will be able to control the ads they see. If users are not interested in certain ads, they will be able to turn to nose out. Tune those out. Great fear for some users . Giving users control is a big deal. Aretwo issues that you talking about, that is what you should Pay Attention to for the consumer. That is to say, if you want to opt out of that kind of targeting, you can do so. To me, facebook sensitivity to user privacy concerns has been writing very radically in the last 12 months, especially the last three or four. I view that as positive, because it is clear that advertising on facebook works. I bought a guitar last week from really . Im shocked. How many have you got this year after is the only one i bought this year. I saw an ad on facebook and i bought it. The funny thing is, they will also show you why you were targeted. What it was about your behavior that did it. And if you dont want that, you can turn it off. And my own experience, both as an advertiser and the consumer, is that it really works. ,he more you know about the why the more effective it will be. With a second. When the user turns off the things they find annoying, the ads will actually become more effective because they are saying, although i may have clicked on a bunch of sites about athletes foot, im good now. Or the people who buy vogue magazine, or vintage guitar, those are publications that are primarily advertisement, but people buy them for the ads, because the context for the ads is the context people are looking for. They pay money to see ads. I think what facebook is doing is making a baby step toward making the advertising really contextually relevant to the facebook members. And in my mind, there is nothing but goodness. If someone is showing me the opportunity to buy a really good guitar, that is a positive thing in my stream. If i have nothing but guitar at, i probably would have more than one guitar the First Six Months of the year. But you might be broke. How does facebook know what im doing on the web when im not on facebook . Keep in mind, you are using Facebook Connect to sign into a lot of other sites. The authentication process gives them data and gives you security. It gives you confidence and all these other things. It has been a very positive trait. I actually think this notion if im on a site that i know i like and they know i like and they say, is it ok to show you stuff relevant to that and i can turn it off if i do not like it, to me, that is all goodness. This is part of facebook maturing and becoming a responsible member of the media industry. I thought you were going to say, becoming utility. No, no. There is that. Theyre like the Telephone Company before it was broken up. In the early days of the old mob bell, it was the way that adults communicated. Now it is the instagram and snapchat with the kids. I think the Facebook Connect is definitely one of the most powerful things they ever did. Stealthily one of the most powerful things they ever did. The way i understand it works is they have essentially given away they have gone to other companies and said, we will take over your user id, password, and problems and we will give you statistics about how users are using your website if you will let us be the ones to gather that information. But i think that is fundamentally correct. It is a great value on both sides. Mind, over time, facebooks ability to give consumers the better online really helped by Facebook Connect. For people toeasy sign onto site. He did not have to have 100 passwords and you did not have to remember whether you checked into something before. And the quid pro quo of that, if all of a sudden the advertising is relevant to what you are interested in as opposed to not relevant, that will feel really good to you. On a this going to turn firehose of advertising revenues for these guys . I dont think so. When you have as many members as they have, the number of ads that they have and theres remarkably low. Compared to things like newspapers where advertising dominates the experience. Facebook has to be careful on that issue, but the more accurate the accurately targeted, the fewer you have to do to make your numbers. But what kind of guitar did you get . I got a gretchen g retsch 6118. It arrived yesterday afternoon. I warmed up on it and took it to the show. I will check that out. Stay with us. Coming up next, mobile iron made street relative debut today. What does it tell us about the state of wireless and Enterprise Software . Great Big Questions next on bloomberg. You can watch us streaming on your tablet, phone, and bloomberg. Com. Welcome back. Im cory johnson. Mobile iron is now a publicly traded company. It is a cool little company, but not that little anymore, i guess. It is an Enterprise Software company that takes business steps to smart phones. Raise 100ping to million, but are delaying plans to go public. Are joined by the ceo and president , Roger Mcnamee. Bob, let me ask you first of all, why wait . And why stop waiting . The Enterprise Mobility market is a massive market that is happening right now. Mobile irons execution adding 6400 customers in four years and anding growing over 409 four years, the company is ready. And growing over 400 million in four years, the companies ready. The business and the market was ready. Lets talk about that. I dont really care about the trading. I care about the Company Behind it. When you are having a deal like this, do you have to be concerned about another quarter and getting out before that hassle, which might delay things, change things, or mccue forced force you to make some changes in your plan . Not at all. Particularly with Enterprise Mobility. You change or document any meet your investors and it is time to become a Public Company. We are thrilled to become a Public Company today. Bob, Roger Mcnamee here. Congratulations on the ipo. Help me understand a corporation that you are doing business with. The focus is to get employees to have access to corporate data using smart phones and tablets. Tell me what the apps are that they are most focused on now, and how you think that is going to evolve in the next year. Absolutely. In the early days of Enterprise Mobility, the primary app was email, frankly. Choice. Anted device they wanted apple, google, windows, but it was really about email. What is happening now is it is becoming about rolling out mobile apps, or being able to access quicker document. People want to be productive in the way they want to be on a mobile device of their choice. And the mobile apps but they are doing now are apps related to crm, Customer Relationship management. Asked related to improving customer service. Yard p applications that help applications erp that help businesses run better. We actually have one large Swiss Company that rolled out over 100 applications to their employees in one quarter alone. I recognize is a huge opportunity. One of the things im confused by, though, is right now it cost to about . 65 of sales and marketing to generate one dollar of revenue. I would have thought that in a category like this, margins would be a lot more favorable to you, because of the urgency Companies Feel to get mobile first. Yet we dont see that in the p l. When is that going to change . If you look at the mobile line business is mobile iron business, we have added it thousand customers if you look at the mobile iron business, we have added 6000 customers last four years. We are a very high gross margin business, 80 . As we reported in our s1 documents, our early customers and we started selling in 2010 our early customers have expanded to become very profitable for us. Customers start small, but then we make them successful and they grow. Customerslly, how are expand five x over a threeyear time frame. That is what drives our Marketing Market ability for the are the marketing costs going to come down . Statements provide like that, but when we have a large, fastgrowing market like this and you look at our past track record, our business is in good shape. Look at him. A couple of hours in the market and he talks about this talked like the ceo of a Public Company. Good shape. Coming up, we are going to look at huber and their latest round of funding. When bloomberg west returns. But it is 26 minutes after the hour, and that means television Bloomberg Television is on the market. Im alix steel. A little bit to the downside in terms of the s p, led by Consumer Discretionary industrials as well as tech. The only sector in the green is energy, and that is because oil is surging to an eightmonth high. We are on the market again in 30 minutes. More bloomberg west coming up. You are watching herbert west. Bloomberg im cory johnson. Patentsll of its available for public use so other Car Companies can use the technologies. Elon musk says the decision is necessary to advance electric vehicles. Tesla will not File Lawsuits against anyone who uses teslas several hundred patents in good faith. Amazon is the latest company to get into the streaming music business, launching a Service Called prime music. The service is available for amazon prime members. All but universal music artists. Amazon and universal could not reach a deal. Amazon is embroiled in a conflict with warner bros. Over publishing. And china places researches on google in the runup to the anniversary of Tiananmen Square crackdown last week. But now, there is a mirror website allowing chinese to fromh for images and video the 1989 protests. More than 100,000 visitors to the site today alone. Numerous multibillion dollar tech deals, at t for example. Huber huber u beer is valued at 17 billion dollars. We have had to deal with these number for a long time. I get tired of the conversation under uation and is unattached to the underlying business. You can stretch valuations across the market. At that point, it really matters. What is good about this environment is that the company is going public or getting extreme valuations for the most part, at least in the Public Market and the upper end of the private market, have really substantial businesses. The company that was just on here has 105 million. Companies clear that like go pro are substantial businesses. Of those ievery one withdraw an electric battery maker. I get that, but that is not want to focus on. Not what to focus on. I will to you it is. The news the day before yesterday that eric cantor lost his seat in virginia, i think, sets back immigration policy. The thing to underst

© 2025 Vimarsana