He led the twitter ipo and has a varied background, including cfo of the nfl. He is also a west point graduate, spending time in the middle east while in the army. Gupta will stay on as Senior Vice President of strategic investment. This is less than three weeks after the coo resigned amid reports a power struggle between himself and the ceo p meantime, twitter is also active on the acquisition front, reaching a deal to buy the mobile ad targeting firm for 100 million at what do these moves say about twitters future . I spoke to a partner at red Point Ventures he was previously twitter director of platforms for four years. I asked about this i have heard Amazing Things about anthony. I know they had a great experience working to the public process. There were a lot of fans inside of twitter. I think about what it means for twitter. I think bringing someone in like anthony to help translate between the two worlds will be very effective for them. There are a lot of executive moves happening. The head of engineering left her they have had a lot of shakeups in the products department. What is going on . It is about finding the right leaders at the right time to grow and continue to expand the opportunities they have to do with around 300 million active users, i think that could because two one billion. They have to find the right people help them to get to the spot. How is dick costolo regarded in the company . I think he is an amazing ceo. I love working with him. People are inspired by him. From a culture perspective, is there anything to worry about . Every company has its challenges and growing pains. Twitter has thousands of employees and is now a public company. There will be some growing pains, but i think it is healthy and growing like crazy. Why are they buying this acquisition . Twitter is doubling down on mobile advertising it we see tons of ad dollars shipping into mobile. We see tons of companies being billed mobile only. To keep doubling down on mobile advertising is very smart. It is some the gulf region targeting. There were companies trying to get in stalls and bring new users, but now they will have audiences, and they can build Advertising Products to bring people back. If you want to buy something or you use ebay, ebay can target an existing user with a product they want to buy the time they want to buy it. Not long ago, twitter hired ahead of commerce, but nobody really knew what exactly twitter was planning to do in commerce. Do you have a better idea or they are going with this . There was a little bit of news leaking out today. The ceo is a total rockstar. I think he is the right guy to lead and figure out what commerce is per at if you think about the evolution of how twitter is built out him of their building stuff in stream. Theyre consuming something. They are putting a buy now button right next to products or clicks you think they will do that . That is my guess. How is this going to help user growth . The thing that is most important is building more use cases so people understand how to use twitter. The more way they can get twitter out outside of those active users means a lot to them. If you think about the global reach, people are undercounting the reach that twitter has. One of the things dick costolo said to me is a does not matter how many people are actually using twitter, because you see tweets everywhere, on tv and in magazines done is that true or do they really need people to be signing up . I think that is where the Public Market misunderstands twitter. It is not like facebook. It is not just about the monthly active. It is about the one billion plus users they can reach on a monthly basis. It is media. It is such a part of the culture now. In many ways it is bigger than facebook or do you hear about it more on a daily basis than you do about facebook. I think there is a huge opportunity. You have been at red point now for a year . Not a year yet. Almost a year. How is it going . What trends are you following . How has your twitter experience help you pick and choose where to place your bets . I am loving it. It is a big change from operating. There is a lot to learn still. Good thing i am learning from twitter is looking at User Behavior and continuing to motivate people to use the application. What will get people to log back into your application pier you look at the behavior for twitter, it is the thing that people open up every day to see new realtime information. My job is to look at those things and figure out which ones will be the next twitter. So which businesses are looking cool or like they will keep people coming back and opening the app every day . Yes, that repeating behavior. It looks like, place behavior, like somebody taking public transportation. How are you guys being affected by valuations and what is happening with you mentioned uber, and what is happening in the broader environment are these valuations trickling down . It had been fluctuating for a while. I think enterprise has stated little bit higher the consumer has probably been a little depressed. It affects the valuations in the early stage. It is import and for us to still try to find the winners in those markets, because those winners can have outside values. That was a partner at redPoint Ventures, former director of platform at twitter p or tech investors want to find in a big Disruptive Technology, but what happens when legal challenges like what happened to aereo that these new companies on the defensive . We talked to a top investor about the pros and cons of investing in Disruptive Tech, next on the best of bloomberg west. Welcome back. Im emily chang. After the Supreme Court ruled that the Area Business finally its the rights of broadcast networks, they have suspended operations. In a blog post, the ceo called the ruling a massive step back for consumers. He says the journey is not done and aereo is busy mapping out its next step. How do investors know when a Disruptive Tech committee will be a huge success or when they might lose it to government regulation . We spoke to a venture capitalist who has weighed these risks over the last decade to started by asking how he makes a decision to invest in companies with regulatory concerns. You think about commercial drone, as well, so everyone chooses the market they are going to either create or disrupt. When you disrupt, you have things to deal with it when it comes to aereo, they must have chosen to go after the cable providers thinking that there was a shot. Personally, we would not have taken that bet because theyre very litigious. That is what happens good with commercial drones, we made that that. We have a service which is sort of like uber, except it is the driver, not the car, that is available to you do have to figure out the risks. You have to hope that the regulatory one will be addressed at some point in your favor. Is the notion that there are certain of different types of industries, things like federal, finance, health care, obviously, communications with aereo, that that is federal income and spot checking protecting themselves . With municipalities, theyre dealing with a lot of regulations as well, but they cant take them one day at a time. Cqn can take them one at a time. I would go after the local ones, even though you have to tackle them one after the other. The federal ones are always more challenging. We hope that progress will actually win eventually. Hope is not a plan. I know. Look, there is a lot of luck because into this, especially in the early stage. In the case of regulation, you talk to your counsel and they say, look, this is sort of what has happened in the past, sort of the way the agency is looking at those kinds of things, and you hope for the best. We have talked about evaluations. Uber at 17 billion. Do you think these issues could truly slow them down, become their fatal flaw . I do not think so. In the case of these two companies, they have reached a scale where they can actually go to the local government. They can go to institutions to make their case. In the case of aereo, they were just too small and they had not made a dent in the marketer they were slaughtered by the cable industry. Airbnb, where regulatory concerns the reason why you passed on it . When i was looking at that, it was called air bed and breakfast. You could go stay with someone to make it cheaper. I thought, yeah, right. You are not the only one. When uber them, too. When they got their valuation, you could feel the funk in the ecosystem where everyone who passed on it was like what is that feeling like when you know you have passed on something that you could have made so much money on . That is our job. Our job is to see everything that is sort of interesting and then make a decision. Hopefully we will make the right decisions and make money for the next one. In the case of linkedin, uber, and airbnb the thing is, airbnb and uber are on paper. Linkedin is real. You just raised more money to have been talking about valuations and how money rushing into the market is driving up valuations. You are trying to raise money, but it is not rushing in yet but you actually raised a lot of money or commitments to money. What was the fundraising process like . How are the rest of the world investors seeing earlystage investing . Despite the lows that exist today in the market where you have literally 135 funds that are out there investing when i started, there was one. It is a different landscape. People look at the brand is built. The portfolio is with 150 companies spirit we have actually made quite a bit of progress, and we have a lot of winners in what we have invested, which will make a lot of money for investors. So we look at the brand was billed, and we say, yes, we want to be in that court. It does not end well, he said to do you think this will end well, the capital chasing deals right now and the prices going up . You have a lot of capitalchasing deals. People will lose a lot of money. But i think that there is a lot more discipline, and prices have sort of gone up and sometimes in crazy ways. But if you look of the market, there is just a finite amount going in, and that is worthy regulation is happening. Even though some Companies Get high valuations, the mean valuations have not moved up that much. Cory johnson with our guest. Is it time to change patent law . Washington looks for a little help from Silicon Valley to clean out the junk. That is next. Welcome back. Legislation to kill patton control died on the senate floor this spring, so the patent trolls live on for now. But the u. S. Trademark office is not giving up its fight to reform the patent system. What is a patent troll and why are they causing such edits for Technology Companies . Cory johnson has the answer. They are called patent trolls, committees who acquired the rights to a patent but do not have to sell or produce anything. They build patent arsenals, often collected from abandoned stockpiles of universities, failed startups, and defunct Big Tech Companies be at once they build their war chest, those trolls go out for blood, targeting committees whose technologies are similar to those outlined in the patents. They threaten costly lawsuits unless licensing fees are paid up in most troll attacks are settled out of court through nondisclosure agreements. In fact, of the 4700 patent laws filed since 2012, 3000 were from these socalled hand trolls. Cory johnson also spoke about ways to fight heightened trolls with the Deputy Director of the u. S. Patent and trademark office. He started by asking her what she sees as the fun a mental problem with patent trolls. That is a pretty complicated question. The biggest question to ask is what can we all do to better improve the patent system, to make it the best it can be . There are lots of initiatives being undertaken. They are being undertaken by the court, the congress, and by the administration, by the u. S. Trademark office. Happy to go into those in as much detail as you would like. You have worked in Silicon Valley, worked with lawyers, worked on the applemicrosoft case which was very important. How do you sort of explain how Different Things are now banned they were even 10 or 15 years ago . Like i think our companies are just as innovative as they have always been. But studies have been done, and there has been an uptick in Patent Litigation and abuses litigation to the goal of the administration is to help curtail the Patent Litigation and create a system that promotes and encourages innovation. What kind of litigation is being abused . Starting a patent when you have no ownership rights. Stretching the meaning of what it covers. Using a tactic where you send demand letters to a lot of folks and you are saying to not look too much into the details of it and you can settle this litigation for just 3000 to my lot less than hiring a lawyer. What has to change . The offices undertaken a huge priority to increase the quality of hand issues. The less ambiguous the patent is, the less the likelihood of that patent being used in litigation. The more likely the companies are able to focus on innovation. How do you make the patents better . Is it a matter of coaching your people so they can do better . They are already doing a tremendous amount. The examiners are very hardworking and do an excellent job searching. However, we are actually using Silicon Valley techniques, such as crowdsourcing, now. Were going up and asking experts to say, look, you are experts in your field, so what should our examiner be considering as they are determining whether or not the patent should be issued . We are also bringing in experts from the industry, from academia. We have some of the best experts in the world that sit outside the walls of the pto. We say come on in, come to the office, give a one hour presentation on semiconductor technology, whatever the expertise is, get that training to our examiners and we will broadcast into all of our examiners. Smart examiners are up to speed on fastmoving technologies lead to better quality patents. What about innovation . There are many factors. The key is that what we want is we want to curtail Patent Litigation, but we also want to preserve the rights of legitimate patent owners be to have a balanced set of reforms that promote innovation, there are a lot of issues at stake. That said, the administration has stalled, but were not waiting to move forward to it we have a number of initiatives under way. We had the crowdsourcing initiative to it we are tapping into experts in the field. Were also using data that so many of our companies use. The uspto has a lot of data. For the first time, were able to go over that data, review that data, and see how the examiners reviewed the patents at every phase of the examination. There was a time when patents were not seen as such an incredible, obvious challenge. President obama actually mentioning it in the state of the union. That highlighted take a listen. Lets pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly and need this litigation. Needless litigation. It is kind of amazing how relevant this issue is. I wonder if the 20 have in your timeframe of patents needs to change now because innovations happen so quickly. That is true. But you have to keep in mind that there are Many Industries for which a 20 have in your term is justified and needed. For example, lot of the biotech and pharmaceutical companies are they put hundreds of millions of dollars invested into developing and getting fda approval for new drug. To recoup their investment, they need longerterm protection. Longer than 20 . Well, 20 is probably long enough to her they seem to be operating just fine with that amount of time. You do need a certain amount of time of exclusivity so that people take the risks so they can then also have the opportunity to recruit for investment. Cory johnson with the u. S. Patent office Deputy Director. Our testers gathered outside the office of facebook in london as the committee faces scrutiny for ads it ran promoting the reelection of syrian president Bashar Alassad. A group is demanding the social network give back or donate money made from running those ads. Youre watching the best of bloomberg west where we focus on innovation, technology, and the future of business. Facebook is under scrutiny for ads promoting the reelection of syrian president Bashar Alassad at according to facebook, the ads ran for a few days last month before it was taken down. In response, the Syria Campaign staged a protest at the facebook london office, demanding facebook return or donate the proceeds it got for running the proassad at the cory johnson spoke with the Syria Campaign director and asked how the protest went. It was good. There is strong support from the public. There were even people in the offices and in the Facebook Holding who are opening windows and showing a thumbs up. People are so pathetic to the question that we are asking facebook, which is if you have done business that promotes such a terrible regime, the thing you should be doing is making it right. By making it right, we mean give the money, the profit you have made, to promote an atrocious regime like this, give that back to the people it belongs to, which are syrians investment need of medical assistance and food. There are lots of aid agencies that can provide assistance with that money. We asked facebook about this, and they said they took the ad down. They said they do not really know who paid for the add in the first place. The money did not come from syria, so they cannot feel like they were breaking any laws. Well, you know, anyone who knows a little bit about this regime knows that its tentacles spread far and wide in the region and beyond the region, which is why so many syrians, whether they live in paris, new york, or london still cannot speak out against the regime. It is not going to be a philanthropist who decides that they want to buy facebook back to promote assad regime on facebook. It is going to be an element of the syrian regime. I think it is disingenuous f