♪ >> from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west" where we cover the global technology in media companies reshaping our world. i'm emily chang. each weekend we'll bring you the best of west and top interviews with global technology and media companies reshaping our world. bill gates is an entrepreneur, technology visionary and philanthropist and now the world's richest person wants to add myth buster to that list.

he wants to destroy the list that poverty and disease cannot be eradicated. the melinda and bill gates came out and wrote by 2035 there will be almost no poor nations left in the world. gates sat down with our inner loop anchor betty lue and mike bloomberg, also the former mayor of new york, for an exclusive interest view -- interview and discussed how they view their charitable causes and whether gates will return at microsoft's e.o. >> i'm on the board and the board is doing some important work right now. foundation is the biggest part of my time but then, you know, i put part-time work in to help as a board member. >> are you involved at all or how involved are you with the search for the new chief executive? >> the board is working on that. there's nothing new to say.

but, you know, it's a good board. >> do you feel a sense of urgency at all? does the board feel a sense of urgency on this front? >> yeah, i think you always feel that way. then, again, you want to pick the best person. so, you know, they'll move at the right pace. >> you know, we had the fortune of having the mayor come back to this company and we're very happy to have him back at bloomberg. bill, has that ever hit your vision in the future to ever going back to microsoft full time? >> my full-time work will be the foundation for the rest of my life. my wife, melinda, and are enjoying that. i get to do it in depth. so i'm not going to change that. although i'll help out part-time. >> mike, tell me how you think, in the 12 years you've been in public office, technology, the industry itself has changed dramatically, new pioneers that are following in the footsteps

of bill gates. give me your take on the state of technology and how you view it? >> technology is an enabler, technology is a tool but i think the basics really haven't changed. ed situation, business, philanthropy is still about looking at each other in the eye and working with each other and working collectively and collaboratively and have to be careful to not think that technology is going to do everything for you. hics matter, competency, the education of our kids is the most important thing. there are enormous changes in the job prospects for people at every level and some will lead us down the path of some very severe problems. but nevertheless, the first and most important thing is every kid getting a good education and in some parts of the world they understand that and in some parts of the world they don't and sadly in america, we don't seem to. we keep falling in these rankings and used to be in the top 10 and now are lucky to be in the top 30 and does not bode

well for our future and we have to pull together and get away from this partisan stuff and start devoting in the resources we need if we're going to have a future. >> bill, you are passionate as well about training our young people, particularly in computer science, that there's not enough training there. >> i think education is a topic mike and i think is incredibly important and are willing to create controversy in saying let's help teachers be better, let's try out new approaches. the status quo is pretty unsatisfactory. and technology is going to help particularly for that motivated learner but how do you create the motivation broadly? that's mostly a human problem in helping the teacher do it as best as possible. >> just on a final note, bill, tell me what you think about the state of the technology industry now and how the new crop of leaders, how you see them? >> well, the rate of innovation

is faster than ever, things like understanding speech and vision and taking large amounts of data and understanding that, big, high resolution dreens that will be on your walls and office at home. we're really in a fantastic period where finding information will get a lot better and lead to productivity and we can simulate things so new product innovation and design can be better. we so it in biology even understanding complex systems and what drugs should be tried out so i'm a great believer, whether it's helping the poorest or just helping the global economy, technology can solve a lot of problems. >> you go back and look what people predicted a few years ago, and they were so far wrong. almost everything they predicted has been done. in the next two or three years we'll improve technology more

than was done from the beginning of inventing electricity to today. >> exponential. >> exponential and the disruption, there's no industry that's not going to have to adjust and change. some will do it successfully, some won't. some people are going to have better jobs, some people will have to find ways to make sure that they're included. we shouldn't walk away from it but it's going to be a very serious problem and it's not just an american problem but a problem around the world. particularly in the middle where an awful lot of automation is taking place. that gives you cheaper, better products but it also re-employs fewer people and we have to find ways to get everybody involved. >> bloomberg l.p. founder and majority stakeholder mike bloomberg and microsoft co-founder and chairman bill gates with betty liu. well, from silicon valley to switzerland, some of techs biggest names are headed to davos for the world economic forum. we'll hear from some of them next.

♪

>> welcome back to "the best of bloomberg west" i'm ellily -- emily chang. tech titans have been taking the stage in davos, switzerland. melissa meyer, cinioff and mark chambers sat on a single panel where they discussed a range of subjects including n.s.a. at length and we talked about the highlights. >> all of them affected, certainly cisco and certainly at&t and also yahoo! as well getting the collection requests. and here they are in this global economic forum talking about the impact of their global businesses on these u.s. spying policies. >> everyone was asked what would you ask if you could ask

president obama for one thing. let's take a listen what marissa meyer had to ask. >> what is one request you would make that president obama? >> transparency. the ability to, one, understand, so we can help our users understand exactly how many requests we're getting and/or the range of requests we're getting and how the data will be used because we need to rebuild trust with our users. >> do you feel the trust has fallen because of this, marissa? >> yeah, i definitely think so. and not only within the u.s. but also internationally. certainly there are other countries that really have concerns about what the n.s.a. is looking at and i think transparency is something that would really ultimately help them. >> you do wonder what the fallout is going to be internationally in terms of how it's going to affect the growth of these companies if international clients, for example, don't trust yahoo! or other companies to hold their daysa. then they turn somewhere else. >> every one of those c.e.o.'s,

at&t, cisco, yahoo! have all been to the white house to talk to president obama specifically about this issue. out last sco came quarter and their sales fell presip it isly because of the n.s.a. program and asked about it in the conference call. john chambers has been outspoken and it's worth noting john chambers, republican, has been outspoken about this policy because it's hurting his business. >> one of the things he specifically talked about was the need for more regulation. i don't know if it's a bit too optimistic on his part but the idea the united states and its allies could agree on the rules of the road, how we're going to do business and prevail, if you will. let's all just agree on it and follow those rules. >> definitely thinking down the road. if it's happening to cisco in china, look at the failing

results hewlett-packard reported and i.b.m.'s server results we'll talk about later in the show and you see it play out through technology and the n.s.a. problem is a issue for u.s. business. >> marc benioff i heard say it's not just the government's responsibility but putting it back on the companies. take a listen to what he had to say. >> transparency is not just about the government, it's also about vendors. vendors have to provide complete and total transparency themselves and also can't pin it all on the government. >> who is he calling out there? is he calling out yahoo!? sysco?alling out >> the companies stumbled around when the news first broke and edward snowden's leaks became known and there were great efforts by "the guardian" and "the washington post." companies have fell back saying it's not that big of a deal and wish we could tell you it's not that big of a deal but we're

not allowed and they continued to call for transparency because they don't have it. i'll be curious to see what the numbers look like if we can see it and if the numbers matter that much if in fact it's this big metagathering. we've had different levels of cooperating. it at&t cooperating very quietly and yahoo! is one of the early ones complaining and they recognize the effects to their business which they're trying to turn around. >> speaking of yahoo!, we dug deep tore what is happening and talked about mobile and it has been a theme of hers and for the past year talked about how mobile is changing their business and let's listen to what she had to say about that. >> for yahoo!, 2014 is the year of crossover. by the end we'll have more mobile users and more mobile traffic than we have p.c. traffic. so you have to be prepared for that and we pride ourselfs in running the world's largest startup. can you be the largest company and be flat and transparent and

enable people to think about how should we be changing and what are the new, disruptive things we should get into? >> here's my question, she talks about mobile now for more than a year but the same thing is happening at facebook and same thing happening at twitter where it's more possibly and doesn't mean more people are using yahoo! but that they're using it differently. what does it say about their traffic and their growth? >> first of all, six days out from reporting the quarter and that will be a big deal in the midst of the turn around where every 16-week period matters bigtime. this is a huge transformation we're seeing across businesses and it's not just about adopting their existing business to mobile but when you have a company like yahoo! trying to find its way and find relevance they've lost over the course of 10 years, mobile provides a great opportunity for them to be relevant in a place where they've lost relevance in the desktop to be relevant on mobile. some of the numbers they've come out with, they've told us in the last quarter they're up

to 390 million mobile users and up 15% quarter for quarter and that's massive growth and big change of user behavior. now they're starting to give those numbers in describes and drabs, it's a -- dribs and drabs like a double-edged sword it trumps up and they'll be required -- not required but investors will say tell us how many users you've got out there and see in the growth is accelerating or climbing? >> how does it translate to sales? we know advertising sales aren't doing well and castro, the chief brought over from google before he joined her team at yeah should, she just fired him and obviously she's not happy with the performance. >> i think what we've seen from the bigger companies that made their way initially in the desktop is they've had a really hard time -- in other words, a phrase mobile first. we keep hearing companies, mobile first development but it's hard for companies to be mobile first. you can argue twitter is a mobile first company and they said on certain days their

mobile revenues compete their desktop revenues. we haven't heard that from facebook and certainly haven't heard it from google and yahoo!. what we know about advertising, it tends to be less for mobile and for advertising dependent companies it's been difficult and we'll see how the transition goes. at some point the company will be required. we know yahoo! fought with the s.e.c. about what they disclose and the thing they didn't want to disclose was that they had 30% of their revenues coming from microsoft and bing and the reliance on that agreement which could expire in a short time. so they have not disclosed their mobile numbers. can you rest assured if their mobile numbers looked really good they would disclose them. if they haven't disclosed them, maybe they're not as strong. >> on the discussion that veered in an interesting direction in the sense that the moderator asked george colony of forester, asked all of them what technology transformed them the most and marissa said the iphone and marc said the

fitbed and he had a funny story of michael dell, has been falling him as friends on the fit bit network and could tell when benioff is not working out. take a listen to this quote. >> marc, are you feeling ok? are you feeling ok, marc? >> what do you mean, michael? >> i'm very worried about you? i'm like, you are? yeah. because i'm your fit on the fit bit network and i noticed the last three days you haven't worked out. >> it's almost a little creepy that michael dell, across the country, could know marc benioff is not working out. >> it's intriguing these big global technology leaders, both who have built their empire really on the desktop once again are thinking about and actively engaged in this world of not getting fit. that's a thing for guys and these guys both in their late 40's i think, maybe a little more, i want to call them. let's say early 40's because i

like both of these guys personally. i think what's interesting is they're actively engaged in learning about this world where lots of data is being collected and a new sort of social network is being created outside of the social network. now, i know they have a facebook connected thing with the fitbit but with the jawbone and a handful of other devices, the fuel ban maybe less so. the sharing of data is a big part of this. but it's also massive amounts of data being collected or on the case of benioff sitting on the couch and not being collected and the reaction of that is a personal one, i'm sure these guys are thinking what it means in terms of big business and changing their business. >> what about what it means in terms of privacy, where is the data stored and who sees it and who makes money off of it? >> i'm sure mike dell is thinking of selling and gathering that data and spinning that data into things that can be used by companies and by big users of this stuff not just trying to get his

friends off the couch. >> cory johnson, our editor at large. coming up we'll bring you another interview from davos, dell founder and c.e.o. michael dell speaking with our tom kean about dell's plans now that it's a private company. ♪

>> this is "the best of bloomberg west" i'm emily chang. dell was taken private late last year. what will the computer maker look like as a private company? dell founder and c.e.o. michael dell sat down with tom keene and david care patrick in dave -- -- david kirk pat trick in

davos, switzerland. >> hardware is important and it is shifting to new areas in servicing and software and these are areas we invested tremendously and done 30 acquisitions in the last five years and built $21 billion enterprise business in these new areas and certainly as a private company, we're absolutely intending to, you know, focus more on those areas. >> david, before you jump in here with some questions for mr. dell -- >> when are you going to let me? go ahead. >> but please, the michael dell ad on television now is a home run deep to left field where you went back and you went back to where all these companies -- >> it's beautiful. >> actually started. >> it was an inspiring ad. >> i had goose bumps. >> i wouldn't say i cried but it is a good ad. >> i appreciate that. >> going to the shape of the evolving p.c. and computer industry, what do you have in your hand and how significant is this kind of device to where it's all going? >> i have our new eight-inch

tablet. our tablet business -- >> hold it so the camera can see it. >> is it a shameless plug or what? come on. >> here's the keyboard if you want one of those. >> the other guys don't have this, do they? >> this is the eight-inch tablet. it's also a full p.c. so it runs microsoft office. you take it with you and you come back in the office and attach it to a full monitor and you take it with you and connect it all the time. >> it's a small really real p.c.? >> is this where the industry is going now? >> it's interesting, i think the death of the p.c. has been talked about quite a lot. it turns out there's still a million of these devices sold every single day. >> are you kidding? >> but price competition base in india is an example, it's been hugely successful. how do you differentiate here versus the person after mr. bollmer or apple will do and

what's the distinction between this product or a high end apple or what microsoft is doing? >> our tablet business has really taken off in 2013. it doubled from first quarter, second quarter, doubled again second to third, third to fourth, about tripled. so there's certainly product differentation, differentation in services. and then, of course, the real issue is, how do you integrate this securely into a company's operations, make it work? it's not just about the product, it's about software and services and undergo how it works within a company to really make people more productive. >> part of being private, then, michael, you're going to try and shift the lion's share of your revenue to software services or are you going to be thought of as a hardware company, say, in five years? >> well, we'd love to see our other businesses grow that fast. we still have a very substantial business in

hardware. but i'll tell you, it's a good business for us, right? and it's a great foundation for us to build relationships -- >> as an entree if nothing else. >> into cybersecurity and systems management, information management. >> right. >> we're entering this whole age of the data economy. >> right. >> bloomberg surveillance anchor tom keene with bloomberg editor david kirkpatrick and michael dell. twitter co-founder biz stone will be joining us and find out y he says his new social search program jelly is not a social network. ♪

>> this is "the best of bloomberg west" i'm emily chang. are photos the future of search? that's what biz stone is saying with his app jelly who answers your questions with the help of pictures and friends in your social network. stone co-founded medium and the obvious corporation in addition to twitter. i sat down with him and asked him, as a social media pioneer, why choose search? >> i did it by accident. i didn't mean to do this. my friend, ben, and i were going on a walk and accidentally asked ourselves the question, what would we build if we had to build something that could answer any question? and that led us to mobile and

led us to social and all of a sudden we thought we had this idea on our hands we had to do. and the other part of the answer is that once i realized what it was, i realized that jelly is really kind of a productization of my own personality because i really enjoy helping people and this just lets people help each other and something i couldn't get out of my head. >> did you mean to start a company? >> not really. we were going to hack on it and sort of put it out there and see if people liked it but then as we started talking more and more about it we started thinking this could be a really good all-around business. >> so it's been out there for two weeks now. how is it going? what kind of questions are people asking? >> well, it's still early so it's hard to tell what people will end up asking over the long haul. but the three sort of questions we're seeing now are one, should i buy this or should i choose this one? >> right. >> whatever the picture is of. two, how do i fix this or set

this up, like i'm confused? and three, what is this? just what am i looking at? >> that's where the picture comes in because you have to post a photo in order to ask a question. why is that? some questions need photos, some questions don't necessarily need photos. >> this is a mobile-only application right now. it's very native to the mobile world. so one of the things that makes mobile what it is, are photos. without the photograph it's a computer and tells you where you are out in the world. in my experience most questions can be doctor maltically ontext churlized with a photo. i made them mandatory so you on't have to do that extra

step. >> let's talk about what else is out there. obviously google. >> i am trying to offer ane. alternative. there are some percentage of queries that are better answered by a human mind and then retrieving a document that has been published. thing is that albert einstein says information is not knowledge. knowledge is worlds away from information. information is an ingredient. it is one thing that gets transmuted into the human mind. when you ask a person a question, you get so much more knowledge -- >> i have been doing it. i have been jelly in a bit. i broke my carry-on luggage. and i asked what i should buy.

right away i got 15 different answers and they were all helpful. one of the things that surprised me is that as soon as i asked my question, my husband asked if i were shopping. he got a notification about me asking a question. how many people got told that i had to ask this question? not everybody. we were jokingly -- >> we are taking all your social networks and blending them together into one network and we are sending your query out to a percentage of those people. of therybody, but some people you know got that question. about those people that you don't want to know you are asking this question? >> that is another decision we made early on.

it was better if you weren't anonymous. there are too many -- in looking at another -- in looking at other anonymous services there are too many mean things that are possible. if you attach your name to something you behave differently . >> does that inhibit the potential growth? >> it might. we were willing to take that chance. if you're not comfortable asking the question of your friends than then it is not the right service. >> i noticed you can say thanks, but i wanted to ask people more questions. and sog have you used it on. is there a reason you can't send a custom message? do not want this to be a messaging platform? a lotintentionally broke of accepted norms. we had an early prototype that was very discussion based and very back and forth. what we found was that people

were not getting their questions answered quickly enough or in a valuable enough weight. said you the model and could answer, dismiss or forward the question. are actively discouraging conversation because we feel there are plenty of other places to have those conversations. that may change in the future, but that is how we are doing it. >> you make a point of saying this is not a social network. why? the simplicity of jelly is that it takes advantage of what we have been building for the last seven or 10 years. people have been collecting followers and friends and collecting s. jelly is a response to that. maybe the answer is that so we can start helping each other. >> why can't you search other

people's questions? quacks like an actual information retrieval across jelly. maybe we will do that. it is still early. we do not have that much information to look through periods down the line we will probably build a huge corpus of questions and answers. but it is really early days. >> your coo is a former vp at twitter. are you thinking about potential partnerships down the line? how do you turn this into a business? >> right off the bat, we are thinking of ourselves as eating a search business. there is a lot of opportunity that has been proven that is a good business to be in. iton't want to get too -- is cart before the horse when you are dealing with this kind

of business because you really need to build up that pace and you need to prove that there is value before you can begin to any form of revenue generating product. we think there is a lot of opportunity in the search space, mainly because there is an intent. when someone comes to jelly they want something. quacks more with biz stone when twitter isk and how influencing how he leads jelly.

>> welcome back to "the best of bloomberg west turcotte biz stone helped twitter get off the ground in 2000. since then it has raised more than $1 billion in ipo.

how is his experience at twitter shaping the way he runs his new startup? take a listen. >> we are living in such a different world now. in three days jelly had more it is twice as- much as twitter. word spread so quickly. >> how do you keep the growth like this? >> well, you don't. it was just crazy and i had to remind everyone on the team that it is going to go like this. the repaired for that. don't think it is failure. the way you have to do it is you have to build the system that has growth mechanisms in it and you have to trust that those will work. you don't want anything artificial. >> anything you are not going to do at jelly, any mistakes you have learned from at twitter?

>> we are not going to go down all the time. it is a different world. we are able to use amazon web services and host everything. we can spin a new server in seconds. in the early days it was twitter that was a whole lot of work. >> twitter is now a public company. how is life different for you? is it at all different? >> not at all. i haveifferent in that some notoriety. i have been ability to get my phone calls answered or make a big deal when i watch a new app. that certainly helps. >> right. twitter going public to read stuck a lot of stories about the founding and a lot of drama.

jack overhyped his role. you were twitter's moral compass, the glue that held it together. how fair was the author's portrayal? ofhe did hundreds of hours interviews. so i think he was fairly thorough. he had to make someone a bad guy and he had to make someone the fall guy and he had to make someone the good guy. it is more exciting that way. in that capacity i think maybe there was a little too much sharpness. otherwise, there was nothing there that i learned that i didn't already know. >> i did not -- really, what? scatterbrained. i looked at my section and a couple of other things, but --

there were meetings that were taken that i wasn't a part of and so on. >> looking at twitter today, there has been this history of a revolving door. how confident are you in the people that are leading twitter now? >> i am very confident. we picked them. and i have always said think this is true, i think twitter needed who it needed at the time they needed them. evolved,olved -- as it people switched roles. look at where the company has come today. i think that is a testament to it. the head of product just left. it set off some alarm bells because of twitters past. some people are saying that twitter may be gun shy about launching new products and that is difficult to get new products out of the door. see twitters ability

to innovate in the future. there are a lot of things that have stayed the same over time and a lot of things that are different. >> this is something every company faces once they go public. we have to make dramatic, innovative moves on the product side, but we have to be careful because we have shareholders. but i think everyone understands what twitter is as their company and that they have to make bold product maneuvers and changes. i think they will. speaking of shareholders, a lot of questions about when twitter will turn a profit. do those kinds of things concern you? i don't have to be concerned. that is one of the reasons why that position. >> is is the first time as a ceo , how is that? >> i love it.

at myct that i have kevin back, that makes all the difference. aboutre talking before how we didn't intend to make this a company. , one oflling kevin thaw my trusted friends and advisers about the idea. he said i am in. i went to dinner at his house and he said i am in. >> i asked him what that meant. that is when i really said with it work.i could make >> what is your ceo style? is or someone you look up to or admire? >> it sounds kind of cheesy, but i look up to evan and jack and to steal their best rates and fold them into my own leadership skills. my main thing as a leader is to

be as communicative as possible. 75% of my job as a ceo. biz stone, jelly ceo and cofounder of twitter. you can catch his interview on bloomberg.com and also our app. we're going to talk about the value of a good engineer, coming up with twitters former head of engineering mike abbott.

>> welcome back to "the best of bloomberg west." i'm emily chang. offered engineers are perks like free food and vacations. what makes a good engineer so valuable? , said down with mike abbott

former head of engineering at twitter. take a listen. >> i think great engineers want to work with other great engineers. they want to make an impact on whatever they are working on. they have a great impact and they're working with great people and they want to work at your company. >> are good engineer is -- do they drive innovation? are they given a problem to solve or do good engineers come up with a problem to solve? >> i think great engineers come up with novel solutions to address a problem. i think many great product companies, the problems are outlined by the design team, or maybe a project manager. the design team may have a vision for a particular

interaction and it is up to engineering to think through how they come up with realizing that vision or dream. there has to be a path for engineers to provide input into that innovation. one of the things we started at twitter was how do we carve out time for engineers to come up with ideas. we actually had an opportunity for that innovation. i think great engineers just love computer science. they want to be able to have quiet and silence to solve those problem's and not deal with a lot of other things. >> speaking about the relationship between engineers, product and design, the head of products left and we don't know why. there has been a lot of speculation that twitter has been a difficult company to ship new product at. the twitter we all know and love

has been pretty much the same for many years. it has been difficult to make changes. maybe the user still wanted or other forces in the company don't want to. what is your take on what happened there? >> i don't have the details, but i think in most companies there is a center of gravity that exists. whether it is in engineering or design or product. depending on where that center resides, there are implications for the company. twitters center has always been in product. it is difficult when you have a product that is so focused on complicity when you have this push to add new things. au have this balance and of constant tension. you have to think of ways to extend it that is meaningful for users.

>> where should the center of gravity be and is it your friend in a start up versus a company that has to make money? >> i don't think there is one answer of where it should sit. i think often times in consumer companies it needs to sit closer to design and product because that is what consumers love. >> then you have the revenue teams saying that we need to make money. >> when you have a great product and a great service there are many ways to extract revenue from the service. what happened with twitter was done in a very deliberate and slow way. carefuld to be really and not perturb the user experience at the expense of just generating some revenue area i think having that discipline is important. on the enterprise side you look at early stage companies and the

center of gravity is in engineering. they talk about the known problem in the enterprise and they come up with a different type of solution. i think innovation varies between consumer enterprises. -- on thet manager consumer side, a lot of times we didn't know we had that problem. look atuber. i didn't know i had that problem five years ago, but look at it now. is lit the motorcycle of the future? they are working on two prototypes. will they shake up the transportation industry? we will take a look.

>> welcome back to "the best of bloomberg west your code tesla has cemented itself as a lifestyle brand of cars. lit motors is hoping to do the same for electric motorcycles. andnt inside lit motors looked at their plan to reboot the commute. from the front it looks like a normal electric scooter but from the side it is anything but. a big hole in the middle of its frame means the scooter , called kubo, has as much room as a car. that kubo is it a take on a pickup truck. motorcycle, its

counterpart will cost $24,000. >> it takes all the safety and convenience of a car and mary -- >> the kubo is $6,000. car startups are tough and can take big money and many years to get a new vehicle on the road. but let hopes to get oath vehicles into production this year. i am developing a car for me hasus. >> to do that, kim teamed up with a design guru. brandsner for a good like herman miller and bmw.

>> how does this new vehicle become really attract if two people who know and ride motorcycles and people who never have. >> kim and one of his engineers are working on their c-1 prototype. gas prices make owning a car undesirable so kim thinks lit is ready for the fast lane. >> we are really just creating a new vehicle for any kind of short commute. get all theyou can latest headlines at the top of the hour on bloomberg radio. we will see you again soon. . .

>> in the middle of the mojave desert. one of the most storied cities in the world. this is las vegas. where fortunes are won and lost, where lives are made and destroyed, where the house always wins. until it can't. >> a lot of pain and stress out here. >> one gambler preyed on the casinos in its weakest moments and walked away with more than $15 million in a single winning streak. people say you play perfectly.