emily: he revolutionized the way we listened to music, even if it wasn't entirely legal. sean parker cofounded napster and became the founding president of facebook. justin timberlake portrayed him in the movie "the social network." he has since settled down, married, and devoted his career to philanthropy. he has donated to -- millions to

global health. joining me today on studio 1.0, napster cofounder and chairman of the parker foundation, sean parker. thank you for having us at your pad in l.a.. we want to talk a little about who you are and how you got here. you started coding when you were seven years old. sean: i was generally a good kid up until a certain point. things went a little bit off the rails. we call it hacking now. that has positive and negative connotations. that was the computer underground in the late 1990's. it was a breeding ground for people who went on to be successful entrepreneurs. we were interested in computer security. it had a way of sucking you in. there was an element of danger. there was an intellectual challenge associated with it.

ini became more involved that world and became less life,ed in my day-to-day everything was going fine up until the age of 14. i discovered this world. thank goodness i did. i would not have learned to code. i would not have known about the internet. i would not have built napster. small cabalto that of people. -- i/o a debt to that small cabal of people. at the same time, it drove my parents crazy. you met sean fanning online. you guys built napster together. great experience for us. we had nothing to lose. we did not realize there was criminal liability with

vicarious copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale. i blame myself that i was not a better negotiator. i could not help them save themselves. it's set to watch the decline of this industry. it didn't need to happen that way. emily: why not? sean: consumers turn to piracy when they can't yet the product legitimate channels. there needed to be a legitimate market offering a coming from the record labels and they couldn't get their act together for years and put that in the market. it was frustrating to watch this long collapse of the industry that was producing something that i loved so much. that was never our intention. we never wanted that to happen. in 1999.sic sales be it's been in years of declines.

you're on the board at spotify. the streaming services and the years of decline? sean: i think we turn the corner and are getting back into growth area this is based what i see coming out of spotify and apple. it looks like it bottomed out. for a while, spotify could replace cd sales are in -- sales. emily: how do you convince people to pay for services when there is so much available for free? sean: it's a free -- question of free versus paid that has gone back to radio. spotify thatlike rateize at a really great where we see users coming in to a free channel, we see at least

one third of those users become paid customers. there is added value. it's makingenience, a play list, sharing playlist, organizing your library, it's all the things we help to surface music. emily: how does modify get over its taylor swift problem? it's not just taylor swift. how do spotify get over this issue that artists don't want to give their music away for free. what spotify consider a paid tier? there is a big difference between artists who make their money by touring and doing ancillary things, they do money from subscription services. download services aren't doing well for them. they get a little trickle from youtube.

the branding opportunities, the opportunities to stage large tours because the touring industry is so healthy. that's the bread and butter for these artists. artist management is a different story. are, many of them are my friends, it's a necessary profession. artists would say it's a necessary evil. they will extract every last the value. i find it hard to believe that the artists you mention don't want their music to be heard as widely as possible by his many people as possible. their managers like to extract every last penny from the product which they had no creative role in producing. their job the ecosystem is to extract every last dime. emily: you think this is her manager speaking and not taylor swift? sean: i think that's an

interesting theory. we know that from social media. of i don't what she really thinks. we have not talked about it. and have talked to other artists who love streaming and they just want the music to be heard as widely as possible. what do you think is the biggest threat to facebook's business? ♪

emily: you are known as the guy from facebook. give me a status update with your relationship with mark. sean: not nearly as much as we used to. we continued to consult every day. speaking, it's a good relationship. emily: there's a scene where you meet for the first time. some people may not know that hang out with go

the ceo of uber. you met up? sean: i don't know that i went to a club. emily: tell us about that. sean: travis hasn't really changed at all. he's sort of the perfect ceo of this company because he enjoys -- he enjoys and feeds off the conflict and the controversy. with very good at dealing complex situations where he's being attacked from all sides. thrive as aould wartime leader. emily: really? sean: he is very good under those circumstances.

i think a lot of companies would be way too boring for travis. emily: how impressed are you with what mover has accomplished? do i think any of these companies are worth their private market valuations? it's hard to say. there is a disconnect. companies wait too long to go public. they don't do so well in the public market. you are seen it. there have been a lot of high-profile write-downs. it's not clear what any of these things are worth until the market, the public market values them. in these close net private markets, you can engineer the evaluation. emily: should they be going public sooner? sean: the traditional path would have been to go forward sooner. i may have inadvertently played

a role in this occurring. the development of this robust secondary market where suddenly hedge funds and private wealth managers and various sovereign wealth funds begin to invest very heavily in private companies. emily: you started that? sean: i didn't start everything. i didn't start secondary markets. we encouraged facebook a robust secondary market. we were open to having a secondary market. we have a longer-term vision. you need to give people the opportunity to take liquidity on the way. the biggestis threat to facebook's business? sean: it has so much growth left in it. it's really value extraction it. its value that has been stored for long time.

there are smart people trying to unlock that value. that process is another 20 years before we start to see what that looks like. emily: how big of a threat is snapchat to facebook? sean: they all serve a purpose. mark has done a wonderful job. i applaud his ability to understand which companies genuinely posed a threat and an opportunity to facebook. is howeresting question to snapchat iterate into becoming more of a communication platform that enables communication that isn't necessarily ephemeral. is an indication that they are going in that direction. i don't spend that much time

thinking about it. emily: whether it's instagram or oculus, which do you see as having the most potential to become the next huge is this for facebook? sean: the interesting question is that next big thing somewhere else entirely? is it google acts and life sciences and contact lenses that measure glucose? is it self driving cars or something very close to the home? the core of what facebook is. emily: you think facebook should move the on the court? sean: communication is the biggest market in the world. it cannot be undervalued. are there other paradigms or ways of communicating that facebook could enable? does it make sense for them to buy snapchat? does it make sense for facebook to expand more into real-time

communication and not just broadcast-based where you are sharing with the group and its essentially public? facebook messenger is no different than instant messaging that we've had since the mid- 1990's. understandingod the core communication network apps that they should own and are there more of those out there? absolutely. there are enormous opportunities left in communication. emily: enormous opportunities left in what facebook goodbye? sean: build or buy. emily: should they consider buying snapchat again? sean: it will be interesting to see where snapchat takes their user base. the great analogy is feed. it was apron i'm that's almost two -- paradigm that's almost

too ubiquitous. could snapchat go through that kind of transition where they have everything ephemeral? that's a possibility. i don't know evan. i wonder about where they could take things. emily: you think your survives? sean: they are a victim of their own success in so many ways. the mediasdone for infatuation with twitter, they never would have an enormous user base. that came at a cost. of deep,was a lack close knit community between its users. it was never an accurate reflection of a real social network. it didn't have the same level of intimate interaction.

i don't think it would've existed had not been for its relationship with celebrity and media. i think it's relationship with celebrity and media is its biggest weakness. emily: really? how does that play out? does your survive this next wave of integration and social networks? sean: the question of survival is to dramatic. it's a question of do they prosper and become a larger company? do they remain at the same size and become a part of our lives and a fairly narrow way? i don't think there goes on to take market share from other players. i do think they will continue to exist. there is a huge debate

between privacy versus security. should the tech industry be more accommodating to the government? ♪

emily: there is a huge debate between privacy and security and how much silicon valley can help with that. tim cook and mark zuckerberg have a stake in the ground and say we are not going to help the government spy on our users. it should be tech community be more accommodating? the relationship between ,arge industry and government it should not be underestimated. of course there is collaboration. to think that communication companies, network providers, aren'tmedia companies walk rating with the federal government in various ways is

naive. we live in a world where enormous economic value comes from finding connections. i never would have met mark zuckerberg or shawn fanning if it weren't for the internet. it would probably be monitored right now by the internet a kiss they are very suspicious of hackers. had it not been the freedom to communicate, none of this would have happened. we would not having this conversation. by that same token, the more accessible and available these communication technologies are and the more accessible and available encryption technologies are, these tools revolutions against dictators and be used by terrorists and the nine crazies

who would never have met and organize homegrown terrorist cell. every technological platform and shift that happens in the way we communicate is a double-edged sword. emily: what are you spending most of your time on? sean: it's 50% venture investing, startups, many that have been going on for several years. also philanthropic ventures. emily: it's been unexpectedly controversial. it's been criticized for not having to charity. it's characterized as an llc. is that unfair? sean: i don't think anything mark does, we should not expected to be anything other than controversial could his

intentions are entirely all true mystic. it's hard to criticize somebody who is saying they are going to give away the vast, vast majority of their fortune. goal of sayinge it the way he said it and laying it out the way he explained it was to spark controversy. by media cycle is dominated and a trump and terrorism lot of really scary things. i think mark felt an obligation to start a conversation about the role of someone who has vast resources trying to reshape the world. i think he has succeeded in that. away $600 are giving million to life scientists and the global health. how has your own strategy evolved? sean: the poker foundation is

feel things that we extremely passionate about. we feel this needs to get done in the world. the reason you see so much of this new hacker style philanthropy is because this group of people, they made their money by being disruptive. they made their money by being unconventional. there is a desire to see the same impact they had in their business career, which has been , how doesdisruptive one find opportunities that are equally disruptive in the philanthropic world? disruption that has to happen if these entrenched social problems are going to be addressed. emily: you are giving money to

advanced science. you are focusing on allergies, cancer. what did you do differently than traditional venture capitalists? sean: i think philanthropy can get ahead of venture capital. venture capital happens when a business is ready for commercialization. it's not there to fund basic science. there is a middle ground. if you're going to fund a therapy, you will take money away from existing labs and researchers. there is a hesitation there. the breakthroughs that happen quickly have been driven by private philanthropy. governments have been too slow to recognize that a technology is ready for investment. if that's philanthropic or venture investment. emily: any crazy areas and

biotech you're thinking about funding? sean: i think karma has done a really poor job of understanding that have drugs demonstrated safe in phase one and phase two clinical trials could have been approved in a much narrower indication. it may mean that access to a drug that only 300 other people need access to, we don't have a regulatory framework that is very good at getting those drugs to market. emily: what is next for sean parker? think life sciences is the single most interesting area of exploration. it is to the world today what social media was to me in 2002. to getlity to get

something a grad student would spend 30 years of their life trying to do previously. , do think that cost reduction because of new technology leading to faster and faster progress, there are enormous opportunities. the fundamental question is how that thee sure technological innovations coming out of life sciences are available to everyone. sean parker, thank you so much for joining us. thank you so much for having a set your wonderful house. sean: ♪ thank you. ♪ ♪

♪ emily: he never aspired to be ceo. he now finds himself leaving a public company, determined to prove wall street wrong. jeff weiner rose through the ranks of warner bros. and yahoo! before linkedin cofounder reid hoffman made him a proposition to help run the professional social network. it was a match made in silicon valley heaven. weiner became the ceo he never expected to be and hoffman stayed on as chairman. linkedin now has over 400 million members in 200 countries but faces its biggest challenge yet. so big, jeff weiner donated $14