♪ caroline: i am caroline hyde. this is the "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, the resistance continues. 120 tech companies take a stand as san francisco becomes ground zero in the fight against president trump's travel ban. no trump bump for twitter, shares plunging after earnings as the u.s. user base remains flat. all the details, ahead. and intel places the $7 billion chip.

we take a look at why the presidential bet on arizona is not as fresh as it may seem. but first, to the lead. the epicenter for the international debate on donald trump's immigration policy is here in san francisco. the case took on increased business importance as 120 companies including tech companies from apple, facebook, google filed a legal brief condemning it. leaders from the tech sector were among the first and most outspoken critics on the executive order on immigration. why? perhaps it is because many of the companies that define tech today would not exist without immigrants? here is a quick recap. ♪ ♪

caroline: now my colleague cory johnson caught up with the founder of joyus and former advisor to twitter.

>> if you look at the history of some of the most famous tech companies we just saw it and there is a lot in terms of the data historically, but today in silicon valley -- over 58% of the highly skilled workers here are immigrants. when you step back and look at our labor pool, the source of innovation has been bred by openness and an open immigration policy lets the brightest minds of the world flow into the country easily. cory: the notion of non-comprehensive immigration reform which has been a republican argument which is more h-1b visas will keep the people crossing the mexican border illegally out. let's let the people we want in. let's let the people who are in a do good things and make us money in and keep the other ones out. >> of course, it is easy to say that in theory, but in practice, these are broad brush strokes. when in fact, there is little

data that suggests that u.s. terrorism has been influenced by the countries kept out. i think if you were to say innovation comes from -- cory: are you talking about the argument that the 9/11 bombers were from other companies like saudi arabia. >> if you look at more recent terrorist acts, people born in the united states, homegrown terrorists, so if you look at solving terrorism on the one hand and a broad brush swath that says immigration has to be stopped from the seven countries, and by the way, to say innovation won't happen from anybody who comes from the seven countries, it is ludicrous to suggest that keeping these countries out will keep america safe. the converse is not true, which is when you create broad policies that keep out innovation and keep us from accepting the brightest people in the world who are willing to come and build companies here on which the entire u.s. economy will proper -- will prosper, there is an argument in favor.

and very little data to suggest that any people here are responsible for the recent acts of terrorism. cory: -- saying for at least 15 years, we should staple a green card to every single degree coming out of stanford. we want those people to stick -- start companies here. >> absolutely, one of the ironies in all this is donald trump talked about being pro-business and making america great again. one of the ways to make the american economy great is to have companies started here, not in china, not in canada, but if you want to have a great and robust economy, it starts with fostering innovation here. that includes having an open immigration policy. cory: let me ask you about h-1b visas, but in practice, the program has been a little more -- abusive is too strong. some people have complained that those people cannot go find other jobs because their ability to live in this country is basically stapled to their id card where they cannot go somewhere else and pursue

gainful employment elsewhere. i wonder if you look at the program, is it necessary or needs reform? >> the h-1b visa program is absolutely necessary. i happen to be one of those immigrants who started my company based on the fact that i got here through an h-1b. then i converted to a different visa. that allowed me to go start my own company. companies large and small, my company is smaller and benefits from h-1b's. let's put it this way, it allows you to find a way here. caroline: as an open critic of the trump administration, the aol cofounder steve case has voiced disapproval of trump's ban, yet he also discussed some of the changes we need to see here within the u.s. regardless of any change in policy. take a listen. steve: one of the reasons president trump won is that -- a lot of people in the middle of the country are left behind.

they aren't seeing the benefits of innovation, including the benefits of job creation, and the reason is that 85% of the venture capital went to the states that clinton won. only 15% went to the states that trump won, only 30 states in aggregate got 15%, so the venture capitals are funding disruptive companies that are creating technologies, but we are not offsetting that by backing those in the middle the country so they can create a company that creates jobs in pennsylvania, ohio, and other states. that has to change. that's what we call the rise of the rest. we need more capital flowing to more entrepreneurs in more places and level the playing field so everybody everywhere has a shot at the american dream. caroline: that was the aol cofounder steve case. president trump's immigration policy continues to make waves in the u.s. and abroad, yet our next guest says that ban would be fantastic news for china and

another u.s. tech competitors. our bloomberg gadfly columnist joins us right here and right now. why is this fantastic for china? >> if you think about it, tim cook's job, all the big leaders, hire the best people from around the world. they will not limit themselves to the u.s. if they can't get those people to come in here and work, they will have to sit somewhere else. we have seen that visas take a long time, and i know for a fact that apple has had people sit in other places like japan waiting for visas, so they sit there and work away and do what they are supposed to do before they get to cupertino and work here. if the u.s. government is going to stop more people from coming in, at some point leaders in the u.s. tech companies will say, let's just put more people overseas where we don't face that problem. one of the places will be china. absolutely sure of it because

apple has set up an r&d center in southern china, r&d centers elsewhere around the world, and if they're going to have problems and they can't plan for when they start getting into the u.s. and working, they will say, let's put them somewhere else and working there. that is bad for the u.s. local hires will learn from these people being hired and employed by u.s. companies and work alongside them and take that knowledge to other companies in china and japan, and that will not be good for the u.s. caroline: are you hearing from the companies you talk to and the leaders you are talking to that they are thinking of expanding say microsoft canadian r&d centers? are you expecting some of this talent to remain abroad? >> i think it is early for that kind of radical move, but i think tim is expressing a legitimate set of concerns many of us have about what could happen to the tech industry if these immigration attitudes continue to get continue -- more and more restrictive.

that is really what it is all about and tech companies in particular, benefit from more open immigration. there is an article today in the new york times about how the entire economy's growth would be dramatically increased if we had more immigration broadly, and immigration and migration is generally believed by economists to be an almost unmitigated positive for economic growth. caroline: still ahead, despite president trump's being a big fan, twitter still finds itself stuck in neutral. sales growth was paltry, user growth also missing. more from thursday's earnings report next. plus, a 30-year nasa veteran is leaving the agency for silicon valley. alphabet? nope. spacex? nope. it is uber and flying taxis. we will explain. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ caroline: twitter's says it is getting tough on harassment with the latest update. rolling out new changes to combat bullying, hiding content, and preventing banned users from setting up new accounts. the update is part of the post to cleanup twitter. it follows years of criticism that not enough has been done to curb abuse. speaking of twitter, shares tumbled this week after reporting quarterly revenue and a profit outlook that missed analyst's estimates. the social network are having trouble delivering advertisers and users to the platform. it added only 2 million monthly active users in the fourth quarter. this deceleration in user growth is causing advertising sales to sag. now, keep in mind that ads represent 90% of twitter's revenue, and despite the media attention over president trump's frequent tweets and the lead up to the 2016 election, trump's impact on twitter, the cfo acknowledged they have not capitalized on the attention.

>> we cannot quantify any impact at this point in time. we will continue to analyze it as we go through q1. caroline: we spoke with corey johnson and the analyst -- and an analyst for more. >> daily actives are improving and they are getting better engagement from those users on their platform, but at the end of the day. i think twitter needs to decide what it is and what it isn't. they are trying to continue this mau growth story, but it is not happening. when you are going through big world events, with donald trump and the trump administration utilizing it as their primary communication tool to the world

and still not seeing any in improvements in the conversion rates, because what we do know is they are getting at least 2 million new visitors coming to their site every single day in some capacity, and they are not able to convert those users, and ultimately, i think the rocky road ahead is just about to get even rockier. caroline: get even rockier, cory. dig into some of the key issues you have been seeing here. you have been doing your own analysis, particularly on some of the dilution in terms of shares. cory: in the midst of this inability to grow users, grow revenue, revenue per user was notably better. they are giving a lot of stock options out. it is a different business from an income statement point because they are giving away the stock options. the stock compensation for this company is at massive levels and the result is you have gone from 360 million shares to 714 million shares, and it continues to have this massive stock compensation expense such that were not for the stock compensation, the company would be profitable. there is a valid argument that this is a non-cash expense. that they don't actually have to spend to get these options, but the result is that there are so

many shares hitting the market and you see this company -- the insiders becoming enriched whether selling businesses to twitter or insiders getting more shares with every knock down in price, but the result is it is flooding the market with shares even as investors are stuck holding the bag. caroline: is that something making investors bristle? is it something you as an analyst are keeping an eye on? james: of course. at the same time, you are seeing all the tech peers moving away from kind of non-gap reporting basis, which includes the stock-based compensation expense, so that is something to scrutinize, considering 20% of revenue is in the form of stock-based compensation. it is something that does involve more scrutiny. cory: let me back up. involve more scrutiny. it is my take that when a company has an ipo, you expect

to see a lot of stock comps in the initial statements, but that should drop off because the shares before the ipo are not being expensed, but these guys are still issuing shares. james: they are issuing shares and nobody is putting their money where their mouth is. you go through the conference call and there seems to be so much confidence in the metrics of the reporting and belief that this turnaround in daily active users will drive a bigger turnaround story for the company. i don't know where that confidence is coming from and it would be good to put their money where the mouth is and buy back some stock, or as jack dorsey says, i believe in it today. i will buy my shares today. we are not seeing that. it is just a lot of rhetoric. the results aren't matching and i think they really need to look in the mirror and what are we and what do we want to be? who do we want to serve and how do we do it? and answer those questions. caroline: they are trying to hit a they are doing it by doing

more video. they are striking more partnerships, live video in particular. can they manage to get that target to profitability by this year? james: video is a double-edged thing. c i am so exhausted from giving the benefit of the doubt to twitter. every incremental dollar of video you get comes with a higher cost associated with it because you have to acquire licensed content. as you move into more premium categories, the cost structure could change from the one that people believed in at the time of the ipo. at the same time, who else is going after video? you have facebook going after video, snapchat going after video, youtube going after video, and twitter with its 319 million users, good luck.

one point on that, of the 600 hours of video they have in the fourth quarter, only 31 million users, unique viewers, watch that content. come on. caroline: and we here at bloomberg technology explored the dynamic between twitter and the twitter president. what do his user numbers tell us since the u.s. election? ♪ caroline: president donald trump's use of twitter is unprecedented for a world leader. consider his audience. the president's personal account has roughly 24 million followers. compare that to his neighboring leaders, the mexican president has 6 million, and the canadian prime minister justin trudeau with less than 3 million. barack obama's personal count has four times as many followers as trump, but half as many actual tweets. trump built his campaign around the idea of speaking frankly and directly to people and twitter provides the ideal platform for this. he tweeted more than 240 time

since inauguration day, often directing the news flow in 140 characters or less. it is sometimes to share his schedule, sometimes to discuss foreign affairs, and sometimes none of the above. but with all of the added attention the president has brought to twitter in the past few months, is the company attracting new users? not according to comscore. comscore reported mobile apps users fell 6%, and 5% again in december to 45 million unique users. the context, snapchat has 82 million in the same month, facebook twice that. trump's spotlight on twitter has not helped investor sentiment. shares are flat since election day and on the days trump tweeted something particularly engaging, twitter is not usually rewarded with a bump in the stock price. for example, his most popular tweet last month was this one on sunday, janaury 22.

liked by 400,000 users and retweeted over 83,000 times, but when you trading resumed, shares closed nearly flat. ubs in pivotal research downgraded twitter from buy to hold last month, citing among other things, muted growth among monthly average users. so if twitter the company is not benefiting from superuser president trump, who is? perhaps democracy? caroline: still ahead, uber is actually researching floating taxis. we will talk to the man who literally wrote the book on uber's flying cars. and later this hour, we will meet the makers. we will head to the 2017 makers conference and catch up with aol ceo tim armstrong. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪

caroline: tired of that morning commute? uber may have a solution in the works. mark moore from nasa, naming him director of engineering for aviation. the end role is to develop flying cars. cory johnson set down with brad stone for more. >> if you are a science fiction fan, the idea of a flying car or a small aircraft that takes off and lands vertically and runs on electric power or maybe is automated is just cool. a little background, seven years ago mark moore at nasa wrote a paper about the feasibility, -- there is a stanford professor named elon crew and they started talking to larry page that spawned two companies.

one is arrow and the other is kitty hawk. cory: kitty hawk. that is a noted name in the world of aviation. >> of course. the wright brothers. we wrote about these two companies working on flying cars. uber at the end of last year wrote a white paper saying they wanted to play a new role in the ecosystem of flying cars. not necessary build a flying car themselves, but they think they have a role to play in changing regulations, negotiating with the suppliers, creating new battery technology. my story today is they recently hired that guy from langley, mark moore, who wrote the paper in 2010, so adding firepower. this is real. silicon valley is working on it. you will be soaring through the air one-day to your job, but maybe not soon. perhaps one day. cory: or not. >> or not. cory: i do think it is interesting that uber is a company that could have been all cloud. i don't mean cars in the cloud,

i mean a company that takes advantages of other people's hardware. and they are where the cash is transacted. instead, they are doing things they could have been left to others. i wonder what it is about the mentality of this company or that it is all about leverage in the cloud and using amazon web services on the backend consumer's foams -- phones on the front. still sinking a lot of money into the development of actual hardware. >> there are two explanations, one positive, one cynical. the cynical explanation is they worry this will happen without them, that google would develop a driverless car or arrow or boeing would develop a flying car, and they don't need a uber, so uber needs to be involved in some way or they risk being left behind. on the other hand, you invest in -- you invent the future you want to see. it is the same reason amazon developed the alexa, the kindle.

if you want to see a future and solve real problems in cities around transportation, then you have to be involved in advocating for it, and uber has the resources to do that. cory: it is interesting they sucked up all the ai robotics engineers out of carnegie mellon, it is interesting that cherry picking of academia. >> absolutely. it is funny because google got a lot of criticism about big bets. doing these things in-house and one by one they have been spinning them out. the driverless car is actually now the waymo division and central to google's plans. the flying car project they decided to do outside of the company, and now uber is doing some capability in-house. -- developing caroline: that was cory johnson and bloomberg technology's brad stone. be sure to check out brad's new book, "the upstarts, how uber, airbnb, and the killer companies of silicon valley are changing the world." out now. coming up, intel becomes the latest firm to talk up its grand ambitions with president trump, but is it a case of deja vu. we will have the details next. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio.

you can listen on the bloomberg radio app, bloomberg.com, and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪

caroline: welcome back to the "best of bloomberg technology". i am caroline hyde. intel says it will spend $7 billion on a production facility in arizona. the announcement came amid a meeting between the intel ceo and president trump at the white house. the ceo says the investment expands intel's presence in arizona and creates 3000 jobs, and yet it was already included in intel's spending forecast and the plant's construction already started, so why the announcement now? bloomberg editor at large, cory johnson caught up with stacy smith and asked why the company is focused on building in the u.s. >> if you think about our footprint as a company.

to put us in perspective, we tend to be among one, two, three in the world in terms of our capital spending every year on r&d every year, so we are huge. the majority of that investment is in the u.s. we invest all over the world, but the majority is here in the u.s. and the reason we invest is first and foremost because we can hire great people here. we have really good infrastructure and we have access to worldwide markets. while we build capacity in the u.s., 80% of sales are outside of u.s., so that is important to us. we do all that against a dissonance of the u.s. has among the highest tax rates in the world and so we are actually disadvantaged relative to our competitors in korea or taiwan and that is the place where we are obviously working close with the administration to try to get more pro-investment policy such that it makes more sense for us to continue to make these kinds of investments here. cory: is $8 billion the price

tag on a top-of-the-line fab for intel? >> we are starting on the shell. we still have work on the shell, then we get it outfitted and into full production is a never -- and other $7 billion. if we were starting from a piece of land, you are in excess of $10 billion to build one of these factories. cory: the time horizon. that is amazing. i visited a fab up in hillsboro years ago and it is jaw-dropping. i wonder in terms of the time it takes. you have this shell. if you were to start with vacant land to completing this kind of fab, how long does it take? >> it is kind of from start to finish, depending on where you are, whether you have a shell or not, 3-4 years. they could actually be a little bit more than four years. to put it into perspective, in addition to the direct employment for intel, these are among the largest construction

projects on the planet. as you said, this one already has the cell -- shell. we will still have 3000 construction employees getting this thing ready for production. they are just enormous and the impact on communities is also enourmous. cory: there is some irony perhaps, here you have intel where andy grove, refugee and founder of intel, and at the same time the federal district court in san francisco is debating this immigration ban, then brian kucinich meeting -- at the white house today with president trump, and i wonder how much does intel need immigrant labor and labor from refugees around the world? how important is it to intel historically and how important is it today? >> it is very important for us to hire the best talent around the world. the tasks we have and the research and development we do is some of the most complex

problems on the planet. to put this in perspective, intel is not political. we engage with democratic administrations, republican administrations, and depending on the issue, some places we agree, so we are in agreement around what they are trying to do around the tax and investment policy. in other places, we disagree, issues around immigration and being able to hire the best talent, and we have made that clear to the administration as well, so we engage on issues and not necessarily down political lines, and our issues are investment, hiring the best talent, being able to build in the u.s. and export around the world and make the kind of investments the make us a great company. cory: talk to me about intel's use of h-1b visas and if that could be simpler than it has been in the past. >> it comes back to that simple concept of we need to be able to hire the best talent in the world, and as you know, the phd's, people who come in from overseas to get phd's in math

and science areas, and those are the people who come in and make intel a great company, so what we would like to see in the h-1b space is a higher proportion of those visas being used for the most highly skilled technical people, and it is one the places i know that brian is engaging with the administration to make our point of view known. caroline: that was david kirkpatrick and cory johnson. a story we are following, apple has yet again sent in a request to sell used iphones in india. this as the tech giant negotiate with the government to start production in the country. the last attempt to get this license was met resistance. industry executives and government ministries believe this could undermine the make in india program to encourage local manufacturing. apple is exerting its brand

influence. its pre-owned devices will be cheaper and target a price-sensitive market. coming up, we sit down with aol ceo tim armstrong and quiz him about his goal to have women represent 50% of aol's leadership by 2020. a reminder that all episodes of bloomberg technology are live streaming on twitter. check us out at @bloombergtechtv weekdays at 5:00 p.m. new york and 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ caroline: a revolving door in tech, a new ceo at zenefits. he will be the third ceo of the embattled startup since 2016. david sacks announced he would be stepping down as chief executive. his tenure lasted less than the year after taking over from parker conrad. while cutting 45% of the workforce, the new ceo announced job cuts aiming to reduce cost in the wake of regulatory scrutiny and management shakeup. this week, we were live from palos verdes, california, where

makers kicked off its women's conference. at the event, aol ceo tim armstrong announced a goal to have women represent 50% of the organizations leadership by 2020. he is also targeting equal pay in the same timeframe. aol joins a push by corporate america to make top ranks of executive more accurately reflect the population. we caught up with tim armstrong. tim: this journey started six years ago when we cofounded dylan mcgee, makers as a brand. we want to not just be an investor in the media side of makers and the 4500 stories, but -- it is the largest catalog online, we also want to lead as a company in the space, and what is clear to us in meeting with our executives and up-and-coming women executives, and i asked if -- they asked us -- of their -- is there one thing we could do at the company and send a message and would be great for the company. they said could we get 50-50 gender diversity in the top 1,000 positions in the company,

so we discussed it and made a commitment to it. we now -- announced it on stage about an hour ago. we are in the process of getting the company reestablished, recruiting, internal employee development, and the future, so by 2020, we want to be 50-50 we now -- announced it on stage across-the-board in our executive team in the top management of the company. it is a bold goal, but we will figure out how to do it. caroline: and equal pay by 2020. if you are an entrepreneur watching, as a business leader, give us the step-by-step approaches you need to achieve that. >> we have diagnosed the issues we have a route it that around it and i think it starts outside the company with what i call pools, where we are getting the talent from, different talent pools, so we need to reconnect our recruiting into broader pools, and in some pools we are not in today. if i went to a company and said we want to be 50-50 back 2020 and said get going to let's go faster, we would go to the same pools.

we have to change what we are doing. we have been rewiring the polls we are recruiting and when you come in for an interview, we have to represent what you think the company is in the space of what we will be doing. so if you are a female executive coming in, part of the interview process should meet with female executives and getting that side of the story from us in terms of why you want to come. the last piece is the internal employee development process, which is if you are diverse talent, a female executive any what to move your career along in general, we have to put the fundamental steps in place, which we have been doing, so our plan over the next 2-3 years, is to really put investment just like when we bought the huffington post or the techcrunch deal, we will do a deal around this issue, and that is what we announced on stage today. we are serious about it, just like any other startup issue we deal with, we will figure out how to do it and our employees are engaged in it and excited about it. caroline: talk to me about the yahoo! deal, how optimistic, pessimistic, frustrated are you by the timeline?

>> let me start with the yahoo! brand and the yahoo! talent. the yahoo! brand remains a brand we care about, and many, many people care about it in the world. the talent, we have had great experience with them in the integration process. caroline: that is still going well? >> the integration process is -- has been on track. they had data breaches and the deal sits right now is we are -- where the deal sits right now is we are waiting for information to come back on the second data breach and to figure out if there are any changes in value. caroline: timeline on that? >> it is ongoing right now. i would not want to give a timeline, but i assume during q1 we will have a lot more information from them and once we have that, we can sit down and discuss with them in a coherent way next steps in terms of what the outcome should be, and it is too early to have that discussion.

i'm hopeful the deal closes. i think we have a higher appreciation for yahoo!, but we need to figure out if there's a value changes based on the breaches. that is really how simple it is. caroline: the driver for yahoo! is more web users to become a powerhouse to become the number three player when it comes to the advertising space, google and facebook dominate. how are you going to be the number three player? >> we bring something unique to the table. first of all, google and facebook are gold medal athletes. they are performing well, executing well. you saw the recent numbers. they have done a good job and continue to do a good job, but the one space we want to be an olympic athlete in is the brand space, in the same way google cares about search, facebook cares about social, we care about brand. as you have noticed on social networks with fake news and things like that and in the search space where it is more ai than user-directed search, brands become a really important role, so we want to be owners and partners and content brands to have a brand advertising system which really helps find new consumers for customers and push them all the way through the conversion funnel.

if i said to you simply facebook is social, google's search, we will be brand. everything we do as a company's around brand and we are excited about the future of advertising. it hasn't really been cracked yet and we are probably one of the first two or three companies on it. caroline: that was the aol ceo tim armstrong. while at the makers conference, we caught up with the former u.s. chief executive technology officer for president obama. megan smith. we asked her about president trump's proposed h-1b be set restrictions --visas restrictions and what they mean for talent to the united states. >> we need to keep the pressure on and work on bringing great talents to our shores all the time, like we always have in history. it is critically important. and really our opportunity is here. it is technology. we did artificial intelligence work for the president and so it

is becoming automation, and we need everybody, the training and the extraordinary work starting to happen. 35 coal miners just graduated, what are we doing to get americans to have the kind of talent? we did a huge amount of work around that. nine out of 10 parents want coding taught at school. let's get it done and we are getting it done. some of the governors, very bipartisan, and continue to welcome the talent. it is a two part plan. lift all americans and bring everybody and pay attention in a smart way to how we are reviewing and how homeland has tremendous programs. we review those companies in a way that -- they are really capable and we need to continue to announce to the field how we do that and not ban people. caroline: some now switching to potential executive orders on visas, but concerns about the way those visas are deployed. are they being used in the right way? are there more efficient ways we could be bringing in top talent

to the united states? >> one of my favorites, we have been working on a modernized entrepreneur visa. many countries have that. you see that in britain and canada and other places. we need to do that. we need to have entrepreneurs making companies and making jobs here. the department of labor, which we should call labor as talent, they did a great program were $135 million of fees from those visas was used for grantmaking to help accelerate albuquerque. four counties represent half the population in new mexico. they are accelerating veterans, people coming out of prison, foster care, social disability, straight into the tech sector. you see people go from $10 an hour to $60,000 $85,000 a year. in three months. that is a real thing and exciting to see. 70 different regions and growing who are making that ecosystem work with employers training and bringing people who have stereotypes about -- i don't do that tech jobs. well sure you do. we have to do that because we need to get ready.

caroline: that was the former u.s. chief technology officer. megan smith. facebook made some announcements at the conference. the company is expanding paid leave for its employees. -- for its employees facing hardship. sheryl sandberg spoke about why. >> this is personal for me. i lost my husband suddenly two years ago. facebook provided leave and the flexibility i needed, now we are doing even more. caroline: the new brief meant -- the new bereavement policy will allow up to 20 days in the case of an immediate family members death, and up to 10 days for extended family. coming up, why are vc firms waiting to hire female investors? we will pose the question to student alliance at the -- susan lyons at the makers conference. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ caroline: a story we are watching, pinterest unveils what it is calling the lens technology. the feature will let users search for products using their smart phone camera. it will identify objects in pictures and pull up related content within the app. the company also announced other features that allow users to find more products related to images users have already saved. now, back to palos verdes, california, where makers kicked off its women's conference. the message this year, of all -- evolve. we spoke with bbg ventures president. before launching bbg ventures, she was ceo of aol's brand group. take a listen. >> the good news here is that women are starting companies at an extraordinary rate. we have seen 1400 companies with a female founder since we started bbg ventures two and a half years ago. obviously, that is not all of

them. this is a very fertile arena right now. the problem is that the legacy venture capital world still does not have the networks that reach into this female entrepreneur base, so women are still getting only about 10% of the venture capital that goes to startups in this country. we looked at that and said that is not -- that at -- that is an opportunity. if women are the dominant consumers and there are more and more women who are coming out of not just engineering schools, but companies that have real vertical expertise, we should be backing the best of these because they understand that end-user. caroline: what will be the tipping point for vc's to start seeing the talent coming into their own hemisphere? the data already proves that if you are in s&p 500 company, it

-- if it is female lead, it tends to be outperforming the rest of the s&p 500. what is the data not showing to the typical vc right now? >> it is less about what the data shows because a lot of these companies are still very early stage. it takes 5 years, 8 years, 10 years for a company to really show what it can become. i think what you are seeing is that there is at least a recognition that they need to open up their partnerships and several of the most storied vc's, sequoia just brought in their first female partner. caroline: just now? what took so long? >> i think it has been a world where -- it is understandable on a certain level. most of the early startups were selling to bars technology companies. they were enterprise plays. being able to talk to those guys at those companies was important, but as the world

changes and technology becomes a part of every company, there is just a bigger world out there and a bigger opportunity. caroline: what we have seen a lot, particularly in silicon valley, key startups have been led by immigrants as well. how are you seeing the trump travel ban come into play? how much is that affecting female immigrants as well? are we seeing it come from outside the united states? >> we only invest in companies that are u.s. based, but there are certainly plenty of founders who have come to this country to go to university really and stayed and they are starting companies now. so there is no question that this particular sector, the startup world, technology startups, would be impacted dramatically by this ban.

caroline: you have spoken a lot also throughout the election cycle that perhaps there was an echo chamber, as has been voiced by many within social media. you are now starting to see social media attacking this problem. do you think they are becoming accountable? >> i think that everyone, whether they wanted to take responsibility for the outcome of the election or not, i know for a fact that every company really looked hard at what their current policies were, how they could make sure that the echo chambers were opened up if that was a problem, and all of them have gone after the fake news problem as well. i think that nobody is being cavalier about this. it is a problem that everybody recognized and i think they are all doing a pretty good job of trying to find solutions for it.

caroline: we are sat here at the makers conference. we can hear the music, the shouting behind us, more than 500 women, it is all about leadership and storytelling within that. it feels optimistic here. are you optimistic about the talent pools currently coming through? are there stem subjects being adopted by u.s. youth at the moment to be the talent pool you want to invest in? >> i am optimistic about a lot of things. i am very optimistic about this conference. everybody talked about it coming in as the meeting after the march and if you are in washington, d.c. ordinate the -- any of the other numbers, it was such a spectacular day. it was one of those days that remind you of how much progress has been made and what a unified group women in the united states are and actually, women around the world right now. and the message was very simple, we are not going back, right? i think what an event like this

is great for is to get people really thinking about what does that mean in practice? what are the things we need to do going forward to make sure that our daughters have even more opportunity? and certainly in this area of entrepreneurship, where you can create your own company, that is key. it is an arena that we need more women in. women are natural problem solvers, so you take any consumer problem out there, and there is a woman, i promise you, who is working on a solution for it. being able to find ways for more women to understand how to use technology in order to solve problems and then getting more vc's, more investors interested in supporting this next

generation women to do that is great. caroline: that was the bbg ventures president, susan lyne. and, oh, snap, literally comes to mind in this case. a market's mistaken identity. this week, investors sent shares of a little known startup snap interactive surging 164% in four days since snap inc. filed for a $3 billion ipo. snap interactive's makes a mobile dating app. volume started to rise in late january after reports of snap's upcoming ipo. that does it for this edition of the "best of bloomberg technology". we will bring you all the latest in tech throughout the week. thursday, we will hear from cisco ceo, jack robbins after they report earnings. tune in everyday at 5:00 p.m. new york, 2:00 p.m. san francisco, 6:00 a.m. in hong kong.

and remember, all episodes are now live streaming on twitter. check us out at @bloombergtechtv weekdays. that is all for now. this is bloomberg. ♪

carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. oliver: i am oliver renick. plus, the algorithm that could help police catch serial killers. carol: a lucrative second career for steve young. oliver: all the ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ carol: we are here with assistant managing editor jim ellis. you guys look at ivanka trump, who seems to be important when it comes to china policy. >> it ses