♪ emily: i'm emily chang. this is "the best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all the top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, tech loses an ally after gary cohn exits the white house. with a loss of the top economic advisor means with the looming trade war -- were the looming trade war with china and for silicon valley. plus, the amazon agenda. our deep dive into the ever expanding footprint of america's e-commerce king. not just be company, but -- the company, but industries

potentially in its crosshairs. an hour extended interview with google cloud ceo diane greene, just one of the top female leaders of tech we bring you ahead. first, to our lead, gary cohn the parting the white house, president trump's desired trade tariffs are spending chills -- sending chills throughout the tech community, especially if they take aim at chinese imports , including consumer electronics. amazon and apple could feel the impact, especially considering the products that they manufacture in china. apple could have the most to ipodswith most iphones, and more being assembled there. we discussed what a looming trade war could mean for the industry at large with executive editor tom giles. we also spoke to max able to an, who covers money and power for bloomberg. tom: wall street is not happy. on the one hand, we cannot go too far. the reality is that nobody knows what is going on with this white house. you do not see the federal

market losing 10%, but people are upset. gary cohn, if you remember, was the president of goldman sachs. he left being the number two guy at goldman for the white house, and that came after trump literally mocked goldman sachs on the campaign trail. people are relieved that they have this guy that they saw as a friend, someone who could push to cut corporate taxes, and now gary cohn is gone and that is sort of destabilizing. i talked to wall street executives over the last 24 hours that said this freaks me out. somebody compared it to losing a security blanket. emily: let's look at apple as an example. it is still unclear if apple would be marked as an importer. if this would hit company that manufactured apple products, .ike foxconn or what does this really mean as far as we know for apple, its products, its supply chain? tom: apple has to be caught in the middle of this somehow, given the fact they are the world's largest, most viable company. they are importing products from

china, both finished goods and a lot of the supply chain is in china. to the effect that china is affected, apple is not going to get off scott free here. the question is, in a worst-case scenario -- we have talked to a few analysts here -- it certainly would be affected. in a company that generates so many tens of billions of dollars a year, we have heard people talk about this as something more of a rounding error. we are talking about tens of millions of dollars. not, at the end of the day, a big factor. it really all depends on how much of a levy is going to be imposed on steel, aluminum, finished goods. trade wars are not good for big, multinational companies like apple and to some degree, amazon. although amazon and some of these other tech companies, the faangs people like to talk about our less affected because they are so service-based. -- are less affected because

they are so service-based. microsoft, a software provider. facebook, social media delivered over the internet. amazon, the lion's share of what it does is not consumer electronics, but be -- the echo is getting bigger and bigger. emily: apple in particular, we know, president trump took aim on the campaign trail. so, who knows where that relationship stands. max, is there a silver lining here? max: there might be a silver lining for wall street considering that steven mnuchin is the treasury secretary. he worked for goldman sachs, just like gary cohn. but when i hear tom talk about apple and am reminded that trump mocked apple, considering the direction -- nobody knows what is happening -- if donald trump decides he needs someone to be at up on, it might not be wall street. what if it is big tech? the guy who made the movie about clinton cash, his next documentary, which is going to

debut at con, is about the big tech companies. i can smell in the air the sense that the new wall street, the new punching bag, instead of being goldman sachs and jpmorgan, it could be amazon and apple. emily: marty schenker was on the show yesterday during the breaking news, and he talked about how he thinks the relationship between silicon valley and the white house has taken a bit of a pause. we just don't know. what is the general vibe or response from the tech community so far? tom: what you have to think about with silicon valley is to the extent that we are going to look at foreign nations as the enemy, that is going to have a big impact. there are lots of different ways, and that think the biggest way i want to talk about is when you look at the big deal, the biggest deal in tech, brought, -- which we brought to you at bloomberg, broadcom trying to

buy qualcomm, this is a transaction that is hitting a buzz saw. they are looking at this and what they are saying is, to the extent that this transaction would undermine our competitiveness as a country, countries like china, they do not want to see it happen. treasury is raising objections. we wrote about the letter they published earlier this week that says we do not want to see this transaction go through. on one hand, that sounds friendly to tech companies. on the other hand, if you are broadcom, you do not want to see a deal like this, a big, game changing deal, get blocked. so how much are big tech companies going to get caught in this larger narrative with u.s. competitiveness and competitiveness with countries like china? emily: what does it mean for companies that have been trying to crack the u.s. market? they are coming with products from china. tom: it is not going to get easier. if you are trying to sell

phones, tablets, laptops, it is not going to get any easier to get it to hold in the u.s. and in -- under a regime like this. emily: max, you talked to a lot of people about what gary cohn might do next. you got some interesting answers. any inkling as to what he will do next, and who will fill his role? max: someone like gary cohn is not like trying to figure out the white house. he spent 25 years at goldman sachs, then went straight to the white house. the truth of the matter is, the way the world is going, it is not that insane to think he could go back to goldman sachs. especially because deana powell just announced that she is returning. i think she is going to the management committee. it would be a bad look for the revolving door idea that people could leave goldman sachs, a power- a crew political -- accrue political power, then turn it right back into a

goldman sachs job. someone said he could work for spacex, but it looks like they have wonderful management, including one of the biggest women in tech. someone said he should just go spent six months on the beach in the bahamas, and i feel out of thatall of the options, seems like the most realistic. emily: i love that idea. what about who would fill his job, and how important is it that it is another banker? max: it is so crazy to think about. if someone was twisting your arm and you had to say what does donald trump stand for, i am pretty sure you would say populism. this idea, the stephen bannon cooked up idea of populism, that donald trump represents the average person. it is just so remarkable to think that he is a billionaire who has surrounded himself with billionaires. bloomberg news has done a good job of explaining how his cabinet is the richest cabinet in the history of america. so on the one hand, i feel like it would be crazy to guess that he would pick anybody but another tycoon, someone like wilbur ross.

steven mnuchin. i can almost imagine him moving someone who is already there to take gary's job. shuffling around. people i talked to said it is hard to imagine people leaving from wall street to go to the white house, considering considering how chaotic things are there. that does not seem like a place you go and stay for a while. emily: that was bloomberg's max abelson and tom giles. president trump may have an ally in elon musk, at least when it comes to china's trade protections. musk was in a bitter fight with chinese authorities to build a factory in shanghai. he tweeted his response to an earlier post by the president, writing "you would think the u.s. and china would have equal and fair rules for cars." the tesla cofounder and ceo noted that china charges 25% import duties on cars, compared to america's levy of 2.5%. like -- it is like competing in the olympic swearing lead shoes. -- wearing lead shoes. coming up, our important conversation with top female

voices in technology. we will bring you amazon's stephanie landry and google cloud ceo diane greene later this hour. and 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 areas xm.

♪ emily: well, another day, another legal battle for uber. pennsylvania's attorney general is suing the company. the suit says uber failed to disclose a hack that affected over 13,000 drivers in pennsylvania. uber has known for over a year that this breach potentially impacted 57 million passengers worldwide. under the law, the ag's team can seek civil penalties as high as $13.5 million from uber. well, this thursday was international women's day, and we brought you a slew of top female leaders in technology. from google cloud ceo diane greene to amazon's stephanie landry, and

bloomberg's regional manager for the u.s. and canada. -- uber's regional manager for the u.s. and kennedy. -- canada. we started our conversation on uber's business and its changing culture. >> i have been extraordinarily lucky and have had a remarkable experience at uber. since the day i came on board, i have been working for an incredible woman that is leading our east coast organization. -- wee an organization had a board that was 50-50, men and women, i was really supportive of people of different backgrounds and styles. it was a place i really felt like i could drive and encourage those around me to try. to be honest, a place i knew i could come in to work every day and make decisions with integrity and fight for what i knew his right -- i think the disturbing thing that we have all realize over the course of the past year is not everyone in

our organization can say the same thing. it has been invigorating, in a way, to say that this is our mission going forward. i have been deeply involved in ensuring that our culture and our norms and business practices going forward are ones we can all be proud of. i think the exciting thing is that we have teams in the canany who show that we grow and scale in a way that we feel proud of, and now it is up to us to ensure that every single team across the company can say the same thing. i am really excited about the progress we have seen today. hired by travis kalanick and there has been a big changeover. i am curious about how your work and your mandate has changed, and if you are seeing an actual change in the culture at uber as a result of his leadership? -- of new leadership?

meghan: there has been a distinct change in our company, the mandate from the top, and even the direction we we are going strategically. i think we have acknowledged that we need to articulate and hold our teams accountable every time. even if it is something that is going to cost us a bit more. especially in the short term. emily: where is the balance of power between growth versus profitability? talk about where the pendulum is and what you have been told about the priorities? meghan: we need both growth and profitability. any company does, especially if it is optimizing for the long-term. we need to ensure we are continuing to invest in long-term growth, but ensuring we are doing so in a sustainable way. i think the challenge of any business leader is to hold those two things at the top of mind at the same time, and to ensure we are helping navigate the company through those trade-offs. putting consistently is

the long-term interest of the company first and ensuring that we are setting ourselves up for long-term sustainable success. emily: the competitive landscape has also changed, and there is some data to show that list -- riders as uber was going through this big cultural transition. what do you have on the competition, and are you at all concerned about the threat of lyft? riders and drivers always have a choice about whether to use over or not -- uber or not. they can drive their own car, choose to walk, or some other alternative. at the end of the day, what we find exciting is the opportunity for people to be able to leave their keys at home or not by that second car or never by the first car to begin with, and consider using options that are actually more sustainable for our city that large.

when we do that, we will need in our cities allocated to parking. we will have less congestion on our streets. we will have safer roads because we do not have people that are getting behind the wheel drunk. we will have great opportunities for drivers who need it. somenk as we think about of the lessons we have learned over the past 12 months, to ensure that we are consistently delivering on the promise to riders and drivers so that we have the better option -- a better option than anything else out there. emily: that was uber's meghan joyce. we also caught up with amazon vice president stephanie landry for international women's day. she launched and runs the countries prime now expressed deliberate -- prime now delivery service, and now is the head of amazon fresh and its restaurant delivery service. over 4000 we have

open jobs in our seattle offices today. we are constantly looking at our businesses and evaluating and making sure we are applying the right amount of resources in different areas. but we have so many jobs open right now. we are looking for people all over the city and actually worldwide. the opportunities here are tremendous, and i have had an incredible career over the past 14 years. i do not think there is necessarily any sort of issue with the amount of jobs that we have. emily: stephanie, you now run amazon prime now and amazon fresh. talk to us about how big prime now is and how many people are using it? stephanie: the connection of all the businesses that i run is that we deliver food, often fresh food, and really fast to customers, in some cases as little as an hour. the prime now business is currently available in over 50 cities provide, nine countries. in the u.s. we are in over 30 cities. so we have started that business in 2018, so it has expanded

incredibly fast. emily: you were involved in the kickoff of amazon fresh grocery deliveries, and now, of course, amazon is all in. amazon bought whole foods. but the company still lags walmart in grocery delivery, and there is a lot of competition. what is the path to greater domination in grocery? stephanie: you know, throughout my 13 year career here at amazon, what we have focused on is creating a great customer experience, and specifically a great customer experience for our prime members. i think that our collaboration with whole foods gives us an opportunity to solve an important problem. i have a six-year-old. i am a mom taking a little kid taking a little kid through the grocery store is a big chore. to be able to get it delivered to your home is such an incredible convenience. so i think that our collaboration between the whole tods company and amazon, bring people groceries at great prices is an incredible opportunity that our prime customers are really going to

love. just today, we launched grocery delivery in as little as in san one hour francisco and atlanta, and i am very excited about that opportunity for customers. emily: that was amazon's stephanie landry. coming up, asia is encouraging its biggest tech firms to bring its business home. we will head there, next. and the bank of amazon? the company's new move into the world of financing later this hour. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: tencent is calling on the to boostovernment regional trade between hong kong and the mainland. ma met with the media and explained his proposal. exporter controls and different

taxation regimes are two of the biggest obstacles to the greater bay area project. also the free movement of high skilled workers is yet to happen because hong kong is concerned about the inflow of labor. so i suggested the idea of an id system linking hong kong and mainland china to allow people to cross the border and may collect payments more easily. also fielded a question around octane and the -- blockchain and the cryptocurrency market. take a listen. >> blockchain is a really innovative technology, but we must be careful using it. technology is good but usage is important. ico's for digital currencies means a lot of risk. i am not saying the technology is not mature, but everyone can create and use digital currencies, so there could be huge issues for regulators. so have not participated in an ico. emily: meantime, some of the biggest companies are being

floated back to china through dual listings. to lower companies to achieve exchange. managing editor of asia tech coverage from bloomberg joins us live from tokyo, along with selina wang. >> the backdrop is interesting here. you have this annual national people's congress. a gathering of thousands of delegates from all over the country. in the past you will see business leaders, and express their support for the administration, but they were typically traditional businesses in real estate, state owned enterprises. this year, you are seeing the coming out of the technology companies that have become some of the most valuable in the world. so leaders like robin lee at baidu is talking about listing china,res in mainland and they're talking about listing shares in mainland china in addition to listings overseas. so there is a burnishing of the 's reputation if

they can learn these stars home, and it helps the tech companies, because valuations in mainland china tend to be quite high. emily: selena, talk to us a little bit more about the pros and cons of this structure? selina: the chinese stock market does not have the best reputation. they have difficult regulations these companies have to comply with. they're known for volatility and for sometimes spontaneous government intervention. as peter mentioned, this would be a good move on the chinese government's part to boost the reputation and attract some of these big listings. it is also great for a lot of domestic retail and institutional investors. they have not really been able of theicipate in some greatest wealth creation in china's history, alibaba, baidu, and tencent. give them a chance to dissipate and boost the valuations of these companies. retail investors are excited to get in on this if it becomes possible. emily: and peter, some folks won't be pleased about this. who are they?

competition for these listings. right now, hong kong is competing to draw more attention . historically, they have not allow the dual class shares you see at many u.s. tech companies, including some foreign companies that are listed in the u.s.. they are competing aggressively for this business, but you cannot have dual listings in places like mainland china and hong kong, and the u.s. and and maine -- and mainland china. emily: there are some big tech ipos in the pipeline, tencent music, how do we expect those companies in particular to proceed? selina: changing regulations in both hong kong and mainland china are going to play a big role in what they ultimately decide. one company is considering a dual listing in hong kong well inch -- as well as in china. tencent music is also considering a dual listing, and is already listed in hong kong. these stock exchanges are going

to do everything that they can to attract these companies and to become the global leader here. know, has as we really fallen far behind new york in terms of attracting these companies, and they want to get ahead of the game again. emily: peter, do you have any thoughts or inklings as to how those potential listings could play out this year? it is interesting, certainly, the big prize will be xiaomi this year. as selena mentioned, if they are leaning towards hong kong as their primary listing but they missed in mainland china as well, it gives them a chance to tap into that consumer demand to give customers of xiaomi an opportunity to buy into the shares, and that could help their valuation quite a bit. it will be interesting to see how that one plays out in particular. thank you to peter elstrom and selina wang there. still ahead, we sit down with google cloud the

ceo. how she is doubling down on innovation. and a reminder that all episodes of bloomberg technology are now live streaming on twitter. check us out. this is bloomberg. ♪ mom you called?

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emily: welcome back to the bloomberg technology. i'm emily chang. back to our coverage of international women's day, diane greene has been ceo of google cloud since 2015. it is a big job. last year, but advisor eric schmidt said all that has invested some $30 billion on its cloud services. diane greene was founder and ceo of the amway -- the ceo of -- for -- the background helping, and as i first got to

know what was available at google in terms of the phenomenal infrastructure and infrastructure and engineers -- and -- and sadly, realizing what a big deal the cloud was. i knew it was a big deal, but that is just sort of profound when you think about this is a place where everyone in the world can share and the whole world is going digital and being connected to all of these mobile and you cansensors, kind of make this available to -- youth, use almost, almost democratizing technology through it. so it was more interesting the -- so it what i got, was more interesting to me the more into it i got. no google had been talking to me about doing it, and i have been helping them find someone, and i decided i would do it. emily: amazon is in the le

ad, and then microsoft. which one are you more afraid of? afraid of iborra them. i do pay attention, but last year the cloud at about $45 billion in business, and you can argue is it about -- it is about a $1 trillion business, so there is a lot of room for everyone there. amazon and microsoft have different strengths, so does google. we arethink about it, highly differentiated in our machine learning and analytics. we are highly differentiated in our security. suite on downty to the basic network, i think we know we are the people that discovered the heartbleed sector meltdown. we have these differentiations that are where all companies are going, so that is why i cannot say i am afraid. i do see we have a lot of work cut out for us and we are working extremely hard.

emily: you said last year you think google has a good shot at being number one in five years. you believe that bill? -- do you believe that still? diana: i think it is possible. those words were quoted a little bit out of context, but we certainly are executing it extraordinarily well. at the end of january, our earnings call said we passed $1 andion a quarter in 2017, the google cloud platform is the fastest-growing of the public publiclyccording to available numbers, which puts us in the triple digit growth. tremendous momentum. we had our g suite, over 4 million paying customers. it is definitely a possibility. about we are benchmarking our own growth against ourselves, and we are pretty happy with it. emily: speaking of the metrics,

we always want more. when will google actually give more details on how the cloud business is doing? diana: well, we will in good time. it is so interesting to me that in january, we finally gave some metrics and now it is my most frequently asked question, when you will give real metrics? they were pretty real, but not the kind of company reporting metrics you are looking for. emily: do you think blockchain will change cloud computing, and if so, how? diana: blockchain gives you this distributive mechanism to verify things, which is powerful for everything. for the cloud, for security, it is going to be powerful for health. everye the cloud is where company is going to operate and all the data is going to be, it is inevitable that blockchain is going to play a gigantic role in cloud, and in our fully

distributed world -- distributive world on which cloud plays a meaningful role, because it is where all the data gets shared. google cloud ceo diane greene. our next guest is best known for suing her venture capital firm, kleiner perkins, for gender discrimination. she lost the suit in court, but somewhat argue she has one in the court and public opinion. talk about a lack of diversity that persistent technology and why. ellen: it is more of this backlash against change, and it is trying to fix the problems that have taken place for the past several decades in tech, where we have created the genuity --t favor: certain ingenuity, and how do we

change it and take down the system, and get it to catch up and transform how you do things? that is uncomfortable for people who succeeded in the system. emily: you have suggested that inple need to be fired order for real change to happen. who should be fired? ellen: people who do not believe that women, people of color, people who are older, or immigrants are equal employees who are able to do the same work and have this innate biases against them, they should be fired. if you cannot treat your coworker equitably and fairly, you really have no place in the workforce. -- workplace. emily: how to we know who these people are? if you haven't got result, if you haven't tried, or you made an untoward comment. had we identify the people that are not doing enough? do not know if it is not doing enough. there are people who are saying terrible things about their sharings who are

private information about their coworkers, so their coworkers get attacked by outsiders. those people should be fired. there are no places for people lauren a bling attacks on your coworkers in the workplace. you want people who believe -- enabling attacks on your coworkers in the workplace. you want to have people who believe in your culture. those who do not are making it harder for others to do their job. emily: the research shows helped cut down on hate on the site, and one of the questions i ask in my book is how my the internet be different if more women had been involved in creating these stems and designing these systems -- systems and designing these systems in the first place? do you think long line -- online harassment and trolling would be such a problem? ellen: it is unfortunate they were mostly started and run by white men for so long, and

most of the engineering teams were white men. no one ever experienced this the same way that people who work -- who were of color or who were women or non-binary experienced it. if you do not experience it, it is hard for you to address it. there was no one calling attention to these problems. you see it on other plot arms as well, like next-door -- platforms as well, like next-door and airbnb, trying to change from a home in jesus -- homogenous workforce and trying to make sure there platforms -- the platforms are more inclusive and opened and do not reflect the biases that their early employees did not experience. emily: thank you to ellen pao of apur center.ter -- k -- preventing crypto related accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner.

facebook recently banned ads tied to cryptocurrency. still ahead, amazon continues a bout of extension period from your doorstep, to your wallet, -- about of extension, from your doorstep to your wallet to your health care. and the votes are in, and italy is getting a new antiestablishment government. again, people are ready to blame social media for the outcome. this is bloomberg.

♪ emily: amazon is reportedly

offering a discount on its prime membership to the millions of medicare recipients in the united states. the move is another step toward the lower income stoppers -- shoppers and depression are -- and keeping pressure on walmart. get it for about half the usual cost. and now is a good time to take stock of the state of amazon, from its ballooning e-commerce and cloud businesses to newer forays into groceries and hardware. in january, the company also announced a health venture with j.p. morgan chase & co to hathaway. in february, the company acquired portal start up ring for half a billion dollars, and now they are looking into providing their customers with checking accounts and expanding whole foods deliveries to amazon prime customers and more u.s. cities. how do all of these announcements fit into the complex operations of amazon? we spoke with brad stone. brad: it is a company that one of its products is its culture and the way it be centralizes and empowers teams to go innovate and even requires them to innovate.

you have tens of thousands of people looking for growth and expansion opportunities, and it yields everything you mentioned. emily: not every business they started have succeeded? brad: they spent 10 years trying to make grocery stores work. it did not work out as well as they had hoped. emily: talk to us about the expanding whole foods delivery business and what that means? brad: there is so much they can do inside whole foods. they can bring amazon pay into the checkout, they want to do a loyalty club for prime members, they could redesign the grocery store and make it friendlier to customers. but the easy stuff is delivering from those supermarkets and from the whole food supply chain to people's homes, and that is what we are seeing in a couple of cities, including san francisco. my colleagues wrote a story about it today about how it's to cart have the relationship with whole foods -- instead cart -- instacart is getting shoved to

the back as amazon comes in. emily: it was pretty good earlier that amazon might buy target next. take a listen to what was said in january. >> the future of retail is going to be a combination, and i would bet that investors would view this as amazon -- the takeaway would be amazon taking over the world, and that is a good thing. emily: is amazon taking over the world a good thing? -- were amazon investors, obviously, the company's performance has been stellar. the stock prices have multiplied by a factor of four over the no. four or five years, but as the bigger it gets, the more industries it enters, the more questions about its market power arise. we can say great for customers, certainly, that amazon is

bringing its willingness to lose money, the path -- to pass down the benefits to customers in the form of lower prices, great for customers but destabilizing a lot of other industries and raising some questions about market consolidation. emily: it has not been all great news for amazon this year. the last studio with struggling to get back on its feet, and a high-profile partner today, greg really leaving for airbnb -- departure today, greg greeley leaving for airbnb. not: probably people do regret, super saver shipping, where for the first time in that if people wanted to wait a few extra days they could get shipping for free. it cost amazon a lot of money, but it cemented the loyalty of customers. that was the pathway that led to prime, another product he had it up more recently. they were using their efficiencies on the supply team to benefit customers. the senior members of the team, some of those are going to spend more time in the whole foods

division, but that bench is extremely deep. the bigger story is how little turnover they have on the upper ranks. i think airbnb has brought him over to be president of their homes division. he is an experienced executive who knows operations and marketplaces. emily: speaking of the cost of delivery, we think they are offering the customers things that do not come cheap, and to our delivery is expensive on the amazon site. is that going to hurt them at some point when they start to raise prices that are more comparable to what they actually are? brad: you can always look at it as a cost curve. in the beginning, it probably cost a lot of money, particularly when the distribution of customers who are ordering from prime now are small, but this is what jeff bezos likes to talk about. they are willing to do that for 10 years and as they get the concentration of customers higher, the cost per delivery comes down and they are uniquely situated to be able to do that and suffered the early bad economics for the longer term payoffs.

it might look bad now when you have one truck making one delivery in one neighborhood, but fast-forward in five years and suddenly that truck is full of stuff. ofly: what do you make amazon buying ring for $1 billion and amazon key, the efforts to have a concierge service, a person who can come drop off your packages and even housecleaning services they are testing. brad: i wrote about this in our tech newsletter on monday. in the short-term, amazon is up against google and to some extent, apple in this kind of home automation. it is a novelty now. people love quizzing alexa and getting the weather, but in the future it is going to be a utility. giving your door, life, and amazon works with third party appliance makers. the more they can bring in-house the better experience it is. on the longer term, not only allowing the delivery guy to come into your door but maybe

monitoring your door from work, letting her housekeeper in, not having to wait at home for the cable guy. in, call it the true lock when they control your doorway it is pretty powerful. thanks to bloomberg's brad stone. meantime, amazon says it is aware of the bug in its alexa feature and is working on a fix. problem? some users say they have heard strange laughing noise in that random fromt the home speaker. amazon can push updates to the service automatically. speaking of amazon, the battle for the cloud continues to heat up. we talk to the man behind one company looking to stave off giants like amazon and microsoft next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: blackberry is suing

facebook for patent infringement, claiming its technology is used in the facebook messaging app. [inaudible] in the past, facebook executives have a slight in the tech industry, copying what works is him times necessary. publicly credited snapchat for creating the popular stories function. the world of cloud content management got big news in the past couple of weeks when dropbox and outed -- announced it was the latest such company to file an ipo. one company that beat them to the punch was box, which recently announced it missed forecast, shedding the price tumbling. -- sending the price tumbling. we spoke with the founder and levy on tuesday. strong,uarter was very so we did 136.7 million in revenue -- 136.7 million dollars

in revenue, and that was the range we got. we had over $200 million in billings, $300 million in free cash flow. a strong quarter overall,, and what box looks like when it is that our best, serving some of the best customers -- largest customers on the planet, major banks, government agencies. we did 78 deals over $100,000 and 90 over $1 million. what happened was it guided -- nine deals over $1 million. what that did -- it guided the year we were in right now and it was lower than expectations, but the reason for this is we are singleioning from a product company to a multi-products company, and we are serving bigger customers and bigger deals, and we want to make sure we set ourselves up for a really good foundation for the year that would have some leverage for accelerated wrote either later this year or next year -- growth either later this

year or next year. we are on a path to accelerated revenue, but we wanted to make sure we were more conservative and how we were guiding. emily: you have been asked about dropbox many times over the years. now that you have seen the numbers and they have filed to go public, are you concerned about the competition? aaron: i'm not sure that the numbers chamber does -- changes the competitiveness at the business. the numbers are a tale of two types of companies. one is a consumer revenue business, 60% or 70% of their revenue, and users or people like you and me using it. a third of the revenue is b2b. that is the only part of the business that looks anything like box, and that tilts toward small businesses or teams, where our revenue tilts towards midsized companies and large enterprises. emily: why couldn't they go after those? aaron: in some cases they have been trying, and they have ended up tilting their focus back to where they are really good, on

the consumer as in beside -- snb side. the consultants you need, special services, level of security compliance and regulatory controls you have to build into the platform -- they end up looking like a different company at scale. the thing that our 1800 employees do everything will they look very different compared to what dropbox does. even though we are similar in nature and we both let you share files, the general electric's of the world and the eli lilly's of the world end up meeting a different functionality, and that is what we have focused on over the past decade. emily: you have a couple of years on them as a public company. any advice? aaron: i do not give any advice to pseudo-competitors, but as long as we can both be as clear as possible the better. this will put a massive spotlight on the industry. that is good for both of us. we are going after a $40 billion to $50 billion market. there is no share of adjustment for us to go and tackle.

we are focusing on enterprises, they are focusing on consumers, and there is plenty of market for both. emily: you said you will start investing more. what are futures are companies you would like to acquire? aaron: i will not announce any moves today -- emily: why not? aaron: pr, the sec, they'll have problems with this. we will be able to get there someday. we are focused on our organic growth and our organic investment. we talked acquisitions here and there, but the best way to think about our roadmap is if you are a 50,000 person company or a 100,000 person company and are transforming how your business works or operates in the digital age, maybe you are a bank, life sciences, government, we want to be the backbone for how you are managing security and working with information. we have a lot of technologies box,bring more ai into

better compliance to serve our customers. those are the focus areas for the business right now. emily: bloomberg has just confirmed that gary cohn is leaving his post at the white house. aaron: wow, breaking news. emily: this has been speculated for a while. you have been a very outspoken opponent of the trump administration. what do you make of this in the context of in general where we are, more than a year into this administration? are we better or worse off than you thought we would be? so offhonestly, we are the path of where i could have even imagined. generally, we tend to think linearly about these things and this has been very nonlinear. the gary resignation would lead to more internal chaos that i think we have already been seeing, so incredibly hard to know how i would compare where we are today versus where you could have been thinking a year ago. in general, it is not good to see that lack of stability and maybe steady hands of some of the people he was surrounded by. emily: do you think it will hurt

business? aaron: i have no idea. i think businesses and the market probably appreciate having somebody with gary cohn's background and political views involved in an administration, very pro-trade, very oriented towards a growth economy, and i think that this could put some risk from the policies. that is what matters a lot in these types of roles, who is advising the president and ultimately what are the policies we see enacted? i think having somebody like gary out of the system and not advising trump -- i cannot imagine a positive thing. --ly: that was aaron levy, cofounder.d ceo and that does it for this edition of best of bloomberg technology. 5:00 p.m. in new york, 2:30 in san francisco -- 2:00

p.m. in san francisco. that's all for now. this is bloomberg.

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