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tv   Best of Bloomberg Technology  Bloomberg  September 9, 2018 5:00pm-6:00pm EDT

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emily: i am emily chang, and this is the "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all of our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, big tech takes on washington as jack dorsey and sheryl sandberg testified before the senate. how is this time different from when mark zuckerberg was in the hot seat? plus, amazon joins the trillion dollar valuation club. the air is thin up there so how will the e-commerce giant amazon fare alongside apple? and bumble puts women first in the dating game. now the company is turning that
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attitude to investment. we will hear from the ceo on her plans to invest in other women. but first to our top story, big tech took center stage on capitol hill this week. facebook coo sheryl sandberg and twitter ceo jack dorsey took questions from the senate intelligence committee on russian election meddling and more. notably absent google. a symbolic left share, and lawmakers openly discussed their disapproval over being snubbed. otherwise did was more civil than when facebook ceo mark zuckerberg testified in may. but sandberg and dorsey, though contrite, gave familiar refrains. >> as a bipartisan report from this committee said, russia used social media as part of, and i quote, "a comprehensive and multifaceted campaign to sow discord, undermine democratic institutions, and interfere in u.s. elections and those of our allies." we were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. that is on us.
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>> we are proud of how that free and open exchange has been weaponized and used to distract and divide people and our nation. we found ourselves unprepared and ill-equipped for the immensity of the problems we have acknowledged. emily: once that was over twitter ceo answered questions before the house energy committee. republicans pressed dorsey on what they believe is the shadow banning of conservatives. bloomberg's chief washington correspondent kevin cirilli caught up with senate intelligence committee vice chair mark warner and asked about his thoughts on the testimonies. >> they clearly understand this problem of russian intervention or other foreign countries' intervention and spreading misinformation is not going to go away. i think they are finally taking it seriously. they did not think that for the first year after the 2016 elections. now i think they realize this is an ongoing challenge. two, i heard a real willingness
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to sit down and work with us on how we can get appropriate rules not to over regulate, not , to cut off innovation, but i heard from twitter for example that they thought there was validity in the point i made that should a human being have a right to know whether they are being contacted on social media by another human being or by computer. or by a bot? that doesn't mean you get rid of the bot. it does mean maybe get that invitation. >> what does the framework look like? >> there was also a question where i thought facebook was very forward leaning about the idea of not only would they make more public the personal day-to-day data they may be using and sell to advertisers, but also how much value they are getting. if you know how much value your personal information is creating in the marketplace if you know , price transparency, i think that is a good thing. they thought there were certain sites that incited violence to such a level, and we cited the
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example of miramar were there are military sites that are inciting people to go out and kill and there is minority , culpable and that they would have a moral or legal obligation to take down those websites. i heard a real willingness to think about this together in a way that tries to -- you know, the wild, wild west of social media is not going to expand. there has to be some guardrails but not in a way that cuts off innovation. >> they said they were willing to come to the table, but what does that table look like? i mean what is the timeline here , in terms of regulation, in terms of there being working groups? >> i think one of the things i was proud of today was our committee showed that a lot of folks had done some of their homework. this was not internet 101 the way some of the earlier hearings had been. >> i agree. >> we will continue to sit down with these companies and others. that is one of the reasons why it was so frustrating that google decided not to participate, which i think was a huge error on their part. but we will sit down with these companies and say, how do we get
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this right in a way that at the end of the day allows users of this information to have a better judge of its accuracy, better judge of its origin, and not trying to limit people's discussion, but at least trying to have some sense of what is real or not. >> i want to press you on google in particular. because you went there, you visited them, met with 20 something. for them to essentially say we are not showing up, they were a no-show at this hearing. essentially not just say no to the committee, but also not taking questions from the country just 10 weeks before the midterm election. >> kevin, i do not get it. i have worked with google for years. i think they have been a very forward leaning company, and their unwillingness to try to sit down and work with congress, and for that matter as you said answer questions that americans , have, i think at the end of the day, it is going to hurt the reputation, not just with policymakers but i think with a whole lot of google users.
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what do they have to hide if they are not willing to show an d answer questions? emily: that was senator mark warner with bloomberg's kevin cirilli right there. i want to walk through the day's hearings and bring in somebody who recently testified before the senate committee on foreign -- committee on foreign operations in social media, laura rosenberger, codirector of the alliance for securing democracy, as well as selina wang who covers twitter and went through the events. walk us through the highlights today. the room was packed. conspiracy theorist alex jones was there, interestingly, probably one of the many people interested in these discussions around shadow banning. but were there any surprises? selina: it has certainly been a marathon of hearings, and one of them is still ongoing. the second hearing, you thought that the lawmakers were more prepared and quite aligned on the issues they wanted to hit the tech companies on. we also saw facebook and twitter really evolve their statements to say that this is their number
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one priority, to stop abuses, to stop foreign election meddling. and there are also a lot of questions about, are they adequately equipped to deal with the evolving threat? and many lawmakers brought up the new, coordinated misinformation campaign coming from russia and iran. in the hearing that is still ongoing, we did see the tone shift. it took a much more political tone, and we saw the democratic and republican lawmakers really start to divide and be quite combative towards each other. the republican lawmakers wanted to focus on alleged censorship on these platforms, while democratic lawmakers saw this as an invented conspiracy that republicans are using to push their ideals in preparation ahead of the midterms. however the conversation steered towards several other issues in addition to data privacy, and election interference, and data privacy. jack dorsey has really kept his cool through all of this. this was his first time testifying, and it was quite impressive how he was able to
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methodically and in his dorsi like introspective -- jack dorsey like introspective way responded to all of the lawmakers questions. emily: dorsey was perhaps more contrite than investors would have wanted him to be. we saw twitter shares fall, we saw facebook shares fall as well. laura, what did you make of what we heard from both dorsey and sandberg? was there any new information here? laura: thanks, emily. you know, there really was not much new information here. i think what we heard from them was a recognition that there is a problem, a recognition that they have an obligation to do something about it, but extremely short on specifics in terms of what that actually means. i agree with senator warner's assessment that we are hearing more in terms of a willingness to cooperate, potentially with government, in terms of tackling this problem. one of the things that the members asked about was information sharing across the platforms with one another.
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this is a problem that is not confined to just one platform. these -- our adversaries are using different platforms to different ends, and really to tackle the problem, we have to be able to pull all of the information together. jack dorsey came up really short in terms of citing you know what they had in place to share that kind of information. this is two years after the 2016 election, and we are still talking about needing to develop ways to tackle the problem rather than actually doing that in a meaningful way. that is what really concerns me. emily: that was laura rosenberger of the alliance for securing democracy, codirector, and bloomberg tech selina wang. coming up first apple, than , amazon, but what company will be next to cross the trillion dollar valuation? we will discuss. if you like bloomberg news check us out on the radio, listen to us on the bloomberg app, bloomberg.com, and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: amazon started september with a bang. shares of the tech giant rose this week, pushing the company beyond a market value of $1 trillion, a milestone apple reached just last month. it is a big accomplishment, not just for the company but for ceo jeff bezos, currently the world 's wealthiest person. most notably has been the speed at which amazon hit this milestone. shares have more than tripled in the last three years. we talked about all of this and more with the chief investment officer ivan feinseth and global editor of bloomberg tech brad stone. >> it is funny because when i first visited jeff bezos, amazon's stock price had fallen into the single digits. employees were panicking and he wrote on the whiteboard in his office, we are not our stock price. it is something amazon employees might remember today, because as the chart that you showed demonstrates, this company has been propelled, yes, by strong fundamentals and increasing net income, but really by a wave of optimism.
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right? that everything amazon is involved in will turn out well. this market capitalization has tripled in just the past few years. everything has to go perfectly for amazon to justify this valuation and to keep growing. amazon is not a stock price, it is doing quite well and all of -- in all of its core businesses. it has transformed its business into a marketplace and service that helps other customers, other retailers sell online, but clearly there is a lot of optimism. emily: and let's talk about the reality here. how likely is it that everything will go perfectly, as brad said? ivan: i don't think they really expect it to go perfectly. it is a company that takes risks. they get into new businesses. they invest in growth, and they are continuing to expand outside of their core business by adding different services into their online retail supply chain management system, and also their web host, amazon web services. they are adding big data
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analytics, they are adding artificial intelligence capabilities, so they keep expanding what they do. i think the next big area that amazon goes into is going to be focusing on health care. emily: look brad, i am looking at the chart from 1999 and looking at the speed in which shares have risen over the last three years. is this rational? brad: well you know, the kind of market decides that. i mean clearly, yes, it is. these are all rational actors who are buying and holding amazon stock. this is a company that has executed extraordinarily well in the past 10 years. the acceleration and loyalty towards amazon, the amazon prime the increasing success of the , fulfillment by amazon, where amazon turns its warehouses over to third parties. all of the things it does so well, i mean, and online retail is still 5% of total retail in the u.s. i think some of the optimism is investors rationally looking and seeing that amazon is an extraordinary well run company
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in markets that have so much room for growth. emily: so petrochina recently passed that trillion dollar mark in 2007. oil prices than crashed. -- then crashed. do you see some big potential challenge or headwinds out there that could lead to some downside risk here? ivan: there could be with the recent run-up and the long-term run-up, there could be some profit taking. there are a lot of value -- there is a lot of value in a number of other leading tech stocks, specifically google. i think that google is a tremendous value here. it has not increased and does not trade at the valuation that amazon does, yet it has a lot of the key business drivers similar to amazon. also, microsoft is again close to the $1 trillion market, a little bit ahead of google. microsoft is evolving into a leading cloud play as well, so i think you could have some profit taking in amazon and people reallocating the money into
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other stocks that also have potential to go across the trillion dollar, or at least increase in value as well. emily: what about the threat of regulation? is that the biggest threat? brad: we talk about this trillion dollar mark, when really it is this objective number. amazon is not different than yesterday, then it is going to be perhaps tomorrow. it is important in one context, which is it puts an incredibly visible target on the backs of these companies. there is no better illustration than they dominate our landscape. i think, let, amazon is seeing it from the right with trump and his tweets about taxes and the post office, and jeff's ownership of the "washington post." and on the left from bernie sanders about wage growth and public assistance. in the amazon fulfillment centers. i think that there is a big conversation about whether amazon's commitment to low prices are having an impact on macroeconomic indicators like inflation. amazon is the biggest thing around. i do think that regulation is
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one of their biggest obstacles and challenges in the years ahead. emily: a venture capitalist thinks amazon will be the first company to hit the $3 trillion mark. i know it is hard to look that far ahead, but what do you think of that prediction? ivan: i think the stock still has further potential for a number of reasons. it is, along with apple, the dominant stocks within the s&p 500. so as money continues to go into the market, passive investors have to -- they are both close so4% each of the s&p 500, four cents of every dollar goes into the s&p index fund goes into amazon and apple. with the rise in the market, it is going to attract more money. i think it continues to trade up on that basis. second is they are a very fast-growing company that continues to evolve into new businesses, and develop new markets, and go after markets that are fast-growing that they can bring their operating
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efficiencies to, and i think that they are going to continue to do that, which will drive more growth. i think there is further upside in the stock. so $2 trillion, i mean, $3 trillion is probably a ways away, but at some point when the market rises, significantly amazon is going to continue to rise significantly as well. emily: 3t, brad. brad: it seems excessive but $1 , trillion in 2018 would have surprised me also. amazon plants a lot of seeds. alexa is one of them, it is a new computing platform and is leading this voice market. if they bring that into cars and to the enterprises of the workplace, then i see a lot of different opportunities for amazon. emily: that was "bloomberg tech's" brad stone and ivan feinseth. uber is introducing a number of features to make trips safer for drivers and passengers. the ride-hailing service plans to check up on you to make sure
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all is ok. there will be an emergency button for drivers and voice-activated commands. coming up, dating app bumble, where women make the first move, has been battling tinder in court, and fending off facebook's efforts to get into the online dating market. now it is looking beyond dating. we will hear from the ceo. defense lockheed martin searching for the latest artificial intelligence innovation with a challenge to drone racers. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: china is said to be exploring a megamerger between two of the nation's three wireless carriers. a merger between the second and ,hird digging -- biggest telcos china telecom and china unicom, would help gain an advantage over the united states. well in 2012, whitney wolfe herd was the only woman on tindr's team.
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when she left the company two years later, she did not leave the dating app scene, she decided to flip the switch on it. she launched bumble, the female first app where women make the first move. today the company is one of tinder's biggest competitors and having facilitated over a half a connections and now she is million investing in other women. last month the company launched the bumble fund, focused on investing in female founded and led businesses. whitney: we are generally flattered when a competitor wants to come into our unique space. what we really stay focused on is being true to ourselves. we were founded based on values and we are a mission driven company. there is authenticity to that. and so as long as we stay true to that end we just keep innovating beyond that, we are really not too concerned about competition. and candidly, facebook has been in the dating business since facebook started. the fact that they are actually attaching a label to that is hugely validating to the entire dating industry.
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and bumble has beyond -- evolved beyond dating. we are a full-fledged social network. emily: professional networking, friends is that a foreshadowing , of what's to come or will what you want bumble to become? whitney: the mission of bumble is to be the global empowerment brand. we want to bring people together at every level of their life. so that should not just bring you a date or a friend or a business partner. we want to connect you across the board. nobody in our space has ever been able to successfully do that. the fact that we have been able to foray into friend finding and networking successfully, and show that we have this lifetime value of when someone meets that significant other, we don't lose that user. they can stay on our platform and friend find or connect for a business. this can be a platform for introducing you to people you don't know yet. emily: when you launched, you really really changed up the norm. i am curious how the trends have changed. is that the norm now, and where
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do you see the online trends dating going? whitney: when we launched, we were the only platform to ever really put women out there and empower them to be confident and to own making the first move. traditional gender norms suggested men had to make the first move. you saw that spill over into the digital sphere. as we default, with this -- evolve with this momentum women , are becoming more empowered. bumble is in such a right position to continue building upon that and giving women more control through features, and evolving even beyond where we are today. i think you will see a lot of that in the coming years. emily: you have launched a new feature, snews, which allows people to take a break from online dating. why can't they just put their phone down? why can't they just log out of the app? whitney: when was the last time you put your phone down? emily: i am right there with you. whitney: this feature is a great way to build upon alitalia. we want to engineer accountability and eliminate rejection. just putting your phone down and ignoring conversations is not pleasant for either party on
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either end. and so we really want to empower our users to take a break when they need to. and the beauty of bumble, why we are not nervous about losing our our users, or losing is at the end of the day we all need human connection, even if we take, you know a break for a , moment. we need to connect, need to find love, business connections, and friendship. we will always be there, but we are encouraging users to focus on themselves. it just is core to who we are. you are looking at these big social media giants right now on capitol hill and throughout apologizing for their lack of accountability, their lack of you know catering to their users and giving users a break, or taking care of their users and the lack of accountability across the board. and bumble really we want to say we have been here standing up, raising our hands say we are here to bring you an accountable experience. we want to engineer kindness and good behavior in the product through every single thing we do. we have done that since day one. it is really fascinating to see
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these giants right now kind of apologizing. and here we are saying, we have been doing this from the very beginning. emily: let's talk about one of the giants in the online dating space, which is match the parent , company of tinder. they sued you for patent infringement, and you sued back. i know you cannot talk about ongoing lawsuits, but how would you describe your relationship status with match now? and are these lawsuits impacting you the company investor , sentiment? whitney: we are not raising user -- we are not raising money and our growth is not impacted. our users don't care about what type of a lawsuit the company might be in right now. by the way, we are staying so focused, we are so on track. and with growth, with scaling at such a level, comes challenges. we are willing to weather the storm with whatever comes our way. i have nothing but respect for their current ceo. i think she is a remarkable woman, and i think that you know we will keep doing our thing, keep innovating, building, adding value to our users, and we will see what happens.
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emily: they bought hinge. it was sort of stomping on your territory. does that change the landscape for you in terms of public or private? whitney: no. emily: what is the vision? whitney: you know the big vision , is to add as much value to the users and grow exponentially. we are going super international in the coming year and the aunt, -- and beyond, so the focus right now is going deeper into our existing market, which will just penetrate the markets we have already had exponential growth in, and then really proving that we can be this global, international, high scale, very scalable brand. and what they choose to acquire and what they choose to do is their own business. we wish them all and nothing but the best. emily: bumble ceo whitney wolfe herd. coming up, genetic testing company 23 and me has high hopes about a new partnership with big pharma. we will hear from the ceo about how they are hoping to cure a range of disease. and bloomberg tech is livestreaming on twitter. you can check us out at
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technology and be sure to follow our global breaking news network, tictoc, on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: welcome back to the "best of bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. defense contractor lockheed martin is looking for drone racing for the next advance in artificial intelligence. we caught up with the company's chief technology officer keoki jackson at the techcrunch disrupt event in san francisco this week. keoki: this is the autonomy of ai challenge and bringing that to the world of high speed play. we are partnering with video and drone racing league. to compete the best ai against human drone pilots. so for anybody that has seen drone racing on tv, we are raising the bar there and we are raising the excitement level.
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we are challenging people out here at the conference today and around the world to develop the technology that will allow autonomous drones to meet and beat the very best human pilots in a complicated race. emily: there will be no human intervention? keoki: once it goes, it has to work on its own. that is what we call edge computing, and using that edge ai capability to navigate and complete the course as fast as possible. these are speeds upwards of 80 miles per hour. emily: talk about what kinds of tracks you are going to use and the technical challenges about making this possible. keoki: yeah, so a couple of things. like i said, this is all about putting really complex and highpowered computing into a very compact, lightweight, low size weight and power device at the edge. and so these are small drones. movement is very high speed. they are going into -- you have seen on tv these drone racing
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courses. these are complicated 3d courses where they have to maneuver around obstacles, and they have to be able to complete the course in the fastest time possible. ultimately we are going to compete with these machines, and the ai folks out here develop against those very top human drone racing pilots. emily: what kind of tracks are you using? are these normal tracks? keoki: we are going to use tracks comparable to what the pilots are using in drone racing today. emily: lockheed martin likes to say it has been in silicon valley before silicon valley was silicon valley, but some say this is an odd fit for a defense company. how do you respond? keoki: the challenges we face, whether it is defense-related, or it is putting people back on the moon and out to mars, these are incredibly complex challenges. they are very very difficult , missions and very difficult environments. they require a whole range of technology. and so to meet those mission
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challenges, we need to be bringing in not just the very best talent from around the area here. but we are looking to partner with companies that have new ideas, whether it is autonomy, a.i., sensors, machine learning, quantum information sciences. these are the technologies that are going to bring the next advancements of these capabilities. emily: where do you think you find the technology that lockheed martin could help develop? keoki: absolutely. we are looking to collaborate with small companies through large companies. we are actually out here on the floor today at techcrunch. we have representatives from our lockheed martin ventures fund, a $200 million venture fund, who are looking for companies who have commercial and interesting technologies. they have a range of challenges from undersea to deep space. emily: so you know, we talk about self-driving cars, but in reality they are probably a long way off. are we farther along when it comes to flocks of drones that
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can be controlled by a piloted plane with or without human interaction? keoki: let me give you just a couple of examples. i will use one in the military. you will recall a few years ago there was a big problem with , improvised explosive devices harming troops in afghanistan. our engineer said, we have technology that can deal with that. we ended up deploying two autonomous cargo helicopters. they did over 1700 missions and autonomously delivered over 4 million pounds of food, supplies and cargo. those are the type of capabilities that exist today. on the commercial side we are developing what we call matrix technology. think autonomous fullscale helicopters, been doing that for the past five years, things like operating in zero-zero weather conditions, in oil platforms in the north sea. you can detect a forest fire. then send a helicopter out to rescue somebody and another helicopter out with a water
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bucket to put the fire out. emily: that was lockheed martin's cto keoki jackson. also at techcrunch was 23andme ceo and cofounder anne wojoliki. the genetic testing company is hoping to leverage its technology and a partnership with a pharma giant glaxosmithkline to develop new treatments and cures for some of the most devastating diseases. she told me why it is a dream close to her heart. anne: 23andme started with the data. so we said that drug discovery can fundamentally change if you have an incredible amount of data. and so the hypothesis we have is that if we have all of this information, and we discover targets that started from a human genetic component, that will have a higher success rate with drug development. so most drugs today when they are in development, they fail. the reason why it is so expensive to develop a drug is because 95% of everything fails. so if we can actually have a
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better beginning starting with human genetics, we believe we have a higher likelihood of succeeding. so the partnership with gs k is all about helping us scale the drug development process. so we can find tons and tons and tons of ideas. but each idea is like a child. imagine today, we have 13 children. that is a lot. and so we have called out the big guns here to help us really develop all of these programs and it is going to enable us to scale and really bring, have the potential of bringing drugs to market much faster to our customers and the whole world. emily: anything in particular? anne: we are working on a whole range. i'm most excited. i'm biased. we have this genetic that runs in my family on parkinson's disease. i am obviously most excited that they have a program going on that variant. i am excited about that because
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we are going to be able to combine some of the power of what 23andme has from all of our engaged customers to the drug development that gsk already had going for this parkinson's compound. emily: the fdaemily: also approved you doing a test for the breast cancer gene, which is the first direct consumer. how groundbreaking or impactful do you think it can really -- anne: i think that is huge. more and more there is a trend that if you want to have good healthcare at scale, it can't always be a one to one position. so you have to find ways to leverage the internet and leverage ways to scale information across the entire country. so this allows people to get really important, valuable, life-saving information in an affordable fashion without having to have a physician or a genetic counselor. emily: you volunteered 23andme services to help reunite parents and children separated at the u.s./mexico border. what's the status of that? anne: we never -- no one took us
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up on the offer. we had a number of people in government contact us and other groups whether or not we could be part of this. like i said, part of our business is connecting families. so there is a lot of issues that other people have around it. i think fundamentally for me 23andme is always about helping people improve their lives. so this was an opportunity for us to really help people. but it never came to fruition. there was too many controversies around having us involved. emily: there is a question about who owns the data? could law enforcement subpoena that data? anne: it was a shame it didn't happen. again a lot of the children have , been reunited. there is all kinds of things that we can do. you can always opt people out of research, and you can opt people out of being part of the dna relatives. it is anonymous. when people -- when you choose the choice, it is just you. there is no -- we do not cooperate with law enforcement. we don't give your data to anyone else. we felt like we had a good
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handle on privacy. but that is it. we will always offer to help when there is an opportunity for us to help. emily: there is this question of once you hand over that data, even if you have the proper consents in place, how do you prevent misuse? how do you prevent it from getting hacked? i mean how do you think about , these questions? anne: the reality i always say is people -- i love looking at your dna but your bank account is so much more interesting. there is so much technology that is dedicated to protecting bank account information. so we can learn. there is tons there is tons of , things that we can learn and security and data. privacy, security are top of mind for us because we have always said we have no business if we can't protect the data of our customers. so what we really believe, we have to do everything as a company to make sure we are protecting your data, but at the same time, we want to give you choice. if you want to share your data with me or your mother or a friend, let's give you that choice. if you decide you want to delete you data, you can delete your data.
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totally fine. so what we want to do is allow you to have choice about how your data is being used. and it is also part of the reason why we always give you back when there is a publication that has come out of our research, we want you to know about it. emily: that was 23andme's ceo and cofounder anne wojoliki. a company will formally dissolve. it is reported the silicon valley company will seek to pay unsecured creditors its remaining cash in the coming months. this means more bad blood for founder elizabeth holmes, who promised to revolutionize blood testing but was criminally charged in june with defrauding investors along with the company's former president. both have denied the charges. coming up, the technology matching cancer patients with treatments specifically tailored to them. the new platform that has the backing of a hong kong billionaire to take it global. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: it is a new global platform is aiming to revamp cancer care. driver was developed by a harvard-trained oncologist. it will help with specifically tailored treatments from anywhere in the world. the ceo and cofounder told our chief asia correspondent the startup launched in china with a number of cancer patients that is exploding. >> we did not pick the timing. we have been in china over three years. since horizons ventures -- we have endeavored to build our platform as a global one. reporter: in a nutshell, how does it work and what need is it filling? >> the problem that driver solves is the following. we have a market failure in terms of how a patient gains access to treatment. there has never been more treatment. 50 years ago there were very few treatments. the doctor did a pretty good job interfacing with a cancer
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patient and getting them treatment. reporter: there's a lot of information out there. how do you get the right treatment? >> there's a ton of information. today, the only way the patient can get access for this treatment is through a physician. and the data is is that physician is failing to give the patient a standard of care, so they should get it anywhere, and getting that patient access to the most advanced therapies in the form of clinical trials. what driver does is it says instead of the doctor being by , himself or herself responsible for clearing that market, what if we had a platform to help? we are not a new treatment, per se. driver is the middleman, we're an operating system between the patient and the doctor, but what we are hopefully curing is the treatment system itself. so as the cure for cancer treatment, hopefully we can speed up the development and the delivery of many more. reporter: but is that marketplace, the ecosystem that is there between the doctor and the patient and what is out there, is that marketplace broken? will: broken.
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it's completely broken. and i think the data comes from societies like the united states where post-obamacare, more than nine out of 10 cancer patients have their care paid for, so for society at least in the united states, whether it is the government paying for it, insurance paying for it, yourself paying for it, 95% of patients have been cared for. but too many patients don't get the standard of care. the overall statistic is hard to define. the numbers differ disease by disease. more than 70% of patients will not get guideline-based standard care. i would say that is a market failure, meaning that the treatment exists but the consumer is not getting it, and they have the ability to pay for it. the second market failure is how patients get access to clinical trials. the number is less than 3% than the number who wants treatment.
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is 80%.at would like to reporter: how does this bridge the gap that we have seen? we talk a lot about pilot shortages in the airline industry, shortages of this and this and this but there are , oncologist shortages. will: there is a massive shortage of oncologists. two really bad things are happening at the same time. one is there is not enough oncologists, and two is this shows more and more cancer patients. over the last decade, the number of cancer patients across the world rose by 30%. the majority of that increased driven by patients in africa and asia. you take the fact that there are not enough oncologists. in eight countries in africa there are zero oncologists. there is a 10th of the number of oncologists in china compared to the united states. stephen: i think it's 18 oncologists per one million people in china. will: and that is 10 times that in the u.s. we might have a 20% or 30% efficiency.
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so if we are not comfortable taking a part of the oncologist's job and migrating it to a technology platform, it means you are comfortable with a lot of people around the world not having an oncologist at all. the way we are going to solve that is by bringing oncologist jobs today and migrating it to an oncology platform. reporter: you decided you are a technology company. you are not a health care company. will: we are a technology company. we're not even a health tech company. i'm not sure why in health care and medicine, if you are a tech company, you need an adjective in front of you. health tech. digital. i like to say drivers know more of a health care company then it a tech say uber is company or airbnb is a hospitality company. stephen: how much did this impact how you decided to seek funding? you did not want to be beholden to big pharma or the insurance companies i assume. will: you're exactly right. exactly. many people, when we were getting started, said why didn't you start off with going to
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pharma? we didn't start off going to pharma because while we wanted and we are really excited, we have had lots of conversations about how we can work with them, we wanted driver to be a platform for the patient, and we wanted to build alignment with those two key stakeholders in that room when a patient comes out of treatment, and that's just two people, the patient and the doctor. and we wanted to build our platform with the patient being our primary customer, with alignment with our partner centers, and then now that we have done that, we are really excited to bring pharma in, but in highly patient-aligned ways that can augment their options. emily: driver ceo and cofounder with bloomberg's steven engle. coming up, bbg venture is tackling venture capital diversity problem and making the best on companies big and small from startups up to amazon, we we will hear from her next. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: president of abc entertainment, ceo of martha stewart's media company and kill group ceo as well has worn many hats, and she has been on hits like "grey's anatomy" and "desperate housewives." she has led brands like several -- today she wants to see more women at the top. she leads built by girls, a venture capital firm that looks for companies with at least one female founder. she also happens to be a personal investor in amazon, which just hit a $1 trillion valuation this week. >> they are a very unique company. you know, they are a tech company. they are a commerce company. they are a media company, and they really have diversified in a way i think most tech companies have not. additionally, they have created an ecosystem or flywheel that is
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brilliant, that moves people from one part of their ecosystem to another very seamlessly. emily: there has been a huge run-up in the shares the last -- in the last three years. the stock has exploded, but really quickly, does that concern you? that this could be the top, the plateau? susan: you know what, i don't think it is the top. i think when you look at -- it is a highly valued stock, let's be fair. but i do think that there is still a lot of room there when you think that ecommerce is still only about 15% of all commerce in the country, and they are the dominant player in that space. as it expands more, they will benefit from that. and i think they are also one of the few companies out there where you can say, they are not going to be profoundly impacted by the trade wars. emily: interesting. i want to ask about that.
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i do have a chart in my gtv library comparing apple to amazon. what about the threat of regulation? what about the fact amazon is in the president's crosshairs? susan: yeah, well i think it is, but i think the other thing to remember about amazon is that they support and they enable thousands and thousands of small businesses around the country. so you go after amazon, and you are going after really the mainstay of the president's support system. so i think he will think long and hard about how and when he goes after them. emily: you know what it is like to run an ecommerce company that is competing with amazon. today we saw j.crew, the j.crew mercantile line actually partner with amazon. you can get j.crew products on amazon, which is kind of surprising. do you think that is the only choice for a retailer today is to work with amazon, not
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against it, or is this going to be an isolation? susan: no i think there are lots , of different options for both retailers and for brands. so one of them is definitely to use that amazon platform because you can reach an enormous number of people, but there are plenty of brands that are doing very well by going directly to consumers, and those are among the companies we back as a vc firm. there is no question that there is a lot of things amazon does really well. one of them is not necessarily developing brand strength. and so for companies like parker and casper and glossy a, they develop a direct relationship with their consumer. it is an emotional connection, and it keeps the customer with
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them i think for longer and on a more consistent basis. emily: let's talk about bbg. you came on the show when you launched its fund. every company has a female founder. have you found that to be a competitive advantage? susan: yes 100%. , one of the reasons that we launched bbg ventures was we knew women were the dominant consumer. we are either responsible for or have the last word on 85% of all consumer purchases in every part of life. it is not just fashion and beauty. it is what health care plan you use. it is what insurer you choose. it is where you buy your house. all of those things, women are the dominant force in. so it just made sense to us to back entrepreneurs who understood that end-user and who were going to speak her language, know where to find her, and how to delight her. how to serve her needs. emily: now despite the fact
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that there are people out there like you making bets on women, i see women led companies still get 2% of venture funding. a lot of investors say, we are looking hard, but we can't find them. what are they doing wrong? susan: they aren't really looking. we have seen 4000 companies since we launched four years ago, all with a female founder. i think that organizations like all raise, which i imagine you covered all raise is doing , fantastic work in that space. nonprofit that is trying to get more women into venture and more women funded. susan: correct, exactly. i think that there are lots and lots of women out there starting businesses. the problem is that the vc world is still dominantly male. 91% of all, all vc partners are
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male, so that impacts the way that venture dollars get invested. and it may seem like it is an arcane part of the finance world, not really important, but it is. i mean truly, venture capital has a much bigger impact than you would think. if you look back over the last 44 years, 42% of all the companies that went public during that period of time were venture backed. so if we want to have a more diverse ecosystem of companies out there, if we believe that, that a more diverse group of entrepreneurs is going to come up with better solutions, then we must find ways for mortgage -- more venture capital to go to women. emily: bbg ventures susan lyne. that does it for this edition of the "best of bloomberg technology." we will bring you all the latest in technology throughout the
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week. you can tune in every day. 5:00 p.m. in new york. 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. and bloomberg tech his life on twitter. you can check us out at technology and be sure to follow our global breaking news tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪ this isn't just any moving day.
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>> welcome to daybreak australia. we are counting down to asia's major market open. >> the top stories we are covering and the next hour. china's trade surplus it's a new high amid threats of tariffs on all exports to the u.s. president trump says he is ready to go. sweden faces weeks of political gridlock after an election

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