♪ emily: i'm emily chang and this is "best of bloomberg: technology." the social network is becoming less social. mark zuckerberg says he thinks the future is a more private platform. plus, the promise of the green new deal.

congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez is making waves in washington and beyond. we speak to her chief of staff they plan to push for change. and we dig into the new york city tech ecosystem as amazon pulls out, are investors still bullish on the big apple? first, mark zuckerberg, who has spent his career pushing for open communication says the future is going to be more private. in a blog post, he declared the future product development will be focused on encrypted and ephemeral communication. he wrote quote i believe the future of communication will increasingly shift private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and the message and content won't stick around. this is a future i hope to bring about. this comes amidst heightened scrutiny of facebook's practices. michael wolff and sarah frier joined us to give their perspectives. >> there is a little bit about increasing that trust of users. but in my opinion, a lot of it is about the fundamental problems that are facing

facebook today, the public scrutiny and government certainty over privacy. also, the problem with content moderation. if it is encrypted about facebook can't even see what people are saying, therefore does not have to fix it. of course, the zuckerberg frames all of this is something that users want, he says users really want communication. we are doing this because of their demands, but it is worth noting how it affects the perception problems. emily: can we trust facebook to make it more private. >> she talks like going from the digital town hall to the living room. the problem is i'm not sure if people do trust facebook. he is saying it because he recognizes this challenge. but in reality, what they're doing is talking about protecting the privacy of people in a broader conversation.

not necessarily privacy versus facebook. facebook is ultimately in the advertising business. emily: you are still giving them all of your information. >> the battleground will be around messaging. you look at facebook controls between messenger whatsapp and instagram, they control the majority of messaging around the world. that is not mean that people concerned about privacy are not going to go to other platforms let's not forget, we checked, which dominates, does not have to stay in china. some of the things he is doing is purely defensive end users are going to be very skeptical. emily: talk about what he said. that services would be often -- opt in. how is this going to look or feel different for a user? >> think about the position they are in. they are being scrutinized by governments around the world who

say they do not give users choice. zuckerberg has always thought that if we give people choice, they probably would pick an on advertising supported network aired they would pick to post publicly. a lot of this won't be as big of an impact as we think. an an impact as we think. that said, he was very eye deliberate about explaining and that everyone has been using instagram stories and parts of the service that only last for 24 hours. birthday to you love me here he and he he wants to bring that kind of disappeared nature and i and i kind of disappeared nature tomorrow facebook content. and it because less of a permanent record of your life and will more of a rotating

version of you. of water things appear maybe in very wide three months or three and will i years. mostly emily: you have done a light ton of research on digital and ton of research on digital advertising. petty think changes like this, no matter how they are put into practice, will affect facebook's business quirks mark --? >> a lot of it enables advertisers to target a very finely. to find specific groups of people and their interests. their they will private a lot of it is unlikely to affect in facebook's advertising one in business, in fact, it and could enhance them. you are you other the broader and the broader challenge is that facebook is going to emerge a and in design and from being a that it from being a broadcast platform, which is where a lot of the problems were. a lot of the information took place in that broadcast. they're saying it will be more

one is private. a a lot of users are going to you a lot of users are going to wonder to see what happens. ironically, facebook began as a private platform, something for university students to talk to each other. family and each other. in order to become a commercial you will enterprise they had will and a lot of the open up and you and the door. you are we can expect it would in be engineered and only all of it. there be engineered and only enhanced facebook's advertising is any business. emily: facebook won a freeze on need blankfein regulator longacre trainemily: facebook won a freeze on some of their disclosures and in washington dc in a problem you disclosures and in washington dc privacy lawsuit are the attorney general has been suing the company to more than i been suing the a protect working in you are in consumer data. are you what does this mean? and he and >> facebook has had a lot of big document leaks from governments or news reports. the governments or news reports. this is a small victory and a bigger picture.

the company is going to face regulators and lawmakers. life this is the year where it in a is going to happen. they need to be proactive about coming up with solutions before the government comes up with solutions for them. an i think that is how that ties already into the new year today in a were facebook is coming out are were facebook is coming out and saying we will give them in the more choice, we have heard them and are listening, but mike -- like michael said, it will be in service to the advertising business. there a i emily: what is your outlook on instagram, whatsapp, and whether users will keep though there is a coming back? are they so large users don't big bellare they so large users don't have a choice? or will these privacy issues ultimately be the downfall? and >> already, and greater and great read on instagram far surpasses that on facebook. -- already, user interest on great-- already, user interest on instagram far surpasses that and instagram far surpasses that of facebook. were because they are younger, there are less concerned about

and privacy and the content shared does not have the same level of depth. they will be less vulnerable. facebook itself, we should expected that lots of people will continue to be skeptic. and then you look at whatsapp i and messenger, and there is really no barrier to entry. an so we can come up with a new and in service, your content is not on it, it immediately scrapes your contacts. you can get up and running on another service. that is where facebook may be the most vulnerable. a we may see a new wave of social splinter as a result. emily: that was activate ceo michael wolff and lou berg's sarah frier. tesla blind-side, elon musk caught many by surprise when he and caught many by surprise when he announced the carmaker would shutter most of its stores and move sales online. we tell you what's happening behind the scene. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio, our app, and in the u.s. on sirius xm.

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emily: the fallout after elon musk abruptly decided to close most of the carmaker stores and shift to online only sales. bloomberg has learned that many tesla sales found out they found out about the decision when they read a public blog post. we discussed the reporting with us tuesday. >> we were blindsided and that was made clear by the news that this was posted publicly. they found out about it, and

apparently they found out with the media found out. there were people who sending out email say thank you for writing this, capturing how we felt. it is just stunning. emily: you reported there is a story in honolulu closing of a store in palm springs. >> our understanding was that musk would be invalidating the stores. but it is clear that the low performing stores or stores without traffic are closed. emily: let's talk about the traffic from investors? they have recovered a little bit from their lows today. we spoke to what investor who sold all of his shares, this investor also tweeted that it pains me to say this, but we have sold our position in tesla for our advisory client.

i believe the decision to close stores is a bad one and points to a weakness in sales. most of the investors -- is that what most investors are telling you? >> it is important to note that alex lives in pasadena, owns a tesla, and has a very pro-tesla for a while. this decision to close the stores was a complete 180 from what tesla was trying to do if you look at their regulatory filings. emily: last quarter, they opened multiple stores, including more than they had in any quarter in a year-and-a-half. they also touted their retail strategies. it does not seem like something tesla was considering for a while. it certainly does seem like it was an abrupt decision.

>> that is what caught investors off guard. there is an argument to be made that americans are shifting most of their purchases to online. there are a lot of dealerships and startups trying to help dealers with the online sales process. so it is not unreasonable that tesla would want to experiment. it is to announce they are completely shuttering most of the stores. emily: i do want to talk about tesla's employment worldwide. looking at this chart on the bloomberg, headcount has been increasing significantly. they are reporting that there are now dozens of jobs going to go away at the fremont factory tell us the very latest in terms of how the jobs are actually going away. >> sure. in january, tesla did a 7%

reduction in force were -- worldwide. when they announced the pivot, musk announce they would be laying off a lot of the marketing people, but hopefully shifting some positions either to stores remaining open or service jobs. emily: bloomberg's been a whole -- dana hull. we talked to another guest who remains bullish and thinks must is misunderstood. >> i think the mistake people are making is that elon is writing down a technology cost curve. prices should fall, they're going to fall and continue to fall because battery pack system prices are coming down. emily: even he says making a car at this price is excruciatingly difficult. >> we talked about that, we had a podcast with him. emily: you and your colleagues set out with musk in person.

>> yeah, he walks in, and first thing he says is traditional automakers, they are just unbelievable in terms of the ways they cut costs. what i said to him is, that's fine, but they have not been writing down a technology cost curve for a century. you are writing down this battery pack system cost curve. your prices will fall and continue to fall as there's rise. what he said on his last earnings call was that the demand is there. people can't afford the high end prices, so he is bringing prices down. emily: can tesla afforded to deliver at that price? >> i think so. you see the restructuring she is doing, i think it is very sensitive. i think she is making these moves to scale more quickly than he otherwise would. these price points are very attractive. emily: so you don't have any concerns about him closing stores, shifting everything

online so abruptly? and laying off people? >> it was abrupt. we got the sense something was up because he is still competing against other auto manufacturers. at some point, his pricing is going to drop below there's, well below there's -- below theirs, well below theirs. battery packs are down, he's got the deep learning chip which will help them. you know the story we are telling, but we are not concerned. emily: what was your impression meeting him in person? >> i think people misunderstand him completely. i just reflect upon the clips about joe rogan's interview. there is one click. -- click -- clip. emily: the interview where he smoked pot? >> that is all people saw. shame upon the news media for not delving into the content. emily: to be fair, you don't often see a.c.l. smoking pot in

an interview. >> that was provocative, fine. but there was a two and a half hour interview, real content. and his brilliance was shining through. emily: what is his outlook on demand for the model three? >> demand is that, as prices come down, it will be explosive. on our podcast, and in our models, we believe that ev sales as prices continue to come down will scale from 1.3 million globally to 26 million in five years. i asked elon what he thought about that? he said he might be off by a year or so, but yes, we're talking about x potential growth. exponential growth happens because prices come down.

this is a technology cost curve. those who follow traditional auto manufacturers have not seen this for a while. they assume that cutting prices means demand his mother. emily: what is your outlook for the rest of the faang stocks? we have seen hundreds of billions wiped off the market caps of these companies. where do you see the positives and negatives? >> you are right, they are all different stories. i don't know why we love them into this acronym. we don't own facebook, for the most part, because we think they have got a loss to work through in terms of privacy. any time the regulators start going after an industry or a company, we kind of pull away for a while. it is true that they are one of the few places for online advertising. as is google.

but now, we see amazon advertising pretty aggressively. it's advertising skills are screaming -- sales are screaming. i think they are -- the whole online market is growing quickly at the expense of television. we are not worried about that, whenever i see regulators going after a company, and i see what they're doing with the blockchain, they are want to get more information on people but allow them the privacy. they are even trying to invest in this themselves. emily: you think there will be a crypto revolution? what does that mean about especially as crypto has not had a great run? >> they had a great run. bitcoin went from less than $20,000, -- less than $2000, and

it's now back at three or $4000. what happened was bitcoin's share of the entire crypto asset network value or ecosystem in. -- increased. that told us that bitcoin is the reserve currency for the ecosystem. that is a huge role. last year, $1.3 trillion worth of transactions were on the bitcoin network. why? venezuela, and b2b, business-to-business. the average transaction sizes about $14,000. that is pretty amazing and this technology is only 10 years old. we do think there is a crypto asset blockchain revolution underway. emily: that was ark invest ceo

cathie wood. how this real estate company is creating its own pipeline of female talent. later, progressive politics. in the short time alexandria ocasio-cortez has taken center stage, we speak to the chief of staff about her agenda. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: when bridget joined redfin in 2011, she was just one of a handful of female engineers. she was promoted to the chief technology officer, and within a few years, women accounted as one in three of the engineers. she trained women with nontraditional backgrounds and even recruited women from their own marketing for engineering roles, teaching them all how to code. today, the company is making more money as a result. i highlighted the story in the new afterward of my book broke tokyo, breaking up -- "brotopia."

the author joined us from seattle to discuss. >> something we did is look for women working in roles adjacent to software development. for example, someone in a technical marketing role and we use the trading to teach them how to build software at redfin. what we found is that it's much easier to teach someone how to code that is to teach them how to be a decent human being, someone who can work collaboratively. these women are doing really well and has been a huge competitive advantage for redfin. we are able to recruit engineers from pipelines. emily: instead of complaining about the pipeline, you created your own pipeline. how did you know it was really working and that these women could go on to be successful? >> one thing is that we measure everything.

we are a very data-driven company and we look at everything from our numbers, our numbers on gender diversity every time we go through a promotion cycle. we publish data on our pay gap publicly. by looking at these numbers, we can really see progress, really see people getting stuck or if we need to make adjustments. emily: in addition, you found that this paid off from a business perspective and he were working on your home foreign products. it had taken years to get it right, it still was not quite right. somehow, when you added women to the team and build a more diverse team. you end up making extra $30 million. >> we have been working on this process for years. we built all the software and kept tweaking it, but just kept finding that our agents were not adopting software. and then we assigned a new team of a team with more gender diversity. from day one, they took a completely different approach. they said we are not going to build anywhere software. we're going to step back and

listen to the real estate agents. or going to spend time with them, see how they are using the software. this give them a whole new set of ideas they never would have gotten have been taken that empathetic approach. we have seen is that when you build a team of people from different backgrounds, they have to listen to each other, they have to stretch mark, and that means we build better products. emily: what can other companies learn from this? >> yeah, so, it really takes a lot of small changes to make your company more diverse and more inclusive. we have almost thought of ourselves as these diversity mechanics of crawling over everything we do, develop careers. you and how we run meetings. you have to settle in and be prepared to make a lot of small changes along the way.

emily: i want to talk to about other tech initiatives. at redfin, you have got your instant offer service, these algorithms that everybody wants to know how they work. how exactly do you decide how much a home is worth? what data are using? -- are you using? >> we have an incredible data set. we have information about how people are visiting the website, but because we are a real estate brokerage, we also have agents walking through homes making offers. they know which homes are being poured and which aren't, so it gives us this rich data set to see how people are reacting. that means we have been able to build the most accurate home value estimates in the industry. emily: coming up, alexandria ocasio-cortez is not completely ruling out amazon coming back to new york. we hear from her top aide and chief of staff. bloomberg technology is live streaming on twitter. check us out and follow us on

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emily: welcome back to the best of bloomberg technology, i am emily chang. the green new deal is a sweeping proposal that outlines solutions to combat climate change, reduce income inequality, provide health care to all americans, and much more. there are two resolutions for the legislation sponsored by senator ed markey of massachusetts and newly elected congresswoman alexandria ocasio cortez of new york. the representative has captured the attention of the nation. since she defeated a 10-term incumbent by double digits, becoming the youngest woman to ever serve in congress. we spoke with her chief of staff from new york.

>> thus she is presenting a really new idea. you see her week after week, month after month, putting new ideas on the tube to change the course of the conversation. we saw that from the green new deal, to the marginal tax rate, to even things like health care and other policies. people are engaged. it turns out people in the country want to talk about policy. emily: everybody talks about her social media. that she has taken over twitter. a lot of lawmakers are on twitter permit what makes her so special? >> she engages. emily: she is also a unafraid?

guest: that when you are pushing bold ideas, you have to defend it on its merits, and argue it. she uses twitter as a platform for communication, two-way communication, not just one way communication. emily: there are a lot of folks who say the new deal is too expensive? guest: i find that funny argument. this is a gigantic investment. we talk about it as a mass scale economic globalization on the skill of world war ii. there are all these plans about decarbonizing the economy. your examples in our history. for example, the state highway system. for every dollar we spend on the state highway system, we earned $6. project drawdown is another example. if you decarbonize the economy, and you could actually make $3 trillion. emily: let's talk about amazon. folks say that this would have created a lot of jobs for a lot of people in queens and now it is not happening. isn't that a loss? guest: she was vocal about the

process by which it happened. the dell deal was sprung on the community without any input. whenever these companies come into a community without any input, rents go up, people are evicted, so there is a social cost. emily: but isn't there going to be a cost know that they are not coming? guest: amazon chose to walk away from the negotiating table once the community started demanding to be heard. they stepped away. if we can do it through a committee process, where the committee is heard, i think that would have been a better way to do that. emily: would you welcome amazon back? governor cuomo is trying to back that up? guest: we welcome having a community process, yes.

i don't know where talks are at this stage. emily: let us talk about her tax proposal. bill gates has downplayed what he called extreme proposals, not singling her out specifically, but you didn't tell the verge of this -- you have politicians who are so extreme that they know that it is even beyond. you do start to create tax dodging an incentive to have income sharp and other countries. we can be more progressive without threatening income generation. what you have left to decide is how to spread it. guest: there are two pieces to it. if you look back at our history, we've had -- our top marginal tax rate has been as high as 90%. the greatest periods of our growth have been when our tax rate was at 70% or 80%.

you have economist like paul krugman saying that 70% is just about right. she didn't pull that number out of thin air. this is what economists have been saying we can use to fight rampant inequality. secondly, if you do a big development program like the green new deal and the economy grows, if all that new income is being captured by a few people at the top, sort of what we saw from the recovery from the recession, about 90% of new wealth was captured with the top 10%. when you do that, people get really wealthy and the majority of people don't the in economic benefit. if you do generate wealth, you are spreading it equitably.

emily: this proposal would only cover a fraction of the initiatives she has proposed. how would she plan to cover the rest? saikat: there are all caps of ways to pay for wealth generating investments -- all types of ways to pay for that. that is what the new deal is talking about. tax revenue could be one way, tax incentives could be another way. sort of the same way we have paid for world war ii, the green new deal, the republican tax cuts, the recovery after the recession. there are other examples in other countries. for example, the european central bank invests using their bank and makes money back. nobody asks, how are you going to get the money to pay for it? emily: president trump has said that the left has embraced socialism, total government emanation? saikat: when republicans have no attack to make, they start calling anything socialist. the called medicare socialist. i called social security socialist. those things worked out well, so maybe they should keep telling everything socialist. i think the thing that is frustrating about that is that if you look at the system of economics we are talking about green new deal accomplished,, they're way to get something like the it's so incredibly american. it's the moonshot, it's what alexander hamilton talked about. one of our founding fathers. it is really more like a return to the american system than it

is whatever trump thinks it is. emily: is a congresswoman plan to endorse anyone in the 2020 race? guest: she plans to listen to everyone. emily: that you have a favorite? saikat: we have not even had the first debate yet. we are seeing a debate of ideas in the democratic primary. that is so interesting. you often get into these personality conflicts, a debate of who is what, but right now all these new ideas are coming out, from elizabeth warren's policy, and we just love it. emily: does she see room for centerleft folks in the democratic party? saikat: it depends on what centerleft means. if by centerleft we talking about people who are really out of touch with where the people, talking about policies like medicare for all, 70% of people

are for medicare for all and in the democratic party, it is like 90%. so the centerleft should be strongly for medicare for all. but if you have a fringe group of conservative democrats but don't represent where the people are, who aren't presenting new ideas, folks like howard schultz, she is not a fan of howard schultz because we aren't hearing a single new idea from him. if he actually had an actual solution to problems we face, that would be good. if you have a real solution, we are willing to debate on that. but if you don't bring any ideas to the table, then, sorry. emily: that was the chief of staff for representative ocasio-cortez. coming up, the u.s. government says huawei is a national security threat. the ceo of cisco doesn't seem to agree. who's got it right? we will discuss, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: may 8. that is on exhibition hearings for the huawei chief financial officer will begin.

the u.s. alleges she perpetrated bank fraud. huawei says the u.s. is out of line by trying to ban its 5g networking gear. huawei also seeks to sue the u.s. government for impinging on its civil rights. we talked about this from huawei headquarters in shenzhen. >> this is a multi-pronged counterattack by huawei after pushback from the u.s. it is a pushback on the legal front, and we have outlined some of those cases there, but also on public relations front. but is rather have invented journalists down to their campus in shenzhen. they have opened up some of their labs, taking us on tours, trying to show themselves as a company that operates heavily and separate from the chinese government.

on the legal side, as you say, we have heard that they are looking to sue the u.s. government over what is effectively a ban on carriers using their equipment. we have had that case in canada, where meng wenzhou has sued the canadian government over which it claims are violations of her rights. so it is a push on the public relations side as well by huawei who are trying to commit themselves to argue against the u.s. campaign. the u.s. is trying to push its allies to push out and ban equipment from huawei, saying that they'd pose a significant security risk. emily: how is this deal being covered in chinese media? president trump: it is interesting. they are clearly watching this very closely indeed, watching

the machinations of meng wanzhou in canada. there has been all along support for huawei's chief financial officer. there are also two canadians who were jailed in beijing, who have had very little consular access. the concerns about those canadian individuals were articulated outside the courtroom in canada a few hours ago. in terms of what is being written in the press here, they have to be careful about how they portray this, but certainly, there is sympathy for meng wenzhou. in support for the company. >> how about u.s. allies? the u.s. government has been trying to argue that huawei is a security risk. how is this being pursued by u.s. allies were being lobbied by u.s. officials?

tom: it is a real conundrum particularly for countries like germany and the czech republic and like poland, who are wrestling with these issues. they want to have access to what is cheap and high-performing gear from huawei, but they have to maintain the security alliances with the u.s. we heard from the likes of mike pompeo and vice president mike pence saying that if you were to incorporate huawei technology, it could affect communications or to the u.s. and those countries. so the debate is well underway in europe. companies like the u.s. have their own system set up with gc hq overseeing some of huawei's code and hardware. the u.s. is determined to pressure its allies to block away as much as possible. emily: coming up, new york's tech scene is growing up, homegrown startups are starting to find multibillion-dollar

exits. we will talk to two new york-based venture capitalists about the current climate. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: 2018 was a historic year for venture capital. according to the national venture capital association, vc firms spent roughly 138 million dollars. but while that trend continued this year? our guest joins us from to discuss from new york on wednesday. >> at the start of last year was saw the yield curve inversion and concern about slow down. into the first quarter of this year, we haven't seen the slowdown. the deals are just as competitive as last year, funding runs are as big if not

bigger -- funding rounds are as big if not bigger. deals are being preempted. emily: what do you mean by preempted? guest: meaning that if deals go to market, there are more funds being raised. they are bigger and bigger. while softbank is invested -- has invested big dollars in

2018, i think the bulk of the funds increases in the last year or so will make up for that. emily: are you concerned about the political uncertainty tied to the economic uncertainty given the election cycle and what is going on with china? guest: in the private markets, particularly venture capital, we keep an eye on that, but we don't necessarily see those transfer 6-18 months until they hit the market. emily: we have lyft on track to go out potentially in a couple of weeks, uber, pinterest, what is your outlook on this year? beth: it is shaping up to be a big year for 2019 for ipos. what makes me excited as an early-stage investor is we generally see after a wave of ipo's a lot of innovation. people who are building and scaling those businesses, coming out and thinking of new businesses and starting those businesses. i think we will continue to see a bunch of innovation in 6-12 months out. emily: you were the coo of fab, you worked at etsy early on, and you are an investor in pinterest. what do you expect to happen in

the e-commerce landscape over the next year? it seems like we're seeing a rise of these niche players who can compete against amazon, but you wonder for how long. beth: we are looking for companies who are capturing the hearts and minds of the consumer. something that has differentiated -- amazon is not doing right now. we are doing a trend to investors having a closer eye on profitability and sustainability. emily: are they, though? lyft is losing as much money as it is making. [laughter] beth: but that is not e-commerce, right? especially in the e-commerce space, it feels like there is pieces of those companies, there's a little bit more. emily: 8000 venture capitalist

deals last year, 2% of venture capital funding went to women-owned companies. a fraction. do think that will change in 2019, or do think it will take longer? beth: i hope so, but i think it will take longer. emily: what are you doing in your firm to make sure you are seeing women entrepreneurs and looking for these people who have been overlooked? beth: we are setting more time sourcing and also having someone like me, which looks like these female entrepreneurs helps that pipeline as well. in the last year, we have increased the number of female founders we have backed. emily: what are the hot trends in training team, where will he be putting your money? beth: i said a lot of time -- i spend a lot of time in the consumer space, but also the back end of the business -- supply-chain, customer service, how do we get the companies up and running and continuing at scale, and also making them more efficient?

emily: lyft is targeting a public valuation of $20 billion to $25 billion for its ipo based on its fast-paced growth and despite mounting losses, making it one of the biggest tech public offerings on track this year. my guess joined me from new york to talk about lyft and more. >> i think the existing shareholders, it gives them a path to liquidity, particularly the ones who came in earlier. drivers are being offered the ability to buy stock, and i think the business model will have to change in favor of the drivers, give them more money. the company has lost $2.3 billion in the past three years.

emily: that is a lot, they are losing a most half what they bring in. eric: that's right. so no question it is a good company, but it is hard to understand from vs1 what the profitability model looks like. and what the economics look like for this company to be profitable. we are also talking about the over ipo, which i think loses even more money. emily: do you think uber's model looks worse? guest: i would say model, except it is bigger. emily: but they have different businesses, they have ubereats, self driving cars. guest: these are all investments. lyft is getting into scooters. all of that requires a lot of capital and investments. it is not clear why the core business can't make money.

emily: so where are you investing right now? guest: primarily in new york-based companies. we reflect what new york is good at. we have a large portfolio in direct-to-consumer e-commerce companies. we also do a lot of health, new york is a big center for health care. there are a lot of great ideas to simplify health care, give better care to people more directly bypassing different levels and intermediaries. we invest in ai, what new york is good at. emily: he also took over binary capitals portfolio, where justin caldbeck was ousted over sexual harassment allegations, the first investor to be exposed in silicon valley's metoo. why did you decide to take over their portfolio?

guest: well, we had experience in doing that and they asked us. we had managed to of the softbank early-stage funds, too. we learned that it is complementary to our business and we can attach it to our back end, to all of our compliance and audit, and we can supply a lot of support to these portfolio companies. emily: did you feel like there were any ethical issues that you were rescuing these companies that didn't have anything to do with this? guest: the ethical issues were part of the lp-gp relationship to read that didn't transfer into a new relationship. we look to the portfolio and we thought it was complementary. we had at least one company in common, it was a successful company growing very fast. so the question was, can we add value and get these entrepreneurs back on track. emily: dia what do they make?

eric: it is a leader in the plus size clothing category. new york city, like all big urban areas, has to become a tech city. check is going to replace our traditional sense of wealth, such as wall street or -- our traditional centers of wealth such as wall street. by losing out on the capability of ringing 25,000 people plus all of these ages for jobs that it brings, all in one go over the year, it is a big loss. emily: new york has a thriving tech ecosystem that still does not have a $10 billion tax company. when does that happen? eric: i don't know if it will happen, but we do have at least ten $1 billion companies. emily: i will have to count them to make sure you're right. eric: and many more. there are a bunch of really successful wealth-funded companies coming up in new york and maybe out of those -- >> what about wework? it is a controversial company, but -- >> i think it wework is a great business. it might be the very first.

i don't know if they will go public this year, maybe next year, but they have the potential of being one of those. emily: eric hippeau there. that does it for this edition of the "best of bloomberg technology." all episodes of "bloomberg technology," are live streaming on twitter. check us out weekdays 5 p.m. in new york and 2 p.m. in san francisco. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio.

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rosalind: coming up on "bloomberg best," the stories that shaped the week in business around the world. the u.s. faces a trade deficit. >> it has risen more than $100 billion. >> projections. >> that is the weakest target china has set itself for growth. >> investors await a deal that will free both economies from the pressures of a trade war. >> it is not making us richer. >> huawei tries to mend fences. >> huawei will say we are not a company -- >> cs