emily: i'm emily chang and this is "the best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, pinterest and zoom make their public debuts. will investors hit the brakes after lyft's slow start, or move full speed ahead. we will speak to the ceo's of both companies. plus, a global legal battle that has dragged on for years is over. and apple and qualcomm have settled their differences, at least for the next six years. and netflix gives an underwhelming forecast in its earnings results. but ceo reed hastings says he is

confident new services from disney and apple will not slow their momentum. but first to our lead, pinterest is joining a slew of unicorns heading to the public market this year. unlike some of the other big names making their trading debut, pinterest is burning less cash. the social media discovery company has taken a slow and steady approach to growth compared to its peers. i spoke with ben silbermann, ceo of pinterest, after the company listed its shares on the new york stock exchange. ben: we really talked with investors about how regular people use the product every day. people use it to get inspiration for a whole range of things. everything from the food they cook, to the clothes they wear, to their homes. and it is really more about your personal inspirations. it's less about your friends. it's not really about following celebrities in the news. we wanted to make sure that everyone understood that, because that's our how users see the product every day.

emily: so, you launched pinterest nine years ago. and many companies have gone public much more quickly with much deeper losses. why did you feel that now was the right time? ben: we are really proud of the progress we made over the last few years to build out the business. we felt like we were at a point where the business had reached a level of predictability, that it could be in the public markets. we were also excited at having the opportunity to have access to public market capital. and the reason is that a lot of great companies have acquired other companies in the future. we thought this would enable us to do it. finally, we just had a lot of patient investors and employees, so it is a nice moment to provide some liquidity for both of those parties. emily: patience is a virtue. some investors might look at pinterest and say you're just another digital marketing company. so what do you think makes your advertising model unique to other platforms? ben: i think the thing that it is special is that the reason people are on pinterest is to get inspiration and do things with their life. it has really lined up with what advertisers want, which is to inspire your customers and get them to buy products and

services they really love. what that means is that the ads on pinterest can actually be really additive as long as we do a good job of making sure they are highly relevant. and i think that is just really different from a lot of media companies, where ads are candidly, a little bit of attacks. that difference in alignment is the biggest difference between us and some other media properties. emily: now, one of the primary criticisms is that the majority of user growth right now is coming internationally, where average revenue per user is lower than in the united states. how much room to run is there in the u.s. in terms of growing users, or is it more of a story about increasing engagement? ben: i still think there is a real opportunity to grow over time and increase engagement. a lot of people might use pinterest for one thing or two things, but they do not know the wide range of different ways people all over the world use the product. i also have to say that we're super proud we're growing globally. it was just a few years ago, the story would have been a u.s. based service, so it is fulfilling to know the product works all over the world. emily: what is the plan to grow

international sales? ben: we are actually just in the very first chapter of that story. so, we are just hiring our first local sales teams in places like canada, western europe, germany and france. so, we're just at the beginning of the journey, but it will be a real opportunity to show the same great results we've seen in the united states to advertisers all over the world. emily: do you see profits coming soon, and if so, when? or is your focus going to be more on investing to grow the top line? ben: we are going to continue to invest for the long term. we've shown really good margin improvement over the last two years. my eye is always on what will make pinterest great three years, five years, 10 years from now. that's how we'll continue to run the business. and we are really excited to see it keep growing. emily: pinterest is great at collecting dreams, but less so on executing them. what do you plan to do to better connect those two things? ben: we are always trying to

make sure people bridge that gap between seeing something inspiring and doing it. one area we are investing in is making sure we match inspirational images with more and more products at a price point that matters to people and from retailers they trust. it enables people to upload all of their catalogs. we are investing a lot into computer vision technology to match products with images. and we are not just doing it with shopping, but all of the different use cases. if you have a recipe, now you can see ingredients, write reviews. if you have a diy project, you can see others' experiences whether it was easy or harder than they expected. emily: you have played around with buyable pins, those didn't really take off. do you think that social commerce will be a thing someday? ben: i don't know about social commerce overall, but i definitely know that our users often want to buy the things they find on pinterest. a lot of people say they discovered a product or service while browsing pinterest. we just want to make it easier

for them to go from that inspiration all the way to reality, which in this case, would be a purchase. emily: that was ben silbermann, ceo of pinterest. and pinterest wasn't the only tech company to go public this week. zoom, a san jose-based provider of videoconferencing services, also went public on the nasdaq and i spoke with ceo eric yuan shortly after trading started. eric: we have finalized the price, today, it is out of our control. we just need to go back to work. [laughter] emily: well, how do you live up to it now? eric: first of all, i would say the market opportunity is huge. over $40 billion in market opportunity. the customer, they do trust us and our employees so far are also very excited, very happy. as long as we stay humble and continue working as hard as we can to keep happiness to our

customers, i think we'll be ok in the long run. emily: now, many people have talked about how zoom is a rare unicorn in that you are profitable. should we expect you to grow profits this year, or focus on investing to improve top-line growth? eric: i think we should focus on both. we want to grow for sure, that is our top priority. but at the same time, we also want to have a much more disciplined approach. we have to have the right balance and i think we should focus on growth at the same time also focus on cash flow positive. emily: you were last on our show to talk about your immigration struggles. the u.s. government had denied your visa eight times before they finally approved it. now you are taking a company public on a major u.s. exchange. what does that mean to you? eric: first of all, i appreciate the visa office finally giving

me approval to come here to silicon valley. i think one thing i learned is never give up, keep trying and keep working hard. never give up, have a dream, and some day your dream will come true. today is our dream is coming true, to be a public company. i think many years of hard work has very well paid off. emily: now, cisco has begun to offer some of the features that you offer. cisco of course is your former employer. how do you see competition from cisco evolving? eric: cisco is a great company. i was there for 4.5 years, i learned a lot, and i really appreciate all the support when i was there. and we do not look at competitors. we always spend time on talking to our customers. we try to be the first vendor to really understand the customer'' problems and work very hard to

come up with a much better solution to suit our customer well. this market opportunity is huge. as long as we care about our customers, we will be ok. we do not specifically focus on competitors. emily: and what about google? why should customers use your products rather than google if they're already, let's say, using google's cloud products? eric: i am using google as well, gmail, google calendar, youtube. and google is great. the search, youtube, search, mobile phone, but when it comes to the cloud, videoconferencing, i think we just spend more time on that. we really care about our customer more than any other vendors. that is why customers like our solutions. the feedback is zoom just works, anywhere, any device. i think we spend more time and allocate more resources on that than any of our competitors. emily: now, do you see taking more market share away from

-- from competitors, or do you actually see meaningful growth in the videoconferencing space? eric: that is a good question. so recently, we announced a zoom marketplace and have built a platform. for now, we can allow our third-party developers to build all kinds of certified applications. because videoconferencing is a brand-new market. it opens up so many new use cases we never thought about. i think it's a huge opportunity, like telemedicine application, online learning application. a huge opportunity, i think. emily: now, what are the opportunities you see beyond videoconferencing? eric: i think video is a new voice. you look at the traditional, you know, the pbx system. i think in the next several years, they are all going to migrate to the cloud-based solution. i think there is a lot of opportunity. because voice is part of the video. i think there's another growth

opportunity. emily: now, zoom is more exposed to the chinese market than some other u.s. tech companies. what have you learned from navigating the chinese market, and how much more growth do you think you'll see there? eric: i think the china market for now, i do not think there are so many very successful software and service companies. i think in the future, we might focus on that market but for now, we are already busy focusing on north american market, japan, australia and europe, right? focusing on the business productivity. and in the future, probably focusing on marketing in india and china. for now, that is not our top priority. emily: that was zoom's ceo eric yuan. well, soon after a devastating fire engulfed notre dame cathedral in paris on monday, news outlets began streaming live broadcasts on youtube. that led to several clips including a box of text.

the company introduced the tech text box feature last year to combat the spread of conspiracy theories including those that question the 9/11 attacks. but the software mistakenly labeled it as footage from 2001, triggering the panel below the video. in a statement, a youtube spokesperson said these panels are triggered algorithmically and our systems sometimes make the wrong call. we are disabling these panels for livestreams related to the fire. coming up, after years of battling it out, qualcomm signs a deal for royalties and chips with apple to end a global legal dispute. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio and on bloomberg.com and in the u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: well, elon musk has already been warned about his twitter use, but that has not stopped him so far.

musk tweeted another tesla production forecast like the one that got him in trouble in the first place. he wrote that the company will build over half a million cars in the next year. a similar tweet led the s.e.c. to argue he was in contempt of a settlement reached last year. joining us to discuss is craig trudell, who covers tesla for us. craig, what exactly happened this time? craig: this is very similar to a post he sent in february. in that post, he said that the company was going to build about 500,000 cars this year. around that time, the in-house securities lawyer at tesla who was sort of named to a position or hired as a result of a settlement with the s.e.c. reached out to musk and worked with him to quickly send out a follow-up tweet to clean that first one up, because it was sort of inconsistent with past statements. there is a little bit of a

deeper story there where musk himself sort of contradicted a written statement on an earnings call. but in any case, they tried to clean it up. the s.e.c. took notice and reached out to musk's lawyers and we found ourselves in this contempt of court fight. for musk to send this tweet over the weekend, it was very reminiscent of it. it also just, based on context clues, did not look like the sort of post that was run by a lawyer. it was sort of in passing and made in a reply to some person on twitter. so, it definitely sort of read as though musk was doing something very similar, just sort of casually talking about how many cars tesla is going to make. and the s.e.c. has argued that's very much material information and something he's supposed to get cleared with a lawyer within tesla. emily: so, craig, there's no question elon musk likes to fly close to the sun, which is what many investors love about him. but technically, if the

information is correct, is he allowed, per this agreement, to tweet about it? craig: well, this is part of why the judge overseeing the case told both sides within the last couple of weeks to put their reasonableness pants on, and those were her words, to go back and revisit this agreement and come to an agreement of what is and isn't material and what the sort of protocols are for musk. clearly, he does not like this agreement. he has wanted it changed, i think that has come through in the ways in which he and his legal team have sort of reacted to the s.e.c. sort of wanting to do battle over this again. emily: expedia group is moving to simplify its ownership model and boost its value. the online travel company has agreed to acquire liberty expedia holdings in a $2.6 billion all-stock deal.

expedia's stock structure has been divided between two billionaires, barry diller and liberty's john malone. diller will become the largest shareholder with a 29% stake. apple and qualcomm agreed to end a two-year legal battle over billions of dollars of tech licensing fees that threatened to jeopardize qualcomm's most profitable line of business. shares of the chipmaker surged more than 20% on the news tuesday. to discuss details, we spoke to bloomberg's ian king in san and cisco and our own mark gurman, who joined from outside the courthouse in san diego. mark: we were in round three of opening statements. this morning kicked off with apple's lawyers giving their perspective and then you had the contract manufacturers which basically is a consortium of foxconn and others. after them, you had qualcomm taking the stand. we were about 10 minutes away from qualcomm finishing their prepared opening remarks and the news came in from apple about the settlement. it was interesting because the lawyers kept going. it didn't seem like the lawyers

were aware of what had been happening outside the courtroom. emily: ian, you were just on the show yesterday previewing what would happen. jury selection was underway. you have been covering the chip industry for two decades. are you surprised they came to terms here? after all this bitterness. ian: remember what we said yesterday, you showed that clip of the interview where he said this is business and it will work itself out. i said, well, we've seen this kind of bitterness transform in a second to a collaborative relationship. that appears to be what we have here. emily: apple and qualcomm released a joint statement saying that they, apple, will be paying qualcomm a one-time payment. that they have reached a six-year licensing agreement as well as a multi-year chip set supply agreement. can you tell us more? i mean, what is the amount of this payment? ian: the only clue we have so far is that qualcomm has said this would be worth $2 in e.p.s. for them on an annual basis.

the analysts and investors i spoke to has said that using that assumption, it looks like apple has agreed to pay roughly the same licensing percentage that everybody else has to pay. if that is the case, this is a victory for qualcomm. emily: so, can you put that into billions for me? i'm asking you to do math on the spot. ian: well, put it this way, annually, qualcomm is earning roughly $2 a share. so $4 a share in e.p.s. so this is adding 50%, that's a lot of money. emily: is this apple waving the white flag? apple giving in? mark: you know, i think not really. more so apple putting the consumer and its flagship products ahead of litigation. this seems to be an extremely important for tim cook personally. apple going after qualcomm for what they believe to be overcharging or double-dipping, as they've been calling it all morning.

but more so now, they are saying we realize we need to be in 5g. this is more of an admission of apple saying they do not think intel is capable of giving them the 5g modems as early as the end of next year as intel and apple had been anticipating. it also means that apple's own in-house chip efforts are likely ways off. that six-year agreement i think will become a moot point in three or four years when apple will inevitably have its own modems ready. emily: interesting. apple c.e.o. tim cook and qualcomm c.e.o. steve mollenkopf were expected to testify in this particular trial, which really upped the ante. but does this mean the core issues go away? apple is saying they are charging too much, qualcomm is saying these are the rules and these are the patents, you have to pay. this is not going to change. ian: there's a couple of factors at play here. you will remember there was an ftc trial accusing qualcomm of the practices you had just mentioned. we still do not have a result

there. we still have to see how that will play out. but fundamentally, you have got technology and you have got licensing. qualcomm pretty much throughout its history has faced legal challenges trying to get these license fees reduced. it's managed, by and large, to fend them off. of course, we're likely to see more. and as companies come and go, in terms of the power of their customer base, they're going to try to challenge this because it helps their profits. emily: now, mark, you have reported that apple had postponed 5g this year, would perhaps consider it next year. does this mean apple could have 5g even sooner? could it be in the phones that are unveiled as we expect them to be in the fall? mark: it is too late for apple. barring some miracle of engineering, i do not see a chance apple has a 5g device on the market this year. but what this does is give them

a cleaner and clearer path into getting into the market in 2020 around their next september, october, november iphone cycle. the iphone 12 or whatever they choose to call it. there has been some concern about being able to get the right amount of chips from intel or proper processing power for 5g from the intel modems. now, that all goes out the window because you have the best in qualcomm, the market leader in 5g components, now under an agreement for the next six years with apple. emily: ian, you are nodding. ian: it is a technology decision. these things take about 18 months. the chip to make alone takes three months, never mind the qualification of networks, integration, writing the software. so, it is not going to happen this year. it can't, basically. there's just not enough time. emily: bloomberg's mark gurman and ian king. coming up, later this month consumers will finally be able to buy samsung's foldable phone. we got a sneak peek. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: it's one of samsung's boldest devices to date. earlier this year, the company unveiled the galaxy foldable phone that can be a phone or a tablet with a price tag of nearly $2000. bloomberg's mark gurman got his hands on the device for a closer look. mark: remember about eight years ago when samsung launched giant, expensive high-end smartphones and there was a group that thought was a gimmick? well, samsung is hoping that will happen again and also turn mainstream. this is the galaxy fold, a $2000 foldable phone. you can run three applications at once. the user interface is fairly intuitive. it is not as consistent as i would like when swapping between the smaller screen outside the phone and the bigger 7.3 screen when you open it. but i have a feeling it will get better over time as samsung continues to invest in this style of sulfone. when you open it up, it's basically a tablet. almost the size of an ipad mini

but without large bezels. it has an in-screen fingerprint scanner. there's a 5g version coming for international markets. this one goes on sale at the end of april in the u.s. on at&t mobile. it will be in several colors, including this blue and gold, there's a silver, a dark gray/black color. a green that almost looks gold. overall, productivity users and business users will probably like this thing for the multitasking. you are able to pin three applications next to each other at once. so for example you can be watching a video while looking through your calendar and taking notes. so overall it will appeal to those types of users. but the $2000 question is are people really going to want to buy these things so soon after they hit the market given the technology is still fairly early? i'm mark gurman for bloomberg news, new york. emily: coming up, netflix's forecasts for new user growth trails estimates. what it means for competitors like disney, next. and bloomberg tech is live on twitter. you can check us out at @technology.

this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: welcome back to "best of bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. netflix reports its first quarter results. the last quarter was relatively strong and the streaming platform added the most customers ever, 9.6 million of them. but the forecast for the second quarter was underwhelming. netflix said it -- it would add five million customers, short of the six million analysts forecasted. netflix says price increases in the u.s., brazil, mexico and parts of europe will slow subscriber growth for a brief period, but won't affect growth in the long run. but what about the competition it might see from apple and disney?

mariann montaigne, portofolio advisor and andre swanston , joined us with their reaction on tuesday. andre: i think i may come off as very contrarian, but i almost did not care what netflix reported in q1 and their guidance for q2 is irrelevant to the long term outlook. really i think netflix is facing huge headwinds when apple plus and disney plus, as well as the massive growth we're seeing across free ad supported and connected tv solutions come in, so i think q4 of this year is when they will for the first time they will truly have real head-to-head competition and it will be a challenge for them. emily: mariann, you are an investor in netflix. do you care? mariann: yeah, i care, and the way i see it, you are going to have some competition from apple, but we do not know what it is. what they told us was very slim. when it comes to disney, i think

they can coexist with netflix. i don't think the parents are going to be watching disney after 8:30 at night. that is just not the history of computers in general and cable tv in particular. so those two together would still be under $20 a month and i think that is something that they can very much co-exist with. emily: so i sat down with bob iger, the ceo of disney, when they unveiled disney plus, and he talked about why he thinks the details of the service will be competition for netflix and all the rest. take a listen. bob: making them available on a new technology platform, a technology platform that is simply more modern and growing in popularity, at a price that makes sense with a user interface that is beautiful, i think that is why we feel confident. emily: so he is talking about the entire disney vault, animated classics going back decades as well as original content. andre, do you think customers are going to pay for that and netflix? andre: i think people like me

that do not even look at their bill can when it comes to that, but there is a lot of americans cannot afford to and will prioritize. if we look at this as common sense, what business of any industry could you lose your best-selling product or some of your most valuable products to the business right next to you and then they undercut you on price and it does not impact you? i think the other thing a lot of people aren't realizing is that the real growth in connected tv over the last 24 months has been supportedported -- ad solutions like pluto tv and others. what netflix benefited from was kind of being the de facto standard over the cross of -- over and across connected tv. if you bought a new smart tv or roku or fire stick, you had to get netflix, or else what was the purpose of having that device? but now, what people are seeing across 40 million homes is, you 30 million, 35 million, buy those new devices and you turn on something free with ads. and then you can be selective

how you add on top of that. for any home that has a child, if you are prioritizing budget, do you prioritize disney's whole content library or the content that netflix has? it is not really just children. it is the avengers library and other things as well as competition coming from warner and apple. there is just so much -- netflix never had to face such direct competition. where people are lowering prices, they will be increasing them. it is just, you know, i can't find a metric by which there's not a concern. emily: disney has got the "star wars" library going forward as well. netflix has got first mover advantage. mariann, are you concerned about the forecast here? the price increase is slowing subscriber growth at the same time that, for the first time ever, there could be real direct competition. mariann: actually i would say now is a great time to be raising prices because the unemployment rate is so low, the participation rate is so high,

the wage growth is improving, and if you are going to take a price increase, now is the time to take it. if it is one dollar or two a month, i do not think it will crush anybody's budget. as i look out at the netflix situation, they are growing very strongly overseas. they leveraged the heck out of their content by dubbing or subtitles back and forth, so now things made in india will be shown here, either subtitles or dubbed. i think there is just a ton of leverage to be had out of the system. so we're very positive on netflix. emily: how do you explain what happened with the stock today? i mean, shares plunged 9% right after the results, and now they've stabilized. what happened there? mariann: well, you are asking me? emily: yep. mariann: alright. what happened is people did not read through, and one of the things they did not read through was they beat subscribers in the

u.s. and overseas. when you look at that guidance for the coming quarter of 5 million, that is right in line with the consensus numbers that we have seen. it did not knock the cover off the ball, but it was in line. i think people too have to think back to the management guidance in recent years which has been conservative. n, moreve that commo common attitude of, we are going to guide down and then beat. this has been more frequent in their situation. we expect them to beat next quarter as well. emily: andre, netflix is surely competing with companies with big budgets. of course apple has $250 billion in cash, but they are investing multibillions of dollars in original content over the next two years. can they spend their way ahead of the competition? andre: i mean you know netflix has had a huge head start in

terms of investing heavily in content. i think more so, they're not going to spend their way out of this, because you can't spend more than these other companies if they decide they really want to dig in, as well. there are opportunities netflix could take advantage of because they have been spending billions and billions of dollars for several years now. some of the content that is older, they could make ad supported. a lot of people have talked about that happening. that's more of a reality going into 2020, if i were them. i do think that is a way they may go. but i think people are orerestimating -- overestimating the loyalty that people have to netflix or any content in particular. the churn rate is much higher across households that do not have a child, across any ott subscription service than those that don't. there's a lot of things would be concerning, regardless of what their numbers are for q1 or q2. emily: mariann montaigne of gradient investments and tru optik ceo andre swanston.

the billionaire founder of the company that assembles apple's iphone plans to run for president of taiwan. foxconn's terry gou will seek the nomination of the opposition kuomintang party. he says that a mythical chinese sea goddess encouraged him to come forward to support peace with china. coming up, can the hr industry be transformed by cloud based services? one startup is betting on it. we speak with the ceo of namely. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: google and apple have complied with an indian court order to block downloads of the popular app tiktok after the government voiced concerns with illicit content on the app. this move could handicap its owner, a chinese group, in one of the most promising markets. for more, i want to bring in mark bergen who has been reporting on this story. interesting that the indian government has intervene here whereas other governments have not. it has been concerning to a lot of people because we have a lot of children on this app, and performing and lip syncing and concerns about sexual predators. mark: yeah, it is interesting on multiple levels. in many ways we have seen this and done some great reporting out of asia that india, like other countries in asia, are adopting more of a chinese model of regulating the internet. they're becoming more severe, some would call it draconian. -- indiagoing after has fairly conservative leading politicians, and they are going after a chinese company who has made this big push, claiming to

have 120 million monthly active grown they have just gangbusters. and one of the few tech companies in china that has done well outside of china. they have a huge and growing presence in the u.s. they also, this is an ai company that prides itself on its ability to take down content pretty quickly. emily: bitedance has said the case is still ongoing and they have faith in the indian judicial system and they are optimistic about an opportunity that would be well received by 120 million monthly active users in india. i mean, the concerns are really disturbing concerns about dangers to children, claims about -- exposure to sexual predators. how is this different from youtube where a parent can upload their video of a child? you know who knows what happens , to it? mark: youtube will tell you no kid under 13 watches the videos, according to the terms of service. so right now, musicaly, which was the app that became tiktok, had a record fine from the ftc around collection of children's

privacy concerns. so there is a drum beat and the same sort of advocacy groups are asking for lawmakers to look at youtube in a similar way. emily: i also want to ask about the notre dame situation. obviously, it is a devastating story, watching notre dame you know getting essentially burned out, and in the middle of that on youtube, this text box pops up that labels the burning of notre dame as 9/11. mark: yeah. emily: what happened? mark: youtube said there was an algorithmic wrong call which is interesting phrasing. the best we can decipher is their image recognition technology that saw an image of a burning facade and the software determined it looked like an image of 9/11. emily: there could be lots of burning facades. manus: totally. i think there is a lot of cases where youtube over the years has been hammered for pushing conspiracy theories like 9/11 was an inside job. and so in this case this is a

precaution they are taking. it goes back to the point with tiktok, bitedance is a chinese company that prides itself on its artificial intelligence. google is arguably the world's leading ai company, and ai is not quite there at perfectly solving the problem. both companies will point to scale saying that they can't have humans look at this. youtube said this morning, 500 hours uploaded a minute. so each if you had humans looking at that -- this is clearly an interesting case, a breaking news event, you would think someone in the company would say let's look at all the videos around the notre dame fire. this is where a lot of people were drawing attention. they are still relying on machines and software right now. emily: it is having to find the balance between what machines humans can and should do. thank you for that update. elon musk's spacex has won a nasa contract to play a real life version of the arcade game asteroids. spacex will provide launch

services for the double asteroid redirection test mission with the goal to demonstrate the ability to deflect an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into one at high speed. the test mission is targeted for a june 2021 launch on a spacex falcon nine rocket. for many that run an office, hr operations remain one of the biggest headaches in the a workplace, but can tech streamline how the hr industry works? namely thinks so and offers a cloud-based platform for small to midsize business. the company says 75% of their clients say namely has increased employee engagement, and 72% say the platform has made its employees more productive. namely ceo lisa steele joined us on monday. elisa: our software is so different because it is a full solution for a midsize company. midsize companies have small hr departments, but they have the same problems as a big enterprise. the have to manage their workforce.

they have to drive employee engagements. they have to understand data and insight, and namely puts it altogether in a one stop shop in a package that is easy for them to use. at the same time, we provide an engaging platform directly for the employees. emily: so are you competing with folks like zenefits, gusto, workday? or are you competing with old-school hr? elisa: those companies do similar things, but target target on different customers. we're targeted on that mid-size company about 100 to 1000 employees, we are trying to manage the full suite. it is usually a competitive situation of they have not really adopted tech yet. they have this opportunity to now modernize the workforce. emily: what is interesting about is that you are at a sort of critical entry point where employees are coming into the organization. you are also managing employees throughout the organization. as we talk about issues of bias in the corporate world in general, hr can play a critical role, as well as technology h.r.

representatives use. is that something that you are thinking about? elisa: yes, one of our newest and most popular products will provide data and insights to help them understand their workforce, and benchmark that against our other clients so that they understand, how are we faring? how are we faring on pay equity, how are we faring on diversity? how are we doing in promotional opportunities for our people? they can look at that in the context of namely data and give themselves a scorecard. emily: talk to us about some of the biggest hurdles when it comes to modernizing hr and creating an hr workforce for the modern world. elisa: typically, hr has been in a function that has not been able to be measured well. emily: often it's not prioritized. elisa: and true in midsize companies, they usually have a department of one or two if they are lucky, but the same problems of a large enterprise. they are trying to maintain the workforce, drive engagement, retain their talent, attract talent.

so having a solution that combines technology and the human beings of talent is really, really important for their success. emily: so i have to ask you , stepped into this role a few months ago, had just done a massive funding round. the ceo was pushed out after an investigation that showed inconsistent -- absence inconsistent with what is expected from namely leadership. what can you tell us about what happened there? elisa: namely is a very strong cultural values system, and when an employee has behavior that does not align with that, they don't really have a place at the company. unfortunately, that happened with our ceo. i was on the board at the time, and stepped in, fell in love with the company, the product, our customers. i am happy to say i am there now as the ceo. emily: that was elisa steele, ceo of namely. still ahead, digital health company everlywell wants to put health tests in the hands of consumers. how it is competing with the likes of 23 and me and other direct to consumer health startups. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: in the last year, americans borrowed an estimated $80 billion to pay for health care, with one in four skipping treatment due to cost. that is according to a study by gallup and west health. startup everlywell wants to democratize the system.

everlywell offers a suite of at-home lab kits with over 3500 panels including tests for food sensitivities and fertility and std's. since 2015, it shipped over 275,000 kits and now, the company have secured $50 million in new funding to expand its digital platform. everlywell founder and ceo julia cheek joined us tuesday to discuss. julia: everlywell is transforming the $25 billion lab testing industry. the kits themselves are a way to make the process more accessible and convenient for consumers. so we actually work with fully certified, regulated labs that have been around for a long time working with physicians and hospitals and are simply using existing technology to be able to make a service that is suitable for home kit collection by a consumer and then mailed off and resulted in a certified lab. emily: talk to us a little bit about the technology here and how proven it is. anytime you say "at-home testing kit," that can raise some alarm

bells when you are doing something outside the doctor's office. how proven is the technology that you are using? julia: i think what's important here is that everlywell is the connector. we are not inventing any new lab testing technology or assays, and all of the labs we work with pre-exist our company and have been in this -- in business for years or even decades. what we are making easier is the home collection process of a sample, using materials that have been validated and are cleared for use via several state regulatory bodies. the testing itself is just as accurate as the same test that your doctors and physicians typically use, and in fact we work both with an independent physician network to review the orders and results, as well as work with physicians across the country that our consumers share their results with. emily: as i understand it your , tests are not fda approved, and some of the critics say this

is a way to get around fda approval. how do you respond to that? julia: laboratory testing in the united states is regulated by two federal bodies, the fda and the center for medicaid and medicare services, otherwise known as cms. cms is the regulatory body that currently regulates the tests everlywell offers through our network of labs. that is generally through a body of legislation called clia. all of the labs we work with meet and exceed federal regulations for lab testing, as well as meet or exceed the state-by-state regulations. so should the fda choose to regulate our type of lab testing, we would love and be excited to engage with them on that. emily: how do you help people understand what the test results show, whether they really have a sensitivity or maybe it is a sign of something more severe like cancer, or if they have an eating disorder? can the tests really tell you that? importanthink what is

is we are making it accessible for consumers to get accurate, insightful and clear lab results that are not only reviewed by independent board-certified physicians, and available and encouraged to be shared with consumers' primary care physicians. in fact, 80% of our customers have a primary care physician and 60% report using these results directly with their physician. the goal is really to provide a service that closes the care gap of consumer compliance around lab testing. something like 40% of americans do not get testing due to fear of cost and so our goal is to increase that rate so it is useful for people, and then they can work in conjunction with their health care provider as well as their own health and wellness plans to improve their health. emily: now i am sure whether you like it or not, you are compared to theranos all the time. i realize they were creating technology, and you are not creating lab testing technology. however, the sort of spectacular

failure of theranos is very fresh in the health tech industry. what can you say to assure consumers and your customers that everything you are providing them is sound? julia: the most important point to know about the everlywell brand is the network of labs we partner with work already with physicians and hospitals. they existed before we had this digital model to allow consumers to initiate test orders. and so they are relied upon by many of the top physician networks and hospitals in the country, and we work with the larger labs in the country as well. and obviously there has been parallels made, but i think the most important point is we are really connecting people to proven technology, similar to what a warby parker model did, which is connecting people to more affordable eyeglasses and a physician prescription service, and not creating anything new.

♪ emily: everlywell ceo and founder julia cheek. and that does it for this edition of "the best of bloomberg technology." we will bring you all the latest in tech all week. you can tune in every day, 5:00 p.m. in new york, 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. we are livestreaming on twitter. you can check us out at @technology and follow our global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪ xfinity watchathon week has sadly come to an end.

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