"press: here" is sponsored in part by -- barracuda network. simplify i. trjs. sti national bank, providing lines of credit to help northern california businesses grow he. >> silicon investor mike kwatinetz sits down to discuss hidden opportunities across the economy. we exchange words. and a toy store chain, reporter mike creigh of investors business daily this week on "press: here." ♪

good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. we pay a lot of attention to very young people these days, the head of snapchat is 25, john collison who created the company stripe with his brother, 25, though i think 24 when last on "press: here." they're smart people making the world a better place and we love talking to them. but every once in a while it's nice to get a little perspective from someone who is not in fifth grade when pets.com ran those dog puppet commercials. somebody like long-time valley investor michael kwatinetz, 25 once, just not as recently. mike earneds the title number one stock picker on wall street until he turned venture capitalist, his blog sound bites are read by smart investors and a general partner and has a ph.d. from cal berkeley, one of the most authoritative voices on education technology today joined by mike cia of investors

business daily and [ inaudible ] graham of fortune. let me ask you the way i set that up, i want to look back at some of the things you've been through that the john co colelinsons have not been through. let's start with the premise is that worth doing? is looking back at the dotcom boom and bust or recession or credit crunch worth doing in this economy or is that foolish? >> i think it's always worth looking at the past for parallels and so it's of two perspectives. the thing you're mentioning are national-type trends, overall economic trends, but it's also good to look back to do comparison to prior iterations that approach the same thing. so we do that all the time. so if you look at how the iphone is going to attract music, why not look how cds developed and see what period of time it took for them to capture the market.

>> that means the iphone and its music is less revolutionary than i thought it was. there are these huge pivot points sometimes at which well you can't compare that to that. >> well, you compare it from the point of view when you have a new platform, how is the adoption of that platform? so people sometimes get impatient and say oh, it's three years and it's not 90%. well what did the last three iterations of new platforms do? took them seven years to get to 90%. maybe this is tracking the same way that it's going to own the whole market. that's a good way of looking back and understanding things. if the new platform will win it better have a value proposition that exceeds the old by far. >> big question, mike, the macro question would have to be, obviously, went through a big tech bubble. >> yep. >> and, you know, for months i heard people say no tech bubble, no tech bubble, now i'm starting to hear tech bubble more and more. what's your take? >> it's interesting.

in 2001/2002 when it burst people said this would never happen again and i knew it would happen again because it happened before, it would happen again. >> is it different now? >> it's different now. it may not continue to be different but right now i think we're in 1997 equivalent, '98, not in 2000, 2001. the reason is if you look at companies for the most part, there's real value behind the valuation. the question is, are they slightly overvalued, maybe, but it's -- in 2000 we got to the point where there was no value behind the valuation. >> companies clearly not making money. >> not just making money, not having revenue and having a billion dollar valuation. we have some of those. >> do you have some in your portfolio? >> none that have gotten to a billion but we have a great company called yikyak, the next generation social networking. what you have to do in something like that as you did with facebook and others in the

social space, the value is in how many users are they acquiring and how big have they gotten? in 2000 we had some that didn't have users, didn't have revenue and were a billion dollars because of the promise. i don't think we've gotten to that point. >> you had as many good opportunities now? >> more. >> much more. >> ignoring valuation, you know, there are more great companies now than ever. and the reason is tech has a much bigger scope than ever. you know, previously, if you go through each generation of tech, if you take the main frame, how many companies were there that had software for the main frame. so you go through each generation. every generation of tech, widen the market that tech addressed, and i always found amazing in the early 2000 year people would say there's nothing more tech could do. are you kidding it's going to take over music, books, take over everything over time, and it's going in that direction and i think the difference is that

it's not pure tech. you have to have the tech skills and other skills combined in a lot of these types of models. >> are the founders any different today? you mentioned some of the young, the 20 something founders, do you see any differences? >> i used to have this question, what do bill gates, michael dell, ted wait and larry ellison before being -- besides being billionaires at the age of 30 and that was none graduated college. the founders are no different. they're brilliant. >> looking back -- >> don't have time to finish school. >> looking back ten years, ten years ago you wrote "the big tech score" which was -- this would have been the bust point, right, of the bubble? >> it was written before the bust point. the bust point -- >> didn't sell a copy because you just got to really -- >> got to number two on the business list. >> okay. >> and sold a few copies, but

not many. >> here's the thing, i was looking forward, i thought it would be forward to find a smart guy, what he predicted ten years ago, be because i'm living here ten years later to find out what he's got, and you recommended a number of industries -- >> [ inaudible ]. >> no but look, here are some of the industries you had recommended. intelligent appliances and used the examples handspring and rim, wireless application, example avantgo. i haven't thought about avantgo and intelligent search engines, ask jeeves. it would be easy to tease you about these things. >> not teasing with the intro. >> when else do you tease a millionaire. to tease you about ask jeeves. i want to bring up the page again. take a look at what i noticed. that is if you change the names of the companies but keep the categories the same, you're a

genius. >> just to that point, when i was on wall street i froze what i bought or sold in tech stocks. so i did very well because of that, because i had microsoft and dell. i never sold them until i left. as soon as i left wall street i bought apple and sold it too soon. it still did well. i think the point of the thing wasn't so much that i knew which companies, it's that these were things that were going to happen and we had to start tracking which companies would leverage it. i had the wrong companies but i think everyone -- >> right. well -- >> existed but google didn't exist you couldn't have known. >> right. >> with a minute left here, mike, i want to ask you about ed tech, where people should be really focusing education technology? >> education technology is a really important point and the reason for that is, think of where we're going as a marketplace. we're going more into personalization. what's happening if in the

schools? we're cutting budgets, we have hetero genius grouping instead of homogenous, which means the teacher has to teach to four levels in one class. because of that the schools have to -- you have to have some way to use technology to be able to address the market. education.com one of our companies has come up with something called workbooks which it offers for -- on a subscription basis to customers, believe it or not, 60,000 teachers are now subscribers to this. if you assume they have 33 kids in a class, i use that number so that the multiple is 2 million students and they print, 20workbooks a year, it would mean that the kids are exposed to 1 billion worksheets. >> all coming from your company. >> but the point is, those work sheets allow each student to get personalized assistance and that's the most important thing in education today, that arena.

>> michael, who was right about ask jeevess in a way, i'm sure is right about aztec. thanks for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> up next the head of one of america's fastest growing toy stores says the future is brick and mortar, on "press: here."

. welcome back to "press: here." i've been reading a lot lately about the future of the american mall and how it's dying and can't survive. the internet age. but i spend a lot of time driving around malls looking for a parking space. it seems to me most of the malls in silicon valley are still vibrant and adding interesting new stores like marbles, a chicago-based chain that sells brain training type games and management thinks the mall is the place to be. lindsay gaskins started marbles as one of the mall kiosks and has expanded it into a chain of 33 stores, including mall of america. thank you for being with us this morning. is mall of america the crown jewel? the one you're always like if i cancel only get into mall of america some. >> it was one of our first malls, our fifth store that we opened, and it's fun. it's an amusement park plus a mall so a great place to be. great traffic and people come from all over to go there. a lot more of those type

centers. mall of america was the beginning of bringing entertainment into a mall scene and they've really gone over and above with that. yeah, i think that's neat. >> most of the people who sit in the chair tell me brick and mortar is dead. you are brick and mortar. >> we have an e-commerce site and we sell to our customers in all channels and a catalog business as well, but when we started the company i wanted to start with that experiential retail. i think that's what's going to win in the future and shopping is social. people like to be seen with their handbags and what they buy. marbles is a social place for people to come and check out what is new and get their hands on the product before they buy it. i think that's where retail is going. you'll see so many new retailers that are -- that started in e-commerce and are now putting in a brick and mortar presence to learn from their customer real time. when doing an ecommerce site and throwing something out there, your feedback is did they click. but when you open a brick and mortar store and see the

emotions of the customer and how they shop, and you talk to them real time, you can learn so much more about how to create something that's really tie mam nick and -- dynamic and continue to test and learn new ideas. >> it's interesting to see newer e-commerce companies or subscription services like birch box going the other direction. do you think there are certain types of projects that are best for that experienceal kind of experience i guess? i mean, is there a particular product this works for? >> i think in the case where it's a social activity, so a lot of the things that we sell are for the family to do together. for kids to play with their parents, grandparents to play together. when doing something socially, it's not easy to do that on-line and choose an outfit together. you're not wearing the same outfit. everybody is choosing their own thing. clothes and shoes where that's an individual experience but when purchasing something you will use in a group setting it's more fun to see it in a group setting as you're taking a look at it. i would say products like games

and activities, those work well in a brick and mortar setting. kind of the sunglasses and all those like high-end fashion, also works very well in brick and mortar because people want to be seen buying it. >> people want to see the games and know they cab play them, i think, they're not too dumb for them. >> right. everyone has a brain. anything in our store can be used by anyone with a brain. the idea that stores don't have, you know, the interactivity they should is the problem why some stores are failing. our aim is we brand coaches in the store to show you how the products work. >> i wanted to ask you about the work force and i'm going to be specific to silicon valley, but it may be true in other regions of the united states and that is, the tightening of the labor force, i mean in order to get a good salesperson, who's also intelligent and understands how these intelligent games work and then can sell them to families,

that's a really skilled retail operator. you just opened some san francisco and silicon valley stores. were you able to find that work force i'm presuming minimum wage? >> better than minimum wage. >> a premium. the brand is so appeal, marble the brain store, not just a retail sales associate you're a brain coach, getting to play with games while you're in our store. there's something that differentiates us against other retail jobs. and with the economy how it had been we started in 2008, and then where -- there were a lot of people that were looking for extra work. we found we've attracted great talent and growths also helps. having possibilities for our retail associates to grow into the store manager role, move into the headquarters, we're getting a lot of the great talent because they see what's ahead of them and what we're doing with the brand and want to be a part of it. >> you're expanding quickly. where's the fund coming? >> when you go in and pitch the

company we're a brick and mortar. >> yeah. we've only pitch it where the brand fits in the solution. not just a brick and mortar retailer. we have an ecommerce, produce our own products. we're trying to be the leader in brain fitness across the country and we have a brick and mortar presence to learn from our customers what products we should produce and present to the customer. we have funding the whole time, from the beginning venture backed. i've pitched this business to hundreds of people. we got a good investment from two groups helping us grow to the next phase of the business. >> are you targeted to different parts of the brain, the cognitive, the memory, that's fascinating? >> exactly. we separate the store into cognitive functions. critical thinking section, word skills, memory, coordination and visual perception and put products in there, tested by brain health experts to tell us which category they should go into and then out to try in the store so you can have an exprns

with them, work with a brain coach to talk about how to use it. if you have brain concerns like autism or cognitive decline talk to them and we'll give you suggestions. we're not doctors, we're not trying to be a physician to you, but we will say, we've had other customers come in and try this product for adhd and had very good success with their child using it in the classroom to pay attention to the teacher. we are giving ideas of how our products can be used to help with brain concerns. >> and the little bb 8 droid -- >> yeah. >> how does that help my brain? >> what part of the brain does that -- >> the idea the product -- the fun part. >> rolling robot for people not familiar. >> we carry the product early, so we carried their first product spearo a robotic ball to learn how to do basic programming and turned it into a lot of learning experiences. the bb 8 is a hot toy, yes, and we carry it and we're one of the

few people to have it in our stores. we're excited to have it. >> is that your best sell smer. >> it will be this season. >> lindsay gaskins, i have to go to commercial break. i'm glad you admitted it's your hot toy. all these fascinating brain things and this is really hot. lindsay gaskins with marbles, thanks for being with us. >> thank you. >> we will exchange words with our favorite lexicographer, go ahead, look it up in the dictionary and meet you back here when "press: here" continues.

welcome back to "press: here." there's an effort on-line to create the world's biggest dictionary, bigger than anything that's been attempted by webster or oxford. the effort led by a non-profit called the word knicks society wants to add a million never before defined words to the dictionary, a million. the head of the word society says, quote, we believe that every word of the english language deserves to be lookupable. lookupable. erin mckean we're quoting, lookupable is not a word and i looked in the dictionary and it was not lookupable. why are you a lexicographer using the word lookupable. >> you understood it, didn't you? >> i did understand it. >> can you think of a better way to save able to be looked up?

>> no, but isn't that the idea that there are words that are in the dictionary and those are words and then words that are not words? >> is that your definition of a word, you understand what it means? >> yes. if it's spoken by a native speaker and intended to be what it is, so it's not an error or a typo or misunderstanding, if it's intentional it's a word. english is great. it's -- english is a shared dilution de -- delusion we have. lots of people believe if it's not in the dictionary it's not a word. >> purists. >> well -- >> trying to point out to my viewers, you were the editor in chief of what the oxford english -- american oxford english dictionary. >> the oxford american dictionary. >> i mean you come from -- if you're not a purist yourself you come from a line of puritans. >> yes, my buckle shoes are amazing. most dictionary editors are more

about oh, we're reporting the language, how people use it. and the onlyp are that these hundreds of thousands, million words are not in dictionaries, it takes a long time to write definitions and paper is really small. think of most dictionaries likes the 7-eleven of english. it has the essentials what you need, run in, get something, go out, but it's not comprehensive. it's not exhaustive. >> how many more words would word nick have than the oxford. >> ten times as many words but we don't have good examples for all of them and so what we're trying to find is what we call free range examples. we call them freds. >> free range -- >> looking for something in the wild. >> lots of journalists you probably read thousands of these sentences in your lifetime, writing about something new they often have to define new terminology for their readers and define things in passing. there was a -- this great article a couple weeks ago about

how the pacific northwest is in trouble ifs there's an earthquake and a follow-up article about what you can do and the journalist katherine schultz i think her name is used the word seiche. it's a complicated technical term but it's a tidal wave in a lake and that's exactly what she said, right. >> so she's right as an aside. >> these words happen all the time. one of my favorite new words the word echoborg. how people interact with robots is it a machine or the tone of voice and the words they use that make it weird to interact, talk to a robot. they have these volunteers be echoborgs, a mike in your ear like now and a robot, a programmer is telling them what to say and they would say what the program told them to say. and they're called echoborgs? are most new words a combination of words. >> english is like the biggest set of lego you can imagine.

take any two parts and shove them together. >> more than german? >> german lego pieces are very well machines. >> run like an au i ddi. >> it's not like wikipedia, right, the way you're going about it or is it? how are you building your data base? >> we just look for these sentences that people have already written explaining words. they didn't -- >> look how? >> is it -- >> spiedering? >> we are crawling and taking nominations. >> okay. >> and what we do is we sit and we all also have using lookup data since 2009. we know every word ever looked up on wordnik and whether or not there's a traditional definition for it and we've had tens of millions of strings looked up. >> but you've got a kickstarter you're trying to raise money to fund this. what is it you're funding? paying people to look things up? for servers to go out and crawl all these news items. >> we're paying for servers.

no people will be harmed in the kickstarter. we're paying for servers and also paying for some great machine learning consultsents. lots of examples of the free range definitions, the sentences, and we will use those as a training set to build a program to go out and find more. >> okay. >> what's your favorite word? >> oh. >> i know, i know. >> he knows it. >> her favorite word she's been on before. it's airnashious. it's erin. i'll let you do the definition. >> it's a wonderful word used be used more often, it means [ inaudible ] like a hedge whoing. >> volpine like a fox. and since talking about it, lots of people have started giving me hedge hog things. >> using it if my next article. >> with less than a minute left adopt words, craig newmark the founder of craigs list adopted a

word. >> craig adopted the word nerd and adopted the word nerd forever. >> you can't get it. >> he's got it. he is representing for nerds for all time. and yes, so you can adopt a word for our kick starter, a name and link to your twitter or your website for a year and how much you love that piece of the language. >> erin, my favorite lexicographer. thank you for being here from wordnik. >> thank you. >> "press: here" will be back in just a minute.

that's our show for this week. thanks to my guests, mike kwatinetz, blogged sound bites two, bites with a "y," best just to google it. lindsay gaskins of marbles as well and want to help erin document the words in english find and fund it on kicks starter. we're available on i tunes,

search press here in the podcast section. i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. "press: here" is sponsored in part by --

"comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today we're gonna go back to our tour of the cesar chavez compound in nuestra senora de la paz in keene county, as we kick off hispanic heritage month here on your "comunidad del valle." [music] male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle," with damian trujillo. damian: we begin today with an organization that's been helping this community for decades. we're talkin' about the american gi forum. with me is esau herrera, who is a member of the great organization of "old number one," verdad? esau herrera: yes, "old number one." damian: now, then, tell us a little bit about the american gi forum, maybe for those folks who might not be aware of the accomplishments and the organization itself. esau: the american gi forum is a family-oriented organization of latino military veterans, men and women who have served their county and who have made