an outspoken silicon valley ceo wakes up in a bad mood and helps kicks racists off the internet. silicon valley swoons over a new shoe, all the nerds, and the power of one. the internet allows a single person to change the national conversation. >> good morning, everyone, i'm

scott mcgrew, i am very impressed with what my first guest did. matthew prince, the ceo of cloud flair says he woke up in a bad mood the morning after the vijsz in charlottesville, and decided single handedly to end his companies relationship. opening the daily stormer up to hacks and security breaches. the cloud flair employees, he wrote my rational for making this was simple. the people behind the daily stormer are very bad word and i have had enough. i do not like racists, and i also agree they are best described by that very bad word. that's not what impressed me, what impressed me, he realized he shouldn't have that kind of power to wake up and arbitrarily decide who gets to publish on the internet. he's been incredibly transparent

about it, a few major corporations will have the power to decide what is and what is not published on the internet. matthew joins us here this morning. that was a lot of gushing, i don't normally gush that much. let's talk about, you walk up in a bad mood. >> this particular customer is something who had been on a radar screen for some time. we had them on probation. we had been trying to talk about how our policy was to stay neutral, and one of the core tenets we espoused was we never took someone offline. when you're explaining, you're losing. we found ourselves explaining that to a lot of people and explaining why it was dangerous

for us to take customers offline. at some point we needed to say, this is why this is dangerous, and while we think that this content is repugnant, having the power to pick and choose who is and is not online, that's dangerous, and we need to have a public conversation about that. >> it sounds like you're actually making the case for the exact opposite action of the one you took. what's your rationale for other than the bad mood thing. what's your rationale for making the decision you did make? >> pretty difficult for us to have there, it was a distraction to us. >> what were the things. >> we got reports they started to take abuse complaints that had been submitted to us, and then when we would turn them over to their hosting provider, they would harass or threaten violence against the people that were submitting those complaints. that's when they got on my radar

screen. on the morning i woke up, what i saw was a twitter feed full of comments that were taken from their blog saying, the upper echelons of class flair are white supremacists and they support what we're doing. that was the final straw. >> yeah, i mean, i guess under that circumstance, maybe you did have good reasons beyond -- i don't like your content as a company, where they were violating your terms of service or -- >> companies like cloud flair and google have kicked them off earlier. we can point to our terms of service and make that excuse. i think what's important is, the reality is, the content, if it was a cute kitten blog, we would have cut them more slack. that's just the reality, there is a level of arbitrariness to this. what worries me is that the system, it should not be

controlled by ten tech executives who wake up in a bad mood, it should be -- there should be some level of due process, and some trains parentscy to these? >> i just this week, interviewed richard spencer who is a neo-nazi, and he and robert mcchesney, a professor at the university of illinois, completely agreed the government needs to step in and regulate, otherwise we lose free speech on the internet. unless you have access through these companies or through certain companies, you're being silent. >> i think there is a question when certain private companies start to get such square -- whether it's government or

transparency through clarity. i'm the son of a journalist, one of the things i think makes this uncountry so important is the first amendment we operate in 70 countries around the world. the vast majority of them have nothing like speech protections in the united states, there is a rule of law, there is due process, that requires transparency that we haven't had previously. what kind of reactions are you seeing from your employees and what kind of conversations are you guys having? and what kind of hate mail are you getting? >> inside cloud flair this is a discussion we've been having for six years, our question was, how do we take the discussion happening inside cloud flair and make it a broader discussion?

i think outside, it's been -- there's a lot of noise, a lot of angry people that say, nazis are bad, or you're bad for having censored nazis, you flush that away and look at the thoughtful comments, it's split 5050 on what the right role is, for me, the answer is going to be different depending on what kind of company and where you sit. >> one thing i find in general is that a lot of people don't understand the first amendment does not apply to google or facebook or you or any of these companies. we have a first amendment, it's like, no, these are private companies, private websites. the question is, if a company's become so big that they're affectively monopolies, at what point does the government? >> there are choke points on the internet, we think of the internet as being this broad

network of -- and anybody can get on and publish. what companies should we be looking at as what yours obviously. 10% of internet traffic -- google would be another one. what companies are the choke points? >> i think that what's interesting is a chain of companies that have to work together to bring you what the internet is, and infrastructure companies like level three or cloud flair that are out there, at&t, facebook, google, amazon, all play different roles. what's important is the answers for each of those companies is potentially different, take google as an example, two days before we kicked the daily stormer off, google said, you can't use our registrar services, they didn't block them from using our isp, from using their browser or pull them from search. those are all things they could have done, those feel like

they're wrong. the deeper you get into the internet staff, most of your viewers, and this is even a silicon valley aware audience, haven't heard of cloud flair. more that those are the compa companies making editorials, that's where there's concern. >> let me take you back to last wednesday again, would you have made the same decision? >> i think we made the right decision in the short term, because we needed to have this conversation, in the long term, deep infrastructure companies like cloud flair making edit editorial decisions is dangerous. >> thank you for being with us. >> thanks. up next, the hottest new start-up in silicon valley gets bigger two feet at a time.

welcome back to press here.

i wear a jacket and tie because nbc asks i do. if i works for facebook, i would wear their uniform. mark zuckerberg may have made it famous, but now the hoodie and jeans are universal in high-tech. to that we can add shoes. these are in tech offices all over the bay area, the new york times says, in uncomfortable times silicon valley has turned to a comfortable shoe. this is it the first time i've had a shoemaker on the show. he started his career in biotechnology trying to turn algae into gasoline. he's turned into a beach of a cop letter, thanks for being with us this morning. all of a sudden, nobody is not talking about them, the new york times is running columns about them, and they just appeared out of magic air. how did you get so popular? >> we didn't plan for quite the

amount of success that we had, it's been a fast run, we've been around for about 18 months and -- >> that's it? >> yeah, the short time, i think what we did really well in the beginning, we made lots of mistakes, we said no to everything. we launched with one shoe, this was our second model that came out, 13 months after we launched. and we came out in the industry, it was one shoe, a couple colors, and we just kind of disuntilled things down to a solution that people needed. and that was a comfortable shoe de void of logos, minimalist design that was focused on comfort. >> where did you first market this shoe? >> we're almost 98, 99% from our own website. the only place we sell the shoes. and we have to do a ton of marketing, we got the word out predominantly, 70% of people who

buy our shoes now are coming to our website, one of our friends told them -- >> that sounds like a fluke. i can't come up with any, unless you spent millions of dollars in marketing that i don't know about. there are lots of people that are like, i got a great product. people will buy it, and nobody shows up. >> ever every over night success, it took a ton of work. my partner tim brown was a professional athlete, he had been sponsored by nike, he was tired of the approach those guys were taking, he's from new zealand and staring at 29 million sheep, sometimes you ask yourself, what are you going to do with that, we developed, we co developed with a partner in italy, this is a fiber from a particular type of sheep which is used in $5,000 suits, and we put that into a shoe and designed a proprietary textile to make it really comfortable. >> since you were in the biofuel industry, are these basically

safe for the environment, you think about your process? >> yeah, the only reason i wouldn't be doing a shoe company if i didn't think it was important for our company to exist. we founded the company, because we believed that particularly in shoes, the consumer products, there's not a lot of focus put on environmental sensibility, particularly in the sourcing of raw materials, my career has been focused on doing renewable product innovation and putting that into industry. it was challenging, trying to take a leadership position on how to market consumer products. but doing it because of renewable materials but not in spite of. you know, we have caster bean oil derived insoles which is high cushioned stuff, the marina wolf in the top is an extraordinarily low carbon

footprint. >> it's not 100% sheep? >> no. >> how much are they? >> i can't tell you the whole blend. there's a little llama thrown in? >> how -- what do you attribute the success to, because you explain how you guys got started and how you fell, to your point, there are a lot of companies who have tried to do that, with various products. did you get the support and the endorsement organically of a few big techies? >> there wasn't one silver bullet that happened, we grew -- before starting the company and launching to the public, we grew a huge amount of conviction that there's this trend where people on their mobil devices working, not just 9:00 to 5:00, but they're working all the time. you need gear that keeps up with the change in life and changing behavior you have. and apparent has kept up with that. >> is that what you're say something you. >> don't need --

>> you're working all the time, you need something that's versatile -- >> that may explain the silicon valley uniform. for a bunch of people who are trying to disrupt the world, they all dress the same. >> yes. >> really the same, like a bunch of junior high kids. >> and now the next one, you have a tiger by the tail. now, you can either be the next nike or the next crock. >> which would you rather? >> because something hits and it's great. remember 2017 they had those wool shoes. how do you stay ahead? >> our company is in our dna, we're thinking that someone like nike is putting $50 million budget and a great team trying to beat us, we're getting some publicity, some great noise. we never thought one innovation was going to create something that was going to be created.

we had already started a pipeline of other materials, this is our first and we put it into a couple silhouettes, there will be a couple more. material innovations we're coming out with are extraordinarily novel. never in the industry has the materials we're working with created something like close to negative carbon footprint. that's really what we're focused on doing. something out of a tree than a traditional shoe. >> the dutch do that. do you see copycats? copycats are coming. >> the wool biodegrades. we think of the end of life when we're designing this. not quite. >> you're not going to make an all wool stiletto, are you? >> what kind of other products? >> that is not in the pipeline.

>> good. >> question focussed on redefining comfort, and making comfort and distilling it into something simple. you see one seam in our shoe. we took out everything unnecessary. you can think of a number of different categories inside casual shoes and then outside of casual shoes where comfort is king, and you want something that every sing emday you can rely on to take you through whatever you're doing from when you wake up to when you go to bed. that's incredibly comfortable. >> let me ask you one last quick question. it's made all of wool. >> it's a nod back to our heritage. when we first settled, it was all birds no mammals. >> coming up next, the power of a single voice. four people, talking about that.

welcome back to press here. sitting is the new smoking. the worry that all in a time on our rear ends is the biggest health threat we face. it comes from a ted talk. merchant has a talent for coming up with pithy phrases. the power of onliness, make your ideas wild enough to dent the world. instead of fitting in at a large organization and climbing the ladder, the power of the internet gives you the power to spread your wild ideas. lett's address the first thing, the somewhat obviousness of that statement, the internet allows us to be heard, that's happening all the time. >> right, but for a lot of us, the ability to sort of claim one's narrative as ones own is

relatively new for a lot of us. 69% of the world, women, people of color, really young people, their onlies haven't counted for a long time. >> on the internet no one knows you're a dog, or 15 and have a great idea. live in some poor neighborhood some place, or whatever. that's essentially what you're saying. >> it changes the organizing principal. what we've been able to organize around before is the school i went to or the neighborhood i live in, or the parents i was born into. and now you can organize by ideas. >> i think i've certainly seen that happen, for good and bad. i actually wonder as the internet grows larger, we have bigger corporations. have you seen it change where small ideas have a harder time at all breaking through? now, so many people are on the internet. >> certainly there's a ka coffinny of noise.

we have different meanings. and so is meanness. we don't have enough rules and thoughts in place about how do we manage crowds, how do we bring out the best in people rather than the worst in people. >> what's an example of a breakthrough in your book. >> there's 20 some stories of positive people and ten negative stories. one of the breakout stories was a story of kimberly bryant. she was working in a major tech industry world. and lost in that world as a black woman in tech. when she saw her daughter go to stanford and get treated like a

lot of black girls get treated as if they aren't relevant and meaningful, she thought, i should figure out how to help these kids and she built curriculum around her kitchen table and borrowed computers and started teaching black girls code. >> i knew i knew that name. >> i spoke with her yesterday. >>. >> the organizing principle came around moms saying, can i borrow your curriculum. they've now trained over 10,000 girls, the power of that isn't so much -- somebody could have said to kim, your idea isn't meaningful to me, it could have been said as marginal, she claimed it as meaningful for herself. and that idea became the organizing factor for an entire business. >> i like what you wrote about, everyone has ideas, what do i know? you wrote something to the effect, only you are standing in the place you're standing or something to that effect. >> only you stand in that spot in the world that you stand in.

a function of your history and experience, vision and hopes. >> the reason i'm doing the history experience vision and hopes, we can prove our skills, we can't show anyone else when it's just this little mingling idea in our head or maybe something we go, that's broken, that needs to get fixed. >> what's the point, though, is the goal here to showcase and give a little bit of a how to for breakout ideas and successful companies or not profits, or is the goal like here's this opportunity where everyone can express themselves. there are thousands and thousands of people who sell their crafts on etsy, most of them don't make that much money, right? >> the organizing principle in why this idea became important, right now we've been organized

for commoditization of people. what is the steps of capabilities and strengths and passions you bring so the organizing system can be much more passion focused and we can change how we recruit, reward, build companies. that's the big thing, if a whole bunch of us had been told our ideas don't count, by ourselves or other people, we're actually having a latency in the system, that's sized to be a trillion dollar opportunity in the u.s. alone. >> that's sort of how? how is that a trillion dollar opportunity? >> i'll point to research that i did through the prosperity institute. if we engage the talent of people currently working, how would that occur, we try

angulated that data to get the number. >> you did it. >> thank you.

that's our show for this week. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.

damian trujillo: hello, and welcome to "comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today, la raza historical society, learn about our roots on your "comunidad del valle." male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle," with damian trujillo. damian: and we begin today with the start of the school year. dr. linda prieto is with the agency called alearn. and also with us is ruben bejinez, who is a student with the program. welcome to the show. welcome back, dr. prieto. both: thank you. damian: tell us about alearn again, and who benefits, and what you're all doing out there. linda prieto: absolutely. so, we are a nonprofit, and we've been around now for 10 years. we're celebrating our 10-year anniversary. we've served over 11,000 students, primarily in santa clara county, but also in san mateo county. we offer programs after school, but really in the summer is when we're the busiest. and so, we get to serve students like ruben, who are either going into their fifth grade year all the way