protect your family. visit tobaccofreeca.com. the future of television with roku ceo and chairman an thoeb wood sits down to talk about battling apple and amazon. then to the genetics lab with ceo serge. and a look at san francisco through fresh eyes. erin griffin and michael, this week on "press: here." good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. i would assume you know what a roku. it's the little black box you

can add to your television to watch netflix and amazon video and youtube and hundreds of other channels, many for free. it's a smashing success. the company's most recent financial numbers thrilled wall street. that's particularly amazing because roku's competitors are huge. apple refreshed efforts with its own tv box, apple tv. anthony woods is ceo of roku. his two biggest competitors, apple and amazon, have orders. anthony is a television pioneer before he invented the set-top box, he joined the dvr. so, you've had quite the week. on thursday you announced that you can get hbo premium on roku

just in time for "game of thrones." then there is this report that amazon is going to throw millions into a new channel. that has to be another darn day for a ceo, i guess. >> it's a great time to be in the streaming business. people are streaming more and more. last year over 3 million people cut the cord. about half of roku customers don't have a traditional paid tv subscription, so, you know, business is booming. >> how does the game change now that apple is getting even more serious about streaming and one of the biggest consumer brands in the world, does that help bring more attention to it? it seems like reed hastings says the more people that come to the party, the bigger the party gets. how do you feel about that with apple getting -- >> yeah, you know, apple made an nou announcement about some much their new television services and roku was part of that announcement. we're one of the platforms

they'll be distributing services on. that's great. the biggest obstacle to more people streaming is how much content is available on streaming. the more content that comes to streaming, the more people want to watch it on streaming. i think it's exciting. >> you're kind of known as a hardware company. you started out selling boxes and now selling tv sxz also selling subscriptions through the service. how much of your business is actually selling subscription to the content versus selling the boxes. when i hear these criticisms that, oh, no, roku is under attack. i don't understand how that connects. >> that makes sense. i went to the dentist and the person cleaning my teeth. she says, where do you work. i love my roku but i paid $29 for it. i'm worried i'm going to go out of business. it's a very common misconception. we make almost no money selling our hardware. obviously, our goal is to have

as many people watching television as possible using the roku and tv interface. we do that by selling roku, the number one streaming device in the united states. we also ship to tv companies for people that build tvs. last year over one in four smart tvs sold in the u.s. ran roku's operating device. we put a lot of efforts into making that a great experience for customers. that's not how we make money. we distribute content through roku. we essentially get paid. >> content, that's interesting because amazon sells a box but amazon makes a lot of content as well. apple sells a box. apple is talking about if not has already made content. >> they've got oprah. >> yes. i will argue as well that comcast, which by the way, owns this television station, full disclosure, comcast owns the hardware but also makes a heck

of a lot of con terngnecticut t including this television show. you don't make content. are you going to be handicapped because you don't make content? >> no. we're a distribution channel for content. for example, we have xfinity app on roku. apple's new service will be on roku. we do get paid. we get paid, for example, if you signed up for hbo on roku, we get a revenue share for that subscription. that's an example of how we get paid. we also have a big advertising business as well. >> when we're seeing these headlines, apple is coming after you guys, amazon is coming after you guys, how big of a threat is that? is that a stris to you? are you nervous about it? is it overblown? >> those companies have competitive products but we're a

big distribution product of amazon. we also sell roku's on amazon.com. they have fire tvs. in terms of streaming players, we're the number one streaming players in united states. amazon he sells a lot of streami streaming devices. we've been competing with these large companies ever since we've been in business and successfully. our market share grew last year in streaming players. >> you're $7 or $8 billion company, is that right? >> market cap. >> i'm wondering if that makes you a takeout target for one of these companies. >> i have no idea. >> oh, you do too. look at that face. >> we are very happy as a full streaming company. >> you're talking about all the content and disney soon. you have a great search but you talked about getting a smart

assistant, a smart entertainment assistant. you talked about it last year. it seems like it didn't come to fruition. will you work with alexa or google assistant or have you abandoned those efforts? >> we're excited about disney launching a new service. this will bring more content to service. we've had options for a while. re have different models for tv. if they don't come in voice, you can buy a voice remote on our website. we also support alexa and google assistant. if you have devices with those voice assistants built in, you can use those to control your roku. we're part of that ecosystem. we are trying to make watch tv simpler. we're not trying to build an assistant. with when you have to search, instead of typing in the

letters, you can talk and it makes it easier to search, for example. >> let me ask you more about content. there was a short time back when you added -- or allowed the edition of alex jones and then quickly pulled it off. can you walk me through the process that went through your head. i know you're tense about me asking this question, but what i'm trying to get across is -- and we had matthew prince of cloud flair on some months ago where he had the responsibility whether or not to allow daily stormer through his service. you say, listen, we serve content and then along comes content we find objectionable. that's a hard balance. i don't care about the reasoning but i wonder about the balance in that room.

what do we do here? >> i'm generally a believer in free speech. we don't allow -- we don't disallow content on our platform unless it's illegal content. we do reserve the right to pick which content is districted on our platform. in that particular case, what happened was there were a lot of complaints and customers and business partners. at the end of the day we're a business and it was starting to affect our business. >> have there been other incidents that have caused complaints that you consider -- >> it happens regularly. i don't know what the cadence is, but once a year -- >> you haven't kicked any other platforms off? >> i don't -- i'm not sure. i don't keep track. >> i think that was the response i was looking for is that interesting -- you started with, we're an open platform. you ended with, but we're a business. and i feel -- i feel for you that that's got to be an

incredibly difficult balance to hold. >> it is. i lean towards being a platform -- if you think about it, the fact that today one in five u.s. households watch their tv through roku. that's a big number and it's getting bigger. our active accounts grew over 40 pst la 40% last year. we added millions and millions of accounts. you have the ability to control what people have access on their television. i don't want to pick what people have access to. >> but you did in -- >> in some cases it becomes problematic for our business. we're not the government. we're an independent, private company. so, we do make business decisions ultimately at the end of the day. >> you want me to let you off the hook. what's your favorite zooish i thought i answered -- >> youtube, amazon, netflix.

what don't i have on my roku i should. you're like, oh, no, how could you miss that one? are you asking me to -- >> do you have the xfinity app? >> i don't. my own comcast xfinity app, i don't. roku is japanese for six, right? >> correct. >> i did my research. what's the next project? >> i'm very happy with roku. there was another roku, which spent out bright sign, the leading digital sign company in the world. which i'm the chairman of. >> anthony wood, ceo of roku. thanks for being with us this morning. up next, a scientist and ceo who's willing to admit everything he doesn't know when "press: here" continues.

featuring conversations with silicon valley power players. >> i still remember when we did the acquisition of youtube. >> subscribe now to the sandhill podcast. >> i'm betting you a nickel. >> you're out of your mind. welcome back to "press: here." i'm rather proud of some of the issues we've taken on on this show. not just the controversial stuff but complicated stuff. things leak quantum computing and carried interest tax structure. this morning genomix. this is video inside 10x where

scientists are building the tools that will cure cancer and prevent aging and solve disease by concentrating on single cells. the company has grown 2,000% since 2015 and is now worth more than $1 billion. founder and ceo dr. serge is a smart man but what impresses me is what he doesn't know. telling bloomberg, the big obstacle is how little underlying science we actually know. biology is really complex and we can see only 5 or 10% of it. he was the first employee at 23andme and grew up in the soviet union. thanks for being with us. i was impressed by saying you don't know what you don't know. but what's the difference between genetic and geneomex. >> it's a good question. genetics is a study of inheritance, how traits get passed to children.

and genomics is the study of genomes that determines your biology. >> going back to that quote, what i got from that is now that we have this science that you're able to give to scientists, we're at a pivot point in which we are going to learn a tremendous number of things that a stethoscope or microscope could have never told us. >> now we understand as the quote suggested, my fundamental belief, you understand very little of the under lying biology. you look at what that means in the real world, as companies, pharmaceutical companies develop drugs, for example, 90% of the drugs that enter clinical trials fail. the reason is -- it's kind of like trying to fix a car without knowing how the cars work.

we try things and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. we want to step back and appreciate the fact that we don't know that much biology. that requires underlying biology. we have huge, long genome, 6 billion letters long, 40 trillion cells. each human has close to 40 trillion cells, each expressing their own genetic based on that genome. so, the complexity is daunting. the way to address it is to build tools to address it. >> that's what your company is doing. you have a billion dollar company doing this research. can you explain the business model? how big of a business is this? >> we give tools to scientists to understand biology to ultimately cure disease and the

advance human health. there's lots of scientists, buy o biologists, clinicians ho with use these. we sell ourselves as software, chemistry, hardware. we sell the instrument up front and then they buy cartridges, chemicals from us, to run that instrument. there's an ongoing source of revenue. for every experiment a scientist runs, they purchase from us. >> you're selling the proverbial pick axes in a gold rush. >> in a sense. we're of enabling the gold rush as well. we're enabling people to make big advances. >> speaking of the gold rush, your revenue is growing like gang busters. you hired tesla's finance chief. that's spurring speculation when you might go public. i know you wouldn't give us timing. but it your calculations change or lift, i know it's a totally different business, bit have a

lot of high-profile ipos this year coming up. >> it's certainly in the news. for us, the business has been scaling really well. and for me -- the goal for all of us is to build a good company. the market opportunity feels boundless. the goal is to built a very large company. >> no ipo this year. >> it's sort of like -- the conditions of the market is sort of independent. we can go when we need to and if it makes sense -- if it makes sense to go public for the purpose of building a very large company, we will do it. >> you had said hardware, chemistry, software. i'm guessing it's the software that is the most difficult thing. also the thing that is giving us the best insights into what's going on inside the cell. this is the kind of tool we would not have had 50 years ago. the other stuff we might have been able to do. the computers we would not have had. >> i'm going to correct you a little bit.

software is absolutely necessary and huge enabler what we do. all the other components we've had to innovate just as much. and the hardware, something called microfluid, the chemistries -- >> all brand-new. >> all brand-new. >> we had to innovate and invent all kinds of things and build on the shoulders of giants. a lot of the work has been done in the industry as a general over the last 20 years. all of these parts -- that's one of the things that's been challenging with the company to begin with is we needed to invent a lot of things from all these different areas before we even knew we had a product. >> you came from the soviet union. you end up studying under wally gilbert at harvard. that must have been a tremendous leap. >> wally is a special person. for me, i feel very fortunate in terms of coming -- immigrants, going to new york and ending up at harvard. and i think the major thing actually there, when i think back to your question, is the sense of actually -- at some

point i had this realization. you can actually change the world. you're there, well, other people make things happen. there's no reason why you can't do it. >> can you talk at all about the ethical considerations of genomics. i feel like these kind of conversations come up a lot. you guys are providing the tools for the people doing the research. there's so much positive potential of what could happen but are you also -- are you doing anything to prevent possible negative outcomes with your tools? >> tat this stage we're very early in the chain, in the process. we're enabling science to be done. i tend to believe that's generally speaking new science, new discoveries is a huge net positive for the world. >> regardless of what they might lead to? >> ultimately there will be questions. those questions will need to be dealt with, the governmental and ethical considerations. >> you're putting a lot of faith

in our government to the do that. >> and it's want just our government. >> there's currently no ethical framework for how we're thinking of this. there's not a body out there establishing how are we going to consider these things once they become real. >> right. which is why for us much of the focus sis enabling new science r vision enabling new cures. that's the driver for us. cure cancer is one. >> it's very noble. i like it. >> speaking of ethics, but how did the collapse of theranos and that whole debacle and biomedicine. is. a whole -- >> i know it's different but biomedicine. >> we're like the anti-theranos. >> to be fair enough, this box you're selling looks like a heck -- we aren't making any accusation. >> we have close to 400 peer

reviewed publications built on our products so we're open. >> that's about 400 more. >> you're not facing more skepticism? >> actually, we haven't. we haven't. >> one of those people had a ph.d. in genetics from stanford. the other quit stanford at 19. >> that's right. >> thanks for being with us this morning. we'll be back in just a minute.

welcome back to "press: here." we're delighted to have the talented erin and michael with us. erin, you worked in new york. you're relatively new to living in san francisco. you've been covering tech for a long time. >> from new york. >> yes. >> a lot of red eyes. >> yes. so, you've been to san francisco a zillion times. that said, i would like to get your impression of the city from someone who is new living here. michael and i have lived here 20 years or so. >> sure. well, one of the things that's different about covering tech from within what i now realize is an actual tech bubble is that, you know, there are a lot of absurdities, things that get made fun of on the tv show

"silicon valley" and in new york i would interview people and we would talk about these things and it was, that, that, funny, yeah, right? but when i'm here, there isn't that. i realize it is a very contained bubble where people are all talking to each other. i found that has been a little disarming. generally it feels like i'm coming at the end of a moment. for a long time we had debates about whether or not we're in a tech bubble. since i got here, i realize that conversation hasn't happened hardly at all. it's not on the top of people's mind and that makes me a little nervous. the minute we stop talking about are we in a tech bubble probably means we are. that's something i've been thinking about a lot, especially as all of these ipos come up. >> that's an interesting per sicktive. you came here in '98 because of the dot.com boom and then boom.

your day doesn't get any less busy. >> there should be a meter for tech reporter jobs and that should be a way for us to track whether or not we're in a double. "the washington post" has staffed up -- >> it's mazing. >> every sincele publication i've seen is trying to add staff to cover tech right now. it's a huge kind of boom. so, that should almost be a sign that there's wide mainstream interest what the tech industry is doing. >> it's permeating our whole business because in the ap, no matter what you cover, there's a tech component in it. >> education, culture, tech addiction, education, every aspect of our life has technology. even with kids, youtube kids, that whole controversy. there needs to be tech savviness in every single news roompy don't see that slowing down because it's so ubiquitous in our lives.

>> i hope you will come back and join our panel. >> thanks for having me. >> delighted to have you. thank you. we'll be back in just a minute.

that's our show for this week. before we go, i want to make sure you know our new podcast called sandhill road, an easy to follow look at venture. it's light on finance and heavy on personality. starbucks says it will accept bitcoin in four years and i bet him it won't. >> you won't think starbucks will accept bitcoin in four years? >> i bet you. >> you're out of our mind.

>> shawn, our producer is here. we bet a nickel and we'll send is it to a charity. >> you're out of your mind. where are you living? are you living in a hole? >> sand hill road on apple podcasts or whenever you find your podcasts. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. and welcome to

"comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today we have cast members from the luis valdez play "adios mama carlota" in our studio on your "comunidad del valle." male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle" with damian trujillo. damian: and we begin today with such a powerful event for kids, it's where nasa comes to the students. with me on "comunidad del valle" are andres martinez, he is with nasa, and also rene sanchez, he's the assistant superintendent of the alum rock school district. welcome to the show. andres martinez: thank you. damian: rene, what an opportunity for these students to have something like this happening right in their own backyard. rene sanchez: i think it's a tremendous opportunity. we're going on four years in this partnership. and it's an opportunity not only to showcase the great things