Jon Weeks from the Evening Standard interviewed me for their How to Be a CEO podcast about Tumblr, and as I often do we mostly talked about open source.
If you can’t listen Techcrunch’s Sarah Perez posted a really nice summary of the interview.
Category Archives: Podcast
Whoop Podcast
Whoop is an excellent biometrics bracelet I’ve been wearing for a few months since my friend Jaime Waydo joined as their CTO. After many years of being very in the Garmin 945 camp, I now do an Apple Ultra for all the smart stuff, and Whoop for all the great sleep, HRV, and recovery information that I use to be aware of my energy levels throughout the day, complemented by the Rise sleep and energy tracker app. This has been my ideal combo.
The founder and CEO of Whoop, Will Ahmed, interviewed me for their podcast, which we covered for a more mainstream audience my passion for open source and creating an open ecosystem for a web, how I got started as an entrepreneur, how Automattic hires, growth mindset and mental clarity, working with Joe Hudson as an executive coach, and day-to-day routine (or lack thereof, sometimes).
Jack Dorsey and Running Two Companies
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jack Dorsey for the Distributed podcast, a conversation that ended up going a bit deeper and longer than previous episodes.
In preparation for the interview I kept coming across people critical about the fact that Jack is the CEO of two companies simultaneously, Twitter and Square, each having over 5,000 employees.
I think what people miss is that at that scale, running a company is not that different from running a large division of a company. No one asks Jeff Bezos how he’s CEO of both a retail company and a cloud computing one (AWS), or Tim Cook how he’s CEO of a hardware business and a services business, and of course with both of those examples the breadth of what the companies cover is much wider. Also as an added benefit, shareholders can choose to invest in Square and Twitter together or not.
All of that said, I think having a CEO-level seat at two of the most influential technology companies today does allow for accelerated learning, as organizational experiments will naturally happen at each company and then the best practice can be shared to the other. Jack wasn’t aware how much peer executives at each company meet with each other to share learnings, but that seems like an obvious win.
Readers of this blog will especially appreciate how much we talked about open source and cryptocurrencies, and his view on the three things he’s responsible for as CEO. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.
Introducing the Distributed Podcast
I’ve been meeting with some brilliant people for Distributed, my new podcast dedicated to exploring the future of work. The first episode is a conversation with Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork, about how they built a distributed culture, and how flexible work will shape the future of the global economy.
Unlike Automattic, Upwork does have an office in Silicon Valley (albeit one with a remote receptionist!). It was interesting to hear how Stephane’s teams balance in-person culture with inclusiveness for all employees, no matter where they live. Read more about Stephane’s work at Distributed.blog, and subscribe at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Podcast: Charleen Mullenweg
Podcast #10 is up with my sister Charleen. We talk about the art of TV shows, covering Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Babylon 5, Veronica Mars, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural, Alias, Lost, Joss Whedon, and more. This is a long one, clocking in at 12:46, but the file size is only 3.9mb. Here’s Charleen’s blog. Enjoy!
Podcast: Scott Berkun on Myths of Innovation
Back to podcasting! Podcast #9 is a 13 minute interview with Scott Berkun where we discuss, amoung other things, his new book The Myths of Innovation. It’s my longest podcast ever, but definitely worth it, especially if you’re involved with a startup or want to create something new.
Podcast 8
Podcast #8, which I mistakenly call #7, includes comments on podcasting, wallets, chipping, McDonalds, and Microsoft Office 2007. Hopefully this one shouldn’t sound all chipmunk in flash players. 3:30.
Podcast: John Roberts of OpenDNS
I had lunch with John Roberts of OpenDNS today, and we chatted a bit about OpenDNS and what surprised him about the business. 4:26.
Podcast: Glenda Bautista
Valentine podcast #6, with the inimitable Glenda Bautista, discusses Fall in New York City. 2:05. Bonus music: Autumn in New York sung by Billie Holiday.
Podcast: Pageflakes
Podcast #5 with Ole Brandenburg of Pageflakes is up, we talk about the importance of personal start pages. 3:14.
Podcast: EVDO
Podcast #4 is on EVDO, and comes in at 2:39.
Podcast: Steak with Ryan Boren
Podcast #3 is up, wherein Ryan and I discuss steak. (Before and after.)
Advertising and Blogs
Podcast #2 is up, broadly about advertising and blogs. 2:30. The quality is still awful, I might still sound like a chipmunk if you play it in flash, but thanks for all the great suggestions on the post from yesterday, I’ll be trying them out over the next few days.
First Podcast
I’m diving into the wild and wooly world of podcasting, and here is my first “episode.” Expect much experimentation to follow.
Startup Podsession
I joined Om and Niall’s podcast last week to talk about Startup Dos and Don’ts. Their podcasts are nice and short, about 20 minutes. Om tries to bait a Rails flame war but it doesn’t quite happen. 🙂
DORM’d Podcast
Podcast Interview
While I was in Cork, Ireland Tom Raftery interviewed me and Donncha for a podcast that is now live on his site. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it all through yet but it was fun talking to him, and the accents are awesome.
Web 2.0 Show
There is a new “Web 2.0 Show” (on podcast of course) that interviewed me as part of their innagural podcast. The Skype call quality was pretty bad, I must have been too close to the mic on my Powerbook or something. They said they’re fixing that for future shows.