53 min listen
An Alternative to Silicon Valley Unicorns
An Alternative to Silicon Valley Unicorns
ratings:
Length:
51 minutes
Released:
Jun 30, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Why isn't Twitter doing more to get bots off their platform? Why isn’t Uber taking better care of its drivers? What if...they can't?Venture-capital backed companies like Twitter and Uber are held accountable to maximizing returns to investors. If and when they become public companies, they become accountable to maximizing returns to shareholders. They’ve promised Wall Street outsized returns — which means Twitter can't lose bots if it would significantly lower their user count and in turn lower advertising revenue, and Uber can’t treat their drivers like employees if it competes with profits.But what's the alternative? What might it look like to design an ownership and governance model that incentivizes a technology company to serve all of its stakeholders over the long term – and primarily, the stakeholders who create value?This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with two experts on creating the conditions for humane business, and in turn, for humane technology: Mara Zepeda and Kate “Sassy” Sassoon of Zebras Unite Co-Op. Zebras Unite is a member-owned co-operative that’s creating the capital, culture, and community to power a more just and inclusive economy. The Zebras Unite Coop serves a community of over 6,000 members, in about 30 chapters, over 6 continents. Mara is their Managing Director, and Kate is their Director of Cooperative Membership.Two corrections:The episode says that the failure rate of startups is 99%. The actual rate is closer to 90%.The episode says that in 2017, Twitter reported 350 million users on its platform. The actual number reported was 319 million users.RECOMMENDED MEDIA Zebras Fix What Unicorns BreakA seminal 2017 article by Zebras Unite co-founders, which kicked off the movement and distinguished between zebras and unicorns — per the table below.Meetup to the People Zebras Unite’s 2019 thought experiment of exiting Meetup to communityZebras Unite Crowdcast ChannelWhere you can find upcoming online events, as well as recordings of previous events.RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES A Renegade Solution to Extractive Economics with Kate Raworth: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/29-a-renegade-solution-to-extractive-economicsBonus — A Bigger Picture on Elon & Twitter: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/bigger-picture-elon-twitter Here’s Our Plan And We Don’t Know with Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin, and Stephanie Lepp: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/46-heres-our-plan-and-we-dont-knowYour Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_
Released:
Jun 30, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to Saving the Planet: How can we feel empowered to take on global threats? The battle begins in our heads, argues Christiana Figueres. She became the United Nation’s top climate official, after she had watched the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit collapse “in blood, in screams, in tears.” In the wake of that debacle, she began performing an act of emotional Aikido on herself, her team and eventually delegates from 196 nations. She called it “stubborn optimism." It requires a clear and alluring vision of a future that can supplant the dystopian and discouraging vision of what will happen if the world fails to act. It was stubborn optimism, she says, that convinced those nations to sign the first global climate framework, the Paris Agreement. We explore how a similar shift in Silicon Valley's vision could lead 3 billion people to take action. by Your Undivided Attention