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Zoom Rent-a-cops for online security

Mobile app spending to double, audio broadcasting, NPM joins GitHub, Wework sells Meetup, Zoom security issues.

Transcript

Justin  0:00  
All right.

We are live.

Alright guys, welcome to our second episode of remote voices. We have a guest this week. I'm going to introduce her in just a second. We're excited to kind of queue up all these topics that we've got on the right you're gonna see our first tweet already on the right just ignore it for now, because we're going to focus on our amazing guests. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, Tell us a little bit about what you do and what your company does. And yeah, we'll kind of go from there.

Brooke  1:05  
Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me. This is super awesome. I'm Brooke. I am CEO and co founder at work from my background is project management and front end development. I'm current we're currently a tech stars company. So going through that work from mission is to improve the lives of remote workers. And so far we've done that by helping people find places to work, like coffee shops, co working spaces, and now we're moving into helping people connect better with the people that also love those places. And in the current situation right now, virtually connecting people for things that they miss out on when they don't have an office when it specifically pertains to to other humans.

Justin  1:50  
Now, how do you connect to them to these places are this is it rented or you just finding them spots that they can just go like in the case of a coffee shop, but just tell me a little bit more about yourmodel.

Brooke  2:01  
Yeah, so it's a crowdsource platform. So it's not rentable, it's literally, like, very similar to the place piece of our world is very similar to a Yelp. So anybody can add a place you see Wi Fi speeds if it's noisy, a ton of coffee shops are on there. And then also, as we're moving into this new world, we have a slack community. But yeah, as far as the the place goes, it's all free and crowd sourced.

Justin  2:27  
Very cool. Yeah. I was gonna ask, like, how has this you know, virus situation impacted you guys because clearly you focus on real estate and real locations. You know, what have you guys done to kind of adopt to this new world or adapt your product?

Brooke  2:41  
Yeah, so what we've done you're right, yeah, people aren't quite using the places. But we were moving into kind of shifting our product a little bit and making places a part of what we are and not necessarily our entire core. So we're really leaning into our slack community right now.

Like getting trying to get people to go anyplace. So we've been doing a lot of virtual workshops. And so we have the community was built because people are naturally drawn to work from and finding coffee shops when they were remote workers and you know, kind of isolated and lonely. And so that just naturally evolved into an online community. And so we're just leaning into that right now and launching

products or features that will help people connect purely virtual right now. Yeah, like I said, lots of virtual workshops. Trying to create some one on one connections a la donut style, but kind of on video testing some things there. Yeah, a lot of testing.

Justin  3:39  
And this is like people that aren't necessarily in the same company, right?

Brooke  3:42  
Correct

Justin  3:43  
Like this is just working and Okay, cool.

Brooke  3:46  
Yeah, correct. Yeah, cuz we kind of like to say, you know, your co workers might be all over the world. But you also have co workers that are near you and people working like you. They could easily meet they it's kind of hard right now. Actually.

Justin  3:59  
Very cool. Yeah.

Hunter and I had talked about doing something like there's a coffee shop radio just like a place where you could tune in and almost hear like background cafe noises to make you feel so lonely. I don't know what your thoughts on that are if hunter you want to dive into that a little bit more.

Brooke  4:17  
Yeah, so I do no service, but I can't remember the name. But it is like a armband on Viet noise coffee shop situation. I can't remember the name. But we have a channel in our slack specifically called coffee break. Anybody can start a zoom channel at any time. And just basically hop on and chat with each other.

We have people hopping on there from like Ecuador, Ireland, Boston. So that's something we've done too. And I think a live co working idea could be a cool idea. So yeah. If you guys did that would be awesome.

Hunter  4:50  
Yeah, that is pretty cool. I'm curious how how are you handling your Slack channel right now? Did you guys create an entirely new slack community just for work from

Brooke  4:59  
No, so we always had one, it was a Yeah, we always had a slack community, what we've done is drop the price. So it was kind of this, you know, $99 lifetime happening. We've dropped the price down and might even continue to do that just because, you know, we want to get people in there. And it's kind of the updates we're making our actual website are kind of trying to mesh what we've created in slack with places. So yeah, the slack community is not new, but we're definitely trying new things. And also kind of reorganizing channels so that as more people come in, it's not chitchat is like our biggest channel by far. And it's awesome. Everybody's just like, having random conversation, but we're trying to like make sure it's definitely organized based on expertise, or, you know, the coffee shop thing. So those are changes we're making. And I think just making sure that it's not just a bunch of noise, and then it's actually helpful and valuable for people.

Justin  5:57  
Do you find that most of your users are like in a large company or they're freelancers or agencies because I feel like as a freelancer, you know, former Freelancer myself, the isolation and loneliness thing is a real issue for me. But inside of a company, I guess I have people to talk to, like, what's your user split typically look like?

Brooke  6:16  
So the last survey we did about 70% of our work from members were employees at companies.

But we also do get a lot of freelancers, but just from the chatter, notice in Slack, it's not everybody might have the team culture that you do. So even if you're in a big company, you can still feel that isolation if you're kind of remote work culture isn't super thriving. But yeah, so we have a kind of a mix of people, but it's definitely majority of our employees, companies.

Justin  6:48  
I think thats super interesting super interesting because like, that does speak to the problem, generally in a cultural level that people feel the need that they have to go reach out to this third party service because they still don't feel part of kind of a larger group of people even at their own company?

Brooke  7:05  
Yeah, and I mean, it'd be awesome to in a world where work from could be that for a company, like if they're not super, you know, a lot of people are going remote and creating a remote culture I know super hard. So it's like, just get everybody into a work room will help create thatwould be pretty cool.

Justin  7:20  
I can see it functioning almost like an employee benefit. You know, like for, you know, in office employees, you get coffee stations and keen wobbles. And if you're a remote employee you get access to work from because that's the stuff that you miss out on in the office. I can definitely see like it being a perk for you know, remote employees.

Brooke  7:40  
Yeah, hell yeah. That'd be awesome. And I just even think like, future when we can when we are going to, you know, our coffee shops that we love, which we've learned people have like their two or three places. If you're a coffee shop person, that's where you go. So to be able to help people, connect with others that also love those things too in a physical world.

Not just digitally. Super awesome.

Justin  8:02  
Yeah, very cool. Well, awesome. I mean products. Amazing. That's definitely needed. You look at any of the stats on remote work, loneliness, isolation. Those are some of the biggest problems that people have remote work. So you're solving a real problem. And again, I think, I think would actually draw people to accompany if a company offered that as a perk. But yeah, let's let's dive into some of these tweets. And I'd love to get your thoughts. Obviously, we kind of live on our own little founder of bubble hunter and myself, you know, commonly go back and forth on all these topics. So it's awesome to bring kind of a third party in and get their opinion on something. So I'd love to just kind of like show you a couple tweets, and we'll have some discussion around them Sound like a plan. Sweet. Cool. Alright, so this first one is basically I don't know how connected you are into kind of the developer world, but GitHub bought NPM and we already know that GitHub themselves actually got purchased, I think last year, so there's like this nesting dolls.

situation happening with a lot of what developers at least consider community tools, even though at the end of the day, I think they are technically companies. And, you know, GitHub was, you know, for profit, but I think a lot of people view it as this giant open source collective. Yeah. I'm just curious, like, did you hear this news? Like, what do you think? What do you think the impact is going to be to the developer community?

Brooke  9:21  
I know I didn't hear this news. I guess my in my world. My question would be,

I'm curious how big NPM is as a company, will they be fully remote? Now? I know GitHub is like a huge, kind of a huge company. Like one of the largest companies. It's 100%. Fully remote. So I'm curious how that's gonna work out.

Justin  9:43  
Yeah. I mean, I guess to add some context on that. So NPM is your node package manager. So when you're developing in JavaScript, this is the thing that like, I mean, just hundreds of thousands of open source projects are hosted there. It's like the thing that like saves everyone time and their development stack, like our project at the end of the day is almost built entirely out of just like free NPM packages that help us, like move forward very quickly with our project.

So yeah, I think the concern for the community is now it's going to a for profit organization, they could like start paid modules, they could lock down the free stuff, maybe they'll remove stuff that's like competitive to them. So it it's interesting, you know, when big, big corporations end up buying up these kind of like, hacky in their, you know, indie, you know, maker tools, because they those guys start to get scared because maybe all of their stuff is gonna get taken away, I think is kind of the fear.

Brooke  10:41  
Yeah, I really hope not. Yeah, so I've used NPM like in school and stuff. So I remember like doing it, my terminal and all that stuff be, they're helpful. I hope that I would hope that GitHub would see the benefit of not changing it. People love it for a reason. I'm curious. Did you guys see much of a change Product Hunt in the angel list acquired like did that was community or, you know, I didn't particular notice any changes as far as that goes.

Justin  11:10  
I noticed a lot, but I don't know if it had anything to do with the angel list acquisition. I've just noticed a lot of changes recently. Hunter, what did you think?

Hunter  11:20  
I didn't see anything from like a consumer perspective, but from posting perspective, it might have changed a little bit. But just going back to this real quick, I do think though, I think it's important to remember I think it was Microsoft, that boy, GitHub, correct. Yep. Yeah. So I'd be interested to see what Microsoft does with teams and whether or not they leverage NPM and GitHub into the teams. Because a lot, there's a lot of friction right now with teams joining with teams joining teams. So I'm interested to see if this helps alleviate some of that and see the integrations that come but

Justin  11:53  
I think we'll probably do is, is that they'll just make NPM more accessible like they'll add a nice gooey to it on the website like you can search it and like install packages just off github.com instead of what you know, you were saying all over the terminal Brooke, because it is it's very like dirty old hacker style way of doing things you're manually typing in commands, you have to search for package names explicitly.

You know, you can't just like search for some keyword and bring up a list. It's all done through the, you know, the Mac terminal or the Linux terminal. I feel like GitHub has an opportunity to make something cool out of this and host on their website and stuff. But your product has questions actually really good. That's it's a great example of something that started very community driven and very, like open and honest and driven by the people and then definitely became, I think it became a little bit too profits driven. Their ad packages like hunter and I've been looking at their advertising rates for stuff in my opinion is just exorbitantly expensive, especially for something that at a base level

You get to use for free and already reach the same audience just by launching. I understand why they do it. But it's just it's definitely catering to a different version of a startup, like, you know, we're VC funded, and it's still really expensive and something that would make a huge dent in our runway to throw that kind of money at it. Did you notice anything when that happened?

Brooke  13:20  
I didn't. I haven't been a poster on podcast. I'm purely a lurker, I guess. So I didn't. I didn't really notice anything. I haven't done a product launch on there and quite a while. But it is interesting. It's something I'd love to keep an eye on us. Like, we definitely are like for the people by the people that type. So it's like as we grow and get funding and all that kind of stuff. Interesting to see how different companies or products that are based on that kind of evolve when these big changes happen.

Hunter  13:54  
Yeah, I think it's if I think because for Angelist

Andreas Klinger Yeah, he works very closely with the product team. And I think that they just happen to have very similar outlooks on what they want the companies to look like. I remember when

Product Hunt got acquired, one of the things that Ryan Hoover said was like, they aligned so closely. And I know a lot of VCs are obviously on angellist. And they're also looking at products on almost every single day. So those things are really similar. What I what I think is interesting is I was recently talking with somebody about the how Reddit as basically become too corporate, and they've censored things, and they're not making the right choices. So I think in that case, it was like community driven first and then like a corporate layer on top that just didn't jive with each other. So I think that's why Product Hunt, you didn't see the change. So I'd be interested because get GitHub actually was community driven. And then now NPM was community driven. So I'm hoping that that stays the same. And that way they you won't see the change either. We'll see though.

Brooke  15:07  
Yeah,

Justin  15:08  
Yeah, that'll be interesting.

I think you're right, in that they were very similar cultures. And that helped that that mesh because they're fully remote Angel list really supported that. I don't think you saw many changes, you know, obviously product on didn't go to like a paid product or anything like that. But I've seen changes as opposed to for sure. So it's interesting book that you say you didn't see any changes from a lurker as you called it perspective, because that's interesting, because it is obviously a huge audience that they have to cater to at the same time. And if that's not changing, maybe that's good. And maybe it's supposed to be changing, you know, for us that are hunting products and us that are product owners, which by the way, if you guys end up wanting to launch anything soon, especially around kind of like the virtual stuff that you're working on, definitely let us know we would love to hunt it for you on product on.

Brooke  16:00  
Amazing. Yeah. Love that.

Justin  16:04  
Awesome. All right.

So this is Amazon workers. And instacart, I believe, kind of doing a strike. I have, I guess, political feelings about this. But Brooke, you're probably a little bit more integrated into the startup culture. I'm wondering what your thoughts are and like what you've done internally at your company in terms of working. I'm sure you guys like remotes? Not a big deal for you. But what about people that maybe had like kids in school and have to take care of them? Like what have been your policies around like having people work during this time? And what are your thoughts on this?

Brooke  16:39  
Yeah, so our team is small, very small. So Darren and I are the only full time and then we have three close to full time contractors. So as far as policy goes, like Darren and I, we had a team meeting and just very people first and so making sure to like, be clear.

Like, how's everybody feeling? Is there stuff you need to deal with. And if you do like that comes first before anything, like, fair and I have our eye on the prize as far as business stuff goes. And so we just really care that people feel supported. So and we but like I said, we have a small team. So it might be a little bit easier to do things like that Darren does have a two year old. So he's been in isolation with him and his wife, who's also was always a remote worker, but they usually had childcare. So that's been interesting. And I think just myself learning, I don't have any kids. So learning to be graceful, I'm trying to understand that and that I, you know, we might all have to work at different times of the day, sometimes he can work only from 10 to midnight, and we just have to be flexible around that. That's just our how we've been dealing with it.

Interesting about instacart because even just here in Portland, I've heard like, you can't get deliveries at all that we've tried. And yeah, so it's just interesting.\

Hunter  17:58  
Oh really can't even get deliveries in Portland?

Brooke  18:01  
God no it's been like I think people have had different experiences but it's like you know two weeks out or three weeks out and that's just not really how you know that doesn't work. groceries yeah we have a local companies actually a fellow tech stars company called local milk run and you order directly from the farmers. So I've been trying to push people cool that prepares the founders freaking awesome, but it's Yeah, it's just super cool. And it's like I said, the bigger companies and grocery delivery seem to kind of be not being able to service people as quickly as needed. I saw i don't know i don't know if i sent this to you, Justin. But I saw this butcher delivery basically the same thing instead of milk. It's like meat.

Hunter  18:42  
I'm getting ads like crazy for it now. I mean, I'm super into like eating, but I don't know maybe. But I think it's interesting that these these startups are kind of taking off right now. But at the same time you have people like instacart they're, they're striking. So there's like this. The industry is booming with

Justin  18:59  
At the same time the employees feel like they're not being protected. I think it's. This is crazy. I think for me there's like there's such a weird split here because you have half of the US saying like, hey, let us work we have to make money. What are we going to do? How are we going to pay our bills, and then you have like literally the only market in which you have the most secure job like an Amazon warehouse worker, because a that's just the only way we're going to be able to get stuff in and I can already tell that stuff is going crazy. I am I've got this crazy streaming setup here. I bought a camera and I've had it all set up and to really get it set up properly I need a dummy battery, so the battery doesn't die. And it's today ship off Amazon except for it's going to take a month to get to me right now. Because they're so backed up on deliveries. And like it's got to be the most secure job that you could possibly get in America right now is like a delivery person or a warehouse worker. And I get part of me wants to say like, be thankful for the job that you have. I don't know if that makes you sound like coarse and

I might get shit on for that. But like, in a way, it's just weird because they have literally the only job that has no chance of being lost. And they're striking. Now that doesn't say that Amazon shouldn't be paying them more. I mean, Bezos makes just a ridiculous amount of money. We can have that conversation all day long. And Hunter, I know you have all kinds of thoughts on that. But like, it just seems weird to me that the only people with incredibly safe jobs right now are like warehouse workers and nurses. And the nurses we should just bow down to and be incredibly grateful for for like the warehouse workers like, dude, you have the golden opportunity right now to just have like, really steady money for a very long time. I would not want to screw that up. I don't know Hunter, what do you think?

Hunter  20:45  
I'm actually more interested in what Brooke thinks. Because even on her LinkedIn, she specifically says that she's humanistic. So I'm actually curious from an empathetic standpoint, which he thinks

Brooke  20:57  
Yeah, I mean, so I think that If you are not wanting to work, I think an employer's being willing to lay people off. I don't know what that, you know, I know that's happening a lot employers are laying people off. So they collect unemployment, maybe that's better for them. I'm not exactly, you know, sure about that. But I think there are some people willing to work. So it's kind of like, if you're not willing to work, then choose this path. You know, you can, you know, whatever that is, whether it's like, we'll lay people off, do, you don't want to work and then people that do want to work in the world can do this. And like you said, like, yeah, you're putting yourself at risk. But if that's your choice, just like a nurse or any, you know, you're choosing to work. So I think having different options for people based on what they're comfortable with, or, or not, I think is probably the way to go. Right?

Hunter  21:49  
Yeah. The key word you just said though, is choice. As long as they the people have the choice to I think that's fine. I noticed that. I think yesterday, Burger King is giving bonuses out to people that actually work. through it. So if you're willing to take the risk, I think that it's the right thing to do is for the employer to reward that. But yeah, you're right, Justin it is. I didn't think about that. That's really weird though, it seems, at least from the media makes it seem like half the half the people want to work. And the other half might be, I don't want to say half but the other half might be striking. It's a weird time.

Justin  22:21  
it's interesting to me, just because I think I subscribe to choosie the beggars on on Reddit subreddit where people just post screenshots of people begging for stuff, but then being very picky about the free stuff that they're given. And, you know, it takes a certain type of person to be like that, I guess. But for me, this seems like one of those situations. It's like, Oh my god, you know, we're going to hell in a handbasket. What are we gonna do? Oh, thank God, I have a job. And then it's like, oh, well, you need to pay me more. I need hazard pay. I need paid time off. Actually, I don't want to work at all, but I still want you to pay me. So there's like all these like, you know, slight changes that

They want made, when in reality like, the kind of fortunate they the only job that has no chance of going away right now. And I'd be clamoring for that. I mean, my wife's down to two day work weeks, their hotels at 8% occupancy. So they've laid off majority of the staff even at least temporarily, like the lead front desk person just doesn't have a job. She's getting paid, but she's asked not to come in. And my wife is covering for her now because she's considered an essential employee. And like I see all of these people losing their jobs left and right. And so the last thing I would be doing is like, going on strike, I guess. I don't know. That's just kind of my position on it.

Brooke  23:36  
Yeah, it's interesting too. It's for me, my parents are small business owners, they own a restaurant and carwash, Lucia. So they're struggling to say the least. And so it's interesting when you compare it to that versus Amazon when it's like, it's hard to it's like, Is it because you know, you're such a huge company that they people have different demands from them. How does this situation vary from small business owners Two giant corporations as far as being an employee, and then yeah.

Justin  24:06  
Yeah, definitely.

All right, what do we got next?

Okay, so all the zoom stuff. I don't know if you've seen any of this Brooke, but I guess like, shit hit the fan for zoom recently. I mean, a we know that just millions of downloads and tons of traffic for a while I know they were even like clogged up on the video streaming people were having all kinds of issues and quality on calls. But literally, like, I guess yesterday, just tons and tons of articles coming out about privacy breaches and data leaks. And then I guess like their mobile app was reporting stuff to Facebook for some reason, which I don't really understand. And now there was a bunch of stuff that came out today about like, if you sign in from a personal email account, because like there's no sign ins necessarily in zoom unless you're the account owner, but if you like type in an email, just when you click a zoom link, it adds you to some contact list and now you could

accidentally call some stranger that you've never met before because you're included in like a company directory, even though you don't belong to that company. I guess my my thing to talk about this, like, the thing to chat about is how much it sucks to be in the limelight sometimes, like you're just under constant scrutiny, like people are going to be looking at you harder. It's like a fear I have for my own startup is that once we get big, and we just have tons and tons and tons and millions and millions of users that all of a sudden, you know, we're gonna actually just be a giant target for people to attack. I don't know, Brooke, like, what do you think?

Brooke  25:35  
Yeah, I agree. I feel like and with startups, people tell me that this is the best time and these problems are the best, most fun problems to have and all that kind of stuff. It's like, yeah, as you get bigger and you step more into, you know, the arena or Rene brown reference, but as you said, then more things coming at you and you're more, you're not vulnerable, but it's like you're there to be a target for other people.

So yeah, I could imagine a lot of people as this was happening. It's like, oh, zoom is like the best company to be right now. I'm so jealous, like what a, you know, wish I was zoom wish I would have thought about that, but then changes. It's like, stuck like this. And so it's like the grass is not always greener.

Justin  26:17  
Do you feel that as a startup?

Brooke  26:21  
I do. But one thing I'm learning with this personally, the lot like going through the stage of a startup is that like, if it's scary, I should do it. So like, even things like this, or I've been on public couple podcasts lately, things like if I like, I don't know about that. It's like kind of putting myself out there, then it's like, just Just do it. Because that's the kind of stuff and move forward. So yeah, as a startup and support, it's a bit scary, but it's problems I want to have being a startup founder. Like I want to be in a position to be able to deal with that, and complete the mission of which we all set out to do with the startups we've created. So

yeah, it's scary, but not scary. Not to stop doing it.

Brooke  27:04  
Okay, what do you guys think? Yeah,

Hunter  27:06  
I think what's interesting about this is this not to be political, but it just seems like zooms now getting cancelled. So it wasn't. It was less than four days ago where I've seen thank God for zoom. My entire class, my entire company, everything is running on zoom. Right now, zoom calls are dropping left and right, less than a week ago, because of the amount of people on it. And so one week we have everybody's praising nurses in zoom. And then the next week, it's canceling zoom for every flaw. I guarantee none of these flaws came about within the last 48 hours. It's just people decided to start saying something about it, or at least those stories started to get relevant because zoom. Apparently IP owing wasn't making them relevant enough. Now that everybody knows who zoom is now these stories can come to light and I just don't. To me, I don't really like that where people are just kind of holding off on stuff.

Until someone has Success to me. I think zoom regardless of any of this is true. I think zoom has done an incredible job of handling the amount of traffic when the United States at least needed it most.

I mean, even Google Classroom is is a thing and but zoom has really become the go to tool right now. And I just it just sucks that like people are punishing the success and it doesn't really seem to be from a good place. It's I mean, I don't know who DHH is, but

Justin  28:31  
that's our base camp, buddy.

Brooke  28:33  
Yeah

Hunter  28:34  
oh okay. Yeah, I just don't The reason why I say I think there's a motivation behind it is because the last word in his tweet there says corrupt. there's a there's a motivation coming out of it before we know all the facts. So to me, it seems more politically motivated and just trying to rip on their success versus actually caring about it because like I said, this probably didn't come out about in the last four hours. It's probably just people are finding out about it now that they're successful.

Justin  28:59  
Yeah. I mean, it's it's new information, I guess, but it's not new facts, you know, they've been tracking people for a while a lot of what he's talking about here is is mostly the privacy breaches. Like, I don't know if you remember we talked about this, like eight months ago, actually on the original remote Voices Podcast that never got released. When zoom had that weird bug that would like let any website control your webcam

like so like a couple things that came up in this thread was they had that bug where they were like force installing something at like a kernel level that let any website hijack your webcam, because like they essentially built malware on purpose because it it lowered the barrier to entry. Like it was less friction for the zoom application, which is a question of how good of UX is too good. You know, like you've done such a great job building UX that you actually accidentally built malware. And then like, the other thing they did is to lower the amount of like, effort it took to install the app, they would hijack the like installation process.

Using like scripting, and like, basically hit like next neck next all the way through for you so that you didn't have to like do all the installation yourself, which again, is one of those things of like, is that genius or evil? Like it depends on kind of your perception because they built something that totally like removed your

like ability to decide or consent. I don't know, in a weird way your software consent, which is such a nerdy thing to say, but it removes your ability to consent, but it also does actually inherently reduce friction. So I can understand in a way that like some dev or designer came up with this idea and thought it would be amazing because they could reduce the friction tenfold. And now you know, Twitter's are upsetting because technically speaking, that's a breach of my privacy. But I don't know I think for me, one of the more interesting things here's what I tweeted out a couple hours ago, which you just brought up, which is like Google Classroom exists and hangouts meet nuber conference and WebEx and there's like a million tools

Unknown Speaker  31:00  
hop in and join me and all these things that exist for for video conferencing. And somehow those zooms still became the de facto, which is like hats off to them. I think that's amazing. But I'm also really confused like what were like there's got to be some conspiracy theory here that prevented all these schools that already had an existing system. And you you tweeted it out today, Hunter, just that, like Google Hangouts integration with Google calendar is unparalleled. Having that deep integration at a kind of company level is beyond anything that zoom provides because Google Calendar plus Google Hangouts, it's a match made in heaven, and just like auto creates these links for you. So like, why is nobody using these other pieces of software? Why How did zoom become the central focus? For me that I'm just confused. I don't know if if your experience has been different, Brooke, like, have you guys used any other meeting tools?

Brooke  31:49  
No, we've, we've been on time. And it's like a random like, when I've tried to do Google, like, if you for me, I'm like learning you're not like in the technology industry, so for me if I try to get some use of Google Hangouts, they email by trying to get try to get them to use Google Calendar. And they're still on. I just feel like there's some barriers to just like, whipping up a Google Hangouts I think I haven't used in a long time. But I think zooms like create an account, have a link, or just don't like that kind of you don't need any other world around it. Use it

seems why it's been. So

Justin  32:29  
I think that's one of the key things is the click without a link or without an account, the ability to just click a link and not have to like log into a Google account or I don't know, I think especially for probably kids as well as older folks. It's like, Oh, I don't remember my password. I have to have a Gmail to get into this. Why this doesn't make sense. Except for with, you know, zoom, you just click it and it's like, yeah, my name is Justin, enter, and I'm in so there is power in that for sure.

Brooke  32:54  
Yeah, I didn't think so. It's funny. My dad called me this morning, who is he hasn't had voicemail my whole life. He'd barely you know open up to search something on Google and he called me was like how do I do a zoom call?

Like what and then he was like like create one or one and I was like you're gonna have to get my sister on the on the phone I'll get you set up I just kind of funny because it's crazy out infiltrating all these parts like for people in my life that I never would have

Justin  33:22  
What was he doing a zoom call for? What was the context there?

Brooke  33:25  
Oh, he's involved in the local government like so. City Council things like that. So I think something was there City Council's doing something on zoom and yeah, he wanted to join him

Justin  33:38  
oh, that's crazy.

Brooke  33:40  
Yeah, but it is interesting even just like I don't know if you guys aren't Tick Tock but I feel like the zoom stuff happening there became this like trend kind of like stuff happening on zoom and zoom backgrounds and the zoom private chat like I don't know if that had something to do with it. Like once I got to college campuses, and it just became the like,

I don't know what the word is, but it's like it's not a video chat. It's a zoom call. It's like it just became that kind of trend.

Justin  34:06  
So, you're saying it's the team's fault. It's the teens that caused

Brooke  34:10  
it is

Hunter  34:11  
the Zoomer okay?

Justin  34:12  
The Zoomers,

Man, that's even a more applicable term now.

Brooke  34:20  
You were talking about Justin earlier, like, I don't know if it's like naive, naive on my part. But it's like as people that are building companies, it's hard to just immediately assume maliciousness from zoom as a company like things like this happen. Like, hopefully, people are pointing out issues that can be fixed and that the people building weren't aware of but as far as like, calling a corrupt and assuming malicious intent and being a founder, I that's it.

Justin  34:47  
I think that's definitely the scary thing for me as a founder is and you know, Hunter knows this about me. Like I hate being accused of something that I didn't feel that I did. And I feel like as a founder, I would be the first person to be like, yeah

There was a security hole totally on us. We will patch that immediately. I appreciate you pointing it out. And I definitely don't like the tone that everyone's taken to accuse them of being corrupt or evil or purposely breaching privacy. Like, I don't know, I think I guess I guess I'm just the first person to assume good intent. And it is scary as a founder to think that like, you could mess up and instead of just looking like a bug, all of a sudden you look like a you know, a weird dictator.

Brooke  35:27  
Yeah.

Justin  35:30  
So it's, it's a line to toe for sure. And I think we as consumers, also just need to be careful to not as hunter said, just cancel people so quickly, there needs to be some forethought to put into you know, hey, we found this information. Let's look at it objectively and figure out you know, is this good or bad or just facts and I think that sometimes we're too quick to just jump down somebody's throat especially when they're a like multi billionaire you know, Corporation.

I think there's it's probably easier to distance yourself from that and start to point fingers. But all right, let's move to our last one, which I thought was super interesting. I don't remember who sent this in. Maybe it was Jordan. But I think this is really cool. Because this has been a hot topic for many, many years, like knee ly talks about a lot on the verge cast. It's a very kind of political and government driven topic. But I think, you know, last week, we talked about this entire event and the virus in the quarantine, starting new technologies, killing old technologies or old businesses. And I think this is a great example of Wi Fi as a human right or a basic right or included in some kind of like government system, just like water and electricity. I think that this is the moment where we finally got pushed into that. Brooke, what are your thoughts?

Brooke  36:52  
Yeah, I mean, I just wrote, so yeah, internet as a basic service. I remember I'm not the new as far as politics go, I don't know if I was the most in depth knowledge, but I know that back when they were thinking about charging for certain websites or certain parts of internet and all that kind of stuff, I was like, so not about it like it should be a free place for everybody all the net neutrality stuff. net neutrality. Exactly. Yeah, I was like, absolutely not like I am not a fan of Comcast, like our own like things. I just feel like it's a monopoly on information and connection and things that should be free, especially when it's become such a core part of all of our lives. So yeah, I haven't seen this tweet, but it's definitely an interesting take.

Justin  37:39  
Do you think it'll happen? Like, do you think this is the moment and will actually make it happen?

Brooke  37:43  
I don't know. I mean, seems like the companies that are providing us internet will fight back pretty hard. I don't know if it's just gonna happen. I think maybe the wave for people like actually giving a shit and like pushing it forward. Could be definitely be intense.

By now, I think that I think changes, especially when it's like gigantic behemoth corporations like, you know, Comcast and other internet providers that that's how they make money. I think that would take

Justin  38:11  
Yeah, I mean, I think the way that they would feel comfortable with it is they would get compensated for it in some very large way. But you know, there's there's some precedent on this, which is interesting. I think hunter listened to this episode too. But reply all had an episode about Intuit, the company that makes a QuickBooks. I never knew this, but they had its whole story about how they have an agreement with the government to provide this basic tax filing service for free. And they're required as part of this agreement with the government that a the government will never compete with them. They will never put out some free tax filing service because they have paid into it X amount of dollars and have some agreement with them that says you must provide a free version of this. We will never compete with you as a result of that. But you have to have this free version of tax filing available to all you know us

citizens'. And what the podcast kind of discovers is, yeah, they do offer it. They just totally name it something incredibly confusing. Hide it at, you know, links deep on their website, remove it from any Google search results and replace it with something that's called the same thing, but with like some slight wording changes, which isn't actually free, but says it's free. But yes, they do technically still offer it. And I feel like that's what we'd end up seeing here is there'd be some like basic free cable plan that they would offer and then they would find a way to like still circumvent that system, while cashing in some government check. Hunter, do you remember the episode that I'm talking about?

Hunter  39:38  
I don't, but I'm confused by that. I'm confused by the tweet because I don't I don't see the parallel between saying, okay, public schools are going online. Therefore, internet is a basic service. I don't see how you reach that conclusion.

Justin  39:54  
I guess the question would be, how would you do your homework if you are legally required to go to school graduate and not drop out of school as like a Middle High School or whatever. And when you go home, you have to finish this thing. And you have to pay 80 bucks a month for internet. You can't afford that. Should that be something that I could I don't know, put my food stamps card on to like government stipend, my internet?

Hunter  40:18  
Well, I mean, the argument has always been well, you could just go to a library like that is one. But I think the question here is what you're talking about is should internet be free for everyone? Is that? Is that what you just mentioned?

Justin  40:30  
Yeah, I guess a basic service like you included in everyone has access to it. You can get you know, government credit

Hunter  40:39  
Well who doesn't have access right now. That's I'm trying to figure out like who

Justin  40:42  
Well, I mean, I guess financially would be it would just be financially right. They just can't afford it because it's too expensive because as Brooke mentioned, it's run by a bunch of monopolies that can totally price out like I found out the other day. I didn't even know this. And you know, Neil, I talks about it all the time, but I have comcast in my area, I wanted to get rid of spectrum in favor of Comcast to get faster internet. And when I called them, they told me Oh, no, you can't actually use our internet, because spectrum owns the land that you're on. Like they own the area. Yes, we can install a line like we we literally have line hookups that we can install. But the there's like, some agreement where we cannot install internet in that area. I was like, okay, so I don't have choices. a consumer, like the monopoly has decided what I am allowed to use for my internet provider. So it's not really a choice at the end of the day. And I think the same applies to, you know, just this idea of it as a basic service, right, that, you know, they can charge whatever they want. And so if it's $1,000 a month for internet now because the price of Internet has gone up because so many people are on the internet, and you can't afford that. Sorry, you don't get internet now.

Hunter  41:54  
Well, that's why we need starlink.

Justin  41:57  
Oh, okay. Elon is gonna solve everything.

Hunter  42:02  
Yeah, Brooke, what's your? What's your thoughts on starlink? Do you know much about it?

Brooke  42:05  
No, I don't mean take her to Starling.

Hunter  42:11  
I think he puts up 60 satellites. I think he puts up like 60 satellites a week or a month or something. He's gonna cover the entire globe and satellites that give Wi Fi I don't know if it's for free or not. But basically like how we have GPS, that's how Wi Fi will be so literally anywhere in the world. You can pull out your phone, and we'll get Wi Fi.

Brooke  42:30  
I could imagine him. Yeah, doing something like that. Like even now so but just like you said, the dealing with Internet companies getting it set up in a new place anything that is literally I don't know if there's many things that are more frustrating, but it's worse. But um, yeah, I know that. So with xfinity you like now that we do have an account, there's all over the city and you can connect to the internet. So I could imagine me you know, like that doing something

It was easier to access like actually being you know, making it affordable on your home, but maybe giving it out to like public areas or something. Yeah, exactly. As I scroll you guys and the landlines and everything, we're gonna bring it down from space and we pay us five bucks. Here's your internet. So

Justin  43:18  
yeah, I think it's interesting because a lot of those free internet projects have died like Google, I think just cancelled theirs. I think Facebook cancelled theirs as well, like they've been in. Yeah, like they'd been in, you know, existence for a while. And I don't know, maybe the just like, profitability wasn't there, and they just weren't making any money. And it was just a huge cost suck. I don't know why they shut down. But I find it interesting that there were two big players that had the money to be able to do this. And we're actually going into communities and countries and places that needed that type of service. And they still couldn't make that work, and they ended up actually canceling it all.

Yeah, maybe they're not the right people to do it. But well, Brooke, we appreciate your time. Thanks so much for hopping on with us. We will tweet out some awesomeness and some quotes from this from you and hope to kind of share what you guys are doing with our followers. So appreciate your time today and thanks for your thoughts.

Brooke  44:19  
Yeah, thanks for having me and just commend you for what you are all are doing if you like been a fan girl for a while. I just think it was you guys are awesome work. That video you just put out was kick ass like I just love what you guys are doing so many compliments and kudos to you.

Justin  44:34  
Awesome. Well, appreciate that. Yeah, well, I am going to cut our feed and kind of get us to roll out with some music here. Thank you

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