Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York city you're Inside the ICE House our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision in global business the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism right here right now at the NYSE. And it houses 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now here's your host, Josh King, Head of Communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Welcome Inside the ICE House. Today we're bringing you another conversation from Interbrand's best global brands summit. Every year Iterbrand a division of Omnicom group, NYSE ticker symbol OMC, identifies the top 100 brands creating value for their companies and shareholders. The keynote of the event was a fireside chat with the New York Stock Exchange's Executive Vice Chairman, Betty Lou and Forbes Media's Chief Content Officer Randall Lane on how the archetype of the entrepreneur has changed due to technology, access to capital, and the American spirit. Betty and Randall discuss how modern brands make and keep consumers trust while standing out in the crowded landscape of traditional and social media. The conversation kicks off the Forbes Media's recently announced partnership to leverage blockchain technology to combat fake news and revolutionize journalism. I'll turn the episode over to Andrew Miller now Senior Strategy Director at Interbrand to introduce Betty and Randall right after this.
Speaker 3:
Our mission is to bring the world together through live experiences. We're focused on building a technology enablement platform for event creators, lower the friction and cost of creating an event, and increase the rate of success for event creators all over the world. We're a global inclusive company in 11 different countries. This really marks a new chapter for Eventbrite and it feels like the starting line. Eventbrite now listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Andrew Miller:
We're going to bring Betty back on stage today to lead a conversation with none other than Randall Lane. He's an editor of Forbes magazine and the Chief Content Officer there as well. He's been with the company for 12 years. In addition, to his role as an editor, he also writes about business, philanthropy, and food. And just in this last year he's interviewed Jeff Flake, Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, and Jeff Bezos to name a few it's quite a year so far for Randall. They're going to be talking about how capitalism is fueling a brave new world. So please welcome Betty and Randall to the stage.
Betty Lou:
Well, I want to ask first about this interesting piece of news that I saw today about Forbes breaking some new ground here or at least being at the forefront. Blockchain. So Forbes partnering with a company called Civil.
Randall Lane:
Yep.
Betty Lou:
To publish on the blockchain.
Randall Lane:
We've been talking about brands all day I think it's consistent with what Forbes is always, at least for the last we got Mike Federle our CEO back here and instead, and the new management team came in seven, eight years ago with the contributor network, the brand voice platform, it's always been trying to do new things and do new things first and pioneer. And so this is an idea. We think that blockchain is here to stay. Now, whether or not you should be buying Bitcoin. I have different opinions on that. But blockchain we believe strongly is here to stay.
Randall Lane:
And so with that in mind, why shouldn't we be the first major publishing company to try to experiment and actually publish on the blockchain. Which in the beginning it doesn't mean that much. What it means is it's basically a verification system where our metadata is going to be shared via Civil. And you're basically going to know it's real news, it's real Forbes story. It could lead to all sorts of things but I don't want to get too aggressive. We're going to sit and we're going to learn and we're going to experiment. But we're taking that first little foot forward. It could lead to all sorts of things as blockchain develops.
Betty Lou:
Like what? Give me an example for instance.
Randall Lane:
If this all works people could use our CMS a contributor could publish their story on the Forbes platform. And then let's say five days later, because with our contributors they always publish first in Forbes. They want to publish it on their own blog. It could automatically upload. And again everyone would know it's the legitimate story. It could serve as basically a verification and a certification and an automatic syndication. But again that's five steps forward right now all we're doing is dipping our toe in the water-
Betty Lou:
Could it be like what social media is now on steroids essentially?
Randall Lane:
... Listen I think at the end of the day blockchain is, if you look at what are the technological trends that are for real it's blockchain and it's AI. Those are not going anywhere. Those are you have to play. And so we're playing in both those areas. Our CMS also has an AI component. When our contributors or our staffers write a headline for story, we have AI prompts to try to help them write better headlines. And so again, we don't have computers writing stories yet. But we are experimenting, dipping our toe in so that we learn because who knows. I could not tell you where this is going to go.
Betty Lou:
Right.
Randall Lane:
I just know that we're going to learn and wherever it goes we want to be one of the first with the knowledge to do that.
Betty Lou:
Right. Learn, evaluate, and then adjust. Right.
Randall Lane:
That's the key to capitalism. Here we are.
Betty Lou:
Here we are.
Randall Lane:
The Versailles of capitalism.
Betty Lou:
When you think about all these technologies, right? Whether it's blockchain or it's AI or any number of ones that we've talked about how does that, Randall in your view, change the way or changing the way brands communicate to the "End user?"
Randall Lane:
In terms of using the technology or... I think at the end of the day-
Betty Lou:
And also receiving that content again.
Randall Lane:
... These are evolving. I think it comes down to brands need to show that they're evolving. It's almost as important that we're trying it as to what we learn because we're also sending a message about our brand. That we are open to innovation that we are learning and we are comfortable failing too. And I think as much as how do you use AI to inseminate information, receive information blockchain, again, it's still very in the early, early days in both these things. But right now for everybody here and we have some of the best CMOs in the world here, it's also a message to the market and I should say the to the world that you're at a brand and we are at a brand that is comfortable with change. It's not intimidated by it and is going to figure it out one way or another as opposed to get steamrolled. Like when you think of the media you've got a lot of bodies all over the place on both sides of the road.
Randall Lane:
But if you accept this part of your culture that you're comfortable with change and you're comfortable with innovation that's what we've done in Forbes is we've embraced change. And the thing we're really afraid of is not trying things because that's when you really have to start looking over your shoulder.
Betty Lou:
So that's interesting because the whole theme here is activating brave, right? So do you think that nowadays brands get more credit for activating brave than it was in years past? Right.
Randall Lane:
I think that's absolutely right. And I think it's all also but there's a caveat which is authenticity. In that if you activate brave just to show that you're brave the customers now in every field, certainly in our field, they're smart and they can tell when you're forcing it. And so you want to activate brave and you get credit, but you get credit if it's within the realm of what you're supposed to do. And so I think that the caveat is yes, the brands that we cover. And again all we're doing is looking at companies that are innovating and companies that are at the cutting edge, but it's the ones who are innovating authentically that get the credit whether or not it works. Of course the goal is that it works. And then you get the benefits of that. But again even in failure you learn, but the key is that it's authenticity and you're not jumping into something that you have no business being in.
Betty Lou:
One thing we know is consumers are very savvy these days.
Randall Lane:
Yes.
Betty Lou:
They can sniff out-
Randall Lane:
A hundred percent.
Betty Lou:
... Fake.
Randall Lane:
A hundred percent.
Betty Lou:
Fake things fake news. Thinking about fake news Donald Trump. So you interviewed him.
Randall Lane:
Yes.
Betty Lou:
Jeff Bezos, Emmanuel Macron as Andrew mentioned. Many luminaries in the last few years. Just within the last year speaking to many of these news makers what have you learned?
Randall Lane:
You can look at it two ways. We're in some crazy times and you can look at it we're in exciting, we're in scary times, but we're also in incredibly exciting times and you could take a Trump and a Bezos. And I was talking to Charles here about this a week or two ago. You've got these two billionaire. One is the richest man in the world. The other thinks he's the richest man in the world. And one is president. The other thinks he should be president.
Randall Lane:
But what you see is they represent these two sides of the coin where you've one, Bezos, besides the fact that he's looking really... He's spending a lot of... He has time clearly the Vic that company gets the morning could delegate, because he's been working out a lot. But here's somebody who is rigorously looking at data and he's not afraid to take chances and take risk. And it's been paying off in ways we've never seen. When our 400 came out last week. And for the first time in 24 years Bill Gates is not the richest person in America or the world it's Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos made almost as much money in the last 12 months. He made basically a Warren Buffet and just in additional gains. He's now worth 160 billion. We never had anybody worth a hundred billion and he just blew past that. So he is absolutely crushing it and crushing a lot of companies along with it. Because that's somebody who's focused on data and logic.
Randall Lane:
And then you have this other guy who there's no data it's all gut there's no fact set. It's just gut and marketing. And so they're polar opposites but they also represent what's going on. Which is it's scary times, but it's also incredibly exciting times and we focus on both but I think there's a reason that there's a disturbance in the force out there right now.
Betty Lou:
Yeah.
Randall Lane:
Despite the fact that we're growing three four times. This is good times. The economy is humming. That's the riddle. That's the riddle.
Betty Lou:
That's so interesting. You point that out though. Putting them side by side. Does it tell you that they're two Americas? Is there no better metaphor than that? Perhaps.
Randall Lane:
The issue is what we're going through, this disruption, is that people even though we have full employment. Again, we have full employment and people are scared and it's because we're going through this historic change along the lines of the industrial revolution. And there's incredible opportunity look where we are. We're here in the New York Stock Exchange. And the last week off we came to our under summit. Which is we gather all the honorees from our 30 under 30 list from around the world. And we had over 9,000 people come to Boston the best young leaders and young entrepreneurs in the world. Amazing event. Amazing event.
Randall Lane:
And you look at that 30 under 30 and you see people... they're all listed here. You've got Evan Spiegel big board listed company Snapchat. He founded that when he was in college he was a billionaire by the time he was 23 years old. You have Daniel Ek, Spotify, another 30 under 30 member listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Founded that when he was in his early mid twenties. Aaron Levie, Box, founded that in his twenties that's also listed here in the New York Stock Exchange.
Randall Lane:
So here at the place that to actually start a company and take a public on the big board even 20 years ago you needed to be like an 80 year old man, right? You did not have kids ringing the bell wearing hoodies and now it's a common place. Nobody bats an eye because that's the incredible world we're in. We're in an incredible world if you think about it. And if you look at where we live and if you take the whole arc of human history. Take the whole arc of human history until 10, 15 years ago, you weren't able to be able to take a company public in a multi-billion dollar valuation.
Randall Lane:
It wasn't that the were laws against. It was just that you needed time and you needed resources and nobody would give you money unless you had an adult with you. It just didn't happen. Maybe occasionally. Maybe 20, 30 years ago that Michael Dell and Bill Gates were the pioneers. But even then it was such an aberration. And now it's commonplace. Now it's easier for a 25 year old to raise money than a 55 year old. If your computer is broken and IT comes. And a 25 year old walks in and a 55 year old you want the 25 year old to fix it. It's serious. And that's the first time. So we've inverted it. Where for the first time in human history, it's actually the digital natives. It's actually an advantage to be young and have these ideas.
Randall Lane:
So we're in this world where you could take an idea and some code and you could be ringing the bell three years later here with a multi billion dollar valuation. So it's exciting but also for people who've played the game over 30 years and know you cannot count on being an employee somewhere that you're set and you're going to get the golden watch in 40 years that's scary.
Betty Lou:
It's commonplace now, but is it normal in your view?
Randall Lane:
Well, it's different because of technology and because of the digital, it's part of all our lives now. And because the people who grew up with these phones they're wired differently. They could see things that we are maybe a few years older than them, but we just can't see it because it's innate to them. And so I don't think that's going away just because it's like, "Okay. Well now everybody and every generation's going to have that. It's normal." Because no, the next generation it's going to be innate that they work in AR and VR and they grew up with that. So because of technology and people growing up we've had a paradigm shift where I don't think that changes. This isn't going to change. This isn't like, "Okay. After the next crash the kids get back to school and the adults get the run again." It's not going to happen. The 30 under 30 works for a reason.
Betty Lou:
This is here to stay.
Randall Lane:
This is absolutely here to stay.
Betty Lou:
To your point it seems like one minute you hear about a billion dollar company the next month they're a $2 billion company.
Randall Lane:
Right.
Betty Lou:
That gross is just accelerating.
Randall Lane:
And they're also holding out later to go public. Where before going public was the end line-
Betty Lou:
Still is but yes.
Randall Lane:
... So the starting line too. But now it's like they want to sometimes wait as long as they can to raise $10 billion from SoftBank. And-
Betty Lou:
Those are good problems to have, right?
Randall Lane:
... Big time.
Betty Lou:
You spearhead the Forbes 30 under 30 which you had referenced. And I'm curious, we've touched a little bit upon it, but the biggest differences you see between entrepreneurs now and before.
Randall Lane:
It's like skiing the best time to learn how to ski is when you're four years old because when you fall doesn't hurt. And the reason you're having all these absolutely wild ideas is because the best time to start a company, aside from all the psychographic reasons to do it. And then the reasons that we've seen that change in the last 10 years the advantage swing towards younger is because you don't have a mortgage or kids or anything like that. And so it's that mindset. If you go to Harvard business school now or you go to Stanford or you go Columbia anywhere and you say, "Who do you want to be?" They don't say... 20, 30 years ago they said, "Oh I want to be Lloyd Blankfein. Or I want to be..." They want to be mark Zuckerberg. They do not want to climb corporate ladders.
Randall Lane:
There is this idea. And that's why Forbes is working right now because Forbes has always been about the entrepreneur. We've been blessed with this great brand that for a 101 years since Forbes' is founding, Forbes wrote about people. Fortune always would focus on corporations. And there were times let's say in the 1950s and 1980s where the corporation was exciting. But we're in an era where it's the people that are exciting. And what you see psycho graphically with the 30 under 30, but really if you just hashtag 30 under 30 and every day you'll see kids in college say, "I'm going to make the 30 under 30 by the time I'm 29. That's going to be my first goal because I want to have self destiny"
Randall Lane:
So there is a culture shift where being an entrepreneur... There was a time even 20 years ago I remember my first time in Forbes writing a story about all the layouts going on in research triangle and a lot of these mid-career tech executives said, "Well, no one's given me a job right now. So I guess I have to start my own company." It was I have no job. I have no choice. But now ask your kids and your kids friends and your brothers and your sisters or whoever you got in your world that's 22 years old or 18 years old or 25 years old. So they want to start their own company. They don't aspire to work. Maybe they want to aspire to work at a Facebook or an exciting young company so that can learn.
Betty Lou:
So they can start their own company.
Randall Lane:
So they can start their own, but they're not saying, "I want to work at Facebook and be there for 40 years." They do not. They do not. And that is a change. And again, I don't think that's going away either which is great for Forbes of course because we love entrepreneurs and celebrate entrepreneurship. And it ties into what we're talking about with the uncertainty. The only thing that's certain is that you have to rely on yourself and entrepreneurship is the safest way. In some ways it's the safest career path because you don't have to wait and look over your shoulder. How's the company doing? Are they going to need to cut back? Did it get merged? Did it get cut? You have self destiny. And I think that's very attractive. Especially in chopping times.
Betty Lou:
You see that changing where people who aren't companies suddenly say, "Why am I here?"
Randall Lane:
For sure.
Betty Lou:
"I want to get what Intel I can at my company. And then I want to go start my own."
Randall Lane:
100%. But also the factor, and let's hear from America right now, this is where we should feel optimistic. We should feel good. We're maybe the only country in the world where failure is a good thing. The easiest way to raise $10 million in Silicon valley is to have lost your last $10 million. That's true. That's funny. And it's true. There is an acceptance that the only way to succeed is to fail and to learn. The only way you're failing is if you are not learning but that's not true if you lose.
Randall Lane:
We did a big cover story on president Macron and getting to talk to him was very interesting because you know you're in bizarre world where the guy who's hitting the most free market notes in the world is the president of France. Trump is putting up tariffs. Wow, we are in strange times here. But that said the problem with France, and it's not his fault he inherited a culture where if you go and raise 10 million bucks and you lose it, you're kind of dead they don't forgive that. They're like, "Oh, you are failure." And that's hundreds of years of culture. Where America, especially over the last 20, 30 years accepts in some ways celebrates failure because there's an understanding that it takes failure to get to success. And that's why-
Betty Lou:
Well that signals risk taking.
Randall Lane:
... Signals risk taking. But it also signals that you're not going to hit it right every time. It's almost impossible. And there's an acceptance that if you're learning the safest thing to do... Again, if you give somebody who's lost they're not going to make the same mistakes. They'll probably make new mistakes, but that's that's fairly unique to America. And it's why no matter how down in league... Last week was just politically a rough week no matter what side you were on. It was a taught week here in the States. And we had Jeff Flake in the under 30 summit. And we had 5,000 people watching the interview. And then there were a 1,000 people protesting before the interview.
Betty Lou:
Yeah.
Randall Lane:
And it was exciting. And it was dynamic. And it was democracy in some ways at it's finest. But so it's strange. It's disrupted times here, but we have to also take a step and recognize that this country still has so many amazing advantages. And one of those is that acceptance of risk and that celebration of entrepreneurship.
Betty Lou:
Which again, we both have experienced but to success not failure.
Randall Lane:
I've failed that's fine. I've started two companies and they both didn't make it to the finish line. But a lot of what we've been able to accomplish here in Forbes is a very entrepreneurial place is because I took those lessons. And again, you just keep on learning and that's great.
Betty Lou:
So Randall in the last few moments that we have you on stage here I do want to talk a little bit about the media. It's a question I often get and I want to pose it to you which is consumers right now, the audience so to speak, they get information everywhere now, right? On social media. They of course go to Forbes to get trustworthy credible information. So what can you tell the audience here on educating the audience on misinformation out there?
Randall Lane:
It's a great question. And it's the number one most important thing going on right now media is. How do you trust? We're in a situation where you look at every poll and people have incredible mistrust in any information they get no matter where they get it. And some of that is the fact that anybody can create content now. You could just go on your Facebook page and write something, you post something on LinkedIn, you post something on Medium. So the beautiful thing about what's happened is we've democratized information that is mostly good. But in democratizing information, we've kind of created this Tower of Babel where nobody trusts anything, but that's where it's been a lot of fun to be at Forbes because you do see, and again, we have so many brand experts here, you see that turn to quality brands in some ways it gives us more power.
Randall Lane:
Because if people are looking for stuff... And the Nieman labs at Harvard just did an incredible survey. They interviewed over 2000 people. So it's a bulletproof through the margin error survey about what brands they trust most. Forbes out of 38 came in fifth and we were right ahead. The number one spot had NBC news. And in two spots had New York times and one below BBC. So we were an excellent, excellent company. And we are very proud of that. And I think that's our number one challenge. And our number one goal is to cherish that. That we have a great brand. And again, we have all these brand stewards in this room you represented an unbelievable brand.
Randall Lane:
So everything we think about every day when we go into work when we publish a story and we publish three or 400 stories a day is we recognize that any one story, ask Rolling Stone in the UVA rape story, any one story can kill your brand. So it is both an honor and a privilege to have a brand that has that kind of trust. And in this world people are increasingly looking to a few brands to say, "Okay. I know that is legitimate." We still have fact checking. We're one of the only places that still do that. And again, that's not-
Betty Lou:
Is that trust fragile quite fragile?
Randall Lane:
... Yes. And that's an investment we make in that trust because it's not an economic... You cannot economically justify having 20 people who a lot of their job is to sit around checking name spellings and things like that.
Betty Lou:
Right.
Randall Lane:
But it's an investment in the brand. And that's our number one asset is our brand. And everything we do every day is to... At the end of the day every institution is under attack. Financial markets, government, media, there's a mistrust of everything institutional. And so, but you do see, and we saw that on Friday with the releases of the survey, you do see people saying, "When I can't trust anything, I'm going to take a couple things that they're beacons that I know I can trust." And that's something that we think about every day.
Betty Lou:
And Randall just a final thought here. What are some tips or what recommendations might you give the audience here about how to cut through the noise? As a brand, how do you cut through the noise these days?
Randall Lane:
I cut through the noise in a way that's probably the worst way to cut through the noise. I actually use Twitter which is the worst actually in some ways place. But if you filter correctly and most importantly you filter small l liberally. In that you're getting different points of view, trusted sources, but diverse sources. You can actually get a feed... If more people did that and use filters, but in a way not to reinforce what they think they know versus to get a wide spectrum of interesting facts and opinion for places they trust. I think we could return... That's what's missing in this country is there's no Walter Cronkrite trusted voice anymore.
Betty Lou:
Right.
Randall Lane:
Again, he probably had too much power in retrospect, but you can now amalgamate that if you're smart. We need to educate. We need to educate. It comes down to education. We need to educate kids who around are growing up incredibly jaded about information. They're the worst. They don't trust anything. And that's why in some ways the 30 under 30 is important because we brand quickly get them in our-
Betty Lou:
Right. But how about the brands? How do the brands cut through the noise?
Randall Lane:
Well, how do the brands cut through noise? That is a good question. To me it goes back to, and when we cover these companies and when we just did the big cover store on Amazon. It's authenticity and it's trust in that they take responsibility and they speak that people trust them. If we ever published a story that is wrong and we don't correct it. It's a brand killer. No matter what your company and what your business is we all make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. How do you handle those mistakes? Are you authentistic and honest? Because like you said before, Betty, the consumers have gotten savvy that if you try to and run them, they will figure it out. And so it's kind of radical honesty, which is kind of refreshing.
Betty Lou:
Pretty simple, right? Getting back to the basics.
Randall Lane:
It's simple in theory and it's hard to-
Betty Lou:
And hard to execute. Right? Randall, thank you so much.
Randall Lane:
... Thank you.
Betty Lou:
We appreciate you joining us.
Josh King:
Thanks to the New York Stock Exchange's Executive Vice Chairman, Betty Lou for hosting this episode of Inside the ICE House with Randall at the Interbrand best global brands summit. And that's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Forbes media's Chief Content Officer Randall Lane. If you like what you heard please rate us on iTunes. So other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us @icehousetheice.com or tweet at us at NYSE. Our show is produced by Pete Ash and Ian Wolf with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner. I'm Josh King your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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