Welcome back to this pro rata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Presented by Bridge Bank, Be Bold, Venture Wisely.

I'm Demper Mac on today's show, How to Measure E-Sports and the Future of Conferences in the Age of Coronavirus.

But first, Facebook, The Inside

Story. That's title of a new book by veteran tech reporter Stephen Levy, whose prior book

chronicled the founding and growth of Google. Levy got pretty extraordinary access from a group

of usually buttoned up executives and comes away with a portrait of a company that's often

at odds with itself, or at least one in which the mission regularly runs roughshod

over those trying to mitigate its more thorny consequences.

Why it matters, particularly today, Super Tuesday,

is that Facebook has become the primary news source for Americans.

It's also the central repository for much of our personal information and one of the few large tech companies that still run almost unilaterally by its primary founder. The future of Facebook is arguably the future of America. And we'll go deeper into that future in 15 seconds with author Stephen Levy. But first, this. The Equity Fund Resources Group at Bridgebank

is a central hub for the venture capital and private equity communities. Offering banking services

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for the entire innovation ecosystem. Meet with our team at this year's Women's Private Equity

Summit in Dana Point,

California, March 11th through the 13th. Bridgebank is a division of Western Alliance Bank.

Bridgebank. Be bold. Venture wisely. We're joined now by Stephen Levy, editor at large at

Wired, an author of Facebook, The Inside Story. So, Stephen, let's just start with the access question

here. You talk early in the book on how it took a while for you to be able to convince Facebook

to give you kind of this unprecedented access into the company. Were you usually convinced

throughout that process that you'd get there eventually, or did you think it was really a closed door that didn't have that much chance of opening?

...