Groupon founder Andrew Mason: “I may not be Jeff Bezos or Jesus Christ, but I've done ok”

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Interviews, News, Silicon Valley, Business News, Tech, Artificial Intelligence, Business Analysis, Ai, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2018

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Groupon founder Andrew Mason to talk about his new company Descript, launching his first startup in Chicago in the late 1990’s (4:30), turning it into Groupon (6:15), admitting he was fired (7:40), starting a guided-tour company (9:30), pivoting to podcasting (12:00), but keeping Detour alive (14:00), underestimating potential (16:00), the explosion of text-to-speech technology (17:00), raising venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz (21:30), learning from past mistakes (23:00), not wanting to be a public company chief executive (24:15), why he keeps working with a couple hundred million in the bank (26:30), his worst day of work (28:40), machine learning’s assault on the $10bn transcription industry (32:45), and the horse story (34:50).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm always up before the birds and the kids.
0:02.9	Good thing Costa Express is always up too.
0:07.0	Early starts are easier with great coffee.
0:09.7	And if I grab one for Bob, I might even get some decent company.
0:14.5	Large cappuccino for the bloc who's half asleep.
0:17.2	Oh, you legend.
0:19.6	Now that's a proper coffee.
0:21.3	Should kick in Justin Samfut, remember which end of the screwdriver to use.
0:25.1	Hmm.
0:26.3	Costa Express, quality coffee every time.
0:32.1	Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from inside the Silicon Valley Future Machine.
0:39.1	A quick production note before we get started.
0:41.4	Last week, several folks led by loyal listener, The Muts Nuts, which I don't believe is his given name.
0:48.0	I think it's just his Twitter handle, but I digress.
0:51.2	He and several others' message to say that the podcast had an intruder.
0:56.3	About nine minutes in, Ollie G. jumped from his normal spot in the intro and made a sudden
1:01.7	appearance. So we quickly got that sorted out, but for those of you who heard it and were
1:06.0	bothered by it, my sincere apologies. Hopefully this week, Mr. G will stay in his box.
1:13.5	Anyhow, I just want to say thank you for keeping us for well, for listening and for keeping
1:17.8	us on our toes.
1:18.9	I certainly do appreciate it.
1:20.7	And hopefully this week will be, we'll go off without a hitch.
	...

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