The I'd Like to Add You to My Professional Network Edition
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2016
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Slate Money, hosts Felix Salmon of Fusion, Cathy O’Neil of mathbabe.org, Slate’s Moneybox columnist Jordan Weissmann, and Paul Ford of Postlight discuss Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn.
Topics discussed on today’s show include:
-Why Microsoft wanted LinkedIn.
-The debt vs overseas cash question and the stock-based compensation question behind this deal.
-How the options-trading going on here raises doubt about insider trading.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the I'd like to add you to my professional network edition of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week, which this week means the news that Microsoft has decided to drop $26 billion on acquiring a social network. |
| 0:28.4 | Because who doesn't want a social network these days? |
| 0:31.6 | There's a bunch of sort of non-M Microsoft, non-social networky aspects to this deal, which is why we're |
| 0:38.5 | devoting the whole episode to it. It's going to be fun. We are joined, as ever, by Kathy O'Neill, |
| 0:44.5 | the blogger and data scientist at mathbabe.org. Hello, everyone. Hello, Kathy. And we are |
| 0:51.6 | joined by the Moneybox columnist at Slate, Jordan Weissman. |
| 0:56.2 | Hello, Felix. |
| 0:57.1 | But most importantly, and one of the main reasons, in fact, the main reason why this is the podcast that you need to listen to at least three or four times because it's that awesome, is that we are joined by the one and only Paul Ford. |
| 1:10.5 | Hello, Paul. |
| 1:11.2 | Sorry, everybody. |
| 1:13.1 | Paul Ford is the most intelligent person in the world. |
| 1:19.1 | He has an agency which does something so complicated that I can't even begin to describe it called Postlight. |
| 1:27.7 | It's a product studio in New York City. |
| 1:30.1 | We build big, beautiful digital things. |
| 1:32.9 | So, yeah, this is like my knowledge of digital is basically I start losing comprehension |
| 1:42.6 | the minute that somebody starts using the word product. |
| 1:45.3 | Oh, it's horrible. |
| 1:46.0 | Isn't that's a horrible word? It is a horrible word. It has, unfortunately, I carry certain signifiers in the industry. We can't be without. You can't like exonerated that word. Well, because I want to do is just be like, I make things for you on computer. Like, that's what I want to say. But that doesn't actually, you don't give a guy a lot of money to do that. |
| 2:01.2 | Is it software or is it also hardware? |
| 2:03.2 | No, we don't give a guy a lot of money to do that. |
| 2:01.3 | Is it software or is it also hardware? No, we don't do hardware yet. It's named Post-Light just in case screens go away and it needs to be Post-Light. But for right now, most of the things we do – I like to future-proof a little bit. Most of the things we do. Well, Bill, you come to us and you say, I need this really, like, complex, weird app. |
| 2:20.7 | I have this really, like, complex, weird app. |
... |
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