Wired’s Steve Levy on Meta and What3words’ founder Chris Sheldrick on mapping the world

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2022

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on two guests this week. First up is Steven Levy, editor-at-large at Wired and author Facebook: The Inside Story, to talk about Sheryl Sandberg’s original “deal” with Mark Zuckerberg (5:00), what Facebook was in the early days (7:10), the failure of the Zuck-Sheryl partnership (9:30), consolidation of Zuckerberg’s power (19:00), the Washington DC operation (21:00), what Sandberg does next (26:30), and what Meta does next (31:20). Then Chris Sheldrick, co-founder and CEO of What3words, comes on to talk about dividing the world into 57 trillion squares (36:30), the origin of the idea (38:40), getting the world to sign up (42:00), partnering with Jaguar Land Rover (44:10), breaking into America and other markets (46:50), the battle for mapping dominance (50:15), the business model (54:20), translating the system into different languages (55:50), and getting its first contract - in Mongolia (57:40)

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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 to remember which end of the screwdriver to use.
0:25.1	Hmm.
0:26.3	Costa Express.
0:27.8	Quality coffee every time.
0:32.3	Yo.
0:34.1	Technology.
0:35.2	What is it all about?
0:36.8	I think that even though he said lovely things about Cheryl
0:40.9	as she announced her departure, his own post about it, I saw as somewhat of an implicit rebuke.
0:51.2	Because he said, this is an end of an era. But now here's how I'm continuing this
0:57.1	reorganization of the top people in tech.
1:21.8	I am your host, Danny Fortin. And this week, we have a double header for you because, well, why not?
1:30.1	I want to bring you the best, most relevant stuff. And that's what I'm trying to do this week with two guests.
1:35.3	So first up, we have Stephen Levy, who may very well be the best person on the planet other than Cheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg to talk
1:45.5	about meta slash Facebook and specifically Sandberg's resignation this month after 14 years as the
	...

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