The 1:1

Below is a collection of every The 1:1 article by The Information.
Jessica Rosenworcel photo via Getty Images. Art by Clark Miller
The 1:1

FCC Chair Sets Her Sights on Space, Net Neutrality Comeback

By Nancy Scola · Jan 5, 2024 11:40am PST
Jessica Rosenworcel has me rattled. As a rule, people who run federal agencies in Washington don’t meet reporters in the lobby. They send staff. But Rosenworcel tells me, on a recent December afternoon, that it was something her old boss, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller, used to do. And she told herself if she was ever the... Jessica Rosenworcel has me rattled. As a rule, people who run federal agencies in Washington...
Art by Clark Miller. Photo courtesy Beeper.
The 1:1

The iMenace: Meet the Startup CEO Hellbent on Bursting Apple’s Bubble

By Janko Roettgers · Dec 20, 2023 8:00am PST · 9 comments
The other day, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky posted a meme from the Belgian comic “The Adventures of Tintin” on X. In it, a disheveled Captain Haddock asks: “What a week, huh?” To which his friend Tintin responds: “Captain, it’s Monday.” That about sums up Migicovsky’s life since the first week in... The other day, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky posted a meme from the Belgian comic “The...
Art by Mike Sullivan
The 1:1

Vizio’s CEO Is Looking Beyond the Screen

By Janko Roettgers · Dec 16, 2023 6:00am PST · 3 comments
Entrepreneurs often describe their business challenges as matters of life and death. William Wang has a different relationship with that phrase. Back in 2000, the Taiwanese-American serial entrepreneur was on board a Singapore Airlines flight from Taipei to Los Angeles that got into a catastrophic accident during take-off. “Sixty thousand... Entrepreneurs often describe their business challenges as matters of life and death. William Wang...
Amanda Bradford's own League profile reads "ENTJ. Love being on All-Star teams. Believer in big ideas & strong opinions, disbeliever in honeydew & boring small talk." Art by Clark Miller
The Dating App Founder Who Wants You to Stop Swiping
By Annie Goldsmith · Nov 17, 2023 11:00am PST · 3 comments
Amanda Bradford's own League profile reads "ENTJ. Love being on All-Star teams. Believer in big ideas & strong opinions, disbeliever in honeydew & boring small talk." Art by Clark Miller
The 1:1

The Dating App Founder Who Wants You to Stop Swiping

By Annie Goldsmith · Nov 17, 2023 11:00am PST · 3 comments
Within minutes of meeting Amanda Bradford, founder of dating app The League, I had to bring up the company’s did-they-really-just-say-that subway ads. “Date someone with a 5-year plan that makes you want to ovulate” one reads; “Achieve multiple goalgasms” suggests another. Covering three New York... Within minutes of meeting Amanda Bradford, founder of dating app The League, I had to bring up...
“We have a good story to tell,” said Airbnb communications and policy chief Jay Carney, a former White House press secretary.
The 1:1

Airbnb Needed a New Story—It Found a Narrator from the West Wing

By Margaux MacColl · Nov 10, 2023 11:00am PST · 1 comment
It’s been a rough two years of headlines for Airbnb: hosts sneaking guests in through freight elevators, massive spiders hiding in the ceiling, tens of thousands of complaints about the platform’s ever-increasing fees. And that’s not even including the company’s legal issues, like New York’s recent crackdown on the... It’s been a rough two years of headlines for Airbnb: hosts sneaking guests in through...
The 1:1

‘It’s Like I Created a Baby’: An AI Matriarch Appraises Her Offspring

By Adam Lashinsky · Nov 4, 2023 6:00am PDT · 7 comments
In the most overheated technology debate of our time—the societal impact of artificial intelligence—Fei-Fei Li finds herself precariously balanced in the middle. A Stanford University computer science professor and co-head of its Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Li is neither a Geoffrey Hinton–esque doomer,... In the most overheated technology debate of our time—the societal impact of artificial...
Second-time author Bradley Tusk is also a political strategist, venture capitalist, small business owner, philanthropist and podcaster. Tusk photo by Getty. Art by Clark Miller.
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A New Novel By ‘Silicon Valley’s Favorite Fixer’ Is Coming for Everybody

By Julia Black · Nov 4, 2023 6:00am PDT · 2 comments
In Bradley Tusk’s new satirical novel, “Obvious in Hindsight,” no one is safe from skewering—including the author. When I asked Tusk whether his cast of conniving characters is based on people he’s encountered in his long, drama-filled career in politics and tech, or whether they are actually all versions of... In Bradley Tusk’s new satirical novel, “Obvious in Hindsight,” no one is safe...
Art by Clark Miller.
Spotify’s AI Chief Wants to Remix Our Relationship With Discovery
By Annie Goldsmith · Oct 21, 2023 6:00am PDT · 5 comments
Art by Clark Miller.
The 1:1

Spotify’s AI Chief Wants to Remix Our Relationship With Discovery

By Annie Goldsmith · Oct 21, 2023 6:00am PDT · 5 comments
When Ziad Sultan began thinking about artificial intelligence, there was no craze afoot. Not even a cultish flurry of excitement. Sultan, who is now Spotify’s vice president of personalization, responsible for a slate of new AI features for the audio streamer, first caught the bug in the early 2000s. He was 17, had just moved to Cambridge,... When Ziad Sultan began thinking about artificial intelligence, there was no craze afoot. Not even...
Meredith Whittaker is an outspoken critic of the tech industry, but still hopes to find allies who believe in the right to privacy. Art by Clark Miller.
The 1:1

Signal Chief Meredith Whittaker Could Use Some Backup in the Fight for Encryption

By Julia Black · Sep 29, 2023 12:00pm PDT · 1 comment
I was about to sit down for coffee in Brooklyn with Meredith Whittaker when she started apologizing for the messages blowing up her phone. “Sorry, we’re launching our post-quantum protocol today,” she said while tapping away in—what else—her Signal app. Whittaker, the president of the Signal Foundation, the... I was about to sit down for coffee in Brooklyn with Meredith Whittaker when she started...
Art by Clark Miller
The 1:1

The Head of the Anti-Defamation League Wants to Make Peace With Elon Musk

By Jon Steinberg · Sep 8, 2023 9:00am PDT · 4 comments
By the time Jonathan Greenblatt jumped on the phone at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time this Wednesday, he had already made the rounds on CNN, CNBC and MSNBC. It had been a high blood pressure day for the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League. And that was before X owner Elon Musk fired off the latest in a barrage of tweets taking... By the time Jonathan Greenblatt jumped on the phone at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time this Wednesday, he...
Czinger cofounders Lukas Czinger (center) and his father Kevin Czinger. Collage by Clark Miller. Photography courtesy Czinger
The 1:1

Selling a Vision, and a $2 Million Hypercar, at Pebble Beach

By Tim Stevens · Sep 2, 2023 6:00am PDT · 6 comments
The chassis lurking under the skin of most cars is a pretty pedestrian thing—mostly sections of stamped and welded steel perforated with mounting points for the engine, suspension and everything else required to make the machine whole. The 3D-printed chassis of the Czinger 21C, however, has an unnervingly organic look. Imagine a car not so... The chassis lurking under the skin of most cars is a pretty pedestrian thing—mostly...
The poetry-minded Runway founder Cristóbal Valenzuela. Art by Clark Miller.
‘Not Everyone Is Trying to Build God’: Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Tries to Dampen the Doomerism
By Julia Black · Aug 4, 2023 10:36am PDT · 1 comment
The poetry-minded Runway founder Cristóbal Valenzuela. Art by Clark Miller.
The 1:1

‘Not Everyone Is Trying to Build God’: Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Tries to Dampen the Doomerism

By Julia Black · Aug 4, 2023 10:36am PDT · 1 comment
It might have been a moment lost in translation, or perhaps a willful reinterpretation, but when I asked Cristóbal Valenzuela who in the tech world inspires him most, he named a Chilean poet. “Nicanor Parra came up with this idea of ‘anti-poetry,’” explained Valenzuela, co-founder and CEO of Runway, a generative AI... It might have been a moment lost in translation, or perhaps a willful reinterpretation, but when...
Art by Clark Miller. Photo of Lee By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images
The 1:1

Elan Lee Wants to Explode More Than Kittens

By Janko Roettgers · Jul 28, 2023 8:46am PDT · 2 comments
Exploding Kittens CEO Elan Lee still remembers the exact moment when he realized that he had to quit his job at Microsoft. Back in 2014, when he was chief design officer for the company’s Xbox Entertainment Studios division, Lee was visiting his younger brother for a small family reunion, only to find his niece and nephew zoned out in... Exploding Kittens CEO Elan Lee still remembers the exact moment when he realized that he had to...
Grindr and Motto founder Joel Simkhai. Photo-collage by Clark Miller; photo of Simkhai by Gregory Scaffidi/Courtesy Motto.
The 1:1

Fifteen Years After Founding Grindr, Joel Simkhai Has ‘Unfinished Business’

By Cory Weinberg · Jun 30, 2023 11:00am PDT · 3 comments
On a sweat-soaked New York afternoon over Pride Weekend, a short line formed outside a dark bar on the Lower East Side. After checking customers’ IDs, a boyish-looking bouncer at the front door asked if they’d downloaded the app they needed to get in: “Do you have Motto?” I pulled up the app, its home screen affixed with... On a sweat-soaked New York afternoon over Pride Weekend, a short line formed outside a dark bar...
Art by Clark Miller
The 1:1

Jennifer Pahlka Hasn’t Given Up on Fixing the Government

By Nancy Scola · Jun 16, 2023 11:00am PDT · 8 comments
It was in spring 2017 that Jennifer Pahlka, then a member of the Pentagon’s new Defense Innovation Board, found herself in a darkened U.S. military base watching a young analyst study aerial footage of a suspicious car. Well, the analyst was trying to parse the images: The Pentagon was relying on clunky, outdated software to highlight the... It was in spring 2017 that Jennifer Pahlka, then a member of the Pentagon’s new Defense...
Adam D'Angelo photograph by Ko Sasaki. Art by Clark Miller
Adam D’Angelo’s Endless Quest to Answer Everything
By Arielle Pardes · Jun 3, 2023 6:00am PDT · 1 comment
Adam D'Angelo photograph by Ko Sasaki. Art by Clark Miller
The 1:1

Adam D’Angelo’s Endless Quest to Answer Everything

By Arielle Pardes · Jun 3, 2023 6:00am PDT · 1 comment
Adam D’Angelo is basking in an “endless summer” of artificial intelligence. A few weeks before he and 350 industry peers released a bizarre, one-line statement warning that AI could herald a nuclear-level extinction event, the 38-year-old co-founder of Quora told me he actually sees more upside in AI than downside. “Right... Adam D’Angelo is basking in an “endless summer” of artificial intelligence. A...
What'll you have? Expensify CEO and founder David Barrett has high hopes for his workspace-cafe-lounge concept in San Francisco. Art by Clark Miller
The 1:1

A Lounge, an Office and a Strike Against Silicon Valley’s ‘Factory Mentality’

By Jon Steinberg · May 19, 2023 11:00am PDT · 20 comments
On May 9, Expensify issued a quarterly earnings report that even its likable longtime CEO couldn’t soften. It had been a “nuclear winter” for the economy, David Barrett told shareholders. There were silver linings for his expense management software company, but “don’t get me wrong, this quarter sucked.” His... On May 9, Expensify issued a quarterly earnings report that even its likable longtime CEO...
Art by Clark Miller.
The 1:1

An AI Researcher Tries to Build Good AI While Burning Down the Bad

By Margaux MacColl · Mar 25, 2023 7:05am PDT · 2 comments
In the hours after Margaret Mitchell was fired by Google over email in February 2021, she ran to the bathroom and threw up. “I was just so terrified that I was never going to get a job in tech again, that my name had been scarlet lettered,” she told me over an hourlong Zoom this week, calling from her home outside Seattle. That was... In the hours after Margaret Mitchell was fired by Google over email in February 2021, she ran to...
Illustration by Clark Miller
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‘This Fight Is Much Bigger Than Yelp Versus Google’: Antitrust Crusader Luther Lowe Is Enjoying the Moment

By Adam Lashinsky · Feb 24, 2023 1:00pm PST
Here’s something you don’t hear every day: “I'm a little bit jealous of my friends who are working inside government.” Such is the rosy outlook of Luther Lowe, the 40-year-old senior vice president for public policy at Yelp, as he assesses the state of antitrust reform in Washington these days. Speaking over Zoom the... Here’s something you don’t hear every day: “I'm a little bit jealous of my...
A Son of Palo Alto Digs Up Its Skeletons
By Arielle Pardes · Feb 17, 2023 10:30am PST · 8 comments
The 1:1

A Son of Palo Alto Digs Up Its Skeletons

By Arielle Pardes · Feb 17, 2023 10:30am PST · 8 comments
Around 70,000 people live in Palo Alto, Calif., but to walk through it with Malcolm Harris is to see a town populated with ghosts. There are the specters of Leland Stanford and his wife Jane (who may or may not have been murdered in a battle for control of Stanford University). There’s the spirit of William Shockley, inventor of the... Around 70,000 people live in Palo Alto, Calif., but to walk through it with Malcolm Harris is to...