This week on the GeekWire Podcast, our guest is entrepreneur and investor Ben Gilbert, co-founder and co-host of the hit podcast Acquired.

Ben and his colleague David Rosenthal have developed a huge following for their deep-dive, long-form podcasts telling the stories behind some of the most successful companies in the world, and they recently released Microsoft Volume II, the second installment in their epic exploration of the Redmond-based technology giant.

We talk about Microsoft's misunderstood era, with help from some archival highlights from GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop's interviews with Bill Gates over the years. It’s a timely topic given Microsoft’s 50th anniversary in 2025 and the company's resurgence as one of the most valuable and relevant companies in the tech industry with the rise of AI.

Before we jump in, we ask Ben to catch us up on all things Acquired. The podcast is the talk of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, as documented in a Wall Street Journal profile. Acquired just announced a live arena show coming up on Sept. 10 featuring Mark Zuckerberg at Chase Center in San Francisco, the home of the Golden State Warriors.

Edited and produced by Curt Milton.

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This week: the aftermath of the CrowdStrike outage, the larger forces at play, the future of cybersecurity, and where the world is headed long-term.

Our guest is Erik Moore, a veteran of the cybersecurity field and program director for the online Master of Science Program in Cybersecurity Leadership at Seattle University's Albers School of Business and Economics.

Moore says cybersecurity companies are facing faster and more complex threats due to factors including AI, and geopolitical and financial forces, requiring quicker responses. Current testing and deployment processes need to be overhauled handle these new challenges effectively. But long-term, he's optimistic about where the field and the world are headed.

Related Links

• • GeekWire News Coverage: ‘A little frightening’: CrowdStrike outage puts Microsoft’s role in global IT back in the spotlight
  • CrowdStrike Blog Post: Technical Details on Today’s Outage
  • Microsoft: Helping our customers through the CrowdStrike outage
  • Seattle University: Master of Science Program in Cybersecurity Leadership
  • CNBC: CrowdStrike update that caused global outage likely skipped checks, experts say
  • KING-5: CrowdStrike Outage Hits Microsoft
  • Channel News Asia: What do we know about CrowdStrike?

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we catch up on the latest twist in the New York Times' lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over the alleged use of its reporting to train GPT-4 and other large language models. The NYT is fighting OpenAI’s request to turn over reporters’ notes, interview memos, and other materials used to produce stories, to prove they were worthy of copyright.

On a related topic, we take a closer listen to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's comments about AI and fair use at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which were more nuanced than some of the coverage might have made them appear. Watch Suleyman's full conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin here.

Turning to the Seattle startup scene, an entrepreneurial supergroup has quietly formed a new electric vehicle charging startup, Juicer Energy, that appears poised to create a marketplace connecting homeowners and others with personal EV charging stations to EV owners in need of places to charge up their vehicles.

In the return of our "My AI" segment, we explore the concept of using AI to turn email into a database that can be intelligently mined, in this case with Google Gemini in Gmail and Google Workspace.

We also talk about using Microsoft Copilot in the Edge browser for domain-specific queries, and discuss the importance of treating AI not as an authoritative oracle but rather as a partner in the quest for insight.

On a related note, we suggest an episode of the "Think Fast, Talk Smart" podcast, called "How to Chat with Bots." (Thanks to Mark Briggs for the recommendation.)

With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.

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Greg Fyke is president and CEO of ecobee, the Toronto-based smart home company known for its pioneering smart thermostat and a growing ecosystem of devices, including security systems and smart doorbells.

A former Amazon Alexa executive, he’s personally based in Seattle, exemplifying how remote work has transformed the geography of the tech industry. Fyke succeeded ecobee founder Stuart Lombard as the company's CEO last fall upon Lombard's retirement.

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Fyke discusses the emerging "golden age" of smart home technology; ecobee's focus on simplicity, long-term functionality, and integration across ecosystems; its competition with Amazon and Google; and its approach to automation and artificial intelligence.

Other topics include ecobee's November 2021 acquisition by Generac, and their broader focus on energy management solutions, leveraging components like home batteries, solar energy, and intelligent control systems.

• The Verge: How Ecobee is becoming the smart home company Nest should have been
• Greg Fyke on the HomeKit Insider podcast.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we get a deeper understanding of ADHD and neurodivergence in the tech industry and the workplace. Our guest is Brett Greene, a tech community leader in the Pacific Northwest who specializes in this field in his work with companies and individuals as an executive coach.

Related links

• Find a list of ADHD Resources on Brett Greene's website, brettgreenecoaching.com.
• Upcoming event: ADHD Strategies for Tech Founders and Investors: Understanding and Leveraging Neurodivergent Team Members for Maximum Success, July 18 in Bellevue, Wash.
• Brett Greene is founder and CEO of New Tech Northwest.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.

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As the creator and host of the "Startup Project" podcast, Seattle-area tech senior product manager Nataraj Sindam talks with a wide range of investors and entrepreneurs, contributing to his broad perspective on the future of artificial intelligence, investing, startups, and business technology. He's also author of the Above Average email newsletter, and venture partner with Incisive Ventures.

Our topics this week include:

• The opportunity to apply the power of large language models and generative AI to the larger world of business-to-business applications, including services tailored to workflows in specific industry verticals.
• How AI will drive a massive increase in data centers in the next 5-10 years to meet increased demand for compute and storage, and will require new "intelligence layers" in cloud infrastructure.
• The opportunities and challenges for startups to compete with large tech companies in developing foundational AI technologies, and where tech investors are focusing when it comes to AI startups.
• The different incentives in a traditional startup approach (focusing on getting to a minimum viable product) vs. long-term AI moonshots, exemplified by former OpenAI leader Ilya Sutskever's new venture.
• Apple's efforts to integrate AI into its applications and operating systems, and the tradeoffs between the Apple ecosystem and the more wide-ranging Windows/Android platform approach.
• In the return of our "My AI" segment, we discuss a useful way to quickly get a summary of YouTube videos using the Copilot sidebar in the Microsoft Edge browser.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.

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It was a big week for cybersecurity for Seattle's tech giants. Microsoft President Brad Smith was in Washington D.C., testifying before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee about the Redmond company's security challenges. Listen for highlights at the end of the show.

Meanwhile, Amazon held its annual AWS re:Inforce cloud security conference in Philadelphia.The rise of AI has added some big new wrinkles to the issue of cybersecurity, and AI was one of the main topics in a conversation that I had a few weeks ago with one of the people who keynoted the AWS event this week, Steve Schmidt, Amazon's chief security officer.

Hosted by Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.

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Our guest this week on the GeekWire Podcast is Léonard Boussioux, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, and adjunct assistant professor at the UW Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.

Boussioux received his doctorate in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research combines areas including machine learning and AI with a focus on healthcare and sustainability. Last year he launched a class called "Generative AI in the Era of Cloud Computing" at the Foster School.

• Foster School: A New Era Of AI And Human Ingenuity In The Classroom
• Boussioux's website, including photography and AI art: www.leobix.us
• TEDxMIT Salon presentation: Let Art Be Your Superpower
• TEDxBoston: How to Solve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in 5 mins.

Related Story: How a photo of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, enhanced by AI, sparked a journalistic debate at GeekWire

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.

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