Book Club Discussion: Brotopia with Emily Chang

David Rosenthal (0:00)

Hello, LPs. We are posting the audio of our fantastic book club Zoom session with Emily Chang here in digestible, almost podcast form. The discussion was fantastic. Thank you to everyone who joined, and especially big thank you to Emily for making time for us. We didn't realize it at the time, but it was right before her big interview with Bill Gurley that afternoon on BlueBrig Technology. So big thank you for making time for all of us in the Acquired community.

The video recording is live on the LP Google Drive. You can find it there. That is linked in the show notes below.

We've also posted our Ben and my book notes on Brotopia on our website at acquired.fm. And there's the Google Doc version as always, if you want to add your own notes. All of those are linked below. Stay tuned for our next book club announcement. We can't wait to keep bringing these great authors and experiences to all of you. We certainly have a blast doing these. And with that, on to Emily and Brotopia.

Once we get started.

Ben Gilbert (1:16)

Yeah, let's do it.

Well, Emily, we didn't prepare you for this question, but my first question is a technical one. Do you have a home studio? Like, you look so like you're in the Bloomberg studios and recently, how do you pull that off?

Emily Chang (1:31)

Yeah, well, right now I'm in my bedroom. But we, for the first six months, we were in an office, quote unquote, in our house with some bookshelves that were, you know, had to be obsessively curated every day. But that was kind of in the line of too much traffic and we were getting some child noise. So we actually just moved down to the basement with a big monitor behind me and they put up a graphic kind of like this one, the Golden Gate Bridge behind Kashiest.

And it kind of actually looks like we're in the real studio. So I've gotten many comments, like, are you back?

David Rosenthal (2:11)

You have the Bay Bridge behind you, right?

Emily Chang (2:14)

Well, we have the Bay Bridge behind us on the normal set, which is actually like the actual Bay Bridge. This is a photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it's more like a typical TV studio look, and it's actually working quite well. Our Bloomberg office in San Francisco is still completely closed. So there's no one there.

Like most of my colleagues in New York, however, many of them have gone back, the TV folks, but we're still here for the foreseeable future.

David Rosenthal (2:48)

Do you have a production crew in your house, or do you do?

Emily Chang (2:51)

So I have one producer who's been coming every day since the shelter in place, and she's amazing. I mean, the things that she has rigged up are incredible. And like the first day, I grabbed a couple of outfits. We didn't know how long we were gonna be doing this. We honestly didn't know if we could do the show from home, technically, if there wouldn't be any glitches. And I've been doing this job long enough that I don't get nervous anymore, unless it's like a huge interview, but I was like terrified.

No prompter, no, you know, like you're basically like in a black box by yourself. There's no control room, no, it's basically just someone in my ear giving me guidance.

And it came off pretty well, no technical glitches. And like that was the way it was for the next seven months.

David Rosenthal (3:44)

And then we get to see all your guests, you know, set ups. I love that Tim Sweeney, just so classic in this like barren room with an old, oh, I couldn't tell if it was an Apple II behind it.

Emily Chang (3:54)

It was an Apple II. Yeah, I mean, some set ups are better than others.

SPEAKER_4 (4:00)

I will say that.

David Rosenthal (4:04)

Oh man, well, Emily, it's such an honor to have you here. We were thinking, I mean, obviously you need no introduction, but I think you are our number one, if you're not number one, you're top three source for us on Acquired episodes. Like all of you. And you are the only interviewer that we've ever used to like equip, we've a clip that we've spliced in to an Acquired episode on our Zoom episode when you had Eric Yuan.

When you had Eric Yuan on the day of the Zoom IPO. And he said the phrase is too high.

SPEAKER_4 (4:33)

I know, when he said that, I was like, oh my gosh.