The Onion’s Owner on Satire, Infowars, Defending Democracy & Trump

**Kara Swisher** (0:11)
Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Jeff Lawson, owner of America's finest news source, obviously, The Onion. Lawson is also the co-founder and former CEO of Twilio, a cloud communications platform that's used by brands like Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, Toyota, and Salesforce. In January of last year, Lawson stepped down as CEO and board member of Twilio in response to pressure from activist investors. Since then, he's continued his work on DemocracyFirst, a political action committee he co-founded in 2022 that donates money to candidates from both parties that are committed to democracy. He also bought The Onion, tried to buy Alex Jones' Infowars out of bankruptcy, and worked on a kit car. I spoke with Jeff last week at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy as part of their ongoing forum on democracy's information dilemma. Lawson had a lot to say about Twilio, The Onion, the state of our democracy and the role of tech. So stick around.
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**SPEAKER_2** (2:03)
This podcast is supported by Google. Hey, Dave here from the Google Gemini team. We're upgrading deep research with Gemini 2 Flash Thinking. Think of it as a research assistant that does the browsing for you. I use it to get up to speed on any topic fast, with a multi-page report and audio overview generated in just minutes. And it shows its reasoning and sources beyond just the info. Smarter, faster research. Try out deep research with thinking at gemini.google.com.

**Kara Swisher** (2:33)
Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from Sophos. Cybersecurity doesn't have to come with sacrifices or trade-offs. With Sophos, no matter your business' size, you get enterprise-grade technology and real-world experience, always in sync, always in your corner. Sophos' native AI technologies evolve with every threat, and their experts are ready 24x7, 365, with their managed detection and response services to stop threats before they strike. And you can manage all of your security alerts, configurations and other security projects through the Sophos Central Platform. So don't sacrifice your peace of mind to grow your business. Learn more at sophos.com. Jeff, thanks for joining me in this conversation at the University of Michigan, where you are an alum. Indeed. So let's get into it. So let's talk a little bit about you here. You quit the university halfway through your senior year, which is an unusual time, in order to work on your startup, which is Versity. Talk a little bit about that. There are a lot of entrepreneurial seniors probably sitting here who plan on graduating next month. Talk a little bit about why you did that and your experience here with people who don't know it.

**Jeff Lawson** (3:45)
Absolutely. Well, I showed up to college, to undergrad in the fall of 1995, and the Internet was brand new. The commercial Internet was really just coming about. I remember I got here, and while a lot of people, like their first day on campus, you say goodbye to your parents, and you're excited about alcohol or parties, whatever. I was excited about the Ethernet jack in my dorm room, which had fast Internet because you have dial-up and all this back then, which none of you know what that is. But you got here and it was like a whole different world, and you could see the whole Internet. And I remember FTP down a copy of Netscape Navigator 1 and started using the web. And a lot most of the web was like these static web pages about people's job or their favorite pet or whatever. And then you had these websites where you could do something.

**Kara Swisher** (4:29)
Right. And there were few and far between. For people that don't know, one of the very first early Internet sites people looked at was people making coffee. It was like a webcam on a coffee maker. And that was very exciting at the time.

**Jeff Lawson** (4:42)
Like, oh, my God, someone's drinking coffee.

**Kara Swisher** (4:43)