Why Are The Biggest Tech Companies So Dominant? - Alex Kantrowitz - #174

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, my beauties, welcome back. My guest today is Alex Kantrowitz. He is a tech reporter for Buzzfeed, and his new book, Always Day One, looks at the biggest tech companies in the world, and tries to work out just why they're so successful. It's easy to look at Apple's iPhone or Amazon's delivery service and say, well, of course they're brilliant. But it has to be more than just the products that they deliver if they're consistently being successful, and trying to find out what that secret source is, is the topic of Alex's book. It's really interesting to hear from someone who's been sat down in a press meeting one to one with Mark Zuckerberg or met Jeff Bezos or watched CeeLo Green perform live a tech conference in front of 10,000 people all shouting, fuck you. So yeah, super interesting stuff, a lot to take away, and a lot of insights into companies that you never thought you would get to see behind the door of. So get ready for this one. It's been a while since I mentioned this. You old time listeners will be familiar, but new ones may not be. If I speak to an author, I will link their book in the show notes below. And if you follow that link, you will be supporting the Modern Wisdom podcast at no extra cost to yourself. Also on my Amazon shop front, I have a full list of every product we have ever featured in Life Hacks and every book from every author that's ever been on the show, plus a bunch of other ones that I enjoy. And that is linked in the show notes below. So go and check that out. And yeah, if you're gonna pick up the book of an author that I feature on the show, follow that link. I would really appreciate the support. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by fitbook.co.uk. That's right. If you are looking for a health and fitness professional, you need to make sure that they have their qualifications. There is a terrifying number of people out there, fit pros, masseuses, personal trainers, who don't have the qualifications. They say they do. And that is a bad, bad situation to be in. So if you are a fit pro who is looking to expand your client base, we're just about to reopen into the world and you need to pick up some new clients, head to fitbook.co.uk and sign up with the code Modern Wisdom for 50% off your membership. This could be the easiest way that you could get new clients, especially as we're reopening into society, you need to bolster that client base, fitbook.co.uk and enter the code Modern Wisdom for 50% off your membership. And if you are someone who's just looking for a fitness professional to work with, PT, masseuse, et cetera, et cetera, you can browse for free. You can check out through all of the different vetted and quality assured fitness professionals for free. fitbook.co.uk. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Alex Kantrowitz.
Alex Kantrowitz in the building. How are you doing, man?

**Alex Kantrowitz** (3:17)
I'm doing great, really glad to be on with you, Chris. Thanks for having me today.

**Chris Williamson** (3:20)
It's timely for me to have someone that reports on tech, given that an hour ago from when we were recording this, Elon Musk just tweeted, Tesla stock price is too high, IMO, and they're now down 11%.

**Alex Kantrowitz** (3:36)
That's right, Chris, but to be honest, anytime we have recorded this podcast, whether it was today, a couple of weeks ago, or a few weeks from now, Elon would definitely tweet something absolutely ridiculous that would send his company in some sort of tailspin, so it's not very surprising that he tried to take his stack about five minutes before we hopped on here. So Elon's just going to keep being Elon, that's just how he does things.

**Chris Williamson** (3:58)
Elon did an Elon, didn't he?

**Alex Kantrowitz** (4:00)
Yes, he did. Yes, he did.

**Chris Williamson** (4:02)
Went and did an Elon.

**Alex Kantrowitz** (4:03)
His Twitter is definitely fun to follow. I mean, just mostly because of the unpredictability about it. Like he's got this valuable thing in Tesla and he keeps playing with its future every time he hits that tweet button. Like for him especially, maybe he should just have someone where he has to read the tweets aloud and then they type it into the box and then they send it and that might prevent some of this stuff from happening, but it doesn't seem like he's really interested in that.