Dan Laufer vowed to ever start a startup again after selling apartment rental platform RentLingo in 2021, but Laufer also couldn't ignore the potential to solve a problem he saw emerging as head of growth and product marketing at Nextdoor.

“Nextdoor is most commonly used by people searching for providers, particularly HVAC,” Laufer told TechCrunch. “There were these gaps on the consumer side, satisfaction with the experience, it didn’t feel modern. The other big trend I saw was the silver tsunami. All these baby boomers who own these and don’t necessarily have an exit plan.”

The result was PipeDreams, a startup that acquires small and large HVAC and plumbing companies and scales them using its software that helps with planning and marketing. PipeDreams allows business owners to retire when necessary without losing their employees, name or brand, or simply become part of a larger company with more resources, Laufer told TechCrunch.

PipeDreams just raised a $25.5 million Series A led by Canvas Ventures and Plural with additional funding from DoorDash founder Tony Xu and former OpenTable CEO Thomas Layton. PipeDreams has acquired nine companies to date and currently operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tucson and Denver with plans to expand.

“The beauty of this industry is that it’s huge. There are over 100,000 plumbing and heating, ventilation and air conditioning companies,” Laufer said of the U.S. market. “We intend to keep their brand. A lot of these people have their name on the truck, it’s very personal.”

PipeDreams' strategy is a variation on the private equity roll-up model, in which PE firms buy smaller companies in a niche (private schools, dentistry, healthcare) and combine them into a larger company with the intent of becoming the larger Selling companies to make profits for investors.

PipeDreams also uses debt to fully acquire the companies, but is not tied to a tight lifecycle timetable to generate returns or exit, such as the four to six years expected with PE. The company has a $15 million credit facility that will be used to purchase businesses and will use the equity raised to improve its software. Laufer said he expects future rounds will need to raise more debt than equity.

Roll-up strategies are not common for venture capital-backed startups. The best comparison for this is Amazon aggregator startups like Perch and Thrasio, which have had financial problems recently. But unlike those aggregators, the underlying companies that PipeDreams buys are not at the mercy of a company like Amazon, which can change the rules at will, and the companies that PipeDreams buys have stronger relationships with its customers than Amazon brands.

However, PipeDreams could face the same growth hurdles that Amazon aggregators face, such as if a new entrant wins more business or if a local plumber improves its SEO or digital marketing strategy.

Laufer said taking over the HVAC companies completely sets PipeDreams apart from other competitors that only want to connect consumers with professionals like Angie and Thumbtack. He said that, like many of its competitors, the marketplace model is not rigid because consumers can search for professionals directly after finding them through a marketplace. Because PipeDreams integrates its technology into each provider's website, it is part of the process every time someone books with that professional.

PipeDreams also addresses the skills shortage in the HVAC and plumbing industries, as Generation Z is less interested in learning trades than the generations before them. The company launched an apprenticeship program in the fourth quarter to provide employees with on-the-job training. So far there have been five students with plans to expand.

While the company still has a long way to go to flesh out its HVAC-focused business, Laufer expects to expand into other categories in the future, including electricians.

“We bought [a company] When the owner had a celebratory dinner a few weeks ago, he described it as: “My company is going to college,” Laufer said. “'I grew it up and it's on its way to the next chapter.' I love this description. We do it like this.”

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Former Dallas Cowboys executive Gil Brandt has died.

He was 91.

>> Read more trending news

The team announced Brandt’s death Thursday morning.

Brandt was the team’s vice president of player personnel from 1960 to 1988. He was fired by Jerry Jones when Jones bought the team in 1989, ESPN reported.

Before joining America’s Team, Brandt had graduated from the University of Wisconsin. He became a part-time scout for the Los Angeles Rams, before going over to the San Francisco 49ers full-time in 1958.

He was the first chief talent scout for the Cowboys when they were created in 1960.

Brandt adopted the use of computers in scouting and evaluations and helped draft such iconic players as Roger Staubach and Herschel Walker. He also signed Drew Pearson, Cliff Harris and Everson Walls, the team said.

Brandt along with coach Tom Landry and general manager Tex Schramm, lead the team to 20 consecutive winning seasons and five Super Bowl appearances, winning the big game twice, ESPN reported.

Jones said in a news release announcing Brandt’s death:

“We are so deeply saddened by the passing of Gil Brandt – a true icon and pioneer of our sport. Gil was at the very core of the early success of the Dallas Cowboys and continued to serve as a great ambassador for the organization for decades beyond that. His contributions cemented his spot in the Ring of Honor. He was my friend and a mentor not only to me, but to countless executives, coaches, players and broadcasters across the National Football League, which rightfully earned him a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame where his legacy will be celebrated forever.

“He was an innovator and set the standard for excellence in player acquisition. From the creation of the NFL Combine to revolutionizing the NFL Draft, Gil finished his over six-decade NFL career with an eye towards the future of the league and teaching fans about the sport he loved as a radio broadcaster. Gil was as good a storyteller as it gets, with a memory as sharp as a tack. His dedication to, and passion for, this game left a lasting impact on generations of Hall of Fame players and coaches. There are very few people that have been able to have the kind of generational impact that he did. Gil was as dedicated to growing this league and sport as anyone ever was, and we are all grateful and better for it.

“Our hearts go out to Gil’s wife, Sara, his son Hunter and all of Gil’s family and friends.”

Brandt was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a contributor in 2019 and was installed as part of the Cowboys’ Ring of Honor in 2018, ESPN reported.

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San Francisco Police Commissioner William Scott and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins (R) at a news conference about the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee.

The man accused of fatally assaulting Silicon Valley CEO Bob Lee will plead not guilty to the murder, his attorney said.

The indictment of suspect Nima Momeni in San Francisco state court was delayed Tuesday, but his attorney, Paula Canny, told reporters at the courthouse that camera footage used by prosecutors as evidence does not support a first-degree murder charge.

“I don’t think you can see anything in the videos,” she said.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has asked the court not to grant bail and release Momeni, arguing the April 4 murder was “planned and intentional.”

Lee, 43, who was chief product officer at cryptocurrency startup MobileCoin and created the Cash App, was revered in the tech world for his programming talents. Prosecutors say he was stabbed to death with a kitchen knife on a downtown San Francisco street after meeting with friends, including Momeni’s sister.

Momeni appeared in court for the second time on Tuesday and his indictment was again postponed to May 2. Canny said she’s waiting for an autopsy report from the city coroner’s office. Jenkins said at a news conference that the report could take weeks to complete.

Canny told Bloombeg News she would resist the district attorney’s efforts to keep her client, a 38-year-old IT consultant, jailed pending his trial.

In a court filing in support of Momeni’s detention, prosecutors cited surveillance footage showing the men in Momeni’s car pulling out of his sister’s apartment building together and driving into a “dark and remote area.”

A color video segment cited in the filing then shows two men standing on a sidewalk for about five minutes – with the camera too far away to make out their faces – before one suddenly moves toward the other. The men then separate, one walking away injured and the other moving along a fence line where the knife was later recovered, according to the filing, which describes Momeni’s BMW speeding away from the scene.

Jenkins told reporters Tuesday that Canny was given DNA evidence from the bloodied knife. She declined to elaborate.

The district attorney said she believes Canny saw enough evidence for Momeni to file a plea deal. Jenkins expressed disappointment that the indictment was delayed, especially after many of Lee’s family members turned up for Tuesday’s hearing.

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CAMPBELL (KPIX) – Family and friends of a Campbell man who was shot dead outside his own house nearly two weeks ago said Friday that it makes no sense why he would have been targeted.

Greg Cirimele, 42, was the “life of the party” who, according to his parents, had “hundreds of friends,” best friend and neighbor.

“He was that kid who just – you couldn’t like him, he was full of life, he was full of energy,” said Cirimele’s mother, Kim Cirimele.

At 10:45 am on November 2, Campbell Police responded to a shooting on West Sunnyoaks Avenue. A witness told 911 dispatchers that he saw a blue Saturn in the middle of the street and that Cirimele walked up to the driver and started hitting him, according to Mercury News. The man behind the wheel pulled out a gun and began firing multiple shots at Cirimele, hitting him twice in the chest, the newspaper reported.

The witness followed the Saturn and gave the dispatcher the license plate. The Mercury News reported that within minutes police arrested 18-year-old Nickolas Amman from a house a mile away.

“It could have been any of us in the neighborhood and I think that’s the scariest thing about it being just so random,” said Cirimele’s neighbor Morgan Musto.

KPIX has contacted Campbell police but has not yet received a response.

Shortly after the fatal shooting, a candlelight vigil was held, which attracted a large crowd to remember the Silicon Valley manager. Ten days after he was murdered, candles continued to burn for Cirimele, and a heart was drawn on the street where he collapsed.

“I just want to know what happened. I mean, it was very unusual for Greg to get into any kind of argument, ”said Cirimele’s best friend James Boucher.

The two of them, he said, spent every day doing sports, playing softball, and going on trips. Boucher said he met Cirimele playing baseball at Menlo College two decades ago and the two became inseparable.

Boucher said it was because of Cirimele that he got a job years ago and that Cirimele was the reason for so many friendships he made over the years.

“It seems like he made very good friends everywhere he went,” said Boucher. “That’s why it’s all so shocking and somehow incomprehensible how this could happen.”

Musto had the same thing to say about Cirimele.

“He actually made you feel like he cared about what you had to say,” said Musto.

Most devastating for those who know the former baseball star is that he leaves behind two young daughters and a wife.

“Loves her to death, I mean he’s a real girl dad and you miss him so much,” said his dad, Gary Cirimele.

Gary and Kim had just returned from a trip to Hawaii with their son and granddaughters.

“He was just a good, good person,” said Kim.

Cirimele’s funeral is scheduled just before Thanksgiving. His wife told KPIX that Cirimele was her “best friend” and that they were all “shocked and devastated”.

“I check this phone every morning, there are no text messages,” said Gary. “I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.”

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Last June, when most of the world remained closed, the Svane Family Foundation commissioned Bay Area artists with $ 10,000 each to create 100 new works, and paid out a total of $ 1 million. It was the foundation’s first program since its inception in 2019, and now the next phase is starting: an online auction and exhibition of the works resulting from the project entitled “Ark” at the San Francisco Art Institute from 7 to 27 May September. (Proceeds from the sale will benefit Bay Area ArtSpan, a nonprofit.)

We spoke to foundation founder Mikkel Svane, who is also CEO of software company Zendesk, about his move to collecting and how art philanthropy has made him rethink his own buying habits.

What was your first purchase (and how much did you pay for it)?

There are pieces in my collection that date back to a childhood portrait, so it’s almost impossible to remember when you first bought it. What really changed my approach to collecting was the Hospitality House Community Arts Program in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, next to our Zendesk office. I got drawn into it and ended up talking to people who lived in really difficult circumstances, but who had this opportunity to support themselves with their work. I was amazed how this studio and gallery could do such a good job of struggling with so much people, embracing the raw expression of life in this part of town, and that my art purchases were of immediate benefit to the life of the Artist would have. I think the first piece I bought there was by Charles Blackwell, and since then many, many works have been created. Eventually I started helping organize their annual fundraising auction, which resulted in my overall commitment to the local art scene here.

What was your last purchase?

Works by Camila Fernandez, Donna Personna, Lord Fredrick and Alicia Mccarthy, all on the Hospitality House auction. And a couple of random Danish nature paintings that remind me of home.

Woody De Othello, Face to Face (2021). Courtesy of the Svane Family Foundation.

Which works or artists would you like to add to your collection this year?

One of Woody De Othello’s ceramic pieces that has not yet come out of the gallery. There’s only so much space on the wall so you’ll have to collect media that don’t need it! There can be a lot of ceramics this year. I also recently bought Jackie Browns Cheetah camo and chiaozzas Bouquet sculpture No. 2 by Hashimoto Contemporary.

What is the most expensive work of art you own?

I have to insist that what you get out of a piece does not correlate with its price. I think my favorite piece I own is a Joe Turek painting. White collarwhich was not expensive, but really impressed me during the time I lived with it.

Where do you most often buy art?

Of course our local galleries, especially Jessica Silverman Gallery, Hashimoto Contemporary, Part 2 Gallery, Rebecca Camacho Presents, the Luggage Store and Gallery Wendi Norris. Artistic is a great pastime. And I follow these little auctions in Europe – there are so many jewels to discover there. I just found something special Robert Bechtle painting from an auction in Paris.

Is there a job that you regret buying?

My only regret is that I’m limited to how much I can collect. Wall space is limited, especially city life. We just moved to find more!

Emilio Villalba, Sixpack (2019). Courtesy of the Svane Family Foundation.

What work do you have hanging over your sofa? How does it look in your bathroom?

Now that we’re moving it’s up for discussion, but before packing we had a piece of Art Collaboration twfive, Venus and the swans, above a sofa. Above others were Emilio Villalbas Six pack, a painting of cigarettes (I always say collecting art is like smoking, it’s fun, and addicting), and Tammy Rae Carlands I’m dying here (Carole + Mitzi) –all “Ark” artists – and Peter Gronquists Ferns and roses. I hang my kids’ pictures in the bathroom and bedroom mixed with the professional artists so they are some of the first and last works I see today.

What’s the most impractical piece of art you own?

This huge painting by Casey Gray, The pursuit of happinessthat I wasn’t sure would even fit in the house. We had to test it out before buying it. Also a Jeppe Hein sculpture made of two balloons, Wishes for twothat you need to fix to the ceiling with magnets. But I never buy art for practical reasons other than to support local artists and keep the city creative and interesting.

Dashiell Manley, Black Rotation (2019). Courtesy of the Svane Family Foundation.

What work would you have liked to have bought when you had the opportunity?

That’s the thing, you almost always regret it if you don’t react faster. Dashiell Manley’s last show on Jessica Silverman is a huge regret. Got a little bit, but hesitated too long with my feet and missed what I really wanted.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I couldn’t buy anything. It just felt absurd. But then I realized how important it was to support local artists financially as all their options dried up, and to support them emotionally – to encourage them to keep working. So we made the Svane Family Foundation’s first program a commissioned composition of 100 pieces that will be featured on the Ark show in September. It was a bit of a revelation – why spend $ 1 million on a single work when that amount can support a whole community of artists?

If you could steal a piece of art without getting caught, which one would it be?

There is this very special piece at SFMOMA, Robert Bechtle Alameda Gran Torino (1974), a painting of a car with wood paneling. It reminds me of my father who grew up in the USA during the war and always told us these stories when I grew up in Denmark. It represents that kind of Americana that I associate with my childhood and my father.

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Photo courtesy of the San Francisco 49ers

The Athletic’s Mike Sando made his round of the league asking about the San Francisco 49ers who traded to # 3 overall to pick a quarterback. Even if the two best picks are viewed as bans – Trevor Lawrence for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Zach Wilson for the New York Jets – no one is really sure about the 49ers’ plan.

There is speculation – a lot of it.

Given its history with quarterbacks like Kirk Cousins ​​and Matt Ryan, many believe that San Francisco was traded in for Mac Jones of Alabama. Two NFL executives who spoke to Sando can see that. Whether or not they agree with the possible choices is a different story.

“I heard you think really seriously about Mac Jones and it would blow my mind,” one of the executives told Sando. “If you’d asked Alabama who their starting quarterback would be a year ago, it wouldn’t have been Mac Jones.”

A third manager isn’t sure Jones is the reason the 49ers dropped multiple first-round picks to jump to the top of the draft regulation.

“I don’t think they rose for Mac Jones,” the nameless person told Sando. “I think it’s North Dakota State (Lance) but it could be Ohio State (Fields). They keep Garoppolo for a year, redshirt the rookie and then if everything goes according to plan they have a Kansas City situation with them Mahomes.

“I suspect Carolina or Denver pull the trigger on Mac Jones or the bears go up, but I’m not buying Kyle Shanahan, who goes up to three for Mac Jones.”

That should come as a relief for 49ers fans who feel that Jones could have been acquired with a lower range – or they didn’t want Jones at all. There seems to be a range in giving so much draft capital to a player whose cap may be lower than Justin Fields or Trey Lance’s.

Obviously, this is a choice that will change the franchise and that Shanahan and General Manager John Lynch will have to make. Failure could be devastating for the organization.

More San Francisco 49ers News

NFL teams believe 49ers are “bluffing” over Jimmy Garoppolo plans

By David Bonilla

March 28, 2021

Throughout the off-season, the San Francisco 49ers have insisted that Jimmy Garoppolo stay on the team’s plans for at least 2021. You haven’t wavered even after trading until the third stop in the upcoming draft, presumably to pick a future quarterback. “Jimmy is here to stay. He’s our guy this year,” a 49ers source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Keeping Garoppolo for at least one more season might make sense, even after San Francisco picks up one of the top quarterback candidates in this year’s draft class. The team can afford it after clearing some salary caps. Should the 49ers land a Trey Lance or Justin Fields, the young quarterback could sit for a season

Jeremiah: The majority of the NFL think the deal was the 49ers for Mac Jones

By David Bonilla

March 29, 2021

It sounds like the majority of the NFL believes that the San Francisco 49ers, who climbed from 12th to 3rd last week, should have the right to draw Alabama quarterback Mac Jones, not Justin Fields the state of Ohio or Trey Lance from Alabama North Dakota State. Of course, maybe that’s exactly what the 49ers want the league to be. There are so many fog screens in the design that it is difficult to predict what might happen. That’s part of the appeal. Even so, NFL Media’s draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah revealed what a lot of people in the league are hearing – that head coach Kyle Shanahan and San Francisco Jones, who most believe they are the fifth best quarterback in this year’s draft class, covet. “Well I think the majority of the people in the league

49ers, NFL teams can begin Phase 1 of the OTAs on April 19th

By David Bonilla

March 30, 2021

The NFL has informed the teams that they can begin Phase 1 of Organized Team Activities (OTAs) on Monday April 19, according to Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network. There remains some uncertainty about what the offseason program might look like given the impact of COVID-19. How much is going to be personal versus virtual? The NFL announced today to clubs that they can begin Phase 1 of the OTAs on April 19, per source. Players are still allowed to train in small groups at the facility, as many have done. The NFL and NFLPA will soon continue to discuss virtual and face-to-face meetings and field work. – Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero)

NFL officially expands the regular season schedule to 17 games per team and creates 49ers in the Bengals Matchup

By David Bonilla

March 30, 2021

Big changes are coming up for the coming season. Today, the NFL announced that the regular season schedule for each team would include 17 games instead of the 16 fixture lists that have been a staple since 1978. NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported this first. NFL owners have officially approved the regular season of 17 games starting in 2021. – Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 30, 2021 According to Ian

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‘Maybe we’re having a bust right now, but it’ll boom again’

Mat Honan

OneZero is partnering with the Big Technology Podcast from Alex Kantrowitz to bring readers exclusive access to interview transcripts — edited for length and clarity — with notable figures in and around the tech industry.

To subscribe to the podcast and hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BuzzFeed News Executive Editor Mat Honan has long covered the way society interacts with technology. He joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss the “Zoom Class,” the rise of NFTs, and how San Francisco may change after the pandemic.

Alex Kantrowitz: Hi Mat, Let’s talk about the “Zoom Class,” or the group of people who’ve been able to keep their jobs and work from home during the pandemic. Some have even moved to “Zoom towns” a few hours away from the cities they once lived in. What do you think the implications are of having a group of people who can do that, and a group who can’t?

Mat Honan: There’s a couple of really interesting things there. If you think about what this pandemic would have looked like 20 years ago, when it would not have been possible to have a Zoom class, or a work-from-home class, or a Zoom school, all that kind of stuff. Technology really, in a lot of ways, helped this from becoming a lot worse than it could have been. It clearly helped reduce community spread.

But it’s deeply unfair certainly that some people are basically able to ride it out at home, often all being paid very well to do that. I think it’s almost a cliché at this point — I wish I could remember who said it first because it’s a brilliant truth — about the pandemic being the black light that exposed all the problems in society.

In some ways, it was just a lot of right stuff and right time in terms of the fact that it did work. You worked on a story, when this was all starting, about video capabilities when the pandemic was getting going. So many people had gone to Amazon Web services, there was so much bandwidth, people had fiber to the house, and there’s all this stuff. But it’s just deeply unfair that so many people got to ride it out at home, and it’s deeply unfair that the kids whose families had the money to have a better computer and better internet connection got a better education, or got an education. In some families, their kids just sat alone at home all day while both their parents are essential workers.

It’s really exposed the divides in society and just what kind of inequalities we have to work on as a society; I think that’s more than anything else. “Zoom Towns,” is the most obnoxious phrase I’ve heard in a long time, it’s going to have a long-term transformative effect in society, but I hope we can make a positive one.

Let’s talk about the effect. What’s that going to look like?

Frankly, I don’t want to predict the future. Like I don’t know. I don’t know what it looks like, but I certainly hope that all these conversations that we’ve had about race and class in the past year aren’t for naught, and that all the things that we’ve learned about who has the privilege to do these things, that we don’t unlearn those.

I worry that this will just add another layer of division inside an already really divided country.

I do, too. I do hope that there is some good to come out of it and we can have some sort of realignment. I saw something recently about the massive number of people who are registered as Independents now versus four years ago, eight years ago, 12 years ago.

It’s been an increase?

Yes, I think that’s a positive thing. One of the worst things that we’ve done in American society is to divide everybody up into teams. It’s been incredibly harmful. I hope there’s a chance that we can learn from it, and people become more civic-minded, and people can get more involved.

Personally, all of a sudden I care a lot more about schools, and not just my kids’ schools, but other kids’ schools. Molly Hensley-Clancy wrote a story on schools in the spring, and about all these kids who have just been completely wrecked by the pandemic and left behind. I’m certainly not the only person talking about seeing that, but I think people are really thinking about that now, and I hope that we continue to think about that.

I hope that we can do things like make sure that all families have a fast internet at home. Why is that something that only wealthy families can pay for? Why can’t we have a more equitable distribution of broadband? Why can’t there be broadband in rural areas? Why can’t we do more to have the government create infrastructure where there’s not affordable internet that people can get?

Tech development already seemed like it was happening in a bubble, and now it seems to be further ensconced in a bubble?

Some things maybe became less bubbled, like for example grocery delivery. My mother, who’s in her seventies and lives in a rural area, and is on a fixed income and doesn’t have a whole lot of resources, had never been able to get groceries delivered. Now, she can get groceries delivered, order online, and curbside pickup, and that kind of stuff, and she’s been doing it for a year. It just wasn’t available in her area, and the grocery stores that were there then scrambled to implement it. You’ll see some things like that, where places that weren’t traditionally tech, like a rural grocery store, become happy about technology that makes them more useful to people’s lives.

But what happens if the builders of technology are less exposed to folks who don’t work in the tech industry?

I think what you’re saying is because of people’s ability to ride it out at Zooms, are they going to have even less empathy than they already did have for people who they’ve not been having any contact with. It’s definitely concerning. Did you see the “giraffe money” story?

Was it about having enough money you could buy a giraffe as a test for wealth?

Right. “Are you going to get giraffe money from this IPO?” or just fancy dog money. I don’t know. And you want to have giraffe money. Even that those discussions are taking place is messed up. The U.S. is pretty messed up. I think a lot of that is due to long-term tax policy, long-term policies around race, long-term policies around who got to get a loan to buy a home, and that type of thing. I would hope that the people who are listening to this podcast, who are the builders, are thinking about the unglamorous middle class and working class and working poor who are not living in those bubbles and are not able to be on the Zoom all day.

There’s a company that has an ad where one of their drivers says, “I’m my own CEO,” and it struck me as tone-deaf. Because yeah, you’re your own CEO, you don’t have health benefits, you don’t have unemployment benefits, you don’t have any of the safety nets that come with full employment, and actually, you’re not even your own CEO because you don’t really even set your hours.

You’re managed by an algorithm.

Yeah. But that that mindset could come out now is shocking to me and appalling. We talk about these people as essential workers, yet we treat them as if they’re completely inessential, and it’s discouraging to me that you could have so little empathy that you might not see that as a problem.

When meanwhile there’s a thing going on in San Francisco right now. There’s a driver, I believe it’s an Uber driver, maybe a Lyft driver, who was assaulted by some people because he had asked them to wear a mask in the car. People are out there scrambling and working hard and putting themselves at risk so that other people are able to be at home and sit there on Zoom and Google Docs, and get your work done and check your workflow in Asana, all that kind of stuff. You know? It happens because other people have ventured out and took risks. And I just hope we think about them.

Okay, what do you think about this whole non-fungible token craze and the fact that bitcoin is going to the moon? I think you have a mountain full of bitcoin sitting in some Wired server from your Wired days.

They burned that, actually.

We should tell the story of the Wired bitcoin server, if you’re able.

This wasn’t me, but it was while I was there and it’s pretty amazing. I believe it was Bob McMillan, who’s now at the Wall Street Journal, who had a Butterfly Labs bitcoin mine, and it was in the gadget closet, and it’s just in there churning away mining bitcoin.

What year was this?

2012, maybe 2013. And at first, it’s just in there churning out stuff at whatever bitcoin was at the time. Even when it was $100 a coin, nobody really thought about this being a big problem. Then, all of a sudden bitcoin shot up, I think it was a thousand bucks or something, and I’m not going to get these numbers right, but it became a problem, and people were like, “Wait a second. It’s a thousand bucks today. It could be 50,000 bucks tomorrow,” which I don’t think anyone believed.

Here we are.

Yeah. Here we are. And there was a big debate internally over what we should do with it. I remember Adam Rogers, who’s a longtime writer and editor there, who’s on the science desk there, making the case that we should give that money to charity, “There are people sleeping on the street. We can’t keep this and sit on this bitcoin stash because it could in some ways compromise our integrity.” At this point, I want to say it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 bitcoin. They had mined several, but not a lot. They didn’t have like a thousand bitcoin or whatever; it wasn’t that early. Anyway, at some point after a lot of arguing over it, they made the decision basically to get rid of the key, and so they burned the key; and once they did that, I mean there’s no getting it back.

How much is this worth?

Like when they trashed it. Let’s say it was 10 bitcoin. I don’t know, it would be worth what, half a million bucks now? It’s a substantial amount of money now the way that it wasn’t when they got it.

Do you kick yourself for not buying bitcoin when you knew it was happening back in the day?

You can’t just think about what could have been. You’ve got to go back to that moment in time to really think about it. But there was a point in time when, I want to say it was John Herman, maybe someone else who was there, bought some bitcoin for a story when it was still trading for pennies a coin, and they had to send a money order to somebody who literally went by the name Morpheus. Who could have seen that it became that?

I actually did buy some bitcoin, which I wish I still was holding, for a story one time, and I got beat by Kash Hill who wrote another story about living on bitcoins, which is what I wanted to do. When you think about the million-dollar pizzas or whatever, or whatever Kash spent, she spent some fortune on a bitcoin sushi dinner, I mean it wasn’t worth anything back then, and it became worth stuff because people bought pizza and sushi dinners. That’s why it’s worth something now.

Do you think it’s going to crash?

I think it’s less likely to be valueless now than it was because there’s so many institutional people in it. I have no idea where the money is going or what’s happening with it.

Can I talk about NFTs?

Let’s define NFTs first because I’m still wrapping my head around how someone could sell a JPEG for $70 million.

I think we can define it as not a JPEG that sold, but as a unique digital object; that’s the way to think about it. I think if you define it that way, that it’s a digital object that is one of a kind, you can understand why that’s exciting.

Digital stuff is replicable on pixels anywhere. If I buy a painting, at least that painting hangs in my house. If I buy a digital object, anyone can see it on the web. I can’t display it. I guess I could buy a screen and put it up there, but anyone could buy a screen and put it up there, so what’s going on here?

I can put a replica of the Mona Lisa in my house tomorrow, right? You can replicate anything, you can already do that.

Is this Beeple’s First 5000 Days thing that sold worth $69 million? I have no idea, man. Who knows? I don’t know.

Why do you think this is cool?

I think it’s cool when you start thinking about it not just in terms of art. I think it’s cool when you start thinking about the ability to have a unique digital item that is yours and yours alone that you have ownership of. I think art is an easy place to start. But I think just in the same way that you weren’t able to really use bitcoin for anything except drugs, you will at some point be able to buy and sell other things, and there’s some weird stuff.

There’s that tweet that Jack Dorsey offered up as an NFT, and so the tweet is always just going to exist on Twitter anyway. It’s the person that’s setting up my Twitter tweet, but someone else is going to own the NFT of the tweet, I think is how it works.

What prevents Jack from selling an NFT of the same tweet to someone different?

Right. But could you fork the tweet? I don’t know. Maybe.

Because it’s all made up.

Yeah. It’s all made up. But I think it’s an interesting way to transfer ownership. This is going to sound crazy, but what if all ownership became some of those transferred NFTs, not just art, but like anything that you own that you don’t necessarily have in your possession, like the title to your car? I don’t know. I possess my car, but the title lives on a blockchain somewhere? It’s just an interesting way to think about ownership. I think there’s obviously all these huge problems with the energy usage that people are talking about —

Because mining bitcoin takes the carbon of an absurd amount of computing power.

The energy involved in mining and transferring bitcoin, and transferring NFTs, is apparently quite significant. But I think being able to prove unique digital ownership is a pretty cool concept.

Do you think you’ll buy any NFTs?

Not $69 million.

But if we put this podcast up and sold the rights as an NFT, would it be valuable at all?

I don’t know, Alex. Why don’t you try it? There’s a service that you can use to sell your tweets, which is I think what Dorsey used.

Oh, yeah. I put something up on there; it didn’t sell.

One of the things I’m going to think about doing is selling. I had someone hack my Twitter a long time ago, they posted to my Twitter account, and it’s always been so interesting to me that when you look at Twitter’s — I own my account, right? Twitter owns my account, but I technically own the content and their terms of service because I created it, the content is mine. Well, I didn’t create that. I didn’t create it. I didn’t display it. Someone else did all that. I’ve been wanting to sell that tweet just to see how you transfer that, how it works to transfer ownership to something that I clearly don’t own and didn’t make.

Could people tell your Twitter was hacked? Because there was one time where you were tweeting one night like, “Oh, God,” and “No, not this,” and…

I was watching Game of Thrones and I was just reacting, I think it was a season finale or something, and I tweeted like, “Oh, shit!” something like, “Oh, my God. This looks terrible.” It’s that total context collapse thing, and then I went to bed. The show was over. And I guess Marc Andreessen saw the tweets and flagged them to Ben Smith, who flagged them to our security, who was trying to call me in the middle of the night. I had my phone turned off. I woke up the next day and there’s all these messages from Ben and our security team like, “Are you okay?” And I said, “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

Was this the moment when Marc Andreessen turned against journalists?

I don’t think so. This was before he went on the blocking spree. This is when he actually followed lots of reporters and was saying those things about how Twitter was his way to inject his thoughts directly into a newsroom.

You wrote a piece on Substack saying that you’re pretty optimistic about San Francisco coming back. What do you think is going to happen here and why are you optimistic?

I guess I see people doing interesting things in the city, especially around media. There are a bunch of small interesting media startups in the city now that I think are cool, but I also see people becoming more engaged, you know?

I do think that we’ve got so many problems to solve in San Francisco. It’s clearly got a horrible, absolutely just incredible, fentanyl crisis, not just an opioid crisis. It’s a fentanyl crisis. It’s got horrible issues with people’s authority to actually live there. Like if you want to rent an apartment, if you want to buy a house: good luck; it costs just a shit-ton of money to try and do that. I think they’re starting to do a little bit of building in San Francisco. Like even people are still fighting it, but you’re starting, for I think at least the first time since the 20 years that I’ve lived there, to see a lot more support for new construction and for affordable construction. And I’m seeing a lot more people involved in knowing what the Board of Supervisors is doing.

I think that, in some ways, having school board meetings, and board supervisors meetings, and all these other government meetings happening on the internet where people can tune in and see them, and not have to go to a building and be there in person, it encourages participation, and so that’s encouraging to me. I think it’s only encouraging though if people are willing to dive in and start doing things and trying to make a difference, and I certainly hope they are. But also part of the point of that piece was that San Francisco has always been a weird fucked-up place, right?

From the very beginning, and it’s been this kind of place that’s always attracted weirdos doing weird things, whether they’re looking for gold, or coming for the summer of love, or whatever. Certainly, there are the origin stories that are connected to Stanford and Xerox PARC, and Fairchild Semiconductor, and all that kind of stuff. But one of the reasons that there are a lot of tech people in San Francisco is that it was a place where people were trying interesting and different new things. There’s a great book called What the Dormouse Said about this, but there’s a direct line between people that experiment with drugs and experiment with technology.

And I think that San Francisco has been a town that’s had a lot of booms and busts, and maybe we’re having a bust right now, but it’ll boom again. It’s a beautiful place that’s on the ocean, you can ride your bike across the bridge and be in a national park. It’s got a lovely climate, even if we do have fire season now.

And people are going to want to live there. This myth that everybody’s vacating San Francisco for Miami — also a great city, but one that’s sinking underground and brutally hot in the summertime — it’s ridiculous. People are always talking about problems. But before 1990, San Francisco was pretty grim, and yet the tech boom happened after its grimness.

They tried to draft you to run for mayor at one point. Are you going to do that?

No. I tried to draft myself, honestly. But no, I’m not. Of course not. I could never do that. What a terrible job that’s got to be, right? Man, that’s a shitty job.

Maybe to be governor, but it’s also super interesting to me that San Francisco politics have become so dominant, in the sense that the politicians have become so dominant: Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris. All those people come out of San Francisco local politics, and it’s amazing.

If you think about the dot-com bust which happened in 2000, but it took a couple years to shake out, lots of interesting stuff happened in San Francisco in 2003-’04, ’05, ’06. Before, it was totally on its feet. If there are people who are there just for a job and they want to leave, they should be able to go.

Going back to one of your earlier questions, I do think that we’re never going to go fully back to the office, and there are going to be people who are working on Zoom, we’re going to be working from all over the place; and if they don’t want to be in San Francisco, they shouldn’t necessarily have to be. I think things will shake out, and things will change, and we’ll fix some problems, and we’ll get new ones.

I think you need to have a certain level of affordable rent to have the weird people that make a city enjoyable, so maybe this will be one of the silver linings, that San Francisco will be a place where weird can flourish again.

I hope so. And I hope it’s also a place where people who have grown up there can stay there. My wife, as you know, is a nurse, and she works with people who commute in from hours away because they can’t, especially if they’re younger, afford rent. I hope it’s a place where artists and nurses and teachers and musicians and people who are the soul of the city can live, and I think that all comes down to housing. I think when you think about the homelessness crisis, the people experiencing the homelessness crisis, that’s driven by housing. So much of what people complain about with San Francisco can be solved by starting housing, and it’s encouraging me that we’re starting to see a little bit more get built.

And it’s encouraging to see that some of the focus that’s been happening out of city hall, including today, is on livability. I think when you really start thinking about what makes a city livable, it’s people’s ability to fucking live there, right?

That sounds so stupid. But if you can’t actually live in the city because you can’t afford to, I mean it’s not going to be a lovely city. Like who cares how many slow streets you have. You’ve got to have a house.

You’ve written eloquently about the fire season here that’s become a fact of life. Are we going to have a fire season on the West Coast every year? This year was particularly brutal.

It was awful. I don’t remember how long it was. I just remember it was just absolutely awful. Especially combined on top of the pandemic, I mean it’s terrible. It destroyed some people’s homes and their lives. Peter Aldhous has written a lot about it, and everything that I’ve read that he’s written has made me discouraged that it’s going to get better anytime soon.

Yes. I mean the trend is certainly that they’re getting worse. I don’t know what the snowpack is like right now, but it was low, which is not encouraging for fire season. I think it’s a fact of life in the West. It was happening in Colorado, happening in Montana, in ways that it didn’t used to. To me, that’s the thing that’s really alarming about living in San Francisco and California and the West and the world is like, “Oh, shit. What have we done to the planet? And are we going to be able to do anything to fix it?”

My wife’s cousin was emailing us and they’re like, “Well, we wanted to come out in August, but we’re worried that it’s going to be very smoky,” and my response is, “Yeah. I don’t think you should come in August.” I wouldn’t plan a vacation in California in August right now.

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