Episode #200: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google with Scott Galloway

Welcome back to Future Squared for a very special milestone episode number 200…. it seems like just yesterday I was sitting down with my co-founder and bashing out episode #1. That was now over 20 months ago and in that time I’ve been lucky enough to speak with and learn from the likes of Kevin Kelly, Steve Blank, Tim Harford, Jason Calacanis, Gretchen Rubin, Andreas Antonopoulous, Karen Dillon, Sean Ellis, Massimo Pigliucci, Brad Feld, Jamie Wheal, Lawrence Levy, Tyler Cowen, Alec Ross, Jamie Wheal, Susan David, David Allen and countless others - it just blows my mind how far this show has come in a short amount of time, picking up the Australian people’s choice award for best business podcast earlier this year and amassing a following of thousands.

So with that, I would just like to say a big THANK YOU for listening to the show, whether you’ve been with us from the start, whether you discovered the show 100 episodes in or whether this is the first time listening to the show - thank you so much - of course, if you have been a fan all of this time, I look forward to bringing you another 200 episodes and if you’d like to show some love, simply take a minute to leave a rating on iTunes, Stitcher or Google Play - it goes a long way to ensuring that the show gets into as many ears as possible.

 

What I’m doing on this show ultimately aligns with our mission here at Collective Campus which is to unlock people’s potential to create more imact for humanity and lead more fulfilling lives and I just hope that through these episodes you’ve been inspired to act and create change or add value to your life and the lives of people around you in ways both great and small.

So with that, it’s time to introduce today’s guest... Professor Scott Galloway.

Scott is a clinical professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, and a public speaker, author, and entrepreneur. He was named one of the world's 50 best business school professors by Poets and Quants. He has just released The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google which is already a New York Times and USA Today Bestseller.

In it Scott deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can’t match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career.

In this episode you will learn:

• How the big four tech titans got to where they are today and why we’re wrong about how we think they got there

• Whether the big four are too big to fail and what the broader social and economic implications of their dominance are; and

• How to apply lessons from the big four to accelerate your career

Topics discussed:

- Scott predicting the Amazon Wholefoods acquisition

- How Amazon made money on the acquisition, almost immediately

- How companies like Amazon have a competitive advantage by getting big on "someone else's credit card"

- Why investors are so forgiving to companies like Amazon, Tesla and Facebook despite high profile crises that would destroy other companies

- How these companies got so big

- Are the big four 'too big to fail'?

- Has Google gotten so big and collected so much data that it's almost impossible for a second entrant to compete?

- How companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, UBER and Facebook concentrate wealth in Silicon Valley, much to the detriment of social safety nets everywhere 

- How big four companies are doing much more with much less

- How behemoths like Amazon and Google get away with paying effectively no tax while small companies end up paying much more on a per capita basis

- On Silicon Valley companies designing apps to effectively addict us to dopamine hits

- In the wake of high profile anti-trust breaches, sexual harrassment cases and multi-billion dollar fines, are the big four's companies political fortunes on the decline?

- Jeff Immelt's ousting at GE and how the market was less forgiving for a traditional company than a Tesla (despite the latter's product recalls and missing production targets)

- How we can apply the lessons of the big four to our own lives

 

Show Notes:

1) Book website: www.thefourbook.com

2) Twitter: @profgalloway

3) Get the book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2CKzGqb

 

 

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