Recode Replay

Snarkitecture partner Benjamin Porto and Allbirds co-founder Joey Zwillinger talk with Recode’s Edmund Lee about designing architecture and shoes for Silicon Valley, respectively. Brick-and-mortar spaces continue to be important as storytelling vehicles for brands, they say, even as the numbers point to e-commerce growing and retail shrinking. Physical stores are actually thriving, Zwillinger says, because Amazon’s speediness has forced them to up their standards and unique offerings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Williams-Sonoma CEO Laura Alber talks with Recode's Jason Del Rey and Kara Swisher about how the retailer is going beyond the retail store. Alber says most purchases are made on an emotional basis, so it's still vital for retailers to connect with their customers, whether that means making better predictions about what people want to buy or flipping the script and sending an adviser to visit customers' homes. Alber also talks about how WIlliams-Sonoma-owned Pottery Barn is working with Google on an augmented reality experience for decorating one's house. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Boxed CEO Chieh Huang talks about competing with warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam's Club, offering customers the ability to buy in bulk without needing to drive to a physical location. He touches on changes in what consumers value, how Boxed treats its warehouse employees and how certain products are taxed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blue Apron CEO Matt Salzberg talks with Recode's Jason Del Rey about how the meal-delivery company is changing now that it's publicly traded and how it is reacting to Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods. Over the past five years, Blue Apron has sought to grow as fast as possible and is now moving to think about broadening its offerings to customers with new types of products. It plans to do more a la carte sales of kitchen and pantry items, but Salzberg says he has no plans to compete head to head with mass-market grocers like Whole Foods. Plus: After a rocky IPO, why should Blue Apron remain independent? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachel Roy's eponymous founder and Dia&Co CEO Nadia Boujarwah talk with Recode's Edmund Lee and Racked's Tiffany Yannetta about designing and selling clothes for plus-sized women, an addressable market of 100 million. To reach modern consumers, they match their companies' clothes with social media tastemakers who have big followings and a unique point of view. Plus-size consumers were among the first to make the jump to the internet, Roy and Boujarwah say, because they weren't served well by most brick-and-mortar stores.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nike Direct President Heidi O'Neill talks with Recode's Jason Del Rey about how the sports apparel company is working to connect with consumers digitally. Nike products can be found both in stores and across the web, but the company has created a membership program for people who go to its website and apps directly, rewarding them with personalized shopping recommendations and first dibs on new products. In return, Nike gets clearer data about what its customers will want in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clarifai CEO Matt Zeiler talks about how artificial intelligence and neural networks are getting smarter, learning how to automatically recognize images more quickly and accurately. AI companies should build their own neural networks in-house, but everyone else should borrow the expertise of outside firms like Clarifai, Zeiler says. He explains the potential of "visual search" for shopping, helping customers find and buy things that they can't quite describe in words. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pinterest President Tim Kendall talks with Recode's Kurt Wagner about how the company is partnering with brands and advertisers, including a new mobile product that helps people search for items by taking pictures of something similar. The goal is to help Pinners discover things they may want to buy — even though almost all searches on the platform are for generic terms like "red couch" rather than specific brands. While Google and Amazon are good for targeted searches, Kendall says, Pinterest can capture a lot of value among people who don't know yet what they want.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Fanatics Executive Chairman Michael Rubin talk with Recode's Kurt Wagner and Jason Del Rey about the fast-moving world of official sports merchandise. Rubin says Amazon and the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba are good businesses, but not good for brands like NBA teams that want to profit from their own names. Silver also talks about how sports themselves will change as technology gets more sophisticated and how the NBA is working with digital platforms on streaming sports games around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Venmo COO Mike Vaughan talks with Recode’s Dan Frommer about how his company is turning a popular payments app into a real business. Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, processed more than $25 billion in the past four quarters, and Vaughan said it captures the essence of real-world interactions: Friends pooling their money for a gift, roommates paying each other back or parents collecting dues for their kids' soccer teams. The next step for the company is integrating the app with the services that people commonly use it for, as well as turning users' Venmo balance into a debit account they can access via a physical card. Plus: With peer-to-peer payments launching natively in iOS 11, is Venmo under threat from Apple? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peloton CEO John Foley talks about building a boutique fitness class program that can be accessed from the home. Peloton's exercise bike has tripled in sales in the past year, but the more important thing for its business is its monthly subscription to online spinning classes. Foley examines the social, economic and even religious forces that are driving people to other fitness programs like SoulCycle, CrossFit and Orange Theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Celebrity chef Mario Batali talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the future of restaurants, including how technology helps him do his job and whether he can envision a future where a restaurant's food is prepared without human hands. Batali evaluates food/tech companies such as Blue Apron, Juicero and Soylent, as well as food for people who think they are too busy to eat. He also talks about how he uses several social media platforms: Twitter (good for picking fights), Instagram (good for "what I'm doing") and YouTube (good for entertaining Batali's teenage son).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Perpich, the president of the New York Times-owned site The Wirecutter, and Ben Kaufman, the head of BuzzFeed Product Labs, talk with Recode's Peter Kafka about running and building media businesses on top of affiliate links. Perpich says Amazon, Google, Facebook and their peers are "setting the rules" in the digital commerce world, so the NYT has to navigate relationships with all of them. Kaufman says BuzzFeed is moving beyond links to other ways of making money, such as selling a cookbook and hot plate bearing its food brand, Tasty, and partnering with brick-and-mortar retailers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn talks with Recode's Jason Del Rey about starting a digital-first clothing brand, selling it to Walmart and continuing to run it along with another company Walmart acquired, ModCloth. Dunn says the deal makes sense even though Bonobos won't be selling in Walmart stores; as an institution for "the vast majority of Americans," the company will help Bonobos access a much larger customer base online. Dunn talks about the calculus that led him to make a deal with Walmart, as opposed to an IPO, another acquirer or a private equity firm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forerunner Ventures founder Kirsten Green talks about the blurring line between brands and retailers. She traces the history of shopping stores, malls and online, arguing that consumers today want to know more about brands, inviting them to enter their lives like a human relationship. Green also notes that the era of "you are what you own" is over and we've now entered the era of "you are what you experience." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Revolution CEO and America Online co-founder Steve Case talks with The Verge's Walt Mossberg about the "chasm" between startups in tech hubs and the rest of the country. The author of a 2016 book called "The Third Wave," Case says 75 percent of all venture capital goes to three states, 90 percent went to men and less than 1 percent went to African-Americans. Entrepreneurship is now global, and he argues that America can't lead in that field if its investments are constrained by geography, gender and race. Case believes his "rise of the rest" campaign will be supported by President Trump and his allies once they understand the opportunity it provides for American jobs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Twitter COO and CFO Anthony Noto talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about whether the company would ever ditch ads and start charging a monthly subscription fee instead. Noto says user growth is re-accelerating as Twitter makes its timeline and notifications faster and more valuable, but he acknowledges that Twitter may "look at" paid premium services. Most of its "resurrected" users are following many news and politics accounts, but Noto wouldn't say if this increase is directly linked to President Trump's tweeting. He also talks about Twitter's deal with the NFL to stream football games on Thursday nights and how it thinks about livestreaming in general. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Taplin, the director emeritus of USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab, talks about how the creative class and its ability to make money is being undermined by tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon. These companies have shirked their responsibilities as their platforms have been used to spread "fake news" and terrorism videos, Taplin says. He argues that they are in the business of "surveillance capitalism" and it's time to take a closer look at where money and power are concentrated in Silicon Valley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about how the nonprofit has dealt with controversy and political opposition under President Trump. Republicans in Washington are attempting to limit the organization, which Richards says would undermine access to local health services and cause the rates of STIs and abortions to go up. Planned Parenthood will continue to exist even if the GOP's health care bill passes, she says, but it's still fighting to remain a public benefit, with funds for most of its services being reimbursed by the government. Richards also talks about how her team uses social media and texting and why she wants to use drones to air-drop birth control. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich talks with The Verge's Walt Mossberg about the company's pivot away from the PC market and into new areas, such as cloud computing and self-driving cars. Even in a declining PC market, Krzanich notes, Intel has been able to improve its profitability as buyers keep demanding more powerful computers. He says autonomous vehicles will behave more like servers than cars, with the ability to collect and use data around them, applying artificial intelligence to reduce street crime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices