Investing in Tech

As tech stocks soar, the conversation about innovation has never been more important. And today we launched our first-ever virtual conference series, Barron's Investing in Tech.

Every Wednesday over the next six weeks we'll be chatting with top executives, investors, and analysts about disruption, entrepreneurship, and markets -- all in the context of a pandemic. 

We kicked off the conference with three interviews: The first was with Ken Chenault, former CEO of American Express and current chairman of venture capital firm General Catalyst, and Henry Ellenbogen, partner and chief investment officer of Durable Capital Partners.

Here are some highlights from Lauren Rublin's interview with them:

·        Chenault, who is African-American, began by talking about the recent wave of protests about police brutality: "Incidents of violence and inhumanity against blacks in this country must stop. We must not simply stand by and stay silent...The business community must recognize its responsibility to eradicate racism and to close the gap on racial inequality."

·        On leading in a crisis: "My leadership mantra is that the role of a leader is to define reality and give hope..."

·        Ellenbogen on change: "I would say that change has really gone broad. Technology spilled over to media, which has spilled over to transportation and hospitality and recently we’re seeing a lot of change in financial services. It’s going all the way down to the manufacturing floor. I think what you’re seeing as result of the current environment with Covid-19 is that many trends in place have been pulled forward three to five years. 

·        "People are realizing there’s a lot of liability in the analog word."

From there, Ben Levisohn spoke with NYSE Group President Stacey Cunningham. 

·        On the NYSE's continued importance for markets: "Part of what we do each day is dampen volatility."

·        On going virtual and now returning to the trading floor: "Using technology to empower people really leads to better results. That thoughtful integration is what’s really critical."

·        On tech companies choosing to stay private longer: "An entrepreneur and dreamer could raise money in public and create wealth for themselves, while creating jobs along the way. But it's really important they’re also sharing that success with public investors. When they stay private, investors miss out on that value creation. It continues the bifurcation of wealth,  when that very rapid growth cycle is limited to private investors."

And then Eric Savitz chatted with Stewart Butterfield , co-founder and CEO of Slack, the enterprise communications platform.

·        On work-from-home tools like Slack: "I think we will see a proliferation of new tools...Do organizations have all the tools in their tool kit to support this mode of working? I don’t think so. So innovation won’t stop in 2020. We’ll see more interesting new tools because when you are working in a distributed fashion there’s a much higher threshold for discipline around communication." 

·        On Slack employees working from home during the pandemic: "We have been as effective and productive, maybe more so on a sustained basis from the early stage of work from home."

·        But there's some concern going forward: "Now we've had hundreds of people that have started at Slack after we all started working from home ... 18 months form now -- when 50% of the company was hired without meeting face to face -- are we going to be able to function at the same level?" 

Next week, we'll be talking to Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of biotech company Moderna, which is currently testing a Covid-19 vaccine, and Craig Moffett, telecom analyst and founding partner of MoffettNathanson. 

Sign up for Barron's Investing in Tech here.