Barry McCarthy, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Barry McCarthy comes up
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek · Acquired
- ▶ 1:10:49 Ben Gilbert PitchBook has all the financing events over the company's history, including pioneering the modern direct listing when Daniel and Barry McCarthy took the company public in 2018 without raising any
- ▶ 1:11:01 David Rosenthal Barry McCarthy rides again.
Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ▶ 20:16 David Rosenthal The Barry McCarthy connection, and that is a take that has not aged well.
Peloton - the entire history and strategy behind America's trendiest workout · Acquired
- ▶ 1:43 David Rosenthal Well, I mean, anytime Barry McCarthy gets involved, like, we were texting, Ben texted me the news, and I was like, that's it.
- ▶ 1:54 David Rosenthal Acquired superhero Barry McCarthy literally riding again.
- ▶ 2:35 Ben Gilbert Uh, today, February ninth was Barry McCarthy's first day in the CEO seat.
- ▶ 2:40 Ben Gilbert And I think he frames this better than we ever could have in his email to the company this morning.
- ▶ 2:45 Ben Gilbert He wrote, and now that the reset button has been pushed, the challenge ahead of us is this.
- ▶ 8:38 Ben Gilbert And to transition us in, thinking about our previous episode with, well, one of our previous episodes with Barry McCarthy, he was a part of that big sort of like company changing moment at Netflix where they had to restructure the whole…
- ▶ 9:05 Ben Gilbert So he's, he's kind of clearly good at, uh, at sort of taking a bare bones team and making the most of it.
- ▶ 9:19 David Rosenthal Barry McCarthy, the acquired superhero.
- ▶ 10:17 Ben Gilbert Um, but yeah, as, as other people ease into retirement, uh, Barry accepts his first ever public company CEO job.
- ▶ 10:34 David Rosenthal There's not a lot on the internet about or with Barry McCarthy himself.
- ▶ 10:51 David Rosenthal With Barry McCarthy on the internet is on YouTube with the headmaster of his high school that he went to a school called the hill school.
- ▶ 11:39 David Rosenthal If you do nothing else from this episode, go watch this interview with Barry and you will
- ▶ 11:54 David Rosenthal And very, very relevant to this news today that I was going to save this for later in the episode, but one of the final questions that the headmaster, who's a wonderful interviewer, asks him is sort of, you know, like, well, you know,…
- ▶ 12:21 David Rosenthal So we all know that Barry becomes the CFO of Netflix when the company is very, very small, still a startup.
- ▶ 12:40 David Rosenthal But how, you know, this was also not early in Barry's career.
- ▶ 13:36 David Rosenthal Barry was the CFO.
- ▶ 15:18 David Rosenthal It's like Barry went through this himself.
- ▶ 16:41 David Rosenthal Um, and, and that's how Barry ended up
- ▶ 16:54 David Rosenthal Barry was, you know, alongside Reed, uh, part of architecting the true, you know, incredible business model of Netflix of becoming a subscription business.
- ▶ 17:40 David Rosenthal Uh, Barry tells Reed, you know what?
- ▶ 18:06 David Rosenthal Barry's gonna be stepping down.
- ▶ 19:00 David Rosenthal And Barry, in one of the most, just like, one of the many reasons why we love him here at Acquired and his story is, uh, he, he says, I can't, I can't leave.
- ▶ 19:27 Ben Gilbert Barry is Mr.
- ▶ 20:51 David Rosenthal Uh, and if Barry is saying that you can take that to the bank and then bent on what you were saying, this is also from the Hill School interview about him, you know, really being, getting fired up by wartime and peacetime is not as…
- ▶ 21:14 Ben Gilbert And listeners, as you can tell, we're spending a lot of time here on Barry, in part because I think it's really important to know, as we think about the future of Peloton, you know, what is his MO?
- ▶ 22:00 David Rosenthal Well, and I think the other thing, you know, that's sort of one half of the magic of, of Barry McCarthy to the extent, uh, he has magic, which I believe he does.
- ▶ 23:38 David Rosenthal So then, you know, when he retires from Netflix, he goes and joins TCV, which of course has a storied history of investing in Netflix and helping them through, through all of their challenges as a financing partner.
- ▶ 24:10 David Rosenthal So he joins them as a venture partner.
- ▶ 24:13 David Rosenthal And, uh, I don't know if he was thinking that he was just gonna sort of be on boards and be an advisor for the rest of his career.
- ▶ 24:19 David Rosenthal But in 2014, he joins the Spotify board and he's sort of so taken by both the Spotify business and Daniel Ek and the opportunity ahead.
- ▶ 24:28 David Rosenthal And they need someone like him to really come and transform that business.
- ▶ 24:38 David Rosenthal He architected.
- ▶ 24:40 David Rosenthal Barry, like, invented, you know, didn't invent, but modernized the direct listing and everything that's happening now.
- ▶ 24:51 David Rosenthal So he goes and joins Spotify as CFO, and not just CFO, but also eventually he would add, uh, uh, head of their free business, the advertising-supported business at Spotify.
- ▶ 25:08 Ben Gilbert Oh, I didn't realize he's like an operational leader of the ad supported business.
- ▶ 25:11 David Rosenthal So originally he moved to Stockholm and was, uh, was CFO of the business in Stockholm and then moved to New York to set up and really drive the free portion of the Spotify business, which is what Taylor was so upset about.
- ▶ 25:26 David Rosenthal And that now that they've built, built out since he, when he took that over, they built that into a real business and working with artists and making that actually work for, for the company and for all the stakeholders.
- ▶ 25:37 David Rosenthal Um, so he had this,
- ▶ 25:40 David Rosenthal Incredible chapter there, the DPO, everything, and then in January of 2020, he retires, presumably fully at this point in time, because he's 66 years old, and rejoins the board of Spotify, and, uh, uh, and spends, you know, thinking he's…
- ▶ 26:01 David Rosenthal He joins the Instacart board, and, uh, re, uh, re-establishes his relationship with TCB,
- ▶ 26:08 Ben Gilbert Didn't he also join the board of Pandora, if I'm remembering right, speaking of music subscriptions?
- ▶ 31:03 David Rosenthal So to feather back in preview a little Barry element here, you know, one of the things that he talks about to the extent he does talk publicly and learned
- ▶ 31:15 David Rosenthal Deeply from Netflix, but has just become kind of ingrained in him.
- ▶ 31:24 David Rosenthal And at this point in time, when Peloton was getting started, not obvious is his quote is everything linear dies, everything on demand wins.
- ▶ 32:05 David Rosenthal And that, Barry always says, you know, sports is sort of the one.
- ▶ 1:01:58 Ben Gilbert So, you know, Barry is definitely used to the Spotify world of, we, we pay a pittance to, to, you know, the, the labels and the artists.
- ▶ 1:37:59 David Rosenthal And Barry McCarthy is riding in as the new CEO.
- ▶ 1:39:16 Ben Gilbert John Foley is currently Barry McCarthy's boss, but it totally is fair to say that John Foley is on the board, is the chairman of the board, the board hires and fires the CEO, and, and here's the real kicker on this whole thing, as many of…
- ▶ 1:40:21 Ben Gilbert So the message Peloton wants Blackwell's and other upset shareholders to hear is John Foley has sort of moved on, stepped down as CEO, uh, and we've brought in Barry McCarthy.
- ▶ 1:40:41 David Rosenthal At the same time, I don't think Barry would
- ▶ 1:40:57 David Rosenthal It's like Barry is like, who wouldn't want to work for Barry?
- ▶ 1:42:16 David Rosenthal I look forward to working with you, Barry.
- ▶ 1:42:41 David Rosenthal Well, Barry has no social media presence.
- ▶ 1:51:26 David Rosenthal You got to think that Barry can make a huge difference in fixing a lot of these issues.
- ▶ 1:51:33 Ben Gilbert I mean, Barry's not going to be the product person by any, by any means, but, uh, you know, that's why fully is there.
- ▶ 1:51:41 Ben Gilbert And hopefully Barry can provide the right sort of, it's almost like the check and balance to make sure that Peloton can
- ▶ 1:52:30 Ben Gilbert It's definitely not giving Barry enough credit to call him a career CFO, especially given his divisional responsibility in building the ads business at Spotify, but you know what?
- ▶ 1:53:03 Ben Gilbert Uh, and, and, you know, maybe Barry can be the Tim cook of Peloton.
- ▶ 2:01:06 David Rosenthal Um, I definitely, to me, one that stands out, and I think one that attracted, uh, Barry is, is scale economies here.
- ▶ 2:10:46 Ben Gilbert Well, before we grade this one and bring it home, this one will be fun to grade, paint the A and the C, and maybe the F scenarios for our friend Barry.
- ▶ 2:13:15 Ben Gilbert So I think what we should do is paint the, the A scenario, and maybe a C or an F scenario, uh, for what Barry does from here, and, and, you know, what, what those outcomes are.
- ▶ 2:14:19 David Rosenthal And I doubt, you know, I, we don't know Barry at all.
- ▶ 2:14:23 David Rosenthal Barry open invitation.
- ▶ 2:14:56 Ben Gilbert I think it's gonna be more along the lines of a lot of the consumer electronics companies that we've talked about where I think Barry can turn it around.
- ▶ 2:17:54 David Rosenthal Uh, well, we'll revisit with Barry in a couple of years.
- ▶ 2:18:08 David Rosenthal Uh, so related carve out, as I said at the top of, at the top of the episode, whether you enjoyed this emergency pod or not, whatever you think of it, go watch that interview with Barry McCarthy at the hill school.
- ▶ 2:18:27 David Rosenthal Interview with him dedicated to just him.
- ▶ 2:18:29 David Rosenthal There's some stuff where he talks about direct listing on basic teensy podcast and others, but, uh, um, that's just about him and his career.
- ▶ 2:18:40 David Rosenthal He talks about his, um, uh, strategy exercise that he likes to do, uh, that they did in Netflix and Spotify.
- ▶ 2:18:47 David Rosenthal And I'm sure he will bring the Peloton of, uh, how to, how to plan and build your
- ▶ 2:18:55 David Rosenthal Organization to be resilient and robust for the future and, uh, his four to five year strategy exercise.