Jan 16, 2025 · 1h 20m · tbpn
What's Happening at SONOS (Total Disaster)
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In this episode of the Technology Brothers podcast, co-hosts John Coogan and Jordy Hays analyze the software meltdown and corporate decline of Sonos before exploring trending tech culture, venture capital behavior, media curation, and online discourse.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 48.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.2 Guest teaching 1.6 Guest disagreement 1.1 The hosts pushing back 1.2
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 40:21 Jordy defends productized parent-kid man schools
Jordy pushes back against dismissing adult education courses, arguing that productizing life skills and creating family traditions through structured workshops is valuable.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 40:54 John rejects the man school curriculum conceptJohn firmly pushes back against the premise of a weekend 'man school', arguing that Mozart did not need a course and that basic life skills simply require personal initiative or time with family.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 30:09 Jordy details Sonos's legal patent fight with GoogleJordy walks through the detailed procedural history of Sonos suing Google, the ITC ban on group volume controls, the $32M verdict, and the judge's ultimate reversal for patent abuse.
The host holds their own ▶ 10:50 John details John MacFarlane's pre-Sonos dot-com mergerJohn demonstrates command of tech history by detailing MacFarlane's ownership of software.com, its merger with phone.com to create Openwave, and how the dot-com crash shaped Sonos's wireless audio vision.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Sonos App Meltdown and Hardware Reliability Paradox | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | John leads the deep dive into Sonos, citing Bloomberg reporting by Dave Lee and Mark Gurman while detailing technical details like HDMI CEC protocol and the legacy S1 app deprecation. Jordy agrees and shares his own setup frustrations. | |
| Comparing Smart Speaker Software to Defense Hardware | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Jordy shares company trivia about Rincon Audio and draws a contrast between consumer smart speakers and mission-critical defense hardware like Anduril. John notes the vast cultural difference between defense tech and Santa Barbara tech. | |
| Founding Sonos and the Dot-Com Merger Era | 7 | 2 | 1 | 1 | John provides a detailed historical breakdown of founder John MacFarlane, the software.com and phone.com merger into Openwave, and the post-dot-com pivot to wireless multi-room audio. Jordy riffs on early dot-com domain valuations. | |
| Lexicon Branding, Palindromes, and Speaker Longevity | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | John highlights Lexicon Branding's naming portfolio (Pentium, Swiffer, BlackBerry, Zune) and explains the industrial design benefits of the Sonos palindrome logo. The hosts banter amicably about naming agencies and robot apocalypse prep. | |
| Sonos Evolution: From Dedicated Controllers to KKR Backing | 7 | 2 | 1 | 1 | John walks through the 2002 to 2012 hardware and funding timeline, including the Play:5, Play:3, and KKR's $135M round. Jordy jokes about streaming service MOG and private equity cost-cutting playbooks. | |
| Steve Jobs Confrontation and Apple's Missed Acquisition | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | John recounts the story of Steve Jobs confronting John MacFarlane at All Things D over scroll wheel patents. Jordy analyzes why Apple missed a major strategic acquisition opportunity in home audio. | |
| Missing the Voice Assistant Wave and Audiophile Realities | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | The conversation covers Sonos missing the voice assistant trend, Stefan Simchowitz's bespoke audiophile setup, and car speaker engineering. John playfully teases Jordy over blowing out the subwoofer in his Porsche Turbo. | |
| Sonos Patent Litigation Against Google and IP Strategy | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Jordy outlines Sonos's patent litigation against Google and the subsequent ruling reversal. John contextualizes software patents versus UI conventions and mentions securing his own patent for Breakers capsule nicotine pouches. | |
| Evaluating Sonos Financial Decline and Turnaround Ideas | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts discuss Sonos's 24% revenue decline and debate whether phone audio quality renders smart speakers obsolete. They joke about turning speakers into dumb hardware or replacing alarm apps with live private musicians. | |
| Founding Families and the Weekend Man School Concept | 5 | 1 | 2 | 3 | Discussing tweets by Moses Kagan and Nick St. Pierre, Jordy advocates for parent-kid weekend skill courses. John pushes back against the excessive productization of life skills, arguing that real competence comes from practice and family involvement. | |
| The Hidden Costs of Freedom and Twitter Curation | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | John reflects on Rune's post regarding the hidden institutional costs of American freedom compared to authoritarian central planning. Jordy shares a promoted post on domain broker Rob Schutz and the legendary sale of pizza.com. | |
| Subway Surfers, Brain Rot, and Multi-Feed Media | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | The hosts discuss multi-feed media consumption, Gen Z brain rot, and Jason Calacanis allegedly ducking a charity fight against Trey Stevens and Palmer Luckey. They review past tech fight spectacles. | |
| Tech Twitter's Temporary Pivot to California Politics | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | John and Jordy discuss tech commentators temporarily pivoting to local California politics during the LA wildfires, followed by a promoted spot for Ridge Wallet's disaster relief fundraising campaign. | |
| Secret Communist Segment Pitch and the No-Case Stack | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Responding to listener suggestions, the hosts discuss segment pitches, the 'no-case phone' status symbol, and how to attract VCs to tech events in hot sub-markets like El Segundo. | |
| Group Chat Memeing Through Disasters and Crises | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts examine how founders and tech workers process acute crises like the Silicon Valley Bank collapse through group chat memes, noting Marc Andreessen triggering automated corporate email content filters. | |
| Posting on Main, AI Training, and Social Niches | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Discussing Andrea's tweet, the hosts analyze the benefits of posting on main rather than anon accounts, training AI models via online discourse, and Nikita Bier's formula for balancing humor with substantive analysis. | |
| Grimes Urges Rune to Write Essays and Revive Print | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts cover an exchange between Grimes and Rune regarding the cultural value of printed longform essays versus Substack posts, followed by a promoted recommendation of a Clinton Oval Office replica chair. | |
| Dating VCs and Getting Tattooed for a Robinhood Gold Card | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Bantering through tweets on VC dating tropes and a user tattooing the Robinhood logo for a Gold Card, Jordy shares a personal anecdote about a failed cold email to Deckers Brands in college. | |
| Promoted Post: Gumloop's $17M Series A Post-YC | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Jordy highlights a promoted post on YC startup Gumloop's $17M Series A, before discussing Casey's tweet on hosting recurring social gatherings for remote tech workers in Los Angeles. | |
| Wil Manidis on Short-Lived AGI Fortunes and Dynastic Taste | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | John analyzes Will Manidis's tweet predicting the squandering of AGI fortunes due to secular rationalism, contrasting ephemeral tech wealth with the enduring architectural legacy of William Randolph Hearst and Citizen Kane. |
Statements from this episode (26)
Coogan: Sonos Split Its Platform into the Legacy S1 and New Apps
“They literally have the S one app
And then the Sonos app and the S one app is for older systems.”
Coogan: Sonos Mastered Hardware but Failed on Software Execution
“Sonos delivered on the hardware side. They did the hard part and then they just couldn't get the app to work, which is crazy.”
Coogan: Sonos does over $1 billion in annual revenue
“And now they do over a billion dollars a year in business.”
Coogan: MP3.com went public for $100M with no software written
“I mean, I think we've talked about mpthree.com. They went public with just the domain and the business plan. No software written. A hundred million dollars.”
Coogan: 93% of Sonos speakers sold over 13 years remain active
“93% of Sonos speakers that sold in the last 13 years are active today.”
Hays: Apple acquiring Sonos would have been great for consumers
“It's funny because it would have been great for consumers in so many ways if Apple had acquired Sonos. Because Apple is the best in the world at making it seamless to set up a device.”
Hays: Apple could have captured 10% to 20% of $100B audio market
“They probably, it's a hundred billion dollar annual revenue opportunity, and Apple could have probably gotten 20% of that, or 10, 10% of that at least, so it wouldn't have been as big as AirPods.”
Coogan: Sonos Admitted It Missed the Smart Speaker Wave Until Mid-2016
“Sonos had never considered building its own voice assistant, and the smart speaker era took them by surprise. McFarlane later admitted that they were late to recognize the impact of voice in mid-twenty 16.”
Coogan: Cheap Pricing and Baseline Features Drove Alexa and Google Home's Distribution
“The success of the Alexa and the Google home is just like check the boxes on features and make it super, super cheap and you'll just get crazy distribution. And people will put up with some of the other, other junk.”
Hays: The Average Consumer Does Not Care About Audio Quality
“People clear, the average consumer clearly does not care about audio quality, right? They're not optimizing for that.”
Hays: Y Combinator Tells Early Founders Filing Patents Is a Waste
“This is the kind of stuff like founders will join YC. They never built a company before and they'll go into their first partner meeting, whatever. And they're like, yeah, we're filing our patents. For this. And YC will give you the good advice of being like, y…”
Coogan Received an Approved Patent for Breakers Capsule Nicotine Pouches
“I got my first patent approved. ... Breakers. ... First capsule nicotine pouch.”
Hays: Sonos suffered a 24% drop in revenue in May
“In May, their revenue, they had a 24% drop in revenue.”
Hays: Apple will not acquire Sonos
“I think they're not going to get bought by Apple because Apple could be like, well, why don't we spend a billion dollars developing a better speaker and sell it through our thousands of stores?”
Hays: Sonos can definitely remain a billion-dollar business if software improves
“I think if they just make smarter, smart speakers, continue to focus on design, actually get their software right. There's definitely a billion dollar revenue business here.”
Modern Culture Over-Productizes Basic Life Skills Better Learned Through Practice
“There is this relentless pursuit of productization here, where it's like, do you need a course for this, or can you just go do it? Like, a lot of these things, it's like, go watch a YouTube video, buy a book on it, and you'll just know how to do it, or just pr…”
Hays: The X algorithm favors screenshots over quote tweets
“Because right now the algorithm actually much prefers a screenshot like that than a quote tweet.”
Legacy News Networks Pioneered Multi-Feed Formats Analogous to Modern Brain Rot
“The other interesting thing is like, if you look at like ESPN or CNBC, like those have brain rot elements where there'll be tickers at the bottom picture in picture, you go to Bloomberg and it's like, Someone's talking while they're giving you the news facts o…”
Hays: Jason Calacanis is a bully who ducks charity fight challenges
“Yeah, but he, you know, he is a bully. And it's interesting that as soon as the bully is actually getting invited, saying, step into the ring. He's saying, oh, I, you know, it's, I don't want to do this.”
Hays: Karen Bass Was an Active Communist Working With Cuba in the 1970s
“Karen Bass was the target. It turns out her political career, well, I guess this was just the beginning of her political career. She was a very active communist working directly with the Cuban government in the seventies.”
Hays: Many VC General Partners Secretly Take Exotic Big-Game Hunting Trips
“The number of GPs that are secretly taking multiple trips a year to hunt elephants, elk, lions, really exotic.”
Coogan: Ron Conway writes every email in all caps
“You know the thing about Ron Conway, how every email he sends is all caps.”
Coogan: Only Post What You Want Baked Into AI Models
“You just gotta find the correct line and only post things that you're comfortable living on forever and being baked into the God in a box. Feeding the LLM.”
Coogan: X's Algorithm Connects Disparate Subcultures Better Than Reddit
“That's the beauty of X is that it's not designed like siloed reddits. So you don't need to like go and take your account over to watch Twitter or tech Twitter or media Twitter or UFC Twitter to engage with those people. You can just kind of like follow a few p…”