Episode 5: Siri

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[17] Hey, Siri, were you a good acquisition by Apple?

[18] Interesting question.

[19] Are we starting?

[20] Yeah.

[21] We're starting.

[22] So, welcome back to all of our listeners.

[23] As usual, you can give us any feedback or anything at Acquired FM on Twitter.

[24] It's been on fun in the last few episodes.

[25] I think this is our last one before the new year.

[26] Yeah, happy holidays, everybody.

[27] Yeah, yeah.

[28] In the meantime, though, we've got a special one for you here.

[29] We're doing, hey, Siri.

[30] We are.

[31] We are.

[32] We are.

[33] David, do you want to start us off with the acquisition history and facts?

[34] As always.

[35] So Siri, a super interesting history, a spin out from SRI International, which itself is a fascinating organization, many people are probably familiar with, based in Menlo Park.

[36] It itself was actually started in 1946 by the trustees of Stanford.

[37] and was originally called the Stanford Research Institute.

[38] And the purpose of it was to commercialize, well, to research and then spin out and potentially spin out and commercialize basic technology and has been funded by the government, Stanford itself, and many other sources over the years.

[39] done a lot of great work.

[40] And in the sort of mid -2000s started working on this project called KLO, which was funded by DARPA and that SRI was a major participant of.

[41] And the goal of that was to develop an artificial intelligence -based personal assistant for the government and the military.

[42] And SRI thought that the potential was there to spin this out in commercial it and put it on smartphones.

[43] So in 2008, they spun out what would become Siri, and there's a really cool story about how they decided to name it, actually on Cora.

[44] Adam Che, one of the co -founders and the VP of Engineering at Siri, talks about how they came up with the name, and obviously it echoes SRI that the company spun out of.

[45] Um, but Dag, uh, Kitless, uh, who was the CEO of Siri had apparently once considered it as, uh, the name for his daughter, uh, when his daughter was born.

[46] Um, and just, just think of that every time you say, hey Siri.

[47] Every time you say, hey Siri.

[48] And, um, in, in, in, in, in Norse, uh, Dag is, is Norwegian American.

[49] Um, in Norse, it means beautiful woman who leads you to victory.

[50] And then apparently in Swahili, it means secret, which this is my favorite part, as Adam writes on Cora, a tip of the hat to their pre -named days of the project when they began as stealth dash company .com, which still exists.

[51] If you go to stealth dash company .com, there is this really old school looking website saying, stealth, get in early.

[52] we are forming Silicon Valley's next great company.

[53] We aim to fundamentally redesign the face of consumer internet.

[54] And then in news and events, they have office location finalized on February 1st.

[55] In January 18th, money raised from top VCs, in parentheses, lots.

[56] That's the key to success.

[57] That's my understanding.

[58] Those are the biggies.

[59] Hey, you got to an office?

[60] You got funding?

[61] You're going to revolutionize consumer internet.

[62] All right.

[63] So fast forward.

[64] So it's spun out.

[65] It's its own independent company.

[66] It becomes a consumer offering.

[67] There's an app you can download in the store where if you look at some screenshots of it, I was just Googling around earlier today.

[68] I remember having it on my phone, but I don't remember how bad that UI used to be.

[69] Oh, so bad.

[70] But it was early days.

[71] So it's hard to know at this point looking back if like that was sort of table stakes or if they were actually just like, yeah, way, way, way form before function.

[72] I'm sorry, function before form.

[73] I mean, this was back in the days of iOS 3, I believe, and the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS, super old school.

[74] And what was interesting, I remember using Siri 2 before Apple acquired it.

[75] And my favorite feature actually was the ability to type into it.

[76] You didn't have to use your voice.

[77] And I'm so bummed that Apple ditched that over the years.

[78] Yeah.

[79] And, well, yeah, I mean, it manifests in so many other parts of the U .S. But the main thing that they basically did was they took out a massive license with nuance and used nuance for all the speech recognition.

[80] Nuance itself being an SRI spin out from the past.

[81] I did not know that.

[82] But still an independent company that over the years has licensed their speech recognition technology to kind of all the major players.

[83] And they kind of combined that with partnering with a bunch of the independent functions that Siri was going to serve.

[84] So looking up restaurants, mapping things, making reservations, weather, kind of all the APIs that you would expect.

[85] Yeah, yeah.

[86] And they kind of went from there.

[87] So it became an app where it was theoretically easier to use your voice to look up all those specific functions.

[88] And quite honestly, probably a lot of if -then statements, a lot of regular expressions, like kind of just parsing whatever you were saying.

[89] Bailing wire and duct tape behind the scenes.

[90] what's interesting though is like I remember this being super cool as an app getting a lot of press downloading it using it occasionally but it was actually way harder to do anything on it versus just opening up the open table app yourself yeah and it's and thinking about that too I mean that was before there was proper dictation on the iPhone so I remember you know walking around and opening the nuance app the dragon dictation app to talk in my phone and then copying and pasting out of that into other things where I wanted to use it.

[91] So at the time, you know, now we're looking back at like, well, I don't really use Siri that much.

[92] I use Dictation a lot more than I use Siri.

[93] And that all kind of has been bundled together in Apple as sort of one big thing.

[94] Yep.

[95] So the company spins out.

[96] They raise two rounds of venture capital from Morgenthauer and Menlo Ventures, 24 million in total.

[97] The company, the apps in the App Store for just about a year, maybe less, I believe.

[98] And then in April 2010, and it was only on iOS.

[99] They'd announced that they were working on Android versions and BlackBerry versions at the time.

[100] Remember Blackberry, Ben?

[101] It's been a long time.

[102] Seems so far away.

[103] And then in April of 2010, Apple announces that they're acquiring the company for, they've never disclosed the price, but rumors are around $200 million.

[104] and then fast forward another year and a half after that to the launch of the iPhone 4S in October 2011 and Siri relaunches as a baked -in feature exclusive to the iPhone 4S as one of the most intense betas of all time.

[105] I mean, I think for a year or maybe it was a full release or two full releases, Siri was technically beta and any ridiculous things that happened to the series.

[106] It's the Gmail thing.

[107] Perpetual beta.

[108] And interestingly, in a very Apple -like move, when the iPhone 4S came out, they removed the Siri app from the App Store.

[109] So if you wanted to use Siri, you had to have an Apple iPhone 4S.

[110] And you know what?

[111] There's a variety of reasons they did that, I'm sure.

[112] One of which I bet people get confused.

[113] I mean, I bet you hear Siri comes out, you see it advertised, and where do you go to check out the thing that you're seeing everybody talk about on the new Apple phone?

[114] you're going to the app store.

[115] And that could be enormously confusing.

[116] Not to mention, I think it helps sell a lot of iPhones that Christmas.

[117] Yeah, yeah, and I want to get into that.

[118] So that's the history.

[119] So Apple had acquired Siri for $200 million, is -ish.

[120] Heard a variety of figures, but I think we'll kind of lock on that on what we look at, the acquisition price this episode.

[121] And that was sort of a pet project of Scott Forrestall.

[122] And if you guys remember, you know, he was sort of the second Steve jobs of the company.

[123] And people talk about Johnny and the design aesthetic and kind of that focus on making beautiful things.

[124] But Scott was kind of the product person that was like second only to Steve.

[125] And I remember, I think I'm remembering, right, but in the time when Jobs' health was declining, a lot of people were talking about Forstall as potentially being the next CEO of Apple.

[126] Yeah, yeah, it's true.

[127] And I think a lot of people now know Scott as the guy that kind of took on Apple Maps, just like Siri was going to be his baby, that Apple Maps was kind of his charge also.

[128] Not to mention the guy infamous for skeuomorphic design and iOS.

[129] I think that's after -the -fact assignment and really easy way to say that was his little fiefdom.

[130] History is written by the victors, best.

[131] It's true.

[132] Scott's actually, I think he produced the Tony Award -winning Broadway musical this year.

[133] Talk about quite a different departure.

[134] No. It was last year.

[135] This is worth looking up, actually, because it's totally crazy when I heard about it.

[136] Let's see.

[137] So Scott Forrestall was a producer of Fun Home, a Broadway musical that follows the story of a lesbian cartoonist looking back on her childhood with a secretly gay father.

[138] And so interesting to see after he leaves Apple, total media silence, not doing anything else, then we find out this is what he's been up to.

[139] And the really funny part, I remember, I think it was totally coincidence, but it was during the WWDC keynote that he tweeted that he would, I think it was like his first tweet or his first tweet in a very long time, so excited to have produced the Tony Award winning musical this year, thanks to all the amazing people that worked on or something like that.

[140] And I remember thinking, this is unbelievable, right in the middle of the keynote.

[141] Wow.

[142] Anyway, so the acquisition was kind of done by Scott Forrestall, and that kicked off a long chain of things happening in Apple acquisitions.

[143] Siri, you know, as it sort of turns out, looking back, there's a lot of really intense research that has gone on since then in architecting these kind of voice and, you know, I guess, for lack of a better word, AI systems.

[144] And we see a lot of them, I'm not sure if Siri is or not, but I know that Google's is and Cortana is architected as a neural network.

[145] And Siri, at the time of acquisition, the company that was Siri was definitely not that.

[146] And I think it's important to start kind of at this point going forward thinking about Siri as two things.

[147] No longer as the product that Apple acquired, but as both an organization at Apple that is responsible for dictation, for voice search, for a variety of those things.

[148] and the product that is shipped on iOS devices that we now today know as Siri.

[149] And that product is a ton of things all in one.

[150] I mean, I think that the impetus for Apple to actually create this group and to focus on shipping this product in every version of iOS going forward, that would not have happened without this acquisition, but the theoretical success that Siri has today as a product is attributed to so much more than that.

[151] Apple got extremely serious about hiring great people.

[152] They hired a senior director.

[153] He's now the senior director of Siri, Alex Asero, who is ex -Microsoft research.

[154] They made a ton of acquisitions, including but not limited to topsy, no various technologies, AutoCat, Q, spot set, or vocal IQ pretty recently, and Perceptio.

[155] And these things, particularly Topsy, are really.

[156] really kind of the academic rigor around the search and the, um, the methodologies that Siri uses today.

[157] I mean, I think Topsy, Topsy was another, uh, $200 million acquisition.

[158] That one is, ish, yeah.

[159] I think actually that one might be reported.

[160] Yeah, but, but Topsy is effectively the, the backbone of how the search works within Siri and how the, um, kind of deeply technical part of it works.

[161] And I think a lot of really good people came, came with Topsy.

[162] Whereas you look at the actual Siri acquisition, all three of those founders are gone.

[163] They've started, I think Viv, I think is how it's pronounced, but effectively newer, better next generation, Siri.

[164] And, you know, they had a lot of people a trit from that acquisition.

[165] Topsy, a lot of those people stayed with the company.

[166] And from talking to some friends that are kind of in the know, really, really top people.

[167] And, you know, Dave and I were talking earlier, thought about kind of doing this episode, this is a dual episode on Topsy and the Siri company, because that's sort of how important Topsy is to the product that Siri is today.

[168] Yeah, I think a couple really interesting notes.

[169] I mean, as Ben mentioned, fascinating that this acquisition has led to the creation of this whole organization within Apple, that, you know, AI, search, and, those types of, that type of platform technology was so not in Apple's DNA prior to the Syria acquisition.

[170] Yeah, I truly believe that we wouldn't have this product shipped if not for, wow, we just unloaded a bunch of cash acquiring this thing.

[171] We've got to be serious about it.

[172] Yep.

[173] And what's doubly interesting about that is that the actual people at Siri that Apple acquired, like they're gone.

[174] It was acquiring this company and bringing this product and this feature into iOS.

[175] that was the first foundation of a platform that Apple started building and all the great people that they've acquired and hired since then.

[176] And you can argue, I think, probably very justifiably so, that Google is still ahead of Apple in a lot of these areas, AI, search, voice search, speech recognition.

[177] but certainly Apple is not nearly as far behind as they would have been had they continued along the path they were before this acquisition.

[178] No. And I think that in kind of thinking about any acquisition, you can use the framework of builder buy.

[179] If you're thinking about it before you make the acquisition, you're a leader at that company and you've decided that, you know, this is something we need to pursue.

[180] and it's going to cost us $200 million to buy or we could build.

[181] And I don't think that that is the case here.

[182] I don't think that Apple...

[183] Could they even have built?

[184] Like, would they've been able to hire the really top people that they would have needed to in machine learning, AI, speech recognition to make this happen?

[185] Yeah, I don't...

[186] It's interesting.

[187] It would have been a tall order and still was.

[188] I mean, I think that even after they did the Syria acquisition, they had a long, long road ahead of them to turn it into the product it is today.

[189] And the question it sort of begs to me is, you know, it would have a different name and it would have started off in a different place.

[190] But what if they didn't acquire Syria at all?

[191] And they just made all these other acquisitions and these other key hires because they've hired a lot of the really great people away from nuance.

[192] Yeah.

[193] They've actually architected the whole kind of speech recognition pipeline that they were licensing from nuance internally.

[194] They've rewritten and thrown away all the code that they've acquired from Siri.

[195] So there's no Siri people.

[196] There's no Siri technology.

[197] There's merely a Siri brand and basically what that original product did there.

[198] But a lot of the success of what Siri, the product in iOS is today is not attributed to what they actually acquired.

[199] Yeah.

[200] And it's interesting, a little bit of an aside, but on nuance, most of the major mobile companies, mobile platform companies, Microsoft, Google.

[201] Apple, I believe most or all of them have moved away from Nuance at this point.

[202] Yeah, I think that's true.

[203] Got to be some really upset account reps at nuance.

[204] Yeah.

[205] So I love the discussion we've been having in a way, you know, we're sitting here at the end of 2015 talking about this.

[206] It's been almost six years since this acquisition happened.

[207] We haven't really talked about Siri the product slash feature yet.

[208] And I think, you know, I would argue as what a lot of people, it really hasn't lived up to its promise so far.

[209] Nope.

[210] I don't know about you, Ben, but I use Siri for one thing, setting alarms.

[211] It's a, God, I would love to see the histogram of this at Apple.

[212] Because I think, I just don't think Siri has gotten that far.

[213] Well, they have two problems.

[214] One, I don't think they've gotten that far.

[215] from actually being able to, you know, do things that are like, quote, unquote, learning, right?

[216] Like, I know I have these very specific functions, much like the original Siri, where I go, hey, Siri, look up the best breakfast restaurant around me or something like that.

[217] And the sort of second problem around that is if they have fixed that or they do in the future kind of roll out something that's much more technically sophisticated, that's truly like a deep systems approach to search and an understanding and, you know, all these deeply technical things, how am I supposed to know about it?

[218] Because I think that, like, there are some of us that, you know, we'll watch the WWDC keynote and that's super cool.

[219] But it's a really sort of dangerous thing with these voice -based interfaces that don't have a layout of all the possible functions in front of your face that you can use.

[220] If it falls on its face a couple times for you, you basically assume it can't do things in the future and you never try again.

[221] Yep.

[222] And you definitely fall into that uncanny valley and then you just reject it.

[223] And that's what I said.

[224] It's super interesting.

[225] We're sitting here at the end of 2015 talking about this because I think it's non -controversial to say Siri as a product has been a failure, all these like even just basic, basic stuff.

[226] Like, you know, my wife's name is Jenny.

[227] J -E -N -N -I -E.

[228] That's her given name.

[229] every time I talk to Siri about my wife, it says J -E -N -N -N -Y, and she has a different last name that maybe.

[230] She didn't change her name.

[231] Siri doesn't like figure that out.

[232] It's so annoying, super basic stuff.

[233] But we're sitting here right now.

[234] You know, Amazon came out with the Echo and Alexa this year.

[235] They're investing heavily in that.

[236] Definitely Amazon believes that voice and voice interfaces are going to be a huge part of technology going forward, as does Google, as does Apple.

[237] In a lot of ways, I think this, the full story on this acquisition hasn't been written yet because there's going to be so much more to come.

[238] Yeah.

[239] And then there needs to be.

[240] I mean, the interesting thing, you know, we say this show is about technology acquisitions that actually went well.

[241] And if you look at kind of the app, we can do this, this episode of this show because Apple needed to do this, I mean, it's effectively table stakes to have a personal assistant baked into your mobile operating system.

[242] It's funny.

[243] As you're saying that, I had my left hand twisted back and I accidentally activated Siri on my Apple Watch.

[244] Oh, do you have Hay Siri on?

[245] No, it was holding the digital crown.

[246] That's your fault.

[247] But it's so fundamentally like this needs to be a part especially as you move into watches and televisions and connected speakers and being able to say hey Siri to your phone a critical part of any platform yeah yeah it is it's interesting in trying to think of examples of things that Siri can't do it the thought exercise of it is actually difficult because your mind is trapped in the things that you can do like I'm pulling up my phone thinking of like Like, you know, hey, Siri, am I going to have time to go for a run tomorrow before work based on when my first meeting is and the fact that I want to walk to work, not knowing what the weather will be right now?

[248] Hi, Ben Lechheim.

[249] And that's a mispronunciation of Lechheim because it's Hanukkah.

[250] Like, there's a long way to go.

[251] Long way to go.

[252] All right, listeners.

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[272] All right.

[273] So let's move into the next segment of the show where we categorize this acquisition.

[274] I'm not looking at it right now, but I think we've got people, technology, product, business line, and other.

[275] For me, you know our audience is craving disagreement here but I just don't think well Ben what's your category so I think if you like didn't do your research it's technology and you think you're acquiring this super academic and I guess it is partly technology and we've just come a long way since since Siri was started but um I mean what it ultimately became for Apple is a product because the sure as hell don't have the people and they don't have the technology that it was originally built on.

[276] And the world has moved in a direction.

[277] And Apple is, to their credit, really kept up with this and put some serious muscle behind this and hired some of the top people in the field to build out the direction of the technology that's actually moving in.

[278] So I'm calling it a product acquisition.

[279] Boom.

[280] I'm disagreeing.

[281] All right.

[282] Maybe I didn't do my research.

[283] I think it's a technology acquisition.

[284] I mean, as we were just saying, like, Syria's a product sucks.

[285] Yeah, I didn't say they acquired a good one.

[286] I mean.

[287] Fair point.

[288] Fair point.

[289] Yeah, I mean, I think, look, we've already talked about all of this.

[290] But I think for me, it's a technology acquisition because I don't view Siri as, a product like a it sucks but um i don't think it is even really especially going forward will be a product or a feature i think it's just going to be so fundamentally baked into the platform um voice and voice interface uh and and the predictive assistant uh parts of it um that i think that is just going to be a fundamental technology piece is a fundamental technology piece and will be more so over time And yes, that's not exactly what they acquired, but that was the kernel of it that they've built over time.

[291] Yeah.

[292] I mean, I have no doubt that voice will be more central to the way that human beings compute in the future and interact with machines.

[293] I don't think screens are going to go away.

[294] I think we'll become much less reliant on them and much more conversational with machines.

[295] but the question is, is Apple doing this and building what they're doing today, actually moving in the right direction so they're going to be the ones to create that future?

[296] Or is it going to be someone that fundamentally kind of takes a new approach to what is a computer?

[297] How do you interact with it?

[298] Can you do it all over voice and not be hampered with a legacy of let's try and tie this future of computing into the way that people interact with this screen?

[299] yeah that's a great point um i guess that's me cheating and preemptively launching into technology trends love it the next part of our show is um what trends does this illustrate for you in technology right now that's absolutely one i mean every time i have someone talked to me about a thing that they're working on that's more about a natural interface or screenless computing or thinking about the movie her i've had probably three conversations in the last few months with with different entrepreneurs working on this, people at Microsoft at Apple.

[300] There's so many AI companies right now doing everything from just like, we are an AI research company platform that is building to be acquired by Facebook or Google or Apple.

[301] I think I love that theme and is so true in technology.

[302] You can't bring old world thinking into the future.

[303] It's like the Henry Ford analogy of a faster horse.

[304] Yeah.

[305] And, you know, we'll eat these words if in 10 years, Apple's the leader in this category and everyone's interacting with their voice device.

[306] But I don't know.

[307] It's hard for me to see Siri today evolving into what I think is clearly the future of computing.

[308] Yeah.

[309] But I also, I don't think screens are going away.

[310] I think visual interaction with computers, uh, it, is not going to stop and is only going to continue to rise with computing.

[311] But you don't always want to do that.

[312] Sometimes you want a voice -based interaction, like in the kitchen, which is the primary use case for the echo.

[313] It reminds me of a similar trend.

[314] So thinking about the fact that you've got this massive spike in tablet sales since they came out.

[315] For so many people, you know, the tablet is not as successful as the phone, but for so many people, The tablet is the computer that they actually needed.

[316] And ever since personal computers came out, people have been buying them, people have been using them for a variety of purposes.

[317] But it was really the device that we could build at the time that was overapplied to a variety of use cases that were outside of the specific thing that they were actually good at.

[318] And perfect story at my grandma's house over Thanksgiving, helping her move some stuff around.

[319] she needs to unplug her computer because someone's going to be doing they're going to be putting new carpet in in that room and they're moving into the other room and I'm like oh well I'll plug it back in and we'll set it up in this other room for now and she goes oh you don't need to I haven't been on it in a month and I was like what because she I mean she really does a lot on her computer it's not like she's on her iPad or well she's very proficient with her computer she's been fully reliant on her iPad and her iPhone and I didn't realize this I mean I've been emailing with her and I actually don't think she does her spreadsheets on the iPad but I think but she could she could she totally could and it's it's just me kind of explaining the new new input mechanism to her but for so many people the point I'm getting at is is that the computer was doing a lot of jobs and it had a very specific job and then when the tablet came out it revealed that the tablet is actually a better thing to do a lot of those jobs around consumption around lightweight email things like that than the computer was so then people are actually using tablets a better thing for that purpose, for its intended purpose.

[320] I think screens right now are oversaturated the same way that PCs were oversaturated.

[321] We've got screens doing a lot of job, screens don't need to be doing.

[322] And sure, screens will be doing things where there's a heavy display of information.

[323] Yeah, great, great point.

[324] Heavy display of information, things where you need to reference multiple things in parallel and not just have a single track, things where you have modal interfaces where you need to understand context with new context on top.

[325] But there sure is a lot that does not need to be on a screen that we use screens for.

[326] Yep.

[327] Another theme that I'd throw in that I think this illustrates is that consumer generally and specifically building great consumer products is really hard.

[328] I mean, I feel like Siri is a classic example that a lot of companies and products have a trap they fall into, which is, I've got this awesome technology.

[329] We can do these amazing things.

[330] look at these really cool shiny demos and then you get it out in the real world with like edge cases and delivering actual value on a consistent basis solving people's real problems doing that without friction and it's really really hard to live up to those promises in the demo and when you think about most consumer products many or most consumer products that end up being really successful they're really simple and it's very clear what their value is um like Airbnb you know which I've been on an Airbnb kick lately deserve my wife and my wife and I just signed up to be hosts in the last six months and it pays half our mortgage and that's amazing and that's like as a host that's what Airbnb does for me and we get to meet these really cool people who are coming through and we're traveling for the holidays to a whole bunch of places to see family and we're staying in, I believe, three different Airbnbs this month.

[331] So what you're getting at is you very much understand the intended purpose of that product.

[332] Absolutely.

[333] It's so simple.

[334] It's so elegant.

[335] And it perfectly solves my problem.

[336] Siri, I don't even know what it's supposed to do.

[337] It looks cool.

[338] I watched the keynotes and I'm like, that's awesome.

[339] And then I never use it.

[340] Yeah.

[341] I mean, to take it to another, I'm sitting there trying to, I'm on, so I have the new Apple TV and I was looking for some videos on YouTube.

[342] laying there on the couch the day or night, and it's, uh, it is the worst to type into.

[343] Just like one row of characters, swiping around, trying to tap individual characters.

[344] It's like being on PS2 again, and I was using the keyword.

[345] Anyway, so I'm like, oh, wait, Siri, this is supposed to be like a really conversational UI.

[346] I'll use Siri.

[347] And I'm like, hey, Siri, look for the Aziz Ansari stand up on YouTube.

[348] Or at first I said, the Aziz Ansari stand up.

[349] And it brought up, like, movies with Aziz Ansari.

[350] And they were, like, you know, theatrical releases.

[351] And I was like, oh, I should probably specify.

[352] And I'm like, look up the Aziz Ansari stand up on YouTube.

[353] Exact same search results.

[354] And I was like, oh, my God, it's not even plugged into YouTube.

[355] And like, every time I have this brilliant idea where I'm like, I should use Siri for that.

[356] It doesn't really work.

[357] Yeah.

[358] And I think we're weirdos.

[359] Like, we're tech people.

[360] I am the kind of person that walks down the street and it's raining.

[361] so I'm not typing on my phone, and what do I do?

[362] I, like, hold down Siri, and I'm like, Siri, text back, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[363] Yeah, because you're not worried about the social stigma of, like, talking to nobody walking down the street.

[364] It's a little weirdo.

[365] And, you know, I'm fine with that, but I fully recognize that, like, other people aren't doing that.

[366] And I have to imagine if you can see the numbers at Apple of the people that are actually, like, using Siri on an hourly or daily basis.

[367] It's probably very disappointing.

[368] I'm curious, as you're listening to this, if you disagree with us, you should totally let us know that you use Siri and what you use it for.

[369] Yeah, God, I'd like to know.

[370] I would love to know.

[371] At Gilbert, at DJ Rosentee, at Acquired FM, find us.

[372] The other thing I want to add on that before we move on, you know, this is also, you know, building consumer companies, consumer products, super hard.

[373] This is one of the reason why as VCs we really focus when we're looking at consumer companies on cohort and retention data, because just like straight up acquisition data, user acquisition data isn't enough.

[374] Like the question is, are people coming back, you know, month after month after month, day after day after day, are they continuing to see value from your product?

[375] And it's really hard.

[376] Yeah, I wonder, so in February 2015, one of the founders of Siri, um, was remarking in an interview to TechCrunch that more than 200 million people use it monthly and more than 100 million people use it every day.

[377] So it's one in five people with access to Siri actually are a daily active user, which is a little shocking.

[378] Like I wonder how wide the purview of that is.

[379] And I also wonder, I mean, every single person out there is going to laugh.

[380] But like, you're sitting in a meeting, you hold the button, it goes into Siri mode, you're super embarrassed.

[381] I can't tell you how many times a day I accidentally open Siri.

[382] I mean, I'm just glad they turned off the little doo -doo so that I don't look like a total idiot meetings.

[383] That must have been the number one use case for Siri was the accidental embarrassing meeting do -dood.

[384] Yep.

[385] All right.

[386] Should we wrap this one up, Ben?

[387] Yeah, so I think it's time to give it a grade.

[388] You know, I think that if they didn't do this, Apple might not have moved in this direction and might have tried to follow after Google and Microsoft did it.

[389] I don't think it's really in their DNA to start this without going on an acquisition spree to start acquiring a lot of talent hiring people from other companies.

[390] These days, it's sort of table stakes to have it, but Apple definitely does not sell a single, like one single more iPhone because it has Siri versus it doesn't.

[391] I bet they sold a lot more iPhone 4S because it had Siri.

[392] Sure, once.

[393] Yeah, ones.

[394] I don't think anything they're doing to Siri now sells a single additional iPhone.

[395] I agree.

[396] Or like when they, you know, add Siri to another market.

[397] I think that there's an interesting thing.

[398] Like maybe we'll see in China, maybe we'll see it pick up a little bit since in China it's so much more difficult to type and it's so much easier to enter characters.

[399] Yeah.

[400] It's got to be much nicer over there.

[401] And if actually you have any experience as a a Chinese person or someone who has used the iPhone in China would love to get your feedback on that too.

[402] But I think to this point, it's hard to point to ROI other than it was something they sort of needed to do long term.

[403] And I don't know that actually acquiring the company Siri was the best way to do it.

[404] I'm going to give this one a C. Yep.

[405] So I think this acquisition was just like so classically.

[406] Apple, or at least Apple of the last few years, spend south of $500 million to acquire a technology company that you then use to build into part of your platform and your whole product platform.

[407] I'm thinking about, you know, Authentac and the fingerprint.

[408] Great acquisition.

[409] Great acquisition.

[410] We should do that in a future episode.

[411] The company, oh, I'm blanking on the name that they bought that was the semiconductor company.

[412] PA semi.

[413] Yeah, PA semi.

[414] And God has that paid dividends.

[415] Oh, man. They're, I mean, they're, are they the highest yield, I think they're the highest yield producing arm chip manufacturer in the world now.

[416] Not to mention, like, now Apple designs their own chips.

[417] Yeah.

[418] And the fact that they can do their own system on a chip and the fact that they tie it directly into their operating system, they're able to do things like touch ID where they have that secure enclave that sits separately than the processor.

[419] and talk.

[420] I mean, we'll do PSMI too at some point.

[421] So much good stuff.

[422] Yeah, but and when you stack rank those, like unfortunately, Siri falls pretty far down the list.

[423] So, um, I think I'd give it a, I'm going to give it a B because I think it is, I'm giving a B because future importance of voice and AI is going to be huge for.

[424] Apple.

[425] And if they hadn't done this, if they hadn't started when they did, there's just like Google and Facebook and maybe even Microsoft would be so far beyond them at this point they could never catch up, no matter how much they would spend or who they would buy.

[426] Yeah.

[427] Although I just saw a stat the other day that like Maps is getting better and getting more usage.

[428] Well, yeah, it's getting more usage.

[429] It's ships with the OS.

[430] Well, right.

[431] I haven't tried it in a while.

[432] I didn't had a bad experience.

[433] I keep hearing it's getting better though.

[434] But we still don't use it, so same with Siri.

[435] All right, be for me. Be for you, C for me. I think that's, uh, that's what we got.

[436] That's all we got.

[437] Happy holidays, everybody.

[438] We will see you in 2016.

[439] Siri, do you have anything to say to the listeners?

[440] I'm sorry, Ben.

[441] I'm afraid I can't answer that.

[442] Who got the truth?

[443] Is it you?

[444] Is it you?

[445] Is it you?

[446] Who got the truth now?

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