Season 2 Episode 3: Jane Metcalfe of Wired

Come on into The Room. The Room is a series that lets you get a view into the room where it happened. I'm Claudia Laurie.

And I'm Madison McIlwain, your co-hosts.

This week on The Room, we sit down with Jane Metcalf. Jane was the co-founder of the legendary Wired magazine and media company, Tchou Chocolates, and now NeoLife. In the early 1990s, Jane and her life partner and co-founder Louis Rossetto came to San Francisco with the idea and passion to establish a magazine devoted to cutting-edge technology. 3 years later, Wired was launched and became the home to some of the most futuristic but also technology-defining stories. Jane and Lewis had a big story to tell, which was that of the internet becoming mainstream. Today we chat with Jane to hear about her three-time founding stories, from media to chocolates to biotech. Jane has seen it all and has some deep wisdom to share. Let's open the door.

So let's, uh, rewind a little bit. Before Wired, you started your career in media as an associate publisher at Electric World in Amsterdam. Tell us a little bit more about your early life and what initially attracted you to the world of internet and computer journalism.

So I was living in Europe. I had done a degree in international affairs. And so that is like basically politics and, you know, political geography and languages and history and just like all that juicy, yummy, interesting stuff. And I moved to Europe and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up in the fashion industry, so we share that, but it wasn't satisfying to me. And I ended up meeting Louis Rossetto, my partner. And really, you know, going to Amsterdam and doing Electric Bird was about— it's a love story, you know. It was, it was falling in love with Louis and moving to Amsterdam. And I took a look at the fashion scene and I didn't get it. It was colors I wasn't familiar with. It was, you know, I had been working in high-end couture and, you know, the Dutch were very funky and had this very unusual palette of colors, so I didn't get that. And he said, well, I've just started this magazine. Why don't you, you know, come work with me? And so that's how it got started.

That's incredible. I love that love story, both in terms of starting your career and also with Louis. That's incredible. So what actually happened after you worked at Electric World? After that, it seems like you founded Wired. Could you tell us a little bit more about that process?

Yeah, so Electric Word really was the precursor to Wired. Lewis had been hired by a translation company that was basically getting contracts to do technical documentation and localization for tech companies. So this was the run-up to the integration of the European Community in 1992. He had contracts with like Directorate General 13, you know, which is like what technologies can help us with language, and his company basically said, "We wanna start a magazine as a way to sell our products and services." And Lois said, "Well, maybe you should just put some salespeople on the road." But they're like, "No, no, we really wanna be publishers." So, the magazine was really technical in the sense that it was dealing with, you know, the existing and future, you know, human-computer interfaces. And as the magazine grew, you know, we had bigger and bigger ambitions for it because it was really extraordinary to be in Holland when Philips and Sony were really vying for hegemony. And so we were able to watch the digitization. So we were watching what was happening as all these data types— that it was compact disc audio, compact disc video, that it was interactive video. And so we were just seeing things going digital. And we were reading a lot of science fiction at the time. And, you know, we were coming to San Francisco for Macworld and meeting all these incredible engineers who had these incredible visions of how the tools they were developing could change the world. And, you know, we just like tossed all those ingredients and, you know, stirred and had a little spritz of, you know, personal experience or, you know, dreams as a kid or whatever, and out popped the recipe for Wired. And I mean, I think Louis was as a kid influenced by his father, who was an engineer. But for me, I was more interested in how it was going to connect humans and how it was going to, you know, less about the technology itself and more about how the technology was going to transform us.

It's interesting because this is 1993, or right around then, as you were getting started. And we were doing some digging into Wired's background, and one article pointed out that this was just 4 years after the Berlin Wall fell. And so the relationship to technology at the time was really shrouded around the Cold War mentality of how to kind of beat the Russians. And we were really still figuring out what technology was as not a tool for fear, but as a tool for empowerment.

When people talked about technology back in those days, they were not, that the primary take on this was not about empowerment at all. You know, the traditional media were all about, you know, technology will enslave us. And it was all about, you know, Big Brother. And it was about all these ways that technology was going to exacerbate the divide between the haves and have-nots, you know, and how it was going to be a tool taken over by totalitarian governments. You know, until Wired came along, those people's voices were not a part of the mainstream dialogue about where our society is going. And, you know, not only did we want them to speak, but it's like, share your vision for the future of the world. Tell us how you want to transform education. Tell us how you want to transform, you know, entertainment, but tell us how you want to transform the way we do business. Media is inherently biased towards disasters, right? I mean, disaster porn. 2020 was like the year of disaster porn. You know, it's like so many people in the media industry, you know, realized more deeply than before how much disaster is clickbait. And, you know, we consciously set about creating a positive vision for the future.

I love that you built a technology magazine that was a physical magazine, right? This is before we had digital media in the way that we do today.

Yeah, I mean, digital media was like being able to take a recording of your favorite band and put it on a cassette tape, you know, and then play that while you were jogging. That was a big I mean, when Steve Jobs came up with the iPod, 1,000 songs, you know, in your pocket, it was like, poof. Why would anyone want that, right?

And although Wired was, you know, a physical magazine initially, you also invented a lot of the digital advertising components that are still being used today. You invented the first online advertising banner supporting original content and Fortune 500 advertisers, if I have that correctly. Could you walk us through the aha moments and how your digital advertising innovations set the stage for today's advertising practices?

Well, you know, there's a really interesting entrepreneur you might wanna talk to at some point. His name is Jonathan Nelson, and he is currently the global head of digital media for Omnicom, you know, one of the largest agencies in the world. And he was an original collaborator at Wired. His brother ended up working for us for quite some time, but he was busy starting his agency. It was called Organic, and he wanted to build websites for clients. And then once they had the website, you know, how were people going to find it? And so, you know, I remember I would be on— I distinctly remember flying home from New York one time and Jonathan was on the plane and he came running up to me and goes, "I just convinced MCI and Sprint, you know, they're going to be on your launch." I was like, "Great." So, you know, we'll be the media that drives the traffic and he'll be the company that builds the sites for the advertisers. And, you know, you have to cast your mind back to 1990. '93, '92, '93 when we were having these conversations. No, sorry, it would've been '93, '94 because we were waiting for a graphic user interface to the web, right? Because that didn't exist when we first launched Wired. And so, you know, at the time the conversation was around commercialization of the web and how it could not be done. Well, in fact, it wasn't even called the web then. It was called the internet because again, we didn't have the graphic user interface, but the, the web community was unspoken. The spoken, very blatantly spoken rule was you can't, no commercial speak. And so the only reason why these advertisers were comfortable doing this is because they could go in behind the Wired brand, right? We came in because Wired said it was cool to do this. And, you know, the first ad we ever ran was an AT&T ad that it said, you know, have you ever clicked on a banner, you know, let an advertising banner and there's a big button in the corner, it says, "You will," you know, and that's like boom, the first click, you know, for Fortune 500 advertising, you know, with original content and, you know, the model that we know today. And, you know, it was a risk, it was absolutely a risk, but everybody wanted in on it, everybody wanted to figure out what the possibilities were, and it was an incredibly exciting time. You know, Jonathan, of course, has gone on to do extraordinary things in his his career, you know, including the development of programmatic advertising and just this really incredibly powerful targeting technologies that they have now. But yeah, it did all start in one little building at the corner of, you know, Third and Bryant in San Francisco.

Wired has just had this ability to be ahead of the curve in so many ways. It's, you know, it was true with advertising. It was true with having an optimistic perspective of technology and Claudia and I had a really fun time going back and reading some of the Wired archives and just like slackjaw over some of the predictions that were made that have, have come true. And we'd love to bring up one that really hit us. It, and it was year 2003, so you might not have been at Wired any longer when this was published, but it, I think the sentiment stands. Uh, it was an article published by, uh, Jenny Jardin and it was called Phone Cam Nation and it was So poignant reading this. The article notes that, you know, US buyers will snap up 2 million this year. The year was 2003, uh, referring to cameras with phones. To put that into context, today Statistica estimates that the US will have 257 million smartphone users. So I don't even know what that multiple is, but honestly, more than 2 billion worldwide. Exactly. So it's just shocking to see that that was the attitude in 2003. And I think the even more eerie part of the num— than just the numbers was really, uh, what she she saw, this author saw as the prediction for phone cams future users. And one quote that she said was, you'll never know when someone out there might snap your photo, then upload it for the world to see. The cams will instantly capture and disseminate scenes of crimes in progress or police brutality as it happens. And today has proven more true than the author I think could have even known. So I'd love to understand more about how Wired approached making these technology predictions that quite frankly foretold the future.

So I would like to say that everyone at Wired is and was brilliant. Everyone had a special, you know, tunnel into the future that we could report back from. And I think that is true to a certain extent, but I would also say two things. One is that the, when you're involved in developing new technologies, you see what the limitations are at the time and you can imagine what would happen. As processors got faster and costs dropped. And then it became a question of imagination. And one of the things that I find most extraordinary about these days is, you know, the rise of design thinking and how pervasive it has come— has become in certainly technology companies, but all kinds of companies, you know, around the world. I go to this pharmaceutical industry conference where they, you know, talk about design thinking. I have to tell you I, you know, all credit to my partner Louis, who put a science fiction author on the topic of the future of war for the first issue of our magazine. And he said to me, you know, as I said, this was whatever, 26, 27 years ago. He said, "Yeah, the science fiction guys really have an ability to imagine where the technology is going to go." It was really that simple. And if you think about it, the technology tells you where it's headed. Right? As you're trying to solve a problem today, you know, you can see where the possibilities lie as you're solving the problem, where the possibilities and limitations are. But the other thing you have to keep in mind is, you know, the kids, you know, running the big tech companies today grew up during the Space Age, you know, and that was what was igniting and electrifying, you know, humanity's imagination. Everyone all across the the planet was focused on that and was focused on the technologies that came out of that and what the possibilities would be. And all they had to do was, you know, put their heads down and focus on the engineering to get us the tools that would enable us to do the things that they dreamt about as kids. And, you know, you hear Jeff Bezos talk about that, you hear Bill Gates talk about that, you hear Elon Musk talk about that, you know, the younger generation of entrepreneurs talk about that. And it's, it's one of the reasons why it is so important that we put out positive and sustainable visions for the future because the next generation growing up is looking at that. That's what is inspiring in them.

I think both Claudia and myself are technology optimists, and we love that that was core to the ethos of WIRED in its founding days, and it sounds like is still core to your vision for the future. Would love to just ask about what your vision originally had been for WIRED with Lewis. And how your exit ended up manifesting what you had hoped and dreamed for in the magazine.

So it is interesting. Our vision for the magazine was let's write a magazine about the coolest things happening on the planet today. You know what I mean? It's like, this is like an excuse to go talk to the most interesting people in the world and ask them about the future. And we were able to go across all these different fields, you know, whether it was like work, you know, or technology and computing, or whether it was business or, you know, design and entertainment or education or, you know, civic engagement, whatever it might be. And I guess Lewis was sort of the strategy guy and I was really the operations person, you know. And I was like, okay, it's about a magazine. And I remember we got a huge amount of media before we even launched, before the first issue hit newsstands, you know. We were already talking to Good Morning America and CNN. It was amazing. And this film crew came in— I forget who it was— this film crew came in and they said, you know, well, if what Wired predicts is going to come true, you know, there'll be no reason for this to be in a magazine, you know, in print. And Lewis is like, yeah, we're going to do, you know, CD-ROMs and we're going to do internet stuff. And I was like, oh, I didn't know that. I was trying to get the first issue of the magazine out the door. Lewis is already like, you know, imagining media that didn't exist yet. So I, you know, I still believe in magazines. I really do. And you know what I don't believe in? The idea that all media has to scale. And I just think it's sad. And I don't believe that everything should, you know, necessarily evolve to its lowest common denominator because that's what happens with media, you know. And so I'm much more interested in niche media, in finding people who are super passionate and super interested in a very specific thing and targeting those people and getting to know your audience really well. To me, I just think that leads to a much more interesting. You know, it's, it's not a fragmentation at all. It's allowing us to pursue our, our curiosity and to get, you know, information that's more than an inch deep.

Thank you for sharing that. It's awesome to hear you mention that you were sort of the operations person and Lewis was strategy. It's incredible that you guys were able to build not just Wired but another business in chocolate. I would love to ask, how do you pronounce T-C-H-O, Cho. Okay, amazing. Actually, a really funny story. When I was interviewing at Uber, I was in their micro kitchen looking at their snacks and they have a whole drawer of Cho chocolate. And I was like, okay, I like this place.

And it's funny because when we first started the company, so the original founder— I'm not an original founder, by the way. I joined the company after they'd been trying to build the factory for a couple of years already prior to the actual launch, but not technically a founder. And the founder's name was Timothy Childs. And so when we came up with the name CHO, it was like Timothy Child's, you know, humble obsession. Or it could be technology chocolate. And it's like, ooh, what does technology chocolate taste like? It's like, nyum, nyum, not good. You know, so we didn't want it to be that. And so I used to say CHO just means yummy chocolate.

It certainly is. Can you tell us a little bit more about the similarities between taking WIRED off the ground and launching CHO?

I would have to say literally there were none. I just, it's, you know, a manufacturing business could not possibly be more different from a media business. And, you know, the whole bill of goods, the BOM, the bill of materials, you know, and having to build everything up, you know, piece by piece, all these little widgets. And, you know, for us it's not even like a chip and then some software and a shrink-wrap package that, you know, or a download, you know, this was like farmers in Peru. Okay, let's start there. And we would teach them— actually, we did bring a lot of our tech experiences to the chocolate industry. Timothy used to go down to Peru with a weather station, and he would pull the various pieces apart, and he would give them a temperature gauge to put in their fermentation boxes. So instead of saying, oh, put the beans in the boxes, you know, for a certain number of days, he would say, well, actually, you know, Let's do it for this many hours at this temperature. So just, you know, crazy stuff like that.

Although you said there's not similarities, I'm loving how you were able to bring disruption both to media and to chocolate.

I went to an investor conference once and it's like, what are Lewis and Jane doing here talking about chocolate? And it was like digital revolution. And then it was like food revolution.

So, and so what actually was the impetus for going after the chocolate industry and revolutionizing food?

So You know, after we sold our company, Lewis felt very strongly giving startup entrepreneurs capital was his, you know, was his next step. And we had known Timothy for a while, and Lewis just thought it was Timothy's turn, you know. The guy's super innovative. He was a super taster. He's got an amazing palate. And I think Lewis wanted to build another consumer brand. So it was those three things together. I looked at the two of them, I said, I think you guys are crazy. I don't know anything about chocolate. I don't know anything about manufacturing. I'm not going to have anything to do with this company. And lo and behold, I started out saying no, and then I became an investor, and then I became a board member, and then I became president. And, you know, I remember like literally mopping the floor one time thinking, I've been downwardly mobile in this company. But I'm super grateful. I had an opportunity to do things that I had never done at Wired, and I learned so much. You know, it tapped into, you know, growing up in an agricultural state like Kentucky. It tapped into, you know, my time in Europe when I really began to appreciate food and the role of food in health. And, you know, I'd seen people taking medication instead of, you know, changing their lives. And I began to be thinking about that just as my parents—mother, father, and stepfather—all hit the wall. They all turned 80 and they all had significant health issues that I suddenly became responsible for. And so suddenly I was thinking about food and health holistically. And then I began thinking about, you know, the science of nutrition and the potential impacts between what we eat and our mental state. You know, there is a direct— there's a highway in between your gut and your brain. And, you know, bacteria travel up and down that highway. And there's implications in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. And, you know, my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was growing up. And I often wondered, you know, if she'd had a different diet, if she'd had a different, more physical lifestyle, you know, what would have— what would have happened? How could things have been changed?

And I think you just led us right to our next question. Madison McIlwain: And thank you for sharing that story. And I, I can hear just through your curiosity how much there is still to be learned around the ways in which technology is interacting with, uh, our physical world. Um, and in this case, with your new venture, NeoLife, that physical world is looking and exploring into biotechnology. And I, I think from my view, um, as an investor, it, we're seeing a lot in biotech and hearing things like the next 20 years venture capital investing will be really focused around disrupting, uh, the intersection between biology technology and computer science. You know, as you mentioned, Wired was really founded to report on the digital revolution, and NeoLife is educating the public on the neobiological revolution with these things such as microbiomes and stem cell research and CRISPR. And I'm curious about how you view the intersection of science and technology as being the next revolution worth writing about.

So one of the interesting things was understanding the difference between a scientist and an engineer. And I remember as I was first getting into this, I mean, I really had no background in medicine or anything. I was interested in it, but I just didn't like the whole, you know, hospital scene, and I didn't like everybody taking pills for things, you know. I just wanted to think more holistically about it. And so, you know, biology— that, that to me is what's interesting more than medicine. Or I guess I'm really interested in alternative forms of medicine. I have a panel coming up later this week where I'm interviewing an entrepreneur who's using food as medicine and one who's using music as treatment. So that's going to be fun. But a scientist is an observer, right? They observe biology. They observe what happens in the cell. They, they're peering inside the body and trying to observe our biological systems and learn from them. You know, an engineer takes a final product like a computer and then breaks it apart and tries to rebuild it, you know, so they're like reverse engineering things. And it really is the difference between, you know, building and growing. And I think we're alive at this remarkable moment in time where those differences matter less. And it's important, in fact, that we blur those lines because it could be that growing is a much more sustainable way of achieving our goals than building. Or put another way, that maybe we need to bring an engineering mentality to biology. And I would have these conversations with, with people like Genentech and Google, you know, and they talked, they talked different languages. I mean, they really were coming from two different worlds. And in the very short amount of time I've been involved in those worlds, they went pow, you know, I mean, it's just been this huge mashup. And, you know, when you talk about digital health, the vast majority of what people are talking about with digital health are medical records. You know, whereas in fact, what's really interesting is, you know, how are we using imaging technology to see things that we couldn't see before? You know, as a journalist, to be standing at this particular moment in time looking at what I look at all day, every day, it feels like I hit the jackpot a second time. You know, it's the story of our times again.

I was just going to say, with your track record with Wired, I'm inclined to believe you on the future here.

As you mentioned, 2020 has really been a year where we cannot deny how important health is. It's really just something that has completely changed our economy, our way of life. And I think this time, you know, in quarantine, for example, at least for me, has been a time where I've really taken a deeper look at our health. So I think NeoLife is an incredibly important part of our future. You mentioned a few times we have as well, Lewis, your partner. You founded both Wired and also worked with him on Show. Tell us more about what it's like being co-founders and partners. What advice do you have for younger founders who are also considering starting something with their significant other?

I think you instinctively know whether it's going to work or not, and you should follow those instincts for sure. I mean, I talk to people all the time who say, you know, I just don't think I could work with my partner. I never felt that way. You know, it's like, if you feel that way, do not work with your partner. If you have any inkling that it might be a problem, it will be a problem. You know, Lewis used to talk about, you know, he's Italian and he would say, you know, families work together on the farm. You know, they spent all day together and they ate all their meals together. And that's the way we evolved. And, you know, I have to say, when you've got a story like the digital revolution by the tail and your business is media, it's gonna be your whole life. And we couldn't think of anything cooler to do with our lives, honestly. You know, if I were an entrepreneur and I had a 5-year plan and I needed an exit and it needed an X-time multiple, I think we could have come up with a smarter, more efficient way of doing things. But I don't think we would have had anywhere near the impact that we did. And so, you know, we were passionate about each other and we were passionate about Wired, and I think you can feel that in in those issues that we produced and then the company that we built and in the, you know, the impact that we had. But it's really, really, really important to have boundaries and it really is important to establish clearly what your priorities are. And, you know, our boundaries were clear. Lewis was going to be the editor-in-chief and strategist and I was going to make the trains run. And it gave us plenty of room to not step on each other's toes. The most important thing is, you know, if at any point you sense your priorities are shifting, to communicate those.

It's awesome to hear that perspective. Seeing we're just over time, I'll ask our last question, which is our hero question for our podcast, which is, who is a woman in your life that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

Yeah, I mean, you know, who's the most inspiring person? How many people say Steve Jobs, right? But I thought long and hard about this question. I've been asked it before. I've never had a good answer. And I started thinking of, you know, women who broke barriers is really what it comes down to. You know, I never really thought about the fact that there were no women around. To me, that was kind of just the way it was. And, you know, a lot of the women that I grew up with had no idea what I was talking about. Gonna throw themselves into it. I could say Billie Jean King, you know, I mean, she really— and even if the match was rigged, because part of it looked rigged, you know, it was also staged. The fact that, you know, and the Equal Rights Amendment, you know, was going on, but, you know, so Sandra Day O'Connor, she was very ladylike, you know, while shattering, you know, firsts and, and holding her own in a way that I thought was very, very sweet. They're both at different ends of the spectrum. So those are, those are two. And there's somebody else that I think is worth mentioning, Jennifer Doudna, you know, who just won the Nobel Prize for CRISPR, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in a very long time, and the first time two women shared a Nobel Prize. But what I love about her is she is a scientist and obviously a very creative and a very successful one, but she's not afraid to talk in very measured tones about what's good and what's potentially bad about her invention. I find really, really inspiring.

Thank you so much, Jane.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Room. If you enjoyed our conversation, please like, follow, subscribe, and talk to us on Clubhouse and share with friends. Get excited for next week's episode where we sit down with Jesse Draper, founder of Halogen Ventures, airing Tuesday at 10 AM Eastern, 7 AM Pacific. See you in the room.

All opinions expressed by Claudia and Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Defy VC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.