Om Malik, the venerable entrepreneur, writer and now investor, joined TechCrunch editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino for our second episode of The TechCrunch Podcast.
In 2006, Malik turned his personal tech blog GigaOm into a business to track the tech industry. In that time he watched the industry evolve rapidly with the pace of innovation. But there’s a problem with that pace, he says, which is that the big companies like Google, Amazon and Apple are trudging ahead without considering the effects of technology on consumers.
“We need emotional intelligence in the Valley and we don’t have it. We’re so focused on IQ that we don’t understand that there is emotional intelligence required,” he says.
After leaving GigaOm, he became a partner at True Ventures to look five years in the future. He says he sees big things for AR, and calls for the big and little companies alone to consider the human in the tech.
“I don’t think SV has time to ponder those issues. it has to start to learn to use phrases like emotional intelligence and empathize with the real world and interact with the real world as people and not technologists. What we’re trying to do here is learn about society at large before trying to influence it.”
Click play above to hear Malik and Matthew talk about this and more, including why the idea of Mark Zuckerberg running for president is absurd.
The TechCrunch Podcast is on iTunes, Pocket Cast and Overcast.