Crazy Wisdom

Crazy Wisdom

What does it look like for humans to adapt to cities? Brian Chen - CEO of Room

February 21, 2020 · 53 min

MP3 · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

About this episode

This one was really fun because I got to talk to Brian about how humans are adapting to cities, one of my favorite things to talk about. Brian started a company that creates tiny rooms that people can use for meetings or podcasts escaping from open office floor plan hell. He was actually in one of the rooms while he recorded this podcast!

Follow Brian on Twitter
And check out Room
Episode transcript
Guest 100:00

Sam foreign.

Guest 200:33

My name is Stuart Allsop and this is my podcast, Crazy Wisdom, where I interview creative people about how they work with and manage the stress that is inherent in creative work. What I've realized over the past 10 years of my research is that anybody who is creating something of value that is significantly different from what has come before is considered crazy. Most of us have a fear, an ingrained fear of going crazy. So what I'm saying is grab onto

Stewart Alsop III00:57

that fear, realize that it's there and

Guest 200:59

just go with it. Because the problems we're going to be facing over the next 20 years require crazy people in order to solve them.

Stewart Alsop III01:27

Welcome to the Crazy Wisdom podcast. Today my guest is Brian Chen. He is the CEO and co founder of Room. Really excited to have you on the show today, Brian.

Guest 101:37

Thanks for having me.

Stewart Alsop III01:39

So for my listeners, can you explain more about Room?

Guest 101:43

Room is. We're a startup, we're about just over two years old, on a mission to reimagine the modern workplace. Our first product is a flat packed, soundproof phone booth. It assembles on site and is really designed to solve the problems of noise and privacy in the open floor plan, which is something that really drives a lot of people crazy today.

Stewart Alsop III02:11

And it's really interesting because as we've been having our pre interview chat, there's a couple times where you open the door and I was able to hear what's going on outside and I can't hear it right now. So that's a really good sign from this side. And then the other thing is that you don't need a microphone in there right now. You're just kind of, it's set up to basically do podcasting. So this leads me to the question, are there a lot of people using Room to record podcasts?

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