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The Vergecast builds a tech company

The Vergecast builds a tech company

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On The Vergecast: we steal the best of the tech industry to create history’s greatest gadget company.

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An illustration of several gadgets in a Vergecast style.
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the board of The Vergecast Inc. The one and only item on the agenda for today? Build the greatest tech company in the history of the universe. We will borrow, steal, and buy the best products and businesses from tech companies around the world in order to offer the best possible line of products. Money is no object, though we’d like to make some at some point. Let’s begin.

On this episode of The Vergecast, our cohosts — Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce — ditch their mics and headphones for suits and ties and spend an hour starting a tech company. (Shout out to The Big Picture for some inspiration on the format.) The rules are simple enough: we get to take one product in each category we’re choosing to enter, though we can only take one product from a given company. At the end of the exercise, we’ll have our lineup of gadgets, apps, B2B moneymakers, and more.

Make sure you listen before you read the list below because it completely spoils the whole episode.

But if you want a refresher, here’s the official product lineup of The Vergecast Inc.:

  • Smartphone: Apple iPhone
  • Tablet: Amazon Kindle
  • PCs: Lenovo’s lineup
  • Wearables: Meta’s Quest and smart glasses
  • Headphones — sorry, “audio solutions”: Sony’s lineup
  • App platform: Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Messaging app: Google Chat
  • Streaming service: TikTok
  • Wild card gadget: Fujifilm X100
  • Startup we’re going to buy: Anthropic

What do you think we got right? What did we miss? Please let us know, and we’ll bring it to the attention of the board ahead of the next meeting.