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As I say, I'm almost jig-a-rack. I saw. Well, yeah. Just the narrative is immediately like, OK, wouldn't it be, oh, no, if the species is wiped out, it might take a NASDAQ down.
Everything is like immediately. Let's jump to the market. People have been so warned to enter the stock market as what the economy is. It's just not as you have said many times.
All right. So I was just in Miami this week. I interviewed Jorge Ramos. Who's a possible replacement for you, obviously.
But I'm almost. It was an amazing. It was a great talk. But one of the things we talked about was sort of where journalism is.
And it was a very high-minded conversation of what to do. And one of the things he said is you speak the truth. And so let me just, I think this seems like a strange stretch, but actually you predicted because you were so mad that they played a correct prediction by me. You predicted we'd be hearing a lot more about Sanders' opinions on the history of communist leaders.
And lo and behold, he had some pretty controversial comments on Fidel Castro. And Jorge Ramos discussed this in this interview I did with him at the Night Media Forum. Let me just say, clearly, Cuba is a dictatorship since 1959. Venezuela is a dictatorship.
Nicaragua is a dictatorship. And that's where you have to start. You cannot start by saying, well, maybe they have a great health program. Or maybe they have a education.
But if they kill thousands of people in Cuba, if they have political prisoners, if they don't have opposition parties, that cannot be a democracy. And you cannot tell that to people who personally suffered from dictatorships. So it's going to be incredibly difficult. Yeah, with a shocker, it happened.
If you make enough predictions occasionally just to probability get them right, but it's only just begun. You're going to see, I mean, he has a colored past and you're going to see just all kinds of videos. And unfortunately, everything's now on a permanent record. There's no way to live a life without making a lot of mistakes.
And from where status means that you are wildly vetted and they go to every dark corner because the media has a profit motive and highlighting things that are embarrassing because everybody clicks on them. But Senator Sanders has a lot of them. And here's the- Yeah, he has not been vetted properly. Well, here's the problem.
How does he win Florida? How does he win Florida? Well, that's when Jorge said it's impossible. And we've never had a Democratic president win an election without winning Florida.
And if you know people in Florida, understandably have a very, very emotional reaction to South American socialist and autocotically leadership. And he has a lot, he's on record, has been quite benign and closing out. Yeah. If it does, it's literally the tip of the iceberg.
There's going to be a lot more here. I see what he's doing. He's so stubborn. I can watch him do it.
It's like, there's nothing wrong with saying that it's like saying, oh, Russia does some great things. Like nice vodka or something like that. And it's like, that's not really, he should just stop me. He's trying to make a point like that he should be able to say there's some good things and say there's great things about them.
And so, you know, and criticize him at the same time. And obviously Trump does this with Saudi Arabia or Russia or whatever, but it just looks, it's a bad look for him. And it takes away the ability to insult Trump about his relationship with Saudi Arabia or Russia or things like that. I think it's a big mistake.
And Ramos was noting that a lot of Latinos support Trump and now fine with saying it. And so it's not this monolithic body, but this is not a good, this is not a good one. Well, it's not even, I've watched a lot of these videos, it's not, it's not, they're not balanced arguments. Like, okay, in the context of evaluating Russia, we have to remember, they have a great scientific community.
They've always placed an emphasis on education. It's not, it's not attempting to be a balanced argument. He comes across it. He watched the whole thing as an impologist and quite frankly, as someone who endorses a movement away from the full body contact approach or just altered capitalism, which has its flaws towards a more socialist and even maybe a communist ideology.
It's not a balanced argument he's making. What he's implicitly knowing is endorsing a different social and political construct. And that's the problem. And of a hundred senators, of a hundred senators, America has decided to elect one socialist.
So the election comes down to this, if I were Trump, I would just make the entire election if it looks like it's going to be Sanders and Trump, and you know what, right now, right now, it kind of looks that way. I would just be socialism versus capitalism. That's it. There you go.
Well, speaking of capitalism, one of the, we're going to go to big stories now. Oh my gosh. What the? You know, I don't.
I do. Did you reach out to Bob? Do you call him Bobbi? What does he call you?
That's my discussions with him. Well, what's the point? What's the point? What's the point?
I'm listening to this pot and we'll get some insight from you. As you know, one of my predictions was that he was going to leave after announcing streaming, which I did. I think it was the suddenness of it. He's been, I don't, nothing has come out since, right?
That there's some, they asked about health issues, any other controversial issues. He had been wanting to leave. I think the surprise was who we picked because they thought they were going to pick the guy who ran streaming. Yeah.
Ken and I'm going to give you his name. And, and they picked this other Bob, this other Bob, uh, uh, Chapick, who is the chairman of Disney Parks, which is a really big job. And it used to be run by a guy named Tom Staggs, who everybody thought was, who kind of looked like Bob Iger, that he had kind of that look, and then Staggs left under really, just left and was, was, and, and Tiger was not ready to leave at that time, even though he had thought he did. And so I think what's interesting is he's leaving, but he's not leaving, right?
He's going to stay there to, through two thousand, uh, twenty one as executive chairman. This Bob, this other Bob, the new Bob is reporting to him and he's still earning this massive salary. Um, and he did say, he did say it a number of times, um, even though he had resigned to a longer term thing. So I think he's, there was all these immediate rumors that he was going to be the, um, is going to Bloomberg's vice presidential candidate because there'd been some, he had been thinking about it a little bit running for president.
Um, and so, you know, I don't, I'm not sure there's more here. And again, I don't know if something happens. I'll look like an idiot, but I think he was going to leave and in this way he's leaving without leaving. I guess something's up here.
This is the whole thing. Well, the whole thing felt rushed and also, I mean, there's, there's a couple of things on the pack here. Typically, typically some, the person who becomes CEO Pepsi comes up to marketing, the CEO of General Motors, usually is a product engineer. And if you think about Disney and where they are really differentiated and where they are probably their future lives and their ability to maintain this unbelievable momentum, it's, it's in a word, is content, their ability to create $7 billion plus films in one year to lead the box office three years in a row, then take those amazing, amazing content, put it on, uh, Disney Plus, then create parks centered around those themes, then sell Mandalorian action figures and the wheel spins.
But you have a center, if you will, the centrifugal force, the thing that gets the merry-go-round of the wheel flying is content. And it's just interesting that they chose someone from parks, uh, to run the whole thing. I felt that the whole thing seemed so rushed that there was some sort of, I feel like there's another shoe to drop here. But to be clear, it's important to shout or just call out.
The Bob Iger's leadership, uh, profits up 300%, stock up 400%, I mean, it's five-fold. You know, he brought a decent amount of dignity and grace. He was never mean. He was never flamboyant.
He was never in the news. He was, he's been largely scanned. He's been totally scandal free. And also one out of three acquisitions work, two out of three fail.
He is arguably arguably the best acquirer in the history of corporate America, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm. I mean, come on. And he paid reasonable prices for all these things and he has a great reputation. So, you know, boss, he deserves a victory lap.
He deserves, you know, I hope, you know, I don't know how much money he deserves at all. He's coming to code and he hasn't canceled. So, and he's still in charge of content. So, I think we'll be asking these questions.
I don't know if Bob is the other Bob is coming, Jay Pick. One of the things I think that is unusual is this, it looks like this guy's, and look, the park's job is critical. Tom's dad's was a part-job. He was a part-job.
He was a part-job. He was a part-job. He was a part-job. He was a part-job.
He was a part-job. He was a part-job. He was a part-job. You put someone in there and they succeed.
So, that's what I'm told. Yeah. Because there's so much going on. There's so much in that analog and all kinds.
People, everything. He's dealing with coronavirus now and I think both in Asia, big exposure in China with their parks there and largely their parks that are super popular there. And so, you know, he would be among those, but I think what it was is they didn't pick the content, people, Kevin and others. And so, I think that was surprising.
The other is it looks like this guy is getting on the job, training by Bob Iger, right? So, that's another odd thing. And I think if someone's not ready to be that, one of the, I think the more smart analysis, and I don't know if you agree with this, is this is a company too big to run by one person. Very few people that can sing dance and act like Bob Iger, you know, and also look at doing it.
One of the things that I bring down to call him, I call him a cashmere prince all the time because he has these beautiful cashmere sweaters and I try not to touch people I interview, but they're so beautiful. I want, they're so beautiful. I want to touch his sweater. That's his arm.
That's all. It's pretty you clarified that. I know, thank you. But the cashmere prince idea is like, he's just, he moves through life in that way and he has that effect, but he's also quite approachable.
He's not a snobbering like that. And so, I think having this guy train you is great, but at the same time, why do you need to see you? You can run such a multifaceted company like this, because now there's so many moving parts, digital content, parks, commerce, I don't know, what do you think? Well, conglomerate's often times have, you know, you need a CEO who at the end of the day makes decisions, communicates to the investment community and set strategy and quite frankly is probably the most important job is finding and retaining the best CEOs of smaller companies to run the parks, to run the movie division, to run the Disney TV plus at the end of the day at an organization like that.
It's the boring stuff that increases shareholder value. You know, the most difficult thing is it's compensation and that is figuring out a way to align each of the heads of those divisions. Their financial interests with the success of the company that accretes to the whole thing and then getting them to play nice with each other, figuring out a way that, okay, if we give people discounts to the park in exchange for signing, are we giving them a free Apple TV plus? Does the guy at the park get the right compensation for that?
So it's, you need a guy to run the aircraft carrier squadron and even if you have incredibly adept people running each of the carriers themselves. Yeah. So I think what's interesting is that, is Kevin Mayer is up or something about who runs, you know, a lot of consumer stuff and has been in charge of this rollout Disney Plus, which has been directed consumer and international division, which it'll be interesting how Bob interacts with Kevin like that because he was sort of the one everyone thought like, and that doesn't always turn out that just because the reporters are saying this is the one that it happens and that's happened a zillion times, including Disney with under Mr. Staggs.
And so it's, I think that's the difficult part is that people thought, one thing, how do you keep these people in these jobs? Now, they're incredibly powerful jobs and someone like John Bezos has managed to keep a lot of people in these, I mean, they're quasi CEOs, right? Within each of these. Oh, 100%.
You got Richard Plappler reported up to Jeff Bukes and, and, and, and Bukes key, you know, one of the things I said strategy, but then I find incredibly talented people who are willing to stick around, even though they're not number one and anywhere they go, they would be number one. At any great company, a big, kind of a great company is that you look around and there's three or four people that could be the CEO of another company. Absolutely. And when they're.
That was G.E. That was 100%. That's a whole G model. And, and Amazon has that.
You know, they're the great firms. Apple has probably three or four CEOs in there. So you're, again, the CEO at the end of the day, the CEO's job, make sure they don't run on money, manage and, and the investment community of spokesmen to the company, and really the gangsterman, what you got to do is you got to be able to attract and retain a bunch of number ones and keep them happy and ensure they all, and then the hard part is figuring the way for them all to play nice together. Because again, that run-to-fly wheel at Disney, it's starting to spin, and occasionally one group is going to have to take a back seat or give away their product or upgrade people who are a member of Disney Plus, and it's going to hit their earnings in the short term, but they're all going to have to figure out a way to say, okay, how do we.
This is second Bob. Good enough to do that. That's, I think. Those are big shoes to fill.
This probably are the biggest shoes to fill since Steve Dobbs appointed Tim Cook. This will be everyone's eyes. Everyone's eyes will be on this guy Bob, because, because Eiger is arguably, he's going to go down as the best media CEO, probably the rest of the year. Let me just tell you something.
It was really interesting when he was picked. Eiger sort of ate, excuse me, might call him before him, who sort of went out on a bad note, I would say. He ate through a bunch of CEO candidates and sort of killed them off, and one of the things about Bob Eiger was that he was thought to be sort of the one who just sat around and took it from Eiger and didn't really push back, and everyone thought he was going to be. He was Steve Young in the 49ers, would John Montana remember that?
Well, no. But go ahead, sure. Well, so the 49ers, I think it was enough. Oh, you're going to explain sports.
In the early 90s. I know what I'm talking about. But Steve Young was probably the best quarterback in the league, maybe the second best, but unfortunately the best quarterback in the league, John Montana, started to perform. So he had a guy who was one of the best quarterbacks, and he was sitting on the bench, and he was patient, and then he got his turn.
But I remember some of that bullshit. Like, Isaac kept saying, I'm leaving. Wait, no, I'm not. I'm leaving.
No, I'm not. And he didn't seem to want to get Bob the keys to the car. No. And he kind of plays.
Like, he was also, you know, lots of books. I've read all the books about Disney because it's a really interesting company. You know, he was rude to the other ones. He was just like, it was just really interesting.
And it was like, Bob's the one that lasted him. And it was really interesting. When I first interviewed him, and I've interviewed him about a half a dozen times, at least, on stages and in different places, and spent a lot of time with him, was that he was the first person of just only a couple of media executives, very early in the internet game. I'll never forget.
We were talking about why he was going to push really hard. And I just, in fact, wrote a column about this. They had so many disasters in the internet. Many of them, Michael, I was born.
But they kept pushing forward. And I remember they had another disaster or something else. I can't remember. There's like at least a dozen disasters.
Does it go? What did they do? There's an info seat. Go.
There was a lot of bad stuff that happened. He said, if someone's going to eat our lunch, it might as well be us. And I thought, cook for him. He wasn't scared of the internet, which I really appreciated, because a lot of the media executives at the time, whether it was Delment or any others at Viacom or wherever you met them, the only two people that ever talked about the internet as an opportunity in those early days, instead of a nuisance was Bob Iger and Barry Diller, which I thought was interesting.
So one key question you have to ask Bob at Code. Just very simple. What is that, Cott? What is that?
I don't get it. I go have sushi there. I go to Japan land. Then I go to a giant golf ball.
And then I talk about space. What is that, Cott? What is that? I will ask him that.
But one of the things that he did, I hate Disney. I hate Disney. I hate theme parks. I really don't like it.
My brother is one of those crazy Disney lovers. And so he made me go to the park, or he wouldn't come to all things D one year. You have to go. And then he had a film crew there.
Every time I got off a ride saying, Cara, how'd you like it? I was like, you know, I said, you know. Yeah. Cara, I used to call the unhappiest place on earth.
Then we go back and forth and stuff. So he's a really interesting character. I'm excited to talk to him. I hope he doesn't bag out at the last minute and I get other Bob.
Although I'm happy to meet other Bob, but I want. That's what you should call them. Hey, you're welcome. Other Bob.
That'll warn you. Yeah. I know. I've never met this guy.
I've met Kevin Merritt. Anyway, we'll see what happens. And we'll go from there. Speaking of another big company, Tim Cook, another we just mentioned him.
He was talking about coronavirus as a challenge. He said it wouldn't. The company said it wouldn't mean it's revenue. It would work faster than a quarter.
So iPhone, supply constraints. So obvious. And lost retail sales in China where they have a lot of exposure. It's reopened 30 of its 42 stores in China.
Plus many of them down. What do you think of this? What's going on? It's still becoming platinum and China from what I understand.
But at the same time, it affects these. Where would you? Away from Apple. Where would you invest right now?
Yeah. How do they get it if the once coronavirus does get under control? What happens? What do you do now as an investor?
So I think there's two ways. Apple. Would you buy Apple into Apple? I own Apple.
And again, my investment philosophy is straightforward. Monopolies that are unregulated. And Apple checks both those boxes. And I think Apple, again, is putting in all the places for the ultimate recurring revenue bundle.
But I want to go into it. By the way, Urban Dictionary has Rundle and I got excited and I thought it was going to be me. And I immediately went on because I'm a narcissist. It's a type of dog.
I don't know. I'm going to call them because you've already gotten one in. That's right. Who do we?
I want to speak the management. Who's the manager at Urban Dictionary? So anyway. I'm going to be a new job for Bob.
How to play coronavirus. There's two ways to think about it. I think the first is defense. And that is there are certain industries where they will be recast as a negative in light of the virus and they'll never recover.
So I think you could argue movie theaters were already on their way down. This just makes things worse. People go to movies less and find they don't miss it. But are there other companies that have been hit really hard?
We're likely, yeah, it'll take a big hit in the short run. But at the end of the day, it's not going to change the underlying fundamentals and attraction of the business. So for example, carnival cruise lines and that is the company has been obviously ground zero for this. A lot of horror stories coming out of cruise ships.
This stocks off about 50% I think in the last three years and while revenues are growing, it's not got a price earnings ratio of seven, a dividend of 6%. Very well-run company. I just met the CMO. He's a very thoughtful guy.
One out of two people who are on a cruise right now are on a carnival cruise brand. So they've got scale. They've got a great loyalty program and I don't believe that once this thing is over, people are going to be any less fond of taking cruises. And what we also have in our society is we have the full employment carnival cruise act in the form of Social Security.
Because while Social Security takes seniors, 29% of them who would be in poverty without it down to 9%, we spend a trillion dollars on it. So $200 billion of Social Security on one fifth is an effective social program. The other $800 billion is such that someone can, a couple can upgrade from carnival to princess, also owned by carnival. So you have a trillion dollar subsidy, a lot of which I would bet, I'd love to see this math.
I bet 20 to 30 billion of that trillion goes right to cruises in the form of upgrades. So carnival cruises, carnival, that's playing what I call defense. And that is what industries have been or companies have been hit really, really. So for example, American Airlines is now below its IPO price, but also their largest cost input has fallen in price.
So if you think people are going to continue to fly once the virus is over, American Airlines has been hit really hard. But my favorite on the defensive side is carnival, something I wrote about today, playing offense. I'm going to ask you what is an offensive side, because I actually might call him about the time is about these work from home companies like Zoom, it's about 50%. And this work from home movement, even though it's been going on and growing, it really has it.
So at that time, we had stars where people were more nervous about going out and stuff like that. We didn't have Facebook. We didn't have social media. We didn't have Slack.
We didn't have iPhones. And so now all the pieces in place for work at home are there. That's a defensive stock carnival. What is an offensive stock?
Right. So how do we play offense? So there's defense in that as they recover, and then there's offense in that as it accelerates the momentum of the company because this work from home is a great idea. So what else might people do from home?
So my stock pick, if you will, because right now the work from home, we talked about Zoom a couple weeks ago, it's about 15% since we talked about that. One, I think, has a big opportunity because it brings not only tailwinds in the coronavirus is Peloton. And that is, I think that people are perhaps going to work, do an additional work out at home. I think people are going to decide, well, maybe I'm going to go to crowded places, and I've been thinking about buying a Peloton, or I have one, and this is my excuse to use it.
If you look at their vertical, they have Apple-like Martins, they have a recurring revenue stream in the app about 20%. That's interesting. They have outrageous loyalty in terms of their community. They're NPS scores.
Their NPR scores are off the hook. And you know what they should do? You know what they should do, Cara? They could create, right now, it's about $7 billion in market cap growing, 50% of year.
Although Apple doesn't like to acquire it, I've never seen a better brand fit with any company with Apple. You're 100% right. I have such envy to buy the track. I'm going to buy the rowing machine.
Are you a rowing machine? They're coming out with a rowing machine later in the year. I totally buy that. I almost bought one on Instagram the other day.
$7 billion will do $2 billion in revenue, it's about $3.5 to $4 times revenue, which is expensive, but it's growing at 50% a year. And you know what these guys could do? They would have $2 to $3 billion in market cap. They should start, and this year-in-law for this, they should start a dating site of like-minded people into fitness.
If their community is so strong, they're so passionate, there's this underlying assumption that most of the people on Peloton's are hot, which is what drives any dating site, they could create a community and they could call it something else, such that it didn't feel like a dating site. But the Peloton community is in my opinion one of the largest unmonetized assets in America. I really do like this. Working out at home is now very convenient.
I'm going to have a mirror put in just to test it. I'm going to write it a little bit. But you're right. You're 100% right.
We're going to move to one more thing. And working home is a really interesting thing. Not just have a telecommunication. It'll be interesting to see if people start to test this out if this gets worse and let's hope it doesn't get worse.
If you look at any of them in that area, because it's a very different world than the last time this happened. But last one, Uber Eats updates. Jason Droge, who I've interviewed before with Jason Del Rey on stage, is leaving the company. Uber has not given common as to why.
Last month, you predicted that Uber Eats would be spun off, but they've been actually pulling back. They're a co-star shot. He is pulling Eats out of the market where it's not among the top two food delivery services. I just interviewed a chef yesterday here in San Francisco who was talking about how it kills the restaurant business.
You have to be at all these different delivery services. It's a cutthroat thing and he was talking about restaurants getting together and not letting them have 30%. They've got to start getting together. It's a really tough business.
Uber agreed to sell its Indian food delivery service to local driver. It just continued food delivery operations in Vienna and pulled out of South Korea. What do you think this is? Jason's a really interesting character.
He was eight Uber Eats. I don't know. He was like super. This was a big opportunity and a code two years ago, Dara talked about it being a really critical part of the business.
What up, Scott? Well, no CEO ever says this is a shitty part of our business. He went on and on. I'm trying to go on.
He went on and on two years ago. I'm just saying. Okay. 24 months ago, that was before the public.
That was before the shish show. It is the Uber company. It's a public company. They're going from growth to margin.
Even if you look in, I haven't seen the analysis, but just anecdotal pulse marketing. I noticed Uber costs are going up in Manhattan, and that's exactly the right thing, which means they'll take their growth down. Uber Eats is a terrible business, and when the CEO of that company leaves, it's one of two things. It's one of three things.
For personal reasons, which is why they always say, you know, I'm going to spend more time with their family. 90s, I'm going to spend more time with their family. Then two, it's a change that they have disagreements over strategy. In this instance, I would imagine that Dara said, you need to clean this thing up because we're packaging it and selling it.
You need to take growth down, figure out a way to get more profitable. Basically, he's trying to up and said, everything we've been planning for, everything you've been hiring for, everything you've been trying to figure out as the person running this decision, just kidding, though, the other way. And start firing people, start pulling out of markets and start putting lipstick on this pig because we've got to dress this thing up and get it to market. My guess is the CEO's like, boss, I'm going to work my ass off around the strategy.
Just know. Find another guy or gal to do your dirty work here. I'm done. Or he's trying to sell it.
But the two have had a parting of ways because they're obviously both talented executives. There's been a shift in strategy, and this just buttresses, and again, it might be confirmation by us. But again, my prediction with this other shitty company, DoorDash, trying to figure out a way to go public. Time to go.
The time to merge would be Wild DoorDash's private. So who's going to prevail here? Because restaurant, I can tell you every restaurant person hates this and has to be part of it. It's literally, they hate it.
And they can't not use it. It's critical. Because of the trends among especially young people liking delivery. My kids, that's all they're using, or grub hub, or whatever, whichever one.
But this is what you're going to see that's even going to beat up these guys more, kick these dead horses or near lane horses while they're down, is that the biggest and most successful kids are companies Chick-fil-A and Chipotle are going to go even more vertical, which again is the key to massive shareholder growth, and they're going to put in place their own delivery. And they're going to hire their own people, they're going to pay them well, and they'll come up with controlling the person or your interface with that brand has value. Apple, the biggest unlock in shareholder history over the last 20 years out of the prime was Apple saying we want to control your interaction with our brand at the point of purchase. So when Chipotle or Chick-fil-A put people in a uniform and they're smart and they're nice and they're high EQ and maybe they give them a certain verbiage, a certain eye contact, whatever it might be, they're trained to be Chipotle ambassadors, that will positively impact the brand and will warrant the investment as opposed to, I mean, I literally have a guy who's just come out of the rain, whatever it is, and they're good guys, they're trying to do their best and they're always guys, but it's not what I call a highly branded experience, right?
They drive glasses back into you, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, they come and run, they run. Yeah, and there's been some incidents and things like that, you know, it's sort of member cosmo.com, it's just not, it's a race to the bottom, and especially when Amazon, to me Amazon will be the player here eventually, because you do trust Amazon with your delivery and they have a lot of interest. You're going to get into food delivery.
Yeah, because they've been professionalizing delivery. They serve with the trucks and everything else and they have to deal with the safety issues that plague them as usual at Amazon, but to me it's a really tough business away from their core business, which is driving and we got to go break in a second, but I have to say today in San Francisco, because of all these laws, AB5 and things like that, I went to get a new work because I was running late and it was $50.50, it was great, my house downtown. It was crazy, but then I was like, I'm not paying $50 or a ride to work, I walked down to the Metro and took it and I would have taken a scooter, I didn't have a helmet with me, but it was really interesting. Remember, I've been talking about, they've got to bring prices up and I had to say it made me not use it.
I was like, that is too much money, that is too much money. Well, it's margin or growth, they're moving to margin story, it's the right thing, it's going to hurt the stock, but it's the right thing to do long-term. Okay, we'll see how long that was, now it's way too, now I'm probably going to like that much because it's so expensive and I'd rather drive. I jumped on a scooter.
On a scooter. I didn't, I got my helmet here, so I'm not going to use a scooter, but I would. You have a helmet. It's called that hair.
Literally, your head is sacred. I'm so sorry. There is no helmet that gets protected. I'm sorry, you're a hairless cat.
Oh my gosh. The fact of the matter is I have fantastic hair. I'd go right down to my waist. One of the things that's interesting is that I am using their jump bikes quite a bit, I love them, but I think they're great.
They have baskets, they feel slightly safer and more solid, and they give you boots. I think they're electric bike. I mean, they're buying like bike. But I think the rental bike market is amazing and that's run by Uber has the biggest one with jump.
Anyway, let's get to a break. We'll be right back with wins and fails and predictions. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the track at a corporate lunch.
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Scott, there's so many wins and fails this week. Why don't you begin? Why don't you begin? My winner is Panera that is going to a recurring revenue bundle if you will or recurring revenue.
It's a restaurant. Yeah, Panera. A.99 for unlimited coffee. All right.
Interesting because if you think about it, it's kind of a genius move because A. Coffee prices. Eight, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. All right.
Okay. Why do you think that's right? Well, look, people, do you realize on average people spend $1,100 a year on coffee? And what they found is that the people who sign up come into Panera every 48 hours and guess what they're doing.
They're not only buying, getting their coffee. They're free coffee. They're buying food, right? So this is the idea of a recurring revenue program.
For example, restoration hardware, when you get people 20% off, they not only just buy the couch, they start buying towels and sheets. Panera is finding that they're increasing purchases, increasing loyalty of people back in the store. And coffee became sort of disruptable because we really think about how expensive coffee has become. He is disruptable.
It's kind of like you are in a farm and take your picture right now. Thanks. Thanks. All right.
I'm going to be disruptable. I like that. You're right. I do pay too much for coffee.
Yeah. So Panera is, and you're going to see that across. I mean, here's the thing. We want simplicity in our lives.
We don't want to pay or we don't want. I always thought that the thing about Uber that was so wonderful is you just got to bomb out of it. I mean, how many times have you gotten out of the cap for getting to pay and someone starts honking in and he's like, you need to pay? Anyways, so Panera, but they're finding these recurring, I think this is where the world is headed.
So I make one decision. I like Panera coffee or it's not my way to work. And what, you know, once you get people coming through your establishment every 40 hours, one of them starts to happen. Delicious.
Pastry they have there. So innovation across recurring revenue of Panera, that's my, that's my. Okay. All right.
And by the way, it takes some leadership because someone in the meeting says, well, wait, that we're going to lose money from people who spend $4 for our, you know, you know, chai latte or whatever the heck it is. So it's any coffee or just coffee? The honest answers. I don't know.
All right. Okay. All right. Well, that's an interesting thing.
I would, I would possibly pay for that. But I, I don't want coffee. I like to go to a really overpriced San Francisco place that costs. That's a shocker.
That's a shocker. What is your, what is your fail? What is your fail this week? Oh, my fails.
I don't, I don't, I don't want to add field to these rumors about some of the stuff coming out with him, but distinctive any of these rumors about this game, or do you miss her? I suppose we did some very kind of sort of things to, to kind of kill his competition for the CEO role at the firm and all this stuff is coming out. Explain the firm. Oh, vision fund.
Stock bank vision fund. Yeah. Anyways, but distinctive all of that. Distinctive all of that.
Let's assume it's all hyperbola. And who knows? Is there anyone who deserves to be fired more than the guy running the vision fund right now? I mean, literally, other than Tom Perez, the head of the DNC, who deserves.
I just, I, I love the fact that Gina Rometti was fired because the stock was flat. I mean, she did transition the company to the cloud, but Regie Mr. keeps his job at the vision fund. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So like this, the, the fail here is more poor governance from soft bank and Masioshi San. Well, just one person.
Come on. It's one guy who likes or doesn't like. He's not an emotional executive, but I don't mean that in a negative way. He just does things because he feels like there's not necessary.
He's in love with his geniusness. There's, you know. There's, there's such a lesson in this. And that is one of the biggest flaws, one of the biggest Achilles heel we all develop is to conflate luck with talent.
And this guy, Masioshi San made the best investment in the history of venture investing in 20 million in Alibaba. That's sort of a hundred billion. And now he's under the impression that his gut is some sort of like magic, radar of the lost arcs, you know, looking scepter. And you know what boss?
You're right. You're probably very talented. You're also just really, really fucking lucky. Yeah.
And the notion that he can just like dream up. Yeah. Too much of Silicon Valley. Oh my gosh.
That is a mother of all. That is literally the home of third bacers. But anyways, my loser is the poor, my fail is the poor governance, division fund. Okay.
I still has a job. I have a single win fail. Yeah. The win is the conviction of Harvey Weinstein.
Okay. Go on. He is now a convicted rapist. That is a win for the women who came forward.
Yeah. It is a big moment. It is a big moment. And the journalist like Joe Cantor and Megan Tuey and Ronan Farrow who pushed the story hard and really did the kind of best way to work that makes you proud to be a journalist.
But the women who came forward. This is a win for them. And even though some of the counts he didn't get, he's still facing and they're peeling. I think they are, he is going to be in jail.
And now of course he's in Rikers and which, you know, yay. Like the whole thing is just a complete win. I think the fail was how long it took in terms of and the backlash that continues around these topics. And I get the idea of everyone is not Harvey Weinstein.
Everyone is not. He's now a convicted rapist. I can call him a rapist and not a led rapist. And I get there that part.
But the idea that this person who was so incredibly guilty the entire time took so long. And even though Cyrus Vance was the one whose office did manage to pull off these convictions, how slow and how hard it was to do this. And I guess you have to sort of take your wins when you get them. But the amount of people who had to suffer, I think Jody was telling 90 people were varying levels of being sexually harassed or raped by this man, it just was, and I'm sure there's many more than that, that it went on so long is such a fail to me.
I just don't, and I think it's a failing not just of the authorities, but people in the industry who enabled him, even journalists who covered it, I know a lot of journalists tried to get the story. I talked to a number of them who were always trying to get it. And so I think, what I want to know is where the other stories like this are and why we need to get to them faster. So I really thought that was a great moment for a lot of people.
And at the same time, Harvey Weinstein is in jail where he deserves to be. So that is my... Yeah, but the glasses. You first have the glasses half full here because your fail around is taking too long.
It's about to take less long because this will establish precedent. It'll give a lot of district attorney and prosecutors the confidence to go after these cases whereas before they would say, these are very hard allegations to prove and you're going to see a lot of DA's dust off their desks and pencils and start revisiting cases. So I have a question for you around or fail. Did you hear the NBC interview of Sheryl's number?
I did. When or fail? I would not say it when. It was fine.
She did her stock answers. I had a tough interview with Scott, Stephen Levy who wrote the book and he and I had a lot of ways. Let me go to the book first because that's what it was based around was a very good book to know things. You found out things about Mark.
I knew a lot of them, but again, it was full. In any other time, it would have been a very nice book about Facebook, right? But he and I had a bag of words about access, journalism and the price you pay for that. In terms of what people at Facebook were like, this is what we can give to people to explain what we are.
And I'm like, that's a bad thing. You don't want them to give this book to people. And again, it was some of them reporting was super interesting and revelatory when Stephen didn't mean it. He and I didn't have an argument about it.
He said he was showing not telling. I'm like, in this case, things have changed. You have to tell. He did a good job keeping up with me and giving him a hard time.
I think he's a very good journalist. But journalism has changed. And again, back to Jorge Ramos, he was like, you can't just be a type of information or a sayer of information. You have to really start to come to conclusions and speak truth to power.
So that backdrop, I don't feel like that interview spoke truth to power. And I don't know what I would do. And everybody was Cheryl right now. You know, I like Cheryl personally.
But I definitely would have been a lot harder on her and demanded her to get off her talking points. I don't fault her for staying on her talking points because that's what you do. But I do. You have to at least go there with these people.
I'm not sure. I don't know what I would do with it. But it was not. I don't think it was a successful interview.
But again, I don't fault Cheryl for doing what she does, which is go to talking points. What is she going to do suddenly break down and say, yes, it was all me or I don't know. What do you think? I spoke to John Battelle, who's a friend and teaches at class at the School of Journalism at Columbia.
He does these classes in his class last night. And I think that the interview she did should be a case study in communications because I think it was access to journalism. I just don't think there's any way. I think they basically said, OK, what's involved here?
You want to interview her? It's obviously an incredible get. And I don't know how this works. Maybe you do.
But somebody at Facebook said, we would like, oh, you want to ask about Cheryl's engagement? We would like that. And we'd like to start with that. Because we don't do that.
Well, OK, why on Earth? He starts off. Tell me. So you're engaged.
What? And then she goes through a series of talking points about how we need to take decision making on relationships back for young women. And I decided to ask him and we went on a mountaintop. And I used to pray, so we're out with my husband and I was worried and sometimes sitting at the counter about growing old alone.
All this stuff is. It's not the right thing for right now. It's very poignant. It's very gripping.
And it's all been tested. What's the opposite of a trigger, a likability point? And I started listening to this thing in about 17 minutes and I just couldn't take it anymore. And in the mother of all, like, awkward segway, send the reporter goes, so in the book, it says, you're a control freak, obsessed with your image and that you yell at your direct reports.
It was sort of this very awkward segway, but it just felt very, I just kept thinking that term access journalism. Sometimes you try to establish rapport with someone who, you know, who you, actually, Kasey Newton, the very kind of really good thing is one of the tricks. The child has this thing. She's nervous before interviews to the journalist.
The feel like she's vulnerable, which I thought was interesting. You know, again, I don't, I just, it's the journalist job here. Do not do that. I think you try to establish rapport in the beginning.
I have a different thing depending on the person. Sometimes people are like, oh, you're going to get them care or something. You feel there's letter. You feel there's letter?
Sometimes do things like that. But I do, I'll tell you, you either have to sort of establish dominance right away or you have to sort of push them off their game or ask a very strange question to make them confused. I have all kinds. Depends on the person.
Sometimes like with this, oh, hey, I just like him. And so I'm not going to. There's no reason to attack him. But I went right to Trump with him.
Because what, why else would I talk about anything? Because he had that back and forth and what was going on. And so I tend to go right for the actual thing, which is my first question to Cheryl would be if she ever did another interview with me again would be, when are you leaving Facebook? Because I think you're leaving Facebook.
And I would state it. I'd say many, I wouldn't say many people think. I'd say, I think you're going to leave Facebook and trying to find a good exit strategy here. So let's talk about that.
I would just say it out loud. And I think Cheryl could take it. And I think she would actually give a much better answer. I think by doing this backing into it things that people, the reporters tend to do in interviews, it never, it never succeeds.
And you let them go on. And last thing is sometimes you do let them go on. I think my interview with Mark was so successful because I let him go on. But I knew what I was doing.
I was like, I was letting him further make a problem for himself around this. In this case, it was all cost deniers. But I often slap back real hard and then see what they can do. Sometimes I say something just very tough to them and then see what they do.
But I don't tend to like to do the so you're getting married, that kind of personal stuff up top. I think that's. And in that case if I was asking her and I would like to hear your answer because I don't agree with you. I don't think it was as tested as you think it is.
I don't think it is. I don't think it is. It's not, maybe, maybe not. I don't know.
But it wasn't as much as you think it is. And so I would say, look, a lot of people think that was a PR stunt. Can you, is it? Like, is it?
Like, let's not have your answer that. And I think seeing what everyone's thinking is and owning you saying it versus saying many people say and that kind of stuff is what I tend to do. And in this case, I think right now Facebook is facing a lot of big issues and I think starting with her marriage is not something I would do right now. I'm very happy that she's getting married.