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And I'm Sky Galloway with my new Peloton from Cara Swisher with a note that says, Keep it Tight. What does that mean? Keep it Tight. What does that mean?
I can get to a Peloton. I have a girl that should. You do. I know, you know, my brother bought it to Peloton.
I'll buy himself this week. It's working. I think these ads are working because everyone, like three people I know, bought a Peloton for Christmas. So, you know.
I'm sending you. The mind runs wild with that question, but I will go for it. I'm sending you an old fruit cake that I've been sending to around for years. That's what I'm sending you.
A really old fruit cake. That's what I'm doing. That's sweet. Thank you for that.
Happy holidays to you. Because we can now say Happy Holidays again. I can. That's right.
What happened? What happened? What's the big news today? There's so much big news.
Well, impeachment. You heard of it? It's happening. Yes, we have to talk about it because Congress voted to impeach President Trump.
He's the only the third president in US history of impeach. He, of course, obviously, the vote was Republicans versus Democrats. They sort of essentially just screamed. Someone said it was like the Democrats were being super serious and wearing suits and dark, you know, like we're so sorry to do this, but it's part of the Constitution.
And the Republicans drove a Ford 150 into the floor of the house and shot off a t-shirt cannon. Like, it was just a crazy day of watching it. And they did it. And then Trump, of course, immediately insulted a dead man and had a crazy budget tweet and stuff like that.
So what do you think the impact on everybody, tech, media, the world, and at all? Or not, are we forgetting it next week with whoever has won the mask thing or I don't know. I think it's an impact that we felt. But I think it'll be at the later reaction.
I do think, and again, I'm so close to this, and I get more than I get wrong in terms of predictions around business and more wrong than I get right around politics because I'm just too close to it. But I got to think this is just a bad look for the Republicans and for the president. You're right, he's the third president to be impeached, but he's the first to be impeached in his first term. Usually it takes us six or seven years to figure out the criminality of the person we're impeaching.
And in this case, it only took us three years. So it's a bad look. I thought there was some interesting moments, though. I'm hopeful that the five female Congress people who were veterans who were seen as moderates, that they're kind of, it seemed to be a more thoughtful examination of the issue and then them deciding to impeach.
I hope that that creates more power or creates more reverence for moderates among Democrats. I think they would explain themselves well. I think they would explain themselves well. And they look dignified.
They look dignified as opposed to the one guy screaming about Jesus and Pearl Harbor, which is such a... I was like, Jesus had a much harder time and I'm thinking the people of Pearl Harbor did too. That was just nuts, absolutely. I couldn't believe how far they're going.
And like Liz Cheney, I mean, well, she's just an awful thing. It really literally was 100 million white guys and two mean ladies voting for no impeachment. It was sort of a weird look and then a very varied and interesting and diverse group of people that did very, I thought quite good speeches. I don't know.
I think Nancy Pelosi ran a classy impeachment. Now she might delay it. She might delay it. Well, okay.
I mean, the interesting thing was more about the process than the outcome I hear, but one, the gangster move here might be, and I don't know if it's already been decided to send any articles over, but to withhold the articles and never even send them to the Senate for the trial, basically saying, this is gonna be a kangaroo court. We'll just let the impeachment stand and we won't even acknowledge your sham trial. I thought, oh my gosh, that was such a gangster strategic move. Also, I had a moment, you know, I think the most powerful moments of the unexpected when the call on an instinct, when she announced that article two had, of impeachment, had passed, or had been voted affirmatively.
And then a few people clapped and she looked at him like a mom looks at kids saying, if you slammed the screen door again, there's gonna be trouble. Did you feel, I literally felt my bone shake and it took me back to when I was a kid. I mean, it's like a lot of those looks from my mom before she literally chased me down and hit me. And it took me back.
She runs that place. She does. She's great. She's got a lot of grandchildren, by the way.
She's got a big family and knows how to handle them. And I think that she's handled this beautifully. I have to say, I'm so impressed with Nancy Pelosi. I like her personally.
I know her pretty well, but I have to say she's just handled this with the class and I think even as he goes after her teeth. And it's just, I just don't know when they're gonna be like, look at Carly Fiorina speaking of Canada, so don't name them. So I just had her on the podcast. And she was saying he had to be impeached, but then said she might vote for him.
Like that was strange and odd. So there's a lot of people in the Republican party that are just pretzling themselves. Well, if you call Carly Fiorina ugly, she will vote, she will support your impeachment. But if you call your wife ugly, he will defend you, I.E.
Senator Cruz. I mean, at least Carly, you know, I don't know. We've had so many lows with this guy, the new low I found. I just, I mean, one of those moments you're like, Jesus, this guy really doesn't have any sense of decency where the comments he made about it, is he represented in Dingle?
Yeah. I mean, just to remind people, because if people like me, I literally didn't watch yesterday. I started watching the Joker, that very disturbing film with Joaquin Phoenix. I didn't watch that.
I didn't watch him. And at one point, I'm like, okay, I need something even more depressing and disturbing. I'm gonna turn on CNN. And I thought, if I'm, if I love politics, and if I'm fed up with this and don't wanna watch it, it means literally no one's watching it.
And it'll be interesting to see, but I think people are just exhausted by it. And then I heard that essentially the president intimated that former representative Dingle, who was served in Congress for 59 years, was in World War II, that he might be looking up from hell at his wife. That's essentially what our president, you know, the man is supposed to represent the decency and the courage and the integrity of what is the greatest, you know, the greatest democracy in history. That's how he chose to frame, representative Dingle.
It's just like, okay, literally, have we just, have we tried to figure out how do we lose all of our humanity for political purposes? It just is so, I don't know how they stick with this. I just don't, it's really like, it's now like, what is wrong with you people? You know, Mark Maddow is now leaving.
I almost tweeted, don't let the door hit you on the way out. In fact, I actually let it hit you on the way out. Goodbye. It's just the lows that they'll go to.
And this kind of, it's indecent, it's indecent, but you know, this is something we've said over and over again. But Debbie Dingle handed herself well, and she actually said, this is really hurtful. This is the first Christmas without him. They had such a fascinating, I know her a little bit, a fascinating relationship and really close and she's a really smart legislator.
I have to say, I've spent a lot of time talking to her and I hope to have her on the puck as a point. But, and just savvy, just super savvy, as a very close to Nancy Pelosi, by the way. And it was just really like, what is wrong with you? And then there's two people laughing at the thing.
It's just like, it's just strange. It's just strange. I keep coming back to the thing that again, I don't want to blame tech, but everybody feels like they can say whatever they want on some level, to the point of like rudeness in a way that's really low. And it's really interesting.
Do you see any impact of this on business at all? Or is it business just not paying attention? Like it's going to be- I think the impact, or I'm hoping the impact, and again, I might be just talking about my book here, is I hope that America recognizes, people say we become so polarized and it doesn't help but the most profitable and largest and most impactful media companies in the world are fueled on rage and polarization. But I do believe the majority of Americans, whereas I think our leaders are more polarized than Americans are.
I think that the largest voting group or the largest self-identified group in Florida is not Democrats or Republicans, it's independents. And I hope at some point people reach a tipping point and say, okay, should we consider rank voting? Or should we consider redrawing or trying to de-jerrymander? But if we don't get some more moderates in there, it just feels like this is headed somewhere- I agree.
My closest point was someone who's actually very tech-focused, a congressman who's leading Will Heard. And I literally was like, did you just trade your soul for someone who has been a critic of Trump when he does things like this? Just literally, he wants something else, he wants to run for what senator? I don't know what his next move is, but what a disappointment for him.
Like an idiot like Jim, whatever is Jim Jordan, JYM Jordan, is one thing, but this guy is smart, he's been very savvy on tech. And I was going to have him on the podcast, I don't want to have him on the podcast. And I was like, what is wrong with you? It's an interesting time for people.
They're going to look back on it and sort of shake themselves like they did during the McCarthy era. But you asked what impact it'll have on business. I think the impact is it serves as cloud cover for big tech, because Trump is such a, you know, Trump creates so many dumpster fires that are more like, you know, nuclear mushroom clouds, that it distracts you from the dumpster fires that are all over tech. I mean, the thing that sort of embodies the evolution of the gestalt of tech is at the beginning of the decade we were talking about, Facebook being a place where parents of children with rare diseases could get together in fine treatments and cures, right?
That was what tech started out with. And where it's ending the decade is there are a group of trolls who are using the National Epilepsy Foundation hashtag to identify people who likely have epilepsy. And then tweeting them gifts with photosynthesis sensitive imagery, basically blinking lights, hoping to inspire an epileptic seizure. So that's me kind of embodies the evolution of big tech over the last 10 years, but essentially Trump and his obsession with being, I think he'd actually rather be impeached than be out of media cycle.
I think that he wants to all be about him. So to a certain extent, you know, the delay in obfuscation of monopoly power, abuse of the commonwealth, of teen depression is all sort of put in the back seat, if you will, or wallpaper it over by all of this crazy news that I'm not sure it has a lot of long-term impact on the country. I don't know if the immunities are going to finally kick in. We'll find out in the next election.
But it's not good for us because meanwhile, these platforms continue to be weaponized. So what does it mean for business? It means the bad actors in business continue to be bad actors. Speaking of which, Peter Thiel, in the Wall Street Journal, is apparently one of the forces keeping Facebook from fact-checking political ads.
The billionaire investor in Donald Trump backers, one of the forces at Facebook, he's on the board pushing the company not to check back-check political ads. He's convinced Mark Zuckerberg, who controls the board, he runs a, he's co-founded the company Palantier, which has been found to be working with ICE. You know, I've got it, apparently several people on the board want to push back, but Peter has a holdover mark on this issue around political ads. And of course, it would be in his interest to do so as a supporter of Trump.
And Facebook has been holding out on this issue. I gotta tell you, there's gotta be some crack in that wall over there at Facebook where people are like, I cannot do this. This is just untenable the way we're conducting our political ads. But there isn't, because he's got this thing.
So, you know, Thiel is a fascinating character obviously, but certainly is the one person who's had the most impact here at Facebook. Have you interviewed Peter Thiel? Yes. And what's your, I just, he's one guy, it's, you know, was an instinct we like to immediately for safety or friend reasons.
We immediately have an instinct to go, oh, they're one of us, I can trust this person, or they're an enemy and I have to keep my eye on them. That's just basic instinct. And with a guy like Thiel, I just can't, it even began to figure out that guy. He just strikes me as such a complex and usual person.
Do you have any sense for what drives or motivates him? We haven't talked in a long time. I've been, he's an interesting character, because he's quite brilliant. And read his book sometime.
I think it's well worth talking about. Zero one is the one book. He had the history of saying some things in college that were really awful, including he happens to be a, and obviously he had some issues with that, because of Gawker, he did that lawsuit. My issue with him is he did it secretly, and then revealed himself when he won, that kind of stuff.
He sort of mounts legal challenges to journalists, which I think has always been an issue, especially when Facebook's supposed to be supportive of publishers. You know, he said something about women that are problematic. And he, I'm saying that in a nice way. And at the same time, he's quite an interesting thinker about a lot of things.
He's not like, his move towards Trump is a strangest, but makes total sense when you sort of think about his worldview of this idea of the government doesn't work. We don't, we need to like destroy everything really. And he has that mentality. We had a really interesting talk, many, I haven't talked in a long time, but we did, I did, there's a video online from 10 or 15 years ago where I went to visit him.
And we argued about social media and all kinds of stuff. That was, you know, you can see his intellect when he's, when we're going back and forth. And after we had, which was not off the record of this discussion about gay rights, which was really, you know, he was like, nobody needs special rights. I'm like, I just don't want my kids taken away from me.
I want these cool rights. So we had this really interesting discussion. And I can't, he's about a type of conservative, strain of gay men. I don't know how to put it.
Like they just, there's a whole lot of them like that. It doesn't matter if you're gay or not, you can be conservative, but it's unusual. It's more unusual to find ultra conservative gay men, but it isn't actually. And so, you know, he's just a really complicated character, but he clearly has impact at Facebook that is over and above other board members it feels like.
But you know, we'll see what happens with these political ads, but so far, they're gonna stand pat. There's a couple of dynamics at play here. So Peter Thiel supposedly is saying, look, under the auspices of, you know, libertarian values or free speech that Facebook should be able to post these political ads, even if they're false. And that's part of discourse.
And then people have a responsibility or a right to discern who's lying and then judging for lying or not lying. But at the same time, this is the guy that when a media publication outed him said, okay, I'm gonna serve these guys a cold lunch someday. And then funded, I think with $10 or $20 million of his own money, a nuisance lawsuit against Gawker that effectively put them, it did put them out of business. And at the time, I was kind of a fan of it because Gawker had done some really horrible things.
I think it was a lot of Gawker, not Gawker. There was a lot of the site that wasn't, you know what I mean, there's a lot of great stuff on this. Anyway, but go ahead. I agree, but I mean, they were outing people who were not celebrities.
This wasn't news just for the purposes of outing them. And that was, I thought that was, anyways. But this is the same guy who's decided who is now defending free speech. It just seems very inconsistent to me.
And the opportunity is basically anyone who comes across, anyone who has any sort of reputation for being balanced and thoughtful eventually leaves the board. There's been some very impressive people who've gone on this board and what they all have in common is they all leave under the cover of dark. They're like, okay, I am just not down with this. I have no power.
I don't like what's going on and they leave. And the guy on the board, and I'm sure there's more than one or like, I think there's more than one with a lot of integrity. But Kenchanal, the former CEO of American Express, who just reeks of integrity and character and intellect is on that board. And it's pretty clear that no individual has the ability to influence Mark Zuckerberg other than anything, how he gets an additional billion.
And the way that Kenchanal could really have an impact is if after being on the board for about 12 months, in my view, if he doesn't like what is going on, it's to publicly resign for that board and discuss what in fact is bothering him. Assuming there are things that are bothering him. But based on everything I know about him, for him to, he has an opportunity here to be either effective and if he's not effective to leave and rather than doing what all the rest of them do, whether it's Hastings or balls or Desmond, coming up with an excuse and just leaving. But he could be a critical player in this.
Well, we'll see. We'll see. I'm sort of surprised that Charles Amber's saying nothing about that. Maybe she's doing it, but she's a very behind the scenes kind of person, but she obviously doesn't.
I would imagine she would be on the less, let's keep the lies going. When he said a lot of that stuff about free speech, especially the parts about the community and everyone, people should figure it out themselves, I should have realized it was vintage Peter. Like it was Peter who was very smart, shuttled through someone who doesn't have quite the same kind of intellect. You know what I mean?
Like in terms of Peter's quite clever in many, many ways and has really, it's interesting to talk to him because he does, he's a good arguer and stuff like that. So a lot of this stuff is being filtered through Mark, who does not, he's not stupid, but I'm not saying that. It just, he's not, kind of been like, Peter has this quite well-attached area. He's an exceptional brain.
He's an exceptional brain. He's an exceptional brain. He's an intellectual brain. And so, you know, Mark's obviously a computer brain.
But anyway, it's interesting to see what impact he has and if it continues and if Mark, at any point, you know, it seems like Mark is being, not many, it's not many of you that he's being molded by Peter and since the beginning, I think since the very beginning of Facebook, he has been, he's been a real influence on him. And so, it's question is if anyone else can have influence and shift his mentality and open his worldview up a little further. Meanwhile, Facebook's at $200 to business. I don't even know when they were ordering some time.
I did something for the first time, actually not a lot of online shopping. I purchased something for the first time off of Instagram. I cannot get over how incredibly strong and well done the ads on Instagram are. You are gonna see- I love them, I love them.
And it's like creepy, you know, relevance is synonymous with creepy. What did you buy? I just bought a pair of cool tennis shoes. I was drunk e-commerceing.
I had one or two drinks, 11. And I was sitting by the pool all and going to my Instagram feed feeling bad about myself. And then there was this cool pair of shoes that I've been looking at for a while and what I think are cool puzzles. It makes you like better.
And I clicked okay, I clicked by now and of course I ordered two pairs by accident. But I managed, first time I've ever bought anything off of Instagram, e-commerce, moving down the funnel through Instagram, Instagram is about to become more worth more just what AWS is to Amazon, Instagram is about to become Facebook. It's gonna be worth more than the core platform because they're about to solve. Terrific experience, 100%.
100% terrific experience. Speaking of dumpster fires, I don't know if you read the business week cover story about SoftBank, our favorite investor. They wrote a long one, they had a picture of Mary Christmas from SoftBank, a picture of money being lit on fire like a Christmas fire. And it's a really tough piece on Masieoshi Sun and what they were doing.
Not just that they make stupid investments or like throwing money around speaking of drunken e-commerce. But this is the key paragraph. And vision funds, problems don't stop with some bad bets, current and former employees of the fund in SoftBank describe an environment of sick of fancy towards Sun, political rivalries, harassment, compliance issues and an abnormally high tolerance for risk, all wrapped in a casing of general weirdness. Yeah, yeah, that's good.
It's good to, You like that? You love that. I do, all wrapped in a casing of general weirdness. Like it was, they wanted to say what the fuck, but this is what they did.
And you know, it's essentially Sun, you know, doing his weird futuristic stuff. I know him pretty well and he does, he's had him a code and stuff. But it's really interesting that, you know, people are really, as we said, they were gonna start taking him at SoftBank, not just their investments. So I don't know where it's gonna end up because they're getting funded by rich suspect people.
But anyway, so it's a worth a read and it's continues, you know, SoftBank, the destruction of capital is I think gonna continue. Oh, no, yeah, there's this effect. I'm fascinated by SoftBank and Massey, I actually saw no one's going on there. And there's this effect called the Dunning-Kruger effect which basically states that stupid people are too dumb to know how stupid they are.
And so when they're faced with complex situations, they approach them with confidence instead of caution. And this is Massey, Massey is the Dunning-Kruger effect to come to life in the information age because he made the greatest investment in venture history, he put 20 million in Alibaba, turned into 100 billion. And now thinks that his gut is the way to get from it. Well, he did it before, he lost his money and then he got it back.
He hit it first fortune and then this was his second fortune. Yeah, so he thinks like- And the guy running a forum was arguably, he ran Deutsche Bank's credit group, which is arguably the will be the go down as the second largest incinerator of capital in history after SoftBank will be number one. But you know, and I suffer a little bit from this. I understand a decent amount about marketing.
So all of a sudden I think, oh, that means I should opine on any subject. And it's difficult to have humility across different sectors. And I know a lot of PE guys who go into venture capital because I think, oh, I must be a venture capitalist. And this literally, SoftBank is the done and crueger effect come to life.
And that is a group of people who have recognized moments of success or success in other industries who believe it translates into other areas. And the market is just, the market has this incredible attribute of regression to the mean. And you are seeing the world's largest regression to the mean or dose of humility. But SoftBank is going to go down.
SoftBank could be the defining business moment of the decade. And I know we're gonna talk about it in our next episode with what's happened over the last decade. But you are seeing a level, you know, I love the saying, and I got it from the Twitter handle, God. I don't know if you follow God on Twitter, but it's fantastic.
I don't know who it is, but this guy or gals are genius. But it has something really impactful that I think of a lot. And it says that, you know, ignorance looks in the mirror and it sees intelligence, intelligence looks in the mirror and it sees ignorance. When SoftBank looks in the mirror, it sees intelligence.
And they are suffering from so much ignorance. Well, it also, it's one person, again, it's these one person things where they just put up with this. And one of the things that they had him saying was, but the real strategy on the vision fund seems to involve another must of principle, big money means big strategic advantages, the idea that festooning entrepreneurs with hundreds of millions of dollars and urging them to spend at exorbitant pace will scare off competitors and allow the vision fund to mint the he-must. No one wants to pick a fight with the crazy guy, he told Bloomberg Business Week last year.
Oh my God. Well, I'll give him that. There is something to being crazy that scares people in terms of legal or, but when he says crazy, it's not, people do want to pick a fight with a really stupid guy. And it's not that they're crazy to sit there playing stupid.
I mean, at some point, stupidity becomes crazy, but some of these investments, even funding companies, so capital is a strategy. There's so much capital of something that creates moats and pulls away from the competition. But the majority of returns and venture have been companies that have found amazing investments where they put three or five million in initially as Sequoia and Kleiner did in Google and then managed to maintain pro-rata follow on rights and get huge IRRs. The notion that you can get venture-like returns when you're allocating billions, there are only so many companies that grow up to be a hundred billion dollar firm.
So it just mathematically doesn't make any sense. And then they go on to decide, all right, we're going to massively overfund not only companies, but companies in the same sector. So it's like the snake eating its own tail. They have companies putting each other out of business and destroying the capital of the same investor.
They have Uber Eats going after DoorDash. It just doesn't, makes no sense. Do you know Zoom Pizza? They invested 375 million in Michigan.
They're going to change food production. And they haven't. They haven't. It's crazy.
It's interesting. Look, I like people who swing for the fences. I don't mind. It's his money.
And by the way, he's using what's really interesting to me is his lack of moral clarity here and taking all this money from MBS in Saudi Arabia. Mom had been summoned the murderous head of Saudi Arabia and taking their money and having no compunction about it given the behavior of the Saudis. And so as I said, on one hand, I'm thrilled they're losing all their money. On the other hand, it's kind of gross.
It's gross to me. That's the, I don't care if he's a crazy person. He yells at people or he says crazy things. And tells them to do wacky stuff, whatever.
But that to me is really the problem I have with it. Kara, I need your help. And I want our ideally our viewers to weigh in on Twitter via email. But I'm either going to produce a Broadway show or write a book.
And I'm serious about this because I'm out of the point where I'm eccentric and I have a little bit of money. Which spells Broadway Kara. It's spelled Broadway. I'm not going to have to produce movies.
But I am wealthy enough to produce a Broadway show. I am going to put you in touch with Randy Zuckerberg, sister of Mark Zuckerberg. She's at Oklahoma and Hadystown. She's actually doing rather well.
She's creating a union. Cool producing a Broadway show with Mark Zuckerberg, sister. That is so many mixed emotions. I don't know how to respond to that.
No, I mean, we're going to go see Oklahoma. We're going to go out for drinks with her. She's quite peaceful. I love it.
Another hollow promise of good times for your spouse. I'm just saying she likes fun to yourself by musicals. You're getting a rabbit coat, sweetie. Anyway, that's to me.
She's great. I'm just telling you. You want a Broadway show? She's a very successful Broadway producer.
I'm trying to help you. I'm right of luck. I've got about half of it done. I don't like to announce it because then I feel as if I actually have to write the book.
What's it called? Kara, I don't know. Well, here's the thing. I need help.
I'm down to two titles. It's either going to be called Unicorn feces or Unicorn porn. I'm serious. Oh, neither.
Neither. Neither. Neither. Neither.
Not the first. Don't use feces in a title. Just don't. Unicorn feces.
Pretty good. So you like Unicorn porn better? You don't like either. I don't like it.
I don't like it. You need to be more supportive of me. I don't like it. I'm being, you know what?
Tough love, baby. All right, listen. We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back with wins, fails, and predictions.
Tough love, baby, stuff. I'm going to have to have a little brought you cats. Uh. Uh.
I'm Maria Sharapova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts.
So we are 250 years into this American experiment, and I'm saying it's going OK. I give us like a C plus. There is no perfect past. But there is also no exclusively negative past, because humans are going to human.
That's what we do. I think the story of America is the struggle of people who have not been included in the promise of America to expand those principles to include more people. What's going to determine the next 250 years of America? And how do we write a new social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve?
OK, so I'm just going to be a jerk here, because I'm a historian. So we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people. OK. You know, I just can't remember it from Schoolhouse Rock.
We the people, I don't even know the former for a few years, I established justice. What is it? Ensuring domestic tranquility? So you're talking about a foundational document.
So I'm building a document that will protect American democracy. That's this week on America, actually. All right, we're back wins and fails, Scott. So many fails.
Like what? Here's a win. I'll do my win. You know, last week I had that FedEx breakdown, because they messed up my thing, and it caused me hundreds of dollars to get something that they just, anyway, Amazon is borrowing third-party sellers from using FedEx Ground for Prime deliveries, because they said we have seen a drop in delivery performance of FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Ship Methods for seller for failed Prime shipments.
I listen, Amazon, it's like backing like Darth Vader over Palpatine, but I'm going with it. You're going with Anakin Skywalker? Yeah, whatever. So that's a great example.
And my blog post today is on FedEx. You brought this up or inspired me to start looking into this. FedEx, in a word, and this is an academic term, is just fucked. Because effectively, if you look at, there's this interesting dynamic in technology where in its mostly, it started in software where every software startup and I'm going to go on the board of a few of them, worries that someday they're going to wake up and they're going to find it.
Oracle or Adobe has turned their product and made it into a feature in bundle it. Similar, make it free. And basically put them out of business overnight. They just turned it into a feature of their own suite of offerings, similar to what Microsoft did where it said, Internet Explorer is free and bundled with Office, and basically put Netscape, the fastest growing company in history to that point out of business within effective.
We liked 12 to 18 months. But it's now starting to happen. And I don't know if the term is featured. You've been featured across some incredibly large, impressive companies.
And essentially, FedEx is being featured by Amazon. And that is shipping and fulfillment and logistics are now becoming break-even businesses for Amazon that they feature as part of prime. And FedEx literally threw up on themselves in their most recent earnings report. And they tried to employ this crazy delay or obfuscation to say, that's something to do with air freight.
No, it has everything to do with the fact that I cannot get over this holiday season. I've been running around my neighborhood taking pictures. There are Amazon vans everywhere. Everywhere.
Everywhere. And they're coming after Cara Swisher, who's fed up with FedEx. They're coming after Cara Swisher with delivery that can run a break-even or a loss that FedEx investors will not tolerate. And they're coming after.
I mean, there's. I think this is FedEx's fault. They haven't kept up. They haven't burnt Smith.
He wasn't an innovator. And now he's got to let himself get lazy. Oh, he's 76. That's not your 76.
I'm not sure 76. So aggressive. It's like, if you want to be aggressive, bring the juice, my friend. That's what I say.
You know, they're corporate office. They called me. I haven't called them back. I'm not calling them.
That'll show them. I'm not being like you. You know how you don't call people back? When they're mad at you, I'm not calling.
I'm sick of old like us. I'm investing in the young and the possible instead of the old and the powerful. I've had it. I'm done.
Oh, have you? Man of the people, Scott. All right, that is my win. I go in with Darth Vader over alpatine.
All right, what is your speaking of alpatine? I think the fails seems to be the start of my fails. It's the start wars, maybe. I've not seen it.
I may see it tonight. My ex rented an entire theater and was taking people to see it. Speaking of women of the people, that means you're seeing it early. Doesn't it come out the 26?
I have no idea. What's she's up to. She's got content. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad.
It's just awesome. It's just going to be awesome. That's a franchise. I've read all the spoilers.
I know exactly what's going to happen. I did in advance. I don't want to be surprised. I did.
I'm not going to say them, but I did. And by the way, I'm going to see cats. That's the other thing. That's a win to me.
Someone, my favorite tweet was that this person was like, I went to see it. I don't even know what just happened to me, but I feel good about it. So I want to see, I think cats looks great. I'm going to go see cats.
That's my win. That's my other, that's my fail win. So what is yours? What are yours?
Well, my fail was FedEx, but my win is Adam Schiff. I think Adam Schiff, I know this is going to surprise you, Cara, but in high school, I wasn't what you would call enormously cool, which I know comes as a surprise to everybody. And I think Adam Schiff, a representative of Schiff, is sort of an inspiration to young men and women who want intellect and perseverance. And Trump has baited him so many times with these insults about his looks.
And the guy has just decided, you know how I'm going to win with perseverance and intellect. And the guy does his homework. And I feel like there are a ton of 16 and 17 year old people in math club that are 6'1, 128 pounds with bad acne as with Scott Galloway at 17. And I think he's a great role model.
Whereas I think the president is a terrible role model for young men. I think Adam Schiff is a great role model for young men and young women. And it was my way to represent. I will point you to a podcast I did with him recently.
It was a great one. I do another one. We're going to return after this is all over. He promised a second one.
But he's great. He's really great. He's super smart. My brother actually went to college with him and said he was super smart then.
What a shocker. Really? He didn't have all the time. He was riding a skateboard and smoking crack.
No, it was Stanford. They were at Stanford, which I didn't get into. And you did see that I don't know if it's a winner or failed. A federal judge ruled that proceeds from Edwards, you'd be happy about this.
Edwards known as memoir, which we talked about with him. So a federal judge ruled that proceeds from Edwards known as memoir, permanent record to be paid to the US government because he violated the terms of his employment contract with the US government in publishing the book. Well, you clearly don't follow me on Twitter. You're going to love this.
I wrote real quickly on Twitter. Someone summarized Twitter perfectly. The as you know, I wrote espionage as a bitch. And I know you don't like it when I use that word.
And so many people weighed in against me. And it's inspired me, and as have you, to learn more about Edward Stone, because a lot of people who, unless they're bots and as far as I know the Russian trolls trying to gain my trust, but who seems thoughtful have weighed in and said, you got this wrong. Edward Snowden is a patriot. There's much more gray here.
Listen to my podcast. You could read the book. I'm sending you the book. I am sending you the book.
Anyways, I'm going to learn more about Edward Snowden. I'm going to, that's your Christmas present. The free book I got from Edward Snowden. Here we go again.
Here we go again. And you're going to give it to me in the intermission of Cats, right? Anyway, so. You know what?
We're going out. OK, we're going to go somewhere. Don't ask me. I can't handle it.
We're going to go anywhere. Randy, Randy, who might know? Randy, we're coming to your show. All right, so Edward Snowden, you think he should not be paid for the money to go to the US government, because he violated the terms of his employment contract.
That's what you think. I'm going to try to understand how that makes him a hero. But anyway, anyway, I'm sure he didn't get the Russians anything, because there are such nice people. I think he's going to be a Rubik's Cube.
There was no ass-shoving with the thumb drive. I'm sorry. It was a Rubik's Cube that he took in and out. So there you have it.
All right, we're going to finish up this episode with predictions. Predictions. OK, OK, so yeah, I do. So my prediction is that FedEx is acquired in 2000 and 2021.
They effectively have an incredible company with incredible assets that's now been featured and is becoming part of the stack. And I think an interesting acquire would be Walmart. But if Walmart, I think, so first off, FedEx, its value is going to get cut in half. It's about to get worse for FedEx.
And it was trading in a multiple that what I call the innovators multiple, and that it's FedEx has always been an innovator. If you look at e-commerce, they've benefited from the surge in e-commerce and logistics. But it's about to not only see its even to drop, it's going to get incredible or incredible, incredible multiple contraction as people realize it's the next victim of Amazon. And then it's the post office.
It's the new post office. And it's got a 76-year-old CEO, so they need a succession strategy. And I think Doug McMillan offering full stack fulfillment front end e-commerce is a really compelling. Somebody's got to be the yang to Amazon's ying.
Yes, Shopify, as we've discussed. Maybe Shopify's. Yeah, Shopify is no Walmart. And Shopify doesn't have 5,500 distribution stores.
You said Roku was going to get bought by Netflix. I'm going to hold you to these. Well, I know who Roku will be acquired by. But actually my prediction is Roku, if their value keeps going, is going to be a man by stock in a acquired old economy or an old media company, because they're becoming so valuable.
Or they'll be acquired. But something is going to happen with FedEx the next 12 months. The first thing is a value is going to decline. And they're either going to need to go out and make a better ranch acquisition, or they will be acquired.
And I think the interesting one would be Walmart. I'm going to talk to Doug McMill. I'm going to call him after this. He's going to come to code.
I've got another big name for code. I can't announce it yet. And I'll soon dart this week. We have another one.
Anyway, before we go, Scott, that's a great prediction. That's a really smart one. Before we go, let's shout out to some of our listener. We got this week.
Joe writes, there can never be too much pivot. You are a shining light in the media sewage. I constantly have to shift through. We're a light in the sewage.
Thank you for that. We are light. By the way, do you know we hit number one in a country? We are the number one podcast this week.
What country? In Argentina. That's right. We're talking about a good country.
The tango, beef, and fly-fitching in the barrel. Oh, it's good. That's awesome. Let's promise to go there and then let people down.
All right. Next from a self-identified 54-year-old fully-degreed woman in Flyover countries. He says, love it. Gotta have it two times a week.
That's right. That's right. That's right Flyover country. We like you too.
We may come there. Probably not, but we will. Now we like Flyover country. Do we like Flyover country?
Of course we do. We fly over. We're women of the people. You see cats.
And I'm, you know. We're cats. We're about the least flover we've ever met. You're a guy around from Arizona, San Francisco.
And I'm literally in Soho teaching at NYU. I'm running my mouth. Listen, this is the last one. And then you have to read the negative ones.
From a Londoner. You asked what it's like having pivot twice a week. It's like having those guilty pleasures. You shouldn't do twice in a row.
It's overwhelming and awesome all at once. Scott, read the negative ones. We have to do that. But you're the negative ones.
Mike writes with two episodes. I can't believe that I'm saying this. But it's too much. Well, you know what?
Okay, Mike. You know what too much of a good thing is? It's cocaine, Mike. You're insulting cocaine.
Anyways. The problem that I have two shows a week is now they crowd out other podcasts I'd like to listen to. Goodbye at how I build this. Oh my God.
If I'm speaking of two minutes like crowding out of a podcast. You know what? It's Jump to Shark. Did you listen to the Daily today about impeachment?
Jesus Christ was that boring. Michael Barbera, start doing drugs. Do something. The Daily is getting so boring.
I know you work for them. Oh my God. That was all I'm getting. I'm literally the Daily.
You better step it up. You better step it up. We're coming for you. We're coming for everybody.
That's what we're doing. We become a mega-liminal-ed air. Anyway. It's time for us to go.
the door for your pallet on to come i'm sure it'll get there from him sure though i'm a little bit about a list of the house is that a hand i think that we're going to be back next right for the decade interview show we're hearing a lot of special guest special guests meanwhile you can reach us at hashtag pivot podcast or emailing us at pivot at box media dot com let's get on to the decade show will have that next week and then uh... and then have a beautiful beautiful holiday season it is going to be nice i'm excited i'm excited to end the decade with uh... my pivot co-host co-host yeah you do i can't wait to see me for Christmas anyway today's show was produced by prerequisites eric and his pivots executive producer thanks also rebecastro and rubero's make sure you subscribe to the show on apple podcast and if you're an android user check us out on spotify or frankly wherever you listen to podcast if you liked our show please recommend it to a friend thanks for listening to pivot from box media will be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business