Support for the show comes from Deal. Let's be honest, most HR platforms are stitched together. That's why AI barely helps. Deal's different.
It's a single AI-native system for HR, IT, and payroll built from the ground up. That's why AI inside Deal can actually run real work, onboarding, compliance, payroll, approvals, all under your rules, whether you're five people or 50,000. Deal scales with you. See it in action at deal.com.com.
That's D-E-E-L.com.com. Support for the show comes from O-D-O. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?
Introducing O-Doo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, Accounting, Inventory, E-commerce, and more.
And the best part? O-Doo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you?
Try O-Doo for free at O-Doo.com. That's O-D-O-O.com. I have makeup. I have makeup.
I have makeup on. I tried to take some off. It's disgusting. Do you like it?
Do you like it? Do you like it? Do I? I think makeup ages women.
I do too. I do. I do. I think they really attract women.
They're sheer, like, what I'll call beauty comes out when they don't wear masks. Yes, I agree. They force me into it. And then they look back at my hair.
They just, I don't know what to do about it. There's nothing I can do about it. Yeah, I would just go out like share and just go up and just say. Do you know what I'm going to do with my baby?
That's your new plan. That's your new plan. I don't think so. Let's go.
That would be a national discussion about working parents. You'll spawn it. I'll bring Alexis O'haney with his baby. I would bring Evan Spiegel and Evan Bremott's baby on my TV.
That's how I think you create a national discussion. If we're gonna turn up the volume here. Evan Spiegel. I just don't want to speak.
He's as lovely as ever. Yeah, I do. I do. I do.
I like a creative person. And he started off as a big queen. Our first, he was such an asshole to me. Really?
He complained about some dumb stupid quote and it was like, you were so thin skin. You better get used to your saddle on and start to get some. He's definitely take his money and just start a boy band. You think?
Yeah. He's got those movie started looks. He had that beautiful sweat t-shirt on it. Look like it cost $4,000.
Yeah. Look good on it. So speaking of guys with good hair that should start a boy band, you created quite a stir this morning. You interviewed Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
Yeah. At NRF. I had an interview. I was on stage with the head of NRF interviewing us about tech and the economy and this and that.
I did it with Janet Yellen last year, but Janet knew a lot about the economy, but he did OK. He was warned about me before it started. So Janet Yellen of Berkeley? Yeah.
Janet Yellen fed Chair. Yeah. She had an answer to the question. She got a good love against her.
She really was. He was prepared though. Some apparently warned him that I was trouble. He's a smart guy.
He's very smart. He's got some really. He's got some really. It was interesting because he was arguing at the struggle.
I was doing a sophisticated analysis of the tech and economic landscape or untech. I think he was doing his typical, we don't need any regulation. He needs self-reguiting. I think that's where he went.
Yeah. The market will figure it out. And the reason it hasn't been regulated is because Congress doesn't know anything. I'm like, they don't know anything about lots of other industries.
This needs some regulation that can't self-regulate. And then he was saying that Wall Street was self-regulated. I'm like, there's like a zillion laws and there's the SEC. Yeah.
So it was interesting. He was interesting. I'm going to try to get him on the podcast because I think I got in one dig about, he was talking about being down the middle and I was like, I worked out so well for you within the Trump administration trying to be compromising or thinking that you can change people on these sides right now. Yeah, him coming on your podcast is what you call a no-win situation.
Like whoever wants to do that. No, I know he's sharp, but his constituency, that does nothing for him. What does Paul Ryan do now? Well, he's a professor at Notre Dame.
He gave me a card and he says former speaker at the house. That's a pretend job. I'm not even sure. I don't know.
I don't know. But I think he's teaching. He sure is teaching and he lives in what Jamesville Wisconsin says and it says, speaker of the House of Representatives. So we got to revenge on him.
He's in Janesville. Yeah. Damn you to Janesville. Yeah, he's a, you know, I think he's doing a lot.
I'm sure he's doing a lot of consulting. I'm sure he's doing some more. I mean, it seems like the way people go. It didn't seem like he was going to run for office.
Yeah, I think he was genuine. He wanted out. He's the wrong guy for the era, right? This is an era of so many extremes and he's sort of a reasonable, a little downhill, a little downhill.
I think he's very likable. Yeah, he's very tall. Oh, he's very tall. He's very tall.
I'm very short, but he's very tall. Yeah. Yeah, he's way over six feet tall. Did you get in a picture of him with you?
I think we definitely have to get a land of the Giants montage going with you with huge people. He's not wearing any off-tall. He's not that big. He's tall.
You know, David Gregory tall. Oh, no, he's really tall. He's really tall. He's like a new ball.
But he was really tall. He was really tall. He was very tall. They're all tall.
All the big politicians are tall. Well, if you have tall and you have a deep voice, you can get your podcast. He's not just big, but he's also tall. So not that this isn't fascinating.
Let's go down to the stories. Okay. So tomorrow I've got interview Pinterest, you know, Ben Silverman about all kinds of things. We'll see.
We'll talk about that. And doing well. And actually he's in stock by right now. Yeah.
So I'll ask him all about that if you have any questions. Let me know. So let's talk about the big stories. You know, we're going to talk about the alphabet, David Drummond leaving, but I think we have to talk about Tesla, the valuation going through the roof and way up.
All these people that were bears are turning into hugging Elon Musk that stocks. There's some of the things are in the 600s. You mean they're predicting the stock. Yeah.
Yeah. Investors who have been negative on them are back now positive. It's really just tearing up the stock market. What do you think of this?
Because you had been on the opposite. I'm not to remind you. Yeah. Tesla is one of those things that just the rabbit supported has.
So now Tesla, the valuation of Tesla is now greater than General Motors and Ford combined. So basically Tesla is now worth as much or almost as much. I guess we got Chrysler's out there as the entire US auto industry. I think it's crazy overvalued.
I mean, I hated this thing as you know, a 300 bucks, a 400 bucks. Like I can't see. 600 bucks was the value of the $6.12 or something like that. Well, isn't it a little over 400 bucks?
No, no, no. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sort of like Amazon at 400, if you remember, 20 years ago.
Yeah, look, good for the world, good for the planet. He's a genius. I wouldn't get near this. What would you have to do to grow into that valuation?
Continue to make more cars sell more cars. Yeah, hit targets show the kind of margins they have, velocity and also probably convince people that they're not a car company, but some sort of tech company that creates some sort of payment system, a time margin that's more on tech. And then autonomous driving. What about the talking Tesla that he announced?
He's always got something to sleep. Yeah. And it's going to say to you though. I don't know.
You know, like the talking kit from... Also, down Scott. What's wrong? I'll run you home.
Seriously, man. We'll talk to pedestrians. They haven't. I mean, the cutest thing to Tesla, the kind of one of those nice moments of engagement, you can play and you should do this with your voice.
You know, your Tesla can dance. Yeah, I know. I never heard that. They've done it with me.
I'm like car to dance. Yeah, so look, I'm almost to, I'm like the dog that's been hit by the car a million times by Tesla fanboys. So they really were like Scott's idiot. Yeah, I would not.
But now they act like I've come back to Christianity because I said I was clearly wrong. I was like, I'm not going to be back into the crazy fucking weirdo, whatever we are. Oh, the shorts are just as big jerks as ever. Because I said, look, this guy's great with the drama, he's great with the announcements.
He's a very exciting story. And they were like, you're doing an advertising. I'm like, I also said there's math involved here that doesn't seem to pencil out. And I was like, the economics don't work unless he's sold more cars and does it more efficiently.
So no matter what you say on either side of this divide, they're both crazy. Both sides. Yeah, it's hard. I just find it.
I just find it. We don't like you. Love the company. Love the product.
Hate the stock. We're not getting anywhere near it. So I know the guys at Casper, they came in and met with me a couple of years ago. I like the management team, a group of bright young men.
I think it's almost all dudes. Good at branding. It's a nice brand. There's a lot to like here that's a lot to like here that's a lot to sleep economy.
People are spending more time thinking about that. They're live. They're live. The reveal, the packaging when you undo the buy.
It's really kind of an neat moment. And one of the keys, I think that builds the biggest market cap and company isn't even actually the company itself with the industry disrupting. So media was a flat business. It wasn't even a growth business.
But it had incredibly opaque near corrupt players. And awful, awful experience. Yeah. And so I think that's what we're getting and they were purposely keeping all their data behind the wall and incomes these Facebook and Facebook and Google.
So when you think about the sleep industry, where you buy mattresses, I mean, think about retail and mattresses pre this explosion in sleep. It's kind of like the basis of a quententarium of you. Expect some people on the run to jump into a mattress store and start taking hostages and killing people. It's just a very strange retail environment.
So highly disruptable, sleep economy is big, a nice brand, I think good management. This company should absolutely not be a public company. All right. So tell me what the S1.
It's not an Adam Newman level disaster. Oh no, this is crazy. But it's not insane. This is like, I don't know, Kansas crazy, not Florida and saying, right?
This is just so like 310 million. The grand is crazy. Just pop it in my mind. I just popped it in my own day.
I'm Pennsylvania crazy. Okay, whatever. West Virginia crazy. So, okay, 310 million revenues, like 20% last year and Derek Thompson, writer for the Atlantic and a cool cat and great podcast called Crazy Genius kind of summarizing his tweets.
It's a company that takes $400 and kind of foam and cotton and sells it for a thousand. Give them 60 points of margin, but 20% of returns. So they hold on to 400 bucks and then they spend 560 bucks on SD&A marketing. So they lose 160 bucks per mattress.
Wash rinse repeat. And that's fine if you're a company that's growing or scaling like crazy or tech company. There's some sort of flywheel effects, but there's none of that here. It's a specialty retail direct-to-consumer.
Now, multi-channel, which is 960 stores, but when Lamson and I went public, it was profitable. When restoration hardware went public, especially retail, they were profitable. So this is really, this is a sign of the era and that is a company like this. The fact that they can even think they can get public is sort of strange.
The other thing that kind of tells Goldman, I think, is a lead banker. I had breakfast with a senior executive in Goldman and Goldman's core attribute is that reputation as an accelerant and continues to attract the best and brightest. And as you would imagine, this guy was super smart and super impressive. And he was asking me about the brand positioning.
My Goldman's brand positioning is very simple. It's, we're fucking Goldman Sachs. Goldman doesn't take cash for public. This company probably doesn't get public because it's not scaling.
It's a cute company. They miss their window. By the way, I told these guys, I asked for advice two years ago and I said, I have three pieces of advice. Sell, sell, and sell.
Two. Likely a choir would be, I think Target was looking at making an investment. But just as Walmart made some kind of irrational- Like Dollar Club guy who sold Dollar Shave Club guy sold. Well, he sold the Unilever.
But he sold- But he sold- Yeah. He got out. He sold to an old company trying to find Botox to look younger and needs an aqua hire. With Mod Cloth, Bonavos, Jad.
Their opportunity was to sell to a mid-life crisis big company that needs that talent, needs that direct consumer. Maybe goes big and bad and sleep. But I'm curious to see what internet analysts, Goldman, props up to basically engage in unbelievable greater variety. And there's more.
There's more. There's purple. There's a whole bunch of them. See, that's the key.
That's the key negative attribute. And the reason why this company either doesn't get public or gets public and Goldman does a great job of distributing this stuff and it's down 30 to 50 percent in the first 12 months because very few barriers of entry, tough to needle. Purple, which did reverse- Reverse-merge and has a $500 million market cap right now. So this is a company.
It's a nice company. It's a gangster move here, but the VCs won't do it because they're still drunk on evaluations. It would be to create a new age, lame Sonoma and to roll up a way, Warby Parker and Casper and consolidate some of the backend and do better job of targeting, have more clout. Okay.
All right. Interesting. I like this creativity out of your brain today. This is smart.
Well, I'm ramping up the outables. Okay. I love it. I love it.
Okay. So you didn't, you were not impressed with this S1. You were not impressed with this. This is a cute retailer.
I bought that many mattresses. You buy one. It's a cute, it's a nice retailer with 20 percent negative. I'm not buying another one.
I'm not scaling. I think they should have done something earlier. I thought all of them should. 100 percent.
The interesting ones though, will be the gangster, the gangster in the category is Warby Parker because again, you have- Well, they have something else going on. That's more- I like that business. Yeah. Yeah.
Because the industry there is highly disruptable. Like Laxotica, the $7 billion business that does a shitty job, does aviators, you wear, cost $220, cost $18 to produce. And the distribution is awful. No one does a sunglasses.
I mean, the distribution is terrible. And it's not that's actually a difficult business making they do a fantastic job of merchandising. If you give me, if you say, okay, who are Casper's true competitors? I'm not talking about a lot of punch, but who are Warby Parker's true?
Just the other opticians. I don't go to any time. And by the way, I buy three pairs of glass in a year. Oh, malievable.
Every year. Every year. They're not great glasses, but they're beautiful glasses. I don't care.
I actually like them as disposable in a weird way. The fastest zero billion in specialty retail ever was Old Navy with this gangster algorithm of 80 percent of gap for 50 percent of the price. And Warby Parker came up with the Old Navy gangster algorithm and said, we're going to be 80 percent of the $700, $1, $1, $1,100 prescription lenses from Tom Ford. You bought, we're going to do 80 percent of that for literally 15 percent of the price.
And it gives you and me the confidence. I'm like, I'm like, I'm not going to buy a glass in Warby Parker. I buy three and four because I don't have to love it. I just have to like it because it's 99 bucks.
Nice looking glasses. So they raised money at two built great design, great design. They're not edge design, but they're not. And like not eight other competitors.
And they're not $200. A way as a unique product category. Again, it's shitty industry, the luggage industry that is not innovative. They've innovated.
So in the order of what I'll call valuation or an order of investment thesis, you would go Warby number one, away number two. And Casper is kind of a distant third. Casper, what will be interesting is if Casper does what we does and kind of shits in the pond for his direct to consumer IPOs. Yeah.
Because if this doesn't get out, which I think it might not, what I think is really going on here, and I apologize, I'm running out of my Casper. I think these guys have said we're in a corner, we're up against it, Purple got out with this reverse merger. We need to get out before away. Our Warby.
But I think they don't even plan to go public. I think they're basically saying a target or someone come pick us out or for sale. That's not that's probably true. All right, speaking of it just very briefly, SoftBank backed hotel startup, Oyo fired thousands of people in China, India this week.
Reportedly, Oyo has let go of 5% of their 12,000 employees in China and 12% of its 10,000 person staff in India. Yeah. Scott, you've talked about Oyo. And it's another SoftBank disaster along with me as a delivery.
We're talking about Florida when we hear some serial murderers cock, because he shows up doing all of the garden with his victims of blood on his dogs. You just know that guy's in Florida. When you hear about a company like Oyo, which makes no sense, has a 26 year old back and similar reviews, 80% of the people working there have been there at work for less than 12 months. They're a fraudulently inflating the number of rooms on their platform.
I mean, it's just a $3.5 billion raise at a 10 billion market cap loaning the CEO money against his share so he can invest more. And the smartest guys in the room, White House and SoCoA Capital, are not only after seeing this company from the inside out, they're not only not investing in their pro-rata rights, they're actually selling shares. They're getting the hell out of Dodge. So we know this must be a soft bank company and what a shocker it is.
This is a train wreck. And unfortunately, they might have more externalities whereas we was more spectacle than historic. This could be historic as India, which now has 24 unicorns added nine last year that ecosystems were fragile here. The fear is that this might cast a poll over the entire Indian unicorn ecosystem.
This is not only a fucking disaster from an investment standpoint. It sounds borderline fraudulent. And when any of you have fraud involving bribery in this report, so they were bribing officials and letting them stand their places so they wouldn't write up health violations or all sorts of it. They have tax authorities now looking to it.
The definition of corruption is fraud that involves bribery. And so the smell or the stench of corruption is starting to seep into oil. This is a train wreck. And then on, I'm going to get a problem for you.
The parents in New York, I saw one walking down the street on 47th Street. But that's a key point. And that is the world of global branding. And I think a lot about this.
Brands are hard to build. Global brands are very difficult to build. Nestle, one of the great brands builds in the world. Less than 10% of the brands are more than one country and less than 1% of the brands are more than 10 countries.
It is very hard to build a brand that permeates cultural boundaries. So you're immediately asking, well Scott, tell us what brands do make good for global brands. So effectively, the categories with a cohort look and smell and feel the same around the world make for great global brands. So CTOs where bad logo sweatshirts are out of shape and they buy Huawei and Microsoft, right?
Rich people are some of the most boring people in the world. They send their kids to Ivy League schools and engage in massive tax avoidance, departing in same parts and they wear a mess. So luxury brands, tech companies make for good global brands, services companies, the CFOs and chief strategy, I have to see all one hiring McKinsey and Goldman. They make for good global brands.
But budget hotels, if you look at the hotel industry, who are the only brands that scale globally? The luxury guys. Four Seasons, Mandarin, Oriental. As soon as you get into budget, as soon as you get to most tell sex or value, the people who buy budget hotels do not look and smell and feel the same around the world from Australia, it's hostile.
It's running around the world. It's just a different cohort and the notion that they can build a global brand in budget hotels, I think it's not even ignores basic business. They can a lot about mattresses and cheap hotel rooms. I'm not going to go in there.
There you go. I'm going to stop you. I'm going to stop you. I'm going to stop you.
I'm going to stop you. Yes, I'm going to stop you. Yes, I'm going to stop you. But you know, it's another black eye for stuff and including the pizza service, which also has some issues.
Well, who would have thought that would have been? That wouldn't work out. I think they call me. I'm like, no.
I'm like, food delivery. Well, I have that business in my house. It's got my toast around. I made pizza with us.
I'll start it. And by the way, I watch four episodes of The Morning Show. I have done one 80 on The Morning Show. It's a very good show.
It's a very good show. It's a very good show. Are you done talking? I'm not sure.
You're being brilliant. I know you are, but you're being brilliant. So I'm like, let alone, actually being brilliant. You're just part of this Paul Ryan, but that's okay.
All right, Scott, it's time for a quick break. We'll be right back with a friend of Pivot, someone's in fails and a surprise pop quiz for Scott. Support for the show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough.
So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.
CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part? Odu replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Support for the show comes from Odu.
Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need.
It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part? Odu replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.
That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOOOO.com.
OK, we're back. Scott, I really want to talk about Trump saying that his reason for taking out Soleimani was because he had planned attacks on four US embassies, which is his people who work for him can't make any claims to see such intelligence. Meanwhile, the Democrats are raising to limit Trump's war powers, the House-approved resolution of a strict Trump authority to strike it around the Senate. We've been voting on that resolution this week.
There's a lot of unhappy people in the Senate, including lots of Republicans. So we reached out to a friend of Pivot, a New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzy, she of the Rudy Giuliani texting fame. She writes amazing work, actually. She's amazing.
She did great jobite. Recently too, for insights on how it might actually affect the Trump presidency. Let's go to take any attempt to check on Donald Trump's powers abroad. It's going to be faithful to someone by the fact that he just tweets whatever it is that he's planning on chewing or whatever it is that he's done.
That then ultimately becomes the United States' policy. That is how he's making policy, how he's making policy domestically, how he's made foreign policy in the past. It's how the military establishment and the national security establishment as a doughnut White House staff has learned about the decisions that he's made. I'm very skeptical that any action that Congress takes to reign him in will really be effective when he has access to this megabone that enables him to declare policy with the push of a button.
Okay. Well, this is a man written about voices. Obviously, who has more power to reign Trump in Twitter or Congress in a January of 2018? For those who don't remember, Twitter declared that, quote, blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information.
Who has more power? Voters. I mean, you and I talked about this. You can't take, I don't think you can take President Trump off Twitter.
I take him off, but this has more power using it. I wouldn't take him off. You know that. I don't think that.
I think paid advertising is a very different thing. I like what they did around paid advertising, but because of the abuses, but I think you don't take him off. I don't know what you do. I don't know what you do.
You wrote him out. But I do think he has an incredible tool in Twitter. He's using it as a governing vehicle. Oh, he will go down as the guy that earned the most or gained the most.
No individual has gained more that isn't a shareholder from social media than the president. The president is the 140 character president, but it's just so strange. Can you imagine she communicating and dictating and governing by TikTok? I mean, it's just so strange when you think about it.
But it's somewhat effective. It actually makes things happen, which is amazing. And Congress doesn't seem to, you know, they're sort of in this. We're going to restrict the world powers are going to stop him.
And it just doesn't. Like even when he wasn't correct about these four embassies, even his own people, it doesn't matter. Like he can say it and he repeats it on social media or whether he's on Fox News or wherever he is. That's another basic error though of communication strategy.
And that is it's never the action that gets in trouble to cover up. If the administration had just come out and they said, well, why did you kill him? I'm like, well, he's been the strategist and the sport of a bunch of proxie battles that killed Americans. When you do that, eventually when we get an opportunity, we take your ass out.
I think and then and then that's it. And then stop talking, stop talking. And instead they're like, well, we had evidence of them in attacks. That's where they blow it.
It's like, well, no, do they blow it? Does it matter that he lies? And then they say, don't say anything. Oh, 100% if they just said bad guy, we had our shot.
We took it end of story next. And instead, it came out and felt like they had to justify it by lying and saying, I'm going to talk to an amendment of tax. And now I will dissect them. That means the term imminent.
They should have just said America's memory is long and are reached as far. So guess what? You kill American soldiers anywhere. Sleep well, boss.
We're coming for you at some point. And then it should have been, as you said, seen. They should have said nothing else. They could need to justify it.
Instead, they can't start lying. Yeah. I do think the interesting thing is that they are having a hard time knowing what to do with them. It's sort of like a toddler that goes and does everything.
You can't use all these reasonable ways to deal with them in old ways. You know, right here, Paul Ryan, I was like, it was talking to someone in the way down Eric Anderson and the thing. And he was doing it the way it was done. He thought, I can handle it.
This is the way we did it. And Trump just ran circles around him in that regard. No, it's like a 15 year old who's taking control of the house. I can handle it.
And then, you know, that was, I think it was one of his quotes allegedly he said. He couldn't. And the same thing with Twitter. They can't, they don't know what to do.
It's very good for them, though. You can literally, if you look at Twitter's stock price, it's a smile and a trough when Trump was elected and it's gone straight or it's recovered substantially to have a debt, but it's recovered substantially since it's Trump. All right. Wins and fails.
I'm going to go with this leaving of David Drummond from Google. Yeah, let's talk about that. You've been reporting on that. What kind?
Guess a little bit back. I was there in early days. Well, you know, he's been there a long time. Let's have one.
But he was also leaving the company with no exit package following sexual misconduct allegations. He had been going, it was a long and complicated story of many sides and he has his point of view and the person who he went out with. He was with someone who worked for him and then he had a kid with her. It was super complicated.
You know, and she was alleging that he had gone out with more employees. There's now an investigation. He's at the center of it and internal investigation that's reaching all over Google, by the way, around him and then the $90 billion exit package given to Android co-founder Andy Rubin, who was found to have credible allegations of sexual misconduct of the company, led to the Google Walkouts in 2018. And Larry Page was running the show during all this time, right?
Eric Schmidt and Sergey had his own thing around someone who went out with him. Work was going out with another person who ran Android. It was sort of like the chief legal officer was in charge of who probably should have been part of the series. It's a big thing.
These startups are complicated because a lot of people do go out with each other. So it's kind of a, Larry used to go out with a person. A long time ago. So it's very common in startups.
But I think what it is is that as they got more powerful, they didn't put stuff into place that was very clear. And then there was another person went over to Uber. They just went on and on and on. And there's now these investigations going on around all of that in the management.
I think what's happening is Sundar Pichai, who's has been the one to move in and clean some of this up. You can see his sort of invisible hand everywhere. I know his way. I think he's cleaning up quietly.
And I don't know if it's going to be cleaned up quietly. I think this report is probably going to get out in some fashion or maybe there's some litigation. And what he's trying to do is clean it up quietly because he's a good guy. And he's actually, and move it away and move Google into the next year.
But there definitely was very loose management around this particular. They've done a great job in lots of things, interesting culture, interesting way to do business, amazing business itself. In this particular aspect about their personal lives, which were very messy within the company, in some ways that were OK, other ways that weren't OK, but it certainly was messy. And some of it, true sexual harassment, it's just a question of whether Sundar can clean this up quietly.
He's like the cleaner. I don't know. I'm going to talk to him about a little bit about this one. He comes to code soon.
It's definitely, there's got to be a new era of Google. And I think they had to first move the founders out and it's linked a little bit to this investigation, even though they're touted as if it's time to move on like why now. They've got him moving on, David, who's been there forever. So now all the air is gone.
They moved him out. So the question is, now it's the new era, essentially. Yeah, and I hope that for a better era. So unfortunately, because a lot of this is titillating and makes for a great clickbait, the conversation here is more around outrage and a lot of hyperbole.
What I think is neat, I'm hopeful, and I don't know if this is when I'm not. I think we're moving into the air of what I call the calibration or nuance around this. And that is an important conversation, but hopefully it catalyzes some calibration. So some examples, when I've been in on media and they use the term sexual misconduct, they use it as an umbrella to encapsulate CEOs who've had consensual relationships with vendors and people who have attacked women in their office.
And there's a difference. Some of these people should be in prison, some should be fired. And I think some of the other calibration that's required here, and I think this is where I would move to or where we're moving to is as someone who serves as a fiduciary for sheryls and boards and directors. And that is when you have a large group of people in a confined space and they're sharing intense experiences and specifically if they're young, they're supposed to establish relationships, half sex and half children.
They're supposed to do that. They're not supposed to abuse their power. You take a risk. If you ever do anything with someone junior to you, you are opening yourself to liability.
But what I've had several marriages catalyzed and fomented and started in kids and economic security and people who love each other at work. And the notion that at the beginning, they all had their lawyers get together and decide to go have coffee is just a little unrealistic. Young people when they share intense experiences and close proximity are going to have sex. And I think that there's a difference.
And the difference is that once you get to a certain executive level, there's an outstanding benefits about being an executive at a place like Google. You make tens of millions of dollars. B people laugh at your stupid fucking jokes all the time. C you get restaurant reservations and mediocre restaurants and San Jose.
E you get to come on and speak to interesting people like Eric Swisher. You know what else you get to do? You get to have your fly up and fucking locked boss. There's just no, when you reach a certain level in a company, full stop, you take your sex and your personal relationships off campus.
I think we need to calibrate. I think there's a difference between young people who are trying to find mates who don't can't bring a company down who aren't in a position to leverage crazy power to abuse other people. Once you get to a certain level and you're, I think they're going to need to find it. Once you have VP, we don't want to hear from you.
You take this shit off. You find somewhere else. I think the tonality of not dealing with serious allegations of sexual harassment and the way it was done at the company. And I think, you know, you're right, companies are messy and lots of things are messy.
But mating is messy. Yes. But there is, I think it was led to an idea within the company of not seriousness when this was going on with the, with this chief legal officer, you know, one of the founders, top executives. And so there is a difference in the behaviors, but it just mushes all into a thing when these exact, when it seems like there's a lagotage and it did bleed down into other parts, which is why you led to the Google walkout because it did, there wasn't a rigorous idea behind it or discussion of it because they couldn't talk about it, you know, because some, again, some things were fine.
Some things were not fine. And it just was, it was, it was, they didn't create clarity. And I think that was it. And then when serious allegations came, they were either covered up or pushed away or people didn't think you could say something or, you know, the same thing that happened at the, this book by Susan Fowler is coming out, you know, this, this guy who was the high performer, like tolerated more, that kind of stuff.
Some like words, the way that people talk to each other. Anyway, it just creates, it creates a messy situation at the, at the very, and there were not just one, it was more than, it was lots of executives. And so that's what I think. And then you had an executive of ultimately running it, Larry, who didn't do anything about it, like who didn't seem to do anything about it.
Now this new CEO is clearly quietly doing something about, I know a lot about what he's doing. And I think that's the thing. And the question is, can you do it quietly? Okay.
But isn't the point of all this? This is great. A lot of controversy. Ideally, don't come out of the other end of this with some, as you point out clarity, that if I'm running Google America, if I get a promotion, I'm running Google Canada, it's just never been stated at Google.
It's black and white. I'm not here to get. You know companies, you know companies. It's just, but even if people impress with me and pretend that I'm interesting, I don't, I don't pursue that on this level.
That's just part of being a senior. I think he's trying to do it, but the thing is, can he do it quietly? That's what he's like that. That's his nature, not so I shake votes.
And he doesn't have full power because guess who has the power? The founders still have the power though. Yes, I assume it's good walk, right? Okay, my win.
Yeah. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Same more. Same more.
Come on. I just love it. I love the whole thing. I love them stepping away.
I like their entrepreneurship. I love them. Copyrighting and trademarking the shit out of themselves. I like the whole, and I think they could have been nicer to the queen.
I don't know why I have a soft spot for her. I'm not too crowned too much. But I just love this whole, it just shows you that this is just a business. This is just a business like any other.
It doesn't make sense because effectively royalty used to be the Uber rich, but if you can be Uber rich, you can live like royalty, you can join the solo house, go to St. Bart's and roll in LA and a Porsche. I do. I do.
I do. I do. Because I can't because I can't. It's wonderful.
You were just there. I'm not going. Nonetheless, you enjoy something. But I'm proposing a swallow.
I'm willing to be Prince. I'm willing to change my name to Shamu. So they can call me Shamu Prince of Wales. That's good royalty humor.
And then I still think when Charles and Diana had Harry, they should have named him up so they could call their family up, Chuck and die. Oh, geez. More good royalty humor. Oh, geez.
By the way, both of those Joan Rivers jokes got arrested. Okay. Before we go, we got a listener response from Thomas Hegalund who was horrified by our lack. Not our lack.
Scott's lack of understanding about Norwegian cuisine on last week's show. So pop quiz. Scott, what is Smala Hove? Also called Smala Hove.
I can't pronounce this right. Smala Hove. One A, an almond-based flourless fermented cranberry cake baked in a wood-burning stove. An alcoholic beverage made from distilled honey and salt water.
A dish made from a sheep's head originally eaten before Christmas. I have no idea. Come on, pick one. See.
Oh, you're right. The dish made from a sheep's head originally eaten before Christmas. By the way, the grosser the dish, the better the tasting. How did you pick that?
I would think it was a flourless and fermented cranberry. It seems so Norwegian. I couldn't even add alcoholic beverage from distilled honey and water. How is rock fisc prepared?
Rock fisc. Okay. Trowed, salted, and fermented for two to three months or even up to a year, eaten without cooking. Oh, God.
Ribbed of lamb that are first salted, then dried, and sometimes smoked, steamed over birch branches. Dried white fish, normally cod, but ling and burbo are also used, treated with lye. Okay. I don't think so.
I think it's A. Oh, my God. Are you reading over my thing? No, I travel a lot.
All right. Why are you ignorant about Norwegian food? Trout or sometimes jars? I'll do it too much.
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Sometimes. I don't travel.
They get it. They just start like happy and like each other. So we have rock fisc and small o'ho, which I'm sure I badly pronounce. I'm so sorry for our Norwegian friends.
Thank you for the education, Tom. I never sat. All right. We'll do German food next.
All right. We'll do German food. Yeah. The answer to everything is pork.