Big Technology Podcast - Tech IPOs Are Back, Google's In Court, Tom Brady's Working For Delta

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) The return of tech IPOs 2) Is Arm's stock bounce really a good sign? 3) How Instacart is looking ahead of its IPO 4) Why every business is an ad business now 5) Our forthcoming interview with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky 6) Google's antitrust case 7) Tom Brady's new job with Delta 8) Why we're buying the iPhone 15 --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

Tech IPOs are back. Google is in court with the DOJ. Flexport continues to, well, float around amid a new leadership change and plenty more is going on. We'll talk about all that as we come back after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition. When we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed nuanced format, Ron John Roy is here with us. Welcome back, Ron John. Summer's over and tech IPOs are back. I'm excited. That's right. So we had not only a huge, tech IPO this week, where ARM is up 25% after it has IPOed. But another one just filed. Instacart has filed and it's ready to go. It seems like after a two-year hiatus, tech companies are finally returning to the public markets. What do you make of this? Yeah, I think, so first of all, Arm, the AI chip design company that is controlled by SoftBank from my favorite Masayoshi's son, their IP. jumped 25% on the first day of trading.

And this is incredible. The IPO market has been in a drought essentially since early 2022. I think it was actually around the time Ukraine, the Russia conflict started. That was really when the market closed, and it has not been open since. So it's been a year and a half that markets essentially been shut off. And if you think about every late stage startup that has been itching to get out, Arm is the best sign ever. The idea that a company can actually IPO see its valuation jump to $60 billion, I think is a hugely

positive sign. And also, it's a win for Masayoshi's son. It's a win for the overall vision. We haven't really heard about SoftBank in a long time. This is exciting for him. Okay. So let me put the counter argument here, which is that, you know, there's been this long, standing belief that if your stock pops on IPO day, then you're doing great. But isn't it all in how

the banks price it? Like, you can kind of price it in a way that's going to make it pop. You're going to price it in a way. You kind of want to be even, right? Because if it pops too much, you've left money on the table for the IPO, right? This is you get paid. You and the insiders get paid the share price. And then once it turns to the market, that that 25% gain doesn't even go to the company. So, okay, maybe it seems like, oh, it's so hot. Everybody wants it. But this is all in the pricing mechanism, right? So why do we care about the fact that it priced? In fact, isn't that a bad sign?

Like, doesn't it show that the people are taking this company public have actually done a bad job? All right, so if we are to get into IPO pricing, I think this is something, there's been plenty of debate. Bill Gurley was probably the most vocal around when your IPO pops,

you're essentially leaving money on the table, that that's money that you and your private, the long-term shareholders who took your company from start to go. going public, that it could have been given to them versus the retail investors or institutional money that actually bought on that first day. To me, I've always had a little bit of problem with that because it's still showing that there's excitement around the stock. It's still showing that people want to get interested. And it kind of sets the tone because obviously if something

drops on the first day, that's a very bad sign. If something is flat on the first day, that also seems to show that there's not a ton of excitement around this. With Arm, though, again, probably the most praise I will give Masayoshi Son. You already heard it at the beginning of this episode. One thing that was a little interesting here is it was still around $500 million worth of shares were actually available in the float for a $60 billion company. So it was still a very small percentage of the company was floated, which is, it's in a bit of financial engineering in the sense that, you know, rather than the whole company goes out and now everyone realizes money, it's let's take a small slice. And then obviously, the lower the supply, the easier it

is for that to actually cause a large shift in the, you know, top line price. And then suddenly the company's worth $60 billion, at least notionally. But soft bank still does own 90% of the company. I'm sticking to my guns here. I think this is all financial engineering, not even financial engineering, but just sort of engineering a bump and actually doesn't really vote it so well for the company. But it might actually, okay, the psychological ramifications here maybe that we end up seeing far more tech IPOs happen than we've seen the past. People need IPOs. People need IPOs. So they're going to look for any sign. Real or not, real or not. Exactly. So maybe that, and now we're going to have Instacart go out. I mean, what do you make

of the fact. So Instacard is fascinating. It's like we're going to have this spate of IPOs start up. But the actual valuations that you're going to see, I mean, obviously SoftBink did well with Arm. In fact, it's probably its marquee success. And it needed one, right? But now we're going to see some of these companies have been waiting to go public forever, actually go out to the market. And we're going to see what they're actually valued compared to these insane private market valuations that VCs had been putting them on. So Instacard is one that that were about to see. It was valued at $39 billion in the private markets, and now it's going to price at a range of 26 to 28 per share, and that's going to value it at $8.9 billion at the

midpoint, right? So you're going to go from, this is according to the New York Times, right? You're going from $39 billion to $8.9 billion. Even if these startups do go out and do go public and have their IPOs, you know, are we even in a moment to celebrate, or is this more of a desperation needed an exit somehow. And this is just the only way left. Well, yeah, I do think that Instacart, Instacart was interesting for me because having written and had some level of notoriety around DoorDash and food delivery as a topic for our margins newsletter, I was very, very keen in looking at the numbers here. The most amazing part to me about Instacart is they are profitable.

They had almost $428 million in profit last year. And their revenue, it's around $2.9 billion, I believe it was. It's in the billions, low billions of dollars. They're profitable, though. What was more interesting was 30% of their revenue came from advertising. And advertising, again, everyone has been trying to switch to this. In fact, like DoorDash and their S-1, the story was always, we'll start selling delivering groceries which will always be potentially low margin potentially

unprofitable but then within our app once you're there then the every vendor every food creator everyone will start to pay for advertising to move up in your recommendation feed and essentially it becomes you know like an advertising driven product and advertising is the highest margin business imaginable so they kind of are showing that it's possible and I was pretty surprised Again, it never was a $39 billion company. Now it's being valued at 4 or 5X revenue, which is fine, which always could have been the right valuation. So to me, where it's going out actually and the fact that it's profitable might be the most perfect sign of just a normal, healthy market. Uber does advertising, Lyft does advertising, Instacart does advertising, Amazon does advertising, everybody does advertising in the end.

Life is just a long journey toward an advertising business. Big technology started as an advertising business. If anybody at the above companies need some counsel about how to run an advertising business, hit me up. It's a great business. And we will never get into the food delivery business. We started in the high margin area. We're sticking with it. I might have to go do some DoorDash deliveries right after this.

Exactly. Now, let me ask you this, though. you said Instacart's profitable. I thought that profitability was the only thing the market cared about right now, and if you're able to turn a profit, you should be doing well. And yet, even still, the valuation that Instacart is going to go out in is $30 billion less than one of its more recent private market valuations. So what does that tell you?

Does it just tell you that the private market valuation was just completely illogical? I mean, what does it tell you? And what does it tell you about the broader market that even if you're meeting what the market wants, your valuation is still going to be as low as Instacart says. But it's not low. That's what I'm saying. It's reasonable. It's it's it's it's longitudinally correct. It's the idea that like I just wanted to say longitudinally. It's, uh, it's, it's it's like 20 to 22 times earnings. It's four to five times revenue. This is where a even a like a pure technology company.

should trade a little bit more richly, but like a company that is claims to be pure technology, but obviously has plenty of workers and real world presence, but still is kind of a technology platform. Yeah, it's a hashtag high margin areas. Someone commented on our live LinkedIn live. It's, uh, it's actually, to me, it's almost the perfect end to ZERP and to show that we're no longer in a manic era when you see these numbers and valuations being ascribed to a business like Instacart, which appears to be healthy, growing, the growth is slowing a little bit, but everything, so is the economy. Like, like, overall, if you show me any of these numbers, it would just be like, okay, this is a normal business, everything, everything looks okay,

versus where we were a couple of years ago. And again, that $39 billion was high to COVID, height of pandemic, Instacart is the extrapolated pandemic future, and it was just wrong. It was wrong. It's interesting because it just goes to show you, like thinking about how all these companies have gone to advertising, right, the Uber's, the lifts, the Instacarts, this whole generation of startups that were sort of built on share economy, convenience economy, the businesses have not been strong enough. They have to go to an ancillary business like ads.

what do you think about that i mean when is a Airbnb going to get into the advertising business and you walk into your Airbnb actually product placements guess what your Airbnb well guys guys if you're out there listening just go with it just they are they are and i this is a great moment yes they are great moment to plug brian chesky sitting down with me on tuesday podcast is going live on wed here on the feed yes it's happening just confirmed I'm sitting down with him in New York. We are running it on Wednesday morning, 8 a.m. Eastern time. And I will ask him about advertising.

Listeners cannot see that I am that shocked. I had not heard about this for Malice. That's awesome. We get big interviews here on the show. Yeah, no, no, no. I'm saying the timing of that. But exactly product placements in Airbnb's because advertising. I remember Uber was always an interesting one for me because,

especially anyone in New York who's ever taking an Uber to JFK in traffic knows, you essentially have, call it 70 to 80 minutes of captive time where you are sitting there. You have the Uber app open periodically anyways because you're checking your time to distance and you're like, sorry, you're time to arrival. And so what better place to actually just stick some ads in and they're doing it? So yeah, Airbnb, you walk in, this, brought to keels lotion everywhere like in equinox you i think that's a good idea smart business for them to get into and it by the way it brings it full circle talking about when you're in your

ride hail app looking at it because what why i always asked why is a company like google for instance getting into the self-driving business and it's not it actually is a strategic compliment to what they're doing because if you're a search business and you're focused on bringing ads to people based off the intent of what they want to do, there's no more high intent action than getting in a car and going somewhere, traveling somewhere. And if you control transportation, then for instance, your advertising business. Now, of course, that could be a good business on its own, but it's the advertising business that would always, you know, be the interesting part. And I, and I do think that that's sort of what Google is, you know, long term going to get into. You're there. You're sitting in

the back. There's a screen. You're looking at the screen. You're communicating with the Waymo that way. that's going to have ads on it and there's another place where the ad business starts to triumph as well wait so you're so i get in my waymo it knows i'm going to a restaurant serves me ads for something like discounts potentially or competitors can uh start feeding me ads within my waymos on the screen i don't know i don't know if i like this future you're going in a waymo it's take you to burger king the waymo the waymo says after your dinner we can be here waiting for you bring you to carvel you'll get some ice cream 10% off that's going to happen all right that actually that is going to happen i agree with

you on that you uh pointed out this interesting story that in the information by front of the program corey wineberg about how there is a clash between uh sequoia capital and the former co-founder and former CEO of instacart appurveda do you want to take us a little bit into that story and why you found it interesting. Yeah, I think, so a poor of a meta had been pushed out and actually, I believe it's Fiji Simo from Facebook. By the way, just to, I'm just pausing quickly because talking about the future of ads, like it's no, it's no wonder that a Facebook CEO, which is a company that builds itself off of advertising, is coming in and running Instacart, you know, it sort of shows you exactly where things are going. Sorry, I digress.

floor is yours but but that actually was the essentially the kind of signal to the market in the stated move that you know like we built this as a pure logistics business and a poor of a meta I think was from amazon and but we're going to move into advertising so we're bringing in a Facebook executive to take over and it worked but to me the most interesting part is you had it's this like incredible play by play and I strongly recommend if you're an information subscriber to read it or to subscribe to the information from the pieces from Corey Weinberg. It's it's it's this way of under behind the scenes lead investors and founders where do you value a company you know like how do you keep these inflated valuations do you cut it and in order

to attract more talent in order to actually get it to the public markets versus trying to raise more money at that inflated valuation and it played out perfectly in this saga between Sequoia and Apurva. And I think it's, again, and we'll probably touch on Flexport later in the episode, Flexport's another company where, you know, had an inflated pandemic valuation. Every single one of these companies that had an inflated pandemic valuation, this drama is definitely playing out behind the scenes. Advertising is a great business.

We're going to take a break, play an ad, and come back right after this. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about the hustle day. Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on big technology podcast talking about the news of the week, Ron John Roy of margins is here with us.

Thanks for sticking through the ad. Google. All right. They are in the midst of a very interesting antitrust case that really looks at the deals that they've made to put Google in the search bar as the default search. And in some places, some places icing out other competitors. You can go to some phones and, you know, you type a search query in the search bar and automatically turns the Google. That's not an accident. Google pays billions of dollars for that space. And it also, you know, there are, there are places where you could just get Google and you can't get

competitors. It's pretty interesting. So I'm curious if you've been following along this case, Rajam, what you think of it. And honestly, the big question for me is Google, it's kind of funny watching the government go after Google as this big bad tech company while it's at its most vulnerable that it's been in modern memory. I'm kind of curious how you square the two of those. yeah in terms of google's current state we can definitely talk about if have you gotten any of their generative search generative search in labs yeah and it's pretty good we can definitely get into that and what that means for their overall business at least i've found but but to me the most interesting part of this trial and it feels like a pretty strong argument is so google paid i believe

it was four to seven billion dollars a year to Apple to be the default in Safari. They paid Firefox, they paid Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, to be the default in their search bar. And it's actually the predominant source of revenue for Mozilla. So they're paying tons and tons of money to be the default. Meanwhile, their argument is we are the best search engine. Consumers, you know, like we're the default, but that's okay because we're by far the best search engine. Now, if that's the case that you're the best and consumers will choose you anyway, why pay billions of dollars to be the default? To me, as a starting point, it's totally counterintuitive and it's a strong argument that, of course, you're doing that because the search business, the more, if you're the default behavior, that means your search engine will get better because you're ingesting more and more data and more queries and you can make it better and better. So to me, at its core, it's a pretty strong case.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think that like the counter argument to that could be, yes, you are the best. People type you in more on a browser than they do any other search engine, but defaults are powerful. And how can you afford to not play that game if the phone makers are setting it up that way? No, of course you can. but to argue that still consumers default to you because you're the best surge engine, it just like if it's an open question of the highest bidder gets the default space,

and this is a completely, you know, like a monetary-based system, not a quality-based system or one of consumer choice, then make that argument. To me, another part of this I think it's worth touching on is I still always find it weird when the whole conversation is the product is free. So it's hard to try to attribute antitrust in these cases with a free product. Because to me, the customer here is still the advertiser. That's where the revenue is. That's where.

And advertisers, everyone, Google has no choice. They have to pay Google. That's why advertising prices for Facebook, for Google, have risen over time. So the lens through which to look at this should always be not the product is free. So how do you really, you know, consumers are still getting a good deal. It's, are the actual customers who are the advertisers, is it the best possible option and experience and output? But, you know, the phrase Google tax is regularly used because it's almost you just have to pay to be part of search. Like if you want to exist on the internet, you have to pay, which, again, it's the greatest business model ever invented.

If you got a phone and you just ordered the new iPhone, which we'll talk about at the end, if it came in and a default was duck, duck go, would you keep that or switch to Google? I think I would be fine keeping it. I think most people would keep it. I used to duck, duck, go in the past again. I know you're a Bing boy, at least for a little while there. Well, I was doing the Bing chat, but I've never really strayed from Google Search. I've never replaced it with Google Search. So, you know, it's interesting.

It's so convoluted because it's like this is the defense is, sorry, the prosecution is convoluted because it's like the argument is it's bad for advertisers who, you know, might have to pay a tax with Google and they would much rather be able to like, you know, have competition between Google and a search engine like duck, dot go, which is all about not tracking. Meanwhile, who's that tracking done for? It's done on behalf of the advertisers. And Google happens to be like the king of tracking people online. So yeah, that's tough to prove this one. I think the DOJ is going to lose. I mean, definitely given the recent track record around antitrust, I'm not saying that it's a guaranteed win.

But again, to me, the interesting part of this, and I actually, I mean, on the topic of generative search, so the thing that's moving search forward and making it better after 10 years, 12 years, where it consistently degraded as a product and was filled with more and more ads and became messier and just less useful is generative AI and the ability to,

and I do use chat GPT for a lot of, search type queries and that Google's for those so Google has released in their labs program generative search and it's pretty amazing to at least I've found you put in a search query and then there's kind of like little bit of a screen unfurls of a different color and there's an essentially kind of like a an LLM driven generated answer that says here is the answer to your search as though you're querying chat GPT with links out to the right I mean it's what search always was supposed to be. To me, though, the argument on the consumer side is, is if we actually had competition, where could search have gone or have been? Like, it's so clear anyone who has

used Google, which is all of us, is that knows that search is a degraded over time in terms of quality. And like the top half got filled with ads. And it just, it didn't get better over the last decade. It's finally because there's competition getting better. I was going to argue with you, but as I've used generative search, I've started to like it. And I do think it's pretty cool. I think it's actually a good experience. It's getting better. Now, the question is, what does that do to their business model? Because when it's gone to the point that like 50% of the screen is occupied by ads ahead of all the organic search results, and now generative search, it's back to that Google promise. It's clean. It's accurate. It's like informative. It's, it's, it's, it's

It's just, it's the answer that you're looking for. And then that's what, again, Google, the original promise was. Now, it is that again. But then how does that factor into their business model? I think it'll be interesting to watch. It hampers the business model. And that's why they're doing cars. That's why they're doing, to show ads.

Like there's something true about it. Exactly. They'll need to find new venues to show you ads. You know, it used to be back in, I mean, Google is that. the natural predecessor of Yahoo, right? And we rarely talk about Yahoo on this show for good reasons. It's kind of an afterthought in the tech world and long obsolete. It's kind of known as a dinosaur.

But they've had a pretty interesting revival of some sorts. I don't even know if revival is the right word. But what have your thoughts been on where Yahoo has gone lately? Because, you know, obviously it's not a competitor with Google, but it has had a very interesting second act or maybe third act. I would call this at least the third, if not the fourth. Yahoo, for those who are unaware, was bought by Apollo, the private equity giant in 2021 for $5 billion. Now, what they've been doing is essentially, like, it could present itself as the ultimate kind of private equity turnaround story. Apollo went in, brought in all new management, the information had this piece,

talks with Jim Lanzo, the new CEO, about how cutting costs, stripping down the organization trying to actually find where the value is. And again, this is a company that still in the last quarter made $1.8 billion in non-search revenue, but it's still declining. So all of these things, this is a company making billions in revenue. And it's interesting to me because certain assets, again, Yahoo Sports, fantasy sports, For years, I have been in leagues on that platform, and it's been great. And everyone lives in Yahoo for the fantasy app, but then chats on WhatsApp or has to go out.

They could have gotten into sports betting. Yahoo Finance, again, I think they were saying they get 100 million users a month. It's still one of the most trafficked properties on the internet. So then, and to me, the finance one is pretty interesting because they now have a premium subscription product. I think it probably caught on well during the whole retail trading boom. But again, imagine some massive, you convert 2% of $100 million to pay you $10 a month, $20 a month. There's so many good business opportunities sitting there in this brand that clearly to folks like us are listening, listeners to the big technology podcast, probably not putting Yahoo at the forefront of innovation and cutting edge technology. but again, there's a lot there to work with.

I do think that we're just going to, you know, gravitate to become like Yahoo fan podcast. There must be people hungering for content. Like the latest in Yahoo Sports. Oh, damn. Tuning in. Should we do it? Do you think we could do an entire episode, just a Yahoo deep dive? Well, okay, here's what we'll do.

So Jim Lanzone has been, who's the CEO of Yahoo, has been on the podcast. podcast. I've known him for a lot of years. I can ask him to come on to do a Yahoo podcast, but I just need to be sure that there's audience, you know, there's audience interest in it. So, folks, if you want to have a full Yahoo podcast, go to the ratings on Apple Podcasts, hit the five stars. Say you love the 915 show, the September 15 show. If we get more than three five star ratings on that, I'll take that as a signal that we got to have. have gym on and then we can do a full yahoo show what do you think i like this i mean reading this actually brought me back to do you remember the mid 2010s yahoo revival under marissa mayer i think

maybe we call that this third act there probably but um what did they bought tumbler they they uh they made a lot of moves at the time i remember yeah they did didn't work out did not work out very well. So maybe this one will work out better. But it will, I don't know, I still think it's going to be an afterthought for a long time. So, but maybe not. We'll have to do a Yahoo-focused episode then to figure it out. Okay.

Speaking of companies in second acts, Flexport right now is going through a bit of one of those. We've had Ryan Peterson, the former and now, you know, current CEO of Flexport, which is a logistics company and logistics tech company. and um and Ryan left gave the company to Dave Clark who came from the Amazon side and Clark had the company on his own for a handful of months not even a year and Ryan Peterson has has come back so um there's a lot of factors I play here we talked a little bit about it on the show on Wednesday with Christy Coulter talking about Amazon we talked a little bit about Clark Ron John I've been getting texts from you for like the last week and a half being like

I think I learned something new. I'm, you know, doing more research about the flexport story. I mean, I guess, like, I want to frame this with a broader question, which is that, is this just broader upheaval of startups post-COVID trying to deal with the shocks? Or is the fact that this company has, like, you know, so publicly, like, back, you know, swung back and forth between CEOs over the past year, just more indicative of flexport and potentially just like, is this just like a simple story of picking the wrong person? to succeed a founder CEO.

I think what's so interesting about this story for me is, again, having an incredibly public CEO and then chairman and CEO again in Ryan Peterson, like, you know, Twitter celebrity essentially, like where everyone, you know, hangs on his every word, that and him very publicly tweeting about rescinding offers and needing to and a fortress balance. it makes it interesting. But in reality, I think this is similar to the Instacart drama we were just talking about is yet another story of a company that was perfectly positioned in the pandemic.

Not only was it perfectly positioned from a business standpoint in the explosion of e-commerce and the need for faster, more automated and logistics, it also had, again, a very public CEO. So those things together clearly brought its valuation and fundraising to levels that could not be maintained. And to me, so, and I'm listening to your podcast with Christy from Amazon on Wednesday, like her talking about, you know, again, as Dave Clark, the assassin, the idea of like, you know, enjoying firing people and just hanging around, I still wonder how much of it was a culture clash and how much of it was simply he can. at a time to that everything was inflated in terms of expectations. There was just another piece that said that revenue is down 70% year on year for the first half. So basically 2022 first half versus 2023 down 70%. Yeah, it's just a lot of companies that were positioned well during the pandemic.

It's are down. And so to me, I wonder how much of it was really cultural and how much of it was he just entered a battle he could. not win. And now Ryan Peterson's back. And again, in terms of the future of the company, it's maybe it will normalize and like Instacart is worth a reasonable amount now, maybe Flexport just pivots back to where a reasonable valuation relative to its revenue and growth. And then everyone's happy. Right. And I do think that it was like not only the fact that he couldn't win the battle, but it flamed out so quickly and so publicly. Also because he, He brought a leadership team in, you know, of all Amazonians, largely.

And people who had been at the old Flexport didn't like it. And it seems like this leadership team was obstinate and weren't willing to change. And ultimately, like, you have like a tough situation to begin with. If you're not nice, not flexible, sort of ends up being where you end up. yeah i i think probably what happened here yeah i think it's uh it's it's it's a it's it's a it's it's almost every story of kind of like large scale management change pandemic valuation uh twitter heavy CEO just yeah i think it's i think more is going to continue coming out and we're going to learn more and it's going to this is an interesting one to keep following definitely um sorry i know

we wanted to end on iPhone, we'll end on iPhone. But as we get close to that, I just need to ask you about Tom Brady and Delta. So Tom Brady is now not just a spokesperson for Delta, which is kind of old news that happened last week, but he's there helping as an advisor teaching the teams there about leadership, just as they rework their rewards program in a way that's really pissed off a lot of members of these Delta rewards. Now, okay, I'll admit, I think that flight rewards programs are like kind of a strange thing because they really matter to a very small portion of the population as everybody else has this like really disastrous experience on airplanes and flying, even though there's just a true modern miracle and very safe. But so to me, like those who get like way in the weeds on these flight programs, it's almost like,

Okay, crime me a river. But however, it has brought up a bit of a rebellion among the Delta gold medallion or whatever it is, status folks who are now anti-Tom Brady. Take us into the drama, Ron John. Yeah, well, I hope you're not calling out folks who spend a lot of time analyzing the minutia of flight awards programs because I am one of those people. And I spend some time on, I'm sorry, you know what, I'm proud. Proud medallies. and for life. So here's the way I look. If I flew all the time,

I would absolutely be optimizing this stuff because I feel like, you know, at a certain point, just the being on a plane all the time, it can really be soul crushing unless like it's made a little bit more pleasant. Sorry. Yeah, no, no, it is.

I've been flying a lot in the last year and a half, which is probably when I've been spending more time thinking about this stuff. But what's really interesting about this to me is, one, the Tom Brady angle, and I say this as a lifelong Patriots fan, my love for post-NFL Tom Brady sometimes goes up, sometimes goes down. However, Tom Brady is coming into Delta to not be a brand ambassador, but to actually give leadership lessons to the employees. I have never heard of this kind of arrangement. I don't know what it means. Or, you know, like big companies always bring in speakers and pay them a speaking fee

or maybe have some kind of thing like that. Why the CEO of Delta would go on air and make this like it's a big announcement was the most awkward, weird thing to me already. But yeah, but the outrage in the subreddits is Delta basically is just taking their rewards program and just slashing it, making it. it way less attractive, making it far less accessible for people in terms of lounges, in terms of free flights, in terms of upgrades, everything, and basically making it so you have to spend a lot more money, which is interesting to me because, again, the whole antitrust angle with

airlines is something probably early on that pushed me towards the topic of antitrust. It was airlines, because there's no other industry where the overall degradation of the entire experience is so clear to everyone who flies, yet the price goes up and the service gets worse. And it's all, it's an oligopoly. There's a few players, lack of competition, and because of that, it's, and it continues, and it doesn't get any better. And the demand is consistent as well, because people want to fly, especially post-COVID. So, so I think it's the perfect kind of encapsulation of what's wrong when you don't have competition in a market. And, And it's also the perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with corporate marketing when you do something as weird as bring in Tom Brady to give your entire company leadership lessons.

I don't know, man. If you were in a meeting and Tom Brady came in, just came and fired up troops, you wouldn't leave there being like, let's go. No, man. I want Aaron Rogers in there. You've just brought up the third rail for me. I've had a very, very difficult week. This might be the end of the margins, big technology relationship, I believe. No, that's good.

I would bring either Tom Brady or Aaron Rogers in here and let them dump up the troops. Maybe we can get him on. After Rogers went out, I will, I bet on the Jets. I actually bet like 15 bucks, I think it ended up paying out. It was about 8 to 1, but I don't know. I had a feeling. I was like, I was, uh, And it was an incredible game.

Do you think the Jets are above 500 this season? Yes, I do. Because I think that they're not going to stand still if the quarterback ends up being bad. They'll bring somebody else in who can win. With that defense and that special teams and the offensive talent, you can do it. Do you know who I think they should bring in? Who? To wrap up this second.

Tom Brady. Yeah, definitely. He knows the AFC East. He's available. He's clearly got time. he can take a delta plane from wherever he is to new jersey straight to the metal lands yeah and get going right away i support this um all right last let's talk about the iPhone um iPhone 15 is out was announced this week pre-order is open today you and i have both ordered the iPhone 15 i guess the big question is do you see

this as a megacycle for apple or is this just going to be another meh upgrade cycle for the iPhone leading to the big question of whether Apple is now really not as much of a growth company as it's been in the past three straight quarters of falling revenue looks like another one is going to come company really needs this iPhone 15 we talked about a lot last week so I'm curious what made you upgrade and what you think the prospects are for the rest of you know the world following suit this upgrade cycle and I've probably said this many times on this podcast as someone who waited in line for hours for the first iPhone. And I think upgraded every year until the iPhone 10. I had not upgraded since the iPhone 12. This is the first time.

So it's three years. To me, it actually, the bigger symbol of the iPhone 15 is I'm upgrading for the USBC charger. And just because it's been three years. I mean, it's literally, there's nothing of particular interest about the phone to me. It's just, it's time for me to do what I feel. It's the USBC is going to be worthwhile for me. But other than that, I really find nothing that interesting about the way they presented the iPhone. And, and I think, I mean, at a certain point, but I say this is someone who has AirPods, who just bought the Apple Watch Ultra, who has home pods in my house. So Apple's still taking plenty of my share of wallet. It's just that maybe phones don't need to be upgraded every year. Or at least it doesn't need to be an event.

It's moving on to focus on the Vision Pro, upgrade the things that maybe it's like AirPods get to buy every other year cycle, watch gets every other year cycle. But what that does to how people view Apple's numbers, it totally changes the entire. trajectory of what was once and the iPhone company, and it was the vast majority of their revenue. Well, you'll note that they don't even break out how many iPhones they sell anymore, just the total revenue. So I think that answers your question. And you're right. I mean, it is, it is, it's weird actually to continue to have these events. Like, you know, I remember as a reporter in San Francisco going to those reveal events, like for the seven and being like,

oh, this is amazing. You know, seeing the upgrades. Like, it doesn't have a button at the bottom. anymore. That's super cool. And they would take us on to this into the hands-on area. And there'd be like a thousand people with cameras, you know, Jocelyn and Tim Cook walks the floor. It was this big thing. And I remember, I saw the videos this week of people in the hands-on area. And I was like, we don't freaking need this. Like, it's the same thing. However, space-grade titanium. Ron John, I can't say no to that. Space-grade. I want, I need Johnny Ive to tell me about space-grade titanium otherwise i'm not interested light enough to get into space strong enough to withstand the elements space grade titanium on the is that really what they said yeah oh wow i uh wow

hey look we we both bought without even having to hear the pitch i know so at this point the products are selling themselves we can't really say anything i know i i actually pre-ordered at 805 a m uh and again To Apple's credit, and actually, in terms of the power of Tim Cook, killer Tim Cook in the ecosystem, is on my iPhone, and I have an Apple card, it's not, I don't use it as a primary credit card, but I have one, and I literally use it for the financing of Apple products, and it took like less than one minute to order, even say that I just want to trade in a phone, and it even is like, do you want to trade in? Ron Johns Roy's iPhone 12 Pro Max, click that. Okay, the new price is. And then financing, here's the exact amount. Double click on the right side to enable Apple pay, and it's done. And it's financed and you get 3% back with the Apple card.

Like that whole process was almost, it was scarily good. And it's impressive. Yeah, I had never pre-order before. And so I'm going to the pre-order and I get to check out. And it's like double click on the side of your phone to finish this purchase. Like see on my phone. There's already the checkout function. And I'm like, what the hell?

That is good. I'm, I still contend, Tim Cook would destroy either Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk in a cage match because look what he is built quietly without any fanfare, without any boasting. He's just the most killer ecosystem of, uh, company that's imaginable. But you know that doesn't count once you're in the octagon. It's all about here. Once you're in the octagon. Those are my fists for those who are listening. All right, everybody, thank you for listening. Thank you, Ranjan Roy for being here. We'll do it next week. By the way, we'll probably be having our 15s in hand at that point. It's the pickup time. So we'll do a quick little review, but we'll talk also about the week's news.

Plenty to go on. Plenty to discuss. Thanks again, Ranjan, for being here. Thank you. Thank you to everybody for listening. And thank you to LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. Always enjoy. Always great to be here with Ronchan and talk about the week's news. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.