Pivot - Facebook's New Money and Slack's New Valuation

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

This week, Kara is in New York! And Scott's in... France? So close yet so far as usual, our hosts chat about Facebook's venture into cryptocurrency, Tim Cook's Stanford commencement speech, and YouTube for kids. In wins and fails, looks like Slack is killing it, and a stressed out Sheryl Sandberg is decidedly not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Cannes. You're in Cannes? Cannes. Where are you? Cannes. Cannes. You're in France, right? You're in France.

How's it going? I'm the cote d'azur. What are you doing there? Why are you there? I'm mostly sort of like an accoutrement that makes people feel like they have some sort of faux PBS at their events. They invite – there's like two academics in Olive Can. It's me and Adam Grant, who is my nemesis, who I will someday – He's so nice. He's such a nice guy.

He's a wonderful guy. And what a head of hair he's got on him. That's a nice head of hair he's got. Oh, that hurts. Imagine me, but better in every dimension. He is. This guy, he gets invited to everything, and I'm always in my parlor too. But anyways, I'm the second academic they invite.

And they all invite me to their events to, I don't know, feel like they're more PBS or something. And it's like subscribing to The Economist. I think they think it's a good idea, and then the shit actually shows up every week. I show up. And by the way, all these things are named. If you end up sitting next to me, it means they think you're really interesting and boring because they stick me next to you. And the hosts always come up and say the same thing. They're like, you two will have so much to talk about.

And I'm like, oh, you got sat next to me. But you're there for an advertising conference, right? Is that correct? Because I've gone to it. I am not there on purpose. I was invited, but I declined to come. Well, it's a ton of fun. Yeah, it's called the What Advertising Sucks Least Conference is what they should really talk about it. And let's

celebrate the technologically illiterate and the poor who are stuck still watching advertising because anyone with any options gets to opt out. But they don't realize when I come to these events, Kara, that I drink. And when I drink, I dance and it's really awkward. So imagine, imagine a 54 year old white male heterosexual dancing is definitely a triumph over. It's a triumph of joy over any self-awareness. You can dance. And I can tell they're all looking at me and they're going, where's Kara? Why didn't we, why didn't we avoid the, invite the other one that doesn't drink? But anyways, I'm having a wonderful time.

There's rosé. There's a lot of rosé going on there, right? A lot of rosé. A lot. A lot of rosé. Where are you? A lot of rosé. You know, years ago when I went, all the big tech, the reason I did is Facebook had a big thing on the sand right there. Twitter did.

Snapchat. Snapchat actually always has a really cool thing. They had an art installation by Alex Israel this year. They always have something really neat. And it was much more internet heavy before. Was it this time? Oh, yeah. Their beaches keep getting bigger. I went to an event hosted by Joanna Coles, who's lovely, and Evan Spiegel. And he looks 14. I mean, the guy literally, he looks like my paperboy. That guy is really young looking. He is. Not that that's good

or bad. But so Snap and Twitter, I feel like are both kind of the comeback kids right now. I got that wrong. I thought they were history. But there seems to be a mood of, I want to call it cautious optimism. Everyone's sort of happy that the immunities are kicking in. I think deep down, even the other tech players, including Pinterest, are sort of happy that Facebook and Google are getting, I don't want to say their comeuppance, but there seems to be some immunities kicking in. So I feel like there's some balance here for the first time in a while. And, you know, it all washes down easily. But until the empire strikes back.

Anyway, let's talk about speaking of the empire striking back. Libra. Libra. Are you putting everything, are you all in on Libra? Explain Libra for the people who don't understand Libra. So Libra is Facebook's new currency or cryptocurrency. And from a branding standpoint, it's genius. So at an event like GAN, you have a tendency to conflate great marketing and great strategy

with good businesses and good people, right? We assume that great marketing connotes a great strategy. Because on the face of it, from a branding perspective, Libra is brilliant. I mean, even the name Libra is a measurement of weight from the Romans. It's where the British pound derives the symbol of their currency. It's just such a gorgeous, it's such gorgeous branding. And they literally sat down and said, okay, let's start with the assumption that nobody trusts us. How would we do this?

This is cryptocurrency. Explain what it is. It's a coin. It's a Facebook coin, essentially. Transactional. But it's strange in the sense that it's not crypto because they're talking about creating identity and regulatory bodies and going through the traditional players

such that the regulatory agencies are more comfortable with it. Because a lot of government agencies are uncomfortable with the fact of anonymity such that money laundering or funneling capital from bad actors to other bad actors is something that's very dangerous. So Facebook, in their eyes, tried to do everything right. They're like, okay, nobody trusts us. Let's assemble a supervisory board that's a nonprofit. We've told people we're not going to use it for targeting people. It's run by other large trusted agencies, this supervisory

body that includes Visa, MasterCard, a bunch of other people. And it kind of all makes sense. And the notion that they would be able to have some sort of coin that attacks the 500 billion, that's half a trillion dollar remittance industry where basically people are sending money to their families, that charges on average a 7% fee for you to send your money home to your relatives. I mean, this is an industry waiting to be disrupted. It makes all kinds of sense being able to tap on that cool item or that cool scooter on Instagram and immediately have it sent to you to be able to transfer money easily. I mean, if you've tried to send a wire to Europe, it's easier to get a mortgage. It's just so

difficult. So the idea is that a lot of the world does not have as easy as they do. We have lots of financial options here, including a company that Facebook owns, PayPal and Venmo, and we have credit cards and we have cash and we have bank and we have checks and everything else. But most of the world doesn't operate, especially when you're working on a global basis. To be able to buy things easily on Facebook, they've tried for years to make it easy. It hasn't been easy. Sending money back and forth, the unbanked, if you will, is a huge opportunity and a huge need globally. This thing makes all the sense in the world. There's only one problem.

What's the one problem? Let me guess. It's the same problem as the portal. It's from Facebook. And nobody trusts Facebook. take very much imagination to go to the scariest parts of history where the three pillars of tyranny or a takeover of a society are first you get control of the media then you get control of the money or the economy and then that leads to control of the military those are the three pillars of a takeover of a society and margaret atwood really in a genius way kind of said that

the fastest way this dystopian society wanted to go after the power of women was to just shut off their credit cards. So when we look at, okay, how have they handled the first leg of the stool, media? People are like, okay, not so great. Do we really want to give them access to the second leg of the stool and potentially make this coin the default currency? the default currency, if 50% of Facebook users all of a sudden started using this coin, then you potentially have a new reserve currency globally. And it's not even that people think that folks at Facebook are evil, which they may or may not be, but they haven't shown an ability to think through unintended consequences nor protect bad actors

from weaponizing their platform. And if you were to weaponize a global currency and start monkeying with it, you could have what capitalists fear more than war, and that is recession or some sort of global economic meltdown where all of a sudden all ATMs stop working and there's run on banks, et cetera. So you are today, and yesterday you saw a lot of people in Washington say, not so fast. Not so fast. And France, the France finance minister, a lot of people in Washington say, not so fast, guys. Not so fast. And France, the France finance minister, a lot of people were saying – I thought – Facebook is saying they've talked to all these people.

So this is just – they're just being public about it even though behind the scenes they knew everything. They did – they had the Switzerland thing, the independent body, the idea that there's more partners. They're trying to sort of put all the safeguards and guardrails in place or perceived guardrails. And so why do you think everyone all of a sudden was like, slow down? In fact, I'm just looking at a tweet, fool me once, shame on you, fool me umpteen times with a serial empty apologies, shame on us, the hubris of Facebook to even pitch this. And it says, it's a piece, Facebook's Libra must be stopped. Why do you think this reaction was? And what do you think it'll matter? Well, because if you ask Michael Jackson to babysit, anything that bad happens is your fault. And so okay, so deciding to let

deciding, deciding to let Facebook babysit the economy, anything bad happens, it's our fault. So it's a great idea, but perhaps it should be another entity that has demonstrated an ability. Like Amazon, perhaps? Amazon, who would be good at this? Kara, that's the gangster move, if Amazon comes up with a coin,

because they're already in transactions. The thing is, they don't have the global reach and encrypted backbone. But this is, I mean, you've is that's what i said i used the word gangster in my new york times column in case you're interested on this move you gotta read it i said gangster move this is the gangster move of the people who have brought us you know the the failure of democracy is now going to do this or something like that some line like that gangster yeah so here's the reality let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They want to go after the young bank. Of course, they're capitalists. They want people to spend more time on the platform.

There's all sorts of opportunities around transactions, but they've really thought through, how do we try and assuage some of the concerns that are legitimate? And everyone's just kind of regurgitating, saying, no, Mr. Jackson, we'd rather you not hang out with our kids. We trust you've had chemical castration and you've learned your lesson. But sorry, boss. It's just you're not getting near little Johnny and little Susie. It's just not going to happen.

What are you hearing? I mean, I feel sort of removed. I don't know. We'll see. I think everyone's sort of – I'm sort of like amazed that they made the move. Fine. Whatever. They're trying to show that they can still be innovative.

I think that's a big part of it is we can still roll out cool new products that are – I think that's part of it a little bit. And the other is I think David Marcus who runs this was at PayPal and knows all about this. He's their sort of resident expert in this area. Many want to pit Libra versus Bitcoin. In my mind, these two are not in the same category. Bitcoin is a de-correlated investment asset. Libra is designed to be a stable medium of exchange. I have been and remain a big fan of Bitcoin, but for very different purposes. So that was an interesting, you know, I think he's the co-creator of Libra and he's leading Calibra, which is the Facebook company that's in Libra.

And he used to run Messenger, PayPal, and he's been in finance for a while. So, interesting. But he wrote – he's sort of the face of this. Genius idea. It is. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, we recognize the road delivering this vision will be long. Our jobs won't be achieved in isolation.

We take coming together and forming a real movement around this pursuit. isolation we take coming together and forming a real movement around this pursuit our hope is to create more access to better cheaper and open financial services no matter who you are where you live what you do and how much you have so he's it's a really it's a very interesting rollout of calibra and libra um they wanted to have a dedicated regulated entity that that has privacy they say they're not going to share the data. That's the other thing. We've heard it loud and clear that you don't want social and financial data commingled. No, we do not. Who said we want – why even think of it in the first place? Anyway, it's going to be interesting to see what happens, and I think they're going to a lot of pushback. They definitely are, and I don't think it will assuage anybody,

all these things that they're doing. So speaking of someone who doesn't believe them, Tim Cook has come out from a speech at Stanford. What do you think? Well, he's doubling down on what is probably the best communication strategy of the last 12 months. And he's basically said, okay, we need to decou're different and double down on this notion around privacy that they have actually been pretty principled about and start going after the other guys. And he's probably the CEO with the most moral authority, I would argue right now, in America. Maybe since Indira Nooyi, I always mangle her name. But saying, look, big tech is, you can't take the credit without the responsibility.

That was a great, that was a great line. He's definitely going after these guys. We saw the same thing. Yeah, and he said, if you build a chaos factory, I loved the chaos factory idea. It was fantastic. Again, I also used it in the column of the Times. If you build a chaos factory, you have to be responsible for the chaos. And I just love that he, like, calls them a chaos factory. He doesn't make anything else the chaos. And I just love that he calls them a chaos.

He doesn't make anything else but chaos. I just love that. I thought that was a killer line. But, of course, what's interesting is people in Silicon Valley are reacting. They're like, Tim Cook doesn't like tech. Or, you know, why can't you be positive about tech? And he's a scold. I always hear he's a scold.

And so it's an interesting – I don't think so at all. I think not in the least. I think he's an adult is what he is. The only way you get to real significant progress in areas of real trouble like this, and this is your buddy Anand's quote. So Anand Giridharadatta said, you need class traitors. And basically Tim Cook has decided this is the right position to take for the world, even if it pisses off the folks at the country club or at whatever that Palo Alto breakfast place is they all hang out at. He doesn't hang out there. He's like working out at like four in the morning. You get my meaning. You feel me. You know what I'm saying.

I don't think he's part of this scene, but go ahead. He's basically said, look, I'm going to go after big tech because my market, I don't sell iPhones to big tech. I sell iPhones to the world. And the world is fed up with us, so I'm going to separate from us. I am not part of us. I'm something different. And it's a brilliant strategy because the other guys are all sitting there befuddled. You know, the only thing is the other guys are like, you know, Apple tracks you. You know, that's their big thing is Apple.

Apple is just as bad, this and that. They try to sort of fud the situation by saying he's not as good as he seems, you know, that kind of stuff. They're less bad. That's their answer. They're less bad. They're not... I know, but that's their answer.

That's their answer. I'm like, we're still focused on you and your shitty behavior. So it's interesting. It's an interesting reaction you get from them. But they pull. Which is always never the thing. The iPhone pulls 70 to 100 data points a day.

Android or free phones pull between 1,000 and 1,500. So they're bad, but they're about 5% to 6%. They're 94% less bad, if you want to talk about sheer data. Plus, I trust them with it. I do trust them with it. I don't feel like I'm going to get unnecessarily screwed by Apple. I don't think about that. You have to rank who you think you're going to get screwed by.

In a coin, I'd buy an Apple coin. I'd buy an Amazon coin. I don't think about that. You have to rank who you think you're going to get screwed by. In a coin, I'd buy an Apple coin. I'd buy an Amazon coin. I wouldn't buy a Facebook coin. You had that guy, by the way, you kicked off his campaign when you interviewed him on MSNBC and when he said, I wouldn't be in that position.

And the other thing is, the guy in the worst position in the world is the guy who was the head of Portal. Someone interviewed him at Code, the guy charged with the Facebook Portal product. Oh, Andrew Bosworth. Andrew Bosworth. Yeah, okay. So Mr. Bosworth, never in the history of business has someone been set up to fail as badly as you, Mr. Bosworth. Because you could have released, he literally could have released a vaccine to polio and it's going to fail.

Because there's no way. Here's Mark Zuckerberg. I'm going to put tape there's no way here's mark zuckerberg i'm going to put tape over every camera on my computers but no let me take my camera into your house i mean it's just that i would not the hypocrisy here is so thick it's frightening again apple's the only one i let in there you go i have i have an ero and now that amazon bought it i'm a little weary i have a ring i a little weary It does make you nervous. And my son, as you know, has unplugged every Google device that we have in our home.

Because he doesn't trust Google? Everything. No. But he trusts Apple. Even though the house, yeah, even though his other mother worked for Google. Yeah, he doesn't trust Google at all. And what about Amazon? Amazon, absolutely not.

Really? He unplugs everything. He unplugs everything he maybe he could be one of those like off the grid people but he doesn't like any of it i think he's right and speaking of which uh the fdc is investigating youtube over children's videos and how they've been abused obviously this was the shoe that was going to drop i think it was pretty clear when they started discussing how they're handling uh videos involving children on the site. And they've been taken advantage of by pedophiles. So parent to parent, you have boys, two boys that are a little bit older than mine. I have eight and 11.

I know yours are several years older. Have you had any experience in terms of your boys and objectionable content on YouTube? They don't post a lot on YouTube. So that's not an issue. And I don't do a lot of videos. So that's another issue. But here's the deal. I definitely see people contacting them on some of these services, and they always show me their phone like, who is this?

Who just left me this text message or who left me this message on this thing? And I'm like, do not respond. You know what I mean? There's a little bit of that, and I don't know why that happens. And I don't know if it's pedophiles. I don't know anything. I don't know quite what they're doing to get them to that point. But it's happened at least a dozen times.

And so, you know, I think these kids are using these platforms and they're accessible. That's all. And I think that they have to, you know, all these companies that they're taking so long to get to this issue. It seems like talk about lowanging fruit in terms of safety, this should be the most safe area. But you know, they're not that interested in the safety of gays and lesbians. They're not interested in the safety of women. And so even though they do say they are, and I think at their heart of hearts they are, the actions they take sort of say they aren't, or it's one of the many issues they've got to deal with that they have a hard time handling.

Yeah, I've always really, I've always loved YouTube. I personally really enjoy it. It's been good for my career. And last summer, we found what I'll loosely refer to as objectionable content on my eight-year-old's iPad on YouTube. Actually, it's his brother's iPad. And I know for all of you out there thinking, well, it's your fault as a parent letting your eight-year-old on an iPad.

Yeah, that's the whataboutism there. Just so you know, that means you don't have kids because your 11-year-old has to have an iPad because all of his classmates have it. And once your 11-year-old has an iPad, the eight-year-old has to have access to it. And I looked at how this objectionable content came up. And he had typed in Harry Potter nude, N-U-D-E, and this really crazy upsetting content came up. And I thought if YouTube and all their genius hasn't figured out a way or Google such that they can stop really objectionable content coming up around any modification of Harry Potter, then I would argue that really isn't a priority.

And I thought it was very upsetting. So the idea that they're trying to separate to a new YouTube kids, I think it's a good idea. The other thing is, I don't think we should accept that we age gate all kinds of things. I couldn't get into R-rated movies when I was 16. I had to wait until I was 17. So if movies can figure out a way to keep 16-year-olds out of objectionable content, YouTube and Google with tens of billions of dollars in free cash flow can figure it out. There is age-gating across all elements of our society and media.

These guys should be able to figure it out. For some reason they've decided they make all sorts of excuses and all of the excuses are Latin for we want unfettered content and unfettered business model. They should absolutely be able to age-gate. It's the same thing on a lot of things.

They want unfettered. That's a really good way to put it. They just don't want to be responsible for monitoring anything. You know, and again, it's like I always think about it, and I think I've talked about this, that it's like they've allowed people

to think that's the way it is. You can do anything you want, you know, anywhere at a time. And so it's like giving your children sugar, sugar, sugar, and then saying, oh, you know what? You can't eat donuts,

and they go crazy. Like that's why they're getting all this crazy, which I think is the time. And so it's like, give me your children sugar, sugar, sugar, and then saying, oh, you know what? You can't eat donuts. And they go crazy. Like, that's why they're getting all this crazy, which I think is the problem. But what do you think is going to happen to the FTC? Well, maybe we'll talk about that predictions. I don't know. All right. I'm not sure. You don't know? We'll see if our FTC has any juice. You think they will. I don't think they do. After the break, wins and fails. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim. And we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees. And it takes forever to build a campaign?

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Do you have any? I've been doing Wins and fails. Do you have any? I've been doing all the talking here. Do you have any wins and fails? I think the win – no, that's okay. You do that all the time. It's okay. You're used to it. You're very smart.

That's called pivot. I'm used to it. That's called pivot. I think – I know. I know. I know. So I think the Slack IPO, I think that will be interesting. I think it's a great product.

I wonder – looking at the finances, I'm a little worried about them losing so much money. And I do still think they should get bought. That's always been my thought. But I think that was a great win for Stuart Butterfield. It started off as a company. I visited him in Vancouver. He had a gaming company, and I actually blank on the name every time. And it was a gaming company that failed, and they had made Slack as a communication system for the gaming company,

and they turned that into a business. And it was good that their VCs – and actually it was Andreessen Horowitz – just let them keep the remaining $5 million they had left and built Slack. And now obviously everybody is getting a payoff. So I think that is a win in my opinion. I agree. So hold on. Stuart Butterfield. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume this is a white male.

Stuart Butterfield? Isn't that the go out on a limb and assume this is a white male, Stuart Butterfield. Isn't that the butler from The Family Affair? Isn't that the Von Trapp family? What is that, Stuart Butterfield? Oh, my God. I think we've met the whitest man in the world. The butler from Family Affair, which you're dating yourself, is Mr. French. But go ahead.

Let me guess. He likes to speak at TED and he wears cardigans. Okay. So my win is Chewy. Chewy.com went public. $14 billion market cap up, I think, 80% on the first day of trading. It connotes something really interesting, and that is, is there a strategy or that there may be a strategy for carving out space in the world of e-commerce

as a distribution platform for other companies? And specifically going after aspirational distribution. Now, what do I mean by that? space in the world of e-commerce as a distribution platform for other companies, and specifically going after aspirational distribution. Now, what do I mean by that? Amazon is algorithmically driven. Aspirational distribution. Okay. All right.

Okay. Well, okay. So Rolex. Put a parenthesis. There you go. Rolex won't distribute through Target, and they spent a ton of money trying to figure out at LVMH, and they built out 700 stores. Apple, the gangster business strategy of the last 20 years, let's invest in distribution that matches their foots to the quality of our brand. And I was with AB InBev earlier this morning,

and they asked, well, what would you do if you were AB InBev? And I said, full stop. You have amazing brands. You have amazing product. But where's the Sephora of drinks and alcohol? I said, and I use these exact words. I said, where I buy beer, I'm half expecting to get shot. It's terrible distribution. It's gas stations, it's liquor stores. It feels really sketchy. Where is the Sephora? Where is the restoration hardware,

the drinks industry? So distribution matters. And because of their algorithmically driven merchandising model, essentially Amazon is terrible distribution. It's kind of low end, lowest price, convenience. Okay, we get it. It's sort of the Target and the Walmart times 10 of the internet.

But in the pet food industry, you and I can both relate to this. Every year people spend more money on their pets. It's been the category that keeps on giving. more money on their pets. It's been the category that keeps on giving. But if you look at the distribution, it largely bifurcates into these large, big box Petco and PetSmart that aren't that aspirational or to family run pet stores that smell funny. There's no William Sonoma of pet stores. And so they saw an opportunity, all these high end organic brands where they like love the lamb to death before they chop it into parts for Muffy or whatever. All these high-end... Like Blue Buffalo.

Exactly. Blue Buffalo, that's my... All these high-end products need better distribution. And Chewy said, we're going to get massively over-invested in consumer service. We're going to pull a play out of Amazon. The CEO there is from Amazon. We're going to lose money like a bandit, but we're going to have incredible service, but we're going to cater to high-end brands. The learning here is that probably the best way to try and combat Amazon or carve out a space is to go after, say, where the aspirational point of distribution online. Zalando did it in Europe

pretty successfully, but good for them. They have a $14 billion market cap, and I fail to see how they're going to grow into that as the three key components, Cara, of the real gangster stock appreciation, I believe, are one, explosive growth, two, recurring revenue, and then three, network effects. And they really only have one, although they do have a membership model that works potentially pretty well,

so two of the three. But it's hard to see how they go into that market cap. But bottom line, it's great to see an e-commerce company doing well. It's also great to see... May I just say, is this Pets.com? May I just ask, is this Pets.com reborn? Oh gosh, that hurts. Is this Pets.com? I don't think so. These guys have billions of dollars in revenue, huge customer loyalty, and they're losing money. But Pets.com might have been right. It might have been right, correct?

One of my first companies got bought by Patopia, their competitor. I don't know. No, Patopia, remember? Yeah, I do. Trust me, I remember Patopia. I still have a lot of shares in Patopia if you want to buy them. But I don't think,

yeah, I think this is a better business model. It's a better run company, more top line revenue, growing faster. This is a real business. And it's worth something. I just don't know if it's a better run company, more top line revenue, growing faster. This is a real business. And it's worth something. I just don't know if it's worth $14 billion, but only the one of two sole unicorns in my home state, Florida. Quick trivia question. Can you name the other one? Chewy.com is one. Miami. There's one other. Think about it. Third largest economy or third largest state in the union. We only have two unicorns. Do you know the second? Hangingchads.com.

Hanging Chads. Stealing elections.com. There you go. That's us. Disney.com. It's Magic Leap, the VR company, which I think is going nowhere fast. It's right down there.

We'll see about that. A fail. Do you have a fail? Well, so my fail was going to be Cinder's fear-mongering about unintended consequences. But I've got a new one. Yesterday, Sheryl Sandberg was in Cannes talking about – She was in Cannes. Cannes.

What do you call it? It's Cannes. What are you calling it over there? No, it's not even – I thought it was Cannes. Cannes. Okay, good. And I found out from my driver. It's not – it's Cannes. Cannes. Like you even. I thought it was cans. Cans. Okay, good. And I found out from my driver. It's gone.

Gone. Like you're angry at somebody. Gone. Gone. Okay. Anyway. It's gone. Whatever.

Con is fine. So my loser is Sheryl Sandberg. As in Chaka. Chaka. Chaka Khan. No, no, no. Not even close. Chaka Khan.

I feel for you, Kara. Go ahead. Sheryl Sandberg. I feel for you. She's in Khan. You should see my moves. She flew all the way over there. You should see my moves when Chaka Khan comes on.

Oh, my God. It's time to spread a little sky. Back to your dancing. It's time. It's awesome. I look like I literally. That is something I hope never to happen, that I'm anywhere near your dancing. Just imagine.

That is my goal. Just imagine Ichabod Crane having a grand mal epileptic seizure. That is what it's like to watch the big dog bust a move. Okay, so Sheryl Sandberg getting one of her softball interviews. And they're like, how has the last year been for you? And she paused and she looked at the audience stopfully and said, it's been hard. It's been hard. So anyways, Sheryl Sandberg is my loss, my fail for figuring out a way to retool gross negligence on a cosmic scale into executive stress.

Has it been hard on you, Sheryl? Has it been really hard on you? Who was the interviewer? Who's the interviewer? Oh, I don't know. Some attractive woman in a sleeveless dress known as a journalist from every business news network in the world. in the world. Anyways, who probably went to McGill or Kellogg and is a very thoughtful

person who's like an airline pilot in the 70s and that her best days of glory are behind her like every other business news anchor. But anyways, it's been very hard. You thought she was not as... She got not good reviews for it, I'll tell you that. She didn't get good reviews for it.

It's been hard on her. It's been hard on her. Really? It's been hard on you? Well, guess what, it's been hard on her. It's been hard on her. Really? It's been hard on you? Well, guess what? It's been hard. How about all of the women who are slowly but surely losing their reproductive rights at the hands of an illegitimate president that you helped elect because of your gross negligence? It's been pretty hard on them, Cheryl. All right. Okay. I'm angry. Fail. Where's the rosé? Where's the rosé? You need to have water. You need to have gallons. I have no excuse to be angry right now.

It is beautiful here. I like that people are coming up to you wondering where I am. We're like conjoint twins that have been recently separated. They see me and they smile and they go, where's Kara? Like we hang out together all the time. They literally think that you and I just roll around all the time and find a mic and start complaining about big tech. That's how we live our lives, according to everybody here. That's right.

That's exactly right. Well, I hope you enjoy yourself. So, Scott, before I leave you to have Rosé with Sheryl Sandberg, I would like a prediction from you. What's your prediction? That'll never happen. That's my prediction. Yeah. So I think that the two best performing IPOs

or new issuances of 19, and again, I think there's three critical criteria here. Explosive growth, recurring revenue, and network effects. I think Zoom and the company that did their direct listing this week, Slack, have all of those three things. And I have trouble finding all of those three things in any of the other.

All the other IPOs or direct listings have two of the three, maybe with the exception of Spotify, but I got that wrong. So I'm very bullish. People always say I'm so negative. I'm very bullish on both Slack and Zoom. So look to them to perform well over the next 12 months. Even though Slack has those revenue issues. I mean, there was slowing revenue growth, even though it's quite spectacular, slowing.

And also, they're losing money. You're not worried about that. You don't think investors will be concerned? I can't tell you the kind of informal net promoter score that I've registered across small companies I work with around Slack is that it's almost like this virus that takes over the organization, and people love it and can't live without it. So it, to me, seems like a great product. Great product. All right, and then where are you with Uber still? Uber and Lyft are still waiting for their massive implosion.

We're going to lose the value of Ford Motor between the value destruction we're going to see at Uber and Lyft over the next 12 months. All right. That's right. That's exactly right. Well, I hope you enjoy yourself. So next week, we have a guest host stepping in for you, Casey Newton of The Verge, who's written an amazing piece speaking on Facebook on the moderators and their terrible lives of moderating all the dreck and toxicity that flows over the Facebook platform. He's going to talk about that and more. Where are you going to be? Where's your destination?

You know I don't like it, and it makes me feel insecure when you're bringing people more credible and more talented than me. This is just talking about that article you wrote. That article was great. That was a hell of an article. Yeah, it was good. Good stuff. Where are you going to be, Scott? Are you traveling more?

I'm going to be in Greece. I head to Greece on Saturday morning. How interesting, because I'm coming to France tomorrow. What are you doing in France, Cara? I'll just miss you. I'm taking my lovely girlfriend on a vacation. Go on. Say more.

Say more. I know. And then I'm going to Brussels to talk to the Brussels regulators. I'm going to London to do podcasts with all kinds of powerful people there, possibly Sarah Kahn and others, Carol Cadwallader. I'm going to be doing a lot of work too besides my sojourn in Paris. Oh, my God. Impressing your new girlfriend with France and then heading to Brussels to do some high-end –

you're a saucy little minx. You're trying to show off. You're throwing your feathers out there. You're like, I'm a peacock. Check out mommy. Check out mommy. Oh, this is good. This is good.

I think I'm just going to have some oysters. My girlfriend speaks French fluently, so that's going to be fun. Of course she does. She knows how to say con, and I will ask her how to say it properly. All right. Neither of us should be in Paris in any way, but she can go. It'll be nice. I'll just be quiet next to her and eat crepes quietly in the corner.

Anyway, thank you, Scott. I'll miss you. The week you're gone, but I'll be back. Do you mean that? That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Do you mean that? Do you really mean that? Yes, I do.

I hope you do. Oh, that makes me feel nice. I feel warm all over. No, I'm just trying to lull you. No, no. Just go get some rosé and hang out with Sheryl Sandberg. You miss me. You both had a hard year.

Yeah, me and Sheryl. Go find Sheryl and share rosé with Sheryl Sandberg. That would be a really nice move. Well, me and Cheryl. Go for it, Cheryl. And Cher Rose was Cheryl Sanders. That would be a really nice movie. You know, it's been hard. What? It's been hard. It's been hard on me. You can pay for it with Libra.

There you go. You can pay for it with Libra. It's all going to be good. Anyway, Scott, have a good time. Thank you. Thank you so much. Camila Salazar produced our show today. Nishad Kerwa is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Eric Johnson. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. And if you like this week's episode, leave us a review. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees? And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you,

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