Pivot - "Woke" is the 2019 business strategy

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

Kara and Scott are back together again! This week they catch up on Jeff Bezos' divorce and his not so hot texting skills (hey alive girls!). We're pretty sure Gillette listens to Pivot because they took Scott up on one of his predictions; they used a social justice trend in their latest marketing campaign. Meanwhile, during this weeks senate confirmation hearing, Attorney General nominee William Barr got a surprising amount of questions -- from both sides of the aisle -- about enforcing antitrust laws and big tech. And, let's face it, @AOC, aka Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is winning the Internet.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi everyone, this is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, back from Hawaii and now in frigid Washington, D.C. And I'm Scott Galloway, here to publicly disclose for the first time that I am in a relationship with Jeff Bezos. It could happen, Kara. Hey, alive girl. It could happen. By the way, I don't know what it means, but I think I've been upgraded to the next level of prime membership because I just got a picture of someone's junk. Oh, you know what, Scott? As usual, you take a very delicate situation and make it horrible.

You're in Paris. I'm only going to give you time off because you're in Paris right now. I'm so jellied. Yeah, I'm in a basement somewhere in the City of Lights. But by the way, just back to the whole Bezos thing. We're going to get to Bezos. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm so excited about that. I can't hold back. I'm so ready.

Go for it. What have you heard? What's going on here? Well, he's not a very good texter, right? Let's just be clear about that. Although I'm going to get to that in a second. I think, you know, I know, I used to know them very well, and I haven't spent a lot of time with them since they both become zillionaires,

or any time. But in the early days, I did. I spent a lot of time with them. And Mackenzie Bezos is a wonderful and smart and very integral part of the beginning of Amazon, as I recall. And she also, I don't see that she will be, this will be a very, I'd be surprised if it burst out into a horrible fight. It's not her nature and it's not his nature either.

They seem to have gotten ahead of it. It looks like they just were married and then he met someone else. I'm not really, you know. I don't want to go into who did what to whom because I think marriages are complicated and we really don't know what happened. But I think the focus for me is that I don't think it'll affect the business.

I think the issues, I think probably anyone who's an investor is the focus. He needs his focus. Where is his focus and stuff like that. And so anytime you have personal issues and he's got four kids and obviously a new relationship,

there's going to be questions about where his focus is. And I think the same thing happened with Sergey Brin at Google, although he was not nearly, in fact, not at all, a part of the critical management staff at Google. But you see this happen to VCs, to CEOs, and things like that. I think the only thing business people think is, where's the focus? And how will it affect the stock? I don't think it will affect the stock at all or anything else.

So that's how I come down. Where are you, Scott? It appears they have mutual shared interest in that they don't want – they're both large shareholders of a company. They don't want this to spill out into the public. I thought the press release was awfully strange or the thing that he posted on his Facebook page. Well, he did that to get ahead of the National Enquirer. But it was so – you kind of knew something was up because – I don't know. I'm sure you read it, but there was a sentence in there saying, we look forward to new ventures and adventures together. And I thought that describes

divorce perfectly. You know, that it's not, they probably own a lot of stuff together. I'm guessing they do. They probably have a lot of, I know, but it's like, well, you know, Sergey Brennan and Wajewski do, they own like half a town and they have investments all over the place. So they, you have to stay and they have children obviously over the place. So you have to stay, and they have children, obviously, besides which is the best investment. But I think, yeah, I know, it was odd. I think they were just rushing. I think that was a rush job.

You know what I mean? Like, what are we going to do? What I found fascinating is that he didn't imagine that he was going to be the subject of scrutiny by Trump-affiliated people, especially with the Washington Post ownership. And I think they were probably a little caught like, oh, they're following us. You know, he's not the subject of interest.

And the fact that a man who puts echoes in everybody's home and listening devices in everyone's home doesn't realize he could be easily hacked in some way. Yeah. And it just goes to show uh you know everyone everyone's human right and i don't i don't want to make excuses for the guy but i think we all sort of assume that bezos was kind of the least human and that is he seemed somewhat infallible the story the story the the frame the picture it just all was pretty perfect yeah very much so and you know you get it's easy get, it's easy

to be, it's easy to be glib about it. And then you think about, well, they have four kids and I know, I know you've been through it. I've been through it. And, but that press release, they made it sound like their divorce wasn't, you know, it wasn't a tragedy and a breakup of a family, but they were going on a Disney cruise to the Bahamas. The whole thing just sounded. When Gwyneth Paltrow started doing them, remember? Conscious uncoupling. Whatever the hell that was.

Yeah, you know, ups and downs. But another thing that was interesting was the focus on the text and how it became a Twitter meme, obviously. It was kind of crazy. And it was interesting. I ran into someone yesterday who said, I wish I could text like that. Like that I was in love with so much that I texted like that. Even And it was interesting. I ran into someone yesterday who said, I wish I could text like that. Like that I was in love with so much

that I texted like that. Even though it was super awkward. The hey, alive girl, whatever that meant and things like that. I think he's sexy. I think he's romantic and vulnerable. I thought it was very sweet. It was very nice. I think he's dreamy. Someone was like, if I was the world's richest man, I would be like

have like 93 super model girlfriends. And it was interesting. It was very sweet if I was the world's richest man, I would be like, have like 93 supermodel girlfriends. And it was interesting. It was very sweet. I thought it was very sweet. Yeah. So there you have it. There you have it. Best of luck to all of them.

Love is a constantly turning something. There you go, Kara. That is right. There you go. But you're right. He becomes human. He becomes more human, for sure. Yeah.

Also, I'm curious on your take. My sense is that the media has actually shown a great deal of restraint and is being pretty, I don't know, old school about this and not. Yeah. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Oh, my gosh. I mean, it's not like Harvey. It's not like, you know, it's just, you know, it's so not given how all the revelations this year,

I mean, including at Amazon with its own executives, you know, Roy Price and the whole thing like that. That's like, that's different. That's malevolent. This is just human beings relationships, right? This is just midlife crisis. Yeah, or something. You know, the bulking up might have been a sign, I suppose.

But, well, it's just, or the, I don't know. I just think it's, I think as a reporter, you're like, oh, we had, let me very briefly tell you. When we were covering what happened with Sergey Brin, I was very, when they called to talk, they essentially told us what was going on. And when I, at first I was like, no, thank you. We're not writing about this because it's not our area of people breaking up. And the only thing of interest was the stock, right? That he had a certain amount of stock that was controlling shareholder stock. And so that was of interest.

And then the second shoe dropped is that he was seeing someone who had, literally I had just been seen with another executive at google who was going out with another executive google so and that guy left uh hugo who's now at facebook and it was at that one that then it was like oh great this is like invade it's a whole workplace thing and so then we did write about it but it was it was definitely it it was hard to do we felt we had to think about what was important. In that case, a major executive who was running its Android division left because of this romance drama that was going on at Google.

And then there were issues of things in the workplace. This guy was, you know what I mean, stuff like that. But that was more after the Yugo thing happened. I think that was, it became pertinent. It became much more pertinent. So, yeah, don't love writing these. I can't, I tell you, I don't like, I don't want to care what people do

unless it affects their business. But yeah, you're right. People are very prim and proper and stuff about it. And, you know, people don't like to judge. People try not, I mean, even though the press seems super judgy, they don't like to judge. But speaking of judging,

tell us your virtue signaling thing turned out to be, here we have a big thing this week. Yeah, we talked about this, Cara, before you went to Kauai. By the way, how was Hawaii? It was beautiful. Was it nice? It was beautiful. There was some flooding in Hanalei where I was.

But it was beautiful. It's gorgeous I love Hawaii it's one of my favorite places on earth I did a lot of hiking some stand up paddle boarding I don't swim

I don't like to swim but I even went into the ocean did some boogie bar whatever they're called boogie boarding so yes it was great

and the food was great and the pineapples obviously were delicious so it was great good for you I enjoyed your podcast with John Lovett. Yeah, I did like it.

Although I'm a little bit jealous. Were you jealous? You were jealous. For listeners who didn't catch it, let me just summarize it. So you would say, John, are there going to, who is the Democratic nominee going to be? And he would say something like, well, I really don't know.

I'm not in the business of predictions. And you would go, oh my God, you're so thoughtful. Can I rub your feet? I mean, I thought you guys were going to start making out. No, we're not gay. That was ridiculous. That was totally ridiculous. Not that there's anything wrong with two gay people getting together.

Oh, my gosh. I've never even heard of that guy. His bird box rant was fantastic. Come on. It was very good. I admit it. It was good. You're just jealous.

A little bit. Let's get to virtue signaling. I'm giving you a compliment good. You're just jealous. A little bit. Let's get to virtue signaling. I'm giving you a compliment here. I'm trying to give you a compliment. Other than success, looks, and intelligence, that guy has nothing on me. He has nothing on me. Okay, virtue signaling. So we talked about we're going to see.

We made a prediction that at 19 we're going to see a lot of virtue signaling or a lot of woke as a business strategy. So explain what that means for the people who don't understand virtue signaling sure so 70 of our elected officials in the senate at least are represent 30 of the population that a lot of red states don't have a big population so politically conservative values are over represented but economically um kind of progressives are capturing the majority of the income. So there's a very smart, if you just do the math, there's a solid shareholder-driven business strategy in promoting and being very open about your progressive values. Because the bottom line is that audience is the one that's captured the majority of the income gains over the last 10 years. So you see Dick's banning assault rifles.

You see, what's the big one? Gosh, I'm missing. Oh, Nike, the big one with Colin Kaepernick. And then most recently, just two days ago, literally the Gillette ad. The Me Too movement against sexual harassment. Is this the best a man can get? Is this the best a man can get? Yeah. You know, the best of... Yeah. Basically saying, you know, really calling out men on some of these issues.

And I'm kidding. Have you seen the ad? It's been going on far too long. We can't laugh it off. What I actually think she's trying to say. Making the same old excuses. Yes, I love it. I made my sons watch it.

One of them who seems to argue with me about it, saying it was man bashing, and the other loved it. My older son loved it. I thought it was great. I actually watched it again because I wanted to, because when I had this debate with my son, I was like, it actually was, and it said, we believe men was great. I actually watched it again because I wanted to, because when I had this debate with my son, I was like, it actually was, and it said, we believe men are great.

They did say it several times. I think people only saw the guys on the barbecue saying boys will be boys, that part. But every depiction of the good men, you know what it was? It was bad men bashing. It certainly was that. That's okay. I'm good with that.

I think most men should be good with that. All men should be good with bad men bashing. I think most of the men depicted were good, like the guy who was talking to his daughter, the guy who rescued the kid from the bully in front of his son, or the father who pulled the two people apart.

Every example is a man doing something laudable in the thing. I loved it. I know it was manipulative to sell. I know it's to sell to women. Women loved it, which was fascinating. I tweeted about it. I said, I know this is marketing, and I know that I'm being manipulated, but it's not since the Kodak commercial, which is the Paul Anka song,

Good Morning History. You remember that song? Yep. The Time of Your Life. I had not been so moved by an ad. Wow. I have sons. I have sons.

I think about them a lot. Yeah. It's caused a ton of controversy. Has it caused a ton of controversy? There was a good story in the Daily Beast that showed the people that were saying there was controversy had like four followers and linked to think like i have a feeling it's not i think it's just a couple of loud bad men on twitter essentially versus uh but i then my son had the reaction so my so i can see what did you think did you were you like insulted as a man um I was conflicted by it because I think that I think the dialogue is an important one I like P&G

I love it when companies take risks like this I think it shows a willingness to move outside their comfort zone it wasn't a safe thing to run so I think it's you know hats off to them I didn't like the execution on it. Because? Why? It felt a little, I don't know, a little hitting you over the head with it. I felt it was a little passe. And I worry that, I don't worry that, but in every, it feels like white heterosexual men have become the generally accepted oppressors in our society. And I wonder if that's... Which is factually true. Which you think is accurate.

Okay. And they feel bad when we point it out now. See, people are pointing it out now. The I feel bad things. I'm sorry. It's always the people with the gun to the head of society that say they're the victims. But go ahead. Yeah.

I'm not sure, though. I'm not sure. What do you think it does? So in terms of moving the debate forward, you think the progress is that your sons see it and it educates them? You think that it... I think it was interesting that one thought it was great

and he understood he was being manipulated. He also was like, yeah, it was one of those manipulative ads. But he liked it. He liked the messaging in it. And he thought it was good. He was well done. And my other son was wary of it. Like, why are they picking on men?

Why are they doing this? And I said, I want him to watch it again because when I watched it again, I actually thought, no, they really aren't. They are. But it's how you see something.

But I do like that geladas do it. Like, I love ads like this. They engage you. They make you feel something and they make you talk about something. So I loved, I had this amazing debate and discussion with my son about it. So in that way, they engage you. They make you feel something and they make you talk about something. So I loved, I had this amazing debate and discussion with my son about it.

So in that way, it was great. And I don't know if it was quite as gorgeous as Nike's Colin Kaepernick ad, but, you know, it wasn't as beautifully wrought as that one, but it was pretty good. It was, I don't know. I don't know.

I'm not an ad person. You're more, that's more your area. It's spilling over, though, into tech. So, Satya Nadella announces that they're going to allocate a half a billion dollars to try and help with housing affordability on the soft tissue of Amazon who fought the tax in Seattle such that it was going to help fund some low-income housing. But these guys, essentially, they're kind of pulling out. They're battling with their conscience. They're saying, we're the good guys. There was the Facebook with the $300 million.

I didn't think that was very much money at all, actually. You weren't impressed with that. I like $500 million of Microsoft, but I'd like a billion. I want everyone to start with a billion, and then we can go up from there. That's my feeling. I think it's great that Satya did this. I'm not sure what I think of the Facebook thing yet

because I'm not sure what they're up to. And it seems like it's very hooky into Facebook. But I would like them, you know, I have an expression, you're so poor all you have is money. And I think it's, we'll talk later about the column I wrote about Alexandria Ocasio, but she's managed to get people to start talking about this issue of the really rich people grabbing for everything that I think is really catching fire.

And I think in a way she's doing it in exactly the right way. Speaking of really rich people, so I'm headed to the conference. I think we're actually, when I met, I'm headed to DLD in Munich. And I'm doing- You're going to Davos after that? No, I haven't been invited to Davos since I was 30. I peaked when I was very young and I got invited when I was 29, 30, and 31. And I haven't been invited back since.

I hate that place. It's rich people licking each other up and down in the frigid cold weather. But go ahead. I like the analogy when your guest said that it's a fire safety convention that just invites a bunch of arsonists. Hey, everybody, to solve the world's problems,

let's get all the people who have fucked it up together in one place in the mountains. That's funny. But anyway, so I'm doing the keynote on Monday. I recognize I'm boasting. And you know who's doing it on Sunday? Who? It's Sheryl Sandberg. Oh. Will you sit in the front row for me and videotape

that, please? And the theme of the conference is optimism and courage. So I'm titling my talk Pessimism and Cowardice. What do you think? I love it. Oh, good, good. I need you to go to the Sheryl Sandberg. I want you to, I want, and cowardice. What do you think? I love it. Oh, good, good. I need you to go to the Sheryl Sandberg. I want to hear about it.

I want your thoughts. I want to talk about it next week. All right? You have to do that. It'll be interesting. She's been getting out a lot more. I've been hearing. She was at CES, I think.

And so it's interesting. But before we finish this section, William Barr, you wanted to talk about it because, not because of the whole Mueller thing, because he talked about that a lot. And he was trying to seem like he wasn't crazy. That seemed to be I am not crazy and I will be strong kind of thing. Although who knows with these people. But talk about why you think this is important.

Well, we thought that – so everyone was sort of expecting a lot of questions around protecting Mueller. And he essentially said, yeah, I think this investigation should come to its, you know, should be protected and should kind of go where it goes. So the thing that came out of it that was sort of unexpected was that three senators, Republican senators, all brought up the issue and asked for his viewpoint on whether tech had gotten too big. And that the concentration of power was detrimental to competition and privacy. And his viewpoint was clearly that this is something that warrants additional scrutiny, most likely from the FTC. And everyone's been talking about the DOJ. And the FTC, in some ways, for reasons I don't entirely understand, might have more teeth around doing something here expeditiously. So just going back to another prediction, in addition to kind of woke as a business strategy, we talked about that 2019 might actually be the year that the breakup of big tech happens. And

it looks like the attorney general is kind of on board with that. And this might be a rare bipartisan issue because- Yeah, let's listen to newbie Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri. He is the former AG of Missouri, and he beat out Claire McCaskill. Let me ask you more broadly about the question of antitrust and mergers. And you gestured towards this earlier in your testimony. I'm increasingly worried that the department is not enforcing vigorously the antitrust statutes in many sectors of the economy, not just technology. We see, again, as you've alluded to, we see growing concentration of power in various sectors held by just a few firms.

And if you look at recent trends in the department's scrutiny of proposed mergers, it's at record lows. Last year, for instance, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division scrutin proposed mergers, it's at record lows. Last year, for instance, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division scrutinized mergers through second requests for information in less than 1% of all eligible cases. That is, I believe, the lowest level of merger scrutiny recorded since the FTC started tracking those statistics back in 1981. And just for comparison purposes, in 1981, back in 1981. And just for comparison purposes, in 1981, that review was five times higher than it was in 2018. My question is, do you think that this record low level of merger scrutiny is appropriate? And if you're confirmed as Attorney General, what might you do to ensure

that the antitrust division faithfully and vigorously enforces the law? division faithfully and vigorously enforces the law? Well, I am for vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws to preserve competition. And as I said, this is going to be an area I'm going to want to get into. Okay, what he's saying that he's going to push very hard on this. This was one of his topics for sure. And you think the AG will be with them and Democrats too. Democrats for sure. You know, you have Cory Booker and others sort of interested in this. Yeah, they're angry for different reasons. So the Democrats believe that, you know, these guys basically helped manipulate the elections to an outcome they didn't like in 16. But I've always felt that actually the people are really going to go gangster on big tech are these red state senators who have seen their few ad agencies, their corner store, their newspapers, their media companies have really gotten hurt.

Hollowed out. Hollowed out, yes. If you think about this, these companies have been incredible vessels of the transfer of wealth from the rest of the world to the U.S. and then from the middle of the U.S. to the coasts. So Kansas and Mississippi and Iowa, you know, big tech hasn't done much for them. I mean, granted, they can do their searches in.0055 seconds, but in terms of actual economic growth and what it's done for the state and employment and the tax base, it's probably net-net negative. Yeah, although really, is that their job?

They should think of something. I'm sorry, that's not really their job. You think so? Yeah. Like, think of, hey, Kansas, figure it out yourself. Like, come on. Can do, right? Can do Kansas or whatever.

Or Oklahoma, okay. Can do Kansas. Oklahoma, okay. Okay, Oklahoma. Make something. Can do Kansas. Okay. Now I'll get all these messages from Kansas.

I don't care. Make something. If you want to, stop complaining. Make something. Anyway, we're going to take a short break. When we get back, talk wins and fails and hamburgers. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature, Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Back to our show, hamburgers. There's so many things to talk about i'm gonna i'm gonna give uh uh you there's so many fails there's hamburgers which was the trump thing he tweeted um this the new shutdown cuisine there's the shutdown there's our iowa representative stephen king for being the horrible racist uh that took so long to be chastised for this. And he's the one also in one of the hearings he did with Sundar Pichai.

He didn't know who makes the iPhone. But I think I'm going to do a win this week. I'm going to do Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who gets a lot of attention, obviously. But I wrote a column about how she's really owning, extremely online. I said she was extremely online, and she is really causing, creating, controlling, and pushing forward narratives that she's interested in, including pay inequity and income inequity

on all kinds of things. And she manages to shut down her critics, the right wing. They just, they cannot stop her. And she's, it's a really interesting way she she actually never aggrieved she's just very funny and very strong-minded and also serious and one of my favorites was when joe from her own side of the aisle joe lieberman who's sort of a conservative senator but he said she wasn't the future this is a i don't know how he is, but he's been around the block for lots of blocks for many years. And he said she wasn't the future of the Democratic Party. And she tweeted back at him.

She tweeted back at him. Who dis? Yeah, new Congress, who dis? Yeah, she's outstanding. What is it about her Twitter? I heard she was giving lessons to her colleagues on how to use Twitter. You can't give lessons in this. I compared her to Trump.

Trump, I think, is very effective. And she's not afraid. She's not interested in party hierarchy. You can imagine Pelosi and Schumer or whoever it is sit her down and say, or standing here and say, this is how we get things done. Your time will come. Play ball. And she's just not having any of it. No, but everybody is talking about income. And by the

way, they agree with her and the way she's explaining it. She's doing something. You were going to talk, it is like Kennedy in television. How do you look at that? She knows there's something different in how she's using it compared to everybody else, I think. Well, typically these seminal leaders have always figured out a way to master a new medium. And, you know, unfortunately some very damaging leaders in the middle of the 20th century were really good with radio. But, you know, Kennedy and TV, we talked about this. Some people have mastered the in-person medium. But she is definitely somebody who's kind of on a rocket ship.

I mean, what does she care? She's 29? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just the performances. I mean, and she also messes up in a really good way. It's a really interesting, I think, you know, everyone's sort of waiting for the fall, like this is going to fall, but I don't know. I find the Twitter,

just the Twitter performance is so flawless. It's like she lands it with a 10. She sticks it, I think. She's fantastic. It's going to be very, and you're watching the next six months. My kid loves her who's voting in the next election. He was like, she's amazing.

She's like, he was, he's never been excited about a politician, trust me. Although I do think Nancy Pelosi is doing great, too. Is this the one that likes the Gillette ad? Yes, the one who likes the Gillette ad. But Nancy Pelosi's also not doing bad herself. She's had a great couple weeks.

All her asides and then disinviting him and stuff. I think she's doing a good job, too. The ladies are in charge. Scott, what are your wins and fails? Actually, I agree with stuff. I think she's doing a good job too. The ladies are in charge. Scott, what are your wins and fails? So actually, I agree with you. I think Pelosi has really kind of, I don't know, reinvigorated or burnished her reputation as a real leader. I think she comes out of this looking good. I think the Democratic Party, you know, we're great at sort of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And it feels as

if we're on the shutdown that it has squarely landed on the president's desk. And as much as you hate to see it, what's going on, I do think that it's every day. I just think it gets a little bit worse for the president and Republicans. And I thought, what happened with Giuliani? Maybe there was collusion. Wait, no collusion. No collusion. All right. Maybe a little collusion off to the left. Tiny bit. There was collusion. There was collusion.

You know how that mold is. That collusion is. It just gets in and you just can't get it out. Yeah. What was he said? He said, I never said the campaign didn't collude. No, but they did. Just not the president.

Yeah. They did. It's just astonishing. They don't think we have tape. It's just the weirdest thing. What else do you think is a win or a fail? So I'm trying to think. What else did we have?

Oh, fail or prediction. The government shut down everything. There's a lot going on. I'm trying to bring this back to big tech. I don't know if you saw, I think that, and this is both a lose and a prediction for 2019. It ends up that the CEO of WeWork has investment interests and properties that they've been leasing or that WeWork has been leasing from. And as long as it was disclosed and his investors knew about it, it's fine. But my prediction is 19 is going to be a very bad year for WeWork.

Oh, interesting. And if you saw what happened with the limiteds of SoftBank, including some of the Middle Eastern sovereign funds who actually stepped in and blocked this massive investment that SoftBank was about to make in WeWork, when your limited partners step in and actually block an investment, say the general partnership, the guys allocating the capital, no, we're not comfortable with this. That is pretty extraordinary. You don't see that a lot. And if you look at the economics of WeWork, valuation of $48 billion, and yet Regus, kind of a similar but lamer potted plants, bad cherry wood version of WeWork, has twice as many desks but trades at one-sixteenth the value. And while WeWork created a great brand and incredible culture— That's because they don't have kombucha on tap. Yeah, they don't have pale ale.

No, they have pale ale or whatever. But if you look at WeWork, WeWork is now, by a lot of analyses, the floor they own in a large building is technically worth more than the building itself that it leases that floor from. And it's hard to see what kind of network effects or technology. Too good to be. Yeah, it just doesn't. I think WeWork is going to be in the news for all the wrong reasons in 2000 and 2019. All right, okay. What about Snap, given the changes? I was in the Snapchat.

I was at Snapchat, yes, two days ago, two nights ago. Do you know the CFO there? Do you have any backstory there? I do not. I need to find out. I do need to find out. They did add some really good people. Also, like Julie Henderson from Fox,

who I have great regard for. I don't know. I'm not clear what's going on. I mean, they're definitely having a hard time competing with what was a very innovative product. And again, my kid still uses it, and both of them do. But it's just hard. I think it's a really hard go.

And this management, the inability of Evan to keep this management team together is something you definitely have to look at. So this is a broader topic, but I want to talk a little bit about isms, right? So whenever there's a movement or there's a polemic that we discuss in our society, I oftentimes think it's too late. So in the 70s and 80s, we talked a lot about how people of color, specifically African-Americans, had a much more difficult time in the workplace. And that was a worthwhile discussion. But I always felt as the son of a single mother who could either be a travel agent or a secretary, that was literally the choices for a woman in the 70s, that it was really that the cohort that was most discriminated against was, in fact, women. And since then, women with college educations have actually closed the gap. It's women with children that are still

having a tough time in the workplace that the corporate America just hasn't figured out a role for them. But I would argue the next cohort that's going to get more attention and what actually doesn't get enough attention now is ageism, especially in tech. And I think it's going to become a big issue in 2019. I think if you walk into a conference room or a meeting at a technology firm and you're over the age of 45 and you're not a billionaire, you're kind of seen as a loser. And I think there's a pretty big... Wait, that's richism, but go ahead. Well, you know what I'm saying. I think that if you're not, if you haven't really killed it by the time you're 40 or 45 in tech, I think there's an inherent assumption that you're just not very good at what you do.

And I think these cultures are pretty ageist. And I think that's going to start getting more attention. That'll be. There's some laws. There's lawsuits. There's been lawsuits and things like that. You know, someone who talks about this a lot is Dan Lyons, who has a new book out. He did it in his last book talking about ageism and things

like that. But I agree. It's a really interesting issue, being a really old person. Although, I don't suffer from that because I'm better than they are. But it's true, though. That was easy. Come on. It's not even hard. But tying this back to Evan and even Mark Zuckerberg, I think something else that's going to get a lot of scrutiny is that these two-class shareholder stocks protect these managers. So I believe the reason Shell Sandberg hasn't been fired is because they can't fire or they don't think they can fire Mark Zuckerberg because of this two-class shareholder system. Snap has the same two-class shareholder system.

You have a young man who's already a billionaire. Snap has the same two-class shareholder system. You have a young man who's already a billionaire. And if it wasn't a two-class shareholder company, I think they probably would have done something. I think they probably would have sold by now. And this is a problem with two-class shareholder stocks is right now he doesn't really need to be a fiduciary for other shareholders. He's banked his billion bucks. He's off to the races.

He thinks he has a viewpoint or a vision, which he has been totally unable to articulate what it is exactly they're going to do here. You know, the redesign didn't work. They're getting killed. Well, he had a very good vision initially, right? It's a really fresh vision. Everyone stole it. Oh, sure. It's a great company. Great idea. And I find, I have to say of a lot of the people I talk to, I really enjoy talking to him because I always have a

really... He's a visionary. He's a good word. He actually – you're always like, oh, I didn't thought of it that way. But you're right. It's execution. Visionary. Vision can only get you so far.

And so that's what he – he really has the issues with around PR. Not just – every part of it is problematic, has been problematic for them. But the CFO leaving, it kind of punctures another prediction we had a few months ago, where I thought that Amazon was a likely acquirer because the CFO was a 20-year veteran of Amazon. And the fact that someone who was at Amazon for 20 years, you could hardly describe this person as a flake or someone who just kind of goes off half-cocked, leaves snap after six months, is a very negative forward-looking indicator. Because this is the individual. I always see the CFO in any company as the source of truth. If I'm ever in a board meeting and I

hear talk and I don't know what's going on, I sequester the CFO for 10 minutes. I'm like, okay, what's going on here? And they basically, you know, they take the entire board meeting and they put Wonder Woman's golden lasso on and they say, this is the truth. This is what's going on. And when the person who knows the truth, after six months, it snapped, decides I'm out of here. I'm sorry, eight months. I think that's more, you know, kind of trouble in my bill. Definitely.

I will look into it. If you will go see Sheryl Sandberg in Germany, in Munich, I will go find out about this. You know what I'm doing before that, Kara? You're in Paris. Don't. Okay, I'm doing before that Cara you're in Paris don't hold on hold on you're going to have snails on the Seine this is the worst flex in the world

I'm meeting a buddy of mine and we decided to go to Vienna and we're seeing those dancing horses so this is how old and pathetic I am yeah the lippin sogs dancing horses lippin sides? lippin something 10 years ago last time we got together Lip and sogs. Yeah, whatever. Dancing horses. Not sogs. Lip and sides? I don't know.

Lip and something. Lip something. Ten years ago, last time we got together, he and I went to Stockholm. We went to some rave and I tried experimental drugs. Now we go see dancing horses. We might as well go to Denny's and get the Grand Slam special and go home. Aren't they like the river dance of Austria? Isn't that like—

First we need to sterilize our catheters and go home and take our statin drugs. Isn't that like going to Guy Fieri's, our catheters and go home and take our statin drugs. Isn't that like going to like Guy Fieri's Broadway whatever? You're going to see horses dance? We're going to see horses dance. I don't know how we ended up there. How did I get so old? How did I get so old, Kara?

I'd go looking for alt-right people in Austria. They're all over the place again. We're the family von Trapp. The von Trapp family singers. The family von Trapp. Remember that? Wow. You sound very relaxed.

I am. You sound very chill. Hakuna Matata, baby, or whatever. Nice. I was in the town Lilo and Stitch was set in. Lovely. Hana Pippi or something like that. It was great.

It was lovely. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. Anyway, well, I'm here in D.C. for a long, long time for the freezing cold weather for the next couple of weeks.

So we'll be talking from here. So I will go around and see how badly the government is shut down. I'm going to see a senator very soon. I'm going to get on the metro right now and go visit

Senator Michael Bennett from Colorado. I love Senator Bennett. Do you? Yeah. Just to be close. I met with him. I'm finally, I can finally flex back.

I met with Senator Bennett about six weeks ago to talk about antitrust. Well, good. You know what he asked me? What? He said to me, he said, give me 10 ideas to restore the middle class. Oh, all right. Like right there. He's like, give me 10 ideas to restore the middle class.

This guy. All right. Talk about, talk about the kind of guy you want as an elected official. You know, he did before He was the superintendent of schools. Well, I am so excited. He reached out to me and said, can we meet? So he's making the rounds, I guess, of smart people. He's a very decent man.

Yeah. I was really, I walked away. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm meeting all the politicians. I'm going to do that in the next few weeks. I'm going to meet all the politicians. And then this afternoon, I'm going to be doing a podcast with the CEO of Land O'Lakes, Beth Ford.

She's a lesbian, very open. She's running this thing. They were the first company, one of the companies, to push back on King and take away his money and stuff. And so we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the technology beyond agri-technology. It should be interesting. We're reaching out to the real people, Scott, aren't we? Yeah, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the technology beyond, agri-technology. It should be interesting. There's all kinds. We're reaching out to the real people, Scott, aren't we?

Yeah, we're keeping it real. We're keeping it real in Paris and D.C. All right. Go enjoy Paris, the City of Lights. Thanks very much, Kara. It's one of my favorite places. Next week, we'll talk about all kinds of things. I need some stories from there

and stuff that was talked to at DLD and stuff like that. I'm excited to hear what went on there and what the big topics were. Anyway, enjoy yourself. Rebecca Sinanis produces this show. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Thanks also to Eric Johnson.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week for more of a breakdown of all things tech and business. And welcome back, Scott. I did not leave you for John Lovett. It was just a short affair. And I know you saw someone, too. If you like what you heard, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks.

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