Pivot - Zoom stock surpasses airlines; MLB, NBA, Olympics are on pause — what happens to the media that covers them? And a Listener Mail about relief package guardrails.

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

Kara and Scott talk about Zoom's immense stock value in this moment and what the company should do with new power. They discuss what is to come with streaming platforms and media outlets as the 2020 Olympics joins the slew of live sports postponements due to COVID-19. Also, will the WFH movement be the final nail in the weWork coffin? In Listener Mail, Kara and Scott talk about guardrails and bailouts in the recently passed stimulus package. In predictions, Scott expects to see new stock lows in the coming weeks. (PLUS Pivot experiences its own WFH social-distance snafu!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Pivot comes from Virgin Atlantic. Too many of us are so focused on getting to our destination that we forgot to embrace the journey. Well, when you fly Virgin Atlantic, that memorable trip begins right from the moment you check in. On board, you'll find everything you need to relax, recharge, or carry on working. Buy flat, private suites, fast Wi-Fi, hours of entertainment, delicious dining, and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. delicious dining and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London and beyond, and see for yourself how traveling for business can always be a pleasure. harness the power and potential of AI. For all the talk around its revolutionary potential,

a lot of AI systems feel like they're designed for specific tasks performed by a select few. Well, Claude, by Anthropic, is AI for everyone. The latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, offers groundbreaking intelligence at an everyday price. Claude Sonnet can generate code, help with writing, and reason through hard problems better than any model before. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, we're still in quarantine, aren't we? We are. Yeah, we're sheltering at home, although this is really a time. It really does.

You really do develop a lot of empathy for other people. You can develop empathy for people who are unfortunately struggling with loved ones who are sick. You develop empathy for people who have to stay at home and take care of kids. And more than anything, I've developed a lot of empathy for those women who just get in a minivan and drive their entire families into a lake. I understand them now. I understand them now. And they always do it in a minivan. Every time my kids act up, I say minivan. It's not happening.

Minivan. No, I'm going to put a stop to this. Listen to me. Just because you have to spend a lot of time with your kids, you're not going to go right to that spot if you don't want. Oh, they're awful, Kara. Have you met my kids? They're awful. I ordered a ping pong table today.

That is what they have driven me to. I am now going to own a ping pong table. Oh, Scott. What is wrong with your children? My kids are great. My kids are great. I know, I know, I know. You got it all figured out. What's the problem? What's the problem?

They're very demanding. They're very demanding. Of your attention? They want to engage with me. Yeah, but you know what we're doing? We're watching Moments of Engagement, which my book agent, Jim Levine, taught me to do. My youngest son and I have decided to watch The Simpsons. Yeah, that's a great show. 31 seasons.

We're on season two. If we're still watching season seven, I think that means about half the world's population has been wiped out. Oh, Jesus. God. Scott, Scott, Scott. You're not in a good place then, in other words. This is what's happening now. You were in a very happy, upbeat place last week.

People were tearing up about your different speeches that you were giving last week, but now you're in a darker place right now. Yeah, the glass is half empty right now, Kara. Anyways, how are you doing? You're back in D.C.? I am, indeed. I'm sheltering in place in my home here, and I would like to leave. I would like to leave. I would like to have my life back, but so would everybody else. But with all these people dying, it's hard to complain. You really can't. I mean, you start to see, you know, the reports from New York, which sound horrifying at the hospitals there. It's sort of the future for the rest of us, I think, in a lot of ways. And maybe not in quite that intensity given the density of that city. But there was a piece in the New York Times by a woman who worked for the New York Times Magazine about taking care of her husband who was, who was quite sick,

but not hospitalization sick. And it sounded, it was a wonderful piece that I hate to compliment someone on, on sort of dystopian writing, but it was really disturbing. And the last line was, you know, people are sort of still walking around touching doors and things like that. And she's coming back with her husband from one of the doctor's appointments. And she's like, we're like ghosts and we're like your future and you can't see us. You know what I mean? Like we're visiting from the future. And so it was really, it's really getting difficult,

but there's a lot, there's certainly a lot going on, including the stimulus bill. And people are trying to get their hands around all the issues around testing, around ventilators, around all kinds of things that they need. I never thought I'd know this much about ventilators in my life. And I hope never to learn more about them again. But let's get to the big stories trending as everything is changing so rapidly. I wrote a column this week, Zoom is worth more than United, Delta, American, and JetBlue combined. Is Zoom the new superpower business? Delta, American, and JetBlue combined is, assume, the new superpower business.

In 2019, Zoom's market cap was $18.8 billion, which we all thought was too much. While Airlines' 2019 market cap was at $78.1 billion. Now, Zoom's market cap is around $44 billion. Airlines is running a current market cap of $27 billion. Zoom filed to go public last year. I think its stock is up from 62 to, I think it's 150, somewhere in that. The first-time installations of the mobile app were up 213% last week compared to the week before that. Zoom's mobile app is installed 3.7 times more than

Skype's and 8.6 times more than Google Hangouts. This is, I hate to say, but the greatest branding situation in history, I think, which is really interesting. Scott, what do you think about this? And should people buy Zoom stock? This seems crazy. I called it insane, this, what was happening, but how do you look at it? Well, so, and granted, we've gotten a lot of stock calls wrong in the last several weeks, but we did say Zoom was a decent offensive play when it was at about $100. Look, in terms of the valuation here, you referenced that it's now worth more than the entire U.S. airline industry. It's now, this video conferencing app is now worth more than General Motors.

Right, and the P.E. ratio is eighteen hundred, which is. Yeah, there is no. Yeah, it's like it's 20 times revenues on any traditional metric. It's it's crazily overvalued. So the question is, what do you do if you're a shareholder, an employee, the firm itself? I would argue that and we never talk about employees. If you're an employee, what I've finally learned as I got older is when things are going really well, your tendency is to hold on. I can just imagine everyone's holding onto their stock. The employees there should be selling their vested shares like

there's no tomorrow and hope you're wrong, but you should absolutely be getting some liquidity. And when I tell every employee at a tech company that's doing well is until you have a million dollars of liquidity and you can ensure your kids will be able to go to college, ensure that you'll be financially secure, always be on a path to sell and hope you're wrong. The company itself should be doing a couple of things. One, they should be doing a secondary and raising $1 to $3 billion in cash. We're seeing now that when the tide goes out, you want to have cash wrapped around you. And this is an opportunity, just as it was an opportunity that Tesla missed

when it was at 900 bucks a share. But this is absolutely an opportunity for Zoom to bulk up and build a gigantic cash war chest. The other thing they should be thinking about strategically is they should have every middle market investment bank searching for acquisitions for them right now. And they should be thinking about what other services they can think about getting into or offering. I mean, I would love the Zoom plugins where I could

see CNN streaming or CNBC tickers streaming across the top. I could see this company getting into some sort of video on demand, B2B video on demand. They should be thinking about, they should assume, all right, we have a window here to get into other things. And traditional business strategy, courtesy of C.K. Prahala, is stay focused. When you have cheap stock like this and you have this currency, you absolutely want to start making a bunch of different bets on different things.

But in terms of an investor, a shareholder, I would be very careful here because even if this thing normalizes, even if it lives up, it's so priced to perfection. It's not even priced to perfection. It's priced to mania. And those are difficult stocks because if the stock got cut in half, it would still look expensive by traditional metrics. Right. It was expensive back in 62. It was expensive. It's really, I mean, I think it was $170 million in revenue in one of the quarters. It was very small. And so, you know, obviously that's going to go up two things. They've got to keep it tight in terms of delivering on the promise of what they're doing because these other competitors.

It's really interesting that it's more popular than Skype or Google Hangouts, which are very robust services and have been around forever, which I found interesting. It's interesting why people pick Zoom versus those, because they're very similar. And those are from Microsoft, Skype, and Google Hangouts, from obviously Alphabet, that the brand is doing so much better. And that's an interesting kind of unusual trend, I find. And then secondly, just the numbers just don't add up. And even if they

execute perfectly, like last week, I was doing a Zoom thing with Jessica Lesson at the Information about Women in Tech, and we got Zoom bombed, which was enormous. I heard about this. Describe that. Describe exactly what happened. Describe in graphic detail

what happened. First of all, if you're going to bomb someone, get some decent porn. There is no such thing as bad porn. There's just porn that doesn't work for you at that moment. I don't use as much porn as you, Scott Galloway, I'm guessing, by a factor of 103. Don't rag on my hobbies. Don't rag on my hobbies.

There's a guy that had an entire arm up someone's ass. That's really one of them. Fisting! Fisting! A unique genre? It was beyond that. I'm not going to go into it with you. I'm not, no, I'm not moving down this road. That's as far down this road as I'm going. The 80s, R.E.M., U2, and fisting porn. What a great

decade! What a great decade! Listen to me. That's enough. Sorry. But it was like, how did that happen? And if there's all these kids using it, I just was thinking if there's these public Zooms, and it's happened to all of people. The New York Times wrote a story about it.

It's called Zoom bombing. So that was one. It's like execution. This stuff has to work while people are using it. And I think it has, for the most part, kept up. And people are sort of comfortable with a little bit of glitchiness right now because they figure it's overwhelmed. But the numbers, you know, it'll be interesting to see two things. One, if people will continue

to do more at-home working after this is over, and of course, this company stands to benefit. And if they don't, what happens to what they're doing? And I think you're right. This is the time to make hay. I hate to say that about someone, a company, but they have to make hay while the coronavirus goes on. But hold on. Let's be in the moment. First off, I get about 11 emails a day from Jessica Lesson at the information, even though I'm not a subscriber and I will. It seems like every day it's a new offer and a new opportunity to subscribe. And they do a great job of teasing you.

And I think my— Yeah, I'm talking about Zoom. Well, I know. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. My God. Anyway, so I get an email saying that join us for a podcast or whatever it is, live webinar with Kara Swisher to talk about women in tech or some such. And my first emotion is always a little bit of bit of jealousy like why don't they invite the dog okay fine whatever I'm happy for you obviously from the last exchange

and then I get a follow-up email like email 14 the next day from Jessica saying you know and the assholes who who zoom porn or zoom bombed and inserted porn into my discussion with Kara

what do you think my emotion was right there you were thrilled joy pure joy oh my god horn into my discussion with Kara. What do you think my emotion was right there? You were thrilled. Joy! Pure joy! Oh my God. That was literally one of the best things that happened to me this week, hearing that your webinar with Jessica Lesson on women in tech was porn bombed. I mean, that is wonderful. Life is worth living. Schadenfreude is you. Life is worth living. Your nickname should be Schadenfreude.

Anyway, will you please. Gestalt. So they have to make it work, but I do think this is going. I mean, four weeks, five weeks when people aren't using this as much, whenever this sort of goes down, and I think there'll be a resurgence. But I don't know if people will return to stay in the work-at-home mode as much as people think. I think people are fine with it. I don't think everybody likes it.

And they prefer to be at the office. I still think that's going to be a tough one to shake, even though there's all these predictions of that case. I think people do not like it, do not like being on these things. I think my kids really hate it. They don't like doing school on it. So I don't know. We'll see. But in the bigger picture, big tech, I think my column, I said, is going to come out just fine. They have oodles of cash. They're going to shake out, as you said, the herd is going to be culled of their rivals. And when this moves on, they're going to be in

a position to take advantage of it. Yeah, it's hard to imagine they don't come out stronger. And I also think that if there's a winner here, and I don't want to say there's a winner, but of the big tech firms, I think Amazon's reputation is going to come out of this the most burnished. And I have a lot of friends at Amazon. I have a lot of former students. The largest recruit out of my class is Amazon. former students. The largest recruit out of my class is Amazon. And I'm a critic of Amazon, specifically Jeff Bezos, and believe that they need to be broken up for the health of the economy, as any company that gets this powerful should be broken up. But there's just no getting around it. Amazon employees have really risen to this occasion. And whether it's the folks in the

trucks delivering, the people in the warehouses, the decision-making they've made around moving to essentials to ensure their supply chain remains robust around key items. I think Amazon has shown really a lot of grit and fortitude, and the employees there and the management there should be recognized for the risks they're taking. And it's important that people get stuff. And I think they've shown a lot of leadership here. I think right now people said, well, who do we put in charge of this global pandemic?

People would say, Dr. Fauci sitting on top of Amazon would be a pretty good cocktail. They're going to come out of this stronger than ever. You know, there are stories, of course, of people being infected in the warehouses and things like that. And you're right, the risk is among delivery people. What's amazing is these delivery people who do any of the of people being infected in the warehouses and things like that and you're right the risk the risk is among delivery people what's amazing is these delivery people who do any of the delivery people who are doing all these kind of things or or people in restaurants and hardware

stores and things like that do not get enough you know except the people obviously health care workers on the front line are the most heroic here but they they it definitely is interesting like to be able to keep working and especially with some of these people, the shitty pay they get from these companies. I think Amazon's got to step up and start paying a lot of these delivered people and people in these warehouses more for what they do. I've always thought they do take advantage of these people's livelihoods.

And now when there's going to be less employment, they're going to get a better deal. Like their numbers are the same thing with Uber. Everybody else is going to get a better deal now with people desperate to make some money. You know, despite the fact we're getting this massive stimulus. But let's go over to the live sports industry. It's at an unprecedented crossroads. This is something that is so analog with With the cancellations and postponements, it's also leaving a media that covers

them reeling in the wake. I don't know what Bill Simmons is going to do all day. Thursday was Major League Baseball's opening day, which of course was not happening. And earlier this week, the 2020 Summer Olympics were postponed. The NBA season was canceled. NASCAR was postponed. March Madness was canceled.

Back to the Olympics. It's the first time in modern Olympic history the games will be postponed. And I think probably to 2021 they were talking about. NBC and Discovery, who paid more than $1 billion to show the 2020 games, left a schedule thrown into chaos, really. NBC Universal was counting on the Olympics to promote and subscribe subscriptions to Peacock, the company's direct to consumer streaming service that is scheduled to launch in July, which is probably not launching in July.

Meanwhile, the NFL plans to stick with its April schedule for this year's draft, despite conflict on how to proceed between team general managers and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. This is a big, big area of business, both analog and from an advertising point of view and, you know, everywhere. This reaches everywhere.

Yeah, it's a huge industry. And the thing that's just new about all of this or that we didn't model out is that a recession, revenues go down 40 percent, but you can reduce costs 20 percent. So you lose, you know, $200 million on a billion in business. Certain businesses have just gone from, you know, running at full capacity to zero. And no one, the NHL, the Premier League, no one modeled for this. And so, you're seeing, I mean, there's really triage right now in some of these businesses. And if you look at how it ripples through the supply chain, whether it's StubHub or Live Nation or the vendors or the bonds that back the facilities, the leaseback bonds that back the venues. I mean, it's just the people who have the concession contracts, the people who work in the parking. To go from full capacity to zero just overnight. And then what do you do in terms of scheduling? I'm not a sports

fan, so I literally haven't noticed it. But when we did one of those family meetings and we decided, I read somewhere, you're supposed to communicate openly with your kids about what's going on. And they just sort of nodded their heads. They didn't really get it. They got a little scared when I said, we can't go see Babsha and Zsa Zsa because they're more vulnerable. And they wanted to know what I meant by the word vulnerable. And then I told them that all live events were being canceled. And about two minutes later, my son said, does the Premier League games, are they being canceled? And I said, most likely. And that's when he lost it and began to cry. most likely. And that's when he lost it and began to cry. He's like, don't take away his Bayern Munich versus FC Barcelona game. But sports matter. They give people, you know, it's a collective shared experience getting together. But that industry, it'll be very interesting to see. There's a company called FIVO that is a startup that does social. It's a means of creating social groups

where you say, all right, Karen, I, you, and I want to go to the, I don't know, the Wizards game, and we announce it on our social networks, and we get a group of people to buy tickets in groups so we can sit together. It's a cute idea. I mean, imagine that social app for live events. Imagine that business right now. I know, but I mean, it's beyond that.

I mean, just think about, you know, The Ringer, SB Nation, Fox Zones, Bleacher Report, Barstool Sports, ESPN. I mean, you know, Bill Simmons was smart for having sold before. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine?

No, I can't. He's just lucky him. He's the second luckiest guy in the world. The luckiest guy in the world is this kid, Richard Follop. Him and his wife are an inspiration. He's the second luckiest guy in the world. The luckiest guy in the world is this kid, Richard Fulop. Him and his wife are an inspiration. He was a student of mine. And literally, I love this guy.

He's a classic entrepreneur. He started buying $5,000 worth of cotton and then sending it to Israel and milling it and bringing over to Brooklyn and then selling sheets and bedding packages. And it's called Brooklyn. And he closed three weeks ago on selling his company. and it's called Brooklinen. He closed three weeks ago on selling his company. I mean, if you look at Time Warner, it looks like, I mean, it's really,

knowing when to sell is definitely, it's probably more luck than an art, but I'll tell you, it's interesting to look at it. Twitter getting its money, the billion dollars from their group. A hundred percent. Yeah, their stock's off 20 or 30% and they wouldn't have got. And not only that, quite frankly,

this has probably saved Jack Dorsey. No one's really worried about activism right now. Activism is sort of a luxury we don't have right now. But also if you look at, Disney was the best performing media stock of the last 10 years, other than big tech. I think it was up 700%. But now that it's come down, it's up 500%.

And Time Warner, having sold at the peak two years ago, was up 600%. So now actually, Time Warner is the best performing media stock because they sold. Yeah, which is interesting. So what do you do? What do you just like right off a year? You write off a year, it'll come back, obviously. I think people still will want, once it starts up again, they'll want to pay attention. But I don't think that's going to, suddenly we're not going to go, oh, we don't need sports. But like, if you're NBCUniversal and Peacock, how do you get people watching it? If you're, how do you, how do you make up for what's happened? Well, a lot of these companies just won't. I mean, they just won't. It's not, it's not like people say, okay, I haven't eaten, I haven't eaten at McDonald's in all of April. I'm going to eat twice as many burgers in May. Some of this is just lost't. I mean, they just won't. It's not like people say, okay, I haven't eaten at McDonald's

in all of April. I'm going to eat twice as many burgers in May. Some of this is just lost demand. They're just real true demand destruction. The broader question is, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. And on all the calls I'm on, we spend the first half of the, probably two-thirds of the call talking about how do we triage and just cut costs. And this is a difficult time because you're going to see, and the unemployment numbers, I believe, our unemployment or job claims just came out. They're up from 200,000 to three and a half million. So, it's striking. But my viewpoint is you can't protect jobs, you can protect people. And what I'm telling entrepreneurs and the companies that I work with is that you got to be fairly Darwinian

and harsh around job cuts, but for doing that, what you should do is compensate and try and provide as much severance as possible. But every company, and this is harsh, especially with small companies, I think you have to go over every expense line and say, we either got to cut it or negotiate it right now. But coming out of this, I do think there's a lot of silver linings kind of post corona. You're going to see a lot of great businesses started kind of as we come out of this because everything will be less expensive. People will be more open to innovation. But it's really an opportunity for larger companies to rethink their business. And that is if we had a clean sheet here, how would we change the way we go to

market? What costs would we keep? Where would we invest? What bigger bets would we make? How do we right-size? What is the right size of our labor force? Looking at their compensation strategies, it is, you know, there is a lot of opportunity there. I was talking about this with several CEOs. In fact, I interviewed Stuart Butterfield from Slack, and he said that's exactly what they're doing. Even though they're doing rather well during this time things are up. He's like, I can now look at everything. I'm spending a lot of time within the cost structure of our company and what we're doing and getting rid of stuff. You know, when you sort of stuff we're on the bubble, they're not on the bubble anymore. They're

off the bubble. They're off. They're gone. And so I think it does make, and you can say, ah, coronavirus, I'm going to get rid of that. You know, you have an excuse. You got cloud cover. You got cloud cover to make big decisions, take a hit to earnings, because most big decisions and big investments require a hit to earnings, whether it's doing away with your dividend or spinning stuff, but it gives you the cloud cover to make some big, bold bets. Two things. Where does this advertising money go to? What, is it just sitting there quietly, like holding their powder? Where does the advertising money go? Does it go somewhere else? Because several people told me companies like Quibi and Netflix are still spending because they want to have stuff. Where does the advertising money go to? Where does the media money go to? go to? Where does the media money go to? Well, it depends what we're talking about. In the case of Netflix and Quibi that have access to incredibly cheap capital, they keep spending because they're on the verge of launch and they don't suffer from an absence of capital. The

steady-state companies, typically the money goes back to, they just pull back because they go into survival mode. But it's an interesting question because if you look at periods when there's been a dramatic reshuffling in market share amongst players in a sector, it's typically because of one or two things. The first is extreme product innovation where Tide comes out with Tide Pods or Pepsi comes out with Bubly and there's an incredible, they capture lightning in a bottle and they just come in and grab share. The other time you see a dramatic shift in share is in a period of chaos. One company kind of has the capital and the leadership to make a huge, continue making big investments in marketing and supporting their brand. So a seminal moment in dryers, and this is sort of a weird CPG history, was in the recession in 91. Unilever and all the

other ice cream companies pulled back on marketing and Dreyer's decided to increase their marketing spend and they grabbed a dramatic amount of share. So, the bottom line is just as it's a great time to have cash right now and start thinking about offense in terms of the stocks you buy in the market, it's a great time to be a company that has the resources to say, how could we play offense? And as everyone else is retreating, the resources to say, how could we play offense? And as everyone else is retreating, can we decide to maintain our marketing or rethink our marketing or make some big bets? But the companies that are in triage right now, it's not like they're just saving their marketing money and they're going to double their investments in advertising and radio. A lot of that money probably does not come back.

Does not come back. Yes, I agree with you. I think it just starts again. And you're right. They start to think really hard. But very quickly, before we go to break, WeWork is at it again while everyone else is shuddering. WeWork is paying people to come into the office. No one's going into co-working offices, WeWork. Talk about putting a fork in this company. Like, wow, wow, wow. This is a hit.

The hits keep on coming, as they say. Wow. Wow. This is a hit that is the hits keep on coming. As they say, WeWork's website said only two of its co-working offices in North America were closed and none were closed in Europe. WeWork has allowed employees who normally staff locations to work from home. But this week it started to entice them with one hundred dollar a day bonuses. I mean, I don't know what to say. Yeah. They're going to have to shutter and play. I mean, D.C. just had a shutter in place. And most of the governors are ignoring Trump's April surprise, you know, thing, whatever. The resurrection of the United States.

What an incredibly inappropriate way to compare it to. But, Scott, go ahead. days when the spectacle or the shit show that was the collision of hubris, third base venture capitalists, people who mistake their good luck for talent, and the charismatic 30-something Jesus-like figure who raised $7 billion or billions of dollars out of the Middle East only to take it in the street and burn it. It all seems very quaint now, right? The whole world has much bigger fish to fry. But if you've been following the story, we made this prediction last year that WeWork, even after the bailout, was eventually going to

be a bankruptcy, that they were just kicking the can down the road. And I don't know if you noticed this, but SoftBank quietly decided to renege on their deal, and it cite extraordinary force de mesure circumstances, and they're not going through with the buyback of employee and investor shares they had agreed to. And they're trying to use this as cloud cover. But again, this company, it's done. They brought in a new CEO, a very intelligent guy. My guess is they guaranteed him $25 or $50 million, regardless of what happens here. But this company is going to be one of those companies that gets swept off the decks here.

SoftBank will have the opportunity to cast it as they can now save face. Oh, it was Corona. This was one of the many companies taken down by Corona. But WeWork, as we know it, is now the walking dead. And that is, they're going to, I mean, think about mismatched durations. You buy long, you buy 10-year leases, but their customers, most of them on 24 hours notice, can stop renting their space. And who the hell is going to go into a WeWork right now? I know, it seems very dirty. It just is. So you're going to see announcements, I would bet, in the next 30 days from WeWork that they're going to start either filing individual property bankruptcies based on how these things are set up. But that whole space, for obvious reasons, is going to get absolutely wrecked.

But is it 100% going to be that way? Is it going to absolutely have to have no places like that? Because the people like working at those places, or just the business is gone. No, the concept works, and it'll come back. It'll just be right size. Most of the equity will be wiped out. A lot of the spaces will be given back. There'll be chapter 11s across. So the way hotels are usually set up is they're set up in separate LLCs that you can actually declare bankruptcy on one property without taking the whole company down. It's not guaranteed by the

whole company. And I would imagine that WeWork probably did the same thing. But WeWork as a concept, I mean, they're going to go from 500 locations, I would bet, to 100 to 200. There's going to be some sort of reorg here. I got to imagine that revenues have gone to zero. SoftBank has already said, basically said, all right, we're out. Going back on this deal, which they announced a week or two weeks ago, is basically said, okay, we're peace out, we're done. And SoftBank, to their credit, is selling some assets, including, I believe, shares in Alibaba. They're showing up their balance sheet such that they can begin to play an offense. And the day they announced they were increasing their liquidity and kind of culling back to the core. The stock, I think, was up 14% that day.

So SoftBank, which is, in my view, a well-run company, is probably going to try and, I don't want to say get out of the business of the Vision Fund, but this gives them, again, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. This gives them the cloud cover to make some hard decisions that would have been a loss of face if they had closed WeWork down a few weeks ago. Right. So they can just do that. They could just say goodbye. Goodbye out of it. That's right. Peace out. Helicopter off of the embassy. What's the most unlucky company this year? I would say WeWork, correct? I think that's...

Oh, no. Those are self-inflicted wounds. They're not unlucky. Right. Okay. There's a lot of companies that are just incredibly, you know, I don't know, some people, some good companies that were measured and smart. I mean, every retailer I've talked to, every retailer I've talked to has stopped paying rent. Yeah. And that's today, April. I mean, next week, April 1st, which I think is coming around. All right. When we get back, we're going to have listener mail. Hold, please. And we'll be back. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night.

And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people.

These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations 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. 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. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. You already know that AI is transforming the world around us, but lost in all the enthusiasm and excitement is a really important question. How can AI actually work for you? And where should you even start? Claude from Anthropic may be the answer.

Claude is a next-generation AI assistant, built to help you work more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. Anthropic's latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, can help you organize thoughts, solve tricky problems, analyze data, and more. Whether you're brainstorming alone or working on a team with thousands of people, all at a price that works for just about any use case. If you're trying to crack a problem involving advanced reasoning, need to distill the essence of complex images or graphs, or generate heaps of secure code. Clawed is a great way to save time and money. Plus, you can rest assured knowing that Anthropic built Clawed with an emphasis on safety. The leadership team founded the company with a commitment to an ethical approach

that puts humanity first. To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash Claude. That's anthropic.com slash Claude. Okay, Scott, we're back on Pivot. Let's dig into a listener mail question. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hi, Scott and Kara. Given the fact that Congress just passed a relief package to help with the economic fallout from the COVID pandemic, what are some legal mechanisms which should be put in place to prevent corporate opportunism? Examples include a stipulation of no executive bonuses for a certain number of years, requirement to appoint an employee rep on the board, and a prohibition on stock buybacks. Already, I've seen at least

one story of a CEO attempting to secure corporate benefit by using employees as leverage. I'm wondering if it also could be realistic to implement some of these mechanisms going forward to prevent further wealth transfer from the bottom to the top. Thanks. Keep doing what you do, Mike. Mike, I'm sorry to tell you, Mike. Yeah, I think it's already done, correct? I mean, I haven't gotten into the bill, but it looks like they've gotten this Inspector General and Oversight Committee. The Trumps can't benefit, although somehow they will. Somehow they'll get something in there.

And there's the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee to oversee the loans. But this looks pretty happy towards corporations. This is a bailout, right? I mean, although Americans will be getting checks, the amount of money is going largely to businesses. Yeah, I actually think this is pretty good legislation. It was, A, it was done quickly and it was bipartisan, which is something we haven't seen a lot of. I think people want their governments in situations like this to intervene. Every country has done something sort of similar. It does put cash in most people's pocket. Unfortunately, if you don't have a bank account on file, it could take up to four months. It's like, you know, government has to rear its bureaucratic head, and there's a lot

of people who aren't going to get money for a while. And the notion is not to—it's kind of strange this time. We're not encouraging people to seek work. We're encouraging people, we're encouraging companies to keep jobs. So the idea is that there's aid to small business as long as you don't furlough people. I do think there's some interesting things in here. The fact that the Trumps can't benefit. Can you think about it?

Well, it's not just the Trumps, it's the Congress heads of executive departments. And their children. Yeah, which I think is really good. And spouses. And the other thing that was shocking, I was thinking the other day, I work at a venture-backed company. I'm like, would it be ethical for us to take advantage of these small business stipulations? And there is something in the bill that says that venture-backed companies can't take advantage of it, which I think is the right thing to do.

I think it makes sense that it's income-adjusted, that I think if you make over $90,000 a year, you're not going to get a check, which is absolutely the right thing to do. So I actually think this is, given the situation that we're in, given the speed with which they acted, given the size of it, I think it was bold. It feels to me like bold, smart legislation. I think the government is doing what it was supposed to do.

What's interesting is focusing on, obviously you want to focus on businesses to keep people working, like not to lay people off. And I think that's the idea is, as we were just talking about, you know, making, hey, well, the coronavirus rages is something that we just said people should do. But in this case, you know, businesses could sort of fix problems, right? You can use them as cover. And that's the danger of this is they'll be like, well, you know, I was going to do that anyway, or I was going to

do that. And so I think that's really what it is. I do think that there should have been more focused on workers more than anything else, giving relief. But, you know, they're going to do that. But what I think is interesting here is the government, you know, instead of doing loans, there was one congressman, a senator I never agree with, Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania, I guess it was. He was like, these should be loans and not bailouts, essentially. You know, they're grants is what they are. And I kind of am in that camp.

Like, I think it worked in the last time, but this may be an unprecedented situation that we can't do that. But I agree with you. They did it very quickly. And except for the wrangling that went back and forth, it was relatively calm. There was just a little bit of insulting going back and forth, just a tiny bit. And even in the insulting, when the Republicans tried to make hay out of this Kennedy Center grant, Trump was like, oh, I like the Kennedy Center, for goodness sake. Let's not focus on that.

And I was like a moment of clarity from Donald Trump, which was amazing. So I agree with you that it was overall, but it does still feel like bailout versus more creative ways. But I don't think they have time. They had to, Wall Street had to hear this, and so did the global financial and credit markets. Yeah, and to our listeners' question, there's sort of short-term, you don't want perfect to be the enemy of good. And in these types of environments, the key here is speed. And you'd rather have legislation that is 60 or 80 percent of what you want ideally, but done early and quickly. Because there are a lot of people that

it's a matter of days before they're kind of living in their car or taking unnecessary risks or really feeling tremendous amount of stress or companies deciding to lay off 3,000 people instead of 1,000 because they're worried. I mean, the airlines could have gone away in the next four to six weeks. So, you'd rather, I think you have to be a little bit ready-fire aim here. Some of the things she's talking about, about inequality and wealth, it's very hard to restrict stock buybacks because they're a form of dividends. It's hard to get, when the government gets involved in setting compensation limits, I think that's dangerous. I'm on the board of a company, and obviously we're thinking about, okay, management and the board need to show some

grit here and take an executive cut in compensation. But at the same time, if none of your executive team is going to make any money in terms of options, are you going to potentially lose them to other people when the markets come back? So you end up with some inefficiencies, you end up with some injustice, and if you're seeking justice, you're not going to find it in the corporate world. But in general, I think it's very dangerous. Most attempts at goodwill and equity through legislation around compensation, around forms of capital structure, end up failing. I do think you'd rather put up, let the New York Times go after some people and talk about the anomalies and talk about the injustice and the greed. They will.

If they do anything egregious, I think they'll get caught, for one. this and agreed. They will. If they do anything egregious, I think they'll get caught, for one. And there was a really good story, I think it was in the Washington Post, about most of the people that are getting bailouts are people who've acted badly over the past couple of years in terms of employees and everything else. So, anyway, so it's an interesting time. I mean, I think they will get caught if they misbehave, for sure. And I think that's really, that's just, you're waiting for that story a year from now of someone who did that. And then the second part is that they, they really, you know,

they really, a lot of these air, like the airline industry, all kinds of industries have been doing things that benefits the top echelons and they are getting a break here. But I do think this is an unusual situation where we just have to just suck it up and say, yeah, they acted badly and we're going to still have to save them. You know, we're going to have to like pull the shitty person into the lifeboat. They just have to be, they have to be pulled into

the lifeboat. One thing he referenced, it's sort of interesting. I don't know if we're going to think this way, but in Germany, which really never had a recession, which still has a they have inequality, but not to the same extent we do. It's mandated there that somewhere between a third and half of the directors are represented by employees. I think that's a big, great idea. I've always thought that I'm I'm just perplexed why that doesn't happen in this country more. Yeah, it would definitely shift power. It would be what that effectively does at the end of the day. It's a transfer from shareholders to employees. It's a transfer of wealth from one stakeholder to the other. In the U.S., we have always opted for shareholders. It's kind of,

it goes shareholders first. Well, actually, it goes consumer first, then shareholders, then employees in terms of the packing order. And I think people are starting to rethink that balance that just because you can pay your people minimum wage doesn't necessarily mean you should. So, I think we're going to rethink, you know, there's going to be so many interesting things we'd rethink coming out of this. Look at the, you know, collective versus capitalism. Can you have, is a society such as ours really set up to handle such as this global cross-border cooperation? We're just going to look at a lot of things. If you think about, I did an interview yesterday with Professor Jonathan Haidt, who's sort of my role model as an academic, and he was talking about, he said that, and I didn't

notice that, pestilence and plagues and pathogens have killed multiple more people than wars or violence. And if you think, well, if a government's job and a liberal democracy, meaning institutions, are really here as management and they're meant to allocate capital effectively, what that means is that, technically speaking, the CDC should have a $580 billion budget and the Defense Department should have a $3 billion budget. And I think you're going to see a reshifting, I would think, in budgets. You've got to think the CDC, and there'll be something like Interpol, a global CDC that will probably be better funded. And it's also going to make us realize that a democracy demo means people, that it's dangerous. that a democracy demo means people, that it's dangerous. It's got people, if you ask people, they will always war for in the short term, more benefits to me, my group, and lower taxes. But if you defund the institutions that are responsible for climate change, upgrading

our decaying infrastructure. I'm not with you on this one, Scott. I think people are like, we're like the grasshopper. You know, we're just going to play our little music when this goes on and end up right back in the same place. I just don't. Oh, I'm actually, you're usually the optimistic one. I think this could be the mother of all vaccines where hopefully, this is my hopeful diatribe, and that is hopefully we learn from this. We realize that in the U.S., believing you're going to be rich and will never get sick is not perhaps the best way to live your life, that global cooperation is important, that being rich doesn't immunize you against things that are things more important than money, and that this generation coming up that was subject to social media and incredible indulgence from their parents might actually take from this, that cooperation and comity of man is more important. I'm hoping we— You're so—you are a very hopeful man. I don't think that at all. I think it's the opposite.

I think people get worse. I think it's—I think, you know, some of the things—and again, some of them is just the media coverage. For example, what's happening in New York right now, I think a lot of people are like, oh, it's New York, like, whatever. What I think they should do, which is interesting, because they do show these things. Europe, you saw the bodies. You saw the numbers. You saw these. There was a piece on the Times showing a refrigerated truck where they're going to put bodies in these places.

And it was a really incredible video with a doctor there who just brought her camera. And it was like, fuck this, because the people who I'm working with are saying everything's fine and it's not fine. And I'm going to show you why it's not fine. I think we have to show it. I think it's really, we're very antiseptic in this country in terms of showing death. And this has got to be shown. Like, what's going to happen in New York and then iterate around large cities? To your point, one of the things that got us out of Vietnam was the first time photojournalists were allowed onto the front lines censored. And you know what? We decided to do away with that shit in Iraq.

Bush said, no, we're going to censor the imagery coming out of. So we didn't see what 550,000 Iraqi citizens dead looked like. And I agree with you. I think maybe just having some live cams in the emergency admittance rooms in New York and in Milan or wherever it is, northern Italy, might give people a certain wake-up call around the severity here. But I do think this might be, going back to the moment of optimism, the mother of all vaccinations, that this might, I think, I'm hoping that we come back from this stronger and more thoughtful about the importance of institutions and global cooperation. Anyways, that's my hope.

I would hope so. And we're, of course, next of course next week on Monday we're going to talk about Corona Divorce and Corona Babies because we're having Esther Perel on to talk about relationships I think relationships will be an interesting thing just what you're talking about we're going to take one more quick break

we'll be back for your predictions Scott because we need a prediction Mr. Hopeful when we get back Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere and you're making Mr. Hopeful when we get back. tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. 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, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. We're back, Scott. What can you predict for us?

We're not doing wins and fails. We usually end with a prediction, right? No, no, that's on Monday. We're going to do it today as predictions. Oh, I have a win and fail, though, and a prediction. Can I do all of them? Quickly. Okay, okay.

Yes, go ahead. Go right ahead. So, my fail is this back-to-work movement being sponsored by the president and Fox and this lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, trying to position this as seniors. That guy. That seniors are caring that if you want to express love for your children and your grandchildren, you should go back to work because it's more important. The risk to your health is compensated by ensuring that Johnny and Jenny have a 401k. I just find that so insane. He can go right ahead and die.

That's what I said. My mother, I read it to my mother, who's Miss Fox News still, and she's like, I'm not dying. What an idiot. He's crazy. Like, that's not going to put a stress on us. So dad's dying, but my Zoom stock is up. Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck said the same thing. And you know what? It's not just them. I have a lot of friends who are business owners and private equity guys saying that we should think about certain people getting back to work sooner. If you had Dracula come into town and start killing people, and hopefully, and this hasn't even happened yet, we still haven't flattened the curve, but let's assume we flattened the curve. And hopefully, and this hasn't even happened yet, we still haven't flattened the curve, but let's assume we flattened the curve. Let's assume we injured Dracula and you saw him leaving town. You wouldn't just say, okay, let's wait till he gets back.

You'd hunt his ass down and put a stake through his heart. So, we absolutely, the notion that some people should go back to work under the auspices of some bullshit protective paternal notion of the economic well-being of our grandkids. You know what our kids want? They want us to be alive. They don't, I mean, that is just so insane. And I would urge- He's a big Trump supporter. Even the governor of Texas, this guy's the lieutenant governor,

is sort of backing away from killing. Oh my God. Also, they're killing off their constituents, which is amazing. This is like the Fox News group. But, you know, this was the new message after Fox has, let me just say, Fox News really needs to think hard about its culpability in this whole thing. And now they sort of got okay for five minutes, just like the president, and now they're moving into this ridiculous narrative. It's just, you know, Tucker Carlson for five seconds was decent.

And so now he's not. He's indecent in this regard, bringing this guy on. It was on the Tucker Carlson show. So I need a prediction from you, Scott. Well, I'm sorry. I'm not done. I'm not done. And by the way, what a shocker.

Kara's disappointed in Fox News. Oh, come on. Think about this. Think about this. Come on. Let's assume we flatten the curve and keep socially distancing. If this thing comes back, it goes from being a pandemic to a plague. Think about most of us have had cancer in our lives, and it's meaningful when someone gets cancer. What's profound is when it recurs. That's when you go, okay, we got to really start thinking about what this means. And if this thing goes away and comes back because Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick

convinces some old people, the most vulnerable amongst our population to go back to work, that could go from a pandemic to a plague, that could go from tragic to absolutely devastating on a global level. I just think that is the height of recklessness and irresponsibility. Anyways. Dan Patrick, you certainly can die for the rest of us, Dan. Go right ahead. You know what I said? Dan Patrick, I make this offer now just so you can get in touch with the risk-adjusted risks you are asking people to take here. Go on a ventilator for an hour and just check out how much fun that is and whether you think this is worth the risk. But anyways, that's a bit incendiary. My win is the Netflix series. This is a hard segue. My win is the Netflix series Tiger King. Have you seen this thing? No. Oh,

my God. It's a it's genius. It's this guy. He is a gay polygamist who carries a gun and has one of these big cat zoos. This guy is living his best life. Quick fun fact, there are more big cats in captivity in the U.S. than there are in the wild. It's a very strange segment of people.

Also, people that own monkeys are weird, but people that own big cats are mean. I'm learning that now. But it's on Netflix. It's this fantastic series about just how strange America is. Anyways, that's my win, Tiger King on Netflix. My loses

is back to work. You want a prediction, right? Yes, I want a prediction. Okay, a prediction. So... What companies are going to... Give me some companies. I'll go bigger than that. You said Carnival before. I'm thinking maybe you're wrong on that. I'll go bigger than that. I'm going meta here. The'm thinking maybe you're wrong on that. I'll go bigger than that. I'm going meta here. The markets never form a V. If you look at all economic crises in the past, we usually bounce across the bottom, go up a little, and then retest the lows. And then about

three to five months later, typically you have the market revert to its 20-week average. That happened in 08. It happened in the 70s. It happened in the Great Depression. This two-day run we've had for the first time since February, we've had two back-to-back up sessions. This is a head fake, Kara. We're going to test new lows. It just feels, when you start to see some of the footage that's about to come from this surge, unfortunately, and some of the employment numbers and the recognition that government stimulus can only do so much, I think the markets are going to test new lows here. This is a head fake. We don't have a V here. We're going to have something bounce along the bottom and then go down again, and then the markets will begin to recover.

So, anyways, I don't like this prediction, but I think we're going to test new lows in the Dow and the S&P over the next 15 to 30 days. Wow, that's a frigging bummer after your little hopeful thing. Anyway, before we end the show. It's just money. You know what? I'm not going to watch it. I'm just going to wait. 20 years from now, I'll look again.

That's what I'm going to do when I need to actually retire. I'm going to just look in 20 years. That's my plan. That's my pandemic plan. It's like, hopefully, we'll be better in 20 years when I need to sell out. Anyway, before we end the show, I want to talk about an interview I did with Deepak Chopra for Recode Decode about the global pandemic. It is out today, and it's about how it is impacting society and what we can do. Let's give it a listen. I think what is not being addressed right now is the pandemic of extreme fear, perception of helplessness, panic, and stress. And what is not being addressed is that this pandemic does not,

the pandemic of panic does not respect social physical distancing. And it is much more dangerous because stress and helplessness and panic also create irrational behavior, but they also turn our biology into chaos. Are you in chaos, Scott? This is it. It was a different interview. It was a little scary sometimes. Sometimes he suggests everyone, what everyone can do to get through the good times, get good sleep, manage stress through anything, music, poetry, dance, meditation. Scott, please don't dance. Nutrition and investing in intimate relationships. Scott, I need you to listen to this.

Yeah, I do. And as long as we're now like whoring out our other podcasts, I interviewed Jonathan Haidt yesterday and he had— Whoring out? We're not whoring out. Jesus Christ. You're such a pimp. What did you talk about? You're such a pimp.

If I ever need money, I'm just going to have you pimp me out. My God. Listen to me. What did Jonathan Ha about? You're such a pimp. If I ever need money, I'm just going to have you pimp me out. My God. Just listen to me. What did Jonathan Haidt say? You mentioned him earlier, FYI. He said something interesting, and that is if you look throughout history, as a species, we're very good at recovery in terms of our groups rallying and cooperating when there's an enemy that sort of looks like us, invade us. We rally together, you know, war, invasion,

or aliens showing up. You know, what Reagan said about the notion that if aliens invaded, or what he said to Gorbachev, we'd all be friends. I wish aliens would invade. What they don't do is with pestilence or pathogens, they tend to get very feral and selfish. So, this is kind of the worst of all worlds. And that is, we are not, our initial instinct here worst of all worlds, and that is we are not, our initial instinct here is not a positive one, because when a pathogen comes along, we not only don't come together or unite sometimes instinctively, we in fact are afraid of each other. And what's really tragic on a human level, I was speaking to a friend whose son is being diagnosed with COVID and has some underlying health issues, and you could just hear in this guy's voice

just how upset he is. And it goes against every instinct because if your son is not doing well, if one of your kids isn't doing well, your initial, just your absolute reflex instinct is to go be with them and wrap your arms around them. And he can't do that. This guy's in his 60s.

He has to distance from them. So it's just, it's kind of like tragedy on top of a counter, you know, counter intuition to your most basic instincts. But we have never had, at least as far as I can tell in a while, this type of, okay, hold on. I seriously hear someone doing dishes in the background. I know, that's Alex. I know, Alex. Alex, you have to stop. You have to stop for a second. We're almost done. It's my son. He's cooking. He's not listening to me when I told him not to. You're going to have to stop for five minutes and I'll be done. It's not going to stop.

Can you just take it off the thing? Take it off. I already just turned off the heat. Okay. All right. Okay. Just don't move for five minutes. Okay? We'll be done in five minutes. Sorry about that, Scott. Go ahead. Oh, I hope we're recording this. I hope we're recording this. We are. done in five minutes. Sorry about that, Scott. Go ahead. Oh, I hope we're recording this. I hope we're recording this. Big hitter Kara Swisher can't get her son to turn off the dishes. Can't get her son to stop washing dishes. You know what? My son is cooking his own food, Mr. Galloway. I'm telling you, one word, minivan. Drive them all into a lake. All into a lake. He's cooking his own food. My son is a great cook. Both my sons are great cooks,

and they can take care of themselves because that's the kind of men they are. So you better start growing your own that way. Anyway, keep going anyway i do need to grow up there i agree anyway so what we were talking about i totally lost my train of thought you're saying jonathan hayes listen just listen okay so so being you can't be with them and and that is a scary situation yeah that's very it's just countered it's it's obviously counter to all our natural instincts but i just want to leave with a message. You know, I've been saying to everybody, or I've been loud and proud saying, okay, 14 days, six feet. It ends up that it's probably going to be longer than 14 days.

And just this notion that we're thinking about back to work, I really find that scary. And the best thing we can do for the economy, the best thing we can do such that we don't end up in a situation that is totally counter to our instincts would be to continue to distance. And I hope that everybody recognizes every time they don't embrace someone physically, but embrace them digitally. That's a form of love here. We need to love people we have not met yet by ensuring this thing. We need to hunt down Dracula and put a stake in its fucking heart and make sure that the sun comes up and this thing turns to dust. That's my speech. Absolutely. I think so. And you should listen to that on Prof G, which is his new podcast that he's cheating on me with. Anyway, don't forget if you have a story

in the news and you're curious about what you want to hear our opinion on, email us at pivot at voxmedia.com. Do you feature on the show? Scott, please read us out. Prof G, please read us out. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Erica Anderson is our executive producer. Special thanks to Drew Burrows and Rebecca Castro. If you like what you heard, please subscribe or download. This is such an important time. This is our generation's test. Let's live up to the memory of so many people who made such bigger, more dramatic sacrifices than us, such that we could have the freedoms and the opportunities to live this wonderful life in such a wonderful country. Your parents were called or your grandparents were called to Vietnam or World War II. We've been called to sit on our couch and reach out to people via Zoom.

We've got this, Cara. We've got this. All right. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week with another breakdown of all things tech and business. Okay, stop talking now. Okay, go ahead.

Sorry. You are so much more patient than me. I'd be like, who pays for that fucking cereal, jackass? Shut it up. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you. Deliver that feeling to your customers every time.

Klaviyo turns your customer data into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS, and more, making every moment count. Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com slash BFCM. this podcast comes from Stripe. Stripe is a payments and billing platform supporting millions of businesses around the world, including companies like Uber, BMW, and DoorDash. Stripe has helped countless startups and established companies alike reach their growth targets, make progress on their missions, and reach more customers globally. The platform offers a suite of specialized features and tools to fast-track growth, like Stripe Billing, which makes it easy to handle subscription-based charges, invoicing, and all recurring revenue management Thank you.