Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 08/04 – Is Robinhood A Meme Stock Now?

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Robinhood’s shares are up so much after that busted IPO that trading had to be halted today. What gives? Also, what’s up with the rush into Buy Now Pay Later all of the sudden? Vudo will become Roku’s official video store. Superhuman raises another round. And do you need a smart soap dispenser in your life? Probably not. Metalab.com TinyCaptial.com Links: Robinhood surges as much as 81% in second day of wild trading (CNBC) Apple, Affirm to Join on Buy Now, Pay Later for Canadian Purchases (Bloomberg) WhatsApp launches its ‘View Once’ disappearing photos and videos (The Verge) New ‘Google Identity Services’ consolidate sign-in for 3rd-party apps, includes ‘One Tap’ (9to5Google) FandangoNOW and Vudu merge into a new streaming service with titles to rent, buy or stream free (TechCrunch) Blizzard’s head of HR is out (The Verge) Superhuman Raises $75 Million For Its Waitlist-Only Email Productivity App (Forbes) This $55 Amazon Smart Soap Dispenser is dumb as dirt (The Verge) Smart homes and vegetable peelers (Benedict Evans) Link to the Twitter Space reminder! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Wednesday, August 4th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Robin Hood's shares are up so much after that busted IPO that trading had to be halted today. What gives?

Also, what's up with the rush into buy now, pay later? Startups all the sudden, voodoo will become Roku's official video store. Superhuman raises another round. And do you need a smart soap dispenser in your life? Probably not. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Is Robin Hood a meme stock now? Remember when Robin Hood IPOed and it didn't go so well, no first day pop? In fact, they were down on the first day of trading. There were some concerns about the long-term viability of Robin Hood's business model, of payment for order flow and all that, causing some investors to blanch a bit. Yeah, well, Robin Hood shares soared 65% this morning, reaching $77 per share, forcing trading to be for a time. This is after a surge yesterday, thereby bringing total gains for Robin Hood across the

entire week to nearly 120 percent. So who needs a first day pop when you have a first week pop because maybe you have users as hodlers, as we speculated on earlier this week, quoting CNBC. Robin Hood's stock is making up for its lackluster debut on the NASDAQ last week. The stock priced at $38 per share, the low end of its offering range. It opened at that price on Thursday, but then fell 8% on its first day and had largely traded below that price until Tuesday when it rallied more than 24%. It is unclear exactly what is driving the stock higher on Wednesday. However, attention from popular investor Kathy Wood typically benefits growth stocks. Arc Invests Wood purchased 89,622 shares of Robin Hood on Tuesday in Arc FinTech Innovations.

ETF, a position worth roughly $4.2 million based on Robin Hood's closing price of $46.80. This position adds to the approximately 3.15 million shares Wood has bought of Robin Hood since the company's debut last week. Robin Hood is also garnering attention from retail investors. Hood, Robin Hood's ticker, is the number one ticker on Wall Street Betts tracker Swaggy Stocks, which indicates more than 700 mentions on the Reddit chat room, end quote. Apple said it is using a firm's paybright product to launch a buy-now pay later program for iPhone, Mac, and iPad purchases in Canada, beginning August 11th, according to a staff message, quoting Mark German in Bloomberg.

The company's plan to debut the initiative this month at Apple's online and physical retail stores in Canada, according to a message sent to Apple retail employees in the region, which was obtained by Bloomberg News. The service will let iPhone, Mac, and iPad buyers in Canada pay for purchases over 12 or 24 months instead of in full at the time of the transaction. Apple told staff it will offer the program interest-free for a limited time after the launch. This will become Apple's first installment program in Canada in several years. Apple has offered a buy-now pay later system for Apple purchases via its Apple card, credit card with Goldman Sachs in the U.S. since last year, but the card isn't available internationally. Apple has also long offered monthly iPhone payment plans in some countries, end quote. So this might at first blush not seem like the biggest story in the world, but look,

I'm openly asking at this point what's going on with this buy now pay later space. I mean, it was billions, multiple billions of dollars worth for Square not too long ago, and I literally have like five different stories of new rounds raised by BNPL startups just from the past two weeks that I could tell you about right now if I wanted to. Like the continued hotness for food delivery, this by now, pay later space confuses me. Like, isn't this just layaway? Haven't we always had something like this in retail? Why is this like the hottest thing in the investing world right now, along with grocery delivery and the metaverse? And I say that as someone that has a firm hooked up at the e-commerce company that I own.

Works well for us. but if someone can explain the economics behind this boom, what investors see in it where the margins are, I'd be much obliged. WhatsApp is rolling out a view-once feature for photos and videos that can disappear from a WhatsApp chat after the recipient opens, said photo or video, quoting the verge. When sending a photo or video, you can make it view once by tapping the one button to the left of the send button after the recipient opens it, it'll be deleted. The recipient will be able to see that it's a disappearing photo, so it's still the type of thing you'd only want to use for people you can trust

not to take a screenshot. In June, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the feature would be coming, though, details about when it would release were scarce. According to WAA beta info, the feature has been in beta for about a month. As an example of how the feature could be used, WhatsApp uses the example of sending a photo of sensitive information like a Wi-Fi password. Of course, there are perhaps other less wholesome uses for this kind of feature, end quote. Google is apparently consolidating its sign-in offerings with a new family of identity APIs called Google Identity Services, which includes a new One-Tap sign-in prompt, quoting 9 to 5 Google. First detailed last year, the big addition today is the One-Tap authentication module.

It works directly on the current site, so users aren't redirected to a separate sign-in page, thus letting them browse uninterrupted. On-click, developers receive a secure token to authenticate the user. The on-tap prompt slides up from the bottom of the screen on mobile Android, while it appears from the top right on the desktop web. It works for both signing up new users and automatically logging in old ones. An update to sign in with Google will see the button, show your name, email, being used for the service and profile image when returning to a site.

The company also touts improved UI-U-X consistency, with this solution intended for traditional sign-in sign-up pages. In practice, Google touts that Reddit implemented both features, and, quote, increased both new user sign-up and returning user conversion by almost 2x, end quote. With this launch, Google also simplified the implementation process with a focus on requiring minimal code and just offering one SDK, end quote. On-demand movie and TV service Fandango now has merged with the video streaming service Voodoo, and the combined entity will now become Roku's official movie and TV store,

quoting TechCrunch. Last year, movie ticketing and discovery business Fandango, a division of NBC Universal, bought the on-demand video streaming service Voodoo from Walmart after the retailer had failed to capitalize on the service it had acquired in 2010 for $100 million. Today, Fandango is taking the next steps with Voodoo by merging the service with its existing streaming platform, Fandango, now. The newly combined service will continue to use the name Voodoo,

and will feature over 200,000 new releases and catalog movies and TV shows to rent or buy without a subscription, as well as thousands of free-to-stream titles. The company tells us it chose to stick with Voodoo as its name because it's already a popular brand with a loyal following and is now significantly larger than the Fandango Now service. Despite the changes coming to the service, existing Fandango Now customers won't lose access to any of the content they already purchased. Both their movies and TV series will be automatically transferred over to the new Voodoo service starting today. Voodoo already has a large built-in audience for its movie and TV marketplace. Vandango claims the service has over 60 million registered users and reaches millions on a daily basis. By way of its expansive platform support, it's capable of reaching over 75 million U.S. TV-connected device households per NPD group data. This includes Voodoo's support for Samsung, LG, and Vizio smart TVs, the Roku platform, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Xfinity X1, and Xfinity Flex, PlayStation,

Xbox, TiVo, and others. Following the merger and rebranding, the new Voodoo service will also take Fandango now's place as the official movie store on the Roku platform where consumers can rent or purchase using Roku pay, end quote. This story continues to roll on, and it's probably because actual heads are rolling at this point. Activision Blizzard said that Blizzard's head of global human resources, Jesse Messchuk, has left the company. This afternoon's that Activision Blizzard president John Allen Brack is leaving the company also to be replaced by Jen O'Neill and Mike Ybarra, as the fallout from that California labor lawsuit continues, quoting the verge. While Brack oversaw the entire Blizzard brand and was named in the state of California's lawsuit as an alleged enabler,

Blizzard's Human Resources Department was also allegedly complicit. The lawsuit suggested that employees were, quote, discouraged from complaining as human resource personnel were known to be close to alleged harasser. end quote, and one of the people pictured in photographs of the so-called Cosby Suite was allegedly an HR employee, according to an ex-Blizzard developer who spoke to Kutaku. In a report published by Axios today, multiple current and former Blizzard employees called the company's human resources team part of the problem. They would report issues only to be ignored, belittled, and retaliated against they claimed. An HR rep reportedly told one employee to suck it up because

they were, quote, acting like a brat. Another told Axiore. that after she was assaulted by a male colleague, the HR rep took his side, telling her to work from home or to switch departments. Quote, he's really sorry and he really wants to work at Blizzard, and he says that you were really friendly with him, they reportedly said. Last Tuesday, Activision Blizzard's CEO, Bobby Kotik promised to clean house, writing that, quote, anyone found to have impeded the integrity of our processes for evaluating claims and imposing appropriate consequences will be terminated, end quote. On Activision Blizzard's earnings call, Tuesday, Kotik defended the company's intent to make necessary changes, quote,

I want to start by making clear to everyone that there's no place at our company where discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind will be tolerated. Nowhere, he said, adding that, quote, we will be the company that sets the example for this in our industry, end quote. He also continued to suggest, however, that the allegations were old news, quote, over the past several years, we've made significant changes to address company culture, he said, end quote. Interesting, Ray's time.

Remember superhuman, which for like six months, there was the cool email service that all the cool kids were using. You knew they were because it said, you know, sent by Superhuman down at the bottom. Going back to Hotmail, that's the way you do things. If you've got an email product right, well, they're still around grinding away. In fact, even though the service still hasn't formally launched, Superhuman has raised a $75 million series C, led by IVP, a key investor in Dropbox. Sources say at a $825 million valuation, Quoting Forbes. Superhuman CEO Rahul Vora and co-founders Conrad Irwin and Vivek Sodera have built Superhuman into a software app with a waitlist of more than 450,000. Founded in 2014, Superhuman

has never formally launched. Customers, Gmail, and iOS users only so far who make it off that list must go through a 30-minute live onboarding session for the privilege to pay $30 per month for a service email offered by many others for free. Its price point and concierge service makes Superhuman easy to dismiss as a small luxury for the Silicon Valley Elite, but it's allowed Superhuman to grow cautiously, largely off its own revenue, all while tweaking its tools, the killer feature keyboard shortcuts that can make it easy to reply with pre-written messages or templates, zoom links, and calendar holds from feedback starting the moment a user first explores the product. Superhuman doesn't share its total number of users in 2020. Forbes estimated Superhuman had reached at least

50,000 when the startup appeared on the list of next billion-dollar startups. The company does say those customers have sent more than 100 million messages to triage, more than 335 million conversations to date. More than half of monthly users have worked in the app daily for the past two years, and more than 60 percent excluding weekends. Vora adds that 58 percent of users spend more than three hours per day in the app on par with what the average worker already spends on email in a weekday per an Adobe survey and have sent an average of 3.4 invites to others, converting at least one person into a customer within six months. They have the ambition, as well as the user permission, to become a de facto leader in workplace communication

and productivity, says one of the IVP investors. Seeing parallels to how Dropbox spread bottoms up from individual users into businesses, the IVP investor connected Vora to some of his former colleagues to Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and co-founder Arash Ferdowsy both personally invested, as did President Timothy Young. Young's hypothesis, email is still where many workers start their day, but the shift to remote work has stripped away the theater of spending hours checking email to look productive in an office setting, placing a premium on efficiency and hyper-opinionated workflows, end quote. Finally today, maybe this isn't an interesting gadget so much as it's a product for me to clown on, to snark on, to poop on, to quote, a famous dog. Amazon has a new $55

smart soap dispenser. You heard me, quoting the verge. And because it's made by Amazon, it's designed to be paired with an echo speaker to run Alexa routines. Why? Well, according to Amazon, it's to, quote, automatically play songs, jokes, and more when you wash, end quote. The 12-ounce liquid soap dispenser is fitted with 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi and features an LED timer. Around the top, that reminds you to keep scrubbing until the CDC recommended minimum wash time of 20 seconds has elapsed. The rechargeable battery is said to last three months on a single charge. One useful feature is the variable rate dispenser that pumps out more soap the further away from the nozzle you hold your hand. But that features available on a variety of touchless soap

dispensers that cost a lot less, end quote. Yeah, and also, You can always just get a bar of soap for what? Pennies. Look, the canonical essay about products like this is Benedict Evans' 2018 essay about the smart home and Internet of Things space called Smart Homes and Vegetable Peelers. I've linked to it in the show notes. Basically, when a new technology like, say, electrification comes in, people try to put it in everything. Some make sense. Some don't.

I've linked to the essay at the very bottom of the show notes. So read it if you never have, but one quick quote for you. Many of the things that get a connection or become smart in some way will seem silly to us, just as many things that got electrified would seem silly to our grandparents. Tell them that you have a button to adjust the mirrors on your car or a machine to chop vegetables and they think you were soft in the head. But that's how the deployment of the technology happened and how it will happen again. The technology will be there and will become very, very cheap, so it will slide unnoticed into

our lives. On the other hand, many things that people did think might get electrified did not, and many of the things that did work were not adopted in a uniform way. Most people in the UK have an electric kettle, but that's not true in the USA, and most people in Japan have a rice cooker, but this in turn isn't true in the UK. Anyone who's baked a few times has bought an electric whisk for 20 bucks, but not many people use electric carving knives. The smart home or connected home or internet of things, choose your term, will probably look much the same. Electrical components become cheap commodities that let people experiment with all sorts of ideas. Today, the smartphone supply chain is a fire hose of cheap commodity components that, again,

let people experiment with all sorts of ideas for smart things. Some will work, some won't, but our children will take the ones that do work for granted, end quote. Tonight, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, Chris and I are back at it doing a big Twitter space about the Metaverse, the other hot investment thesis of the moment. Link to the Twitter space and the ability to set a reminder to join the space is at the very bottom of the show notes today so long as I remember to put it there. See you there tonight. Talk to you tomorrow.