The Best One Yet - 🍿 “1-click movie” — OpenAI’s Hollywood video. Hershey’s orphan school. Brian Chesky’s 1:1 meeting hate.

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Hershey stock surged 20% on acquisition talks… but family drama can block the whole deal.OpenAI just launched Sora: text-to-video Gen AI… It’s turning Hollywood into an app.Over 90% of the tech industry does 1:1 Meetings… but Airbnb’s Brian Chesky is killing them.Plus, the fastest-growing job in medicine? It’s dermatology… aka The Derm Boom.Check out our Sora AI videos on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod $HSY $MDLZ  $ABNBSubscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.“The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.—-----------------------------------------------------GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Wednesday, Saviche Wednesday, December 12th. And today's pod is the best one yet this is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. I don't know, Jack. What do you want to do tonight? Maybe go to the Knicks game and not too shabby.

Wild story. But Nick and I got invited to the Knicks game tonight by a Yeti. Legendary Yeti by the name of Jordan. He heard we're coming to New York City and he said, I got a VIP box with a couple of seats with your names on it. We said, we finished the pot at 650. be at the garden by 7 p.m. I've never been to a Knicks game. So excited for tonight. Love Yeti Nation. Jack, three fantastic stories for today's pod. What do we got on the show? For our first story, Hershey stock jumped 20% this week on reports that America's biggest

snack company wants to acquire it. But caught in the crosshairs of this epic deal is the Hershey School for Orphan Children. Wild story. Crazy story. For our second story, it's Open AI. They just launched the coolest tech of the year. It's called Sora, which turns your text into videos. Jack and I tried it out to make a video of this podcast and the results. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. We're going to give a two thumbs up. And our third and final story. The entire tech industry does weekly one-on-one meetings between managers and their direct reports. Except for Brian Chesky. Here is why Airbnb's CEO is trying to kill the one-on-one. But Yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. I mean, no one else is doing this mix. Love the mix today, Jack.

Nick, what did you want to be when you grew up? You know, Jack, it's a good question. I wanted to be an astronaut, maybe the president, maybe a doctor, probably didn't have podcaster up there. You know what the most popular answer is today? Talk to me. Dermatologist. Yeti is dermatology?

It has become the most in-demand job in the medical field. The skin doctor is now the wind doctor. Your epiderm is. It's your biggest organ, and it's your biggest payday. Yeah. It's a derm boom. Here's the news. Dermatologist residency applications are up 50.

percent in the last four years. Because medical students have realized that dermatology has the best pay-to-work ratio in the industry. You ready for this? Hit me. Dermatologists only work four days a week. Okay. They have like no emails to go through at the end of the ad. Zero inbox. And they get doubled the salary of other doctors. Oh, check out the Instagram account Dermfluencer. Jack, what are you going to see when you go to Dermfluencer? This dermatologist is showing off a glamorous lifestyle as a skin doctor and three million followers are watching. In fact, the average brings home a pay of $541,000 a year. Jack could just sprinkle on some context. That's double the average pay of a pediatrician, which is kind of messed up. It is. But medicine is a market. And you know what,

besties? People are willing to pay big to have dewy wrinkleless skin like Jack's 42-step skincare routine. I'm already paying big with my 17 skincare products. And you know what? If you're a derm, you can charge $5,000 for a 20-minute laser treatment. And Botox, it's a profit puppy. Plus, there's way fewer emergencies in dermatology. Good point. So dermatologists enjoy much steadier, more reliable hours. This is Thompson. That pimple, it can rate until tomorrow.

Don't worry about it. Interesting detail from the Wall Street Journal. A record high 71% of new dermatologists are women. Because many are working mothers who appreciate the flexibility. And because women have way better skin care routines than men. It's true. Dermatology. It's the new brain surgery.

So don't forget the sunscreen. Good point. Skin cancer. They're not just removing. that blemish on your cheek. They're saving lives. Jack, SBF T-Boy, let's hit our three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm.

They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm. Jack Nick T-Dicks. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

For the third time, a giant food company is trying to acquire Hershey's chocolate. And for the third time, Hershey's probably won't sell. Because Hershey's isn't a company. It's a constitution. We'll explain. Yes, we will. Now, yet he's Jack and I've covered a lot of legendary products, companies, brands, people on this pod. But the Hershey's Kiss, ah, the Hershey's Kiss is a master class in PR spin.

Because the way that the chocolate hardens, the Hershey's Kiss actually looks like a tear drop. But then Larry over in marketing said, hey, let's call it a kiss. And honestly, let's just call it a kiss. Nobody's going to question it. No one questioned it. Hershey's invented the Hershey's Kiss in 1907. And today, the 130-year-old company is more valuable than ever. And Bloomberg reported this week that an even bigger company, Mondalise, wants to acquire the legendary Hershey Company.

Mondalise Plus Hershey's would be America's biggest snack company, and America's biggest chocolate companies in one company. Jack, could one say that Mondalise and Hershey would be like peanut butter and chocolate? Fair point, because Hershey's owns Reese's. Combining the Chicago and Pennsylvania-based company would put Oreos and Hershey's, Reese's and Twizzlers, sour patch and Nabisco, Chips O'Hoy and Ritz,

all under the same roots. Oh, besties, if you want to buy this new stock, you'll have to ask your mom to take it out of the cookie jar. There's no skin milk at that company. No. This is a heavy cream kind of thing. business. It's a heavy cream kind of business. Now, to sprinkle on a little more context, Jeddies, no price has been formally discussed yet. According to Bloomberg,

Mondalese has merely made a preliminary approach to Hershey's. Which means like instead of hiring investment bankers, they hired umpalumpas. I don't know. No, I think they sent an email. Yeah. They said, do you want to talk? From an umpalumpa. But Bessie's Jack and I jumped in T-boy style, and we discovered this is not the first time someone's tried to acquire Hershey. In 2002, Riggily, the gum company, tried to acquire Hershey's for $12.5 billion. But Hershey said no. In 2016, Mondalese tried to acquire Hershey's for $23 billion. But Hershey said no. It's 2024 and Mondalese is reportedly trying again. This time, Hershey's stock rose 20% on hopes that they'll accept the deal.

Maybe Mondalise tosses in a French kiss, you know, to seal the deal. We'll see what they can do to make it happen. But in the past, Hershey has refused to sell. Even when they've had incredibly good prices offered to them. Chocolate covered prices. Because unlike every other publicly traded company in America, price is not the most important thing for Hershey. It's something even sweeter that they care about. Something in their gooey chocolatey course. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Hershey? Hershey isn't a company at all. It's actually a constitution. Yet is Milton Hershey, he didn't just scale. chocolate manufacturing like no other American in the world. Milton Hershey did something we'd never

seen before. He established the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, a town incorporated by his chocolate company. In fact, Milton Hershey and his wife, they love children, but they were never able to have children of their own. It's actually a really sad story. So they created the Milton Hershey School for orphans. It still exists and enrolls 2,000 students today. Oh, and the company Hershey? Well, Today, they are a publicly traded firm worth $40 billion. That's seven lives. But 80% of the voting control is held by the Hershey's Trust. Interesting.

Which was established in the legacy of Milton Hershey and his wife. And guess what they prioritize, Nick? What's their focus, check? What's the profit. The charitable endeavors of the Hershey's. That family trust, it also owns the amusement park that Hershey built to make children. It's a wonderful story, what the Hershey's have done. Amazing story.

And get this. Hershey is so important to this. state of Pennsylvania, the state attorney general can seek to block any sale of the company. Sit down, stand up, and Keystone again, Pennsylvania can block the sale of Hershey because it's that important to the state. So, for Mondalese to acquire Hershey, both the charitable trust of the family and the state of Pennsylvania must approve any deal. That's why the way Jack and I see it, Hershey's isn't a company. Hershey is a constitution. For our second story, Open AI just made it.

most highly anticipated move of the entire year. They launched a product called SORA, which is their text-to-video platform. And Jack and I will tell you what industry this wild new technology is going to affect the most. But Yetis, Brain rot. That's the word of the year for 2024. Brain rot. Artificial intelligence might be the word of the century. Yeah, well put. And it actually all began with chat GPT. Open AIs text-to-text artificial intelligence was launched back in November. November 22, two years ago. One year later, OpenAI launched Dolly, which is the same generative AI as ChatGPT, but text to image. And one year after that, yesterday, Open AI launched text to video, and it's called Sora. Sora. But Nick, how does Open AI describe this new platform?

Well, Open AI describes Sora as our model that can create realistic videos from text. That's the most underrated sentence of the year. Yeah, it is. Because this SORA product is the wildest tech that Nick and I have ever used. Yadis, what Jack and I are saying here is that this technology will let you type a description and then turn those words into video. It is a one-click movie. For example, imagine a family of grizzly bears eating sushi together. Well, actually, you don't have to imagine it. We typed that into SORA and it created a movie of bears eating sushi.

They were all sitting at a picnic table eating sushi. And we posted it on our Instagram. It's literally like grizzly bears chopping into like a... a California roll with some chopsticks. And a computer made this video in like 15 seconds of generating. Now, besties, of course, Jack and I are curious about the business model here. We should point out that open AI ain't UNICEF. So this is only for paying customers who pay 20 bucks a month for ChatGPT Plus. And naturally, because Jack and I are your liaisons in the business world, we signed up and we posted that video of the Bears eating sushi that we created via

chat GPT Sora. But since we're paying us, we're paying. and 20 bucks a month, we decided to have a little fun with the software. We got a little wild yesterday. So we tried to recreate a video of Nick and me hosting this show in our pod studio. Okay, why don't you tell the yeties how we pulled this up? Here's what we typed into Sora. Two American guys in their mid-30s who are having fun co-hosting a podcast together about business news.

And you know what Sora did? It created a video without any cameras based on that description and it looked. It took about 20 seconds to create the video and then it was done. We watched it. Pretty good. It's like, which one's me, which one's you? Pretty. This is pretty good.

Pretty good. They actually showed one version with like 50-year-old dudes. Yeah, I wasn't right. And the other version with like guys who looked. Not as good looking. But they were guys. They were guys. So besties, we posted that on Instagram as well.

But guess what happened since everyone was getting curious about this brand new AI video product? Saw a crash. It crashed. Everyone wanted to create a video with one single sentence and a push of an enter button. Now, our first thought here, wow. This is a huge asset to the video production industry. Game of Thrones season 16, they can cut out their CGI budget altogether. Simply enter dragon fighting other dragons in the air with blonde-haired, long-haired dudes on top of them,

and Sora will generate their special effects. Where are my dragons? They're in Sora. They're all in Sora now. Chat Chitit can create essays, Dali can create portraits, and now Sora can create movies. But best is, before you cut the cameras on the industry, you should hear our takeaway first. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies? at Open AI. AI video is more of a threat to Madison Avenue than it is to Hollywood. Wild.

Yeties, you just watched an AI-created video of a crack in sea monster pulling a ship into the ocean or bears eating sushi or two guys podcasting. And a computer made those videos in like 15 seconds. But Jack and I don't think this is actually a threat to Hollywood yet. For one, actors and writers guilds, they both wrote protections into their five-year labor contracts against the use of AI. So Hollywood is safe right now. But Madison Avenue, on the other hand, the advertising industry, they've already begun using AI to create commercials. Coca-Cola already published their own AI-generated commercial for the holidays. It was a Coca-Cola truck driving through the woods, and as it passed fir trees, those trees lit up with Christmas lights. It was all AI. So if Coca-Cola can use computer software to make their commercials, then that makes them less reliant on ad agencies. That's one reason. We also

just saw the biggest merger in advertising history this week. We did. The two largest ad firms on Earth, Omnicom and Interpublic, they just merged because when the going gets tough, the tough get merging. And when companies can use computer software to create their commercials, that's tough for the advertising industry. So in the short term besties, open AI SORA is less of a threat to Hollywood and more of a threat to Madison Avenue. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story, can I grab 20 minutes on the calendar, Jack? Not if it's recurrent. Because Airbnb's founder, Brian Chesky, refuses to do one-on-one meetings at Airbnb. The tech industry invented the one-on-one meeting, but now it's turning against them. Yeties, legend has it that the first ever one-on-one

meeting was between Steve Jobs and an intern. Is that really a story? Not really, but no one can confirm or deny that story, Jack. However, since that momentous potential moment, the tech industry has thrived on the one-on-one meeting. The one-on-one. It's when you and your manager, or you and your direct report, have a one-hour chat while sipping coffee or just grabbing a room

or taking a walk around the neighborhood. And you're doing it every Tuesday at 2 p.m. Sharp. It's a weekly recurring meeting with a manager to discuss progress, your important tasks, your career development. Maybe if you're lucky, one little piece of office gossip.

The one-on-one is a... Did you see what she was wearing? Never mind, no, we'll discuss it after this show. We'll discuss it after this show. the show, Jack. And the one-on-one is at every tech company. Oh, every tech company. But it started in the 2010s. And then it basically took over the whole tech industry, didn't it, Jack? Nick and I worked at Robin it for three years, which means, by my math, we had 156 one-on-one meetings with our managers each. Although funny point jack, when we were doing one-on-ones of people, they actually put us together.

Like, we were the only guys who had a two-on-one meeting. We were doing two-on-one meetings. True, we did. But in the meantime, every tech company is doing one-on-ones. Amazon and Facebook do it. Google does it. Netflix enshrined the one-on-one meeting in their famous culture deck. But here's the news. After 15 years, Airbnb's Brian Chesky is challenging the one-on-one status quo at tech companies. You know how many one-on-ones he wants? Zero. He told Fortune magazine that the one-on-one-one model is flawed. He said it turns the bosses into a therapist, like they're listening on the couch to whatever their employees are saying. More fundamentally, he points out that company challenges usually involve team dynamics. Good point, good point, good point.

But the team's not in the room if it's a one-on-one meeting. Now, funny thing, Eddie's, Jack and I jumped in T-boy style, and we discovered it's not just Airbnb's founder who's going anti-one-on-ones. Invidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, he did a 180 on the one-on-one as well. And Jensen Wong of Invidia, he runs the world's second most valuable company. He's 55 direct reports. And none of them get recurring solo meetings with it. In fact, we did the math on this one, too.

If he did a 30-minute one-on-one meeting with each of those 55 employees, two and a half days of his week would just be recurring one-on-one meetings. And the video wouldn't be a chip company. It'd be a chatting company. And the more we research, the more we see a trend of erasing the one-on-one in tech. Instead of recurring weekly meetings, more tech companies are having team meetings. Oh, there we go. Right. And if the boss wants to talk about a specific thing with his underling or vice versa, you can set up time to discuss it. Instead of calling that a one-on-one, you can just call it a conversation. Like the rest of the world. Exactly. So Jack, Jack,

What's the takeaway for our buddies over in tech? Having one-on-one meetings. The one-on-one evolution is an example of group think. It's follow the leader fever. Now, yet he's interestingly, we notice there is plenty of research both for and against the one-on-one meeting. Adam Grant says that one-on-ones are great to retain employees. But on the other hand, Harvard has a study that shows one-on-one's hurt productivity among employees.

But what we're more interested in than the merits of a one-on-one meeting is how they got so big in the first place. Because in tech, the hot idea in innovation or HR or branding, it rapidly gets mimicked by the whole rest of the industry. It's why every tech company has a rainbow color logo or every tech company does quarterly and yearly OKR goal setting frameworks. True. And why every tech company does one-on-one manager meetings. Oh, and remote work, Jack? Like that rose rapidly in popularity across the whole tech industry and then now it's declining across the whole tech industry. Apple's slogan is famously to think different, but within Silicon Valley, there's a whole lot of group think. And the rise and fall of one-on-one meetings, that is another example.

It's follow the leader fever. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for Saviche Wednesday? Someone wants to acquire Hershey's again, but only if the Milton Hershey Family Trust agrees to it. Because Hershey isn't a typical company. Hershey is like a constitution. For our second story, OpenAI just launched SORA. You enter a text prompt and it generates a video. We played around with it and we think AI video is more of a threat to Madison Avenue than it is to Hollywood. And our third and final story is Airbnb's Brian Chesky. He's leading a movement to end the recurring one-on-one manager meeting. Ah, the rise and fall of the one-on-one meeting. In tech, it is an example of group think. It's follow the leader fever. But yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, General Motors,

announced they are shutting down Cruz, their Robotaxy fleet for good. Cruise is gone. They're going to invest instead in advanced driver assistance for human drivers behind their General Motors cars. You want to hear the numbers yet,ies? Well, GM invested $10 billion into Cruise, but won't put another dollar back into it. They're calling it quits, which means that Waymo and Tesla have one less competitor in the Robo Taxi market. And second, a federal judge just ruled that Kroger cannot merge with Albertsons after all. The grocery aisle, aisle six, is going to remain separate. It's going to be different. It's going to be two different companies. The Biden administration sued earlier this year to block what would have been the biggest grocery merger ever. Yeah, the FTC said

there'd be less competition in groceries, which would result in higher grocery prices. How much are those eggs? And a federal judge just agreed. The merger would have hurt consumers. And finally, DoorDash already delivers food, groceries, and dinner, but now they're delivering your wedding dress. DoorDash partnered with David's bridle so that your special day can't get ruined because you forgot your dress. Well, you know this happened in our wedding, right? What? Oh, you don't even know the veil? It was forgotten on the mainland.

They don't know where the veil was, and someone had to get it on a ferry an hour before the wedding. Who saved the day? I think it was someone named like Christy over on Cape Cod dropped it on a ferry to go to Nantuckin. Guardian Angel. But now, DoorDash will do it, too. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Andy Roberts down. lovely Covington, Georgia.

A couple weeks ago, we did a story on the return of Dippin' Dots, which is the ice cream of the future. Interestingly, we said that the key challenge for this business was they had to keep dip in dots ice cream at negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a challenge because regular freezers only go down to zero. But negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit is actually a very important number. Because negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit is also negative 40 degrees Celsius. Since the two temperatures are non-parallel in a year.

scales, there's only one point where the two intersect, and that point for Fahrenheit and Celsius is negative 40 degrees. I didn't understand any of that, Nick. But I can't confirm, negative 40 Fahrenheit is also negative 40 Celsius. And it's the perfect temperature for a dip in dot. This is either a coincidence or an ice cream conspiracy. Dippin dot. Yettys, you look fantastic for Cevice Wednesday. If you haven't yet, two of the best things you can do to grow the show is one, click to follow us, tap to follow us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever. You'll get the show every day. And then drop down and give us five stars and a review.

We love reading them. We read every single one of them. And it helps us grow on the podcast platform. True story. Helps us grow in the rankings. By the way, 9,000 of you have left us reviews on Apple, which means a lot of you have yet to leave us reviews on Apple. Yeah, we know the numbers.

A lot of you owe us to review. In the meantime, Jack and I can't wait to see tomorrow. And before we go, a happy birthday. to Eddie Siva Nagalakshmi over in Hyderabad, India celebrated the best birthday yet. And happy 28th birthday to Antonio Rosales in Chicago, Illinois. And Carlos Guevara down in Mexico is a legendary fan having their favorite birthday. Huge shout out to Martin Thomas, who met Nick on a red-eye flight to New York City. Yeah, I wish I was there.

I know. It was great, Ray. Actually, I don't wish I was there, because red-eye flights are horrible. I can't believe how well you're performing on this pod after sleeping only three hours on your flight. Jack, the pod just gives unlimited. energy. It's powerful. And a happy birthday to our buddy, Dan Katz from New York and Riverdale and Brooklyn. And he lived in Germany for a while too. So he gets all of them. It's raining cats and just cats. Now let's get to that next game. This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix and Amazon. And Nick and I both own stock of Airbnb. I literally have the blemish on my cheek. I were removed.

Almost. No, I haven't done the procedure now. Funny enough, the procedure is called BBL, which everyone thinks means Brazilian butt left. You got to double check with that doctor when you get in that room. Is this right, BBL? You're like, do whatever you want, Doc. Surprise me.

Surprise me.