The Best One Yet - 🏀 “3-Pointer Economics” — NBA’s shot problem. Zelle is beating Venmo. Jamie Dimon’s rant.

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Venmo & Cash App are getting crushed by Zelle… The boringest app disrupted the disruptors.The NBA has a problem: Too many 3-pointers… but there’s an economic reason for them.Jamie Dimon just went on an expletive-laced rant about Work From Home… and we got the tapes.Plus, the untold origin story of… The Patagonia Fleece.$XYZ $JPM $BACWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show about the Patagonia Fleece 🐑. Subscribe 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.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.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. Welcome back. It is Tuesday, T-Boy. Tuesday, February 18th. And today's pot is the best one yet. This is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today.

How is Valentine's weekend? You got like a babysitter for three days over the weekend, basically. It had an epic day date Saturday. Yeah. Skiing Monday. It was a great weekend. Skying Sunday as well. Back to back.

Jack, you know what I made Molly for Valentine's Day? What did you make her? Carbonara. why? There are eggs in it. You think eggs are the grandest gesture of love. It's bigger than caviar these days. Yet these three fantastic stories for today's show, Jack. What do we got on the T-boy? For our first story, it's Zell. You're not going to believe it, but Zell is bigger than Venmo and Cash App combined. So we got the details on what the hell is going on with Zell. For our second story, it's the NBA. Their TV ratings are suffering because there's simply

too many three-pointers. Well, guess what? There's a solution to the NBA is three-point problem, and we found it in an econ 101 textbook. And our third and final story is Jamie Diamond. Jamie. He went on an expletive-ridden rant about working from home, and we found audio of it. Yeah, we got the tapes, so we are breaking it down line by line with Nick and Jack play-by-play analysis. But yet, he is, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. What did you just fantastic mix of stories after a three-day weekend, Jack?

Love it. Trivia. Yes. What product got so popular that the owner told us to stop buying it. Besties, what product found its magic material in a toilet bowl cover? And what product is beloved by both finance bros and granola crunchers alike? Jack, the answer please? The Patagonia fleece. The Patagonia fleece. Pairs well with the New England college quad, or like your SaaS job you have in San Francisco. You can conquer mountains or he could conquer spreadsheets, but odds are

it's done in a Patagonia cinchilla fleece. But before Pataguchi went all fratigonia on us, It was actually founded by one of the most counterintuitive entrepreneurs in history. A man named Yvonne Channard told people to stop buying Patagonia because of sustainability. He actually made the Forbes billionaire list and called that a failure. And he came up with the company and the fleece while hiking mountains. With the guy who founded the North Face. Can you believe that? It's a wild story.

Yet he's the most popular pullover of all time is the next episode of our weekly show, the best idea yet. The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. So later today, after this TVOI, check out our weekly deep dive show, TVIY. New episodes drop every Tuesday of the best idea yet. Tap the link in the episode description because the Patagonia Fleece is simply the best idea yet. But Jack, today's tea boy is fantastic. Should we hit these three stories? Let's do it. Let's hit, baby. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dawn. They had an idea It's the cultural storm

It's the best one yet But the best is a norm Jack Nick, that's it I don't even think they need to practice 50% That's a fat tip Tea boy city on your at list If you know you know

Cause we're ready to go We can't wait no more So just start the show First, a quick word from our sponsor Our first story As we said before What the hell is going on with Zelle Zell is actually way

bigger than Venmo and Cash App and we just got the data. Zell just passed $1 trillion in annual transactions because Zell has become the email of finance. Oh, Yeti's last week, Valentine's Day, big question, did he split the bill? Did he go Dutch? Did he send you a Venmo request?

Well, statistically speaking, if he did split the check, he didn't Venmo you. Nope. He zeld you. He zeled you. Because Zell has just become the first peer-to-peer payment to pass $1 trillion in annual transactions. Jack, could you sprinkle on some context, please? Well, we don't need to provide context that a trillion dollars is a lot of money.

We always say trillion like a couple times a year. Like, we rarely use the term. Turns out $1 trillion is twice as much volume as Venmo and cash app did. Combined. Zell now has 151 million Zell accounts. Jack, could you sprinkle on some more context, please? Venmo has 60 million active accounts. Cash app has 24 million. So Zell has almost twice as many as those two combined. Venmo and Cash App. These are culturally relevant brands. They're companies we all know talk about, laugh about. rappers mention Cash App in their lyrics. Venmo has become a verb among millennials. Literally. And yet the two best-known payment apps are getting crushed by a boring service with a stupid name. Is it short for Gazelle? It's actually Giselle, but

That one checks out, Jack. But besties, Jack and I got curious. So he jumped in T-Boy's style. What the hell is a Zelle? We're not going to make that rhyme again, Nick. If you say it three times, you get a Zell bonus, Jack. Well, the way Jack and I like to think about Zell is it's actually a disruption, disruptor, and we'll explain. Zell is actually run by a company called Early Warning Services, which is an even weirder name than Zell is. It sounds like a weather company, but it's a finance company. And that finance company happens to be owned by America's seven largest banks. J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, City Bank. It's like a co-op. But instead of, you know, hippies as members, it's finance institutions as members.

Now, in 2017, those banks created Zell in response to the disruption coming from the startups, Venmo and Cash App. The big banks rightfully saw those two digital peer-to-peer payment apps as a threat to their banking business. Well, eight years later, it appears that they are now disrupting the two disruptors because all the legacy banks basically partnered up and it's working. And because the big banks are interconnected, Zell lets us move money directly from accounts instantly and for free. That's their advantage because Venmo and Cash App, they can't compete from the outside. They make you move money into a separate wallet so they have to charge you if you want an instant money change. Meanwhile, Zell is more than just seven banks. They now have 2,200 legacy

banks that have all joined their anti-Venmo network. Basically, the enemy and my enemy is my friend. All the competing banks have teamed up against these two smaller startups. Add it all up and Zell, a fully functional brandless utility is beating the fanciest, coolest fintech apps. Or Jack, what's another way you could put it by using the word disrupt multiple times? Zell was designed by the disrupted to disrupt the disruptors. Basically, if you think about it, Zell has become like email, right? It's basically email for finance. It's simple. It's boring. No single entity owns or controls it, but we're all using it. Or another way that we could think of it, Jack. I don't think we need any more ways. He's going to say it's like a sidewalk. No thanks. We're good with

email. I use it all the time, but I have no personal feelings for it. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Zell? Zell is winning because of the jobs to be done framework. Yet he's Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, coined the term jobs to be done to understand why you actually buy a product. His theory is that customers hire products, like they hire people to do a specific job. Here's the example. This professor studied why people bought McDonald's milkshakes. And surprisingly, the top customer was actually commuters. Because commuters wanted a long-lasting treat that was holdable in one hand and wouldn't make a mess. Right. And milkshakes do that job the best. Well, similarly, when you need to send money instantly,

not with cash, then it is Zell that does that job. Venmo and Cash App, they have social features, and they try to gamify things by getting you to add a pancake emoji to your Venmo payment. One sec, Jack, our buddy Timmy just sent us seven pizzas, no clear reason why. But that's not what you're hiring for. No, it's not. On the other hand, Zell does the job to be done. And that is why Zell is now the largest peer-to-peer payment by far. For our second story.

The NBA's viewership is dropping because there are simply too many three-pointers. There's an economic reason why we have too many threes in basketball, and there's an economic solution to it, too. True story, Jack, on my flight back from New York City to San Francisco, you know who I sat next to? A basketball player. A bodyguard for a basketball player. He wouldn't tell me who.

He wouldn't tell me who, but he was big. It was huge. He was huge. But the reason that bodyguard for an NBA player was on our flight was because the NBA All-Star game was this past weekend in San Francisco. Did he intimidate you physically? I asked the other person to go let me out to go to the bathroom. I didn't ask him. But yet he's midway through the NBA season. There is one major problem. Basketball viewership is

down. NBA ratings have fallen by 18% this year. And every sports fan has a theory they're posting on Reddit as to why. Some say that today's players are too coddled. Others blame the lack of rivalries. Others say no one plays defense. But we think the reason NBA viewership is down is that there are simply too many three-pointers. Yeah, because the data shows it. Get this. According to Bloomberg, 25 years ago, the average team shot 14 three-pointers per game.

Today, the average team shoots 37 three-pointers per game. In fact, the Boston Celtics attempt 48 three-pointers every single game. That's outrageous. That means five players are taking 10 threes each game on average. Honestly, Boston, it's inappropriate. So instead of enjoying a diverse mix of dunks, jump shots, and threes, all we're seeing are threes and putbacks. The two outcomes are the three gets made or the three is missed. But yet is, here's what's fascinating about this story.

There's actually an economic calculation that explains this three-point paloosa. It's called expected value. Expected value weighs the benefit of an action with the probability of its success. So here's the math for three-pointers. Jack? 36% of three-pointers taken in the NBA are made on. average. And the return if you make a three is three points. Therefore, when you do the math, the expected value of shooting a three-pointer is actually 1.08 points. How about for dunks or for

two-point shots, Nick? Yeah, what is that, Jack? There's a 40% chance that a two-pointer is made in the NBA on average. And if it is made, you get two points. So when you do the math, the expected return of a two-point shot is 0.8 points. There it is. Easy math. There's a higher expected value of shooting a three than there is for shooting a two. So facto, it makes more sense to shoot threes than to shoot a bunch of twos because they have that higher expected value. And now that the math is so clear, teams are realizing this and coaches are coaching their players to shoot more threes. And Jack, who started this trend to shooting more threes? Steph Curry did 10 or 15 years ago. And Jack, who's entrenched shooting threes as the new normal?

All 30 NBA teams, because it's how you win games. And here's the paradox. A team wins by shooting more threes, but the fans don't like when you shoot more threes. It makes it. makes the game less complex, more predictable, and less fun overall when it's just a game with three-pointers being taken. And most of all, Mugsy Boggs hates it. Great basketball reference for a hockey fan. He told me on the flight. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies watching basketball? The NBA's three-pointer problem has a solution, and you can find it in economics. Yeties, what's happening in the NBA actually has a term in econ. It's called a market failure. A market failure. When the market, left to its own forces, results in a bad outcome.

Well, three-pointers are winning games, but they're also losing fans. And that is a market failure. So in economics, when a market outcome isn't optimal, in other words, when there's a market failure, that's when the government steps in. Yeah, the government will tax the thing causing a problem or create a rule to ban the problem. They intervene. And in the case of basketball, the NBA is responsible to step in because it kind of acts like the government here. Actually, Jack, we've seen this before. Like, this happened in baseball when the league banned the defensive shift. Yes, we did, Nick, and fans love that the shift is banned. So the NBA, they need to institute some rule changes. Maybe they move the three point line back, or Jack,

they change how many points that three-pointers were. They should change the math and only give you two and a half points for a made three. Honestly, we don't know, but we do know that basketball faces a market failure. And it will take the NBA to intervene to fix it. Now, a quarter of Quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story, an expletive-laden rant from Jamie Diamond about remote work leaked last week. So we're breaking down line by line why he thinks everyone should be in the office every day. We got the tapes. But first, Yeties, our hero stat of the day.

Get this. According to McKinsey, 2024 is the year that workers returned to the office. They surveyed 800 companies and the number of workers in the office. office doubled in the last year. Sixty-eight percent of the employees at those companies said they're now mostly in person working in the office. Now, a side note about going back to the office, Amazon now requires you to be in the office five days a week, but Amazon doesn't have enough desks. Hey, Alexa, send Amazon some desks on Amazon. True story. Amazon ran out of desks. But another return to office leader in business is J.P. Morgan Chase, America's biggest and most profitable bank.

And the head of that bank is Jamie Dyer. Jamie. He's been the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase for 19 years. He's also a born and raised New Yorker. And besties, you're about to hear his New York accent and his New York cussin in a wild, leaked audio tape. We're going to play the clip, bleep the bad words, but here's Jamie's rant during a company all hands last week. A lot of you were on the Zoom, and you were doing the following, okay? You know, look at your mail, sending text to each other person is.

Okay, not paying attention, not reading your stuff, you know. And if you don't think that slows down efficiency, creativity, creates rudeness, and it does. Okay. And when I found out that people are doing that, you don't do that. My go-in meetings. Now, we should point out, Jack, texting does happen in the office as well, to a lesser extent than work from home. But, you know, people are still slacking and texting when they're in meetings in the office. Yeah, if he doesn't want people texting during meetings, he needs to have a no devices policy in meetings.

That's a good idea. I like that. I like that. But besties, here's the second thing, Jamie Diamond said. And don't give me the shit to work from home Friday works. I call a lot of people Friday. They're not a goddamn person to get a hold of. We're fans of Summer Friday, full disclosure.

But, you know, if someone says they're working and they're not actually working, that could be a problem. Work from home is a privilege. So don't ruin it for everybody else. If you're supposed to be on the clock, answer your phone when your boss calls. Which leads to our third point from Jamie Diamond. You know, I've been working seven days of a week since COVID, and I come in and I, where's everybody else? But they here and there and the Zooms and the Zoom don't show up.

And people say they didn't get stuff. So that's not how you run a great company. We didn't build this great company by doing that. Now, that one is hypocritical. You know, last year, J.P. Morgan actually had to cap worker hours working at their investment bank because a banker at another bank actually died just from working too hard. Yeah. So like six months after, he says you can't work more than 80 hours a week investment bank.

He tells all those ambitious investment bankers, I work seven days a week. Yeah. And like implies you're supposed to as well. So Jamie Diamond's basically saying come in seven days a week and his bank saying the opposite. And then Jamie finished with this final point in the leaked audio. Now, you have a choice. You don't have to work at JP Morgan. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy ripping on work from home, Jamie Diamond?

The best professional investment to make in your 20s is a commute. That is, that's actually a quote from us. Jack and I talk about this all the time. It's about the importance of doing in-office work when you're in your early 20s. Here's what Jamie said about that. The young generation is being damaged by this. They may not be in your particular staff, but they are being left behind. They're being left behind socially, ideas, meeting people.

Honestly, we really think this is true. Coming to the office, it teaches professionalism, etiquette, people skills. He gets me to care from accounting. You learn something. from her. You may otherwise never speak with her, Jack. Remote work is great for older workers who have a family and maybe want to buy an affordable house further away from the city. But when we were 22 and we shared an apartment with three other guys in the East Village, including our buddy Timmy, we commuted to work on the subway

every day. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah, we wouldn't. Those were formative years that started our careers right. Even just the process of going into work, like you put yourself together in a different way. You interact with people in different way. And honestly, loneliness-wise, you just end up doing more things when you're already out going to the office. That's why the best professional investment to make in your 20s is commuting into work. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday. Zell now handles a trillion dollars a year of transactions. That's more than Venmo and cash app combined. And Zell is winning because Zell does the job to be done.

For our second story, the NBA's TV ratings are down, partly because the game is dominated by three pointers now. In economics, that's called a market failure. And the NBA, we've got to step in to fix it. And our third and final story is Jamie Diamond of JP Morgan Chase. He ranted about work from home, and audio of that rant leaked. And we think the best professional investment to make in your 20s is a commute into the office. But Yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. Get this. Apple is reportedly considering making humanoid robots. It's unconfirmed, but it's a scoop from an Apple Anast. that they're looking into autonomous robots to roam your house and maybe the whole world.

Apparently, these Apple robots would be shaped like a Pixar lamp, but also kind of look like a human being, like an I-human, I guess. Oh, so it's like a tabletop robot, like a little human robot, I think. Either way, we think you should design different Apple. Make a smart toilet. Make the eye toilet. Second, retail sales just had their worst drop in almost a year. And the reason is the freezing cold weather we had in January.

Retail sales fell 1% in January from Denny's Diner to Bloomingdale's Brawits. Because it was literally snowing, freezing, and sleeting across half the country, including New Orleans. And finally, gold dealers are flying physical gold bars from London to New York City on tariff wars. Here's the situation. Europe might get hit with big tariffs from America. So gold in Europe is priced $20 cheaper per ounce than it is in the United States. It was wild, but to take advantage, trader's... are getting on airplanes from Europe to the United States and checking bags of gold bars. It's gold arbitrage, a cool example of arbitrage, and a really heavy checked bag fee.

So if you're flying back from London right now, turn to the guy next to you and say, have you had gold bars in your bag? Because they might. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Brian Cornett from lovely Carpentiera, California. The state of Vermont was actually an independent. Republican for 14 years. 7077 to 7091. It had its own constitution.

It had its own currency. And it had its own postal system. That's right. It was its own economy. Vermont was its own country, literally, for half a dozen years. Now, Nick, who's from New York, likes to claim that we were basically

New York's property for a little while. We owned you, Jack. I think legally, technically, we owned the land. I'm just saying. But then Vermont became the 14th state just missing out on the original 13 colonies. You're welcome, Jack. You're welcome.

Yides, you look fantastic over there. And if you are right now wearing a Patagonia fleece, which odds are, like more than half of you are, you are going to love our latest episode of the best idea yet. Yvonne Chouinard was an incredible innovator. He wanted to save the world, but accidentally was hurting the world with his fleece sales. It's a crazy story.

I love how he literally discovered the fleece because of a toilet seat. And then, Jack, when he told people to stop buying it, like he literally said don't come in the stores anymore. Of course. Of course, that resulted in the opposite. You got to check out this show, so go to the best idea yet. Jack and I will see you there. And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yetis,

Lloyd Broughtman and Merrill, who are celebrating in Philadelphia. They are fantastic Eagles, and they are fantastic Philadelphans. Happy birthday to Mariel Sparks Cardinal in Vancouver, British Columbia. And Sidney Barnes is turning nine years old down in Aftos, California. Happy birthday, Sydney. Happy birthday to Beachuan-Loe in Nanning, China. And Cindy Lester is turning a. 60 years old over in Mesa, Arizona. Happy birthday, Cindy. Happy birthday to Chris Sessney in Renton,

Washington, who does a morning walk with Mr. Pickles, I assume listening to our show. And Grace is moving down to San Diego for a new job. Grace, enjoy the tacos. And a shout out to Cordell Zelensky, who's a big fan of Jamie. And Amanda Whitman in Boston, just outside Boston, leaves the best comments on all our social media at a T-boy pod. Amanda, we love having you with us. And the comments are the content. And a big shout out to future parents, Cody and Kim Rhodes from Spong Dalem, Germany. And this is from Uncle Alejandro. And Jack, a Fieldsston Eagle who I ran into on my flight to SF, Jack. She's fantastic and she loves the show. Great to have you with us. And finally, we did that poll last week on Spotify. If Netflix gets into podcasts, what should we call

them? Okay, 22% of you said Netpods. And 78% of you said Podflex. Here, here. Yeah, Podflix and chill. And to anyone else, Celebrate something today. Make it a T-Boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon and Reddit, and Nick and I both on stock of Apple. Water asked me, who is that when I was, like, telling Siri what song to play? Oh, that's awkward. I was like, but she's not a real person.

And he's like, why is she not a real person? I was like, because she doesn't have a body like us. You can't touch her. Wow. Jack, in like 30 years, you're going to look back in that convo and it's going to sound racist.