The Best One Yet - 🤯 “Amazon’s biggest stress test” — Via’s $200M carpool fundraise. A Zoom privacy problem. Amazon hits crunch moment.

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

We haven’t had an Amazon story during the entire corona-conomy — now it’s facing its crunch moment. Zoom became the most popular free app in the world, but now it’s facing its 1st major privacy investigation. And our “Unicorn of the Day” is ride-share under-puppy Via — it just raised $200M for AI-powered busses in the strangest timing for a ride-share investment yet.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Jack. And this is Nick? This is Daily Snacks. It is Wednesday, April 1st. This is the worst one yet. We're talking about it, T-Woy. Yeah, speaking of the worst ones yet, the Dow had its worst quarter ever. It fell by like 13%.

Snackers, end of the first quarter. Welcome to the second quarter. We whipped up three fantastic stories for you on April 1st. For our first story, shocker, we haven't talked about Amazon during the entire coronavirus outbreak. Snackers, basically. So stop answering Jackson my text messages. But we have to hit it now because Amazon has hit peak crunch time. It's showing a few cracks.

Second story, Jack. Zoom is the princess darling of the corona economy. We're talking most downloaded app, period. But now this princess is facing her biggest test ever. Yeah, you know, just a casual privacy investigation and a lawsuit. Third and final story, Jack. The unicorn of the day is Via. Yep, what did you just say?

What is that? Via. It's actually a ride sharing under puppy, not an underdog. Don't call it that. Not an under dog, it's an under puppy. And it just raised a shockingly large $200 million at a shockingly shocking moment. Now, before we jump into all that, we got to talk about how hoarding is kind of like in fashion, unfortunately, right now.

Well, we want to give you a heads up about what is the next hot commodity that is going to be gone from gross to store shelves. Right. You already cut off a neighbor's arm because he had to get the toilet paper. What is going to be next? We're thinking peeps. Peeps. We're talking the pastel coated 28 calories.

iconic spring candies. We're talking the candy that is made by the brilliantly named family-owned company, Just Born. Just Born is actually like a hundred-year-old company, founded by a Russian immigrant to the United States, owned three generations by the same company. Snackers, Jack and I stuffed our mouths, jumped in snack style, checked out the peep's website. Our favorite part about their website, they're a list of celebrity fans. Yeah, we only recognized two of them. The rest were complete no-nameers. In a normal economy, 5.5 million of these little yellow marshmallow birdies are made daily in a Pennsylvania factory. You're consuming three a day. Now, unfortunately, that 67-year-old factory just shut production because of coronavirus.

Correction, Nick, you're not eating three a day. You're eating three a year and you only do it during Easter because for some reason it's an Easter thing to eat these peeps. Snackers, we're calling it, peeps is the next non-perishable essentials hoarding product. We are missing 5.5 million peeps per day as long as this Pennsylvania factory is shut down. We're pretty sure they're non-perishful because there's definitely no expiration date on pure sugar. No, these are like Twinkies. They will survive any apocalypse. Peeps, Purell, toilet, paper, that's all you need.

Let's hear our three stories. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. It's snacks about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the robberhood family. It's all informational just so. You know, we're not recommending any securities.

Nope. It's not a research report or invest. investment advice. Not an offer or sale about security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC.

For our first story, Zoom should be crushing video conference competition like right now. Instead, Zoom video conferencing is leaving the door open to the competition because of unforced privacy errors. We're talking about the Cinderella of video conferencing right now. Zoom and social distancing, those are Jackson. in my two favorite words for Webster's word of the year. Nick, you Google something, you Venmo somebody, you Uber to somebody's place, and you Zoom. Yes. It has become the rare breed of eponymous verbs, Zoom. We're going to change everything we just said, though, and say that eponymous should definitely

be the word of the year. No one really knows how to pronounce that. Nick, Zoom is by far the standout success, mega success of the corona economy. Zoom put on a dress, got the glass slippers, it's been hanging out at the ball, this thing is like the fifth Kardashian sister. There is a list of bragworthy accomplishments that we're about to read off. Hey, Mama, Zoom, toss this one up on the fridge for the next month. Turns out Zoom added more users in the first two months of this year than in all of 2019. This is like a crazy shocker, this next one. It is the most popular app in the world on both iOS and Android. We're going to make up a stat here. There are more Zoom apps downloaded than there are phones in the world at this point. Now, if it's the most download

of that app in the world. That must mean this is not just something that businesses are using for like weekly conference calls. It's like third grade classes are zooming into meetings. You got parents who are actually using this thing for happy hours because they can't see each other. True story. I've been invited to three birthday happy hours that are taking place over Zoom in the past week. Must be nice. A little bit of a humble brag there. Now, Sackers, here's the other wild one. Let's look at how the stock's doing because the S&P 500, it's down 20% so far this year. Meanwhile, Zoom is like, y'all, I hope you're having fun down there. I'm going to double my stock in 2020 while everyone

else is tanker. That means Zoom is now worth $40 billion, or if you really want to know its value, that's about five lifts. All right. Nobody's perfect, though. Neither is Zoom. We're about to talk about its one giant vulnerability, which ironically is its privacy and security vulnerability. Yeah, the Zoom glass slippers kind of been crushed here a little bit. Last year, there were security flaws that hackers were able to hijack your Mac webcam, kind of never a good thing. That's kind of a Gary. Then Vice reported last week that Zoom was accidentally sending user data to Facebook, which is like the last place people want their user data sent. I don't know what happened here. We just packed it up and sent it to Mark Zuckerberg. We didn't know what's going on.

Right now, there's a legit cultural phenomenon called Zoom bombing. This is when Martha's doing like a presentation on a marketing update for the whole West sales region with like 300 people. She's the best. And she distributes a link that anybody can join by. I click in the link. Unfortunately for Martha, someone who happens to be naked jumps into that link. Next thing you know, that sales presentation for the Western District, it's gone from PG-rated to R-rated. Yeah, Martha's thinking like what is going on?

Why has someone else shared the screen and why is that person disturbingly naked? You literally have to shut down the whole meeting if like a Zoom bombing goes down. Martha's disturbed. She has to speak with someone. The whole thing falls apart from there. The reason, though, that we're talking about Zoom today is because yesterday the attorney general of the state of New York, pretty much sent a letter to Zoom and was like, how are you guys doing on data and security? Yeah, she literally wrote in the letter,

I am quote unquote, concerned about what's happening over at Zoom. Now, that's one level below disturbed. Oh, so true. And just one small level above curious. It's very close. It's kind of a dangerous fine line. Now, Zoom security issues go really far back, but basically it's been ignoring them. And so have a stain on your shirt, because let's be honest, you probably have a stain on your shirt right now. You got to take that to the dry cleaner. So, Jack, What's the takeaway for our buddies over at Zoom? Zoom should have overreacted when privacy concerns came up, but it didn't. Snackers, privacy is big tech's number one threat right now.

Just ask Mark Zuckerberg, who made this great product called a Facebook portal video camera. That's fantastic. That nobody wants because they don't want Facebook in their living room. Meanwhile, Zoom is stronger than ever, flush with cash, and everyone wants to work with them. Plus, your mom's figured out how to use it. Despite all those resources, Zoom still has this ambiguous. privacy policy, and it still hasn't figured out a great solution for Zoom bomb. Zoom's only vulnerability is trust. And it's inaction on that subject leaves room for a competitor to come in.

For our second story, Amazon's ultimate stress test is right now. And the Everything store, as it's called, is showing some serious cracks right now. So we noticed a Wall Street Journal report yesterday that the workers at Amazon are like watching Pirel roll down the assembly line, and then they don't get access to it at the Amazon facility. No, which is kind of unfair because their work is essential. I mean, show of hand snackers. Yep, raise them. If you visited Amazon.com since this podcast started playing.

I'm looking out there, Jack, I'm seeing 1, 2,6, 12, 5,000, 43, 2 billion people right now. So workers at Amazon are doing stuff that's, like, absolutely essential, but they're complaining about feeling a little bit underappreciated. Yeah, you got hourly workers with little benefits busting their butts so you can get a three-month supply of like purely Elizabeth Grinola and never have to run out. Now, in the corona economy, every day for Amazon has felt like Black Friday in terms of like demand for shopping. And Amazon was not ready for that. It simply wasn't ready. Snackers, get ready for these numbers. For four straight weeks, they've had over 600 million Americans visiting Amazon.com.

Right. Now, there's not 600 million Americans that exist, which means, I think on average, the average American visits Amazon. twice per week. That's insane. But then you got to cut out like the people who can barely use the internet and babies, which don't order on Amazon. And that means that there's even more usage than we just described. Right. Like the average like Amazon using person is going there four times a week right now. We're talking about Amazon getting 32% more usage right now than it did last year at the same time. Now all that extra demand is causing shortages of crucial products and delays in shipping. tried getting some resistance bansy because I got to try to move my body. Turns out they're non-essential. So an already stress system is being exacerbated by worker unrest. Right, you got walkouts.

You got no-shows. You got people who literally have coronavirus and work at Amazon can't go to work at Amazon. Perfectly legitimate excuse. Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired a few years ago, their workers staged a sickout yesterday, which is like a walkout, except when you're demanding higher pay because like hazardous conditions that are dangerous. grocery store. Now, the big question here is whether all these like hiccups and delays, would that actually hurt customer trust in something as big as Amazon? We don't think so because the global pandemic is kind of a valid excuse for like why your resistance bans will show up a week later than normal. Also, if you're trying to figure out what an alternative to Amazon would be, you're basically

just looking at Walmart. Yeah, that's it. The other stores are closed. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Amazon? This crisis is making the giants of our economy even gianter while the little guys are suffering the most. Snackers, Bezos is working overtime on COVID-19 responses, doesn't answer a text anymore, and he's basically just pulling out a checkbook. All right, first, he's hiring 100,000 extra workers to handle the extra demand. Plus, Amazon said it'll hire a bunch of people who have been recently laid off from a bunch of other places. Then Bezos added sick leave benefits for even just its part-time workers, which is kind of nice. Then he opened up the pockets and basically up the minimum wage from

15 bucks to 17 bucks for Amazon workers through April. Hopefully, it extends beyond that. Now, Amazon is offering better pay and better benefits because it can because it's getting more business than ever right now. Unfortunately, the opposite is true for smaller retail competitors and even mom and pop shops. For our third and final story, RideShare Via just raised a cool $200 million. It's offering an alternative to your typical Uber or Lyft options. Now, Snackers, Via is the only unicorn we had ever heard of that launched on the Upper East Side. of Manhattan. I honestly don't even know what joke to follow up with on that one. I grew up on the Upper East Side and I can tell you, if you're using Via to get around, you're either going to a florist

or a maternity store. Now, the big question here, are we calling this Via or we're calling it Via? Now, we're not Viya people. Jack and I are Via people. I'm a Via guy, for sure. We don't know who the Via people are out there, but if you're saying Via, that sounds more like this is like a streaming service or a sparkling water. To understand Via, though, you need to understand Uber and Lyft. Uber and Lyft focus on rides for single people hailing from one location to another. Not like not in a relationship, but just like you're on your own. Meanwhile, VIA is obsessed with carpool groups of riders. Via likes to call itself the cost-effective and equitable alternative to Uber or Lyft.

It's a nice little pat on its own back for that one. Basically think of this company as more of like a private bus you can jump on than a shared Toyota Camry and here's why. It uses artificial intelligence to basically figure out what two packages. passengers pretty much are going in the same direction. And then like, what street can they both meet on to make things way more efficient and convenient? Yeah, you give an exact address in the East Village. Via is basically like, I don't care. You're going downtown. Jump in. We're cruising down Lexington Avenue. Right. We're going down Lex. And we're probably going to pick up like three people who live in Murray Hill and Grand Central on the way. In the meantime, that means that there's one vital asterisk we got to

throw in here. No, customers, you can't be lazy if you're taking a via. No, if you're doing a via, it's not going to pick you up at the awning with the white glove service, you may have to walk 30 feet and meet them on the northeast corner of like 14th and 3rd Avenue. The only way they're picking you up on your awning is if you live like right on Lexington at 23rd Street, which is a major thoroughfare. So when you hear ride hailing, you tend to think of Uber and Lyft, but when you think of Via, it's a little bit more contrarian. Right. Uber and Lyft are actually avoiding the carpooling and ride share models because they're less profitable for the company. That's all Via does. pooling and ride shares. Now Snackers, if you're curious about VIA, here's the thing. It's probably

not in your city yet, and yet it's extremely international. It's kind of got like a James Bond thing going on. The news yesterday about its fundraise means its valuation has doubled to over $2 billion, which means it's a double unicorn, and it's got fans in 20 different countries. And its biggest investor from that fundraise is the Italian family behind Fia. Okay, so it's got a big Italian parent. It's also testing driverless shuttle vans in Australia. happening in Phoenix, aka the most innovative place in the United States. And its signature product that you might recognize, VIA, is those big vans. It likes to specialize in Mercedes-Benz vans. That's like its shuttle of choice. It's kind of like a quasi-luxury experience you get into

VIA. It's almost like going to a fancy restaurant and then getting takeout. Technically, you're to Mercedes, but you're sharing it with like 12 other people. It's not just Mercedes as though. Just like Uber and Lyft, you're a gig driver for VIA. You can use your car, but they have lots of Mercedes vans that they encourage you to use instead. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Via? Definitely not Viya. Venture Capital is planning for the post-COVID-19 normalcy. Snackers, Via specializes in ride-sharing, which means being really close and it confines based with a bunch of other people.

Right. And right now, we're all obsessed with products and services that avoid what Nick just described. We love social distancing. But what Jack and I found fascinating about this fundraise is that the smart money, which is basically what venture capitalists like to call themselves, nice self-pad on the back. The smart money is investing now for when things return to normal. Right. Via would be a very terrible business for April of 2020. Not a good month. But it's thinking about post-COVID-19.

And that's a hopeful, positive reminder that this public health crisis is going to end at some point. And when it does, you can be back in the final seat of a via talking with someone and debating meeting a new friend, whether it's via or via. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? Zoom video conference is experiencing unthinkable growth beyond the company wildest expectations. But it still hasn't solved this prophecy and security vulnerability. It's kind of an opening for a competitor. Second story, Amazon.com is under immense pressure to feed America in the world with online shopper. It's adding employees, pay, and benefits,

because it can. Small businesses can't. Kind of love that you threw in the dot com there, by the way, Chad. Thank you. Third and final story. Via is the cost efficient and equitable alternative to Uber and Lyft, and it's worth over $2 billion now. Time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Gorav Menin and Lai. lovely Los Angeles, California. So, Nick, you know the hashtag? Like the thing that you put on Twitter to try to make more people see your tweet? Very familiar with it.

People throw them in. They kind of feel forced and awkward, but sometimes you got to do. So we called a hashtag, and it's a symbol, but it has an official name. The official name is not hashtag. No. It's not the Pounce and Mult. And it's not the number sign. Those are just nicknakes.

Also not Tic-Tac-Tow or Four Lines crossed together. It's technically called an Octothorp. Get that, Snackers. the hashtag symbol has a name and it is Octothorpe, which makes no sense because Oct means eight. So true. And if you do a hashtag, it's got nine little sections a la Tic-Tac-Tow. It sounds more like a superhero like, oh my God, Octothorp is here.

Snackers, thank you for snacking on Snacks Daily today. We have one quick request for you. We would love if you could rate us on Apple Podcasts and leave a review too and tell Apple why you love Snacksdale. If you're going to leave either of those, we'd love for it to be a five-star rating because that seems to be the best one out. Even if you listen to this podcast on Spotify, why don't you just jump into Apple Podcasts and click subscribe and rate us because we're trying to impress Apple right now, full disclosure. Even if you don't even like this podcast, you may as well give a five-star review because it doesn't take that much effort. Apple, if you're listening, this conversation never happened.

Snackers, thanks for doing us a favor. We'll be back tomorrow. Cannot wait. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets Inc. or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell any security and is not an offer or sale of a security. The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve as the basis of any investment. decision. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.