The Best One Yet - Amazon’s epic carbon neutrality pledge, Alphabet’s drone deliver goes live ASAP, and Stripe hits $35B

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

Bezos kicked things up a notch by announcing a carbon neutrality pledge for Amazon that shockingly even beats the Paris Climate Accords. Alphabet’s drone division, Wing, just partnered up with Walgreens, FedEx, and a local gift store to make drone delivery happen next month in Virginia. And Stripe just passed Airbnb with a $35B valuation that earns it our “Unicorn of the Day.”Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Friday, September 20th. This podcast is a real treat today. This is the best one yet. In fact, I was so excited, I called my mom to let her know what we were covering today. Okay, first story.

Nick, you know the United States is the only country not in the Paris Agreement for climate change? Jack, I heard Nicaragua and Syria sign this thing. They both joined after we withdrew. Well, guess what? Amazon's in anyway. In fact, it's going to get there 10 years ahead of the deadline. And this is a huge win for one specific electric car startup. Second story is Google Parent Company Alphabet is starting drone delivery with FedEx and Walgreens starting next month.

This is like a smorgasbord of names. We jumped into it snack style. The Transportation Revolution is happening with all of them. Third and final story is the biggest unicorn of the day. Freakicorn. We're talking about Stripe, the payment process, which just hit a $35 billion valuation. That puts it ahead of Airbnb. Let me repeat, a freak of corn.

Yeah. It also put it ahead of WeWork almost definitely based on the horrible situation. Well, that's just awkward. Now, before we jump into all that, we got to talk about another unicorn we got here, Casper. Casper is worth a little over a billion dollars making it a unicorn. It's actually not even a unicorn. We call it a brandicorn. It's a direct-to-consumer company.

It's all about the brand. This is a brand of course. It's got a great brand. I want to go to bed with this brand. It is so cozy and nice. Basically, it just wants to cozy up to you, too. It's an adorable thing. But they're not just mattresses.

Casper's like obsessed with just the whole sleep. situation in your life. We've talked about this before. They have bedding. They have pillows. They also have sleep pods. And they also have nap stores where you can take a half hour nap and try out the bed. Now, one of the co-founders also went to Brown. He's a medical background and he's decided, you know what? We need to kick this sleep thing up a notch. Jack and I thought this was interesting. We're not talking melatonin tablets. We're talking CBD gummies. Casper, the mattress company, is getting into CBD gummies to help you go to sleep faster. But if you're so into sleep, Casper, you know what else works for sleep?

a cast iron pan on the head. Gaspbert, can you just start heating up some milk for all of us, for God's sake? Let's get to our stories. Snacks about to hear ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the Robberhood family. It's all informational just so. We're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice.

Not an offer or sale of a security. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robahood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, Amazon just went from a loser to leader in climate change. We're talking the leadingest company of all when it comes to climate change potentially. Leader squared. Now, the loser's situation from Amazon was the status quo, which is that Amazon delivers 10 billion items per year to Amazon Prime.

We're talking packages and packing peanuts and huge padded envelopes and envelopes within the packages within a box situation. It's like inception over there. There's a dream within a box within a dream. Any Amazon customer knows that there's tons of waste created from being an Amazon customer. You get a ballpoint pen in the mail, and it comes in a box the size of a suitcase. Mom, is that a pony? No, it's a pen. That's all it came in. Now, Amazon is shifting from loser in the climate change battle to leader because of what happened Thursday. And here's what happened. The Net Zero Carbon Pledge to get there by 2040.

They want to be 100% renewable energy by 2030. Now, how could you become net zero carbon if you're shipping 10 billion packages per year? Couple ideas. One is better packaging that's less wasteful. And two is reforestation, which basically means planting tons of trees. Now, we know you're thinking Paris Climate Accords. They had different deadlines. They were basically saying the same thing, but they wanted it done by 2050.

Yes, the whole world tried to hit these targets by 2050, but Amazon is going to get there 10 years earlier by 2040. This is classic like Bezos being Bezos living on Bezos time, which basically means do something 10 years before everyone else like e-commerce. Show up 10 years earlier or Jeff Bezos is going to judge you. Now, Jeff Bezos also appreciates a good branding opportunity. So he's calling this the climate pledge and he's hoping others follow. Yes, Amazon is the first signatory of the climate pledge, which tries to get corporations to become carbon neutral 10 years before the Paris Climate Accord. But here's what's important about this story is that you can't just think of Amazon here.

you got to think of who's affected by the pledge. For example, a little car company called Rivian. Yeah, we mentioned better packaging and reforestation. It's also going to use 100,000 electric delivery vans from this company called Rivian based in Plymouth, Michigan. Right, they got batteries. They're doing tech stuff in California, but their operations are in Illinois. And they've gotten some very strategic investments over at Rivian. Yes, Amazon is a proud investor in Rivian, and now it's giving us this gigantic,

gigantic order for 100,000 electric vans. You're going to see these rivians like cruising by starting as early as 2021. And the 100th Rivian van for Amazon is going to be delivered by 2030. So Jack, what is the takeaway for our buddies over at Rivian and over at Amazon? Amazon is prioritizing the earth, not just shareholders. And that's because the purpose of the corporation, it has fundamentally changed. In the past, CEOs were only allowed to think about profits and shareholders. And in that case, what Jeff Bezos announced yesterday is a clear violation. Right. If you think that like stakeholders matter, then this is the right thing to do because stakeholders are benefiting here like the environment. Planet Earth and everyone who suffers

from climate change, those are stakeholders of what Amazon is doing. By the way, Amazon just mentioned they're investing big in this kind of initiative and Amazon shares actually went up after the news. I love it. American capitalism has changed and companies need to think about their impact on the world. For our second story, Alphabet, the owner of Google, is handling deliveries for Walgreens and FedEx by drone. This is the biggest drone escalation we've ever seen. A drone escalation.

I like that, Nick. Now, Google's drone delivery service is called Wing. Very nice. We like the name. It's subtle. It's sharp. It gets to the point. And it's doing a test with some big names.

FedEx is the first. Boom. Walgreens is the second. And then for the third. Oh, wait for it. wait for it sugar magnolia we had nerd of it either we googled it we still had nerd of it apparently google hadn't even heard of it either turns out sugar magnolia is a lovely wholesome mom and pop gift store that sells chocolates and flowers and other things you should give on valentine's day so google's wing drones

are going to be flying around like lozenges chocolate truffles and like a bunch of benedril through the air to get to a bunch of key homes This is quite a group of three to be kind of the first trials of wing drone delivery. Very intense. It reminds us a lot of like the mighty ducks getting assembled. You got like Charlie Conway from Minnesota. You got Julie the Cat Caffney from Maine. And then he got Goldberg the goalie rounding out the crew. Team assemble. Ducks drone together. Now the trial itself looks a lot like, you know, the drone's like a Star Wars ship meets a Peloton bike look. You got to Google this thing. The wing is an interesting looking. It looks less drone and more droid from Star Wars for sure. Exactly. And this

whole test is going to be going down in a little town called Christianburg, Virginia, where the U.S. Department of Transportation happens to be hanging out. Snackers, if anyone happens to live in Christianberg, Virginia, go to wing.com slash Virginia, and you can sign up to be one of the early adopters and try out this experiment. Now, we know what you're thinking here. You got Google on the one hand with drones. Why is it hooking up with like Walgreens over here? Well, Well, 78% of the American population is within five miles of a Walgreens. So that's a good first partner. Also, Nick, I like to think that medicine and pharmaceuticals might, you might need those

urgently and quickly with a drone delivery. Yeah, there's like NyQuil emergencies that tend to happen these days. By the way, the range of one of these drones, not super far, so they got to keep these things local. One concern, though, old people are going to need medicine, and I don't know if they're going to be thrilled with a drone coming into their backyard. No, definitely like a call of the grandkids so they can, like, order you. the drone delivered medicine on stats. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at all the

companies we just mentioned? This is a perfect model of tech and regulators working together in harmony. Right. That company wing that's owned by Google, they were the first drone operator to ever get verified by the FAA. Let me underline that. They got verified by the Federal Aviation Administration. They got permission. They didn't ask for forgiveness. Exactly. And then only after that point, they start partnering with some really legit, well-known names like Walgreen and FedEx. And now the pilot, which is a funny word because these things are flying, is literally happening in the backyard of that regulator, the Department of Transportation in Virginia. Now, this is how that came to be, but compare it to something like Facebook trying to

launch a cryptocurrency. The government now is like, where did this come from and how come we weren't involved earlier? Politicians are not thrilled about Facebook's crypto or the ride-hailing apps, which bulldozed their way into so many cities. But Wings' drone tech development strategy has been conservative. It's worked with regulators, and it's a model for how to do so. For our third and final story, we've got our unicorn of the day, Stripe, not square, stripe.

It just hit a $35 billion valuation. That's because it raised 250 mil of fresh cash from elite venture capitalists. Jack, does this make it the biggest privately held company in the United States? I believe so if we believe the reports that WeWork has fallen from 47 billion to like 10. Convenient timing, stripe. It was founded by a couple Irish brothers. Their name is the Collisons, and they are famous for seven lines of beautiful, elegant

code, even though I don't even know why it's beautiful or elegant. The Collisons, or Collisons, not sure how you pronounce it, they came from Ireland to the United States and are crushing it. They have seven lines of code, which apparently all you have to do is add that code to your website, and you can start taking online payments. Now, Jack, have you made a recent purchase online, which you probably did while we were recording this pod. Subscripturation is real right now. I get grocery delivery from good eggs processed by Stripe. I buy things on Target.com. Stripe. I am a monthly contributor to NPR,

Stripe. Stripe. Can we even throw in an Airbnb listing maybe that you did over the weekend? Lift and Airbnb get everything done through Stripe. Exactly. You don't see Stripe's name or it's logo when you're buying one of these products, but they're processing your payment. They're taking the money from your credit card and getting it to lift an Airbnb. Now, what's interesting here is you're probably used to e-commerce and you're like, yeah, so they're handling e-commerce. But what you may not realize is that this is actually a growth story for a growth company. These Collison Brothers, they are salesmen.

And they pointed out in today's press release that even in 2019, less than 8% of global commerce happens online. So if you happen to be an investor, a venture capitalist who's investing in Stripe, you're really investing in e-commerce. Every added percentage point of e-commerce that happens from that 8%, Stripe wants to get it. So we got to take a little walk here. We're going to bring out the spreadsheets and let's talk about going down valuation lane. Yes, the company was founded about 10 years ago, but this is its 11th fundraise and each time the valuation has increased. Remember, it's not public. It's a private company. So every time Stripe wants to grow and it's needed money, it goes to venture capitalists and it says, hey, I could use some money. Do you want to buy my shares?

All right. The first fundraise that has information about it publicly was in 2012. It sold shares at a certain price, which gave it a $100 million company evaluation. Then it issued five more times, and each time it issued more stock, the price of the stock and the value of the company overall, both increased. That's when things got really insane. Earlier this year, it raised money at a $22 billion valuation. Nick, that is one and a half lifts. And then this week, it raised $250 million to give it a valuation of $35 billion. Now, just like you've seen some companies that are public, you've seen their stocks rise. Stripe stock has risen as well, but only venture capitalists and private investors have seen that rise. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Stripe?

Stripe thinks that it can lend better than a bank. It doesn't just have payments. And if you're thinking about Stripe just as payments, you're not seeing the whole picture, because it all also has payments data, and there's a huge value there. Stripe recently launched a lending service, and it uses the data that it has on company sales to figure out exactly how risky it is. So, like, let's say Postmates is selling fewer Broughtworths that are getting delivered in the marina of San Francisco to Jack's apartment. Stripe is going to know that.

Extra Sourcrow. Now, a bank, on the other hand, if a bank is thinking about lending to Postmates, it just asks it questions about how its business is done. What are your revenues last quarter? What are you doing today? What do you do last week? Stripe knows exactly the answers to those questions because it handles all of those payments. Stripe isn't a payment processor, as they put it, they're a global treasury network.

Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? Amazon is leading by example, going carbon neutral by 2040. And it's basically buying an armada of electric delivery vans from a company that it's invested in, which is convenient. Can't wait to see that. Second story, Alphabet is doing commercial drone delivery in Christianburg, Virginia. It's asking permission, not forgiveness. and we don't often see this in tech. Third and final story, Stripe Stock has been flying high

on belief that more commerce will become e-commerce. And it's now worth more than Airbnb and probably we work based on everything we're reading. Although it's not planning to IPO anytime soon. That is very true. Now, Snackers, time for a snack fact of the day. A great one sent into us by Grace and Shram from Houston, Texas. By the way, I hope everything is good with the flooding down there, Grayson.

We know it's tough right now. His snack fact is about Nokia, the Finnish tech. company, which goes way back to 1865, kind of like corn and glass yesterday. And it started as a pulp mill for paper products, but then things changed. And then they moved to rubber, and we're selling things like tires and rubber boots. And then they started doing telecom hardware in, like, the late 1980s. Okay, so those are very humble paper, rubber, and telecom beginnings. Only in the 90s did they drop all that stuff and focus on tech mobile phone hardware. Grayson, you know, I'm a history major. I appreciate a good history lesson. Jack loves it too. Thanks for the awesome snack fact.

We appreciate a good emoji because you sent us that head blown emoji at the end. Yeah. Totally agree. Yeah, that was really good, Grayson. Snacker, send us a snack fact of the day at Robin Hood Snacks. And by the way, this weekend, have a really good weekend. Talk to you Monday. Can't wait. This is Jack and 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.