The Best One Yet - “Black Friday is dead (Cyber Monday too)” — The Great Pricing Reset. Slack’s slack-quisition. Pinterest’s secret school.

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

We’re gonna call it as we see it: Black Friday is dead, long live Cyber Daily. Pinterest is secretly working on a new project that we think is the future of education. And Slack put up its “Out Of Office” away message last week – but was busy trying to sell itself.$PINS $WORK $CRM $FDXGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @TBOYJack @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Learn 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. Welcome back. It is Monday, November 30th. We have just finished the last of our leftovers from our 11-pound turkey nurse. Jack, full disclosure here, we went with the short rib this year. I like it.

It was a difference maker. It was a change-up. You know, I think a huge missed opportunity, just buy a Cornish game head and tell everybody it's turkey. The hen's dating the rooster, Jack, but then who's dating the chicken? They're all chickens, Nick. The rooster dates them all. And this is the best one yet. TBOI, Jack, what's our first story today?

Black Friday Snackers is dead. It's gone. Welcome to the great pricing reset of the 21st century. For our second story, someone did some snooping through Pinterest code and discovered a secret new prop. Pinterest, Ed, you of Pinterest, Jack, when you go with Pin Academy, what do you think on this three? Let's call it one of those three. One of those three. It's a good idea. We spent a lot of time on that. For our third and final story, Slack.

Put up its out of office message early last week. It turns out Slack, though, spending that time busy interviewing for another job. selling itself to Salesforce. But Snackers, before we jump into that wonderful mix of stories, by the way, Jack, three words Jack and I never thought we'd use together about a publicly traded company. TikTok, yep, influencers, check, and mansions. That's right, an unprecedented blend of business models go into these TikTok influencer mansions. Here's what's going now. Social media influencers are cohabitating in houses across Los Angeles to simply create content. And they're being called influencer mansions. That's probably old news.

Think of this like a factory of virality, combo of real estate, social media, and dance video. I think of it as the modern-day equivalent of an MTV real-world house. I'm thinking Key West, 06, but less sexual tension, little more choreography. Those houses are owned by somebody, though, and that somebody doesn't charge rent to those influencers. But the guac is always extra. Don't forget it. That's right. The landlord is getting paid by snagging a percentage of influencer revenue from all those promoted posts full of hashtag ads. Now it turns out, Jack and I noticed this over the weekend,

one of those TikTok influencer landlords is called West of Hudson, and it is being acquired by a publicly traded Chinese company. Therefore, a publicly traded stock can indirectly get you ownership of TikTok influencers. So Jack, what's the good news for this TikTok influencer mansion company? It's being renamed Clubhouse Media, and they brought in $100,000 of revenue from influencers in the last half of a year. But Jack, what's the bad news for this TikTok influencer mansion? They also lost a million dollars during the same period.

Well, it's in our three stories. You're tuned in to snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The 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 you know. We're not recommending any securities.

Nope. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial. LLZ.

Member Fenra. For our first story, everything about this holiday shopping season is going to be different. COVID-19 may have just caused the dramatic price reset of 2020. Also, the most dramatic first storyline of any first story we've ever done. You want drama? Ten years ago, department stores became pretty much battlefields. Oh, that is so true, Jack. Black Friday's dress code included like a helmet and a baseball bat to defend yourself.

Honey, can you grab the Bower knee pads and the CCM? hockey pants, we got to get over to Walmart. Snackers, you all saw this. Walmart, Target, Macy's, they opened very early the break of dawn on Friday morning to serve rabid bargain hunters. And then when that got insane, there was a bid to stop people from shopping online so the department star was opened on Thursday. Yeah, Black Friday was Thursday. Yep, actually. And they offered 50% off what was already 25% up prior to the 15% off markdown. And select items are a special 4% off on addition to the 15. Oh, college discount. Yes, we pay you. But this year, Jack and I noticed that Black Friday's a lot more chill.

They don't want you in the store. They're playing a little hard to get. For Walmart, Black Friday started on Wednesday, November 4th, but only on Walmart.com. It's almost closer to last year. Over at Amazon, they're asking you to consider picking up because they're so worried shipping's going to be ridiculously congested. FedEx is so worried about shipping holiday packages, they've run out of vans. They're like checking Craigslist for like somebody's extra Ford Windstar.

Honda Odyssey, anyone, for the week. weekend, please. Instead of delivering your packages to you, you can get them quicker at an Amazon bookstore if it's close by or at like partner locations. That's what Amazon's doing. But perhaps the most important change Jack and I are noticing this year is a fundamental shift in economics. Supply is down. Demand is up. Let's talk supply. Jack, we'll focus on supply. First, what's going on with supply. This spring and summer, retailers were getting no foot traffic because we had a super spreader situation down on aisle 6. The local Burlington Code Factory, they canceled their park orders because they were going to have too much inventory.

A lot of companies canceled factory orders, and the result is stores have way fewer items in stock this year for holiday shopping than ever before. Now, that's what's going on on the supply side. But over on the demand side, it's a wilder situation, Jack, the honors. Revenge spending. We're all feeling an itch for some revenge spending. We're talking a funny phenomenon going on here. The economy's not doing that well. but you haven't gone to vacation, you haven't spent on events. Even Timmy doesn't have a bar tabern.

And you might have even picked up some enhanced unemployment benefits or a $1,200 check. Yep. So we're all wanting to treat yourself this November and December. You're dying to spend on gifts and gifts for other people's gifts. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in Black Friday? Snackers, we may be experiencing history. The great pricing reset of 2020. Supply of gifts is down due to all that inventory management. Demand for gifts is up due to all that revenge spending appetite. Add it together and the Wall Street Journal is thinking that retailers are using this economic shift to reset the pricing paradigm. It's a shift in the demand curve Snackers, not a change in the demand curve. So instead of like 70% off, we're thinking you're going to start seeing more, you know, normal prices.

Allbirds actually increased prices, Nick, on Black Friday, $96 instead of 95, giving that extra buck to charity. So we're thinking heavy discounting the past 10 years. That has been crushing retailers' profits. How is Macy's supposed to profit off a 65% off Nautica pullover? It's not. Jack, J-Crew is literally running out of the words to use for their online coupons. Input Friday on Friday's sale. Yeah, they're using an ad symbol instead of an A.

They're not desperate. There's not much room left. But COVID snackers, it may have reset pricing across retail ending the days of mass discounting. For our second story, according to PFW, Salesforce, get this, they may acquire a slack. And if those people familiar with the matter of right, this could cement Salesforce as the tech giant solely focused on business, not consumers. No ties all business.

Now, in terms of credibility snackers, the PFWTM that we're talking about here, this is like highly credible. The Wall Street Journal spoke with them, and they know that these are legit PFWTM. These are sushi-grade PFWTM. Yes, they are. This isn't like some casual coffee chat. they're like an advanced talks over there. Apparently Salesforce is in advanced talks to acquire Slack. They're like asking Slack's dad for a blessing of the whole thing. We're at that stage.

This is going to happen on Thanksgiving weekend. Now, Salesforce Snackers, we don't talk about them that much on this pod. They were founded in 1999 in San Francisco, California. Also, maybe the coolest thing about Salesforce. They own the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Salesforce Tower right there in San Francisco. Now, they started as a customer relationship management software, which is why their ticker symbol is CRM. They're basically, they're helping employee stock customer relationships. That's what Salesforce does. You can't tell your boss that you had a meeting with a potential client unless you can evidence that with a meeting report in Salesforce. Jack, if it's not in Salesforce,

it didn't happen. Please repeat. If it's not in Salesforce. Now, all snackers, if it's not in Salesforce, it didn't happen. Nick and I see two key reasons. Companies are paying Salesforce for their subscription software. So reason number one, it makes employees better. And reason number two, it makes employees expendable. That's right. Fred and sales is better at selling this stuff because his client information is nicely organized, easily accessible with any internet access device. On the other hand, Fred's kind of expendable now because if he quits, all that valuable information is still in Salesforce. Fred's replacement won't miss a beat. Nope. He will follow up right away with the Penske file who Fred was so close to landing that sale with.

Because Salesforce transfers that knowledge from Fred's brain slash RollerX to the company. You don't need Fred. Well, that was surprisingly scary. Now, Salesforce isn't just CRM customer relationship management. Jack and I like to think of it as like the Thanksgiving stuffing of businesses. Don't think of Salesforce as one company. It's actually 60 different companies mixed in there like stuffing,

representing 60 prior acquisitions. Jack and I jumped in Snacks down this one. Snackers, get this. Go up and Google. how many acquisitions has? And then stop right there, stop right there. Google is going to suggest to you the auto-completed searches. And the first thing they're going to suggest is how many acquisitions has Amazon had. Shocker. But the second one on there on the list, Salesforce. Yep, how many acquisitions has Salesforce ad? Oh, it's 60. And their latest target, it's Slack. Which makes sense because so much data and customer information is actually transmitted through Slack messages among employees. Now, Jack and I notice this break, like right over Thanksgiving, boom, on Wednesday, Slack stock jumped 38% on the Wall Street Journal report, and then Salesforce fell 6%. Because buying Slack is really expensive. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Salesforce and Slack? Salesforce is becoming the only big tech company not interested in you and me.

Snackers, you got Apple, you got Facebook, you got Amazon, you got Netflix, you got Alphabet. All of them are like mainly consumer companies. They're selling stuff to you and me. Microsoft is the one tech giant exception. They do both businesses and and consumer. They do chase some consumers with surface tablets and like Xboxes. Kind of a hybrid situation. But even prior to Slack, Salesforce was obsessed with owning the software that your business runs on, just like Chicago does logistics. Salesforce does business. Yes, it does. And Salesforce finds new customers with ads, sells to them, ships to them, retains them, and even handles all the promo emails you'd send out

to them. Salesforce helps you find data, helps you analyze data, helps you present data for your business. All that data e-back-end stuff, that's why you don't Talk Salesforce. You don't care about Salesforce, and you don't use Salesforce outside of work. But businesses do, and that's why Salesforce is worth $225 billion. Wow. Almost 19 lifts. For our third and final story, Pinterest may be the solution to education. We learned last week that Pinterest is secretly working on classes. Yeah, we're not, this did not like break from PFWTM. No people familiar with the matter we're involved in this thing. No, the source of this story is a reverse engineer who's famous on Twitter named Jane Mansion Wong. She discovers stuff in the

code. She's like on Indiana Jones meets that guy who does the cool toys on James Bond kind of a thing. I think his name is R or Q working at MI6. They're running out of consonants over there. Now, the reason Jane got so fascinated to dive in snack style, can we say that, into the code of Pinterest was because 2020 has been Pinterest year. The number of users on Pinterest surged nearly 40% during the pandemic to 442 million. We're talking, Pinterest is more than Twitter. It's basically a Snapchat and a half. It's also the year of the Pindood. Yep. There is a surge in the number of guys checking out Pinterest. Yeah, check out my khakis and this other shade of khakis. Now, revenues for Pinterest have also

surged 60% last quarter compared to the year before and the stock has quadrupled in 2020. Now, there's also a more subtle change that's happened to Pinterest. They notice that teachers are using the platform to organize lesson plans. That's right. They're posting like the course syllabus or class notes on Pinterest for the student to check up on. Week three, assignment due, seven pages of reading, book six. But thanks to this code snooping by Jane, we know that Pinterest is secretly working on online events that you can join via Zoom for online classes. We're talking like video conference meets Craftopia with Lauren DIY.

Let's say you're an arts and crafts master who loves making pottery right there in your liver. We've all been there. Maybe you've got a kiln in the back. Must be nice. Life goals. Own a kiln. Well, Nick, you could list supplies for making your own pottery at home on your Pinterest board, set a date for an online event, and charge $10 for attendance.

Boom. Suddenly, you got 43 people signed up across the U.S. to learn how to spend some clay straight out of their living rooms. Now, Pinterest was asked about this, and they were pretty much noncommittal. They said they're always experimenting with ways to help creators interact closely with their audience. But here's the kicker. We've seen a massive wave of new creators who are moving their crafts online this year. and that crafter is the teacher. So what Pinterest is working on for arts and crafts could be pivoted to academics. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Pinterest? In fragmentation, there is opportunity.

And Snackers, there is nothing more fragmented right now than online education. We've heard of Newton, Coursera, Chegg, Blackboard, Zoom, Google Classroom. There's so much competition. There are so many different options for different schools to use for their classes, and then there's friction to download every new,

for different courses. So we're thinking why can't online courses occur on a platform that people already love using today? Couldn't there be a tab on TikTok to join your high school class on the phone where you already are? Or a selection on Netflix exclusively for college students 101 courses. Or Pinterest EDU, because teachers are already organizing their course materials on Pinterest. Think about Parsons School of Design hosting a class on Pinterest.

Maybe Doug Ewaist's GMAT could be hosting classes on that brutal absurd, a hateful test, on Pinterest. One of the apps we love and use today, you just need to tweak it, and it can become an online learning place. We're thinking you of P, you of Pinterest. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? Black Friday is dead and so might the era of widespread holiday season discounts. The great price reset at 2020 is badly needed by retailers badly. For our second story, Slack, Mike, it acquired by Salesforce. And Salesforce does business. Other tech giants don't just do business. For our third and final story, Pinterest is preparing to launch online events, according to some code. So we think it could help teachers take their craft online.

Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one spoken in by Claudio and Marita Carici over in Warren, Vermont, via Massapequa, New York. You got to make a left on 495, Jack. So what happened here was, I was like, this is awesome wine over Thanksgiving. And they're like, guess what? Costco. And let me tell you one further. Please, Jack, go on.

Nobody in the world buys more French wine than Costco does. Turns out America's sixth biggest retailer is Costco, but it's one of the biggest wine sellers on earth. That's right. France's top Somaliers are offering up VIP tasting sessions to Costco. Costco, wine salesman of the month, aisle 6. Now, Snackers, you look fantastic. It's great to see again. It's been too long. Happy No Longer Cyber Monday Snackers. Ask your buddies HY HYSD. Have you had your snacks daily? We'll see you tomorrow.

Can't wait. If you know, you know. And before we go, Snackers, be congrats to Nate, who just got promoted over a TD Ameritrade in Obahon, Nebraska. Congrats to Grant and Mandy Marine, who are celebrating seven years in North Carolina. And Ashley and Jordan celebrating anniversary down in Charlotte, North Carolina. And happy birthday to Peter Barron, who just turned 40 in London. And to Andrea Fokerts in New York City. And Zach Eskham in Pensacola, Florida. And Matt and Lee Carroll twins over in Michigan.

And Nick and Stephanie also twins celebrating their birthday in Houston. for the price of two, and Kiana Sudman over in Irvine, California. And Liz Dreyer, who I think I studied with at University of Michigan, who's from Livonia, Michigan. And Marianne, happy birthday in Raleigh, North Carolina. And Ash Kay from Tom's River, New Jersey. And Shrish Prem Krishna in Livermore, California. And Sean Clark in San Jose.

And Jan Sprung in New York City. And Matt Kiefer in San Diego. And happy birthday, Josh, in Chicago, which does logistics. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon. Nick on stock of Apple. The Robin Hood Snob. 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.