The Best One Yet - “Breathe in the Stoxygen” — Stripe’s $95B. Tinder’s background check. Airline’s crystal ball.

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

America’s biggest startup just got bigger, sucking up all the stoxygen in the room. Tinder just made its 1st ever investment in a non-profit so you can background check Brad pre-brunch. And 1 day in March tells us about the whole year for airline stocks — it’s the closest thing we’ve got to a crystal ball.$MTCH $DAL $AALGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewformLearn 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 Tuesday. Tea Boy, Tuesday, March 16th. This is the best one yet. Yeah, it is Jack. Can I say, I've known you for like 14, 15 years?

You've never looked less fungible. I just want to do it to say that. The NFT, baby. The NFT. TBOI, Jack, first story. Stripe has become the most valuable startup in America again. Stripe sucked up all the stockagen in the room. For our second story, Tinder just invested in background checks.

Anonymous is cool online until it's. It's dangerous. That's the bad transition. For our third and final story, one March Sunday, can actually tell us a lot about the entire summer. Jack and I whipped up the closest thing to a crystal ball when it comes to airline stocks. But before we hit that wonderful mix of stories, Jack, Elon Musk, CEO of many of many things. No longer the CEO of Tesla. Seriously. That's right. You heard it correctly.

If you check out item 8.01 in the highly technical form, 8-K, you're going to see what we're talking about. The Form 8-8-K is an SEC filing with like the government. It's not an onion headline, but we're about to tell you. No, it's not, but we jumped in the snack style. Notice a title change going on with Elon Musk. He is now the techno king of Tesla. He's not the CEO.

No, he's the techno king of Tesla. And when it comes to the CFO, Zach Kirkhorn, yep, how about that guy? How's he doing, Jack? He's the master of coin. He's not the CFO. Exactly. First one, Techno King, kind of sounds like a nightclub over in Berlin.

The other one fits right in at some Westeros kingdom probably. Again, real story, Jack and I didn't make this up. Actual title change over a Tesla. Tesla doesn't have a CEO. They have a techno king. They don't have a CFO. They have a master of coin. So Jack and I are thinking here, Jack, if Tesla's going to do this,

why don't the other CEOs of the world do this as well? We're wondering, who else can snackify their corporate title? Mary Barra, CEO General Motors, step on up. The Duchess of Drive. Exactly. Maybe the chairwoman of chassis. How about Apple's Tim Cook? What are we going to call him? Oh, I mean, Donglegate. I think you got to go at the Duke of the Dongle. He's the Duke of the Dongle. How about Amazon CEO, Darth Bezos? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. What do you want to work with on that, Jack? The Earl of Espresso.

They're no longer CEO. So technically, comma emeritus. Or is it Emeritus? Earl of Espresso Emeritus. Never know. I always hear about college graduations. James Harrison, the CEO of Party City, he wants it on the fun. We unite you constable of confetti. And finally, the Grand Sourcer of Zucking, aka Facebook CEO, what are we going to call him? Jack, I mean, it must be he who must not be named. He who must not be named. Snackers, name a CEO. Snackify the title for us already.

Tweet us your idea at Robin Hood Snacks on Twitter or Instagram. Yeah, contest on Twitter, Instagram. We may give away an NFT. We may not. We don't know. We don't know the value. At Robin Hood Snacks. We'll see you there today. Let's hit our three stories. You're tuned into snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The 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. 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 Fembra slash SIPC

For our first story, match group, they know that the stranger could mean the danger. So this dating app company just invested over a million bucks to protect people on first dates. Okay, we're saying over a million because they were a little ambiguous on it. They said a seven-digit investment in a company called Garbo. More than 9-99-99, less than 10 million. That's all we know. And we did a little bit of rounding on that. Now, wild thing here, they invested in Garbo, which is a nonprofit.

that does background checks. Camember the last time we heard of a private company making a big investment in a non-profit company. We checked out garbo.io, which says they aim to prevent gender-based violence in a digital age. Okay, so the World Bank defines gender-based violence as violence against women and girls.

That's their focus. Basically, if you want a first date, if you want a roommate to split your rent with, or if you want to buy a desk, but not build the desk from west elm.com, which takes forever. Maybe all three of those things. You might find them online.

Now, that leads to the Craig's, a listification situation, so you go to the platform and that's where you find something, but then you got to meet up with a stranger to actually get that thing. And the founder of Garbo knows that can be dangerous. She is a survivor of gender-based violence herself. So Garbo, which she built, has been given people a chance to protect themselves with a quick background check and a little bit of proprietary know-how. And all you need for a quick background check is a first name and a phone number. The kind of stuff you get before meeting up with someone on Craigslist. The kind of stuff you get,

when you're having a first date at Restoration Hardware. Which brings us back to Match Group, the owner of Tinder. What do they plan to do with this, Nick? Jack, beautiful question, the old combination of integrate to differentiate. The plan is to let Tinder users access background checks later this year, and eventually they'll expand it to all of Match Groups like 46 dating apps. We assume it'll be available to men as well, but it's intended to protect women. Background checks are available right now.

Like, you don't need Garbo. But they're expensive without Garbo. And Garbo uses technology to make them cheaper. All right. So they're scanning the police reports. They're looking through the restraining orders. They're checking the harassment claims all the kind of violent offense stuff out there. Garbo does not check for past drug or traffic offenses, though.

Okay, so that was an interesting distinction because those two things, traffic offenses and drug issues, aren't related with violence. They're more correlated with racial profile. Okay, we know your next question. We know what you're thinking. Is the background check result going to be on the Tinder? profile automatically for everyone like UNICEF, what are they going to do? Give this away? The answer is no. We expect Tinder will either charge this like $3 per background check or bundle it into their Tinder gold subscription. They want you paying for that monthly subscription subscription.

But even if they do give it away, Nick, and lose money on background checks, Tinder could gain money in the long term, we think. And we know exactly what Tinder needs right now. It needs some reputation points for going the extra mile on safety. Coughbumble. IPL, coughed Bumble IP. Yeah. Bumble is the female first dating out. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at match? First it was rides, then homes, now dates. Anonymity on the internet is getting chipped away. Snackers, the internet has been anonymous since your faceoff guy 22 at AOL.com. Screen name, Jack, I have still got that screen name, baby. The first contact I had with Nick Martel was actually face off guy underscore 22. When you take faceoffs in hockey and you take him in lacrosse,

I think that has to be your screen name. That was a rule in sixth grade, man. Anonymity is still running wild on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook, where profile pictures and real names are still optional. But it's not anonymous, and here's the key development, when someone enters your home or your car. Take Uber and Lyft, for instance. They require background checks for the drivers,

and they require personal details of the riders. Jack, Airbnb, require an ID verification for the guests and the host and the two-bedroom cottage to make sure it does have the charming vehicle. TaskRabit does background checks too. Since the bassinet you're going to be assembling, it'll probably be assembled on the living room floor and like, you want to make sure that person's bedded. Is this a disclosure here? Have you finished the bassinet or not finished the bassinet? Nick, I'm 12 hours in and I think it's like chapter two of my bassinet building book. I'm going to need to see some verification on the final product here. Now matches investment in

Garbo, it shows that dating apps require a check on anonymity too. All of these apps we just listed, they think that anonymity and accountability can't coexist with each other. Anonymity doesn't seem to be at risk when it comes to social media apps, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. But they should probably suck this idea, Jack. We think they should. For our second story, airlines got billions of dollars of cash and a nugget of optimism in the last few days. Snackers' random Sunday in March can tell you a lot about the entire year ahead.

Can I say that is like the boldest line I think I've ever heard you say on this pot? I kind of love it. Can you say it again? A random Sunday in March is actually when I was born in 1988. So that's going to be my novel. That's beautiful. Airline Snackers, they've received three big checks, one for each and every stimulus. They get a check.

Airlines got $50 billion a year ago. Nice. $16 billion last December. Nice. And $15 billion in this latest stimulus bill. Yeah, must be nice. And when you spend all that time and money as we taxpayers have to help a buddy out, honestly, because we have.

You hope the buddy gets better. You want to check on them, not Timmy, just whatever buddy this happens to be. So Monday, our buddy the airlines, who we've given almost $100 billion to, they're looking better. And that's good news. Yeah, Jack, I would say this is better. Stocks for airlines hit their highest points since February 2020. So like over a year. Now, we think they must have some cookies on Nick's like Expedia account.

Literally. Because didn't you book a few flights? Oh my God. Sunday, we were like envisioning, Ma and I like the post-vaccine world. So Ma and I booked like three summer flights for three summer weddings. Black tie optional, vegan-friendly, vaccine-dependent. That's the wedding this summer. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, Jack. 2020 was all about micro-weddings. 2021 is the Vax-dependent weddings. That's what this is.

So Delta Southwest and Sparad Airlines were finished looking at Nick's internet browser. It was aggressive. And they celebrated one bit of data that came out yesterday. Every day, the TSA shows how many people took off their shoes and held their breaths and removed their electronic devices that are larger than a two. tablet. Well, it turns out on a random Sunday in March, 1,344,128 people did all that with TSA. It's a big number. It's not so big. That is 59% of air travel passengers compared to normal times in 2019 pre-pandemic. Okay. So not a huge number there, but it's up 20 percentage points from January's

average of just 39%. So that's key. And 59% is like the highest level of travel since the pandemic began. So data on some rando Sunday in March is way more than just some data on rando Sunday in March. Nick, I think we got it. I know you're thinking, Jack. This is a leading indicator. Oh, yeah, it is, baby. This data about some random Sunday and March, it signals to us what's going to happen in July, August, and September. Yeah, I mean, look at what's happening with airline stocks. Investors are pumped about these TSA numbers and not because we're back to 59%. But because we're back to 59% now, imagine how high we will be in the summer. Yeah, well, way more people are vaccinated, way more people want to go on vacation, and these weddings hopefully actually happen.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the airlines? If you look at the leading indicators, you see a sunny summertime. Jack, are you going to hit Boka? Are you going to go to the 1,000 human concert? Are people going to do, you know, blank insert thing here? The answers to these questions about once we're all vaccinated, they tell us a lot about 2021's corporate profits and the stock prices of those companies. Yeah, the answer right now, we don't know. now. But we are seeing leading indicators everywhere around us that are bright. Everywhere else, take, for example, urban outfiters just told us this month, they're selling more, according to

them going out type of apparel. I imagine that's khakis. No, I think it's just dresses, actually. Yeah, it's probably just dresses. Live Nation is selling out a concert ticket venues. They just told us that. And Alta Beauty is seeing an uptick in makeup sales, which means either you're going out now, which is ill-advised, you're planning to go out soon. Which would be great. Or you just want to look really good on Zoom. Now, this data, these leading indicators, is the closest thing we have to a crystal ball for the

post-pandemic economy. Exactly. These leading indicators, they are what's answering the unanswerable questions about the future. For our third and final story, Stripe's valuation has tripled in the last year to a whopping 95 billion with a B

dollar. Stripe was the biggest private company in America. It was. But now it's the biggest er private company. We're thinking, SpaceX, what happened with SpaceX here? SpaceX was number one

for like a hot second. They did get that. Yeah, but now it's stripe again. SpaceX was the Chrysler building. It was the tallest in the city for like a minute. Okay, so Jack, we've got to lay out these numbers here.

Facebook's last valuation. This is also good trivia. Facebook's last valuation before its IPO, the number? Was $84 billion. Uber's valuation before its IPO.

$76 billion. WeWorks valuation before it's Failed, never happened to IPA. $47 billion. Stripe's valuation, and it has no desire to IPO anytime soon. More than them all. Stripe is now worth $95 billion. Oh, and by the way, along the way to get that valuation, Stripe basically broke the startup alphabet.

This is round H of its private fundraisings, which is like a lot of letters. You got C, Series A, Series B, they have to like, they need to buy a vowel here. It's a Sesame Street situation. It's a payment processing company. Stripe prefers to be behind the scenes. Yeah, it does. It's the espresso machine. It's not the espresso. Now, Stripe started with seven lines of code. If you ask any engineer why Stripe Engineer calls them back, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Seven lines. It's the most elegant seven. It's like writing all of Ulysses, but in a sentence. It's incredible.

After the engineer swoons and then wakes up again, they're going to tell you that that code lets companies easily start their own. commerce. Boom, you copy and paste the Collison Brothers Stripe code. That's it. And you're selling slamming salmon sweaters online. And then here is the company's actual mission, which we thought was also particularly elegant. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet. And the reason they have that mission is, get this, if you take all of the credit and debit cards in the United States, 89% of them have been used for a Stripe transaction. Again, you don't think you've used Stripe? Yeah. You've used Stripe. You've used Stripe. You just didn't see it. You've used Stripe. And it's because has found the bottleneck when it comes to buying things online.

The payments for you to actually buy the things online. Other companies process payments for online transactions too, but none of them have scaled and dominated that bottleneck like Stripe has. Right, but then Stripe, and also, honestly, it's a sumo company. We're straight up missing out when it comes to Stripe. They don't give us metrics, they don't tell us their revenues, and they don't plan to IPL anytime soon. It's still a private company.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Stripe? Stripe has sucked all of the stoxygen out of the room. All of the stoxygen, the stock oxygen. It's a stoxygen company. Stocksogen is part of the air. We breathe. You don't see the stoxygen, but we can't live without the stoxygen. Stocksogen is a network of B2B services that work behind the scenes.

And without stoxygen, our apps and websites, they wouldn't function, they wouldn't breathe, they wouldn't live. Say you click through a Google ad to buy some pancakes on Postmates after reading a Yelp review that that pancake house, was good. I like what you did there. Google and Postmates and Yop, they're all Stripe clients, but you see them not Stripe. Even Amazon is sneakily using Stripe to process their e-commerce transactions. I can't believe it. Jack, I was shocked. I was shocked when I heard. Other stockagen that power websites and companies that we use. Case and point, Salesforce, some stockagen. The back end of customer support. Amazon Web Services, AWS. The back end of cloud computing. Shopify. The back end of e-commerce. But here's the wild thing.

Stripe's stockagen powers all those other stocksgen companies that we just mentioned a second ago. Stripe has become the unseen company behind the scenes of those other unseen companies behind the scenes that power our internet. And we're going to continue to not see Stripe's stock on stock markets since they have no plans to IPO. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways over there? The airline stocks jumped because of TSA data about a random Sunday in March.

Honestly, leading indicators, the closest thing we can find to a crystal. the ball. For our second story, Tinder is cracking down a little bit on anonymity while the rest of social media isn't. We'd have so many fewer trolls if Panda Hater 2428 just had to reveal his name was Tom. We just knew it was Tom. For our third and final story. If you buy something online or with your phone, there's a good chance the payment went through stripes. To oxygen, we don't see it, but we can't live without it. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in in an extremely animated and charming way by Justin Anderson from lovely Fort Worth, Texas. It's a video, but podcasts don't have screens.

Howdy Snackers? I'm Justin Anderson here at Lovefield Airport in Dallas, Texas on Herb Kelleher Way. Today we celebrate what would have been Herb's 90th birthday. Herb was a trailblazing entrepreneur who set out to make flying accessible to all Americans back when it was way too expensive to do so. Herb met with his friend Roland King in 1967 and wrote the idea for Southwest on a cocktail napkin. Now it's one of a Air Lerges Airlines in the world! When Herb started Southwest, the large legacy airline sued him. And since he was an

attorney, he sued them back. And three years later, Southwest was able to fly. Happy birthday, Herb! This one's for you! Okay, that's the first snack fact that paid for extra legwork. Yeah, it was the first snack fact where Southwest flight was actually flying over the person who was giving the Southwest snack fact. He shot this from the tarmac.

About NFTs, about podcast NFTs. Snackers, you look fantastic. today, remember, we want you to tweet us which corporate CEOs should snackify which titles. CEO of Amazon, Darth Bezos. It's a Darth Bezos situation. Tweet us at Robin Hood, Snacks. We'll see you tomorrow.

And before we go, Joe and Sarah, congrats on the two-year me anniversary over in Munich, Germany. And this sounds lovely. Michael and Bonavie started a new life together in Pun and Penn, Cambodia. Congrats. And E.J. Barrios just got into USC for his MBA. Happy birthday to Bridget

Ringwald in St. Louis, Missouri. And happy birthday to Talia Hill down in Austin, and Miguel Alejandro Orozco, Briand in Caracas Venezuela, and Morgan Freeman in Kansas City, and Nicolai Jurbach in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Eric Miller in Brunswick, New Jersey, and Caitlin McHash in Plymouth, Mass, and Brian Marquez in Chappin' South Carolina, and Alex Wong in Seattle. And happy birthday, Ahush Peruzzi, down in Houston. And congrats to Greg Pink for getting promoted in Dallas, Texas. And Peter Freshie just got the new home in lovely Seattle. And to anyone else who is celebrating something to today, make it a T-point. Greg, everything's bigger in Texas, hopefully including your salary.

Yeah, celebrate the wins. If you know, you know. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon and Bumble, Nick owned stock of Shopify and Apple. 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, 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.