The Best One Yet - Budweiser acquires Babe / White Girl Rosé, The RealReal surges 45% on its IPO, and Velodyne is the startup making self-driving possible

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

With beer sales falling, Budweiser’s parent company AB InBev acquires the maker of Babe canned rosé and White Girl Rosé as its summer makeover. The RealReal is leading the re-commerce industry by pulling an Airbnb on thrift stores — and it just surged 45% on its IPO. And Velodyne is our “Pre-IPO of the Day,” using an anti-Tesla technology to make self-driving happen for a bunch of key carmakers (and tech giants).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 Monday the 1st of July. And it's been a great first half of the year. This has been really nice. A lot of big best here. Half number two officially starts today with July 1st and the S&P 500 rose 17% in the first six months. The best June for the Dow since 1938. The best first half of a year since 1997. And the best snacks daily episode we've ever done. You thought we forgot. We didn't forget. This is a T-B-O-I. So, Jack, what are the wonderful three stories we got together? Just in time for the holiday week. Budweiser's parents. company, A.B.M. They have just acquired White Girl Rose A and Babe Wines.

Officially, your summer drinking routine is changing the alcohol industry. Second story is the real deal. It's the real, real, the most absurdly named company IPOing this year. It jumped 45% on Friday. It's first day of trading. It's riding two millennial fears. Overpaying and overburdening planet. Third and final story is our pre-IPO of the day.

Company called Velodine. It makes the technology that makes self-driving cars possible. If you think cars are going to be driving themselves in a few years, you have to know Velodyne and LiDar right now today. Before we jump into all that, though, big innovation in the dating game. Big update for the dating app Bumble. This is one worth talking about on a Monday. It's apparently one of the first apps to introduce in-app video chat. We're talking FaceTiming someone before the first date via Bumble.

So if you want to go on a first date and you're thinking to yourself, these pictures just look a little too good to be true. Is Steve's chin? Maybe Steve is fake and he's catfishing you, so you can actually FaceTime before giving your phone number, before meeting the person in person. You only go all the way into that first date, show up at the restaurant, and boom, Steve shows up and it's not the same chin you first expect it. So there are a couple merits here. I mean, you want to make sure it's not a creep before you meet them in person. That could be dangerous. Now, the flaw, though, is this raises the bar on the pre-date look game. I'm already anxious enough for the first date. Now I have to be looking good on like the pre-first date. What if you don't have a FaceTime face kind of a face? You open up the app and you better like fix your hair. I'm telling you. Jack and I are both off the market. He's engaged. I'm married, so we're not actually too concerned about this. However, we do wish they had this kind of thing for couples trying to meet other couples. That would be nice. But in meantime, daters, they're just raising the bar, bumble is. Many a double date meal could be saved with this kind of thing. Now listen to these keywords before the first story.

You're tuned in the snacks daily. Snacks about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the rob of her family. It's all informational just so. You're tuned. No, 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. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Jack, hold my romper.

Budweiser's A.B. InBev, its parent company just bought the maker of White Girl and Babe Rose. Bud's biggest wine investment ever. This says a lot about the beer industry, but it also says a lot about the wine industry. is crushing it. Rose Sales, bro, is 8% last year. That's a streak. Jack, can I hand you over another number here? Canned wine sales in particular? Search 69% over the last year. In the can is the way to go. Now, we got to talk about a man named John Astrovsky. You know him as the fat Jewish of Instagram fame. He has 10.3 million Instagram followers and has had self-deprecating repost humor since like 2012. Now, this is a man who was in a bad place at a bad time in 2015.

The bad place was the Hamptons, which usually isn't a bad place. But it was a bad place. But it was a bad is because there was a rosé wine shortage. And so he said, you know what? I'm not just going to launch my own rosé. I'm going to create the quote-unquote bud light of wine. Yeah, another thing that the fat Jewish said about this white girl rosé, which he created back in 2015, he said, we're going to sell this to women in the Hamptons that we knew with, like, rhinoplasty.

I think one product in particular, if they came out with sums up the whole target here. What's that? The Bachelette Box? You're talking about the Bachelorette Party Box is actually by a spin-off brand called Babe, which is the sparkling wine in a can, comes with like four different cans of sparkling wine. It comes with two party cups and a baseball. And a little bit of smugness. Now, the chief taste officer for the company behind White Girl Rosee and Babe Rosey is Emily Radical of Blurred Lines fame. Critical corporate hire here. So this company that's being acquired by Budweiser,

it's basically a RAS company. You've heard of Software as a Service, Sass. Yeah, this is RAS, Rose as a Service. And they've used Instagram promotional marketing to drive sales. So interesting, It started with White Girl Rose bottles of wine, which you may have seen just hanging out at the beach. 95% of sales now are from Babe wine, which is the canned spin-off. So it's a really critical distinction. So Budweiser decided to get involved a couple years ago by investing through their venture arm ZX Ventures. Right. And the reason is clear.

For the third straight year, Americans are drinking less alcohol and beer is leading the decline. Now, the challenge is that canned wine, which we've seen this surgeon, is really done by craft brands. not your old school big deal institutional wine companies. These global big corporates, they kind of just sit back and love making money with their own products, and then they wait until a concept is proven by a company like Babe and then acquire them. And the reason Budweiser can come in now and add a lot of value, distribution expertise. The alcohol industry is complicated. Budweiser knows how to navigate it.

So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies having a fantastic, fantastic basic time over Wico Rose. Budweiser had a big summer problem. It needed a new summer drink. We just found out on Friday, perfect timing. That Constellation brands, the owner of Corona, said its corona sales are doing great. Yeah, back in my day, you had like Coleman Coolers full of Bud Light, but nowadays it's Yeti and it's full of these canned sparkling wines. And the problem is, if you're Budweiser, Bud Lights are not the go-to beach drink anymore. No, Bud Light and Budweiser especially, it's kind of like weighing you down.

And instead, we want something that's like light, crispy, refreshing, and picks you up. Budwisers recognize it needed to jump on the light, crispy, refreshing bandwagon. so it's strategically making an acquisition. It's replacing six packs of beer with six plaques of wine. Basic Bud Light is out. Basic rosé is in. For our second story, the company making self-driving cars possible. Velodyne.

Lidar. Hired bankers for an IPO. Velodine. It sounds like an antidote to a poison. It sounds more like a Star Wars evil character. Vennedine Nidal. Those are both good takes. Now, the company is currently private and it's valued at $1.8 billion.

I know what you're wondering. How much is this compared to Lyft? It's about one-tenth of a lift. Everyone, when I got to know this. So you know those little nubs that come out of the self-driving cars that are testing on certain cities? You seem in San Francisco a lot. They're going around. They've got bumps on it. Almost looks like a wart kind of a thing. And it's spinning around. That is a LIDAR detector. Now, there are 50 companies developing LIDAR technology right now and they've raised money from venture capital firms. By the way, LIDAR, it's an acronym. We're going to get to that in a second. Now, LIDAR is the technology. The company here is Velodine LIDAR.

And the company's using Velodine's LIDAR technology so far are Mercedes, Ford, Volvo. And then over in China, you got Baidu, which is like the Google of China, and Tencent, which is like doing everything. Now, there's two key ingredients needed to make self-driving possible. And this is critical to understanding what Velodine Lidar is up to. First is the brain. We're talking about high-powered Google Map-style things that show you the big picture about where the car is going so it knows where it actually drives. Yeah, the car, before it even hits the road, it knows in its head what the city streets look like. Then you've got the eyes.

You need to have eyes because you might know how to get to work, but what if a little soccer ball starts rolling onto the street? You know who might be trailing that soccer ball? A kid. A child. And you better have eyes to stop that thing. You don't want to be the self-driving car involved in that. So the brain and the eyes.

Velodyne makes the eyes. Now, it's using a specific technology to make those eyes. And the vision is coming from LiDAR, light, detection, and ranging. Right. So with this LiDAR system, it basically shoots out little lasers, as it spins around constantly. if the laser gets interrupted by a soccer ball, it knows something is there. You've probably heard of this concept before with like, you know, when you're growing up in first grade, you hear

whales are capable of like sonar. Same idea. Same with radar. But with lasers. Exactly. So radar is actually the competing technology for self-driving cars. It's kind of more traditional, radio detection and ranging. And we know what you're thinking. So what the heck is Tesla using? And what do they think about this LiDAR? Tesla is very pro-radar anti-LIDAR. Elon Musk actually said that anyone relying on LiDAR is doomed. He thinks the technology is too expensive and unnecessary. Meanwhile, you've got this interesting company, Velodyne LiDar, that's looking at IPO later, that's based entirely off of this alternative technology for self-driving cars. And they believe that LiDAR is crucial for truly, fully self-driving. Critical divide here. So, Jack, what's the

takeaway for our buddies rolling around without a driver over at Veladine LiDar? Cars could become commodities once self-driving is a thing. We just talked about the eyes. We just talked about the brain. Let's talk about the body. Let's talk about the body of self-driving cars. Car companies are concerned that once people are self-driving themselves to work, they won't really care like how much horsepower does this thing have. Is it leather interior? It could become commoditized.

They just need a car. It's basically a moving bedroom at that point. So in that case, suppliers end up having more leverage than the brands of the car companies. Right. Like Ford Motor Company may not be able to charge a high price because you can get any car. But Velodine might be able to charge their high price if they have the best. self-driving tech. At that point, when we hit that point, with self-driving cars, what matters most isn't the car. It's which has the best self-driving technology behind the car.

Or which has the best bed in the car so you can take a nap on the way to work. The number one benefit of a self-driving car. This is Jack. Just want to let you know. Nick and I both own Tesla shares. For our third final story, we're jumping in and trying on The Real Real, which just IPOed on Friday and jumped 45% on day number one. The Real Real is thrift store meets Airbnb. I love the way you kind of set that up. Now, this is, re-commerce to play off the e-commerce. Which is the industry of just buying and selling pre-owned things online. The key is that real-reel, the real-reel, verifies and authenticate anything that's going to be on there. In other words, it determines, is this thing real real? Can I drop the mission on you,

please? We empower consigners and buyers to extend the life cycle of luxury goods in a way that, and here's the key, honors luxury brands. And they do that in women's, men's, kids, jewelry, watches, home, and artwork. Now, when we're talking about how they verify, This is where they've invested big. They've got 100 experts, including gemologists and horologists. Horologists. These are like straight off of antiques roadshow. Now, we're talking to horologist to someone who's actually going to verify a watch. So let's say you're trying to sell your tag horror or your brightling and you have no idea how to pronounce it,

but you know you want to get rid of it. Right. So they're going to make sure, like, does this guy really have a tag horror watch? So they're going to send you a few specifics. They're going to say, send us a photo of the watch showing 9.15 a. And then show us a picture of the watch showing 1017 a. Boom, the experts now know that you don't have a stock. photo, you actually probably have this device on me. And they'll be like, okay, we will actually take the time to look at this thing. Please send it in. And we're going to honor the luxury brand. Now, the ticker symbol for

this company is real. I like the specifics. And the stock rose 45% Friday, its first day of trading. The value of the company is now $2.5 billion. Can you give me that in terms of lifts? That is one eighth of a lift. Now, the interesting thing about this company we noticed is that it's a win, win, win, win, small loss. It's really tough to get that fourth win. So I'm impressed by the story. That one really gets that one. So let's walk you through an example by using one specific piece. Now, Jack and I were particularly interested when we were scouring around for this one-piece James Bond play suit that was worn by 007 at a certain point. In the movie Goldfinger by Sean Connery. Kind of looks like a robe. Kind of looks like something we want to be wearing right now.

So this is like a luxury thing. It's probably like a thousand bucks, right? If you're the seller, you can sell this one-piece James Bond play suit and get money back because you're not wearing it anymore. Yeah, you used to wear it in your prime era and you're kind of in your post-a-rower. You're not that kind of a game. guy. Now, if you're a buyer, you can actually feel like Sean Connery James Bond for a lower price because this fancy thing is usually too expensive. It was one of the kind. Now it's a fraction of the cost. If you're the real real, you take a 35% commission for whatever the thing sells for. And if you're planet Earth, that's one less thing in a landfill, which is kind of a win

for planet Earth. One less carbon footprint because otherwise another play suit would have been manufactured. It's a whole circle of life kind of thing. That brings us to the one loser here. Whenever a company manufactured this play suit, they're bummed out. In fact, Chanel sort of representing the luxury brands. Maybe you heard of it? They have sued the real real because they found seven fake Chanel things on their website. But we know that's not the real reason why Chanel or other luxury brands are concerned. Yeah, they're just concerned about their product exclusivity. They don't want this thing to be diluted in like brand and price and value. And they don't want to see the fancy Chanel watch being sold for a fifth of the price when you could have bought it right from them. They want it to be top shelf only.

So Jack, what's the real takeaway for our buddies over at the Real Real Real? Sometimes industries need a middleman. We love the parallel here between the Real Real and Airbnb. Apartment sharing needed a middleman because it brings comfort to both sides. And home sharing already existed before Airbnb was a thing. But you had a sketchy Craigslist situation and you were taking a big risk by like selling out your apartment. So Airbnb had a key value. It made it safer for customers instead of that creepy Craigslist situation. And the Real Real is doing the same thing. They're verifying that the thing is real, and they're ensuring it, and they're allowing returns. That's why the middleman is needed here. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us to start the week?

Budweiser is going rosé all day because it wants your basic summer instaglamic. Most basic acquisition we've seen so far this year. And then Velodyne is the eyes for self-driving cars, and it's got its eyes on an IPO. The big question, will anyone care about the car body when self-driving's the thing? Third and final story, the real real is doing for luxury pre-owned goods, what Airbnb did for apartment sharing. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one we got sent it again from Garima Singh in Dallas, Texas. All right, this is the lawnmower games. There is a new lawnmower by Honda. It's called the Mean Mower V2. Got to look at this thing. I don't know if V2 is version

two or if it's a V2 engine. Doesn't matter because this thing is setting records. It just said the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest acceleration for a lawnmower. We're talking zero to 100 miles per hour and, you know, about 6.285 seconds. That is insane. We verified this on YouTube. It's happening in Germany. There's like a stunt driver wearing a helmet. You got to have a helmet. It's like Forrest Gump would die for this thing. Forrest Gump would feel good about this thing. Now, Snackers, love to have you with us to start the week. We just want to give you a heads up. July 4th is on Thursday. Yeah. And we are taking off July 4th naturally because it's a holiday. But we're going to be there with you for Monday today, Tuesday,

tomorrow and Wednesday. And then we're taking off Friday ourselves. Celebrating just like you. We'll be back the following week. Can't wait.