The Best One Yet - 🏡 “How to survive a Zucking” — Nextdoor’s $4B SPAC. Bloomingdale’s millennial mall. The Jedi’s $10B fail.

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Neighborhood social network Nextdoor is going public via SPAC, but the real story here is how it survived a Zucking. Bloomingdale’s is whipping up a new version of itself called Bloomie’s — it��s way smaller. And the Pentagon’s epic $10B JEDI contract just fell apart because time is the greatest enemy of deals.$KVSB $M $MSFTGot 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 Thursday, the new Friday, July 8th. Great news. The stock markets just hit a new record high. Better news, Jack. We're covering half of the continental time zones today.

Nick's back in San Francisco. Yes, I am. I'm still in Vermont. I mean, when I'm back in the Bay Area, I can get my assay bowls made with Napa Pinot Noir. Nick, Vermont, the mountains are minier, the seas are smaller, but the dairy. Oh, the dairy. You can't stop landlock, baby. Jack, this is also like the best pod we've ever done.

What's our first story? For our first story, next door is the social network for neighbors, and it's going public on the stock markets via a SPAC. But here's the real story here. Jack and I noticed, we got our first ever survivor of a sucky. For our second story,

the Pentagon's epic $10 billion Jedi deal is dead. Yep. It's over. It's complete. The greatest enemy of any deal is time. For our third and final story, Bloomingdale's. They just unveiled their newer, smaller version of themselves. Adorable.

Loomies. Malls are dead. Longer. Long live the millennial mall. Malls are dead. Long live the mall. But Jack, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories, please. The media industry.

It's a lot like the restaurant industry of late. Yeah, because when you run out of something fresh, you just serve up some leftovers. Hollywood's like, should we create a new franchise from scratch? Or should we make Fast in the Furious 14? Oh, we got a long, indigestible three-hour movie we made a few years ago. I know what we're going to do. We're going to chop it up into a 12-episode show.

movie throw this thing on Hulu. Oh, man, I just noticed the cast of friends is laying around in the fridge. Well, chef, Jack, how about we whip them up into a friends reunion special? Customers, but we'll know the difference. Snackers, the number one rule of cooking up fresh media. Nothing tastes like nostalgia. So, Nick, what is on the menu tonight? Well, Jack, I'm so glad you asked. We've got a bunch of specials. You're going to love the duck. The chicken's not bad, but the Gossip Girl reboot on HBO Max is fantastic. launches today. And Nick, how is it prepared? Well, you got the Blair and Serena rivalry. It's continuing to live on as we all expect it. From the Upper East Side to East Hampton to Gen Z.

All the drama of Constance Billard School. It's right there. But this Gossip Girl update is updated with marginal minimal creative app. That's how you know, it's good. So instead of like a blogger, they're going to make Kristen Bell an influence. Instead of wearing Valentinos, you're going to put Chuck Bass and croc stilettos to show it's 2021. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are the Gossip Girl reboot tonight on HBO Max. Nostalgia is a dish best served streaming. And Hollywood is kind of like the Olive Garden. It knows we love leftovers.

Lasagna? Yes. Better 20 years later. If you know, yeah, now. Let's hit our three sports. You're tuned in the 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 ear candy. They don't reflect the views of the robberhood family. It's all informational just so. You know, we're not recommending any security. No. 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, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Nextdoor is going public with us back. Next door, the few, the proud, the unzuckables. First of all, pro tip here for anyone who's not a Nextdoor. You don't have to use Next Door, but you should definitely sign up for their emails. Yeah, you might not be interested in using another social media app, but if you sign up for Nextdoor, they'll send you emails about your neighborhood no matter what.

And Nick, what are you going to hear about Paolo who lives in Sixth app? If you're going to hear that, did anyone else hear that? Did anyone else feel that at like four in the morning? What's the deal with that food truck on the corner? Jack, I'm going to my inbox right now. I forwarded you a next door email on May 14th, and the subject line was literally this. Crows attacked my dog in the marina. Good clean, mostly family fun on Nextdoor. It's disturbing what it's entertaining. But Next Door itself was founded back in 2011 with a simple premise. Help neighbors get advice from neighbors about like the local babysitter that you're setting.

Cats and like adopting cats and like, why is my cat eating all these ants? What's the deal with those rodents? Should I be worried about these rodents? Are my cats going to attack the rodents? Are the rodents going to attack my cat? What about the babysitter? She safe? Or is she a cat?

That was 10 years ago. Today, one in three American households is a member of Next Door. Wow. And 275,000 verified neighborhood communities are chatting it up on Nextdoor. Which led to the news this week. Nextdoor just doubled its valuation to $4.3 billion and is going public via SPAC. Nextdoor is going to have a publicly traded stock. Right now, it's COSla Ventures acquisition company too.

True name. Soon it's going to become Nextdoor. Eventually, though, the ticker symbol for Nextdoor, the stock's going to be trading under, is kind. K-I-N-D. Now, that's because there is a reputation on Nextdoor of people complaining about things that are not so friendly sometimes. It's not all fun and games on Nextdoor because, you know, Paolo's not happy that your son's garage band is really loud. Yeah.

And you definitely see some posts on Nextdoor that can be labeled as racist. Yeah, there are racial undertones and overtones and like a bunch of tones on Nextdoor. And that's why Nextdoor had to launch a feature in April that prompts people to reconsider before posting that text that Nextdoor's AI has decided. is racist or offensive. So that's not that funny, but this is a funny thing that Jack and I noticed about Nextdoor. 73% of Nextdoor's monthly users

also use Facebook monthly. Interesting. That's funny. Here's a funnier thing, Jack and I noticed about Nextdoor. Kind of aggravating, actually. Facebook launched a Nextdoor copycat. It's a copy and paste situation.

It's called Facebook Neighborhoods. I mean, Jack, whip out the old whiteboard. Ipso facto. Next door just got zucked. But here's the thing. Shockingly, Nextdoor, so far, is a Zucking survivor. This is what fascinates Jack and me about Nextdoor because Nextdoor shouldn't be where it is right now. Since three out of four Nextdoor users also have Facebook, they could easily move their neighborhood gossipy conversations over to Facebook. Facebook could have easily destroyed Nextdoor by zucking Nextdoor.

So how is Nextdoor surviving this Zuck? How is Nextdoor thriving right now when the biggest social network on Earth has come? copied what they do. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Nextdoor? Next door, it turns social media into local media. Snackers. Social networks have become so big and so broad that they can lack true community feels right now. On Instagram, I'm following six chefs I've never tried before. Jack, I'm following six hotels that I can in no way possibly afford to actually visit. Oh, what's that Facebook? A notification about some girl I haven't seen since the third grade? Oh, even better. She now is friends with her cousin. I needed to

know that. Nextdoor thinks this makes you feel lost on traditional social media, so they help you get found. So if you post something on Nextdoor about that peeling paint concern, everyone is going to know about the exact fence that you're talking about on Nextdoor. That is the feeling of being found on social media. And that community is what got Nextdoor to a $4.3 billion spec. Local media is how Nextdoor has survived a zucking. For our second story, the government's 10 billion. dollar epic Jedi cloud computing deal. It's a mouthful, but it's cool. Rest in peace. It's dead. Done. Gone. But the cloud computing computer wars are, um, they're raging on Jack, aggressively. All right, Nick, you ready for some thesaurusus? Please. The U.S. Department of Defense.

Love this. The Pentagon. Okay. The biggest employer in the United States. That's a wild trivia stat. I feel like we just made Thursday Night trivia very nice for a lot of people. Agreed. And we are now facing what seems to be the bachelor. Shret for huge military digital contracts. Is Tanya that into you? I mean, I don't know. Is she going to get the rose? Who is going to win the Pentagon's cloud computing rose?

Is it Dale? Is it Jerry? Well, Dale should know, this is the biggest deal in cloud history. And the Pentagon finally announced that it is canceling the huge cloud computing deal with Microsoft. Yes. Remember Snackers? A couple years ago, President Trump granted Microsoft the deal. He didn't grant.

Amazon Web Services, the deal. Yeah, Amazon was positioned to win it, but Trump doesn't grant deals to political enemies. Ips Wack, though. Right. That's what Amazon was thinking. So Amazon sued, and that deal has been stuck in court

for like two years. Yeah. So on Tuesday, the Biden administration was like, okay, enough's enough. Deal, it's off, guys. Now, Snackers, you're going to want to write this one down. You're going to want to read this one at your next meeting. The greatest enemy to a deal is time.

The next time you are literally in a meeting and about to walk out, just say, greatest enemy to a deal is time and then leave the meeting. Time kills deals. Because Snackers, it's been three years since the Pentagon outlined what they needed with cloud computing in a robust RFP. Yeah, this is what they requested. They said, we want to be able to let top security clearance workers log in remotely. They said we need all our classified data put into the cloud. And the Pentagon said, we need to process an infinite sea of data with artificial intelligence to

reach new insights to protect the United States. But that's, That was three years ago. It was probably written in like Microsoft Word Windows 1995. Great addition. But still, three years ago is an eternity in cutting edge tax. So they're replacing the old deal with a new deal. Oh, by the way, the old deal, the old deal went to only one winner. Only one big tech company could win this government deal.

Bad move. Anybody who's anybody knows the Pentagon probably shouldn't put all their eggs in one basket. So this new deal is going to be divided amongst a whole big bunch of top cloud providers out there. Amazon is the front. runner. Microsoft, Oracle, Google, IBM. They all want this deal really, really bad. They do. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are actually all of us? Cloud computing is the oil of the modern digital economy. Snackers, most things we consume used to involve oil like somewhere in the supply chain, somewhere. If it's a t-shirt, if it's a television, if it's a trivial pursuit board

game, all of those needed oil somewhere to be burned to transport them to you. Well, today, Digital dominates. So every website, every app, every computer file, it's running on the cloud. Instead of oil fields, it's server farms. Instead of gas stations, it's also server farms. The Pentagon's cloud deal isn't just a huge guaranteed revenue stream for five years to come. It's also bragging rights. And that's why Amazon stock just hit a record high on word it's back in the running for the new Jedi deal. Cloud computing is the oil of the modern digital economy.

For our third and final story, Bloomingdale's is launching a whole new concept. They're calling it Bloomingdale. Welcome to the millennial mall. Bloomingdale's. I mean, turned a brown paper bag into a statement, Jack. Lexington Avenue, right? 59th Street, basically, great windows. You got to love the holiday windows.

They're famous for those brown bags that you walk out with. And they basically, I think they pioneered the font. I mean, Helvetica, lowercase. Like Times New Roman is extremely jealous of what they did. Now Outdoor Voices is doing the whole bag-ass mark. thing, but that's another story. In the meantime, Bloomingdale's is actually 160 years old, and it's now a part of publicly traded Macy's. They represent 11% of Macy's business, making about $3 billion in revenue last year. Yeah, not too shabby. Now, interestingly, Jack and I checked out

the recent earnings, and the CEO had this curious quote about Bloomingdale's. Bloomingdale's is Macy's test platform for innovation, and then we apply the lessons from Bloomingdale's across our other Macy's brand. So what Macy's CEO is saying is that Bloomingdale's is a petri dish. It's kind of the lab brand. It's a Bunsen burner kind of a situation. You try things out. You hope you don't blow something out. So that's when Macy's got a little more curious here and they noticed a trend going on throughout retail. Target, Coles, Nordstrom, even Sam's Club. They've all launched small format concept stores that are like a quarter of the square footage. So if you're Macy's and you've got this lab brand you're experimenting with. And you notice that trend, you're going to do something

with your lab brand. You're going to take it one step further with Bloominges, which is their first small concept store launches next month in Fairfax, Virginia. Okay. So the new Bloomingdale's Bloomingdale's store concept thing, first of all, it's small. The size is tiny. It's adorable. It's 20,000 square feet instead of a typical Bloomingdale's, which is 200,000 square feet. Okay, so it's one-tenth the size. That's what we've got. It's much smaller, but then things get different when it comes to the inventory. Well, of course, it's got way less inventory because it's way smaller. But they're focused on inventory for things you need to try on in person, like shoes and sunglasses.

Yeah, you're going to go in, you're going to see the local stuff from someone who needs you to try on the shoes. But the inventory isn't static, like a nasty pond that you don't want to swim in. Bloomingdale's is turning their inventory into a rushing river. That's right. It's going to be refreshed weekly with new inventory. to get you coming back into the store. It's constantly evolving, so you don't just show up for the Christmas holiday. You're going in every week to see what else is new.

And finally, Bloomingy's store is going to be experiential. They want to make sure you come back, so the new Bloomingies are going to be doing alterations, returns for e-commerce, and maybe a lunch date. Yeah, we noticed this Fairfax, Virginia one has a Cuban coffee cafe. Lovely. With enough avocado toast for your whole yearbook. Jack, there is not a gram of gluten on the entire first floor. of this Bloomingdale's. So what's the takeaway for our buddies over Bloomingdale's?

Bloomys fits into the new millennial mall concept. Snackers, retail is all about the company you keep. Bloomingdale's was historically in the east wing of a huge shopping mall with a gigantic parking lot next to. But the mall is dead. That's why Bloomese is nestled right beneath a new high-end apartment building, maybe some offices nearby in this first location. I'm checking the floor plan here. Looks like the new Bloominge's is also next to a movie theater. Yes. There's also a West Elm furniture store nearby and a Warby Parker in case you want to try on some sunglasses.

This is the aspirational life brand goal of everyone who's 26 to 28. Add it all up. This sounds like a mall, kind of. Jack, it smells like a mall. But it doesn't smell like those buttery hot dog pretzel things at Auntie Ants. No, by the way, full disclosure, had a hot dog pretzel once. It was incredible. This is a millennial mall.

There's probably a sweet green nearby. It's a new thing. It's a millennial mall. It's smaller. It's smarter. It's not car dependent. And it's very, very experiential. Bloomingdale's dominated malls.

Bloomies wants to dominate these new millennial malls. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us and Auntie Ans over there? Next door has found their way to the public stock markets. Despite getting zucked because it's local media, not social media. The Pentagon canceled the old. Jedi cloud computing deal. They're asking for new offers now for a new deal. Cloud computing is the oil of the modern digital economy. And Bloomingdale's, their stores were staples of old school shopping malls. Bloomingese stores are the first building blocks of millennial malls.

By the way, apparently Bloomies is what Bloomingdale's fans have always called Bloomingdale's. Which is making the story confusing. It's a nickname. It's like Bill and William. Now time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Sam Russell, the hot honey founder from Chicago who likes logistics. Honey never spoils. Get this. Honey has been found in Egyptian tombs thousands of years old with no traces of bacteria or going bad. Because honey contains its own natural preservative in the form of gluconic acid. I think we're describing a superhero.

Honey does its own natural preservative. Honey has no expiration date. And that acid prevents. bacteria or mold or fungi from ever forming. Now, the paleontologists who did the study and Sam, for that matter, they didn't tell us whether that Egyptian tomb honey tasted like normal honey. And that's really all that matters. But I think the takeaway here is if you rub honey on your skin, you too can last forever.

Like a mummy. Snackers, you look fantastic. Jack, have you already started streaming the gossip girl? I have it. Full disclosure. I grew up across the street on the Upper East Side. And Jack, I am the gossip girl. If you know, you know.

But before we go, happy early birthday to Ken Lee in lovely Maui, Hawaii. And Ebony Chimaloo in Newcastle, Australia. And Mark Lynn in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And Pasha Volkov in Houston, Texas. And happy birthday, the Max Oberding in Seattle. And Owen's son, also in Seattle. And Dr. Stannett Bird, the third in Suffolk, Virginia. And Taylor Winn in Portland, Oregon.

Oh, and Jack, Melissa Medina, just got promoted over in San Antonio. Congrats to Heather for moving to Austin, Texas. And Whitney and Aaron celebrating their seventh anniversary in lovely Walpole, Massachusetts, the couple that snacks together. Congrats to Whitney and Aaron and everybody else. And whoever celebrates something tonight and make it a tea boy. Celebrate the wins. 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. Do you ever get one of those hot dog pretzel things? I was going to say,

I did get a hot dog pretzel there once. Like a lacrosse trip. Do you eat it with? your hand. I think it eats you.