The Best One Yet - 💁‍♀️ “Jay-Z is going blonde” — Snapchat’s flying selfie drone. Airbnb’s nomad office. Madison Reed’s hair color.

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Jay-Z just invested $33M into hair color startup Madison Reed because your Profile Pic is today’s Power Asset. Snapchat’s newest product isn’t in the app — it’s a flying selfie drone that thinks it’s Tinkerbell. And Airbnb is going Work From Anywhere (forever), but it’s not an HR move… it’s a marketing move.$SNAP $ABNBFollow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeWant a Shoutout on the pod? Fill out this formGot the Best Fact Yet? We got a form for that tooLearn 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. It's Monday, May 2nd, and today's pod is the best one yet. Tb.O.I. TVO.R. Speaking of which, happy birthday to the best mom yet. My mom, Jennifer Kramer. Oh, Jennifer Kramer's fantastic. Happy birthday.

I ran into her once at a pancake place. She had the best pancake order in the whole place. Should we get into our first story? We should hit the first story. Still at TBOY. Airbnb just announced that Airbnb employees can work from anywhere in the world forever. But this wasn't an HR move. This was a marketing move. For our second story, Jay-Z just invested $33 million into Madison Reed's hair color startup.

We've been saying it for years, blonde unicorns. They have more fun. And our third and final story is Snapchat. Their latest product is not the app at all. No. Snapchat's latest product is a pocket-sized flying selfie drone, and it kills the selfie stick. It's a yellow Snapchat selfie drone. It's a laugh.

Right. It looks like one of those minions. That's the world we're in today. This is how you begin a Monday. Well, before we hit that wonderful mix, it's Horters Almanac. The first hoarder's almanac of the T-Boy era, Week 110. Things were running out of because of the pandemic. Jack and I have been keeping track for you. First, we were running out of toilet paper and chloro.

Then we were running out of clowns and chicken wings. This week, we are running out of Surf and turf. The classic show-off restaurant dish. Jack and I noticed that it's missing. Surf and Turk. know a surf an turf. It's a filet mignon and a lobster tail in one meal. It is fish and fauna in harmony on the plate. It's always the most expensive item on the menu. It's the thing you jump to when someone else is paying. It's the only dish that thinks it's better than you. Now,

Surf and turf screams, I got a passion for protein. It also screams, my Amex card is not only carnivorous, it is amphibious. That's right. But there's a problem with Surfantir. The most expensive dish on the menu has become unaffordable. Yeah, beef prices are up because of cow flation. Lobster prices are up because of mainflation. So no one's splurgeon on the surf and turf. We got a shortage of surf and turf. Restaurants are purging their menus of the surf and turf.

Surf and turf isn't a plate anymore. It's a problem. Let's surf or turf our three stories. Surf or turf. We said media, right? Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dawn. 50% that's a fat tip.

Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show. You're really having a good time on you. I'm having a great time for our first story. Airbnb just announced it's going to be remote optional workplace forever. But this wasn't about Airbnb's employees. It was about you.

If any Airbnb employees are listening, Jack and I just have a little idea for you, come up to the microphone for the speaker. Airbnb loyalty program, right, Jack? Well, then I would stop booking a VRBO because the fees a little bit lower than the same place is on Airbnb. The guy's always like DM and the person on the side, hey, is there a way we can work out the fees on this kind of thing? True.

If you share your Instagram handle, take it offline. Just last week, right before the weekend, Airbnb announced they will now allow employees to live and work from anywhere. Not work from home. No. Work from anywhere. Those are their words. You get Wi-Fi and the Galapagos.

Feel free to zoom into that meeting with you like a Gwan on your shoulder. File those TPS reports from a van down by. the river if you have Wi-Fi. Oh, that sound? That sound. That was the porpoise's mating in the background. Now, honestly, this news may not sound that new because Twitter, Square, Dropbox, it seems like every third company is allowing this kind of thing. They're trying to make fetch happen. It's the cool thing to do work from anywhere, you know, like wearing your hat backwards in 1996.

It's a cool thing to do, like wearing Birkenstocks today. The key here, though, is that it won't change the compensation for Airbnb employees if you're living in a low-cost place. That's right. You won't get an email for. from HR saying, we noticed you live in Vermont now. We're going to have to talk about your pet. Airbnb beers can now end their lease for the $5,000 San Francisco one bedroom and move into the $500 Manitoba mansion. Yeah. And keep getting that San Francisco pet. Now, this is what Jack and I found fascinating about the story. There was one thing not mentioned in this Airbnb news.

The stipend. The stipend. The best Airbnb perk that isn't free kombucha. Get this. Every Airbnb employee gets a $2,000 a year credit to use on Airbnb for travel. Must be nice. Also, it's basically a bonus that happens to benefit Airbnb. So employees at Airbnb can now work from anywhere. They may as well work from an Airbnb. Yeah. And Jack, there's that new feature on Airbnb, right, where you can like verify the Wi-Fi quality. This is crucial because Nick and I have recorded our pod from like a bazillion places. It's the worst when we're working with like five megabyte download. Download speed and we're trying to do our thing.

We're like, hey, you know, the fireplace is wonderful, but what is the download speed on the Wi-Fi today? Yeah, it's like, this is Nick. This is Jack. This is Jack. Well, now those employees can use that stipend they get every year from Airbnb to book the Volcano House and work from Iceland with Wi-Fi. Now, funny thing, Airbnb's CEO, Brian Chesky, he's already been doing this for a while. Yeah, Brian Chesky has been running Airbnb from Airbnb. around the United States. He tweeted a few months ago, he was going to be a digital nomad. And so the

latest earnings report from Airbnb, he was answering analyst questions from like a condo just outside of Atlanta. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Airbnb? Sometimes an HR move is really a marketing move. Yeah, Airbnb, they want their employees to try out work from anywhere. That's why they did this. Now, what's the number one company that would benefit if work from anywhere goes mainstreamed? It happens to be Airbnb, Jack. So Airbnb is not just sharing a new employee policy. They're marketing the Airbnb way of life. Airbnb wants more digital nomads.

So it's leading by example and letting Airbnbers become digital nomads. So work from anywhere, it wasn't an HR announcement. It was an Airbnb advertisement. Airbnb announced this to employees, but it was really talking to you. For our second story, Madison Reed pioneered direct-to-consumer hair color, and they surge during the pandemic. Now they got some Jay-Z money. to make color bars happen.

Okay, the number one question from my high school, Jack. You ready for this? Just you and me. Just you and me. Go ahead. Frosted tips. It's gonna be, may. Did you frost your tips?

Did you frost your tips? No, but Justin Timmelike did. And of course, I was pressured to. I was curious why you'd stop at the tips. Wait, did you? No, I didn't frost my tips. I don't know, I don't know. It was a crazy time.

Madison Reed, eight years old, San Francisco-based beauty company, pioneered the direct-to-consumer hair color. That wasn't a thing. Historically, you get your hair colored, if you're going to get your hair colored, at an in-person salon. You want to check the tone with the person who's the stylist. You want to make sure you got the right shade of red. You want to see it in person.

But during the pandemic, there was a hair panic because salons closed. They weren't essential services, you know? So you're ordering a Madison Reed chestnut shade at home and you're applying it yourself for the first time, right, Jack? That's what happened during the pandemic. And people got so hooked with the Madison Reed product. they ordered the color product online. It came to their door. And then when the pandemic was like waning,

they brought the hair color to their salon and said, I don't want your product. I want you to put this product. The stylist is like, I don't know if you can like bring your own home food into the restaurant, but I guess we'll try to work with this. It's like, do we need a cork fee with this?

It's the old olive garden in you. Well, the news this week, Madison Reed, the hair color pioneer, just raised $33 million from Jay Z. And now Madison Reed is worth over half a billion bucks. Now, this is what Jack and I found fascinating about Madison Reed. Every business tries to be everywhere the customer is, right, Jack? Madison Reed anticipated where their customer would be.

Yeah, Madison Reed kind of pulled the Wayne Gretzky on us. Now, the founder of Madison Reed is not named Madison Reed. Her name is Amy Earnett, and she named the company after her daughter, Madison Reed. And at first, Madison Reed was direct-to-consumer online only, direct-to-consumer color. When the pandemic hit, Madison Reed website saw a surge of new customers who typically went to in-person salons. So they revamped the website for these new customers. They started breaking things out, more details, more support.

You got 11 levels of color. And within each level, you got five sub-levels of color shades. And within the brunette shade, you had to decide, are you Milano or you're Napoli brown? I mean, Jack, I don't want to get too specific here because people always ask if we're natural, but are you more of a Maloney? Or are you more of the Napoli? I've always said dirty blonde. Is that right? I think it's, I think it's, um,

my dirty blonde or am I clean brown? No, dirty sounds dirty. So I think you say like Aphrodite Brown. So to cater to the, I'll take that any day. To cater to new customers used to like in-person salon service, MadisonReed.com set up an online concierge to help them. Yeah.

And the people who use that concierge, Jack, wasn't it like 50% of people who used the concierge ended up buying the hair care product? They did. But then the. company wanted to stay ahead of things. Yeah, they did. So before the pandemic was over, they started building out brick and mortar Madison Reed salons to keep these new customers they won during the pandemic. The now famous Madison Reed color bars of which there are 60 today and they're going to be

adding 40 more because of this new money. Madison Reed always stayed a little bit ahead of where the customer was to where the customer was going to be. Like Wayne Gretzky, Madison Reed didn't pass to where the customer was. It passed to where she will be. past the customer open. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Madison Reed? The profile pick is today's power asset. If you've been enjoying this pod for about a year now, then you know that Jack and I have told you about Bro-Tox,

as in Botox for guys. Dudes wanted their foreheads to look younger the past couple of years, and they've been driving sales growth in Botox. And we've noticed the LA Times just covered a surge in plastic surgery during the pandemic. Plastic surgery, just like Botox, pays for a record year of sales. And third, you got skincare and cosmetics companies that are doing better than they ever have.

Botox, Brotox, plastic surgery, cosmetics. It's all about your face. The evidence is there. We are spending more time than ever online. What's the only part of you that actually really gets seen online, Jack? Your face. Yeah. You want to look good for the Instagram post and you want to look good for that Zoom meeting.

Madison Reed's hair color is enjoying America's focus on their profile picture. The profile pick. It's the new power asset. Now a word from our sponsor, Robin Hood. Okay, so Jack and I got into the news business with our previous company. Markets now. Our goal was basically to democratize financial news for our generation. Cut the jargon.

Talk about the profit puppy. So when we first connected with Robin Hood, there was a chemistry there. We were doing for financial news what Robin Hood was doing for the financial system. Robin Hood was democratizing finance for all, and it started by eliminating trading commissions and building a beautiful app. Remember, we had the same color green. So the green was destiny. Destiny, absolutely. So we sold market snacks to Robin Hood and we launched Robin Hood Snacks. The equivalent of proposing getting married and building a family together in just three

years. Much more to come on why we're thrilled that Robin Hood is our exclusive sponsor. If you're not investing in Robin Hood yet to get started, you can go to robin hood.com slash t-boy and choose a free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y. Certain limitations apply for a list of other fees. View the fee schedule at RBNh.c.co slash fees. Investments involve risk. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC. By the way, Robin Hood no longer affiliated with us or the podcast. For our third and final story, Snapchat's newest product is a flying selfie drone. That's right. It's the greatest innovation to the selfie since the hand.

First of all, Jack and I respect one thing so much. It is the side hustle. Always respect the side hustle. We got started as a side hustle. We did get started as a side hustle. And we've Respect Snapchat, which is obviously a social media app, they have had a side hustle for like a decade building hardware. That's what Snapchat does when they're not working on their app, software. We're talking about spectacles. They've had three or four versions of these AR augmented reality camera spectacles. They're like Google Glass, but they make you look like less of a robot. Well, Snapchat announced last week another piece of hardware that shocked us. This thing is straight out of a David Cameron Avatar movie.

It is a tiny flying drone that takes videos of you in real life. It's $229. It's a drone that when it's not flying fits in your pocket and it only weighs three and a half ounces. If you're trying to picture this thing, like imagine Tinkerbell but as a tech product. It's like the shape of like a sandwich, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Oh, the color. Of course, it's that trademark Snapchat yellow. And unlike most drones, this one flies without.

without a remote control. Exactly. You beckon it to follow you with like a hand motion. It's absolutely incredible. This is the hand motion and it will follow you. And then when you're done and you want to like, you want it to land, you find where it is floating in the air and you place your hand underneath the drone. And it comes down and lands on your hand like one of those Falcon 9 rockets.

It sounds like the coolest thing we would own, but sounds like the kind of thing TSA is going to hate. And it solves the key issue of the selfie. We always need that. one friend with a really long arm, our buddy Timmy. If you're going to get the whole brunch scene included in the selfie, you need like go-go-gadget arm. Because that forearm always ends up blocking Becky. And this drone is designed for selfies.

But it's not going to kill the selfie stick. It almost kills the selfie stick. But it's a drone. And drones are illegal somewhere. So like check with your lawyer before busting this thing out at your next party. But this flying Star Wars selfie stick killing drone thing is not the only thing that Snapchat just announced that they're big of the thing. event last week. CEO and founder of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel. He runs the social media company.

And just like Zuck, he's also interested in augmented reality and virtual reality. But Snapchat's Evan Spiegel just ripped on Zuckerberg. Like, we're talking more shade thrown in Facebook since Andy Garfield. I like standing next to you, Sean. It makes me feel so tough. Here's what he said. Snapchat CEO said that the metaverse ambitions are ambiguous and hypothetical only. That's actually corporate shade right there. One CEO to another. Over at Snapchat's office, apparently no one even says the word metaverse. Jack, what happens if you say the word metaverse? I think they're forbidden from saying the word metaverse over at Snapchat. Snapchat workers, if you're listening to this pod and you've said the word metaverse, blink twice.

And please tell us that you're also not allowed to say meta or meta mates. Or snapmates. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Snapchat? Facebook is focused on a fake world. Snapchat is focused on the real world. 10 billion dollars. That is how much money. Facebook is spending on the metaverse right now. But Zuck's metaverse, it's for the 2030s. And it might never happen. Yeah, Zuck's been talking about the metaverse for months. Hasn't really helped Facebook stop. So Snapchat is doing the opposite. They're making real products today to interact with the real world today. This new Snapchat drone called Pixie, it is a physical drone. It's not a virtual fake digital drone. While Facebook builds a fake world for tomorrow,

Snapchat is building for the real world today. Jack, can you in the disappearing surf and turf whip up the takeaways for us to start the week? Airbnb just encouraged their workers to work from anywhere. Sometimes an HR move is really a marketing move. For our second story, Madison Reed is a hair coloring startup that just raised some Jay-Z money. Because the profile pick is today's power asset. And our third and final story is Snapchat. They just launched Pixie, their selfie video taking hands-free drone.

They're building for the real world today. Facebook, building for the fake world tomorrow. Now time for our snack fact of the day. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Johnny Henderson from lovely Highlands Ranch, Colorado. April is over. But can we look back at one of the finest April Fool's jokes of all times? Jack, let's talk about Taco Bell in 1996.

You know that's in all their commercials? Well, they announced 1996 that they had just. bought the Liberty Bell. Gong! Yeah, as in the famous Revolutionary War Bell in Philadelphia. It was a joke, but no one realized it, not even the U.S. government. From this one April Fool's joke, Taco Bell got an estimated $25 million in free publicity. Gong!

You got another gong in you, Jack? Besties, Yetis, T-boys, T-girls, T-Bays, Jack and I are still working on that name. We're getting close, though. We're getting close. In the meantime, if you've been enjoying the first week of this pod, you can drop down and give us five stars on Apple or Spotify. We do read every review that we get. Even the bad ones? We love those too. It's unhealthy probably.

Our therapist probably isn't into it. That's true. But we do read it. H-Y-H-T-B-O-I. Have you had the best one yet? If you know, you know. And before we go, congrats to listener Ben O'Hydger, who just completed the World Marathon Masters in Berlin, Germany. And congrats to Lorenza Lanz, who just got a new job at St.

Stripe down in Mexico City. Christian Liktie, happy birthday in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. And Steve Kearney, happy birthday in Austin. And Carlos Benito down in Houston. Happy birthday to Rob the Boss Conners in St. Louis. And Sierra Summers hasn't missed an episode of this pod in two years. Wow! Yeah.

And to anyone else celebrating something today, making a TV. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack, Nick and I have both on stock of Airbnb, Twitter, Block, and Robin Hood. Now a word from our sponsor, Robin Hood. So four years ago, we sold our company and we joined Robin. A lot of people asked, when did we decide that selling was the right move? So it was actually in our meeting with the co-founders, that's what sold us. Vlad and Bejou, also former roommates, also met in college.

Also, we're hanging out in New York City's East Village after the financial crisis. And they just figured out how the financial system worked. So Vlad and Bejou saw that Wall Street bigwigs, they were getting their fees waived. And they figured out a way to waive commissions for everyone else, too. So we saw a big, bold vision and decided to join these guys. That's where we spent the last three years until now. It makes sense now that Robin Hood would sponsor our newly independent podcast. If you're not investing in Robin Hood yet, you can get started by going to robin hood.com slash T-Boy, choosing a free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y.

Certain limitations apply for a list of other fees. View the fee schedule at RBNhd.co slash fees. All investments involve risk. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC. By the way, Robin Hood is no longer affiliated with us or this podcast. We should do a whole episode where we're just talking like Adam Newman and talking like Theranos. And for our first story. Masa, hey, I got you covered for the last one, you know?