The Best One Yet - 🚀 “Next stop: Mars” — SpaceX’s historic launch. Taco Bell’s name-your-price. Tesla’s empty CyberCab.

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

SpaceX just landed a skyscraper rocket with chopsticks… It’s the 1st step to landing on Mars.Taco Bell’s newest innovation isn’t food, it’s financial… Name-your-own-price.Tesla finally unveiled their robo-taxi (and a cyber-bus and humanoid robots)… but Wall Street thinks it’s empty calories.It’s National Failure Day… so we’re celebrating the losses (yes, that typo was on purpose).$TSLA $YUM $MCDSubscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.—-----------------------------------------------------GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Tuesday, Tea Boy, Tuesday, October 15th. And today's pod is the best one yet this is a T-boy. The top three puppets miss news stories you need to know today. I mean, you're wearing cream, I'm wearing cream, beige on beige. I like it. It kind of works, Jack. This is good. We didn't coordinate, but we look fantastic. We're loving the vibes. Jack, three stories for today's show. What do we got on the pod, man? For our first story, SpaceX just landed a skyscraper-sized, rocket chip using giant metal chopsticks. This is the first true step to landing on Mars. For our second story, it's Taco Bell. Taco Bell's newest innovation isn't food, it's financial. You can now name your own price for your next chalupa. And our third and final story.

Last week, Tesla launched a robotaxie and a cyberbus. And it was all catered by a humanoid robot bartender. But this week, Wall Street hates all of it. And we'll tell you why. But yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix of stories. Love the mix to kick off the Tuesday, Jack. Today's pod, it's actually the worst one yet. Oh yeah, it's not a T-boy.

It's actually a T-Y. It's the worst one yet. Because over the weekend was the National Day of Failure. I think you mean National Failure Day, Jack. I think you just failed at saying what the day was. 24 full hours focused on glorifying failure. Yeah, the perfect day to be less than perfect. Because Yeti's over in Finland, failure day is a real national holiday.

Yeah, the Finns, they get a whole day to just F up. Now, Yeti, Lord Brotman first told us about this wonderful Finnish tradition. And now it has become an annual T-boy tradition. Now, technically, Sunday was National Failure Day. But Jack and I forgot about National Failure Day. So we failed National Failure Day. Which is ironically the perfect way to celebrate National Failure Day, I'm so glad we skipped it by accident.

It makes sense. It kind of works even though it doesn't work. You can't spell Flair without fail. So yet is, if you left your Costco card in your car, that's okay. If Adam Newman stole your startup idea, that's okay. And if Jack chokes on a cookie crisp. You're really leaning into the coughing on this one. That's okay, too.

That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. Sometimes Jack and I would tangle up a takeaway. But it's okay. Because the next pot is the best. one, yeah. So Besties, happy day of fail. We mean happy day of failure. Celebrate the wins by celebrating the losses. And now let's hit our four stories. You mean three stories. I did. You're right. My mistake. Exactly.

15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea that caused a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 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. Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor. For our first story. SpaceX has landed a skyscraper-sized rocket on the exact same spot that it took off from. It's wild. It's the first reusable starship, and it's a 10x advancement in our race to Mars. Now, funny thing about the businesses Elon Musk starts, but like the end goal is consistently save the human race, isn't it, Jack? He said several times he wants to save the human race.

Yeah, like on his pitch decks, it's like slide 8, you know, save humanity. classic. Well, SpaceX took a big step toward that goal on Sunday. Because on Sunday, Elon's side hustle, SpaceX blasted the biggest and most powerful rocket ever into space. That wasn't the wild part. The wild part was that miraculously, that rocket came back to Earth and landed safely in the same exact spot. Yet he's the Wright brothers changed the world when they took off and landed an airplane in the same spot. And SpaceX just did the same thing. but with a 400 foot tall spaceship. It's like the Empire State Building just got parallel parked in Texas.

Yeah, that's exactly it. After they took it into space first. A skyscraper went to the moon and then parked itself in a garage. It feels like the kind of thing Dude Perfect would pull off, Jack. I was going to say Star Trek, but sure, Dude Perfect. It's Dude Perfect meets Luke Skywalker. In the meantime, Yeties, we should dive into this T-boy style, because Starship is SpaceX's platform of the future.

What iPhone is to Apple, the Starship is to SpaceX. And this product, the Starship, could become the most lucrative space business in the entire galactic industry. You should have said Universe. I should have said universe. You should have said Galactic Universe. Huge error. National Failure Day. National Failure Day, Jeff.

Now, the Starship actually comes in two pieces. There's a spaceship and there's a rocket. And the first part is the Starship, which is a space ship. which is a spaceship that is about 165 feet long. This spaceship is almost the length of four school buses. You can fit a lot of people and a lot of things in there. And that's key because someday this spaceship will be able to transport people and equipment into space. Maybe it'll drop those people and equipment off at Mars.

Yeah. And then come back with a bunch of space cargo, like, I don't know, red rocks from Mars. Maybe a Martian or two, if we're lucky. But part two of the product is the super heavy booster. and what is that exactly, Jack? This is the bigger part. It's 232 feet tall. It's stainless steel, and it's a rocket that does one thing and one thing only.

It launches. It launches. The starship has actually now been into space five times, and it's had five successful of these launches. But the first four times, the booster was destroyed after takeoff. Caput, brutal. This time, however, the booster came back to Earth and landed safely. And it didn't just land.

safely, it did so with the grace of a ballerina jack. Two giant metal arms bear hugged the booster as it hovered back down to ground. SpaceX calls them chopsticks. They call them chopsticks because basically two long poles grab this booster as it returns back like chopsticks clutching a little piece of salmon sushi. It's an incredible feat of engineering and it's a huge deal. It's a huge deal because it means that this giant and expensive booster can now be reused. Now, what about that starship? The thing that it shuttles people in? Yeah, that starship

crashed into the ocean. They're not going to recover it and it's gone forever. But someday, they hope to reuse that part of the spaceship, too. And the fact that they can reuse part of it is actually our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at SpaceX? Reusability. It grows SpaceX's business by 10x. Yeties. The ability of reusability. grows SpaceX's business by a level of magnitude, and we know because we calculated it. Starship, that's actually the second major thing that SpaceX has launched into space.

Good point. The first thing they launched was the Falcon Rocket. Every year, three SpaceX falcon ships would go into space, and they needed a new booster every time they did. It would be like a single-trip vehicle. After one road trip, that's it. You have to buy a new car to drive something again. But then SpaceX learned,

how to land the rocket so they could reuse that rocket over and over and over. Just like we can use the same car over and over and over. You just got to fill it up with gas each time. But now that SpaceX can reuse the same booster too, they've been shooting 30 rockets up into space every year, which is 10 times more than before. The reusability of the SpaceX Falcon rocket boosted their economics by 10X. 10x, because yet he's the ability to do more flights for less

money, that is the unlock that will get humans to Mars. Reusability. Not a sexy word, but the most important word in space. Because it grows SpaceX's business by 10 mix. For our second story, Taco Bell just made the biggest fast food move of the year. Name your own price. Name your own price. So we jumped into the economics of letting customers choose what they pay. Now, historically, Eddie's Taco Bell has been the most innovative company in fast food, wouldn't you say, Jack? It's true.

They're always experimenting with something wild. They're the Thomas Edison of tortillas. Yeah, they're like the Da Vinci of Dining. I like where you're going with the Thomas Edison, though, Jack. Taco Bell, they invented the Mexican pizza, the casalupa, the crunch rap supreme, Jack. They've been playing Frankenstein with our Mexican fast food ever since their origin. Cheese, sauce, and something just spin it together. but Taco Bell's biggest innovation this year isn't in food, it's financial.

Name your own price. Name your own price. Taco Bell is going full Bob Barker because if the consumer names the price, the price is right. Here's the news. They've got a new app feature that lets you choose how much you want to spend between $5 and $25. At each price level that you select in their app when you're ordering, Taco Bell will show you a different combination of food you can get for that price. It's like, are you $8 hungry or $12? hungry because that's the difference between you getting sour cream or not. And as you're sliding between those different prices of hungriness, it's a scale. You see different carts of Taco Bell food that perfectly matched that price. To quote Cuba Gooding Jr., show me the money, and they will

show you how many tacos you get. And if you don't like the combo they presented, you can just push refresh and they'll give you a different combination of tacos. Now, yet he's, Jack and I worked at banks. We went to business school. We studied finance. Jack was an econ major. We were even in the very first economics 101 class together in college. It's the only class we took together. Yeah, economics 101. It was. And what Taco Bell is doing breaks economics 101. Yes, it does. Jack, why don't you whip out the whiteboard for us, please? On a supply and economics, two lines converge. One line is the supply curve. One line is the demand curve. And they intersect at the ideal market price. X marks the spot, the spot where supply matches demand, and that price is the price

that most are willing to pay. But yet is, this is the fascinating part. What Taco Bell is doing is offering a product along the entire demand curve. They're offering a price that all are willing to pay. Not just one is willing to pay. It captures something called the consumer surplus. It does.

Where there's demand, but no supply. Now, we jumped in T-boy style, and interestingly, Priceline tried Name Your Own Price back in the 1990s, the travel website. For $200, what hotel will take me for a night? You could play that game every night. Price line built their entire business model on the name your own price concept. But most companies won't do this.

First of all, it's an economic feat that requires sophisticated pricing technology. Oh, it is harder to pull off than a hard taco shell, Jack. But the bigger question, is name your own price actually good for business? Is name your own price actually a profit puppy? Let me get William Shatner to help us find out. Yokey our own takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Taco Bell? Pricing is a hidden superpower.

Now, yeah, it is Taco Bell's parent company, Yum Brands, they're struggling right now. Sales have slowed, the stock is flat this year, and they need something new. But studies show that this kind of name-your-own-price strategy is actually more profitable if you can pull it off. Okay, the first reason name-your-own price is more profitable is from a strategic perspective.

It's a way to differentiate because no other fast-food brand is doing this. The second benefit to name your own price, price is from a psychological perspective. It feels customer first. Consumers love the power to choose and you can name your own price. And the final benefit to name your own price is from a financial perspective. According to studies, buyers do end up buying more if they can name their own price. Because name your own price optimizes sales when there is a wider range of what people are willing to pay like in this economy. So instead of launching one value meal, like, every fast food restaurant has done this summer.

It's like, are you $8 hungry or $12 hungry? Because that's the difference between you getting sour cream or not. You go into Taco Bell willing to pay Chipotle money? You're walking out with six jalupas and a crunch wrap supreme. Not too shabby. Taco Bell. It's name your own price is a reminder that pricing is really a hidden superpower. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story,

Tesla unveiled the driverless cyber cab, surprised us with a robo van, and the whole event was catered by robots. But all that was empty calories. We'll explain why Tesla stock has fallen since their epic event. Now, yeah, it is, you were hanging out with this last week. Jack and I were in lovely Los Angeles, and we did a story on this pod about Tesla's biggest event of the entire year. The event was called Wii Robot. They were going to unveil their first ever robot taxi. And we gave you a preview last Thursday.

And here's what we said. Let's hit the tape, Jack. This could make Uber's irrelevant. They could make Waymo Robo taxis look way old. Or, on the other hand, this could be nothing at all. It could be another broken promise. Okay, what we got was the awesome one. Yeah, the first one.

We liked that one. That was pretty cool. We got an entirely new car, no steering wheel. It is a ground-up ghost cab, baby. It's called the Cyber. And it looks like your MacBook Pro laptop on growth hormones with four wheels. It spun CEO Elon Musk around the Warner Brothers studio where they set up a fake town for the event. But yet is that wasn't even the wildest part.

Was it, Jack? They didn't just unveil a self-driving cyber cab. They also unveiled a robo van, which looks like the shuttle from the movie I-Robot, that they shuttle like 30 robots in. It's basically an Art Deco minivan from the 23rd century. And after the event, they served drinks to all the Elon fanboys, served by Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robots were manning the bars. So yet he's added it all up. And last week, Tesla unveiled a new robotaxie, a surprise robo van, and a bartender who was a robot with hands making your gin and tonics. It all felt extremely impressive. And it may have made you want to buy the stock.

But we hope you didn't buy the stock, though. Because it's down by a lot since the event on Thursday night. Because this week, Wall Street looked back at that last week Tesla event and hated it. Not only has Tesla stock fallen by 10%, but Uber and Lyft, their stock rose after the Tesla unveil. Basically, investors don't think Tesla is a credible player in ride hailing. So they drop Tesla stock and they boosted Uber stock. Wall Street doesn't want anything that those humanoid robots were serving. Oh, we robot. No, you robot.

And you know what? It actually got Jack and I thinking we got curious over the weekend. Like, what did Elon actually announce at this epic event? Yeah, what did he actually say? What Elon said was that the cyber cab will hit the road in three years by 2027 and we'll start at a price under $30,000. That all sounds amazing. But you got to realize, Yeties, the last time Elon promised something epic like this was the cyber truck. It was the cyber truck. But when the cyber truck finally came, it was two years late and more than double the price he first promised.

Elon promised the cyber truck would be under $40,000. Today, you can't get one for less than $95,000. So what Jack and I are saying here is there's a little bit of a history of over-promising and under-delivering. Yeah, so like when you adjust the announcement to Elon's standard time, then you get a better sense of what Elon just announced, right, Jack? The cybercab probably won't be here till 2030, and it's probably going to cost double what he says it's going to cost. It's the Elon discount. What he says is going to happen is going to happen, but it's going to be twice the price and twice the time. And considering Waymo has a thousand real self-driving cars on real roads right now. I took one to the studio today, Jack.

The cyber cab presentation Thursday, it's not as impressive. Although we would take a Nogroney from a six-foot-tall robot. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Tesla? Tesla delivered was a financial cupcake. It tastes sweet, but those are empty calories. Yeties, what Tesla showed us on that Hollywood movie set last week, it felt like a movie. It was incredible to watch. But like a movie, it was all staged. Can Tesla cybercabs do all that on real roads today? The answer is no. What Wall Street actually wanted was to see data and facts and technical details. We didn't get any of those. Or were that Tesla finally cracked robotaxis and they were

ready right now. We didn't get that either. So this Tesla event, it looked incredible. It tasted great. It smelled fantastic. But what did I actually just consume, Jack? Hey, robot, what's actually in this drink? Tesla delivered the sweets, but they were all empty calories. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? SpaceX successfully landed their super heavy booster, which means they can reuse it for their next rocket launch. Reusability. it's the unsexy word that is the key to getting us to Mars. For our second story, it's Taco Bell. They're letting users in their app name their price, and then they'll fill your cart.

Guac doesn't have to be that extra, because pricing is a secret superpower. And our third and final story is Tesla. They unveiled their cyber cab last week, but analysts were not impressed. Tesla, they served us a financial cupcake. It was sweet, but honestly, it was kind of empty calories. But Yetis, this pod's not over yet. Nothing against cupcakes. Here's what else you need to know today.

First, Nike's new CEO started this week. But here's the wildest part. Their new CEO actually tied his first laces as an intern 36 years ago. Elliot Hill has been just doing it since he was a college intern. He actually has been with Nike since 1988. Second, the Nobel Prize in Economics was just awarded to three economists. These economists compared countries

that were colonized by foreign powers, and they looked at whether the colonizers established democracies or non-democracies. The takeaway? Democracies deliver prosperity better than authoritarian countries. Freedom, democracy, and laws. They lead to innovation, spending, and prosperity.

And finally, three out of the four remaining baseball teams in the playoffs are the biggest spenders in the MLB. That's right. The Mets, the Yankees, and the Dodgers have the number one the number two and the number three highest salaries in all of baseball. That's some return on paycheck right there. Yes, it is.

Now, the Cleveland Guardians, they're the underdogs in this situation, aren't they, Jack? No, no, no, they're the underpriced in this situation. Otherwise, money, it can't buy a happiness, but it can buy you a pennant, it looks like. Also, fingers crossed for another Mets Yankee subway series. If you know, you know, Pasada, you know. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one whipped up by Jack and me on National Failure Day because we have a fail. We should share a fail.

Last week, we discussed the company Generac, which makes generators that are useful after a hurricane. But we had an error in our story that Yeti Kevin Campbell told us about that we'd like to correct here. Generac stock is not at an all-time high. Like we said on the pod last week, it's at a two-year high. So that, that was a mistake, that was an error. That was a fail. We're acknowledging a National Failure Day. Genarack stock was higher back in 2020 and 2021.

You want to share a personal fail over there, Jack? Because I got one for you if you don't get one. Like gluten-free diet I mentioned last week, I am so failing. When we were in Los Angeles, Jack had like three pastas and a side of bread at one of our meals. So it actually wasn't a gluten-free diet. I was on a FODMAP diet, which is outrageously hard to keep track of. It's a temporary diet that, like, tests your GI situation. but there's like 50 different things I have to look out for.

All I know, Yetis, is that when the waiter approached, I had to ask him to cut Jack off. I said, this guy can't handle any more carbs. Yeah, but it was homemade pasta. I figured... Yeah, always round up. Yeties, you look fantastic for National Failure Day. And if you haven't yet,

check out our brand new series, the best idea yet, because it just launched today. We got a link in the episode description for you to subscribe. First episode, it's on the untold story of the McDonald's Happy Me. which was the best idea yet and thought up by a mother of five from Guatemala. So, Yetis, enjoy that show next, and Jack and I will see you tomorrow. And before we go, a happy birthday to Yeti Kushma Kathuru turning 35 years old over in Middleton, Delaware. And happy 41st birthday to Caesar Apodaca in El Paso, Texas.

And Kyle Nash is turning 24 in Shelby Township, Michigan. Happy birthday, Kyle. A Michigan Wolverine who bleeds in Amazing Blue. I think I know what color the cake's going to be. And Yetis, if you want a shout out on today's podcast, any podcast for anything you've done, hit us up. We got a link in today's episode description. This is Jack. I'm on stock of Generac and Nick and I both on stock of Apple and Chipotle.