The Best One Yet - “Ohhhh, the macrame” — Kayak’s hotel leap. Amazon’s Alabama situation. Carbon Capture’s guilt economy.

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Booking owns a bunch of travel apps, including Kayak, is jumping off the internet to launch its own physical hotel… but we think they got the idea from streaming. Amazon’s situation in Alabama reveals Big Tech’s big unspoken issue: The Union Awakening. And Carbon Engineering is the vacuum cleaner of CO2 that’s betting on the Guilt Economy.$BKNG $AMZN $XOMGot 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 Wednesday, March 10th. Okay, first of all, the NASDAQ Index made a huge rebound yesterday. It was so big. Tech stocks jumped by 3.6%. Jack, we corrected the correction. First movie was the correction.

The sequel is the uncorrection. Bradley Cooper was in both. This happens to be also the TBIOI, the best one yet. Jack, first story over here. Hotel booking website, Kayak, is launching a physical hotel in Miami, Florida. All right, here is the one. wildest part, we think they got the idea from Netflix. For our second story, Amazon workers in Alabama, they're voting right now on whether to form the first Amazon Workers Union. Tech doesn't have 99

problems. Unions, though, could be problem number one for tech. That could be the big problem. That could be problem number one for our third and final story. Carbon engineering is a company that doesn't want to lower your carbon footprint. They want to bury it deep inside the earth for all of The vacuum cleaner of carbon dioxide just snagged a critical client. But before we hit those three stories, wonderful mix. We want to highlight what is apparently the busiest company in the United States. Honestly, Jack, a lot of companies out there arguably, it's Apple. Apple's the busiest. And the busiest team at Apple, Nick? Honestly, whoever is like working and designing those new chargers, we're going to get a new charger. Donglegate. Donglegate. Never forget. We never did. Actually, though,

Jack and I think it's the business development team behind the scenes. That's the busiest team at Apple. Apple CEO Tim Cook dropped this little nugget at the annual shareholder meeting. Apparently Apple acquires a company every three to four weeks. Get this. Sit down, stand back up again. Apple has quietly acquired 100 startups in just the past six years. Every time you replace your toothbrush, Apple has acquired five companies or like 10 companies. Jack, biggest deal for Apple the last decade? Beats by Dr. Dre. I think that was $3 billion. Yeah, that was huge. Also, biggest non-deal. deal that didn't happen of the last decade. Well, Elon confessed that he approached Apple about Apple acquiring Tesla, but Tim Cook ignored Elon's phone call. According to Elon. Well, Apple's deals, they don't get

like the big, splashy PR announcements like a bachelorette finale. It doesn't happen. No, it's more a Cinderella situation. One day the company's small and independent. Nice. The next day after the clock strikes midnight, they're part of Cupertino. And Apple, honestly, it tends to buy the features, not the companies. like the AI that eventually became Siri. Yeah, and Apple bought the fingerprint technology that eventually became Touch ID. Oh, and Jack, they also bought the self-driving tech that could, you know, maybe become the Apple Icar.

Snackers, if you got an iPhone nearby, grab it. It's not just one product. It's actually hundreds of ideas, a whole ton of features, and probably like 100 acquisitions that the biz-deb team at Apple's been working every single day on. Can I self-take-away the takeaway here?

Please, Jack, what's the takeaway? This is the opposite of Zucking. That's our three stories. 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. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, kayak.com, that part is key, is launching a physical hotel. It's an online travel booker, and it's taking its talents to South Beach.

Jack, we've got to do a little timeline situation here. Kayak founded in 2004, IPOed in 2012, acquired a year later for $2 billion by Bookin.com. And we think this might be the first and only company with a palindrome name. Honestly, what other company, what other palindromes have gone public? I hadn't think of it. I'm wondering, is there a company called Race Car? And then also, is there a company with just one letter? Because that's a palindrome, right?

I don't know if the one letter counts. Because then I think it has to be like an A where it's like symmetrical on either side. I don't know if an R counts as a paladrum. You know what I mean? 2020, despite the pandemic, was actually pretty good for this palindromic kayak.com company. Yeah, it turns out booking stocks up 59%. You know they own like price line, a bunch of other things. The kind of stuff that you're always like, you're filtering.

You're always filtering. Yes. Oh, yeah. I need a place that's pet friendly. Yes, you do. I need a view of the bay. Very needy. I need a place that's, you know,

reachable from a nonstop flight from JFK. Honestly, early takeaway here. It is hard traveling with Jack. I travel with Jack a lot of needs. There's a lot of needs here with the filters. I'm a simple man with complicated needs. Now, booking is online only for all these bookings until yesterday. We just learned that in April, kayak.com is opening up a 52-room hotel at Miami Beach. And this thing, it looks like it was designed by a TikTok account. Let me just sprinkle a little mid-century mod on this thing. There is a monsoon of subway tile, like across the macrame? Oh, yeah. Oh, the macrame.

Oh, man, we work in Drybar. You combine too many times. The key here, though, here is the key snackers. Kayak is owned by online travel icon booking, and this hotel has basically become Booking's little laboratory petri dish. That's because to unlock the door to your $230 a night hotel room, what do you need, Nick? Jack, you're going to need the kayak app to do that.

If you decide to set the alarm early so you can go to the gym before whatever, what do you need? Jack, you're going to need the kayak app to get into that gym. That's what you're going to need. Booking is about to collect a whole bunch of data on what you're doing in the hotel and whether they need to buy a fourth elliptical for the gym. Okay, Jack, let's say you and I have been snacks on this. We go, we visit the hotel. I know what's going to happen.

We're going to want that 8.30 p.m. dinner reservation at the Lebanese restaurant. That's at the bottom floor of the hotel. It's all connected. Yeah, it is. You got to use the open table app, which is owned by booking as well. If you want to get the Lobna, you got to use OpenTable.

We expect booking to use all this data from the kayak app, all this data from the OpenTable app, plus their data from Priceline.com, to build out optimized hotels for the future. Okay, and then once it optimizes for one hotel, like this one that's launching in April, then they can build out a whole chain of hotels potentially.

Meanwhile, TripAdvisor, Hotel Tonight, Expedia, Hotwire, even Google flights. Do any of them own a hotel? No, they don't, Jack. So how are you going to different? differentiate for our buddies over at kayak.com. What we saw play out in media over the last few years, we may now see in travel. Jack, the two biggest themes we saw in media the last two years, I feel like we should tattoo these on either bicep. First, own the original content. Second,

make that original content exclusive. Spotify did it with a billion dollars worth of podcasts. Disney did it with the Mandalorian on Disney Plus. All right, so we're living in a world with like nearly unlimited content options. So media companies are creating their own original content and then they're making it exclusive. Emily and Paris is both exquisite content and it's only on Netflix. Well, Jack and I think kayak is doing the same exact concept but throwing it on the travel booking industry. Their Miami Beach hotel experience is like kayak's original content. Then they can create more kayak hotels, then make those exclusive and only bookable on the kayak app. What we saw the last few years in media, we could see the next few years in travel. For our second story,

Amazon and its profits versus union organizers and Joe Biden. Nick, there's been an awakening in the force of labor unions. Historically, we're going to go a little fur back on this one. Jack, you think unions, you're thinking like the Harley crew. You got the t-shirts, the badges, you got the tattoos. The Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Chapter 2473. Get that tattooed on your chest. I love those numbers. Ink don't sink, Jack. Ink don't sink. Now, Snackers, unions, they can be a check on capitalism because they give power to the workers and it helped give rise to America's middle class. Yeah, when you get workers uniting, they'll be able to bargain better for wages and benefits.

That's the power of the unions. And unions are still a big deal in some places. Case and point over in Europe, it's actually common, get this, for board of directors of companies to include a union worker as one of the representatives on that board. Unions aren't still big in the United States. Okay, we got a little number situation here.

Membership in unions in the United States dropped from 33% in the 1960s down to, get this, 11% of the U.S. workforce today. Just one out of 10 workers is a member of a workers union in the U.S. But Snacker, stop what you're doing. There has been an awakening in the force. I think Yoda's ear just twitched because 5,805 workers in Alabama are voting right now on whether to form Amazon's first workers union. Okay, voting ends this month on what could become Amazon's first.

ever union for blue-collar workers in one of their distribution facilities. If they form this union, here's what they're going to demand. Better work conditions, better pay, and more job security. Oh, also like a longer lunch break. Get this, they only get like 30 minutes precisely. That's it. Any longer, your picket stock. Amazon has a reputation for ruthless efficiency. Yeah, it's intense. You can't run with a sandwich in your stomach. It's hard. And according to the Washington Post, Amazon is not happy that they're trying to form a union and they're fighting back hard against it. they're sending like four to five emails per day blasting unions. The implication, if you unionize, we might close this plant down.

Jack, Amazon is putting up banners on the wall in these distribution centers. Amazonians united against unions. Jack, they're going pretty far here. They're even putting up flyers in the bathrooms of that Alabama distribution center. If you vote yes to unionship, get ready for a B.YO toilet paper policy. That's what's going to be happening. Now, the message coming from Amazon, this is, it's partly truthful. Part of it's truthful here.

It's true that unions will cost the members dues they have to pay every year, and it could weaken workers' one-on-one relationships with their managers. But, Jack, there's also part of this is intimidation coming from Amazon on the union stuff. Yeah, there's some allegations that Amazon retaliates against workers who try to organize and are pro-union. Yeah, and the way they do that, firing, demotions, that's the kind of thing that's illegal in the United States, but that's what ends up happening. And it's become political. President Biden denounced what he described as threats, intimidation, and anti-union propaganda going down in Alabama.

He didn't say Amazon, but like, he didn't not say Amazon. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Amazon? The Union Awakening transcends collar colors. Snackers, the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, real name. That's a classic union. That's your blue-collar union. But in the last few years, we're seeing white-collar unions emerge. Yeah, over off Union Square in media, you got BuzzFeed launching a union. In big tech, you got Google workers forming their first union. In that bombshell royalty Oprah interview the other day, Megan Markle casually dropped that she's part of a actresses union. The demands for white collar unions likely going to be a little different than the historical blue collar unions.

Blue collar workers historically focus on pay benefits and job security. Google's median pay is already $200,000 and includes a lifetime supply of free Greek. yoga. So their new union, they're focused on HR policies and social issues. Amazon's situation, though, this is a whole new scale and inflection point. They hired 500,000 human beings last year. And those 500,000 human beings probably don't want to lose their job again. And that is driving this union push in Alabama. The union awakening. It is transcending color, colors, and color sizes. For our third and final story, carbon engineering, the vacuum cleaner of carbon dioxide just snagged its biggest client. This is key. We've got an early mover in what we're calling the guilt economy. First of all, we've got to introduce these guys, carbon engineering up in Canada,

Canadian startup with an extremely polite and efficient name. Now, the status quo in corporate America is to reduce the amount of carbon that you're emitting. I suggest they don't want you getting confused. They literally just made their business model their name. That is what they did. They've got engineers. They're in the business of carbon. Now, meanwhile, everyone else, they're installing solar panels, they're using electric vehicles, or planting trees. That's how they're dealing with their carbon issues. Carbon engineering, though, has a different approach. Oh, yeah, it does. They're not asking you to reduce the amount of carbon you're emitting. They're going to suck it up for you with science. They got a little thing they whipped up called carbon capture. Interesting concept.

These guys have chemical reactions that will emulate a tree which drinks carbon dioxide up from the air. All right, so that's the first part of what they do. The second part is where it gets wild. This is the carbon storage that comes after the carbon capture. After drinking up the CO2 from the atmosphere, carbon engineering compresses it and then they store it deep underground in the earth so that it never escapes. Yeah, basically holding their breath for a long period of time. Now, they've got their first plant that's going to actually do the carbon capture and the carbon storage. It's going to come online in 2024. It's called the direct air capture plant. And one of these plants can apparently cut the emissions produced by 250,000 automobiles per year. Jack, it feels like an acronym

moment. I know what you want to say. I feel like you should say it. What are you feeling and thinking right now? CNAS, baby. Carbon neutrality as a service. That's what this company does. Honestly, we jumped in snack style. You check out their website. The first line when they describe what they do, which is always worth checking out, help your business meet critical emissions reductions targets. They're like your spotter. One big Canadian tech company is called Shopify. and they need to meet their critical emissions reduction targets. They're not too comfortable with the fact that they shipped you like 12 pairs of satin pajamas in the last 12 months.

And they're also not capable of taking their CO2 emissions and stuffing them into the earth like carbon engineering does. Boom, Shopify is ordering 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal from our friends over at carbon engineering. It got Nick and I thinking, carbon engineering's business could arguably fit into a company's like operation flow, just like trash removal. Yeah. Basically, you hire waste management to eliminate your trash.

You hire carbon engineering to eliminate your CO2. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies up north over at carbon engineering? New thing. We're calling it the guilt economy. The guilt economy, Snackers, when you get an earlier stage company like this, first thing worth doing, check out the cap table, the list of investors, especially the strategic ones, because that list reveals a whole lot. Okay, the Canadian federal government has invested in this company through a grant.

Then you got like a bunch of venture capital for a company. and you got Bill Gates, so you got unlimited capital. But then this shocker, big oil, is behind carbon engineering. That's right, Occidental and Chevron, two big oil companies, both just invented in carbon engineering. In fact, Exxon Mobil, the king of American oil, they think that carbon capture will become a $2 trillion business for them by 2040. Funny timing, Jack, because Exxon just suffered their worst annual loss in modern history, $22 billion, done out, gone. So Exxon is looking at carbon capture, probably as a potentially profitable business for them in the future. But the other reason they're looking at carbon capture, it's part of the guilt economy.

From big tech to big oil, carbon engineering can capture those penance profits. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? Kayak is launching a hotel in Miami, Florida. Just like media travel companies need exclusive content. For our second story, Amazon is worried that if Alabama unionizes, all the other places might do. Yeah, we got ourselves the Awakens. of the force that transcends collars and colors. Carbon engineering is the latest seen-ass company.

All right, the tech has a way to go, but then they could cash in on the guilt economy, new thing. Penance profits. So time for our snack fact of the day. Sent in by our buddy, Ro Gupta from Calcutta, India, now living in Large Mont, New York. And Ro had kind of a he had a question about a follow-up to a snack fact.

Okay, last week on my birthday, I pointed out that the fifth most seen character in Seinfeld is the cashier at the coffee shop. Now, Rowe wanted to take it a step further, so he jumped in Snackstyle to see the percentage of lines attributed to certain characters on Seinfeld. Okay, 33% of the line spoken.

Over nine seasons are from Jerry, 22% from George, 18% from Elaine, 16% from Cosmo Kramer. Then you're getting a drop-off. And Nick, you were right. The fifth most present person by spoken lines is Mrs. Seinfeld.

Which is kind of shocking and then funny because Morty is coming in sixth on this thing with 1%. And then George's X and then Newman. Newman. Newman. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Snackers, you look fantastic today. By the way, you can get snacks daily on Spotify.

And if you're listening on Spotify, you can follow us by clicking follow. And by the way, top of the morning, do you? If you know, you know. And before we go, this is unprecedented. Congrats to Carlos Armis and Caitlin Van Cho, who we gave a shout out to when they got engaged in October, and we're given a second shout out to because they just bought their first house in Houston.

Great house. We saw the picture. They sent it in. No invite, but it's a great house. Chee-Shu, Jack Lynn, is moving to San Francisco from Taiwan. Chee-Shu, remember, Suble's got the best food. Congrats to Diego Rodriguez and his wife, who are celebrating an anniversary in Monterey, Mexico.

And Olivia and Mustafa, congrats on the first baby in Syracuse. Happy birthday to Cigar Varma in Folsom, California. and Cam Braverman at East Hampton, Massachusetts. And Todd in Huron, Ohio. And Jackson, Rice, and Simpsonville, South Carolina. And Versi Williams in Chicago, Illinois. And Tam Trim in South Lake, Texas. And Maroo Gesh in San Jose, California.

And happy birthday to Amy in Stanford, Connecticut. And if there's anyone else celebrating anything today, make it a team boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. Nick owned stock of Shopify and Apple. We both own stock of Spotify, I think. and 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.