The Best One Yet - ♟️ “Pawn Stars — Chess’ “random” disruption. Netflix’s unlimited parental leave. Time’s CEO of the Year.

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Chess has a new World Champ… but traditional chess is getting disrupted by rando chess.Netflix’s legendary unlimited parental leave policy is under pressure… so we calculated the ROI.Time just named AMD’s Lisa Su CEO of the year… because she has 1 incredible hero metric.Plus, Taco Bell just opened Taco Bar… They call it a cafe, but we see a night club.$AMD $NFLX $SPYWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Nike’s Air Jordans 🏀 Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe 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/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Friday the Real Friday. December 13th. And today's pod is the best one yet. This is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. The Yetis, unfortunately, we left something on the subway.

What do we leave, Jack? Full disclosure. Our voices. We left our voices on the subway. We're both feeling a little under the weather. Honestly, we were yelling across the bar at J.G. Mellon to get burgers. And then we were yelling at Madison Square Garden for the Knicks. And then we met Bobby Flay.

So we kind of having a big conversation with Bobby Flay. Yeah, we also both sucking down cough drops. We both got a throaty situation. And we recorded two podcasts six hours yesterday. It's been a hell of a 72 hours, but we might need some social distancing from each other. Honestly, glad I lost the voice. It was so much fun, Jack. We still got a T-boy.

Yeah, it is three stories for today's T-Boy. What do we got on the pod, Jack? For our first story, it's chess. Yesterday, a new chess world champion was crowned. But at the same time, the best chess player is disrupting the 15-100-year-old For our second story, it's Netflix. Netflix has the most powerful work perk we've ever heard of. True story.

Unlimited parental leave for the baby's first year. So Jack and I calculated the ROI on the ultimate work perk. And our third and final story. Time Magazine just named the CEO of the year. She's the tech CEO who made her stock grow 50 times larger. But Yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix, Jack. I'm going an octave lower.

Fantastic Mick. The newest fast food chain in America is not Bobby Flee approved. It is not Taco Bell. It's Taco Bar. That's right. There is a new bar by Taco Bell. True story. Taco Bell just launched a non-alcoholic bar for Gen Z. They're serving milkshakes, coffees, and dirty sodas. Hey, bartender. I'll take a man to do Baja blast. Mocktail.

On the rocks. Here's the context, James. Please, Jack. The name of this new Taco Bell concept store is the Liv Moss Cafe. Now, Jack, they say it's a cafe, but like, we notice the whole menu is drinks. Tropical Punch Rockstar Refresca? What's that? That's a dance floor drink, not a breakfast drink. I mean, honestly, Taco Bell's new bar, it's like a Starbucks and a Java juice had a highly caloric baby.

That was raised in Cabo San Luis. So we got to ask. Why is Taco Bell trading solids for liquids? Because for the last three years, beverage chains have been beating out food chains. Sales of coffee and soda are outpacing burgers and burritos. Blue bottles in, Wendy's is out. In fact, Taco Bell's best-selling. new product this year. You see what it was? A drink. Yeah, a frozen

soda with a bunch of extra sugar. So Taco Bells open this first concept cafe, first location, San Diego. But this Taco Bar could get Taco Bigger. Taco Bell, they're about to turn a nacho into a non-alcoholic party punch. To quote that Chihuahua, yo quiro taco bar. Let's in our three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but But the best is an 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, you know what? I think we sound kind of sexy, Jack. I think you do. I think we sound pretty. Yeah, what is this jazz? Are you trying to get me in bed right now? We're not to get a lot of good comments.

A lot of good DMs. Yeties for our first story. The chess world championships, they ended yesterday, but the best chess player in the world wasn't even there. Because Magnus Carlson is disrupting the entire chess industry instead. Jack, let's play a game. Name a famous chess player. Actually, everyone listening, name a famous chess player, right?

Chances are you can only name one famous chess player. Who's that? Bobby Fisher. Or the lead character in Queens Gambit. That's the only other option you got. Bobby Fisher is the American chess player who in the 70s ended the Soviet Union's 24-year streak of chess domination. Chess, it now carries less geopolitical weight than during the Cold War,

but the World Chess Federation still holds a championship every year. And yesterday, India's Gukesh Dumaraju beat defending champ Ding Loren of China. It was a 14-day 14-game marathon. It was some hardcore pawns. Sit down, stand up, and... Stay seated because it's 14 games over 14 days. But guess who wasn't at this world chess championship tournament? Who was that, Jack?

Magnus Carlson. Ah, Magnus Carlson. If you knew a second famous chess player, it was this guy. Yeah, he's the Michael Jordan of chess masters. He's the Raphael Nadal of rooks. But this five-time champion of Norway is bored with chess. Because he won his first world championship at the age of 23. In his career, he's never lost a world chess championship.

match. Ever. So two years ago, he retired as the defending champ. Interestingly, we discovered that instead of playing in the world championships, this former champion is busy playing three games, three games we'd never heard of. Three different types of chess. There's rapid chess, blitz chess, and random chess. All right, Jack, you got to explain these three, because we'd never seen it before. Rapid chess gives each player only 15 minutes to make all their moves. Checkmate in 30 minutes. Blitz chess gives each player just three minutes.

to make all their moves. Sorry, no bathroom breaks. If traditional chess is a movie, then rapid chess is like a YouTube video and Blitz Chess is a TikTok. I can see that. However, Magnus Carlson is making an even bigger move to blow up trad chess. He is now focused on playing a game of chess known as random chess. Rando chess. I want to play random chess because here's how the game works. Talk to me. The game starts with a randomized back row for both players. You got like a rook in the middle, the king's over here, the queens over there. You know how the castle is at the end of each board? It's randomized for each player before the game begins. And here's the strategy. If the game is less predictable, then the game is more exciting. Because think about it, professional chess these days,

it's just memorizing the optimal sequence of moves. And you basically know what your opponent's going to do because they've done the same thing. Sound like Magnus over there. It's become too boring. Well, we're seeing it in the business world. Now, chess.com has 100 million members. 32 million people play a virtual game of chess on that website every day. And many of them are rando or rapid chess games. So the chess board has been disrupted. And that's actually part of a bigger sports trend. Basically, we're all pawns in this chess disruption, Jack. We're not playing chess. Jess is playing us. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our bishops over there playing chess? The top focus of every sports league right now is to cut out the boring. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.

After 1,500 years of no change, chess is getting completely disrupted. The reason? In an era of TikTok, chess games have become too boring. Young people, they got endless forms, a short form, and addictive entertainment options out there. Plenty of things to watch. So chess is adapting by cutting out the boring parts of the game. And it's not just chess that's doing that. True. Last year, baseball added a pitch clock because the games were too slow. The NFL has changed their PAT rules and their kickoff rules.

because those had become boring parts of the game. Also last year, the NBA added a mid-season tournament, and the NHL has added overtime shootouts. Now, it's a fine balance when you're changing a hundred-year-old game. Oh, great point. You don't want to change the rules too much that the purest completely revolt. But you got to change them enough

to keep the purest kids' attention. In the attention economy, it's not just about shortening your content. It's also about cutting out the boring. For our second story. Netflix has the most generous parental leave policy in all of tech. One full year. But Netflix is quietly cracking down on that ultimate work perk.

So we calculated it's ROI. Yet is, if you're curious, the U.S. doesn't have national paid parental leave laws. It's actually like a patchwork of 50 states. On average, companies offer two months off in the United States. Some of that time off is paid, some of it's unpaid. And your baby's still breastfeeding. Maybe you have post-perseating. part of blues, but you're back in the conference room. The outlier in America is big tech. It's

big tech, because big tech is known for big perks. Meta offers six months of paid maternity leave. Google, same thing. And yet Netflix offers double that. In 2015, Netflix shocked the industry. They offered unlimited time off in the kids' first year. We repeat, unlimited. You can take eight months off if you want and then come back to work, or you could take four months off and then come back for four months and then take another four months off in the summer. Or Jack, you could just take all 365 days off. You're gone. You could say, see you in a year, boss. I'm in my nesting era. You could even take a year off and at the end of the year you could be pregnant again and then be prepared to take another year off. Technically, yeah, you could pull all that off. Now, whether

you're the birth parent or the non-birth parent, Netflix let you spend time with your baby, still get paid, and still retain your benefits. It was all part of Netflix's freedom and responsibility principle. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Netflix's revolutionary parental leave is sneakily disappearing. Apparently, there's a little gossip going around Netflix, right, Jack? Here's the rumor at the water cooler. More Netflix employees took a full year off than management had expected. And honestly, it's created some challenges for the bosses. Think about it. If two of your team members are gone at the same time for a full year, that could leave a major hole in the team. So rumors are that if you take over six months off for a parental leave, it's round upon.

It could even get you fired. Today, Netflix employees actually take off 6.3 months on average in the U.S. and seven and a half months off on average in international offices. Now, you could take the full 12 months off for baby Bianca, but you may get passed over for that promotion over at Netflix. The Wall Street Journal actually spoke to an employee who was let go after taking that full parental leave. Mom's back and now mom's out. Now, Netflix says they haven't officially changed their parental leave policy.

But unofficially, the message is that more than six months off requires the boss's approval. Jack, this sounds like the year of efficiency. It's part of Netflix's new culture of cost controls and profit focus. Efficiency. But we got to ask, would the stock at an all-time high? Yes, it is. With its streaming market share at an all-time high. Yes, it is.

Why is Netflix making a major change like this? If it ain't broke, maybe the change should take some leave. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Netflix? We did the maternity math. Netflix's unlimited parental leave has positive ROI. It is, we dove in T-boy style to the numbers. The average birth rate in the United States is 1.5%. But for younger women, like those working in tech, it's more like 3 to 4%.

But then you have to add in their partners who also get parental leave. So it's about 7% of workers each year that might be taken parental leave at Netflix. So the cost of this parental leave policy is 7% higher wages, paying people for not working. That's the cost. Offering one year parental leave, like Netflix does, is effectively a 7% pay raise spread across the company. But Jack, what about the benefits? The benefits of this parental leave policy are recruiting, retention, and honestly, a little bit of risk. I mean, unlimited time off in a baby's first year, Netflix offers the best in the U.S. That's a brag.

That's a major brag. You get to tell that a brunch. Everyone's talking to you, man. So the 7% cost of parental leave are offset by the human capital that they get by recruiting and retaining great workers. Which brings up 100% of the employees. So for Netflix's ultimate workbook, the publicity benefits outweigh the payroll costs. And that's the maternity math.

Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story, Time magazine, just named the CEO of the year. and it's Lisa Sue. Because Lisa Sue runs the second largest chip company in America, and she's grown it by 50X. 97 years. That's a long time magazine's editor has been picking people of the year over there. And why do they pick people of the year in the first place?

Well, it's actually kind of a funny detail, Jack. The editors of time notice that no news happens during the holidays. It's slow. So they created the biggest news event of mid-December. And what's the actual criteria for a person at the year? According to Time Magazine, it's the person who most affected the news and our lives for good or for ill and embodied what was most important about the year. Well, yesterday, Time announced that Donald Trump has been selected second time person of the year.

He is the 16th person to be chosen twice, and there's actually one person who's been chosen three times. FDR, because he was president all the time. But Time Magazine also named the CEO of the year yesterday. Interesting. And who've we got, Jack? It's someone who has grown their company's value by 50x since taking over a CEO. And isn't Jensen Wagon of NVIDIA. It's not Mark Zuckerberg and it ain't Elon Musk either.

It's Lisa Sue of AMD. Lisa Sue, come on down. Lisa Sue of AMD is the time CEO of the year. Born in Taiwan, raised in the Bronx, she graduated from MIT and is a rare engineer CEO. She's basically like the Caitlin Clark of computer chips. Ten years ago, she became the CEO of advanced microdevices, or AMITEDs. AMD for short. Actually, the first woman to lead a semiconductor company hadn't happened before. And when she took over, her company had declining revenue. They were deep in debt. They had 25% of

their company recently laid off, and the stock price was just $3 a share. Okay, so 10 years ago, what did Lisa do, Jack? She whipped up a controversial turnaround plan. This was not what I wouldn't expect it at that time. Instead of making many different kinds of chips for multiple different types of customers, she dedicated the company to being best in just one chip. We're doing one chip, one fancy Louis Vuitton of chips. And that one chip was for cloud computing, and it was called Zen. Zen. And her bet worked. It did. It did. The Zen chip became number one in the industry. Today, they've got 34% of cloud computing market share. And that chip is the chip that powers the most powerful supercomputer in the world known as El Capitan. Now, Jack, we should sprinkle on a little

chip industry context here. AMD is a distant number two in America to Nvidia. Yeah, Nvidia is worth 15 times more. AMD is number one in cloud computing. Invidia is number one in AI. And AI is simply more valuable than cloud computing right now. Oh, also, fun fact that we noticed, what's this jam jack? Lisa is actually a distant relative of Jensen Huang.

Can you believe that? The CEOs of America's top two chip companies are cousins. It's a complex second cousin type of thing. Or is Jack and I call it? semiconductor cousins. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at AMD? Quantify yourself. Find your hero stat.

Yeties, AMD has grown 50X under Lisa's watch, from a $4 billion company to a $200 billion company. That number, 50X, is her hero stat. Yes, it is. It's the most demonstrable example of her accomplishments. The time editors and the time readers, they focus on that 50x return as to, why Lisa is the CEO of the year. And this whole thing is a reminder that to get recognized for your

accomplishments, having numbers to support your case really helps. Now, only CEOs, like, have a metric as clear as stock prices, like pretty good to be the CEO. To find your metric, you might have to get a little creative. Not everyone's job has quantifiable results, but it helps to include a quantifiable metric in your year-end review. Maybe it's an NPS rating for the product you work on. Maybe it's a percentage change from last year in the thing you're working on. Or maybe it's blank number of blanks that I created in the past year. We're looking at a number of downloads. You may be looking at your slamming salmon. Maybe you can create a survey to measure results that way. I like this, and create your own new metric. I surveyed everyone at the company and everyone really likes me.

No, that could literally work. It's like, I'm really liked, so don't get rid of me. I'm really liked, so I should be VP. It's a critical part of your case for deserving a raise, a promotion, or an award. We're talking about your hero stat. So besties, yeties, go quantify yourself. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the real Friday? Magnus Carlson skipped the world chess championships because he prefers random chess. The focus of every sports league right now is cut out the boring. For our second story, it's Netflix.

They offer best in class one-year parental leave, but it's quietly cutting that benefit in half. But we did the maternity math. Netflix's unlimited parental leave has positive ROI. And our third and final story is AMD's Lisa Sue. She's Time Magazine CEO of the year because her stock has risen 50X since she took over. And that is her fantastic hero metric. It's the value of quantifying yourself. But Yeties, this pod's not over yet.

Here's what else you need to know today. First, Elon Musk's net worth hit a shocking $400 billion. No human has ever hit that number. The reasons, Tesla and SpaceX have both soared in value since the election. Tesla is up 66% since November 5th, as he is so close to the president. And for the same reason, SpaceX's valuation has soared to $350 billion. And second, we actually had an IPO on Wall Street. Service Titan, they went public.

The biggest IPO since Reddit at the beginning of the year. Service Titan stock actually jumped 43% on day one. This is a software for home contractors, construction, projects and like H-FAC guys. And finally, the most valuable sports team in America. It's now the Philadelphia Eagles. The E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles sold a minority stake to a private equity firm at an $8.4 billion valuation. Okay, but what about the Cowboys? I think the Cowboys are worth more than that, but since they haven't sold stock in years, we don't know the value of Jerry Jones's team. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by $1.00.000.

Mario Dorella from San Francisco. Earlier this week, we covered Mato, an Italian coffee company, selling $3 latte. Well, speaking of Italian coffee, there is a famous coffee pot called Moka. The Moka coffee pot is a stovetop espresso maker, invented by Renato Bioletti. Okay, but Renato passed away last week at the age of 93, and his family did something amazing. They put his ashes in one of the Moka coffee pots that he invented. That's right. He was in the coffee pot.

after he passed away. He was laid to rest in the coffee contraption that he loved so much. Yetis, you look fantastic out there. Jack, you sound so fantastic over there. Way more fantastic over there. Save the rest of your voice. You'll be back fresh on Monday. True.

Yeties, Nick and I, we'll see you then. Have a great weekend. Can't wait. If you know, you know. And before we go, Jack, why don't you whip up the shoutouts today? Happy birthday to Yeti. Swiftie Mark Leneville, who's turning 73 over in Missouri. Happy 11th birthday to Joaquin Ibarra, who's going to Disneyland for the best birthday yet.

This kid's been a listener since he was seven. And happy birthday to Andy Castler in Washington, Illinois. And Jane Eve is turning 40 years old with her husband and three kids in El Cajon, California. Happy two-year anniversary to Adriana Barna, who's celebrating with her husband and her daughter Emily in Salt Lake City. And congratulations to... the University of Florida Gators Gainesville MBA one-year program, who is graduating right now down in Florida. Get ready, Jack.

We actually got a bunch of MBA graduates. Congratulations to Caitlin Skinner, who just graduated with an MBA down in Texas. And congratulations to Mishkat Lightwala, who just graduated with a 4.0 grade point average from an executive MBA program. And to anyone else celebrating something today, making a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. Thank you.