The Best One Yet - 🏨 “Spreadsheets to Bedsheets” — Goldman’s Greek hotel. Amazon’s dark factory. FedEx’s black jack bet.

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

TBOY Live Show Tickets to Chicago on sale NOW: https://www.axs.com/events/949346/the-best-one-yet-podcast-ticketsGoldman Sachs tried to bought 3 luxury hotels in Greece… but Zeus struck the whole project down.Amazon factories now have as many robots as humans… next up? Dark Factories.FedEx’s legendary founder passed away… and he once bet the entire biz on a black jack game.Plus, the guest for our LIVE show in Chicago is… CEO of Slate Auto: Chris Barman.$GS $AMZN $FDXWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Hamilton the Musical 🎭Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, TBOY Lite is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts NEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Our 2nd show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. Welcome back. It is Monday, July 7th. 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. All right, Jack, we all want to know.

Did you end up putting that pickle relish, the fancy pickle relish on your hot dogs over the weekend? Pickle spears. I took full spears, sliced them long-wise, into eight pieces. Perfect condiment for a hot dog. Besties, hope you're taking notes. By the way, Jack, I found the only line. Lobster roll on Nantucket that cost less than 40 bucks. No, you didn't.

I don't think that was lobster in there, to be honest. After tip, it was 50 bucks. May have been crawfish. Jack, three stories for today's team boy. What do we got on the show? For our first story, every luxury brand wants to be in hospitality right now, including Goldman Sachs. Goldman tried to build its own hotel brand in Greece, but Zeus just struck it down.

For our second story, it's Amazon. Because Amazon is this close to employ. more robots than humans in their factories. And that's led to an insane new thing. The Dark Factory. Think about it. You don't need lights on if it's just robots in there. Freaky.

And our third and final story. FedEx's founder, Fred Smith, recently passed away. But he was actually the craziest dude Nick and I have ever read about. Because he once saved the company by betting his final dollars on a game of blackjack in Las Vegas. But, Yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. It's insane. Jack, love the mix of stories today. We are announcing the surprise guest for our live show in Chicago.

That's right. She's behind the buzziest brand in the busiest industry. Yeties, there's a lot of talk right now about electric cars, aren't there? You got Tesla, Rivian, Ford, China. They're launching 100 new car brands every single week. But the disruptor of the disruptors is Slate Auto. Slate, the $25,000 electric truck startup that launched just two. months ago. We covered their launch on the pot. They've raised over $700 million to make the first

truly affordable American electric car. And they're backed by Jeff Bezos. Yeah, Amazon Bezos. And they're selling an electric vehicle that doesn't even come with a radio. It's that innovative. It's that crazy. And here's the news. The CEO of that company, Chris Barman, is the guest for our live show in Chicago. Chris Barman, she's the Athena of the auto industry. And we'll have her on stage with us for an interview segment in our Chicago show. Because Jack and I got to know, can she create the most affordable EV in history? How on earth can she sell a pickup truck for 18 grand after incentives? What's it like raising money from Bezos while taking on Elon Musk? So snag your tickets to our live show in Chicago on July 23rd. Like did Jeff have one of these pickup EVs on his yacht for the

wedding or what? We got a link in the episode description for you to snag your ticket. I guess he could fit it on the yacht, but would need an invite to be a guest. We got the busiest new car CEO on earth. Besties grab your tickets. See you in Chicago. Jack, let's hit on three stories. Fifteen 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 an norm.

Jack Nick, that's 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. First, a quick word from our sponsor. For our first story, Goldman Sachs just canceled plans to build three beachfront hotels in Greece. Wait one sack, Jack.

Goldman launching a hotel brand? That's right. America's top investment bank tried to launch a Greek seaside hotel. And the whole story is actually a Greek tragedy. Ah, yeties, Jack and I have been tracking a trend. The luxury industry, it really wants in on hospitality. Gucci has coffee shops. Louis Vuitton has a luxury train ride through Europe. That looks amazing. It does look fantastic. And Tiffany has a restaurant so you can have breakfast at Tiffany's. Well, Jack, let's add one more to the list. Goldman Sachs Hotels?

Goldman Stock is up 50% so far this year to an all-time high, so they're feeling very confident. And remember yet is Goldman Sachs's brand of banking is the equivalent of a Harvard-educated Rolex. And a slight issue for Goldman, their clients want even more Rolexes. Yeah, so funny detail here, but part of Goldman's business is doing basically private equity. They offer their clients access to investment opportunities that regular people don't have access to, like high-end Greek real estate development. Which is precisely why in 2022, Goldman bought three lovely seaside resorts in Greece for a hundred million euro, the Athenian Riviera.

They were fixer uppers because the resorts were actually closed. Goldman was going to fix them up and then flip them. Okay. the blueprint plans. Buy them cheap, renovate, and then reopen under the Goldman brand, and then sell them for double. Collect bonuses, wash, rinse, repeat. They're going from spreadsheets to bed sheets.

That was the plan. Call it the Ritz Carlton Sachs, Jack. Because you can't spell Goldman without a mom. True. Oh, by the way, I mean, a lot of Wall Street theme potential for the spa menu at this hotel, right? Like what? The M&A massage?

The financial facial. Jack, I think you may be signing up for an investment. banking bikini wax or two. Again, with those kinds of names, you can charge a higher price, for sure. Well, here's the news, yeties. All of what we just said didn't work out that way at all. Yeah, Goldman just canceled the whole project. They sold all their properties, and they barely broke even on the sale.

It got struck down like Zeus from Olympus on high. Now, this is slightly surprising because Goldman has the smartest brains on Wall Street. But Goldman couldn't beat Marriott at their own game. You know, the Greek economy is strong, the travel industry is stronger. What exactly went wrong, Jack? Here was Goldman's mistake. Their hotel team they assigned to this project had never run a hotel. Here's how the Wall Street Journal put it.

Goldman chose their own management team to oversee rather than choose a hotel experienced firm. These people didn't know the difference between room service and broom service. What's going on? Their team of 10 people had zero hospitality experience. Goldman thought it would cost $100 million to renovate the place, but it actually is going to cost five times that. They got to drain the pool.

They got to gut the carpet. The new doors, way more expensive than they anticipated. You know, like those thick hotel doors, the ones that like slam shut, right? They're bankers, not interior designers. Well, this Greek hotel project, it's now being called a shipwreck over in Greece. It's a Greek tragedy. Side note, if Goldman had taken that 100 million euros and just put it in the stock market instead, they would have gained 70% or 70 million euros of profit.

Instead, nothing. No bonus for you. No Spanacopoda. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Goldman? Like Icarus, Goldman flew too close to the sun. Yeah, remind us of a Greek mythology. Yet he's plenty of financial firms out there are in the hospitality industry. Blackstone, they own a dozen hotels in Greece alone.

And it makes sense why they want to, because Wall Street is a volatile business. A lot of ups and a lot of downs. Having a hotel business as a side hustle gives them some reliable. So the issue here wasn't Goldman's vision of a hotel, it was the hubris in execution. The hubris. Goldman insisted on doing the job themselves, despite lacking the right hotel experience. They could have brought on a strategic partner, a hospitality consultant, maybe even an existing hotel company. But instead, Goldman Sachs went solo like Julia Roberts and eat prelough. I love that pizza. Just like the Greek myth of Icarus, who crafted his wings of wax, but flew too

close to the sun. Overwhelmed by their own self-confidence, Goldman and Dicarus melted. For our second story, under the radar, Amazon has nearly as many robots working in its warehouses as humans. And that's led to a wild new thing. They're called dark factories. Dark factories. No lights. Just bots. Yeties, the whizzes over at Amazon headquarters in Seattle, they have devoted their lives in the pursuit of not love, but of efficiency. True. And here's a stat they love to brag about. The average number of human workers at each distribution center is down 17% from 10 years ago.

Well, here's a hero stat we love to tell you about. Over the same period, the number of packages shipped per an employee is up by 22X. So how does Amazon ship way more packages from each factory with way fewer workers? The answer? robots. Nearly a million of them. A million. Yeah, it is, according to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon factories are on the cusp of having more robots than humans. In other words, they have nearly one million people working in their distribution centers and nearly one million robots too. And here's what Jack and I found fascinating about this story. It all happened

in secret. Because unlike every other tech and gadget company, Amazon doesn't show off their robots. They basically keep them a secret. Yeah, they don't scream it. They whisper. Like, take for example Boston Dynamics, you know, they're robot dogs that you've seen. You've seen them. It could do like a backflip. Well, they treat them like celebrities and give them a press tour every time that robot dog learns a new trick. But Amazon's robots aren't for us, but not for bragging. They're for them. These are back office bots that nobody ever sees. Well, Jack, what do you say? We bring them on out and meet the team of robots over at Amazon.

All right. The powerhouse of this factory is these giant robotic arms, which can grab and sort huge packages because there's a really powerful suction cup at the end of the arm. Jack, those were cool, but I thought these were maybe cooler. They have these Rumba-like moving pallets that whizz around the floor. They're like five feet wide carrying giant loads, like entire floors of this. The newest robot, though, is called the Vulcan. That's scary, but tell me more. Because this has hands that can sense how delicate or how firm a package is, and then squeeze that package appropriately like a human being. It does an awkward poking thing that HR wouldn't like,

but it's a robot so it can get away with it. Next up, though, we should point out they're adding humanoid robots that look like us. Why do they have to make them look like us? It's an AI-powered bot, the shape of you. It's got two feet, two arms, and a head, and maybe even a nose. Why not make them like insects? Give them six legs.

The nose is unnecessary. But besties, Jack and I haven't even told you the wildest part yet. Your next Amazon package may be boxed up in the dark. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Amazon? In China, they're already here. Dark factories. Yeties, Jack and I read Thomas Friedman, the New York Times opinion writer, who compares China to the U.S.

That's like what he does. Yeah. And in China, he has visited a factory that was dark inside. Yeah, dark. It wasn't dark inside because it was out of business. It was dark inside because the factory is so roe. so automated, that it doesn't require any humans. Let that sink in. Because guess what? When there are no humans in the factory, there's no

need for lights. It's a waste of electricity. So in China, they have factories right now running 24-7 in the darkness. That cute top you got off Timu may have been made in the darkness of a factory. In these factories, there are no lights, there's no need to heat the building. It's just the production of stuff. Yeah, like the humans show up once a day, to check in, everything's going fine, and that's it. When we heard about these dark factories, we were shocked. Yeah, it is exciting and scary at the same time, but mostly scary. To me, it's more scary than exciting.

Yeah, I agree with you. We'll round up on that one. And it's important for you to know about these dark factories because they're probably the future of U.S. factories, too. Basties in China, they're already here. Prepare for the dark factory. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story,

The founder of FedEx passed away last month, but his life story is giving action hero energy. Spoiler. The entire FedEx business was once saved by a blackjack game. The CEO played in Las Vegas. This is insane. Yeti's grades matter. Stay in school, work hard, do all that stuff, definitely. But if you're a C student, you can become a billionaire.

Because Yale senior Fred Smith wrote his term paper about overnight package delivering. Nerd alert. He ended up getting a C on the paper. The professor said his plan was not feasible. Because you see, at the time, the 1960s, overnight delivery was considered insane. But he had a novel idea. An integrated air-to-ground delivery system, but nobody bought his idea. Fred went on to do four years of service in Vietnam as a Marine, and he learned a thing or two about logistics. So when he got back to the States, he turned that senior term paper into Federal Express. Yeah, funnily, he chose the name Federal Express because it sounded bigger than like a tiny little startup that it was. Federal Express sounds like an institution, not a one-man startup, which is what it initially was.

Well, Jack, that strategic name worked. He went on to raise $91 million, the largest startup amount in U.S. history at that point. That's a huge fundraise. He also convinced investors that he was serious by putting his life savings and inheritance into the company. Then he bought 14 jets and set up the business in Memphis. Memphis, a place with good weather, a centralized location, and a pretty much sleepy airport at the time. Well, here's the problem, Yetis. The first day, Federal Express only got six packages. Pretty soon FedEx was losing a million dollars a month. Yeah.

By 1974, he had just $5,000 left in the company bank account. Now pause the pot, because that is when Fred pulled off the craziest bet in business history. He flew to Las Vegas to save the company. Literally. This company, it was about to shut down. Investored had given up on FedEx. So Fred took an unsolicited trip to Las Vegas and put down the company's final $5,000 onto the blackjack table.

That's right. The final five grand, he put on a blackjack game and he won. He turned five grand into 27 grand and had the wisdom to leave the casino. Because that money got FedEx through their token. toughest moment in company history. After that Vegas trip, by 1983, FedEx became the fastest U.S. company ever to reach a billion dollars in revenue without a merger or acquisition. Now, I don't think the SEC would approve of a company gambling the company's final five grand, but this story ends well. Oh, yes, it does. Honestly, this story should win an Oscar,

and Fred's Innovations should win a lifetime achievement award when you heard what he did after that. FedEx was an early pioneer of the barcode. They were the first to scan packages for speed. Fred put both a Republican and Democrat former politician on his board to have balance for FedEx. And during the 2009 Great Recession, he had a no layoffs rule. That's right. Instead, Fred took a 20% pay cut to get through the recession. George W. Bush asked Fred Smith twice to be the Secretary of Defense. He declined prioritizing his family and his company. Which leads to our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy Fred at FedEx? What was the real thesis of Fred's original term paper, it was that time is money. Yeties, Fred's Yale term paper was about the company's

core innovation years later, hub and spoke. Here was his insight. Don't send a package directly from Buffalo to New York. If you did, you need a million direct flights between cities. Instead, send the package through Memphis first. With a central hub, only with a central hub, could you possibly connect the entire country overnight? Here was the context at the time. There was no guaranteed time of delivery when you shipped a package. Thank you for the context, Jack. But Fred's model is what led a package arrive at a chosen time as quickly as the next day. The hub and spoke model that all the airlines use today, it was Fred Smith's idea. He basically invented the shipping menu. Like you could now choose the day of arrival like it was a sandwich

at a restaurant. Because what the late Fred Smith of FedEx realized 50 years ago was that people would pay for time. Jack, could you whip up the takeaway? for us to kick off the week. Goldman Sachs owned three Greek hotels, but just sold them. Like Icarus, Goldman flew too close to the sun. For our second story, Amazon is on the cusp of having more robots than humans in their fulfillment centers. Besties get ready for the dark factory. They're in China, and they're probably coming here. And our third and final story, Fredex's Fed Smith got a sea on his paper and gambled the company's last dollars to huge success. His hub and smoke logistics model worked because people will pay for time.

But, Yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, markets could be in for a doozy this week because tomorrow is a big tariff deadline. Mark the cows. Yeah, remember on April 9th when Trump relieved the whole world by delaying his reciprocal tariffs by 90 days? That's right. We marked our calendars for it.

Well, that expires tomorrow. It does. And only three countries have reached some kind of a deal with the U.S. So we expect Trump to extend the delay again, kind of like the TikTok ban, kick the negotiating down the road. But who knows? Nobody knows. And second, Zuck announced his super intelligence team at Meta last week, and he is treating and paying them like top athletes. He listed the names of about a dozen AI dragons that he has poached from other AI companies to join meta. Many of them he poached

from OpenAI. And according to reporting, many of them are getting $300 million contracts for four years of work with a hundred million bucks in year one. That's like LeBron James money. Sam Altman's response, missionaries will beat mercenaries in the battle for AI. And finally, Chuck E. Cheese is launching a new concept, arcades for adults. Yeah, it's a new spinoff branded Chuck's arcade with arcade games, air hockey, ski ball. You win tickets, you redeem prizes just like when you were like three. We covered Chuckie Cheese's revival last year. They're renovating 500 different locations. Chuck is recognizing that in this economy, millennials will pay up. for a taste and a smell

and a lick. No. Of nostalgia. No. That's how you eat the pizza, Jack. I'm sorry I had to say it. We're editing that out. Now time for the best fact yet, which, because it's Monday, is time for some T-boy trivia. Here's the question. What toy was originally not a toy at all, but it was just the packaging of another product? Now, today, 300 million of these toys have been sold.

But the first version wasn't sold at all. It was the packaging for a baked good that was about to get thrown away. One person's trash became another person's best idea yet. Here's a hint. College students in the Northeast were the very first to turn this packaging into a fun game. Another hint? This product was initially known as the Pluto platter. And now it's one of the top-selling toys of all time.

Drop your answer in the comments and Jack and I will reveal it tomorrow. Yeties, you look fantastic today. especially if you just bought tickets to see us in Chicago with the CEO of Slate. We got links in the episode description. Our shows are a... We'll tell you more about the show later, but you're going to want to be there.

You're going to love it. It's going to be fantastic. And Jack and I, we'll see you there. And before we go, a happy birthday to Yeti Brea Nailer in Huntington Beach, California, the events manager extraordinaire at the Viv Hotel of Lovely Anaheim. And happy birthday to Jet Cadabug

of Irvine, California, who's celebrating on the beautiful island of Kauai. And congratulations to Velasca and her daughter Maria from Manlius, New York, who just saw Hamilton on Broadway, perfect timing with our weekly episode on Hamilton. Velasca and Maria, my favorite song was Dear Theodoja. Makes me cry every time. And if you want to get a shout out on the pod for a birthday, a buddy's day, an anniversary, bar mitzvah, you name it, we've got a link in the episode description. We'll get you on the show. And to anyone else, celebrating something today, make it a T-Boy. Celebrate the wins.

This is Jack. I own stock of Ford and Amazon, and Nick and I both own ETFs of the S&P 500.