The Best One Yet - 🍒 “Sustainocoin” — Chia’s green Bitcoin. NYT + Athletic = Super App. Bowery’s $2.3B kale.

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

Some PFWTM say The New York Times is in talks to acquire The Athletic, but we think it’s pulling a George Costanza and whipping up a news super app. Bowery hit a $2.3B valuation in the biggest vertical farming deal in (kale) history. And Chia raised $61M to create a greener cryptocurrency — it’s “farming,” not “mining”.$NYT $XCHGot 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, May 26th. And here we go. Jack, you've not told me, how was the octopus? Did you enjoy the octopus? It was great.

But that was a Joker quote. And you and I saw Batman, the Dark Night, 2008, together. It was fantastic. It was iconic. Great music. It was the best one yet. So is this pod for our first story. The New York Times has been around since 1851.

Great year. It doesn't want to be called a newspaper anymore. No, it talks to acquire the athletic. Jack and I think they're creating a news super app. Or our second story, you eat chia pudding. You might dabble some chia seeds. Why not? Would you pay for chia coin?

Chia. The cryptocurrency just raised $61 million to become the green Bitcoin. AKA the sustaino coin. I like that better. It rolls off the tongue. Third and final story, Jack. Bowery just landed the biggest deal in vertical farming history. I mean, we've said it before.

I'll say it again, Jack. Cale tastes better when it's grown on the seventh floor. Everyone knows it. And funded by a lot of venture cap. But Snackers, before we hit those three stories, It's a wonderful mix today. We have an experiment we're going to do live here. We do.

Okay, here's the experiment. Here you go, here you go. Put your phone down and then pick it back up. And then look around. Yeah, look around. Did someone else pick up their phone too? We're talking about a phenomenon known as the chameleon effect. Yep, the chameleon effect.

When people initiate the use of their smartphone, because someone else initiated the use of their smartphone. The chameleon effect, not the sixth-born movie. a fantastic social experiment we're going to do here. Not sheeple. No. The millions. Now, this is based on research straight out of the University of Pisa, the great

leaning University of Pisa. It's fantastic. It turns out nearly half the time that someone picks up a phone. Anyone. A person right near them picks up their phone within 30 seconds. That's exactly right. It's kind of like the yawn phenomenon. The yawn contagious.

One person's mouth opened. Boom. That leads to a chorus of oral stretching from your entire crew. Everyone you're with. It doesn't end. When it comes to the smartphone thing, now, I'm pretty sure if you're just alone in a room and you pick up a phone, you know, we're all picking up our phones every 30 seconds, is what I'm saying. I mean, this is a tree in the forest situation, Jack. If one does pick up the phone in a room and there's no one there to also pick up their phone, do other people pick up their phones?

I guess what I'm saying is I see correlation. I'm not sure I see causation. And that's why we're getting to our takeaway here, which is, if you run the chamellion experiment today, here's what you might see. You're going to sit down at lunch next to Sarah and Steve. And here's what we want you to do, Snackers. pick up your phone and dabble through a couple apps. Did Sarah or Steve sly snag their phone too? Take a look.

If they did, tell them about Snacks Daily, your favorite podcast. HY, HY, YSD, let's hit our three storms. You're tuned in to Snacks Daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something illegal out the way. It's snacks about the hearing 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 about security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, the New York Times is reportedly in talks to acquire the athletic. It would continue the Times' five-year turnaround strategy. Here it is. Do the opposite of everything you were doing five years prior to this.

Embrace and acquire anything new media. Okay. First of all, Jack. This is unprecedented. Do we have three PFWTMs here? Three people familiar with the matter? Three sources have told Axios that the New York Times is interested in acquiring the athletic. Yes, Jack, the athletic, like ESPN, but with fewer wins or not. They hired a bunch of sports writers who got laid off from newspapers that weren't succeeding. Yeah, they did. And now the athletic writes a bunch of newsletters and a bunch of podcasts all about local sports. So if this deal happens, you got the $7 billion New York Times potentially acquiring the $500 million

athletic startup. By the way, the athletic is not merging with Axios. That story we covered a month ago, talks fell through. In the meantime, Axios is chatting with Axel Springer over in Germany. They may get sold to a German company. And the athletic is chat with the New York Times. Now, funny thing about the New York Times Snackers, the Times, it's actually one of the few legacy newspapers that is thriving right now. Their focus on digital is working. They have 8 million paid subscribers right now. And it all goes back to 20, 2016, when they had a powerful pivot over at the New York Times, you rarely see this kind of thing. In 2016, the Times decided to end their diet of old media and embrace new media only.

I mean, funny thing here, check, the Times, it was really good at news. It was really bad at merging and acquiring other companies. In the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s until 2016. Love those decades. The Times acquired the Boston Globe, About.com, and two rando marketing agencies. They didn't acquire Asked Jeeves, but I don't know. It just reminds me of Asked Jeeves. Well, the Times, in the meantime, soon I did there,

has sold each of those acquisitions for a tiny fraction of what they originally paid, or they just shut down the businesses altogether. But then in 2016, Jack, the Times pulled the George Costanza. They did the opposite. Yeah, they did. Of what their instincts would tell them to do. The Times started acquiring businesses that embraced new, innovative media technology instead of everything they used to acquire.

I'm bald, I'm middle-aged, I live with my parents, I have no job. For example, they acquired all. Autumn, which uses automation to read New York Times articles and then convert every article into a nice audience. So you can listen to articles while you do the dishes instead of have to give all your attention to your phone screen. And then they acquired cereal, which has a bunch of podcasts that relate to like random cousins, killing other cousins and like ways that people try to find these murderous cousins. True crime pods are very popular right now. Then they acquired wirecutter.

The place to find that review on whether or not this beach chair is really this much better than this other beach chair. They've also evolved their legendary crossword puzzles to something more. Now they've got a variety of like new, interactive, digital smartphone games for the well-read, the people with the vocabulars. And my mom makes it very clear that she's both well-read and always achieves genius level in these New York Times crossword games. I mean, Jennifer's a Sunday Times crossword person. So the Times is thinking, oh, excuse me, waiter. Yeah. Does the athletic have any old media in it?

No? No. Has someone handled old media and then handled the? The athlete? No? Okay, I'll take the athlete. So, Jack, what is the eight-letter word for critical information here? I'm looking for a synonym. This is a crossword puzzle joke. Yeah, it is. This is the takeaway. What's the takeaway? I don't know. I don't pass. But the New York Times has the assets to build a newspaper super app. Snackers, that's the takeaway. Because the old New York Times, Sunday Times, Jack and I remember well, that was thick as a King Jimmy Bible. If like a possum ran into my living room, my dad would throw the times at it and it would kill it. First of all, Jack, I have to hear that story. story sometimes. Second of all, we framed your mom and dad in very different perspectives just now.

And third, news, sports, crossword, food and culture. All of that, even a Sunday New York Times magazine fit in the Sunday Times newspaper. The Sunday Times was like five square tons. But here's the thing. Print. It's been slow. It's been a deadly decline. Digital revenues just surpass print revenues over the New York Times for the first time ever in 2020. And we noticed the New York Times is getting very good at digital. They have a vast collection of digital news sections, really. but each of them right now are in their own separate app. Jack, you got New York Times app for news. You got the New York Times crossword for crosswords.

You got the New York Times cooking for the food. Then you got a bunch of New York Times podcasts on different podcast apps. Oh, plus you got e-commerce with wirecutter, and if this acquisition goes through, you'll have even more sports. Put all those assets in one news super app, and that would rival the Sunday Times of 50 years ago. But interactive and digital, and that's what no other newspaper has pulled off. For our second story, Jack, you got the seeds, you got the pudding, and you got the pets. So chia just raised $61 million to be the environmentally focused cryptocurrency.

Chea chia, it uses way less electricity than Bitcoin. Yeah, it does. But actually way more hard drive, and that matters too. Now, the dominating theme of crypto in the last month, Jack, sum it up for us right here. Let's just hit it. Early takeaway. Is Bitcoin the gas guzzler of our generation? Two weeks ago, you had Tesla dumping Bitcoin as a payment option because of concerns about its environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. Understandable because 75% of Bitcoin mining reportedly happens in China.

Yes. Which has a very dirty electricity mix, mostly coming from coal. So we noticed that Elon threw on a robe, is going on like a hobbit like quest for a sustainable cryptocurrency instead. By putting on a robe and going on a hobbit like quest, which is fun. What Nick means is he tweeted, like, what's the clean crypto everybody? The search for sustain a coin. In the meantime, Jack and I noticed that a whole bunch of venture capital attention has turned to something else. It's turned to something called Chia.

Okay, Chia was founded in 2017, and the Chia coin finally started trading this month. Yeah, it took a while. Now, the company that created the Chia coin just raised $61 million in funding, and they actually want to IPO later this year. If Bitcoin is a Cadillac Escalade Gas, Gensler. Love this poetry. Get nine miles a gallon. Chia is positioning itself as the Prius.

Basically, this is the juice cleanse, the asaibol of the crypto world. Jack, by the way, favorite topic? I'll say granola, but it depends what kind of granola. You struck me as a gojiberry guy all these years, but okay. No, not allowed. Different story. Now, the guy who actually founded Chia has been like hammering home the green branding aggressively.

Yeah, get this. Bitcoin and Dogecoin and all the other cryptos, they depend on mining. Yeah, they do. Chia relies on something different, which the founder of Chia, Bitcoin calls farming. Now, there's a little bit of marketing spin on that. On the other hand, it's also the huge key distinction between Chiacoin and all the other cryptocurrencies. Because how does the blockchain allow Bitcoin transactions to happen? Yeah, through miners who verify transactions through mining. Yeah, the mining relies on raw

computational power. You need a whole bunch of juice and a whole lot of power outlets to mine. Chiacoin has taken Bitcoin's carbon dependent weakness into its competitive advantage. And here's the breakdown, Snackers. It's farming. instead of mining. To verify a Chia coin transaction, you just use the empty space on your computer's hard drive, which is more efficient. It doesn't require like something crazy. So Bitcoin mining needs like a whole complex supercomputing operation. Chia farming would basically just need a laptop. We can't say yet, Snackers, if Chiacoin is the future of crypto or if it's just another flavor of the day. But the recent venture capital investors, they seem to think that this could

be the Tesla to Bitcoin's Hummer. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy? over at Chia. Like other environmental solutions, Chiacoin may have a, but what about situation? Snackers, electric cars, they're fantastic. But what about the battery that also needs a ton of electricity to produce and a bunch of minerals that go into that battery? Solar power is renewable electricity, which is great. But what about cloudy days and nighttime?

What are we going to do that? That's the but what about problem. Critics of Chiacoin are already asking, but what about the hard drives? those require a lot of electricity to produce. Yeah, because if chia's an ex-frenzied coin, that could lead to like a bunch of demand for hard drives and then a hard drive shortage. And that could lead to factories in China producing a bunch of hard drives to farm future Chia coin, which would produce a lot of CO2. So great innovation. It can have a drawback. You just kind of hope the benefit outweighs the cost. TBD on Chia coin. But what about?

For our third and final story, Bowery, just did a whopping $2.3 billion dollar valuation to grow salad on a farm in a warehouse just outside of the city. Very close. On a farm and yet still in a warehouse. This is the largest deal in vertical farming ever. Okay, we got to go back. 2015, Bowery's founded, named after the lovely Dutch farms of Manhattan that used to frequent the area. I believe right next to Bowery Electric. Yes. The Bowery is a street in Manhattan. I think they have a great Cologne-style German beer guard. Honestly, I've always wanted to name a future child of mine Bower. I'm just putting that out there. A bunch of people. people are taking it from me. I think we should actually cut that from the spot. Now, the business model here isn't

planes of grains like traditional agriculture. This is apartment buildings for produce. Yes, just like the island of Manhattan, Great Island. Bowery decided to build vertically, not horizontal. These are condos for cucumbers. That's what you're going to picture here. Here's what Bowery will do. They'll be standing in Manhattan and they'll look across the river and notice that the domino sugar factory in Brooklyn. Great factory. It's vacant. It's been vacant for decades. They take that space and turn it in. into an indoor farm. We're talking powerful cost cutting here because the closer you are to the cities, they'll lower the transportation costs, which is a key part of produce costs. And Bowery is a legend of the legume because they're growing cow. Yes, they're growing arugula. They're growing

green leaf lettuce. I love bib. We got to get the bib in there. And then they put it in some millennial packaging that you just want to hug it. Stacks on stacks of soil and seed from floor to ceiling, from the first floor up to the seven. All right. So that's the business. It's more alternative, but last year, that was particularly unique for them. Local food production, like what Bowery does right near cities, that became more valuable as supply chains cracked last year. And that's why we noticed they just announced a whopping $300 million fundraise to keep scaling more seeds to more cities. And this is a classic food cap table. Jack, classic food and beverage fundraiser. You got the big money investors like Fidelity investments in Google Ventures.

Right, but then, you know, it's got to have a little fun. So they also got the fancy money investors like your Lewis Hamilton's and your Natalie Portman's out there. Natalie Portman wants to be able to say, I invested in power. I wish I could say I invested in power. I know. We're kind of missing. It's a sumo stock. We're straight up missing out. Now, as for the numbers, they're in 850 grocery stores so far, Walmart, Safeway Whole Foods, and their grocery store sales are actually outpacing their digital sales. Get this. Last year, they octopled their sales, eight times bigger since January of 2020. So they're expanding to tomatoes, to berries, to cucumbers. And we're going to,

going to, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Bowery? Produce can transform from just a product to an experience. All right, Snackers, here's the problem with this situation. Everything we just mentioned, that was all behind the scenes. You as the consumer, you don't see any of that match. And it's hard to communicate on a package. Whether you're shopping organic or conventional, no judgment. No judgment.

Bowery's products are going to look just like its competitors right in the produce aisle. So here's what Jack and I are thinking. Bowery, its next step should be to stick smaller vertical farms in the the grocery stores. Imagine this. Turn half of aisle six. Great aisle. Into like a Willy Wonka demo of how vertical farming works and then encourage customers to pick their own plants. Yeah, it's kind of like in September, Jack, we cover that company in Farm, the German guys who are installing growing plants in the produce sections of the grocery stores on a small scale. Pick your own parsley. Your boring grocery store experience becomes like your own farm to table,

like do it yourself. Jack, the innovations like vertical farming? You need the consumer education. there. And nothing educates better than turning a product into an experience. Jack, can you whip up the Goji takeaways for us over there? No, not a Goji guy. Never. They're way too chewy. They're way too chewy. The New York Times has 8 million subscribers. The Atlantic has another million. So they're pulling a George Costanza here and we can all be swiping on the New York Times news super app soon.

Chia Coins founder created a sustainic coin. Thinking that Bitcoin's energy issue could become a problem. But like so many solutions, it's got a, but what about problem? Barry's website looks a lot like Sweet Greens' website. It does. And that would, by the way, be a very nice merger check because he can make the product and experience. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Dan Olshansky from lovely Mountain View, California. Octopuses. Speaking of grilled octopus, have some crazy versions of octopuses. Yeah, case and point, the Great Pacific octopus has, get this, eight arms, you knew that, but nine brains,

Three hearts, blue blood. Fact check. They're not arms, they're tentacles. Technically. I get this. There's one small brain in each of those eight tentacles. Yeah. But then you're like, the main brain is getting enough attention?

Get this. The main brain is actually shaped like a donut. If I mess something, I'm going to be like, oh, wait, let me try my main brain this time. I wish my brain was shaped like a donut. I think Homer Simpson's brain is shaped like a donut. Technically, yes. Snackers, you look fantastic today. If you haven't yet, scroll on.

up, click to follow us right here on Apple or right here on Spotify. And always, share us with your friends. That's how we grow. HY, HY, YSD. If you know, you know. And before we go, huge congratulations to Gabrielle Le Monica, who turned unregular pizza, his barter pizza system we covered a year ago into an actual physical store in New York City and the East Village.

It's the New York City Dream from Insta account to Pizza Parlor. Graziemi'a, Gabriela. And congrats to Ryan Clevens, who just graduated from Notre Dame. becoming a Dr. Badger now. Happy birthday to Connor Koza in Omaha, Nebraska. And Nash Smith in Cincinnati. And Jules Karim in Los Angeles, California. And Ethan in Rest in Virginia.

And Mr. Ben English in Dublin, Ireland. Oh, and Jack, Braden Kaisker, just got a new job over at Goldman. Not too shabby. Happy anniversary to Elvin and Laura in Puerto Rico. And Justin and Janet Keene just moved to Portugal. We're all going to miss them. Heartfelt congratulations to Andrew and Lauren Smelzer, who just had a baby in Iowa City, Iowa. Ryan Brown paid off his whole mortgage, the whole thing, and is debt-free in Richland, Washington.

Congratulations, Ryan. And Jessica and Z, fiancés who snack together just got married in the Lower East Side of the Great Island of Manhattan. Dinner, go to on regular pizza. Anybody else celebrating anything today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. 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. Technically, yes.