The Best One Yet - “The anti-prenup” — Headspace gets in Snapchat. Fisker pulls an Apple. Google Maps gets Uber money.

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

To take on its meditation rival, Headspace is partnering with Snapchat in the rare, elusive no-money deal. Electric car startup Fisker just went public, but it’s deciding to act more like Apple than every other car company (including Tesla). And Uber can’t do it all by itself, so its paying tens of millions of dollars to be dependent on Google Maps: It’s one the Silent Servers.Learn 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 Tuesday, July 21st. The SMP 500 rose yesterday, making it positive for 2020, which is insane. Jack, I think that technically means 2020 didn't happen. There seems to be no news that won't push the market higher right now. No, the vaccines could turn against themselves. It would still apparently push markets up. The vaccines could start a mutiny, and this would still be a T-boy of a podcast. The best one yet, Jack. What's our first story? Uber likes to act like it can do everything all by a It's ill. But it just spent millions of dollars for permission to use Google Maps. Mom, can we please have some dessert? For our second story, Headspace and comm are meditation apps that could probably use a session or two on their own meditation apps. Headspace just partnered up with Snapchat while comm's launching a get this, a show on HBO Max? There's no com in that story. There's nothing com about that story. Third and final story, Jack? For our third and final story, Fisker, which just went public is the latest electric car company to break the rules of making cars. All right, so Fisker needs a factory. Volkswagen has an extra factory.

We're looking classic Airbnb style win, win, share this, share that. But Snackers, before we hit those stories, Adwala is dead. It's official. The age of the ready-made smoothie with a 2040 expiration date is over. Now, Nick and I used to live on 14th Street with our buddy Dave and our buddy Timmy. Great guys. And we had an epic smoothie recipe that rivaled Adwala's recipe. It's true.

There was a whole lot of weight protein and we claimed that the secret ingredient was, wait for it. Mango. There was so much mango in this smoothie. I had like one appendage that was just a mango. Now, the key thing to know here is that Coca-Cola acquired Adwala juice for a cool $181 million in 2001. It ushered in the era of bananas, strawberries, and randomly, spinach was in every single adwala smoothie. Just was thrown into each one of those. It felt aggressive, too much Popeye syndrome. Now Adwala, though, is getting shut down next month because get this next.

Yes. Coca-Cola has a bunch of not-from-concentrate juices in their portfolio. Worst team name ever. And Adwala was number seven in Coca-Cola's list of not from Concentrate Juice brand. If Jamba Juice was in this list, they would be like number three. This is bad. Seven is brutal. So tough day for Adwala already, but then Coke CEO kind of made it personal. He said, and I quote, we just couldn't make it work with a Diwala. This feels like an it's not you, it's not me on a corporate level that just didn't need to happen. So you think that Coca-Cola CEO is a dark person? He also has a zombie list of brands that haven't grown in the past three years. Snackers, we couldn't make this up, it fascinated us. He literally

calls them zombie lists. I heard Searcy's on that list too, Nick. Sounds like Arias Dark from Game and Throne. Snackers. Fun fact, before you say goodbye to Adwalla smoothie snackers, peak adwala actually came in 2010. That's right. Adwala and Quidditch were both in the hit Middlebury College classic, the mid kid video. It was all downhill from there also correlates with when they added spinach. Let's hit our three stories. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. It 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, you know. We're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you.

Robahood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, the brand new car company, Fisker is trying to build cars the Apple way. It wants to design the electric cars, but leave the actual building of the cars to someone else. We're talking about Fisker, which is the latest company that has never sold a product to still manage to IPO. 2019 companies IPO that had never had a profit before. True thing. 2020, companies are IPO that have never sold a product.

It's getting wild. It's like somehow getting on the bachelor when you're still the kind of person who's wearing cargo shorts on a weekly basis. It's like, I don't think you're ready for The Bachelor. And not quite. No one's getting the road snackers. Fisker is an electric car company that IPOed through a popular backdoor process that's getting a lot of love in 2020. It's actually a great word to say, even though it's highly confusing. It's called a SPAC.

Right. That stands for a special purpose acquisition company. Right. It means we set up this publicly traded company just to acquire you, Fisker. Like, it's not a real company with like real business until the acquisition. If so facto, Fisker was a private company. Now, because it's been acquired by a random public company, it is now publicly traded. Now, if you search for Fisker stock, you're not going to find it.

It's currently called Spartan Energy Acquisition Corporation. They're probably going to change their name to Fisker eventually. That's the company that acquired Fisker sounds more like the kind of thing that like an evil Gary Oldman would play in a movie that is the executive of this thing. All right, that's it. We're not talking about the IPO loophole anymore. Back to the story. So Fisker's got this interesting electric SUV. They call it Ocean and selling for a cool under $30,000.

It's not selling. It's going to sell eventually under $30,000. There's nothing for sale yet. But Nick, get this. The CEO just pre-announced a super novel, interesting partnership. I think at this point we're like pre-pre-announcing. It's not going to build its own factories to mass produce like Tesla or GM or any car company does. Instead, Fisker is going to use Volkswagen's fancy new electric vehicle assembly lines to produce its own cars. Now they're straight up out Elon and Elon. They are announcing things that aren't even a thing within their company yet. And get this, although the company hasn't confirmed it, the CEO did tweet that it's happening. So it's like super Elon. Aggressively out-eloning Elon.

Now, this got Nick and I thinking, some of the most successful companies in the world don't even make their core product, their profit. Look up and down your house. Nike doesn't make the shoes. Casper doesn't make the mattresses. Both those companies outsource production to a huge network of factories in low-cost countries that are owned and managed by someone else. And the key one here we're thinking about is Apple, which doesn't make the phones, just the Designed in Cooper Tino, made in China. Foxcon is the mega tech manufacturer based in China that's assembling your iPhone. Now, technically, we want to preempt the Apple lawyers on this. They do get like a lot of their iPhone parts from the United States factories, but let's be honest, made it Foxcon. Right. But one industry that always makes their own stuff? It is car companies. Ford's got factories. Tesla's got factories. Honda, GM, Pugio, you name.

Fisker is going the Apple Ruth, though. It wants to design only and let VW do the actual building here. Now, the pro of this setup is, according to Fisker, that will accelerate the time to get its car to market, and it will dramatically reduce vehicle development costs. But the interesting con here for Fisker, innovation could suffer aggressively because it's completely dependent on Vogue. Fisker might be like, I'm ready for a third model,

and Volkswagen's like, uh, sorry, I need three more years because I have no idea this new product that you just sent me a fax about. So, Jack, what's the takeaway, for our buddies over at Fisker. The car industry followed the same rules for 100 years. Throw those rules away. Snackers, car companies that follow old school rules

aren't getting any Wall Street love right now. We talked about this last week. Ford Motor Company is worth 1.11th of Tesla on Wall Street. You walk around the streets of Detroit, you're starting to hear this. That's just not how it's done in the auto industry, Jr. Nick, that is not an acceptable response to an idea anymore. In fact, is someone responds to your idea with a well son

that's just not how it's done? kind of a different situation. That means you might actually have a great idea on your hands. For our second story, Snapchat and Headspace just partnered up to bring some mindfulness to teens. Nick, this shows how the barter economy can still form strong relationships. The barter economy. What is this? Like 16th century Holland? I kind of barked to the barter economy there. That's the only way to say barter jack. There's no crime here, no crime. Now, Nick, I'm talking about the hilarious app for sharing short videos of you eating nacho cheese from a buddy's face. From 2011 to 2019, Snackers, that wonderful app experience was exclusively

on Snapchat. But now that story we're talking about TikTok, which is a huge threat to our snappy buddies over in Santa Monica, Cal. Snapchat is in an epic war with TikTok for the future of teen love. Now, Snapchat announces their second quarterly earnings today. That's right. But yesterday, Snap gave investors something else to talk about, minis. Minis are the little baby apps planted in your keyboard when you're DMing a friend. Whether it's iMessage or Instagram DMs, we all know that the keyboard's there, the emoji board is there. You can probably stick some gifts, maybe a Venmo payment, or some photographs in there. Right, you're going to want to think of these as like umpalumpas. They're small, but they're extremely practical. But Snapchat's taking it

to a whole new level with many versions of apps that you can insert into a conversation. So if you want to insert like a trivia question to a board buddy or like flashcards, let's say your friend's like studying for some geometry thing, you send them a bunch of flashcards and like, is that square or parallelogram. Exactly. But the headliner here is headspace. The meditation app has six mini meditation sessions that you can like chat with a buddy who just needs a minute to breathe and relax. It's like collaborative meditating here. You got one option that's called kick the panic. You got another called pressure to succeed, which I think every freshman who's got older siblings understands. And then you've got me time, which just sounds kind of sassy. But Nick, this is for like

2 a.m. when you and your buddy both have a final exam that's all on Zoom and you just need to spend 10 minutes before continuing your study crap. Now, since Jack and I have completely used up our quote of saying the word buddy in a single story at this point, headspace, it turns out, is in an epic war with calm, a rival in the market for meditation apps. We've talked about this on this pod. Headspace and calm both do the same thing. There's a calming British voice that teaches you how to clear your head of all the thoughts. And for like five to ten bucks a month, you will pay to have Nicole Kidman tell you to sit and breathe and sit because it's Nicole Kidman. It's a very good thing to make your soul and your brain stronger, but both companies are

not common at all. They're aggressively partnering up to add the next million users. Aggressively partnering up, Com just launched a show on HBO Max full of celebrities and the company's worth $1 billion. Headspace, it's arch rival just raised $100 million before launching this Snapchat partnership. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are are both Snapchat and Headspace. This is the rare pure play partnership where no money is needed. Snackers, the best alliance is partnerships and business transactions are the one where no money was ever actually needed. You know, it's just my pleasure to be here working with you, Nick. It's beautiful. This has been charming. You're a treat check. Now, we can't confirm the terms of

this deal, but it seems like there will be no exchange of cash between Snapchat and Headspace. We're looking at this thing. Snapchat gets free meditation many courses, which will boost engagement from teens. Boom, that helps it fight off the threat from TikTok, which is also chasing those teen users. Meanwhile, Headspace gets exposed to Snapchat's 200 million users. Boom, that helps Headspace fight off the threat from Calm, which is also battling for teen meditators. No pre-up needed in this digital deal. For our third and final story, Uber signs a major deal with Google Maps. Because the fundamental technology running Uber isn't Uber, and it's also not free.

Have not been in Uber in months, but Jack and I were just talking about this. There is one thing we don't miss, Jack. Hey, Jack, your driver, Sean is four minutes away. Look out for the black Toyota Camry. Ten minutes later, it's still saying Sean is four minutes away. And for those 10 minutes, you're watching it on your app, it's doing that weird thing where it flips 270 degrees at the intersection. And then it goes in the wrong direction, only to turn around. The car starts going forward and then backwards.

and then twists around and does like some acrobatic thing. Now, any transportation app snackers like Uber relies on one crucial service, GPS and location mapping. It's two things, but we're bundling this into one for you. So in 2015, Uber ain't to deal with Google to use its Google Maps so it could tell you like how close that black Camry is approaching you. It's not just a black Camry. It's a black Camry with a license plate that ends in DTR. If the Camry doesn't have the black ice Christmas tree shaped like smelly thing on the front seat,

it's not really an Uber. What about the Purell? I mean, that's the new standard. It's the new thing. It goes with the Black Ice thing. So Snackers, when Uber IPOed last year, you know what it had to do. It had to tell us everything. All the big deals, all the big contracts, anything that could fundamentally affect its stock price. And so Uber shared with us that it paid a whopping $58 million just to use Google Maps for like two years to run the app. Most of us like downloading free apps. That app download was $58 million. So Jack and I jumped in further Snacks' out, Turns out Google and Uber are like way more than friends. They're like those two buddies of yours. Who've been flirting.

They like went on a weekend trip together. But they've never put a label on the movie. This is like the beginning of every Kate Hudson movie pretty much. They're acting like and we're like, well, you see what's happening here. McConaughey is definitely in that movie. Now, Uber paid Google over those same two years. An additional $631 million for Uber ads to show up on Google platforms. Let that sink in.

they got paid $631 million by Uber. If you Google searched jobs, you probably saw an Uber driver ad at the top. If you searched food, you probably saw an Uber Eats ad right at the top. And on top of all the money that Uber is spending on Google ads, Google, it turns out, owns 5% of Uber. Because it was one of the early VC investors back in 2013 in Uber. So all this good stuff led us to the wild news yesterday that there is a new four-year agreement between Uber,

and Google. Uber is paying an unknown sum. They haven't clarified yet to continue depending on Google Maps for the core functionality of the Uber Map. Which leads to the big question, everyone's probably asking, why not use Apple Maps or one of the other map startups that's probably based in Israel because they all tend to be. Actually, Nick, all those Israeli startups got acquired by Google like Waze and everybody else. That's true. That's very true. But that led us to jump back into the S-1 document where we saw a confession from Uber that really shocked us because it means, Uber has admitted something about itself. Get this. Uber says, we do not believe that an alternative mapping solution exists that can

provide the global functionality we need. This sounds like a Celine Dion song or something. There is only one in this world for me. And without this one, I will fall apart. This is absolute poetry, Jack. As far as Uber's needs are concerned, Google is the one map monopoly. The one map to rule them all. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Google? and Uber. The real power of big tech is its role as silent server for the digital account. Snackers, right now, the focus for everyone is Twitter got hacked, Facebook misinformation, TikTok China, Bezos made morning in the last five minutes than like the entire of humanity ever, stuff like that.

But the real action with big tech is its role as silent server, aka the tech utilities that we're all using, but none of us even realize we're using them. Case and point, Jack and I put together the list, Amazon Web Services, that's 13% of Amazon's business. This is, is a $30 billion a year business. And Amazon Web Services is the tech backbone of most of the apps that you and I are using. Google Maps, it's expected to bring in $5 billion a business just this year. And all the delivery and ride apps we use, they depend on Google Maps. And then you got Facebook's login feature, which apparently has the power, as we learned last week, to crash all the apps ever. For the last 10 years, Big Tech has been spending up to build up its role as a utility

for the rest of the digital economy. And for the next 10 years, Big Tech's hope that's hope that to charge rent to the whole economy for use of its silent servers. Jack Kenyon, wipe up the takeaways for us over there. Designed by Fisker, made by Volkswagen. That actually sounds kind of cool because the old rules of car making aren't a thing anymore. Gone, done, not a thing. Second story, Snapchat wants to fight TikTok, Headspace wants to fight calm. We found ourselves the elusive win-win for Snapchat and Headspace to team up in a no-money pre-up.

That sounds funny, too. That's aggressive. Throw it in final story. Uber signs a new rent agreement with Google Maps. Big tech's unknown profit puppy, the silent servers. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Jesse Brefle in Lovely Morris in Colorado. Not a fun snack fact, but an important snack fact.

This one is based on a study from the United Nations. There are more slaves in the world today than at any point in human history. Get this snackers. We're talking about a population of 40 million people. who are enslaved worldwide right now. Which includes traditional slavery, which we all have known about and seen in movies and read in books,

forced labor, debt bondage, serfdom, children working in slave-like conditions, and a few others. If you're wondering the purpose of the United Nations or other international humanitarian forces like this, it's to fix things like this. Jesse, thank you for that snack fact.

Now, before we go, happy birthday to Julian and Alexandra Duke from Palm Coast, Florida, who are expecting a baby snacker today. Today, consider this like an early happy birthday pre-future Snacker. Also, happy birthday to Ryan Perrinpell from Boston, Mass. And Jeremy and lovely Austin, New York, and Ashraf from San Francisco, California. Now, Snackers, before we go, please share snacks with your friend by asking him H-Y-H-YS-D.

Have you had your snacks daily? We'll see you tomorrow. If you know, you know. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon, Nick-owned stock of Apple. I own stock of Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp and Volkswagen, too. 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.