The Best One Yet - “The only Will Smith stock” — iRobot’s Cadillac vacuum. Shopify + Walmart vs. Amazon. Airbnb’s anti-racism algorithm.

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

iRobot is the only robot company that’s WFH right now, but we’ve got a bold idea for its next move: Sell yourself. Shopify shares surged on word it is partnering with Walmart for an unprecedented rebel alliance against the Amazon empire. And Airbnb just whipped up “Project Lighthouse” to fix racism on its platform — We think the entire gig economy could use that.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, June 16th, T-Boy Tuesday. New quarter, new locale for me. My 90 days in Vermont are officially over. This guy traded out as Crocs for Birkenstocks. Trading out my Ben and Jerry's for salt and straw here on the West Coast.

Hey, Topper for Laganitas. It's good to be back in California. Good to be in the same zip code. I already miss Vermont. Funny thing when you get to California Snackers, your crew neck t-shirts evolve into V-neck t-shirts. Fortunately for my V-neck T-shirt, this is the, best one yet. Jack, first story, what have we got? Millions of Americans are working from home, which means Roomba vacuums are working overtime. I-Robot stock jumped 15%, but we've got a bold

idea for the company. Time to sell yourself. For our second story, the Rebel Alliance to the Amazon Empire just made another big move. Shopify partnered up with Walmart in an unprecedented way to take on Darth Bezos. The resistance investors are fans off. Utilize Shopify for payment processing, for our third and final story. Airbnb loves using the data from your Tahoe Wooded Oasis weekend to predict whether you'll like the Beach House bungalow in Santa Barbara. Now it's using that data power to weed out racism maybe for the whole gig economy. Snackers, before we hit those great stories, we want to give you an update that we are halfway through Pride Month. Feels like we should do like a profit puppy bark or some kind of a woof-wolf situation here. Now, we actually

got great news for halfway through Pride Month. We're going to circle back those. We're going to circle back though to last week's snack facts submitted by Jacob Meyer. That's right. He said that there is no federal law that protects workers from being fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity. Turns out we have an update on that snack fact. We actually have to make a correction to last week's podcast. Best T-boy Tuesday timing ever. The Supreme Court just fixed that lack of federal law situation we just talked about. We all knew Fed Chairman Jerry Power was a snacker, didn't know Scotus was listening to us too. We jumped in Snacks style to a recent decision by the Supreme Court decided yesterday by nine robed justices. It covered a few key cases,

including a county in Georgia that fired one person for participating in a gay softball league. And a company in New York that fired someone days after he mentioned being gay. Which is basically the plot of the movie Philadelphia. Yeah, actually, it's the same exact story. And then a third instance of discrimination when a funeral home fired someone after she told them that she planned to live and work full time as a woman. The Supreme Court went three out of deciding each of these cases was unconstitutional. They cited the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. So even though like sexual orientation and gender identity weren't explicitly literally cited in 1964, the Supreme Court says it still applies to

the economy's millions of LGBTQ workers. The law didn't get it perfect in 1964 by mentioning LGBTQ, but the Supreme Court decided they basically mentioned it anyway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are the United States of America? Our Constitution, is incredible. It defends the rights of minorities, even when a majority of voters elect people who don't defend the rights of minorities. We're going to make a bold call here. The Constitution is the T-boy of founding documents. Happy Pride Month. What an amazing month for such great news. Here's to more progress. Let's hit our three stories. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way.

The snacks about the hearing food is 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. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC.

For our first story, I-Robot stock just searched 10% because you realized how dirty your home actually is. This is the moment for Rumba's robot vacuums. Snackers, we can follow. this like a poem. You know where this is going. First, you pimp your crib. Then you Pimp your lawn. Then you get dirt from said lawn into your crib from the lawn so you clean your crib. Which brings us to I-Robot, which is a very rare breed of company. Snackers, Jack and I tracked this down in the wild. It's a publicly traded consumer robot company. That's also a

Will Smith movie. Who's winning the Google SEO battles between Will Smith's I-Robot movie and I-Robot the corporation? Trick question. Nobody wins. Now, this company was founded by three MIT guys in the 90s, which is the same backstory of about a third of NASDAQ companies. Literally, every time a company IPOs on NASDAQ, they start out with this automatically defaulted into the backstory. Was it MIT? No. Was it Stanford? No. Then they're not on NASDAQ. Whatever. They're not coming with us. Now, this company is famous for Rumba, which we're actually calling the world's first self-driving vacuum company. So true, way before Elon ever came up with the concept. And now the company has expanded from self-driving robot vacuum. vacuums to gutter cleaners, to pool cleaners, and other extensions. Honestly, these things are

getting so powerful, you can get on one, and it basically becomes a self-driving car. You could take that thing down the street. Well, don't forget DJ Roomba from Parks and Rack. True. And they also have a freaky thing coming out. They claim they're working on a robot self-driving lawnmower. Somebody call Ralph Nader, because that sounds highly dangerous and like, look out for Sparky, the profit puppy too. Definitely funded by the Department of Defense over here. That's the backstory of Irobot. But there was news yet. They just gave a casual update to investors that sales during this quarter and for the rest of the year will be substantially better than what they previously said. And then they dropped this poetic gem into the update. Home has become a higher priority.

That's pretty much our Pimpio Cribs, mega theory, in like one sentence. Yeah, because you're making every single lunch at home these days and the whole food pyramid is like scattered across the living room. There's some random asparagus tip that like ended up below the couch. You don't know how long that's been. Jack, you go to bed, you turn over, the pillow has like the tips of the strawberries on it. I have no idea how that got there. Well, I know you eat the entire strawberry. You love bragging about that. It's more efficient. Now, what fascinated us snackers is what part of IRobot's value proposition is actually hitting with consumers right now. It's not the entry level $200 standard Roomba 600 series

that's getting all the love right now. Not the Toyota. It's actually the $900 catallack of Roombas, call them the platinum. That means this is not about saving money for consumers by robot. Right now, it's about saving time. Think about it. You're working remotely 24-7. Your hours are longer than when you were in the office. You got kids on Zoom like learning from some classroom and you cook on a 14th dinner in a row. So you're going to splurge on the most reliable option you can delegate cleaning the floor to not the cheapest one. Oh, in that $900 room but platinum, you got to see this thing. Not only will it clean the entire floor like corner to corner, but it'll also dump that floor dirty payload into like a sucking pipe thing so you don't even need to empty it.

It docks itself and it can pass. It docks itself. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Irobot? Irobot should might as well get itself acquired. Snackers, the price of the Irobot, the corporation, is $2.3 billion. Nick, my buddy just referred to the market capitalization, aka the total sum of every single stock available for Irobot. And Snackers, Jack and I looked into the snack style, that's less than Fitbit, which was just acquired. It's a quarter of a lift. It's highly affordable, and it means the company's barely a unicorn. And iRobot stock is down 40% from its all-time high, so it's basically on the discount rack, 40% off J-Crew email style. Oh, and by the way, it's a single product concept just like GoPro, so it's easy to like just toss in your corporate

shopping cart. This is a small tech company that big tech companies would love to have. So who could acquire this, Jack, and I had a lot of fun with it. First option, Jack? Apple. Add one more eye gadget for upper income America to splurgeoff. Or Google could acquire iRobot. They acquired NEST to control your smart home. This is kind of a natural fit. Or Amazon, expand the dominance of Alexis Empire. Might as well teach this thing to open up the door so an Amazon delivery guy can come in.

Boom, next thing you know, Alexis in the iRobot. This thing's stocking you around the house. You got any other ideas for who should acquire iRobot? Hit us up at Robin Hood Snacks on Twitter. For our second story, Shopify and Walmart are four. forming a formidable rebel alliance. All against the Amazon Empire. Snackers, a short time ago, in a boardroom far, far away.

Bam, ba, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, a little sharp. Episode two, attack of the shopping carts. Help or Shopify, your only hope. Shopify is the commander of a scrappy fleet of retail rebels, Snackers. Since Blackberry is like very much in the graveyard these days, Shopify is Canada's tech golden box. Snackers, this is the company that provides the back-end techie e-commerce services so you can start your slam and salmon sweater store online. One million small and medium businesses use Shopify to sell their own stuff on their own e-commerce website. Now, historically, Walmart has always been like the enemy of small business.

That's because Walmart probably selling their own slam and salmon knockoffs for like 730. And then they're dropping the price like 50% from there just because why not? Always lower prices than mom and pop. Always. But Walmart's website is actually something that not even Nick and I realized until we covered this story. Snackers, get this. They're not just selling Walmart goods on Walmart.com.

It's a marketplace for other third-party sellers as well as Walmart. And the part of Walmart.com that's selling other people's stuff is going faster than the part of Walmart.com selling Walmart stuff. Oh, and by the way, Amazon does the same thing, and they call them their third-party sellers. And if you're a third-party seller on Amazon, Darth Bezos promises you access to his 300 million buyers who visit Amazon.com. The other thing that Blue Jack and I weigh, Walmart has caught up to Amazon in terms of the number of people it is reaching. I wouldn't say caught up, but they're 120 million compared to Amazon's 300 million. Not too shabby Walmart. Which brings us to

yesterday's big news. Shopify sellers can now slip their goods onto Walmart.com's marketplace. That's right. Walmart is now trying to make more money off of its 120 million website visitors. And Shopify's small businesses want those 120 million website visitors. They're willing to give a cut to Walmart.com. So Shopify's being the polite Canadian here and play and matchmaker. They found a way to easily put Shopify powered online stores onto Walmart.com, seamless. Boom. Together, small business and Walmart taking on Amazon together. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies in the Strange Rebel Alliance?

This is Sunshus, The Art of War, applied to business. Snackers, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, words encoded in the art of war. You have seen that applied to real combat, like when the U.S. didn't love Soviet Union, but they made it work because they were facing Germany. And you know what? You end up seeing a business, Jack, and I noticed. Think about it. Your typical Shopify shop doesn't like Walmart at all.

No, no, no. But small business is real enemy these days is Amazon, so they're partnering with Walmart, their historic foe. Any company that's not Amazon knows that the best way to fight Amazon is to team up against Amazon. Nick, the force is strong with you. For our third and final story, Airbnb is tackling racism on its platform with artificial intelligence. Project Lighthouse hath commenced. Now, Snackers, sometimes you hear people say, you know, that they're colorblind.

I don't care if you're white, black, red, green, or got polka dots on. Well, they're not colorblind. No one's totally colorblind. We all see race. It's just the thing you see. That's why in a press release, the CEO of Airbnb said people get rejected by hosts on Airbnb just because of their race. That's why when Jack and I are like going back and forth on a booking, Jack loves to say this. He likes to emphasize his wife, his puppy, his job, and wholesome vacay intentions. Oh, I can't wait to relax by the beach and read a book with my family. Let me tell you snackers. There is nothing less threatening. then that smile Jack just gave me via FaceTime.

Yeah, when you book something on Airbnb, you don't want to tell them that you're booking it for a bachelor party bang out. A quick question for my buddy, Timmy. How many 30 racks does the fridge fit? Just want to make sure the fridge is gigantic before booking your Airbnb. Just trying to top my tease and cross my eyes.

So, like, perception from a guest on Airbnb is very important. But sometimes hosts don't even think about anything except your profile picture and your name, and then they decide whether to accept or rejected. It's an unfortunate messed up reality, which brings us to the news that Airbnb is partnering with civil rights organizations to learn about racism on Airbnb. Airbnb's, though, based in San Francisco, so let's toss a little bit of Silicon Valley into that headline. That's right. It wouldn't be

complete unless CEO and founder Brian Chesky also added, you cannot fix bias without measuring it first. Silicon Valley loves measurement. It's nothing they love more. So Airbnb is launching a big project to learn about how and when discrimination occurs on Airbnb. They're calling a project lighthouse and, you know, Snackers, if you work in the tech industry, you know that there is nothing important that happens unless engineers are assigned to it. And they are assigning engineers to this project, which means it's a real project. If a project walks into a forest and no engineers are with it, does anyone hear it not happen? Are we cutting down the engineers or we cutting down the projects? It's not a good analogy actually at all, Jack. Now, this is a tough

situation, discrimination for Airbnb, because these are hosts opening up their homes, and Airbnb can't force them to let just anybody inside. So when the research is done on this project, Airbnb is hoping it can tweak its product to fight bias. For example, they may emphasize the ratings of users over just their profile in their picture so that race is less of a factor. Or they could start informing users of patterns they're noticing that could be discriminatory. Intentional or not, you may be acting a little bit with bias, and you might just want to know that. But this whole project also shows how much trust that still needs to be built up by Airbnb before they can IPO. Last year, Airbnb promised to verify 7 million properties, all 7 million that are listed on Airbnb.

We don't know what intern got assigned to walk around to every Airbnb property to figure this out, but it sounds awful and hard. I think the census team is available this fall if you want to hire them at Airbnb. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Airbnb? If Airbnb can solve this, other gig companies can copy their solution. Snackers, this is a broader gig economy issue, and so far, nobody has dealt with it. The reality is that any platform where users can accept or reject a gig, bias and discrimination is probably happening.

So Airbnb has pledged to publicized all its results and policies based on Project Lighthouse to the public. That means task rabbit, Uber, even Rover and Wag, the two pet walking companies, they could benefit big time from all this work that Airbnb is doing. Honestly, it's the kind of zucking that we could all get behind. Jack, can you slam and salmon whip up the takeaways for our buddies who are everyone? Fun fact about IRobots Roobut. My brothers and I pulled funds together, but to get the cheapo $250 version for Father's Day. But it's actually a $900 Cadillac vacuum version that's winning most

right now. You need to give that thing an oil change every three months. You better. Second story, Shopify has partnered with Walmart and Facebook the last couple months. Not a bad way to spend your corona economy. Not bad Shopify. It's the anti-Amazon. rebel e-commerce alliance. Third and final story, Airbnb is trying to combat racial bias and discrimination happening on its platform. We hope they succeed and we hope the rest of the gig economy zucks these ideas. Zuck away, gig economy. Zuck away. Now time for a snack fact tweeted in by Annup Got Gay and Lovely Fremont, California. My abs are sore from laughing at this snack fact. This is incredible snackers. The first public phone call ever made from an iPhone was from Steve Jobs on

9th, 2007. Steve Jobs picked up like iPhone serial number one, and he called the Starbucks and placed a ridiculous order. And he got this quick answer. Good morning. This is Hannah. How can I help you? Yes, hello. I'd like to order 4,000 lattes to go, please. Um, just kidding. Gotta go. Wrong number. Goodbye. Snackers, no joke. We couldn't make this stuff up. That was Steve's first call ever on the phone that changed the world. Epic. First phone call. Still waiting on what the first I message was. Anoop, Hit us up. Also, we got to wish an early, happy birthday to Joe Bessmire in Portland, Oregon. Timbertown, USA, Portland, Oregon. What is going on with the snackers over there? From the Wilmot Valley Pinos to the strong IPAs, these guys are strong. This man wakes up every day in the Pacific Northwest, pours himself a coffee, whips up some oatmeal and snacks through the whole thing. Not too shabby. Jack, by the way, go to oatmeal. Go-to oatmeal is in a Tupperware. I call it a snack pack, and you can eat it on the go. It's not promotional. If you're not throwing dates in their snackers, then you're not living.

Thanks for snacking with us, everybody. If you have a friend who's not snacking, text them H-Y-H-Y-S-D. And then follow up and explain it. Have you had your snacks daily? We will see you tomorrow. I can't wait. If you know, you know. This is Jack.

I own stock of Amazon. Nick Own Stock of Shopify. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the host who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robynood. 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.