The Best One Yet - “The Zuck-ocracy” — Facebook’s super shares. Adidas & Allbirds partner up. Vacasa’s $108M booking.

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

Shoe rivals Adidas and Allbirds are teaming up on a sustainable sneaker that’s completely redefining what “competition” means. The latest walkouts at Facebook reveal how unique the “Zuck-ocracy” governing style of the social network really is. And even though the travel industry is hit the hardest in the corona-conomy, Vacasa is our “Unicorn of the Day” for because it’s just the slightest bit different from Airbnb. $FB, $ADDYY, $TWTRLearn 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, June 3rd. Stock markets rose yesterday to the highest point since we started talking about the Corona economy. Snackers, takeaway, sometimes it just doesn't make sense. We cannot make sense of yesterday's games.

In the meantime, we managed to whip up our best podcast ever. This is a total T-boy. Our first story, everybody loves a good collaboration. Netflix and LLB in pajamas, aka Net Leisure Wear, read Hastings. We know you're listening. let's make this happen. Reed, I sent you an owl. Respond to my owl. Reed, cough twice if you can hear us. Now, for the first time, we are reporting on Snacks Daily of two rivals collaborating. We got Adidas and Albert's shockingly whipping up the world's most sustainable shoe. Second story check.

Facebook is having a moment. Not the good kind of moment. Employees are unfriending Mark Zuckerberg at an alarming rate, which we assume is his worst nightmare. The situation reveals how Zuck is the most powerful person on earth, aka a zuckocracy. Third and final story, Jack. The unicorn of the day is Vacasa. You probably have heard that the travel industry is getting kind of hit hard by COVID-19. You know what, Jack, you can't swipe a hotel key card using your elbows. No, you got to touch it.

Snackers, Jack, squeezing them together really hard right now. There's unavoidable surface touching that happens in hotels. But Vacasa is an exception in the travel industry. It's an Airbnb and hotel hybrid business model that just snagged $108 million in venture capital financing. Now, Snackers, before we jump into all that, you know that we're focusing our snack facts this week on racial injustice in the economy all week. But we got so many great submissions by Snackers on Twitter and Instagram yesterday. It was wild. We had too many to choose.

We're not just doing it at the end of the pod like usual. Could not handle the quantity. We promoted one to an intro right now. This does not happen often. point that out. Jordan Parham from New York, New York, and Maka Zayan Yabuchi from Washington, D.C., two great cities, two great Snackers, they submitted the same snack vac. It was perfect historical timing on this one, and you may not have heard of this place, Snackers. It was Greenwood, Oklahoma. It's also known as Black Wall Street, and honestly, I'd never heard this story until they

submitted the snack fact. No, we hadn't. This is wild, and there's a reason we hadn't heard of it. This is a neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that in the early 20th century had quite a an amazing thing happening. They had African Americans create a self-sufficient, prosperous business district unlike anything that was arguably on earth. Just a generation or two after slavery, businesses were being on land that had been acquired by African American people. We're talking an entire infrastructure here, luxury shops, grocery stores, restaurants, doctor and down offices, photography studios, the whole thing. Greenwood, Oklahoma had its own school, its own newspaper, its own bank. You look back on this, it's like a real life, Wakanda, right in the middle of Oklahoma.

It was an incredible city. I can't believe I didn't know this, but it all changed on June 1st, 1921. 99 years ago, almost to the day, Snackers. That is when the local white community didn't want to see a black city improving themselves and living self-sufficiently, so they formed a mob. And that mob went through Greenwood, destroyed buildings, killed 300, burned 1,400 homes and businesses all to the ground, devastating. This was a beacon of black prosperity. in the post-slavery era that got destroyed by lawless racism. Jack and I dove into the snack style reading more about it. It is powerful, we were just saying, to imagine what this could have looked like, you know, 99 years later

if it kept on existing. Greenwood, Oklahoma would be an incredible place. And imagine how many other Greenwood Oklahomas we could have in this country if the mob wasn't allowed to destroy them back in the day. Snackers, Jack and I want to highlight these snack facts. T-boy Jack, that's Jack's handle, and I'm at Nick of New York. We want to hear them.

By the way, if you want to learn more about Greenwood, Oklahoma, aka the Black Wall Street, search PBS Black Wall Street on Google. You'll find an amazing three-minute video. 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. It's snacks about to hear ain't 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 of a security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Allbirds and Adidas just launched a partnership?

Competition, not competing, collaborating. Snackers, this opened Jack and I have to a long whiteboarded list of the great collaborations of all time. Doritos, Locos, tacos, a combo of Doritos and Taco Bell. Cheetos and Forever won. They did like the orange tube tops with like the, freaky kind of scary sunglasses cheat on. Are we only giving examples that include fake cheese product? Not if you include Adidas and Beyonce's Ivy Park, maybe one of the greatest fashion collaborations of all time. All right, so those are three epic partnerships, but they're all cross-industry

collaborations. What shocked Jack and I about Allbirds and Adidas is that this is intra-industry. It is rivals collaborating. Kind of a frenemy situation that we're calling a brand brand partnership. And the two key players in this wonderful partnership are Adidas and Albreeds. Jack, Adidas first introduction. Adidas, the publicly traded German company that absolutely love stripes that come in pairs of three. Albert's is

literally the only footwear unicorn we could find out there. Its shoes are ergonomically optimized for your standing desk posture while you're writing and working on that pitch deck to send to some VC. I believe we just created a new pronunciation of the letter E, Jack. That was fantastic. Nick, you know Albert's wool runners?

that classic Silicon Valley tech worker shoe, it directly competes with Adidas Ultra Boost sneakers. And Snackers, trust us, we know both pairs very well when you work in a Silicon Valley office. 90% of the tech industry wears those two shoes. At Robin Hood, I think it's 100%. A disturbing like 5% of the tech industry wears like left foot Albirds, right foot Adidas. Now, a new ambitious team goal between Albirds and Adidas create a high performance, sustainable sneaker together. They're kicking it up a notch. They want to make the world's most sustainable footwear. The carbon footprint of a typical sneaker is shockingly high. 24 to 35 pounds of carbon dioxide. I'd get admitted making a pair of shoes. Jack and I aren't weightologists, but that seems like a large number.

Yeah, because shoes are like 12 ounces. We looked it up. Turns out that a seat on an airplane from New York to Florida is about 750 carbon pounds. And a pair of sneakers is 35. So like 5% of the same CO2 as a flight to Florida? Insane. Meanwhile, Albert's has figured out a weight to creatively make a shoe in about half the typical carbon weight, only 17 pounds of CO2. That's why they have their awesome environmental brand at Albers. But together with Adidas, they think they can make a performance sneaker with just five pounds of CO2 emissions. Call in the Guinness team, that would be a world record. Adidas is trying to pivot to sustainability, but Albers has it in its DNA. So this fascinating partnership leads Jack and I to a very big question. Will these competitors in sneakers trust each other

enough to actually collaborate? Jack, that feels like a perfect transition point. So what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Allbirds and Adidas? Competition has changed in this age when brands are prioritized. Snackers, there are age-old risks of stealing trade secrets and like awkward debates about revenue splits that would typically happen in a partnership like this. But Albirds and Adidas aren't worrying about those risks because the benefit to their brand, can be incredible. Adidas is a global carbon emitter that wants a sustainability image. Albirds just launched their first running sneaker and they want performance and credibility at scale, which Adidas has. With a long-term focus on their brands, they can both get what they other has.

Both brands benefit where they're weaker with this deal. And they probably both actually do care about the planet. Carbon negative sneakers. Your move, Albirds. The sole photosynthesizes. The shoe is actually a living plant. For our second story, for the first time, though, Facebook has actually decided to do less. And for the first time, the Facebookers are revolting against the Zuckocracy. Reaching up to the top shelf over here, Jack, I got the dictionary, verb to Zuck definition. To copy another company's core product or feature and do it better than that. Jack, can you do us the honors and use it in a sentence?

Snapchat's main feature got Zucked by Instagram. It never gets old. Snackers, Facebook was once a place you'd look at pictures of people in your freshman hallway. Full disclosure, 2007, I'm looking at Jack's Facebook photos. He's wearing a white tux. My sister said that was a red flag. I was 30 pounds more than I was. My hair was way shorter and more intimidating.

And my suit was three times too big. Slim cut wasn't a thing. You've heard of three-piece suits. This had like three vests. It was a six-pier. Snackers, thanks for listening to our stories. Nick and I did meet each other on Facebook back in 2006. Today, though, Facebook is the apps and the websites that control the information you consume.

Facebook and Instagram. It also controls the communication you have with your friends and family. What's App and Messenger? And it built a video camera to put in your living room. It's called portal. It's kind of creepy. We've never actually seen one in the while. That's not it.

There is no limit to their corporate ambitions at Facebook. A global cryptocurrency name Libra. Facebook shops replace Etsy. Virtual reality goggles. It even tried to acquire FitBet. Thank goodness. got outbid on Fitbit by Google. And for once we noticed over the last week, Facebook actually decided to do less on Friday. While Twitter added fact-checking information to false tweets about mail

in balance from the president, Facebook did nothing. When Twitter added a big warning saying Trump's tweets glorified violence, Facebook did nothing. Now, an important thing to know here, when President Trump tweets, he Facebook posts like pretty much the exact same thing. So every time Twitter was fact-checking, Facebook was very conspicuously doing nothing. It basically means Twitter and Facebook are like an AB test situation for the same content. Techies are like so pumped about this. Oh, scientists and techies love this situation. Now, Mark Zuckerberg knows the only threat to Facebook's dominance is regulation from the U.S. government.

Yes, you know, he's trying not to upset the president of the United States. That's what he's thinking. So he didn't fact check the president's posts, but it's backfired when it comes to his relationship with his own Facebook employees. Employees just did the first ever, we'd never heard of this, a digital walkout on Monday. It's a work from home unique thing. You shut your computer, you delete Zoom, and you sign out of Facebook's copycat zucking of Slack. Exactly. You had to use the term twice to make it relevant Snackers. Now, people are quitting the company and posting on Twitter that they're doing this because they're concerned their old employer Facebook is harming democracy by turning news and information into a wild west.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies, poker? and each other over at Facebook. Zuck has more power than anyone in the world. Snackers, we are not overseeing that statement, and we'll get to why in a second. We can explain. Facebook and your parents and grandparents are getting all the news from Facebook. You're getting all your news from Instagram. Guess who controls what you see on Facebook and Instagram? The algorithms. Yes, but guess who controls the algorithm? The engineers. Right, but guess who controls the engineers? CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And guess who controls Mark Zuckerberg? Nobody. Nobody. He only, though, has 16% of Facebook stocks. You're probably wondering how that's possible.

But those shares of Facebook that Mark Zuckerberg owns, they're super shares that are 10 times more powerful than normal ones. This literally sounds like something that Marvel came up with. Snackers, we're not joking. His shares are worth 58% of the voting power of the company, and that is over a majority. He is one of the only CEOs of a big public corporation. We know where one person has final say on everything. And that means one person controls what three billion people in the world are seeing. And both Facebook and therefore Mark Zuckerberg are unregulated. It's a zuckocracy.

For our third and final story, we've got our unicorn of the day, Vakasa, just stagged $108 million and is worth a billion. This shows that one area of the travel industry is hot. Yes, the work from someone else's home. Not work from your home. No. Work from someone else's home. Jack, let's whip open the reopening plans here.

We got reopening of outdoor parks. That's phase one. That sounds like phase one. Reopening of restaurants is phase two, but only at 25% capacity. And then reopening of vacation rentals feels like phase 46. That one's not really coming down the line that quick. COVID-19 hit, and then you and your 12 buddies canceled the annual New Orleans Jazz Fest. Airline Stock.

fell, hotels furloughed staff, Airbnb delayed their IPO. Wasn't good for travel. But one travel company is basically zooming while everyone else is we working. Vacasa, it's 11 years old, and it just found its moment post-puberty. We think Vacasa stands for Vacation and Casa. And I'm telling you, Portland, Oregon headquarters definitely has 12 craft brews on top. Maybe the best lifestyle in the country. One second, I have to move my beard while I can enjoy the ironically named IPA.

They serve their triple IPA hops with timber-made mud. They're playing soccer with the IPAs. Now, Vacasa's business model feels a lot like Airbnb. Yeah, it's a platform for booking someone else's place. But it has a favorite child, a golden boy. The host. They don't care as much about the guests. Not as much.

Full disclosure here, Jack and I have been vacasing before the venture capitalists found out about this place. That's right. Vakasa is a verb, and we vacas at my bachelor party back in April of last year. Key West 2019. never forget. Early snack fact here, they call it the Concre Republic. Now, to truly appreciate Vakasa's value, you got to ask yourself, or ask a buddy, have you ever put your place up for Airbnb? Because if you have, then you've had to clean up before and you've had to clean up after.

Your hands get calloused from all that cleaning and anticipation of guests. And then you got to fill up the shampoo, provide the half and half milk, and oh no, they're millennial guests, I got to have almond milk too. Don't forget the coffee filters. You're making a bunch of grocery trips to prepare. Oh, and then Joey from Seattle forgot his hat. I got to mail that. back. Post office, this is quite a schlep we're talking about. Oh, and you also have to physically be there for the key handoff. What if you're quarantined at home and you want to rent out your second place on Airbnb? You need somebody physically to be there. Check out Airbnb's help center. You're not finding an answer for all those questions there. Enter Vakasa. It handles all that supply side junk and schlepping. They're managing your Mad River Valley, Vermont ski home, doing all the cleanup, setting up, and the random guest interactions.

locations, including one right down the road from me here in the Mad River Valley of Vermont. So true, because they need people to manage the properties that are in the area. So Jack and I dove into the snack style, we noticed some interesting numbers here. Vacasa and Airbnb both have the same number of employees, 6,000. But Vakasa only is 26,000 listings on their website. Airbnb has 7 million listings. Vakasa has one property manager for like 15 places here in the Mad River Valley. Airbnb has one engineer for like two million places in Asia.

It's a lot harder to scale of Vakasa than an Airbnb. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Vakasa? Don't write off an entire industry. Industries are like onions. They have layers. Vakasa's weakness to Airbnb is now its greatest advantage, Snackers, the management. Many people have extended work from home right now, and they're looking for a safe place to escape.

And eventually people are going to want a vacation. again. So think about it. Airbnb doesn't really work for those situations. Guess want more maintenance and more cleaning than Airbnb is going to provide. A hotel also doesn't really work right now. Way too much human interaction. Oh, Mr. Craver, how is your day? I don't want to tell you and I don't want to see you again. It's COVID-19. Stay as many feet away from me as you can. So Vicasa kind of is the perfect fit for this unique travel situation. A lot of people are demanded. That's why their bookings are up big right now. Even while the rest of the travel industry is struggling. Jack, can you whip up? the takeaways for us over there. Adidas and

Allbirds, an unlikely sneakered power couple. Silicon Valley will grow a third foot to wear this shoe. Second story, Mark Zuckerberg is the most powerful person in the world. But is krypton at his regulation, so he's careful not to upset the president. Third and final story, Vakasa,

it's like Airbnb, but with more humans involved. It's the perfect amount of cleaning and sanitizing without the germs of a hotel lobby. It's like a hotel, but fewer humans involved. Now, our snack fact of the day comes in from Jackie Wong in Memphis, Tennessee. Jackie points out powerful data from the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. Income inequality gets all the talk, but wealth equality is

way worse. According to the Fed, in 2016, the medium net worth for a black household in America was $17,600. But the medium net worth for a white household was $171,000. So the wealth gap is basically a thousand percent, which is multiples of the income gap between white and black people. We're talking about magnitudes here. And wealth, it gets passed down from generation to generation to generation. Right. And we can actually understand this wealth inequality because generations ago, black people were in slavery. And after that, they couldn't vote her own land. And after that, redlining prevented them from homeownership, which is a huge way you accumulate wealth. Add it all up and the result is chronic wealth inequality. Jackie, important snack fact. Thank you

for posting you. Now we also want to highlight Kirk Bassett here who has a father, an uncle, and a brother who are all snacking and they've been doing it for years. Families who snack together are named the Bassett family. Also fascinating, all four of them are window cleaners in lovely Bend, Oregon, aka the next Portland. We were just talking about Oregon with Avacasa. This is Nick, and neither Jack and I are endorsed by Portland, Oregon. Mark, your son, Kirk, just wants to say happy belated birthday, but Nick and I are going to say it instead. Happy belated birthday. Oh, In Bassett family, if you have buddies who aren't snackers yet, please ask them HY HYSD.

Have you had your snacks daily? We will see you tomorrow. I can't wait. If you know, you know. 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, or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only, 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.