The Best One Yet - 📓 “Who killed Homework?” — AI’s 1st victim. Uber’s Lyft question. Germany’s free soccer tickets.

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

We just saw the first stock market victim of AI: Chegg’s online tutoring stock plummeted 48% because students aren’t using tutors… they’re using ChatGPT. Uber just had its best day on Wall Street ever, so we need to stop comparing it to Lyft (fyi: Uber is now worth 20X Lyfts). And one struggling German soccer team found a unique strategy to fix its half-empty stadium problem: Free tickets.$CHGG $UBER $LYFTWant merch, a shoutout, or got TheBestFactYet? Go to: www.tboypod.comFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeLearn 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. It's Wednesday, May 3rd, and today's pod is the best one yet. It is a T-boy, man. It's a T-boy. You look fantastic, by the way. You're looking great over there. I like what you got on your head.

That's a good-looking hat. It's the best hat, yeah. Same zies. But enough about you. Jack, what's the first story for the show? One stock plummeted by 50% yesterday because of artificial intelligence. Yet he's AI's first victim is homework. For our second story, Uber just had its most surprising quarter

in years, and it has Nick and me thinking about two things. When we hear Uber, we're thinking Coke and Pepsi. Coke and Pepsi. And our third and final story, a professional soccer team in Germany is trying a unique business strategy. They're selling all their tickets for the nice round number price of $0. The Dissledorf soccer team is giving away their tickets for free. Bold strategy, cotton, let's see if it works out for them.

But Yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix. Just a wild mix. No one else is doing this mix. today, Jack. I love this mix. Before we hit those stories, though, next, we found the secret to making money in movies. We have found the key to making cash over in Hollywood. Here is the key recipe to profitability in the theaters. You ready? Jack, how do you make money in Hollywood? How do you do it man? Vin Diesel wearing tank tops. We repeat, Vin Diesel tank tops. That's how you make money. If Vin Diesel doesn't wear sleeves on his arms, then that movie is going to make more money.

What we're saying here is more muscle, more money. That's how this goes. Diesel. Vinny D. The iconic actor behind Fast and the Furious. And Fast and the Furious too. And Fast and The Furious E. And Fast and The Furious E. Turns out there's a correlation between Vin Diesel's tank tops and movie tickets sold. Yet he's, there is a causation between his shirts and his revenues. And the source of this story is actually a Redditor named Lundgren's front kick who crunched the numbers on Vin Diesel's tank tops and corresponding ticket revenues. Yeah, more biceps, more big bucks. Jack, can we whip up the numbers over here? Here's the deal. Vin Diesel has been in seven different movies where he wears zero tank tops.

His arms are constantly covered in those seven movies. And Jack, what was the average box office revenue for those seven movies where we did not see Vin Diesel's muscles? $100 million. But in films where Vin Diesel wears one or two tank tops, how much money did the movie bring in? Ah, $200 million in those movies. But in films where Vin Diesel wore three tank tops, how much money did the movie bring in? $500 million. And in movies where Vin Diesel wore four tank tops, how much money did the movie bring in?

If Vin Diesel wears four different tank tops in a movie, it's going to bring in a billion dollars at the box office. But Jack and I should sprinkle in a little more context here. Five tank tops, that's too many. Revenue starts falling for Vin Diesel after he goes too fast, too furious, and way too many tank tops. So four different Vin Diesel's sleeveless t-shirts. That is the sweet spot for revenue. tank tops, it's just too much deltoid for one movie. The limit? It does exist. Do Jack, what's the

takeaway for our buddies in the movie industry? If you want to make a profit in Hollywood right now, then hire Vin Diesel's naked shoulders. It's the best ROI in film. A Vin Diesel tank top just prints cash. Let's hit our three stories. For family. Fifteen years before this song,

two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet. 50% that's a fat tip. T-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. For our first story, Chegg, the online education company.

It just plummeted 50% because students are turning to chat GPT. AI's first stock market victim is homework. Jack, can I just kick things off with a poem for you? I would love that. Homework or homework. I hate you, you stink. I'd rather take Baz with a man-eating shark, wrestle a lion alone in the dark,

eat spinach and liver, pet 10 porcupines, than tackle the homework my teacher assigns. Are you the author of that poem? I wish I was the author of that poem. I read it in like fifth grade to like a whole group of people, and I don't think the teachers liked it very much.

It's a poet, Jack Porelutski. My dad used to take me to the local library to do homework, and he'd treat me to a soft-serve ice cream, a creamy afterwards. That's how every homework should end, with cake. So yet he's chag.

It is a $2 billion education company. They do online tutoring, digital textbooks, internet classes, that's their business. Chegg started by solving the gigantic textbook problem.

Like literally the gigantic textbook problem, right, Jack? My back still hurts for sophomore year. The textbooks are bigger than the fifth graders. $437 for a 42-pound bio-textbook.

Yeah, that makes sense. So Chegg pioneered first the textbook rental to deal with the cost. Then they digitized the textbook to deal with the weight. Yeah, you can eat the lift with your legs, not your back. No more herniated discs every time you open that Latin textbook. Now, this company was a pandemic darling stock.

A stock surged 400% on the dream that online learning was here to stay. But then, Jack, what happened yesterday to this online education company stock? Chegg's stock fell by 50% in one single day. Get this, Yeties. Chegg lost $1 billion in value in just. just a few minutes. On Monday, Chegg was worth $2 billion. On Tuesday, it was worth $1 billion.

So, Besties, here is today's lesson. Apparently, one sentence can sink your stock really badly. Yeah, one sentence can sink your grade. It can also sink your investor relations department. Yes, it can. And here is that sentence. The CEO of Chegg said that artificial intelligence is having an impact on customer growth. It's already having an impact.

Today, not like in the future it could be a threat. It's already a threat, is what the CEO said. And then the CEO went on. Students usually sign up around midterm exams, but this year, they didn't. Yeties, today, Chegg's business model depends on people paying $16 a month for 24-7 access to their tutor. Sophomore Susan, she takes a picture of that calculus question, uploads it to Chegg, and then a human tutor walks her through the trigonometry, carry the one cosine thing stuff. Right. Well, the CEO just confessed that this spring, when midterm exams were happening, students

weren't signing up for Chegg like they usually do during midterms. They were not. Instead, those students were turning to ChatGPT. Why? Because not only is ChatGPT free. It's 16 bucks a month. That is a lot of late-night falafel for a freshman check. But ChatGPT is also potentially better. Because the tutor, yeah, they're not going to write a term paper for you. You know, it's like unethical. They're not going to. do that. They probably shouldn't do that. Chat GPT absolutely will write a term paper for you if you ask it to. And it'll do it in like five seconds. Hey, chat GPT, I need an eight pager on the prime minister of Malaysia. Boom. You got it. We'll respond. Single spaced or double space. And then

it will write that paper. Footnotes included. Now yet is Chegg is partnering with chat GPT on a homework helper that they're calling Cheggmate. But here's the problem. That partnership with artificial intelligence, it's not coming out until next year. That's a long time. That's an eternity. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Chegg? The stock market just gave us a wake-up call. Chegg is AI's first victim.

Yetty, sit down, stand up, sit back down again. That was a big moment yesterday. We're talking about the biggest stock drop yet directly caused by AI. Chat GPT wiped out a billion dollars of value yesterday. It massacred half of an entire company before our own eyes. Jack and I were looking at the story here. We're like, hey, this is the first tangible example of robots taking jobs, tutoring jobs at scale. That sounds sad because it is sad.

It's always sad whenever someone loses their job. But here's the hope of AI, just like every other big technology change we've seen in the past. By replacing jobs, newer, better ones can open up. We'll see if that optimistic vision actually happens. We'll see. But in the meantime, Chegg, that stock was a wake-up call. Homework is AI victim number one. For our second story, Uber just had one of its best days in years on the stock market, not too shabby.

But we have to talk about Uber's Coca-Cola situation. Ah, the Pepsi situation, Jack, or the Coca-Cola situation? The Coke and Pepsi situation. But yet, before we jump in T-Boy style, Jack and I noticed that Uber just released its list of annual lost and found items. These are some of the highlights of what people left behind in Uber's this year. Okay, true story. Apparently, someone left a lightsaber in an Uber this year. Real lightsaber? We're not sure. Someone left a bidet in the back of an Uber this year. Someone left a fog machine back there. Like our personal favorite. Apparently, a lot of people leave fake teeth in the back of Uber's. I guess it happens. They haven't been claimed if you want to go down to Uber and pick them up. Something's going on in the back of those Uber's and we don't want to know what it is. In the meantime, Uber stock just had its best day in years.

jumped 12% yesterday. Uber just announced that in the first quarter, two billion rides happened on the Uber platform, which is up 24% from last year. And revenue jumped 29% because of inflation. Big surprise to Nick and me, food delivery is still bigger than the OG business of Uber ride-haling. Get this yet.

Uber's food delivery business is doing $15 billion in sales. Compared to $14 billion of sales for rides. Uber, they're moving more pad tire. around town than they are Peters. But here is the awkward part of the Uber earnings call. Okay, Jack and I looked through the earnings call and we noticed that one analyst asked directly about Uber's rival Lyft. That's awkward.

I can't believe he said that. Like, you do not mention Lyft on an Uber call. That's just weird. Well, Lyft just recently laid off 26% of the workforce. While Uber hasn't done a mass layoff in quite a while. So the CEO of Uber, Darikososhajah, was polite to the question. Honestly, the way he responded to this question, it showed a lot of character. He didn't have to say this, but he gave Lyft a compliment.

He said Lyft is a very, very strong brand. We agree. Honestly, Jack and I were thinking about it, Lyft's biggest asset right now is its brand. People still love that pink logo. Lyft has always had. People are very loyal to Lyft when you talk to your friends. They are still loyal to Lyft. It's a thing.

You're a Lyft person. I used to be loyal to Lyft because I thought it was a vaguely better, kinder company. There was no data behind this. There was no data behind this, but we'd get to the airport and Jack would be like, no, no, no, no, I'm calling a Lyft. That's what we're going to do. But that compliment that Uber CEO gave Lyft, it hides a truth that we want to talk about. There's a truth behind the Lyft mustache. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our ride hailing buddies?

Uber and Lyft are no longer Coke and Pepsi. A Coke and Pepsi industry. Yet he's a Coke and Pepsi industry. That's when two players control pretty much the whole market. It's a duopoly, not a monopoly. Coke and Pepsi is the classic example, but there's also iPhone and Android. There's also Visa and MasterCard. There's Boeing and Airbus.

And there's Homaker and Schlemmer. We always used to say that Uber and Lyft were the Coke and Pepsi of ride-hailing, but we can't say that anymore. We can't because of the numbers. Uber's stock is up 24% in the past year. Lyft stock is down 65% in the last year. Uber's food delivery business, just its food delivery business, is twice as large. as Lyft's entire business. Uber is worth nearly $80 billion on the stock market. Lyft is worth just $4 billion. That means Uber is worth 20 times Lyft. Uber is 20 lifts.

When you look at the brands, Uber and Lyft are as close as Coke and Pepsi. But when you look at the numbers, they're Coke and carrot juice. For our third and final story, a German pro soccer team is trying a very dramatic experiment that we have never seen before. giving away tickets for free to all their home games. This is a professional team. Does she come out like Oprah? That's what they're doing. Because reversing a vicious cycle requires dramatic change. All right yetis, are you bored right now? If you're bored, we've got a little game you can play. Here's what you do. You get in front of a mirror,

you get a map, and you just start repeating German city names to yourself in front of that mirror. You're going to have a great time. It's a lot of fun. Dusseldorf. Duseldorf. The old Duseldozer. The old Dusseldusel Dusseldorf. It's one of the most fun names in German to say, and it's the name of a very fantastic German city. Don't forget the Umlau. The Umlau means fiesta in German. Dusseldorf is a city actually famous for cartwheeling.

Yes, it is. The sewer lids are covered with the city's logo, which is interlocking children cartwheel. Now, all that cartwheeling is cute, except for one business right now in Dusseldorf. That is not cartwheeling at the moment. The soccer team. the 128-year-old football club, Fortuna Dusseldorf, it was relegated three years ago from the top league to the second league.

Dusseldorf soccer team. They're playing in the second league now. And their stadium, it is half-empty for most of the games. And a half-empty stadium is not half-full, we should point out. Because a declining attendance can cause a death spiral. First, if your stadium is half-empty, then that hurts the home field advantage. The team loses more games. so more fans leave the game, and then there are fewer eyeballs on the game.

And then fewer fans at the game hurts your advertising and sponsorship deals, too. Few ads mean less revenue, which means less money to sign talents, so then you lose more games, and then you lose more fans. Okay, now the stadium has become so empty, there's just no atmosphere, which means even more people decide not to go to the game. And then you see empty seats on TV too, and so people watching on TV, they change the channel on the game. It's a vicious cycle.

fewer ads, less ad revenue, less money to sign talent, you'll lose more games, you'll lose more fans. And then you see fewer ads, which leads to less ad revenue, and then there's less money. Then the whole thing just repeats itself. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. For any business that depends on eyeballs, declining attendance, that can be a death spiral. So Fortuna Dusseldorf has a solution to trying out this year. And this is wild. They're giving away their tickets for free.

Oh, we repeat. The pricing strategy behind this soccer team, is to not have a price? A professional soccer team in Germany, a country where soccer's huge, is giving away tickets for free. There's no precedent, baby. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies

in the sports industry? We just witnessed the ultimate lost llama. Yeah, it is for three matches this year. And eventually all matches. This football Dusseldorf team, they're given away all their tickets. Fortuna Dusseldorf's plan to reverse their fortunes is zero dollar tickets except for the luxury boxes.

And here's the craziest thing. It's already working. Sponsorships are up already on the expectations that the stadium is going to be packed. Here was the strategy. The club is sacrificing ticket revenue for sponsorships, attendance, and pretzel revenue. Germans are calling this the ticket revolution. Das ticket volition. But we call this a lost lava.

It is this fortuna soccer team. They could have just waited. for like a miracle player or a miracle coach to come around and turn the program around. Instead, they're giving up ticket revenues to boost every other revenue source for the club. Because reversing a vicious cycle requires dramatic change. Zero dollar tickets? That's a dramatic change. Yeah. Jack, can you pronounce Dusseldorf and whip up the takeaways for us over there?

The old Dussel, Dussel, Dussel, Dussel, Deegg is the online education company that admitted ChatGPT has affected user growth already. Homework. It is the victim number one of artificial intelligence. For our second story, Uber Stock had its best day pretty much ever yesterday, while its cross-town rival continues to struggle. Uber and Lyft, they are no longer Coke and Pepsi. And our third and final story is Fortuna Dusseldorf. They're combating declining attendance by giving away tickets for free.

Because reversing a vicious cycle requires dramatic change. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Sadie Stutzman and Izard from lovely Las Vegas, Nevada. On Monday, we told you about the big pivot of the city of Las Vegas. In just the past five years, they've acquired three of the big professional sports teams. Las Vegas, they got the Golden Knights in the NHL. They got the Raiders in the NFL, and they're getting the A's in Major League Baseball. But there's a fourth team that we completely forgot.

And that fourth team, as Sadie and Isard, pointed out, it's actually the best team in Vegas. The Las Vegas Aces, the WNBA team, has also moved to Las Vegas in the past five years. And unlike the other three teams, the Las Vegas Aces WNBA team, they've already won a championship. They already did it. They're the best. They won the WNBA finals just last year. Not too shabody. Can we also point out that the Aces is the perfect team name for Las Vegas? Honestly, Jack, every team in Las Vegas should just be the Aces. Or the Dices But that'd be confusing because of the die, the dice is, the die. You're not sure what to say that.

I'm not even sure to be honest. You could call them the dices, but then some people would think they were called the die and it would lead to a whole grammar thing. It would be confusing. It would be tough. It'd cause arguments. There would be frustration. Yeties, you look fantastic today.

And the best way you can help grow the show, turn to your buddy and just say, hey, H-Y-H-T-B-O-Y. Tell them, have you had the best one yet? That's how we grow the show. Nick and I, we'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait. And before we go, a congratulations to the entire graduating senior class of Mrs. Remley's marketing. They listen to this pod every day in Kearney, Missouri, and we're incredibly proud of that.

The best class yet. And Arnie and Ashley are a couple of dinkwads who just got down on one knee and got engaged over in Maui. And congratulations to Sunny T, who just quit his job in Brooklyn to officially become a ninkwad. A ninkwad. No income, no kids with a dog. Congratulations to Doug Lopez at Onyx, who just launched a brand spanking new product. And a happy birthday and happy graduation from Tuck to Jordan Figueroa up in New Hampshire. Happy birthday to Christian Bermudez who's celebrating in Ireland.

And a happy 36th birthday to Rebecca Weber over on Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode High. Happy 21st birthday to Mariah Pauman in Wayland, Maryland. And Victoria Liu just quit that job to go into venture capital and is celebrating the birthday over in San Francisco. And happy 30th birthday to the husband to be Sebastian Basma over in Boston. Just outside Boston. And to anyone else, celebrate something today. Make it a T-boy.

Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. Nick and I don't own any stocks of the companies mentioned today. But we do like saying Duceldorf. Coke and Pepsi are the classic example. But you also have iPhone and Android. You got V-Sand-Master card. You got Boeing and Airbus. Dude, we got to toss in a hilarious.

Oh, yeah, great idea. Hamaker and Schlemmer