The Best One Yet - “Zuck Team 6” — Facebook’s copycat team. Earth’s biggest (new) cannabis. StockX’s $2.8B sneaker.

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Cannabis legends Tilray and Aphria are combining into the world’s largest pot company, but the real story is what they’re brewing. “Unicorn of the Day” StockX hit a $2.8B valuation because the rules of media apply to sneakers. And it turns out copycatting is so critical to Facebook that they’ve created a secret team of entrepreneurs… to Zuck or be Zucked.$APH $TLRY $FBGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @TBOYJack @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Learn 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 Thursday, the new Friday, December 17. We have some warmly welcome news coming from Washington, D.C. Looks like the Senate's going to vote on another Econ rescue bill nine months after the first one. Nobody signed it. No one's even voted yet, but we're expecting more unemployment benefits and more stimulus checks for all Americans.

They're going to be less generous this time, but this is pretty helpful because winter is coming and this Snacks Daily is our best one yet. Perfect segue. Nick, the best one yet, TBOI. For our first story, Mark Wahlberg, M&M, DJ Steve Aoki, and Marshall Mathers. What do they have in common? All are investors in a sneaker marketplace called Stock X, which just hit a $2.8 billion valuation. For our second story, the new biggest cannabis company in Canada, also in the earth.

Here's the thing. It's not about what Tilrey and Afria are growing. It's about what Tilray and Afria are brewing. I'm picking up what you're putting down, Nick. third and final story, Jack. A dirty little secret from Facebook. Get this Snackers. Turns out there's a whole team at Facebook dedicated to Zucking. We have to talk about Zuck Team 6. But before we jump into that, honestly, a wonderful mix of stories today, Jack. You may have noticed that Bitcoin hit $20,000 for the first time ever. And in classic crypto fashion,

there's no apparent reason for this jump. Sadly, though, Jack, I do have to admit that Ben the Bitcoin is no longer with us. I know. I'm so sad we're not going to finish every pod with. This is Nick, and I own a Bitcoin. His name is Ben. You know what, Jack? It was his time. But Snackers, this reminds us that the first ever commercial use of Bitcoin actually happened about 10 years ago. Yeah, happy 10 year anniversary to Laszlo Haynez, who casually dropped into his local Papa John's and bought a pizza with Bitcoin 10 years ago. That's right. He bought two Papa John's pizzas with just a few Bitcoin. Not just a few. Here's the kicker. He actually used 10,000 Bitcoin's. I'm not sure if the S is in there. It's like fish or fish or

deer. He used 10,000 Bitcoin to pay for those two Papa John's pizzas. That's because, get this, the cryptocurrency was trading at the time at just 0.04 cents per a Bitcoin. 0.0 cents. It was less than a penny each Bitcoin was. You need to round up the 10,000 Bitcoin just to afford the dough, the sauce, and the mozzarella. Today, however, that 10,000, Bitcoin dinner would be worth $200 million. AKA that Papa John's personal pan pizza was the most expensive pizza ever purchased. The real crime here, however, is that the pizza was a pineapple pizza. 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 snacks about the hair ain't food. It's ear 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. Nope. 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, Jack and I have found the ground zero of Zuckings. Oh my God, we've been waiting to cover this. Facebook's new product experimentation team, also known as Zuck Team 6. That's actually just what we're calling it. But if you work at Facebook and you share that idea on Slack and take a a screenshot of it, we would love to see it. Nick, they don't use Slack at Facebook. True. They use Facebook workplace. Which is perfect to talk about another zuckable item. Snackers, we've been asking for your favorite stories of the year for like our best of 2020 snacks album for the

worst year ever. A frequently requested story by the snackers was any type of zucking. Any type of zucking. There was so many zuckings. It was the year of the zucking, but guess what, Snackers? The zuck strikes again. Facebook is reportedly about to launch a new app called Super. Pretty straightforward here. This is going to let users pay celebrities to appear in your live video chats sounds really novel. Sounds like a clear zucking of cameo, which lets users pay celebrities to appear in their live videos. Literally the same definition, you can drop 1,200 bucks, get Snoop to show up at the candle lighting at your Bob Mitzvah through FaceTime. Or you could get a more C-list affordable

celebrity like Kate Flannery, who was Meredith at the office. She can do her best Dwight Shrewd impression for just 180 bucks. In the meantime, though, Facebook. Facebook's cameo knockoff is going to be launched soon, and it's actually going to be like a whole separate app. Yeah, they're probably going to require you log in with your Facebook account, and then you can, like, do a video event with your Facebook friends. And we noticed this zucking, courtesy of our friends over at Bloomberg and a whole bunch of PFWTM, people familiar with the matter. Snackers, a zucking. When Facebook copies the core product or feature of another company, often doing it better than said company. It's two syllables, it's a verb. We've seen a bunch of them. But get this. Mark Zuckerberg has apparently set up an entire team at Facebook committed to zucking. It's called the new product experimentation team and it's full

of entrepreneurs and uncreative creatives. You got to think of this as like an internal accelerator to build up startup ideas into reality, except these are all someone else's ideas. Right. Formed in July of 2019, the new product experimentation team has launched 10 new products and most of them are clear copycats from what was already out there from competition. The latest example of this is this, super thing we were just talking about, which is a zucking of the previous app known as cameo. Now, this team was formed in July of 2019. So technically, this team can't take credit for all the zuckings of the past, including the original zuck. The original suck. I mean, this goes back to Instagram Stories, which zucked Snapchat, the original zucking. But if you are

creating a product that is zuckable in the future, you better watch out for the new product experimentation team. By the way, Jack and I would love to hear how Facebook stuck new product experimentation team on a Patagonia Fleece. So we decided to rename this team for you. Zuck Team 6. Beware snackers. They're dangerous. They'll suck anything that connects people. Chicago does logistics. Facebook does connecting. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Facebook? 2020 is Facebook's year of the zucking because it can't acquire the competition. anymore. All right, so let's look back on the history here. In 2012 and 2014, Facebook saw threats coming from Instagram and WhatsApp sort of acquired both those companies. But now Facebook has

realized that big acquisitions like that, they would probably get blocked by the government on concern of them being more of a monopoly. Yeah, great example of this lately. Facebook's seeing a threat from TikTok in 2020, but it knows it can't buy the company right now. So it just copies them with a little thing called Reels instead. From like 2010 to 2015, Facebook plucked the competition. That's when they bought up WhatsApp and Instagram. From 2016 to today, Facebook zucked the competition. That's when they've been copying TikTok with something like Reels. These two strategies have worked really well so far. Facebook's worth like $800 billion, but Washington, D.C. won't let either of those strategies happen anymore. So going forward, Facebook may actually have to

come up with original ideas. Facebook might actually have to come up with original products that are simply better than the competition. For our second story, we have got a new biggest cannabis company on planet Earth. Afria and Tilray, just merged. Yep. Because that's pretty much the only thing they can do right now. Yeah, it's all you can be doing right now. I mean, both stocks rose, investors bless this marriage.

Honestly, one of the last big mergers of 2020. Now, basically, all of these cannabis mergers that we're seeing, they're playing geographic fomo. Here's how this goes down. If you're a cannabis company, you don't know where a legalization is going to happen next. so you kind of feel the social pressure to be everywhere. So Afria has planted a bunch of seeds literally in Germany. Yep, but Tulare, meanwhile, has been farming in Portugal.

Now, both are headquartered in Canada, but only one is distributing to Israel so far. Yeah, it kind of reminds me when our buddy Timmy used to text us, oh, I can be uptown, but I can also get downtown to the party's downtown, because I'm in the East Village, but I can also get to the West Village, and then we found out he was just in Montauk the whole time. But a key aspect of this deal is that recreational cannabis is a more lucrative industry to pursue than medical cannabis. Yeah, if you're a cannabis company, those are the two ways you're making money. And when it comes to medical marijuana, there's a lot of friction with the prescriptions.

The healthcare industry is full of red tape. That's why Jack and I thought the most fascinating part of this deal is the hidden recreational surprise baked into Tilray and Afria. Beverages, simply, drinks. No one's talking about it, but that was the hidden synergy. Afria, one half of this merger, they acquired a microbrewery based in Atlanta called Sweetwater Brewery. I tried it once on a Delta airplane. It's actually on the Delta menu. Wild that this was on the menu, because if you check out the flavors going on over at Sweetwater, we're talking like the 420 EPA that's extra pale ale.

Or how about the Hop Hash Easy IPA? And unlike gummies, for example, a CBD edible that has tiny-ish reach, beer has big reach. There's 40,000 retailers selling Sweetwater. beer. So 40,000 retailers are selling a beer owned by a cannabis company that's now the biggest on earth. Meanwhile, the other half of this merger, Tilray, they partnered with Budwise. Yeah. They're planning to make Bud Light CBD a thing. So together, Jack and they are thinking that these two companies are recognizing a need for something called a gateway goody. To get mainstream. They need a product that fits into people's routines. Yeah. And if you're looking at the cannabis products out

there right now, you know, gummies, tinctures, smoking, those aren't necessarily part of everyone's consistent routine. An adult beverage, though, on a Saturday night when you're letting loose, that's part of at least a weekly routine. It's a gateway goody. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the cannabis industry? Cannabis is basically freshman year Harry Potter. He hasn't done anything, but he's getting all the attention from everyone. Snaggers, this new biggest cannabis company on planet Earth, get this, it only has a combined annual sales of a billion dollars, actually under a billion dollars. What this cannabis mega merger makes in one year, Coca-Cola makes in 10 days. So it turns out that the combined value of Tilray and Afria as this new

company is less than half a lift. This may be the least valuable, most valuable company in its industry on earth. Now, the key here is that the United States is expected to become like 70% of the global recreational marijuana market soon. Eventually. But right now, marijuana, cannabis, it's all a federal illegal drug, so the cannabis industry can't nearly reach its potential. In the meantime, all these big cannabis companies, all they can do is just wait and merge. And get a whole bunch of attention for their potential. Just like Harry, pre-Nimbus 2000. For our third and final story, Stock X just hit a $2.8 billion valuation. Basically, is the New York Stock Exchange for sneakers. It's not on the New York Stock Exchange yet.

It's still a sumo company. It's private. We're straight up missing out. But StockX could be on the way to its IPO. Jack and I saw the story, and we honestly thought it was perfect timing. Because remember last week, we were talking about that 21-year-old kid sold his collection of Supreme T-shirts for, you know, $2 million. He wasn't even born when the first t-shirts were made.

Key takeaway here, some people invest in stocks, some in real estate, some in art. Others invest in Jordan's Yeezys and Offwhite sneakers. You got to go with the size 11.5. That's where the money is. Which brings us to stock. It's an online marketplace for limited edition sneakers, but they also expanded to a bunch of other things. Basically like eBay, but instead of wearing pleaded khakis, they're wearing $600 sweatpants. That's right. Rare streetwear, hard-to-find bags, electronics, baseball cards. These are the things

that can be bought and sold on Stockex. And this has been blowing up during the pandemic because you're sitting at home and they just got 10 million Black Friday weekend shoppers and their first profitable quarter ever. Which brings us to this week's news. They just raised $275 million from VC investors to keep growing, which doubled their valuation to $2.8 billion, about a third of a lift. Also, Jack, we got to give a little celebration to our friends over in Ann Arbor. That's right. If you jump on I-94 and drive about 30 miles east, you'll get to Detroit where stockhex is based. And this is the biggest venture capital deal in Michigan history. This is Nick. This is Jack. And that's Google Maps, apparently. Nick, guess who a celebrity investor is to this Detroit-based company? Oh, my God.

When I heard Steve Aoki, I mean, Steve Aoki, Benny Hanna Legend. Also, M&M of Detroit fame. But the real star here is a guy named Scott Kotler. Jack and I checked out the LinkedIn. Executive at eBay, the OG online auction site. He was also an executive at the New York Stock Exchange, the OG Stock Exchange. Well, he's the founder of StockX, so this is basically his, like, third online marketplace where, you know, he connects buyers with sellers. On Stockex, a buyer who wants a rare Chanel double-flap handbag

can make a bid offering to pay $5,000 if they can actually give you that Chanel bag. So if your plush closet is filled with that $5,000 rare Chanel double-flap handbag, you can accept that bid, send that handbag to StockX, and then here's the key. They will verify that bag, and then they'll send it to the buyer. It's crucial that they verify because they need to ensure it's the real deal handbag and not some knockoff. And then StockX takes a cut of the deal. Now there's one other rule of StockX. You don't talk about StockX. Every item sold must be brand spanking new in mint condition, never wore.

Yeah, you stuff gets rejected. Oh, plus, StockX decides what actually ends up getting sold on their marketplace, so they're basically curating street style from the comfort of their website. We like to call it a Crox market, not a stock. market. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies running the Crocs market over at Stockex? Trust determines whether a new market succeeds or fails. All right, so Snackers, when you add up everything, Jack and I just said, at the end of the day, StockX's main skill is price transparency. They can strategically convince both the buyers and the sellers that the price this thing is selling for

is the right price. And that's particularly important because there is a challenge with rare items in deciding what these rare things are actually worth. You can't just Google some painting that's a one of a kind to figure out how much it's worth. Yeah, and if you got a pair of Reebok question basketball shoes and Alan Iverson's 76ers colors, of which there was only a hundred made, you got a similar situation as Monet. The seller of those shoes only wants to sell if it's for a good price. And on the other side, the buyer doesn't want to get ripped off either. So stock eggs do something like really fascinating here. They make their website look like a stock market. You got green arrows going up, red arrows going down, a 52-week high and low that those

Allen Ivers basketball shoes sold for. And then Jackson, my favorite part, they actually assign a seven-letter ticker symbol to each of the shoes on the website. Not as creative, though, the ticker symbols as we hoped for. No, no, we thought we could talk with them. So with StockX, you can see previous transactions of the same item you're trying to buy and what the price is that that item sold for like a few weeks ago. So it's just like NASDAQ. You're getting comfort in the quantitativeness. That price transparency brings confidence to the market. And that's why you drop 600 bucks on the Nike Air Force won. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? Facebook has a Zuck Team 6. The orders are to copy the competition. First they acquired, then they

copied. Now they must innovate. For our second story, the largest cannabis company on Earth is just going to be called Tilray. Afria, they got rid of that. The Harry Potter needed quits to justify his popularity. Cannabis needs U.S. legalization. For our third and final story, StockX treats rare shoes like financial assets. Honestly, because they are. And and price transparency is bringing the trust to those markets. Now, time for a snack fact sent in by Mihir Kumar and the entire University of Chicago media entertainment and sports club, who Jack and I got the chat with just yesterday.

The Booth School of Business at Chicago doesn't do logistics. Yeah, most likely. They also happen at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to have an antique trading kiosk of particular importance. They probably call it a trading booth, actually, and it is one of the original methods for trading stocks at the New York Stock Exchange from 1929 to 1980. Now, what's so important about this booth over at Booth is that it's only one of 12 original kiosks that was donated by the New York Stock Exchange to a whole bunch of

universities and museums. This is like the Plymouth Rock of American Capitalism. Except there are 11 other Plymouth Rocks, probably at six other business schools. Snackers, you look fantastic today. Before the holidays, Jack and I would love this small gift if you could drop down, give us a five-star review, and share with us how much you enjoy your snacks. That would mean the world to us. And I promise Nick and I will be back tomorrow for another episode. We can't wait. We'll see you there. And before we go, Snackers, congrats to Mandy Lee. She just got the new job over in Vancouver. So did Aditya at Capital One. Big congrats. And happy birthday to snacker Sophia Aguirre Corquera in Mexico City, Mexico.

And happy birthday to Richard Melby in San Diego, California. And Kyle DeMerellis over in Ambler, Pennsylvania. And Christine Tran in Santa Ana. And Olivia Yeagerman in Aventura, California. Aventura. And happy four-year anniversary to Vina and Somali in Ulyss, in Ulyss, Texas. Not Ulysses. No, no, no.

Ulyss Texas. Nailed it. Nailed it, Jack. 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.