The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Amazon Unbound — with Brad Stone

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Brad Stone, the senior executive editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News, joins to discuss his latest book: Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. We hear how the comp...any has transformed under Jeff Bezos’s leadership and the existential threats coming for its market dominance. Follow Brad on Twitter, @BradStone.  Scott opens with his thoughts on “burning benjamins” — AKA what happens when billionaires lose other people’s money.  Additional Reading: MeWork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:56 cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. Episode 72, the atomic number of hafnium. 1972, The Godfather, my favorite film of all time. What do I do to celebrate it every day? When I go into Starbucks, I ask for an Al Pacino. You know, you might consider taking a course in business administration just to be on the safe side. Okay. Okay. I need to, I need to do better. I hear that. Go, go, go! Welcome to the 72nd episode of the Prop G Show. In today's episode, we speak with Brad Stone, the Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News
Starting point is 00:01:46 and author of four books, including his latest, Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. I'm a big fan of Brad. I think he's a great journalist. I like his books. Seems like a good guy. Just like Brad. I like him.
Starting point is 00:02:01 I like him. Magusto Bradley. We discuss with Brad everything about Amazon, including how the company has transformed under Jeff Bezos' leadership and the existential threats coming for its market dominance. What's happening? What's on our mind? Today, we're talking about the MiWord generation, or more specifically, a new class of billionaires who make their fortunes while losing other people's money. Full disclosure, full disclosure, I might qualify for that. Looking in the mirror, looking in the mirror, man in the mirror test, the most stressful times in my life, in my life, have been when people believed in me and invested tens, if not hundreds of millions in my company or idea, only to see
Starting point is 00:02:41 their capital go up in smoke. I find that it's actually easier to lose my own capital than other people's because it's a private failure. I think you have to be a bit of a sociopath to be a great investor or a great operator because you might be losing other people's money or you might be forced to lay off people and you need to be able to sleep really well so that you can perform at a high level.
Starting point is 00:03:02 And sometimes I've always thought I'm not a great investor, at least not a great money manager, because I have a much easier time managing my own money and taking risks with it than I do other people. Anyways, to understand... But thank you, doctor. Thank you. So to understand the me work generation and identify this class of billionaires, we've devised two metrics, the daily Benjamin burn rate and the earn to burn ratio. The daily Benjamin burn is how much money an executive lit on fire per day during their tenure. While the earn to burn ratio is the percentage of those lost Benjamins they siphoned off for themselves. Think of it as a commission on destruction or a destruction commission. And I
Starting point is 00:03:41 think that is what is sort of really rankling people or what's new about our economy. It used to be that people would get outraged when the chairman or the CEO of a company, Mickey Drexler made over a billion dollars at the gap. He took a company that was selling records and Levi's and transformed it into a specialty retail juggernaut because of his ability to create voice with product,
Starting point is 00:04:02 the merchant prince. And I think most people are fine with Mickey Drexler being a billionaire because he created tens of billions in shareholder value.. And I think most people are fine with Mickey Drexler being a billionaire because he created tens of billions in shareholder value. What I don't think they're fine with and what I think might indicate an underlying sickness in our economy is that there seem to be people who have figured out a way to make billions of dollars despite destroying shareholder value. So let's go back to our initial Benjamin Byrne. What does that look like? A lot like Quibi.
Starting point is 00:04:29 That likely won't mean anything to you unless you're one of the dozens and dozens of people who subscribe to the short-lived short video service. For context, back in 2018, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman raised around $1.8 billion, launched a bad app with even worse content, only to shut it down six months later. Roku then combed through the rubble and found about $100 million in value. So Jeff and Meg immolated $1.7 billion in 750 days, or a daily Benjamin burn rate of approximately $2.2 million. So they lit on fire $2.2 million per day. If you'd stacked that total $1.7 billion in $100 bills, you'd have a pile, get this, over a mile high. That's about two Burj Khalifas. Am I saying that right?
Starting point is 00:05:12 There's something about my brain that's died around names and accents. Is it the Il Burj Khalifa? Anyways, the world's tallest building. I stayed in the Armani Hotel, rolled into Dubai on my way to Africa, stayed there. It was incredible. I would describe Dubai as a fantastic place to visit. It feels a little bit like Las Vegas minus the charm, but I love Las Vegas. Even a charmless Vegas works for me. Anyway, Jeff and Meg aren't the only ones burning Benjamins. Like I mentioned at the top, I'm a part of this class too, or at least
Starting point is 00:05:42 the DBB class. In 2008, I raised $600 million from a hedge fund, became the largest shareholder in the New York Times company, ran an activist campaign against the paper, went on the board to unlock value. The dog's going to unlock some value. They put me on the board where I ranted about the evils of Google, advocated for the divestiture of non-core assets, the New York Times on the seventh largest building in America and 17% of the Boston Red Sox and about.com. Yeah, that made a lot of sense. Envisioned sunlit uplands of subscription revenue. And then with my amazing strategy went on to, you guessed it, light Benjamins on fire during my 24-month tour of duty watching the Great Recession kick ad-supported media in the groin over and over, I managed to turn $600 million into $350 million for a daily Benjamin burn of about $350,000 a day.
Starting point is 00:06:35 And I literally felt each one of those dollars coming out of my soul. The stack of Benjamins I lost, get this, would have reached only to the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. That's right. I burnt enough capital or destroyed enough capital in my two-year adventure at the New York Times to stack $100 bills that would reach the top of 30 rock. Jeff Meg and I, however, made an old school mistake. We failed to find a greater fool, such as the public markets, gullible board members, or SoftBank, to secure a mega payout for our bonfire of the Benjamins. I didn't make that much money. I was paid approximately, I think, about half a million bucks in board fees and retainer from the fund. And I speculate that Jeff and Meg may have pocketed more, but none of us
Starting point is 00:07:19 made millions. That brings us to the earn to burn ratio. And I think that's what is pissing people off and signals something more insidious in our economy. And that is the hall of fame for broken compensation. In 2012, Yahoo replaced its CEO with an executive from Google, Marissa Mayer. But the new CEO made a series of poor decisions, Ms. Mayer, including canceling the company's telecommuting policy while working from home herself and paying $1.1 billion for Tumblr, which they sold six years later for $3 million. By the way, I don't care what anyone says, Tumblr was a porn site. And the moment they decided to close down the porn, the site basically lost about a third of its traffic. When Mayer took over Yahoo, not including the 20% ownership
Starting point is 00:08:01 stake in Alibaba, it was valued at $14.4 billion. In July 2016, the company sold itself to Verizon for $4.5 billion, and Mayer was gone. That's about $10 billion turned to ash in just four years, or $13.5 Burj Khalifa's for a daily Benjamin Byrne of $6.8 million. So that's right up there in the daily, the DBB. But what's really ugly about it is Mayer's compensation began with a $30 million signing bonus and went up from there, totaling an estimated $365 million. That's right, a third of a billion dollars or a quarter of a million dollars per day commission for destroying $7 million per day of other people's money. That's an earn to burn ratio of 3.7%. However, however, and that's shocking, but it's not the
Starting point is 00:08:46 gold standard. Adam Neumann founded WeWork in 2010, but he didn't start burning Benjamins at epic scale until SoftBank began shoveling billions into the WeWork furnace in August of 2017. By the time Neumann was fired in September of 2019, SoftBank had invested $10.3 billion. A few months later, it rode off over $9 billion of that. That's a $13.1 million daily Benjamin burn rate on SoftBank's money alone. Newman's compensation for this value destruction was complicated by his ouster and a subsequent lawsuit, but we estimate he made off with around a billion dollars, most of it coming out of SoftBank's deep pockets who wanted to save faces. I think Adam Neumann basically threatened to sell it to creditors. And so Masa stepped in and said, I'll pay you whatever you want. That's $1.5 million per day during those
Starting point is 00:09:34 two years, an earn to burn ratio of 11%. That's our hall of fame here. It's people who, a guy who basically got a $1 billion commission on losing $10 billion of other people's money. So to be clear, this doesn't just happen in the US. In 1998, Daimler-Benz acquired Chrysler for $35 billion in the largest industrial merger ever at the time. After nine years of culture clash and billions in losses, K-Car S-Class, I don't see it. Daimler unloaded 80% of Chrysler to a private equity firm for $7.5 billion, valuing the company at $9.25 billion. That equates to an impressive $7.8 million daily, Benjamin Byrne. All right.
Starting point is 00:10:12 In sum, what's the learning here? Why should we be cognizant of the me-work generation, whether we're executives, parents, or citizens? I believe, I believe we need to ask ourselves, have our interests diverged from those of the people who matter most to us in society? It's one thing to make billions when you've created tens of billions for other people. It's one thing to have a wonderful, indulgent lifestyle if you're providing that lifestyle. It's one thing to have a wonderful life when you are improving the lives of other people, but ask ourselves, do our spouses, children, neighbors, employees, and countrymen win and lose in reasonable harmony? Are we part of a family, part of a nation, or have we become the me work generation? I go to a childhood story or experience, and that is my father used to get ready for business trips. He would lay over his Ram golf bag, his beautiful eyes-odd sweaters, and then he would meticulously iron the oversized collar on his Pierre Cardin shirt, silk shirts, and then wrap them delicately around a piece of wax paper and place them in his Hartman luggage
Starting point is 00:11:19 as if they were newborns. And I distinctly remember the smell. My dad wore aqua velvet, and I always thought of my dad as very masculine and elegant. I really looked up to him as a lot of sons do. And I remember specifically on this one occasion, my mom walked into the room and I looked up at her and I said, mom, how come dad is so rich and we're so poor? And my dad tells this story and just bursts out laughing. But here's the thing. It wasn't funny and nor is it funny now. And that is, when you're in a relationship and you're a dad or you're a mom, are you living a different life than them? Are you living a better life than them? Struggles and success are fine, but they should be in the agency and somewhat in harmony
Starting point is 00:12:02 with other people. The thing that when I look back on my childhood and some of the issues I've had with my dad, it's not that we weren't doing well. It's not that he was a bad person. It's just that there were two Americas under one household, under one roof. Stay with us. We'll be right back for our conversation with Brad Stone. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today.
Starting point is 00:12:48 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. And when you're starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind. But if customers don't know about you, the rest of it doesn't really matter. Luckily, there's
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Starting point is 00:14:35 Empire. Brad, where does this podcast find you? Hi, Scott. I am in my garage in Mill Valley, California. This is where I wrote the book. This is where I quarantined during the pandemic. And then this is where I'm talking to you right now. Nice. So you are milking this whole Amazon train. So we had the everything store, which was, I remember reading that book. And I, when I wrote my book before and I had to write a chapter on Amazon, I remember thinking, Oh no, how am I going to, what am I going to say? The Bradstone hasn't already said about Amazon. What, since writing that book and then Amazon Unbound, Django Unchained, what, what has changed in your mind most about Amazon and Jeff Bezos? It's been a transformation of
Starting point is 00:15:22 both the company and the guy. And the guy has transformed right in front of our eyes, right? He's gotten all jacked. He got divorced. He has a very publicly prominent new partner in Lauren Sanchez. He's the owner of the Washington Post and competing with Elon for space domination. And now he's retiring as CEO of Amazon. But what drew me to the story or to the idea of a sequel was simply the evolution of the company. In the Everything story, I write about the Kindle, and this was now the Alexa company. The marketplace had gone global. It had gone Hollywood. They had initiated a couple of projects with groceries, hadn't quite gotten it right, and then bought Whole Foods, spawned a whole transportation division. So, look, I didn't think, Scott, that I would be going back to the same terrain, but it was only because the business story was so good that I really thought it deserved a sequel. So I'm not sure I entirely understand what went down with his amateur photography
Starting point is 00:16:28 and MBS and the detectives. How did that all play out? Who was more involved than we thought, less involved? Did it really involve intrigue from overseas where they were trying to gain leverage against the owner of the Washington Post. What, give us your 30,000 foot view of what went down there. So if people remember that saga, they probably remember a couple of overlapping truths, right? There was, there were a brother involved, Lauren Sanchez's brother, Michael Sanchez, who sold their text messages and photographs to the Inquirer. And then, of course, there was an insinuation that the Saudis were involved and maybe MBS had hacked Bezos's phone and was a Trump world.
Starting point is 00:17:14 They obviously had a lot of animosity for Bezos because of his ownership of the Washington Post. So they disentangled it. As I talked to everyone I could, as I explored the legal documents in the case that the Southern District of New York was considering bringing in the whole episode and the FBI looked into it, the underlying truth and my conclusion was that Michael Sanchez delivered the whole kit and caboodle to the editors of the National Enquirer in late 2018, and that there might have been good reason for Bezos and for his representatives to suggest a more complicated truth
Starting point is 00:17:51 involving Trump world or involving the Saudis. Certainly, MBS was no fan of Bezos in the Washington Post. There were Saudi Twitter bot armies that were tweeting against him. And certainly, Donald Trump hated Bezos because of the post coverage. But none of that, there's no evidence that any of that had anything to do with the tabloid newspaper's pursuit of Bezos's relationship. That's where I netted out. I think if we were ever to find out otherwise, it would actually contradict most of the evidence that was ultimately gathered by the FBI and entered into evidence in the Southern District of New York, which really showed the editors and reporters at the Enquirer
Starting point is 00:18:30 getting the information from Michael Sanchez. So was this, in my view, the kind of the ultimate choreography gymnastics in the world of PR, in the history of PR, was a married man with four kids who's the CEO of arguably one of the most digitally disruptive companies in history. This guy understands technology. He understands that pictures that are pixelated can be forwarded. And he decides to send dick pics to his girlfriend and then they get discovered and he becomes a hero. Do you think it was manufactured, or do you think that as part of the narrative, and to huge excess, because what I think about, there was all these implications that it was political intrigue with Trump and MBS, and Bezos would not take this. If he couldn't fight back, who would? He was standing
Starting point is 00:19:22 up for all of us. And then it just died, right? They just let it go. Do you think that this was crafted in a public relations room with Bezos saying, how do I come out of this looking better than I went into it? I don't know that it was wholly manufactured or totally totally disingenuous. As I said, I think in February of 2019, that Bezos had good... I mean, this is the absurdity of this whole situation and the absurdity of the four years of Donald Trump. Bezos had good reason to believe that this was Trump world. I mean, AMI had been doing the dirty business for Donald Trump with Michael Cohen's involvement, as we now know. And, you know, MBS had killed a Washington Post columnist and was trying to seek retribution against the Washington Post. So I don't know that it was wholly disingenuous. I do think it was opportunistic. I do think it was handy for Bezos to come out and to say that the
Starting point is 00:20:22 National Enquirer is trying to embarrass him because of his bold, brave work owning the Washington Post and uncovering the Trump administration and uncovering the murderous record of the Saudi crown prince. There wasn't much evidence there to support it. Obviously, later they did some forensics on Bezos' phone, and this is disputed in cybersecurity circles. But at least a preliminary report showed that it might have been hacked by the Saudis. We've never gotten any proof of that. And then, by the way, Scott, there is the fact that, and this really takes us down a rabbit hole, but the National Enquirer in its negotiations with Bezos and his representatives really was sort of extorting him and trying to get him and his representatives to drop this insinuation. Now, it turns out that they were in a non-prosecution agreement with the Southern District of New York, and it was kind of radioactive for them to even be accused of colluding with the Trump administration. And there's all sorts of additional complexities, like you mentioned a below-the-belt selfie, which, by the way, really didn't exist,
Starting point is 00:21:30 which is a little thing that I discovered in my book. What? Yeah, Michael Sanchez. No dick pic? There is no dick pic. Michael Sanchez had gone to a pornographic escort website and taken an anonymous photograph and given it to the inquirer and passed it off as Bezos, a Bezos personal pic.
Starting point is 00:21:54 And they thought that they had something that incriminating. Now he had given them other photographs that, which were authentic, but nothing that explicit. But I did not know that. Yes. So there are. So the bottom line is Bezos, his big head and the twins are not out there in terms of photographs. I thought that they were out there. I thought he had taken pictures in Florida.
Starting point is 00:22:15 I did not know that. Michael Sanchez's duplicity in this regard was multifaceted. And the editors of the Inquirer were hounding him to deliver the goods, so to speak. He had given them other photographs, which are pretty intimate, but nothing explicit. And he brought a screenshot to a meeting with a National Enquirer reporter, but the editors from the Enquirer FaceTiming, and he showed them something that was something totally different. And so they thought they had it, and Bezos might have thought that they had it as well. Right. So I want to put forward a thesis that I was fascinated, this guy, Cory Doctorow, author, journalist, activist, and his latest book is
Starting point is 00:23:03 Attack Surface, kind of a cool name. Anyways, he put out kind of a tweet storm that really got me thinking. And of course, I'm always looking for points of light around how these companies need to be broken up and they're too powerful. But there's a general consensus that Amazon is great for consumers, that it's deflationary, that when you shop at Amazon, it's like getting a promotion, you save money, right? And his viewpoint, and he put it, I said, look, if you want to sell anything online, you got to sell on Amazon. That's one out of $2. If you want to sell on Amazon,
Starting point is 00:23:39 it's kind of this deal with the devil where you have to sign up for their fulfillment. You have to sign up for their, if you want to be listed in their search engine, you have to advertise with them and spend money. And slowly but surely, you end up paying 30, 40, 45 cents on the dollar to Amazon. And then here's the kicker. You're not allowed to sell your products for less anywhere else on the web. So if you end up paying this inordinate tax to work with Amazon, which you then have to pass through to the end consumer, and you can never sell your products for less on another platform that, say, isn't charging you these exorbitant fees, that in fact, Amazon is bad for the consumer
Starting point is 00:24:15 and inflationary. Do you buy into that line of reasoning? I mean, this is actually the substance of Carl Racine's lawsuit, the Attorney General of Washington, D.C., which he filed in May. The European Union has looked into this. These are the so-called most favored nation clauses that most retailers have. Certainly Walmart and Target are going to have them. Stipulating that a seller can't list for less elsewhere. And the difference online is that all these companies have their pricing bots trained on each other. So they know exactly when the price is lower elsewhere, and then Amazon will just rip you out of search results. I agree with everything. I think that that's probably a productive line of inquiry for regulators and lawmakers, except for one thing,
Starting point is 00:25:03 which is that you have to sell on Amazon. And Scott, as we know, on the internet, competition is always a click away. It's maybe an exaggeration to say that there are any platforms that are anywhere near as powerful as Amazon's. But over the past five years, the greatest story in tech and in business has been Shopify. Walmart and Target have made some promising inroads in terms of creating other marketplaces. So I think that's where the regulators are going to have a challenge, showing that this most favored nation clause, which is pretty common in retail, is improper when Amazon does it because Amazon is a monopoly. Well, Amazon has great market share, maybe 50% of all e-commerce, but it would be a misnomer to say that there are no alternatives. I think there are. So let's talk a little bit about that threat. If you look at the biggest retailers, I remember when they looked at the advertisers from when Tom Brady was first
Starting point is 00:26:03 in the Super Bowl, the advertisers were AOL and Sears. I mean, it's just amazing how much things have changed. And I think I read somewhere nine of the 10 biggest retailers or eight of the 10 biggest retailers have changed over in the last 20 or three years. I think it's still Walmart and I think Target's still on it or maybe Home Depot, but the rest have just swapped out, JCPenney's and Sears. So generally speaking, everything everywhere ends. What are the existential threats to Amazon? You talked about Shopify. Is that number one?
Starting point is 00:26:33 No, no. I mean, because Shopify has had tremendous success, but the Amazon juggernaut has not slowed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do think maybe we could generalize it a little bit and say Amazon serves so many constituencies now that it can't possibly please them all. And there are likely to be ways for upstarts to make inroads. And Shopify is a great illustration. But there's a regulatory challenge for sure. And just the distraction that'll come with all that regulatory attention. I think a stagnating stock price is going to be a big concern to Amazon because this is a $1.7 trillion company right now.
Starting point is 00:27:15 And hiring technologists and artificial intelligence scientists is all... The compensation is so stock-heavy at Amazon. So continuing to attract people and retain executives if that stock price starts to slow down, I think could be a big challenge. And without Bezos there at the helm, Jassy might be a little less inspirational in terms of keeping that 10-year talent at Amazon that knows how that crazy place operates. I would say that's kind of number two. And then number three is the prospect of organized labor and unionization of the workforce. And Amazon employs, you know, over a million people right now in overall hundreds of thousands in its fulfillment centers. We saw organized labor with a, I'm not going to say a near miss because
Starting point is 00:28:03 they got kind of trounced, but in Bessemer, Alabama. And if we start to see the organized labor movement in the U.S. kind of pick up momentum, that would hit Amazon in a way that it doesn't hit the other big tech companies. Yeah, my sense is that like everything, well, my sense is unions have been, the best thing you can have is to have a weak, incompetent enemy. I think unions have been fantastic for corporate America. I think they've done a terrible job. But anyways, Amazon is the largest recruiter of my kids out of my class. When I say kids, I mean the 28-year-olds deciding what they're going to do with their life. And they all come to my office hours and pretend
Starting point is 00:28:39 like, I've gotten off from Amazon and off from a small company. I don't know what to do. And I'm like, stop fucking wasting my time. You're going to grunge and bad coffee. You're going to Seattle. They all pretend like they all put themselves through this drama and then they pick the best brand. But anyway, if you think about Amazon's market capitalization now, do you think that there's, is their biggest big new thing, do you think it's going to be healthcare? Do you think it's going to be more around media? What do you think is the next kind of quote-unquote big, big thing for Amazon? Right.
Starting point is 00:29:14 Interesting. There's a couple to choose from. You selected two of them. I would put supermarkets and the opportunity of physical retail into that. Supermarkets? Yeah, they're stamping out these Amazon Fresh supermarkets, a brand independent from Whole Foods, so wide selection, no organic subselection.
Starting point is 00:29:35 And then they're using the GoStore technology to the cameras in the ceiling and the weights in the shelves to allow people to walk out without waiting in line. And whether you think that's a differentiator or not, I expect that we're going to start seeing Amazon supermarkets inside every major shopping retail center. Do you think they'll get their acquisition or they'll just build their own? Well, they made an acquisition with Whole Foods and they're growing alongside it in much the same way that they did with Zappos and diapers.com.
Starting point is 00:30:05 They buy some of these franchises, they learn from them, they allow their entrepreneur founders to run them independently, and then Amazon just goes and does what it's going to do. So in terms of the sheer... Well, they're selecting very big markets, right? Healthcare is multiple trillions of dollars, satellite internet access with their constellation of satellites to compete with SpaceX's Starlink. It's still on the drawing board, but could be a big opportunity if they ever are able to launch those. And then the opportunity of physical retail, I would put as probably the big three with supermarkets maybe being the nearest and most realistic one. And do you think that they go into, I mean, you see, what do you think is the likelihood? I've been talking this for a while and every year I get it wrong.
Starting point is 00:30:56 What do you think is the likelihood that they'll prophylactically spin a unit to try and stave off antitrust? I remember those predictions. I don't. At some point, I'll be right, Brad. At some point. 2085, I told you. I don't see them doing that in the same way that I don't see Amazon giving a dividend or buying back stock. Bezos doesn't seem to go in for that kind of financial engineering. And he gets a lot of benefit, I think some very subtle benefits, from having the companies conjoined. So Amazon Retail pays wholesale rates for AWS. beta customer for every new AWS service that it introduces that brings that service immediately up to scale, which is, of course, Amazon Retail. Alexa is basically a consumer
Starting point is 00:31:52 facing application that sits on AWS servers. There's lots of ways in which those companies nourish each other. And they draw from the same talent pool. They have the same cultural norms. And look, there's probably a personal reason too, which is Bezos' empire building and probably draws a lot of satisfaction from having all those units conjoined, for having the relationships between them kind of obscured,
Starting point is 00:32:24 and for drawing a lot of small connections between the businesses. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for?
Starting point is 00:32:54 And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average US company deploys more than 100 apps
Starting point is 00:33:22 and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about the MGM UA, or I guess it's just MGM acquisition. So $8.5 billion.
Starting point is 00:33:57 It strikes me that there was one guy going through a midlife crisis who overpaid for it 10 years ago and managed to find another midlife crisis guy to pay more for it. Do you think that was a good purchase or did they overpay? Well, it seems like the market thinks Amazon overpaid, but Amazon has the resources. It can't overpay, right? Right, it can't overpay. right? It can't overpay. But what I'll say is that I think Amazon, as usual, has a lot of ways to win, a lot of ways to monetize those assets. So the biggest reason that they made the acquisition, the stated reason, was to acquire the intellectual property, the James Bond franchise, the Rocky franchise, Legally Blonde, RoboCop, etc., which they can spin in a million different directions. But Amazon also has IMDb TV and a growing advertising business,
Starting point is 00:34:51 and they can dump 17,000 hours of MGM TV programming into these streaming services and advertise against it as they're going out to buy NFL programming and Premier League soccer and Major League Baseball. And so there's a growing ad business there. And increasingly, there's Prime, which started as a two-day shipping service and now has gradually moved into this package of content benefits, where people pay $119 a year for what they don't know, but it turns them into big Amazon customers. So they have a lot of ways to monetize the asset. And there will be more as MGM kind of gets back some of the rights to that content over the years. And, you know, from Amazon's perspective, probably well worth the investment.
Starting point is 00:35:38 So I want to switch to Brad Stone. I want to get to know the real Brad Stone. So my sense is you have a really interesting career. You're a reporter at Bloomberg. You write books that do well. And I've always said that writing a book was the worst paying thing I ever did and the most important thing I ever did professionally. It was really kind of changed the trajectory and, if you will, my brand. And I get the sense it kind of did the same thing for you. You are a well-respected business or tech reporter, but the everything store kind of, and it felt like it just took you to another level. I don't mean to put words in your mouth.
Starting point is 00:36:24 Do you think that's a, I'm trying to get to, I think journalists, if they're serious about getting to the next level, I think you got to write a book. Your thoughts? That there are different models. And to some, it's a calling card for larger opportunities in the world of public speaking. And I did a little bit of that and never found it, you know, sort of my forte. There was probably a moment there where I was at the, you know, the Hotel Marriott in Toronto, getting ready to speak to the Canadian Association of Hardware Makers about Amazon.
Starting point is 00:36:53 I think I went after you. Exactly. I'm making that up. But it was something like that. And then I thought, you know, what am I doing? And then, you know, eventually wrote a book about Uber and Airbnb and now the Amazon book. So I'm grateful for the opportunity, but that's kind of what I love. And I think there's a, yeah, there's sort of another kind of school of thought.
Starting point is 00:37:13 And look, this is probably the more unprofitable path, but it's the book writing for the sake of book writing. And, you know, with all the accoutrements of it, the public speaking and etc. as being more of an obligation than a financial opportunity. But yeah, I mean, I'm writing the books because I get weirdly enraptured with a subject and I like to go down the rabbit hole. And when I don't have that, that's when my existential dread kind of creeps in. I like having a project. And if you were going to write, well, what is your next book? If you've written two on Amazon, what is next? I'm in recovery now. I just need to take some time. And while I'm still talking about this book quite a bit, and then figure out what's out there that inspires me.
Starting point is 00:38:04 You know, the reason I did this was because there was this whole new chapter, a story of transformation of Amazon, of Bezos. So if I can find something that's half as interesting, what generally interests me are changes in transportation and new transportation technologies, and then any climate. I mean, I know that that's obviously huge, obviously a lot has been written and there are many great books about climate change and our ability to get out of it. And he waxed poetically for a minute or so about how he thought that we can invent our way out of any box. And I would like to see that. I would like to see the invention that helps to address the problem of climate change,
Starting point is 00:38:56 if it exists. All right. Lightning around. First thing's a pop in your head. Best pieces of media you've consumed recently. I've already paused too long for the best thing that has popped into my head. I get a ton of pleasure from reading the Sunday New York Times. The Sunday New York Times.
Starting point is 00:39:18 I just sit there with a cup of coffee as the kids are asleep. Hard copy. Hard copy. Get it every week and just read it cover to cover. And it all, it just feels like a really nourishing weekly ritual. How old are your kids, Brent? I have three teenage daughters. So they're, they're sleeping in. Advice to dads of teenage daughters. Enjoy the early years, have fun and don't take the eye rolls too seriously. Advice on being a good husband.
Starting point is 00:39:56 Did I ask the wrong guy? No, not at all. Advice on being a good husband. Um, leave your, leave your work in the office and enjoy your time together. Best piece of advice or a piece of advice that you've held onto that stood the test a ton. Steven Levy, the tech journalist told me when I was writing my first book, find the straight line. And what he, what he meant was real world business stories are messy.
Starting point is 00:40:22 Things have over events overlap. Characters come in, they leave. The facts are messy. Find the straight line. Find the narrative that runs throughout and tell the story in the way that your readers want to consume it. And I feel like I've had that top of mind in every book project I've embarked on, and it's helped me quite a bit. Brad Stone is the Senior Executive Editor for Global Technology at Bloomberg News and the author of four books, including his latest, Amazon Unbound, Tencent, and Baidu, he's a regular contributor to Bloomberg's technology newsletter, Fully Charged, and to the daily Bloomberg TV news program, Bloomberg Technology, and joins us from his home in the Bay Area. Brad, thanks for your time and stay safe. Thank you, Scott. So I watched the final episode, as many of you did, of Mirror of Easttown,
Starting point is 00:41:30 and I was just so moved by it. And a couple of things struck me. One is that HBO, there's something in the water. There's something really powerful about the culture of HBO. We look at, talk about companies from the outside, and we talk about their investments or the capital structure, the leadership, the CEO. But it's difficult to ascertain what is going on with the culture and also how powerful it is. And that is HBO has clearly maintained a culture where they are able to produce superior product on less money. If you look at the content budget for HBO and the amount of Emmys they win, it's approximately $70 million per Emmy. Or put another way, they basically approximately $70 million per Emmy. Or put another way, they basically invest 70 million bucks per Emmy. Amazon, it takes about 300 or
Starting point is 00:42:10 350 million, which means the culture at HBO is consistently able to produce better content for less. They are punching above their weight class. Can that last forever? I don't know, but it's still there. And I think this was a great example. But more than that, more than that, I think this was really a story about what is the most enduring and powerful relationship. And that is the bond between a mother and child. In this instance, specifically between mother and son. If you think about the really enduring relationships
Starting point is 00:42:38 in your life, the singular relationship, most people will say it's the relationship they have with their mother because of the little investments she made every day. The key to success, the key to success for people is a lot of things. It's a soup and a chemistry and amalgam of where they're born, their education, how much income their family has, their grit, their opportunities, their hard work, their character, but it's all couched. It's all set against the context of one thing. And that one thing is, do you have someone in your life that is irrationally passionate about your wellbeing?
Starting point is 00:43:20 The distinct of what a jerk you are as a 15-year-old, distinctive being an obnoxious eight-year-old, distinctive letting them down at the age of 22 or not reciprocating a fraction of the love or the affection they have demonstrated for you, they continue to be irrationally passionate about your well-being. That is the secret sauce, in my view, of being a man, of being a man, is one figuring out a way to provide the resources and the love and the empathy to show effective, irrational passion for your family's well-being. And then, in my view, what it means to be a real man or a real woman is when you get to a point in your life where you can show that same irrational passion for the well-being of a child that isn't yours. When I think about my mom, I think about, okay, instinctively, she had no choice. She was just irrationally passionate about my well-being. From the moment I was born, she had no choice. But I also think about my dad's third wife, my stepmom, Linda. And I think about the fact that she became irrationally passionate around my well-being. I think that's what it means to be a wonderful man or a wonderful woman. And that is you can garner the resources and you collide those resources with the sheer character, the sheer love, the sheer empathy to show an irrational passion for someone else's well-being. That's what it means to be a man. That's what it means to be a woman. Are you in a position to,
Starting point is 00:44:47 after you're the people closest to you are taking care of you, are you in a position to show or really demonstrate concern for the well-being of someone outside of your family? Our producers are Caroline Shagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard,
Starting point is 00:45:02 please follow, download, and subscribe. By the way, we are on the hills of my other podcast, Pivot. We're coming for your bitch-ass, Pivot. Anyways, muchas gracias. Thank you for listening to The Prop G Show from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week on Monday and Thursday.
Starting point is 00:45:20 Bye. Thursday. Well, I feel I want to apologize to Jeff Bezos. I've been saying I can't believe this guy would be that stupid. It doesn't sound like he was. So I need to correct the record. I did not realize that there in fact weren't dick pics. I thought there were. Well, and let's be clear. They might have been exchanging such intimate photos.
Starting point is 00:45:48 We don't know. But that is not what Michael Sanchez delivered to the National Enquirer, which is just one of the little, tiny little too-good-to-be-true tidbits in this whole sordid saga. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you. Deliver that feeling to your customers every time. Klaviyo turns your customer data into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS, and more, making every moment count.
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