The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Office Hours: Auto Industry Rundles, Fintech Winners, and the Future of Office Space

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Scott answers a question about Tesla’s new monthly subscription service. He also shares his thoughts on stand-out fintech players, offers a prediction for the future of coworking spaces, and gives career advice to someone looking to build economic security for their family. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. Welcome to the PropG Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatpropertymedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatpropertymedia.com. Reach out to us. We want to hear from you. Not really, but somewhat. Anyways, first question. G'day, Scott. This is Peter from a very locked down Sydney. Tesla is now offering

customers a way to subscribe and pay a monthly fee instead of $10,000 upfront for their premium driver-assisted features, full self-driving, FSD. How significant is this moment for Tesla? Some folks on Twitter compare it to Amazon starting AWS. Is this Tesla's first move of becoming a platform company, driving a growing revenue from reoccurring subscription services, even licensing their software? You could be driving a Prius, but it is using Tesla software. Look forward to your answer and hope to see you in Australia soon once we've sorted out our terrible COVID vaccine rollout and opened up our borders. So thanks very much, Peter,

and congratulations on living in what is one of the most beautiful, dynamic places on earth. I love Sydney. I remember going there and thinking, true story, I went to Sydney in 2000 and within 24 hours, I decided I was going to move there.

And I interviewed with a venture capital firm there and I had absolutely nothing keeping me in San Francisco where I was living at the time. I was going to move there. And I interviewed with a venture capital firm there. And I had absolutely nothing keeping me in San Francisco where I was living at the time. I was single. I didn't have a ton of friends. I think I'd just been kicked off the board of Red Envelope. Nice, good for me. Nice moment.

Kicked out of the band you started. Anyway, not what you asked. But I'm down in Australia and I'm like, that's it, I'm moving here. I just loved it there. I loved the attitude. And I interviewed with this VC firm or spoke to them, I shouldn't say interviewed, and they were, had like $200 million under management. And they were either the biggest or the second biggest VC firm in all of Australia. And I'd raised like $80 million just for my own

companies. And I thought, wow, this is a smaller market and came to the conclusion that, and this may be right or wrong, that Australia would be a great place to spend your money, but not the right place for me to make my money. Anyway, did move down there, but who knows? It's not too late. It's a long life. Anyways, anyways, yeah, I don't see this. Maybe I'm not connecting the dots around this being a cloud-based platform or an AWS. What I do think it represents is that if you look at the innovator's dilemma, what gets in the way of a car company moving to a better business model, which is rather than running shitty ads with Sam Elliott saying, you know, like a rock during the Super Bowl. I think GM spends $2 billion on marketing. What does Tesla spend?

Zero. Donut hole. Nada. Nada. Sato. Right? They spend nothing. And then what happens?

What gets in the way of these businesses being shitty transactional businesses where you run a bunch of bad ads, get them to buy the car, cash the check, and then in two or three years, the dealership starts bothering you again to try and buy another car? This should absolutely be a recurring revenue business. And the biggest innovation, I think, in automobiles other than electric was moving to leases where you just got to say, all right, I pay $399 a month. I turn it back in. I don't have to deal with the incredible friction of selling a car. I thought that was probably the biggest innovation was the 24 to 36-month lease. The problem now with car companies moving to a much better business model, which would be recurring revenue, and that is, say, for $1,000 or $1,500 a month, if you're in that weight class to own a Tesla, you just get a Tesla. And then in 24 months or 36 months, they give you another Tesla. And if you're at a certain monthly fee, maybe you can trade them in every six months and get the Model X, or if you want to try the new S, whatever it might be, and they just handle everything.

So this is going to seem unrelated, and it is, but I will try and relate it. When I go out to dinner, I like to have other people order for me, even if it's the waiter. Give me the two best things, what would you have? Why? I'm a big believer in the notion that we all have a limited, a finite amount of good decisions in us. So on anything that's not very important, I like other people to make the decision. And I like to focus all of my decision bandwidth on stuff that i think is important and making decisions around your car and buying insurance all that shit jesus christ that is just a total suck of energy

and time so i love the idea of saying to tesla i'm on board you decide what car and color you should figure out enough about me. Maybe I'll give you some input, but I just pay a monthly fee and Tesla takes me off the automobile table. Now, why can they do that? Because they don't have this legacy liability called an auto dealer network where the wealthiest man or one of the wealthiest men in Texas owns the Toyota dealerships. And that's how they make money. And it's been a capital-light strategy for the automobile companies where their distribution is financed by local entrepreneurs. But they have to run their cars and their products through that distribution facility. And that part of the supply chain has its own ad budget.

And they don't actually make that much money selling the cars. They make all their money in selling used cars and in service. But what Tesla could do, because it doesn't have that legacy liability of that distribution network, specifically auto dealerships, they could do a recurring revenue thing that says, hey, you don't have to come into a dealership. We don't even sell you a car. We just enter into this relationship. You enter into a relationship with Tesla headquarters, and we deliver a car to you, and you tell us if you like it. And if you don't, maybe we replace it in three, six months, 12 months, or maybe you pick something. But even going through all the options and figuring out all the shit for a car, I'm a bit of a car head. So I kind of like that. But even as I get older, I don't want to deal

with it. I am a guy, I'm a 46 year old guy, 56, but let's say 46, who's in the midst of a midlife crisis that I will grow out of in about 40 or 50 years, figure out what car I want, figure out what Tesla I want, and deliver it to me. And they could probably get 90% of the way there. So I think this is more about recurring revenue, moving to a better business model, a SaaS-like business model that's more membership-based, that focuses on the relationship instead of the supply chain, specifically auto dealerships. I'm not sure I make the connection with it being a new type of platform,

but I think this is a step towards rather than charging 200 bucks a month for the full self-driving package, they're going to charge $1,200 a month for the full package, meaning the full car. Anyways, thank you for the question, Peter. And I will see you in Sydney, my brother.

We will absolutely, we will absolutely go out and cause some trouble in Sydney once both brother. We will absolutely, we will absolutely go out and cause some trouble in Sydney once both our nations get their shit together. Question number two. Hi, Scott. This is Owen here from Dublin. I'm a big fan of the show. My question is, I currently work for a government agency investing in fintech startups, and I've just submitted a thesis proposal for a PhD in relation to the impact of fintechs on the future business models of banking. One of the areas I'd like to focus on is the

rundle idea. And I'd be really keen to get your thoughts on who is who maybe is the current winner or the current fintech or bank that you see as the potential to be able to roll out a fintech rundle in the future? I went from Dublin. Thank you so much. And I like these questions because they force me to think about this and try and learn. I think fintech is just so exciting. If you think about kind of my big theme around where you want to position yourself in terms of your human and your financial capital is dispersion. And we're going to disperse headquarters from the initial provider of value, that's the worker, past the office industrial complex to the purchaser or the organization, right? So you're going to use Zoom and Microsoft Teams and your home and computers and laptops and your devices to rent your human capital and bypass or disperse directly to the consumer, or the consumer here being the company. We're going to disperse healthcare over or leapfrog

doctors' offices and hospitals. We're dispersing media away from the gatekeepers, right to our smartphones. And I think we're going to disperse finance or DeFi. And that is the branch system is broken or it's expensive. And the ability to, as Professor Evans talked about in our interview, take out humans out of the process and kind of split the cost savings and also do away with maybe some of the unconscious bias that's inherent in a system with humans. I think that

dispersion of finance and trust away from traditional banking and also from central banks who are losing, especially in developing markets, a lot of credibility around their fiat currency to Bitcoin. I think it's a super exciting place to be. So who are likely the winners? The megastores is PayPal, but it's weird. It's a megastores that feels a little bit dinosaurus. PayPal, even as new as it is, feels a little bit older, a little bit dusty. Unfortunately, I think it's going to be a mix of kind of the existing guys. I think Apple could be big in this. Goldman's not stupid. I wouldn't be surprised with Marcus that they do something interesting. I'd like to see the government innovate around this. I think they're going to

eventually have a digital payment system or a digital currency. I think that would be smart of them because being the default currency, whether it's digital or fiat, is an incredible aircraft carrier squadron. And what do I mean by that? You get to see the flows of power and information if they have to run through U.S. organizations. And you also get greater teeth in terms of sanctions when you want to stop people from doing business with Western companies. So it's easy to enforce or much easier to enforce sanctions when you're the default currency for 66% of currency reserves globally. And if we're going to move to a digital currency, we want to be the default digital currency. So look, I think it's a fantastic field. I think it's hard. I think you look at Square, the progress

they're making. I love some of these startups. To a certain extent, fintech is the case study for a robust ecosystem. What do I mean by that? There's no one player dominating. It's not like operating systems where you have iOS or Android. It's not search. We have one player with 93%. It's not e-commerce where 50% of online is one player. There is a few players and a lot of smaller players.

I love Walla out of Argentina. Pierre Paolo Barbieri is doing just this, he's this incredibly impressive young man who is banking the unbanked. I mean, it's just so obvious that, where do you want to start? Where do innovators typically start? They start with the markets

that the big players aren't interested in. And if 50% of Argentina is unbanked, they still have money. You make their life so much easier. And then as they come into their prime income earning years, they stick with the kind of the cash wallet they have. They stick with the credit card that you issued them that's on their phone. And then you start invading Peru and Chile and Mexico. They launched in Mexico. So I think there's a room for a lot of different players here. The one with the most momentum right now feels like Square with Cash App that seems to have caught fire. But my gosh, there are just so many places it feels like to make money in fintech.

As a matter of fact, if you look at the unicorn universe, by the way, in this last quarter, we produced more unicorns than ever before. I think we produced 154 unicorns. And this quarter last year, Q2 of last year, we produced 25. Granted, we're in the midst of a full-blown pandemic. But we have, even quarter on quarter, record number of unicorns. And what is the number one sector that's produced the most unicorns? Fintech. That's right.

And for those of you who are wondering, the US is still number one. China is number two. And when you look at China's ascent, it appears that it's hurting Europe. And that is, there aren't that many new unicorns coming out of Europe. But anyways, Fintech, fantastic place. Hard to pick one winner. There's a bunch of them

that I think are doing really well. I think it's going to be a mix of the traditional players and some new guys. I have avoided that question successfully. If it sounds like I really don't know what I'm talking about, trust your instincts. But Owen from Dublin, what do I know? The dog is coming to Ireland.

Why? I've been there a long time. I like the people. I like the beer. I like the general vibe. I will come in summer. I will come in summer. Anyway, not what you asked.

Thanks for the question, Owen from Dublin. Okay, we have one quick break before our final two questions. Stay with us. 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. 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.

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Welcome back. Next question. Hi, Prof G. I'm Damian. I'm based in London, and I work for a co-working company called Techspace. We have locations in both London and Berlin. We help scaling technology companies through providing workspaces and a community to help them scale. What do you suggest we focus on to delight our customers and provide the office space that tech companies want in a post-pandemic world? Wow, Damien from London.

This is such an international show. We have all these Australian and British and Irish people. This is very interesting. Because I'm insecure, I'm immediately like, why don't Americans like me? Anyway, so here's the thing. Coworking right now, the problem with coworking is that you've had to sign leases, and you probably signed leases when office space was trading at all-time highs. In a 12-month period, San Francisco registered the greatest and the lowest vacancy rates in office space in history. So you might have the legacy liability of non-economic leases, but let's assume you have decent leases. What do companies want?

I'm actually quite bullish on co-working, and that is companies are going to want more flexibility, which you offer, or I think you would offer. But more than anything, I think what they're really going to want is they're going to want something that really appeals to millennials who are more social and they're going to want something that's aspirational. Because I think basically office space, it used to be where you housed all workers while they were working. I don't think that's what office space is anymore. I think it's a meeting space or it's socialization space or it's recruiting space. And that is, and this is pulse marketing, but I think you can extrapolate this to the broader ecosystem. I started a company called Section 4, which is an online education company. We're hitting about 80 employees. And we don't have an office, I'd say about 20, 25 people in New York and the rest are dispersed across the United States.

But when we get together in New York or elsewhere, we want it to be really conducive to socialization, to people meeting, establishing bonds, a lot of conference rooms, a lot of great spaces, if you will, a lot of a design that sets up random interaction, as opposed to just cubes, right? It'll be in nicer spaces, nicer parts of town. We're going to spend a lot more money on offsites. So I think it's going to be more inspiration and less perspiration, if you will, in terms of a great space, obviously flexibility, fantastic broadband, kind of the basics. And what we're going to do is pre-pandemic, we had 8,000 feet on Crosby and Spring, costing us 70 or 80 grand a month, right? And one of the few smart moves I've made

is two weeks into the pandemic, true story, I called a guy who I had interviewed who is an epidemiologist at the University of Maryland. I said, what do you make of this whole COVID thing? And he said, Scott, it's worse than anyone thinks. And he freaked me out because I have a lot of respect for this guy. And so I went into my office and I said, everybody go home. And I peaced out. I went to,

I'm a bit of a neurotic guy, created a spreadsheet, how far from a hospital, a teaching hospital, hospitals with respirators, low density resort. And I ended up in the Riviera Maya, Mexico, long story, ended up being great with my family. But I also, while I was on vacation, called our tenant or a company we were subleasing from and said, I want out. I said, well, if you want out, you're going to lose a year's deposit. I wrote a check or basically let them keep a year's worth of rent, about 850 grand. And it was smart. I walk by that office now, 15 months later, it's still empty. I think, and so what are we going to do? Will we have some type of office space? Yeah, but it's going to be much smaller

and it's going to be much more aspirational, inspiring. It's basically almost going to, I don't want to call it a party pad, but a place to people come together and appreciate each other. And absolutely, I don't think I'll ever sign a multi-year lease again. Long way of saying flexibility.

Most attractive thing about co-working spaces for post-pandemic world is probably their flexibility. 86% of companies plan to use flexible space as a key part of their real estate strategies moving forward, according to a CBRE survey of companies around the globe. Where young people in the company want to go hang out so they can meet other people, mentors, friends, co-workers, and a place that a recruit walk in and think, I want to spend some time here. Thank you for the question and best of luck with Techspace. Question number four. Hi, Prof G. My name is Shahan and I live in Melbourne, Australia with my young family.

I'm a longtime listener and love just how you're able to get in the minds of young people, particularly young men, and reflect using your own life experiences. It's what keeps me coming back. To my question, I'm in my early 30s, working strategy, and on paper have had a really solid career. However, since leaving consulting a few years ago, I've never had a manager who was one, from a pure strategy background for themselves, and two, really good at providing specific constructive feedback, regardless of how hard I probed. As I look to push into higher levels of leadership, I feel like I'm going a little blind with some gaps in my foundation. I'm doing an MBA, but beyond that, do you have any suggestions on how I can go about making sense of what I'm missing? Or should I stop overthinking things

and just fake it till I make it? Thanks. Okay, that's it. I'm moving to Australia. I mean, Sydney, now Melbourne. By the way, I have a Melbourne story. I went to a World Economic Forum back in 1999. I peaked professionally. I was at a shaved head, had started an e-commerce company that was about to go public red envelope, and everybody thought I was smarter than I was. And I got invited to Davos and this thing called Global Tech Pioneers or Global Leaders of Tomorrow. And you I got invited to Davos and this thing called Global Tech Pioneers or Global Leaders of Tomorrow. And you got to go to Davos for free and hang out. And CEOs of big companies wanted to talk to you because supposedly we were Yoda because we'd started internet companies. And the World Economic Forum, which people are very cynical about, but I think it's

a wonderful organization that does good work. It's important to get people together. I remember going down to this bar in this shitty hotel because obviously Bill Gates and George Soros got the nicer rooms and the nicer hotels, but I was staying at this little like chalet in Davos, which is a ski resort. And I went down and no joke, at the bar were Warren Beatty and Yasser Arafat.

And I'm like, okay, Warren and Yasser. And my point is that I think when people have drinks together, they're less likely to declare war on each other. Not that Yasser was going to declare war on Warren Beatty or vice versa. But I think it's important to get people together to talk about ideas. So long way away, I'm a great, I'm a big fan of World Again Forum. And they did this South Pacific, what was it? I forget what it was. And it was the, they did a, they did a Asia summit and they held it

in Melbourne and I went down. And at the time there was a big anti-globalization pusher movement. And there was this enormous, we had it at this weird place called the casino, I think it was called. And overnight, a group of protesters surrounded the hotel and wouldn't let anyone leave. It was just, okay, I come to Australia and I go to Melbourne and I'm trapped in this weird casino-like hotel. So that was my introduction to Melbourne. And fortunately, I stayed another week and found it to be just an incredibly charming city. It kind of reminded me a little bit of San Francisco, but with good government, if you will, and not a bunch of people who conflate luck with success who are actually ruining the world, i.e. tech people. Anyway, absolutely love Melbourne. Where would I live? Melbourne or Sydney? I don't know, maybe Perth,

most remote city in the world. Most remote city in the world as identified by a city over a million people that it's furthest from another city with a million people, Perth, the most remote city in the world, but a spectacular place, reminded me of California in the 60s. Anyway, enough from the Australian Tourist Board. So look, you're a thoughtful guy and it sounds to me, brother,

like you're making all the right moves. And I can hear in your voice that you have a young family and you are very focused on doing really well and providing for your young family. That's a wonderful instinct. I didn't get my shit together really together and really get focused until my oldest son had the poor judgment to come rotating out of my girlfriend. And I'm like, oh shit, it's no longer about me. So you're getting an MBA. I think that's a great move, certification. I think finding mentors and asking for help at work is really important because most positions, there's two or three people qualified, but it kind of comes down to relationships.

I would say while your kids are really young, work really hard, burn a lot of fuel. This is gonna sound terrible, but I think the dad adds very little value in the beginning. I'm gonna get a lot of shit for that, but it's mostly a science experiment to keep it alive. That's mostly about the mom, not to say you shouldn't contribute, but I think I've always thought my job

was to create economic security for my family. That's not to say that, I mean, my girlfriend works at Goldman Sachs. And if your wife or partner is really good at making money, sometimes being a man is getting out of their way and being really helpful. I'm doing a lot of backpedaling right now. But I like that I hear in your voice, you want to take economic responsibility for your family and be successful. You're getting certified.

Certification is an incredibly important MBA. It sounds like you're doing well at your company. I would say every three to five years, check into the market because oftentimes the people who make the most money are typically people who over the course of their career have left a few times. Try and get to a place where you can build wealth through equity. And that is when you always make money on salary, you tend to pay a higher tax rate and you tend to have a very natural tendency to raise your lifestyle to your current income. I've always spent pretty much everything I made in current income,

but the reason why I'm economically secure is I always, since the age of 26, I've had companies where I was either the largest equity holder or an equity holder. So get to a company where you feel there's upside and what is the greatest or the second greatest vehicle for savings in the history of the Western economy. First is probably a home, but second for the information workers is equity. So mentorship, getting certified, asking for help, checking in on the market and seeing what your worth is and

if it makes sense occasionally to move organizations. Most companies look at the individual through the lens through which they were hired. And then all of a sudden they find out, oh, they're going to be an SVP somewhere else. And then they realize that person was qualified for that position internally. And sometimes they don't see that. And try and get to a company where you can build wealth through equity. Because that is on a tax basis, lifestyle basically everything that's where you build uh real wealth but uh without knowing the specifics your organization i don't feel comfortable giving more advice than that but uh sheen i i just like the cut of your jib

uh keep keep working my brother and if you're incredibly stressed out and it's a strain on your relationship with your family and you're worried that you're in over your head, that just means you're making progress and you're learning. So anyways, best of luck, Jushin. Thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at profgmedia.com. dot com. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. Hello, Claire.

Hello, Claire. Assistant producer, AP. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Thursday. 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? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge,

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