This Week in Startups - Amazon’s Dave Clark joins Flexport, Bird layoffs, Twitter’s bring-your-own algo, Multiverse, Ken Griffin gets into crypto | E1479

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Today, we talk about Flexport Founder Ryan Petersen bringing on Amazon’s Dave Clark to be CEO (2:56). Then, we discuss Bird laying off almost a quarter of their team (17:32), and we talk about Twitter working on a bring-your-own algorithm feature (28:24). Our Startup of the Day is Multiverse, a startup building a pipeline of apprenticeships as a college alternative (37:47). We cover Citadel getting into crypto (47:25) and SEC Chair Gary Gensler hinting there might be some overhauls coming to payment for order flow (54:33). We end with a recap of Jason on Megyn Kelly’s show (1:00:10) and Kara Swisher leaving NYT for Vox (1:17:07). (0:00) Jason and Molly tee up today’s tech news (2:56) Flexport founder, Ryan Petersen announced that he recruited the former Amazon Consumer CEO Dave Clark to join Flexport (10:27) Coda - The All-in-one doc for teams, get a $1,000 credit at https://coda.io/twist (11:42) Climate tech being driven by consumers, wrapping up Flexport story (17:32) Bird to lay off 23% of its staff, accounting for ~138 workers (27:09) Odoo - Get your first app free and a $1000 credit at https://odoo.com/twist (28:24) Twitter working on custom timelines according to app researcher Jane Wong (36:33) ActiveCampaign - Get 10% off your ActiveCampaign subscription today at https://activecampaign.com/promo/twist (37:47) SotD: Multiverse - Companies like Microsoft, Citi, and Verizon are opening up new career pathways without college using the Apprenticeship matching startup Multiverse (47:25) Citadel Securities Is Building a Crypto Trading Marketplace (According to Coindesk Sources) (54:33) SEC Chair Gary Gensler hinted that there might be some overhauls coming to PFOF (payment for order flow) (1:00:10) Jason on Megyn Kelly (1:17:07) Kara Swisher leaving NYT for Vox (1:24:17) If you are a founder pre-series A, you are invited to our Founder University Two-Day intensive on June 13-14!

Hey, everybody, we got a big news show for you today. It is Wednesday. We're at the top of the mountain. It's windy up here, Molly. There's a lot going on. It's windy, and there's an avalanche of news. So a little thing that went by the other day that we didn't even get around to covering was the fact that the head of Amazon's Consumer Retail Division, Dave Clark, left.

But then today come to find out he is going to be the new CEO of Flexport, meaning that founder, Ryan Peterson, is stepping back to be executive chairman. Lots to unpack there. Amazing. Great, great job. That's a serious get. And the scooter app bird is laying off almost a quarter of its team. We're going to talk about these layoffs in context and how you can learn for them as a capital allocator or a founder or somebody who's working in the startup industry. Yeah. Speaking of birds, I believe I've heard a little bird whispering about a possible feature that Twitter might do. Looks like Twitter's doing it. Bring your own algorithm. Yeah, this is going to be great. B-Y-O-A. If you don't like the algorithm, they're, providing you, hey, maybe pick one written by an independent open source provider. This could change everything in social media, including the toxicity. Maybe the people who are the loudest and the most annoying will get less prominence in your feed. Or maybe you can make your feed total chaos. We have an incredible startup of the day today. It's called multiverse, which thankfully is unrelated to

the metaverse or Dr. Strange. Instead, they're building a pipeline of apprenticeships as a college alternative. I love apprenticeships as a career path. Love that. Love it. And then we're going to wrap with a quick hit on Citadel getting into crypto and speaking of institutional investors, Gary Gensler and the SEC, hinting that there might be some overhauls in the payment for order flow space coming for Robin Hood. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Coda. Cota is the all-in-one dock for teams. If you've got a stack of niche workflow tools or if you're buried in docks and spreadsheets. Cota is the dock that brings it all together.

Startups can get a $1,000 credit at coda.io slash twist. Odu. Odu is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. Your first app is free forever and right now, Odu is offering $1,000 off your first implementation pack at Odo.com slash twist. That's ODOO.com slash twist. And active campaign.

The hardest thing in business is turning the lead into a customer into a repeat customer. Simplify the process and start creating repeat customers with 10% off your active campaign subscription today at active campaign.com slash promo slash twist. All right. First up today, Flexport founder and All In Bessie Guestie, a friend of the pod here at this week in startups, Ryan Peterson announced that he recruited Amazon's consumer CEO to join Flexport and eventually replace him as CEO. This is huge news.

Teat up for us. This is huge news. So Dave Clark built that Amazon consumer division. He had been at Amazon for ages and recently left. And it was surprising and raised a lot of questions. And as it turns out, he is joining Logistics Startup Flexport as co-CEO in case you're not familiar with Flexport. It's a company that helps companies move products around the globe, what is known in the logistics industry as a freight forwarder. And listen, Ryan Peterson is a beast as a founder.

Flexport was evidently the seventh largest buyer of cargo between Asia and North America, as Forbes reported in February. It was founded in 2013, generated $3.3 billion in revenue in 2021. and is forecasting almost $5 billion for 2022. It's not pure software margins, but FlexSport was profitable in Q1 and valued at $8 billion by lead investors A16Z before they went all crypto all the time, and MSD Capital, which is Michael Dell's family office. Yeah, it looks like Dave is going to start working September 1st, so he gets his summer. They'll be co-CEOs for six months, and then Ryan's going to move to the executive chairman role.

For those of who you don't know that role, executive chairman, chairman means you run the board of directors, executive means you're still working at the company. So those are the two words in that title. Clark became the CEO of the Amazon Global Consumer Retail business. I think that means the stuff we buy. The stuff we buy. In 2021, after eight years as an SVP, senior vice president of worldwide operations, spent his entire 23 years at Amazon deep in their logistics business and was promoted to run the Northeast Fulfillment Centers in 2003 last week. He resigned from Amazon And there's his tweet from Dave Barr. I've had an incredible time in Amazon,

but it's time for me to build again. It's what drives me. To all I've had the honor of working with, oh my gosh, it's turning into an Oscar speech here. Can you start playing that mute? Play me off. This tweet's too long.

Thank you. Thank you for making it so much. Fun to come to work. To work every day for 23. Invent cool, amazing bigs for customers. Just trying to like make up some Oscar music on the fly. Yeah, it's just a little moust. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, so there's like a million different things to unpack here, including, wow, he was only CEO of the Consumer Retail Division since 2021 going to do this interesting opportunity after 23 years, right? So build again, I have a question. However, the other big question that this raises, why is Ryan bringing in an outside CEO? And here's what he wrote on Twitter. And I think this is fascinating.

He says, why am I transitioning to executive chairman when things are going so well? It's simple. The more we learn about our markets and learning about the world economy is the best part of working in at Flexport, the more we realize the opportunity in front of us is enormous. I'm now to the point where the only fear I have left for Flexport is that we're not living up to our potential. And he said he wanted to get the most entrepreneurial leader he could find to build this thing into the infinite growth beast that he wants it to be. You know, these things get so big, you know, at a certain point that you're just going to need help. And some of the best ways to do that as a founder is to give somebody the CEO slot who has much more experience than you. And in this case, you know, at somebody who has worked in Amazon for 23 years, Amazon basically changed the face of the supply chain.

Really, there's two companies who changed supply chains, Apple and Amazon, right? So if you could get either of those type of executives who've been there for 20 years plus, you think about the knowledge that this person has, having watched Amazon launch basics, Amazon Prime, Amazon and other countries, there's knowledge that would take Ryan 20 years. Totally. So basically, this person shows up with 20 years of knowledge Ryan doesn't have to acquire, and the price for that is like you give them the CEO slot. And they get to use all that energy to be able to.

a leader. And then you get that pent up. This is what I like about it is. You know, somebody's six man of the year on like some team or they are the number three on the team and then they get to be the number one. You think like KD. Russell, Resbrook and James Hardin when they were on that Oklahoma Thunder team, right? It's like three crazy all sorts who changed the league. And they break up. They get their own teams. All of a sudden, I think all three of them have been MVP. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. They can't all be the MVP of the league or the finals or, you know, or the conference, if they're on the same team, it's just not possible.

It's not enough balls in the game. And it is so interesting because it's a very mature, I think, and smart move by Ryan Peterson that also takes advantage of some disruption at Amazon. We have seen since Andy Jassy came over, in fact, Best T in the Nody game pointed this out, Jassy's cleaning house with Amazon's executive ranks. Liz Coddington just left to take over the CEO, CFO position,

at Peloton, she was Amazon CFO. We have seen in recent earnings reports that Amazon's retail business is somewhat break-even relative to the other parts of the business. It's very clear that like Jassy at Amazon is all in on the cloud business, less interested potentially in the retail business, which yikes for all of us who live and breathe Amazon all day, every day.

But it gives Ryan Peterson, I think, this great moment to pounce and to get somebody with, I mean, the fulfillment network that Amazon has built, the warehouses, the lockers, the pickup, the drop-off, the returns, like all of that. They launched their own fleet of planes. They essentially bought their own, from my understanding, I don't know if they technically bought their own factories. The way it was explained to me is they bought like the next 50-year rights to these factories, you know, and they work with the families who own them in various regions, but they essentially have bought them out. And, you know, this flex-board is kind of the most important private company right now along with Stripe. Very similar situation to Airbnb and Uber when they were private companies before they went public.

So this will be, you know, these two are going to be what we'll be talking about over the coming years. When we see the next wave, we had this Google wave and then Facebook and Twitter going public. Then you had the Uber, Airbnb, you know, cohort. And the next cohort is going to be Flexport and Strike. And when we see those go out, that's when you know the market is going to be through the other side of the cycle. Right. So if you want to know when the recession's over, it's when those two go public and people are losing their minds over them.

Antonio Gracias, a friend of mine who was the original investor in SpaceX and Tesla, or one of the original investors. He was just at the All-In Summit, did a Q&A with us, and he said his biggest regret as an investor was not leading a Flexport round. That SoftBank led and Meme account praying for exits, which has been on the show anonymously. It's like one of two people who were ever anonymous on the show, said, you know, he could be on the cap table of any private company would be Flexport. Yeah.

And yeah, so congratulations to the team over there. Congratulations. And a lot of, again, a lot of maturity and wisdom by Ryan Peterson to say, let's bring in this freaking rock star and turn this thing into Amazon of global logistics. Huge. If you're a startup, you know you have to save where you can. I'm talking about time and money and your bandwidth. That's why we love Coda.

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today. Head to coda.io slash twist, and you'll sign up and get $1,000 in credits. I kid you not C-O-D-A-I-O-S-T-T-SHtW for $1,000 off. I mean, and if you look at it, the last couple of cycles, most of the big companies were consumer. So Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, all consumer. Interestingly, Stripe is like a developer finance tool, I guess people would argue, and Flexport is clearly a business-to-business

SaaS-logistics company. So what's happening is tech is moving from, just being a consumer experience into infecting every sector of society. So it's not a coincidence that we're seeing, you know, other hundred, you know, potentially $100 billion, $50 billion companies, which is what I would say these companies will go public at at some point. Yeah. And then we'll actually even have a weapons company, too, coming out of Silicon Valley with

Andrew. Yeah. I also look forward in the next five to 10 years to climate tech companies increasingly being among those cohorts because that's just... Give it 10 years. Yeah. I mean, John Doar just gave that billion dollars to Stanford to start a school around climate tech saying this is the next computer science. You know, I was speaking at David Freeberg's production board LP meeting just yesterday.

And they asked me about climate. And I said, you know, it's really interesting. It's really being driven, I think. And Chimov agreed with me by consumers. And that's where we're going to see that first wave of winds, I think. And I was like, look, you know, you got companies that are, you know, doing coral. or allowing merchants to help people, you know, make donations to charity. You know, you have people working on packaging of consumer goods.

It's really almost every one of the stories, I don't know if you're seeing this, it seems to have, most stories seem to have some compelling consumer angle to it. Now, sale plan, a company we invested in is B2B, so there'll be B2B ones. But man, the consumer, the consumer in that space is relentless. Young people not buying clothes. It's just such an amazing trend to me. Young people always have loved buying new clothes. They have young people who are like, I don't want to buy new clothes.

My daughter was like, I don't know if I want to buy new clothes. Can we go to a Vention store? I'm like, why? She's like, well, there's more clothes than we need on the planet. And those clothes are perfectly fine. And I want to go buy those. And they're cool for anyway. So there's like, really?

Wow. It's really a huge shift. I mean, granted, on the other hand, you're seeing shine, right? Like dominate the freaking planet with the fastest fashion on Earth. God help us. It's like an ecological nightmare. But you see an equal and opposite reaction. And the reason I'm making all these faces if you're watching it on video is because I completely agree.

And I've had investors literally mock me for saying, I think that there is a massive consumer opportunity here. Not even just opportunity, but like responsibility. Like, yes, is it the fault of the fossil fuel industry and their disinformation campaigns and corporations who pollute and get away with it? Sure. But when consumers all do something at the same time, like say, I don't want high fructose corn syrup and my food anymore. it changes. And if we're the ones who give them something to buy,

they're going to buy it. I'm a pragmatist. If consumers were rejecting this and they're like, I don't want to pay extra for solar panels, that's too much work. Why do I want to have these people ripping up my roof?

It'd be like, okay, let's find another solution. Like put the solar panels somewhere else. People don't want them on their roofs. People want them on their roofs. Yeah. They want to look at them every day. They want to open their solar app and see and they want to geek out to that.

Just like I want to geek out to never going to a get. station. That was like, that was my big conversation with people for 10 years after I got the roadster. They're like, what's it like? I'm like, I haven't been to a gas station in six months. I have not pulled into a gas station in like two years. I had to pull in because I wanted to get a cup of coffee when I was driving up and down the, you know, five going on a long road trip. And I was like, I guess I have to pull into a gas station. Where do I put my car? Like, are there spots here? I'm not getting gas. So, you know, it's a value ad. And now,

increasingly because of people like you and me, and I believe it is actually the responsibility and duty of well, middle to upper middle class consumers to adopt these technologies because that's what makes them affordable for everybody else. And now solar and wind are the cheapest energy out there, full stop in every state. Like, now it's the best economic decision too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, the thing is, if just like I had a blind spot for Airbnb, I didn't have the opportunity to invest in Airbnb, but, you know, I thought it was a really dumb idea, like a niche, I would say dumb. I thought it was a very niche idea. I was like, couch surfing, like, I don't want to get stabbed by it. I don't want to like stay in a serial

killer's house. I don't want to, you know, serial killers to be hosting people like, this is the craziest idea. And yet it's become super normalized and there are, it's, there's no serial killer phenomenon associated with. Right. So Airbnb. Like, if you're a serial killer, like, maybe you don't want to. Cray than Airbnb. Well, I mean, again, if you want to be a serial killer, Do you really want to have to, like, you know, work people and meet them there and leave them a gift basket and get them, remind them to leave a five-star review? It's not exactly Jeffrey Dom the behavior. Can you like Hannibal Lecter's call on your phone? Oh, Claris.

Clarice. Can you leave a five-star review for me? Clarice. The Wi-Fi password, Clarice. It puts the lotion in the basket. Kiante. Kiante is the Wi-Fi password, Claris. Clarice, have the name of us stop?

crying. Okay. All right. Now you're freaking out. Okay. I'm literally like I'm getting I'm getting the wiggles over here.

Okay. But speaking of Molly, who is this man you see? What does he covet, Molly? Who is this man? You see? My brother and I was like, it puts the lotion on its skin

or else it gets the hose again. It puts the lotion in the basket. It puts the lotion in the basket. I'm all in a Hannibal. You're full Hannibal. Which is a that's fitting, actually. That's appropriate. Have the lamp stop.

If you're going to be the bad guy, be the baddest guy. Be the baddest guy. Exactly. All right. Speaking of consumer facing companies, however, that do in fact have a strong climate positive argument. And as Flexport positions itself for expansion, the massive layoff wave continues. This one, the latest to be hit is the micromobility company Bird, which is planning to lay off 23% of its staff accounting for 133. workers. Over the past month, their stock has sunk 42.5%. And this is, by the way, I think the

latest numbers I saw this were at something like 17,000 tech workers total being laid off. Although in this case, I have to say, I feel like there were already existing questions about Bird and this business model. Yeah, I mean, listen, this is like a part of the narrative when, you know, you really start to feel terrible about this because, You know, if you look at Byrd, what they're doing is important in the world, right? It's important to have this micromobility. Consumers love it. But we always knew that this on a unit economics would be one of the hardest businesses to actually make work. And I'm trying to find the – is it Bird Global?

The name of the – is the name of the actual company? So they went out on a SPAC at $10, right? Like SPACs do. And now they're trading at 71 cents. And also had to lay off 30% of its employees at the beginning of the pandemic. They let off like 400 people then because it was already, there was already, you know, big trouble. It sucks. I mean, it sucks.

It sucks. And so I think this might be one of these businesses. And I, again, I don't want to be dunking here and say, I told you so because I know this is like people are suffering. A lot of my friends are investors in this business. Sacks was a big investor. Rula from Sequoia was investor. Antonio Gracios was investor. So my friends are all in this.

And Travis, the person who is running this is awesome and the team is awesome and the product is awesome and it's important. So all of that is true. Yeah. I think when we look at this and what the lesson is, is unit economics are super important. And Mark Suster was actually, my good friend, Mark Suster from Upfront Ventures was the original investor in it. So I have had four friends who were on, I think all of them on the board and this company

was a high flyer. Yeah. And it had the opportunity probably to sell for multiple billions of dollars to lift Uber, you know, and other folks. And they didn't. And now they're worth 200 million maybe right now. That company has had hundreds of millions invested in it and they're worth only 200 million right now. The problem is unit economics.

And we all saw the writing on the wall with this, which was they were saying this was the Uber killer. And I looked at it and I talked to like the Bill Gurley's of the world and, you know, obviously Travis from Uber, not Travis from Bird. And, you know, we had like really long discussions about this and thinking about it from first principles, it was like, okay, these things can only operate in certain. certain cities. There is a very finite window where scooters were. Santa Monica, Venice. You know, maybe some parts of San Francisco or Oakland, but maybe not other parts of Oakland, right? And certainly doesn't work in the suburbs. It's for one mile rides. It's urban micro mobility. It's not cost effective to take an Uber. So you just take this thing a mile because it's too far to walk. Exactly. That's as a Tam goes, as a bottom up Tam exercise. Yes. It's just not that many.

So you really have to do a bottom-up tam here. So I always like to include a lesson here in what we can learn from these things. So this is a great part of a bigger company. It's a great part of a transportation company, just like bikes are too. But if we go bottom-up, Tam, not how many rides are there that are under a mile or two miles? That's what people were telling me, hey, this is why this business is going to be awesome. Under two-mile rides equal this percentage of the rides. And it was some incredible number, like 50% of rides are under two miles and lifts and Uber's and whatever.

taxis. Okay, now you drill down. Okay, who wants to get on this thing and risk, you know, put a helmet on, risk breaking the wrist. Okay, so two-thirds of users are not interested in physical activity like this. They want to sit in a car and use their phone or make a phone call. They don't want to do a physical activity like this. Then you say which cities will allow it, Tam gets smaller. Then you say, under what weather conditions is possible. It's not working in the freezing cold. It's not working in the snow or the rain. So in Arizona, okay,

maybe in Phoenix, you know, or like the dense part of the city, but not in the server part of the city. So it was a very small market. It was one part of the mix,

but they did make their own hardware, which was very good, and they solved so many problems. So, you know, it's tragic in a way. A lot of effort went into this, and it's just tragic to see this. Hardware is hard folks.

And then you add hardware to operating in the real world, and it's really difficult. I think the business here, which they had as part of the business was allowing people to run franchises and they would power the franchise. So if you wanted to run this in your town, Molly, and create a business, you could rent scooters for, you know, 50 bucks a day, or maybe 25 bucks a day, people use them for the whole day or whatever. It kind of works in that way or for municipalities to do it

or for campuses to do it, but it may not work as, you know, a straight-up Lyft Uber competitor. I think that's why Uber and Lyft never really, I think Uber had bought Jump at one point, and I don't even know if they're operating that business. Maybe they still have the bikes, but I'm not sure. I mean, because the other thing that happened is everything you just said, plus pandemic. People stop taking any rides, let alone one to two mile rides. And so then you had this sort of like quintuple whammy. And yes, I mean, we don't want to belabor the layoff story.

It's heartbreaking to see. It sounds like Bird was actually a really great place to work and they handled the layoffs really well. But I think we're now what we're going to start to see in addition to all of the layoff trackers. have been busy, we're now looking at a rising tide of potential ruin. We've talked about a couple of companies that have so little cash in the bank at this point that it's more dire possibly. And we don't know that that is the case with Byrd, but it's getting pretty. It's not looking good. Yeah. I mean, it's not looking good. Here's the thing. Peloton, Bird, you know, we talked about BuzzFeed. When things correct this violently, this quickly, and capital markets turn off, if you haven't

cashed up and had a huge amount of cash in the bank and you're losing money, oh my lord you got a problem and this is why I was always again this isn't like Uber's got its own challenges obviously but the thing I always appreciate about what Uber was doing is they always kept a massive cash reserve like a massive unbelievably some people

said obscene amount of cash on hand like in a situation like this an obscene amount of cash comes in handy and so I think when you look at Pelotam when you look at BuzzFeed and you look at what's happening with Byrd the cash shortfall is going to be the problem they're not going to have the time in some cases we'll see to figure

this out and I think they get bought. I think they'll just be part of a bigger thing. I think so too. I was thinking about how those bastards they just buy it now, you know? They really should actually. I was just thinking about how those jerks at Apple are just going to win all over again. They're going to win and win and win because everything is going to get so cheap and

they're sitting on $200 billion of cash and they're just going to be scooping stuff up. Well, I mean, if we think about Peloton, I wonder if there's an existing gym company that actually has a lot of cash. Yeah, like there might be like another company that's like an orange. or a, you know, what's the one that's super expensive that all the starts of the sea, Mary's boot camp. Oh, you're talking about not Sybax equipment? Maybe there's like my fitness.

There's a ton of these. But I'm thinking there might be like a Nike or something that looks at this, you know, some global brand and says, you know what Nike should own Peloton? Oh my God. You know what should buy Peloton? Equinox. I was thinking of Equinox. Equinox, yeah.

You know what should buy Peloton actually is like Bonvoy, like a hotel chain. Absolutely. Put that in every hotel. Yeah. If you stay in the hotel, you get your year's membership paid for free. Right. It comes for free with it, yeah. So these things that can't be standalone businesses, that'll be another trend.

We'll see, Molly, is things that can't stand on their own will be absorbed and become a feature of other products. And that's what we're seeing here, I think. BuzzFeed, you know, at this point, Vox should just buy BuzzFeed, right? They should. Instead of Vox going public, maybe they just, you know, in a way do a hostile takeover of BuzzFeed, and now they're public. And that would be a way for them to backdoor into going public. have the shell of it and, you know, just start, I mean, it's only worth $300 million. If they just started buying shares on the open market.

Marriott, not buy, yeah, Bon Boy is what they own. Marriott has a $56 billion market cap. Sure. Nick is checking on the cash reserves. What does Peloton have then? Yeah. It was a good idea. He's looking. He's looking.

Right? Because I was actually one of the hotels, I stayed in, one of the hotels I stayed in in Miami, had one Peloton. Yeah. And I told our producer Justin, who is a Peloton fiend. I was like, dude, you should come to this hotel. they've got a Peloton. But I was thinking like, man, if they had Peloton and every like in a fancy hotel situation,

I was in, um, Peloton market cap is 4.1 billion. So if Mariana has the cash reserves or Weston, do it. You know, here's the thing. I, um, I was at, uh, the proper hotel. Uh, sometimes I stay there when I'm in Austin. Uh, and the proper hotel had a tonal machine. I have a tonal machine. Oh yeah.

You open up the total machine. It says, open your app and scan this. So I guess they put it in. in hotel mode and there's a little QR code. I scan it. The machine's welcome, Jason. Here's all your information. And then when I stop working out, it's like logging you out in 90 seconds, click here to

not log out. And so it automatically logs you out so you don't have to worry about somebody, you know, using your account. See, that's what I'm talking about. That would be amazing. Yeah. So there's some ideas you folks. Anyway, there you go.

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That's O-D-O-O-O-com slash twist. All right, speaking of ideas that apparently are being picked up by the market, like in real time, Jane Wong from, who's a tech writer

followed by protocol, breaks a lot of stories about Twitter, has reported on Twitter. That Twitter is working on. What she does is, she looks at all the code, Molly. And when she finds things in the code, she reports on things in Twitter's code or the API.

And that could be indicative of future hardware products or future product releases, just like people will look at iOS for indications of what's to come, you know, like little Easter eggs. So she does that, but I'm not sure who she works for. I think she's independent.

Yeah, seems to be. But she has a history of breaking everything. Like she finds all the nuggets. So what did she find this stuff? Well, she seems to have found a nugget that suggests that Twitter is a need working on custom timelines driven by custom

algorithms that are viewable to the users, possibly opening up, I'm reading from the tweet, the timeline curation, aka the algorithm to third party developers. So in theory, this would be like maybe Twitter creates at first a bunch of custom timelines. Do you want only

politics? Do you want no politics? Do you want celebrity news? Do you want all Depp heard all the time? That kind of thing. But in the future, maybe you could be like, I only want to get the Peloton feed or the venture capital feed as curated by JCal or whatever it is or the climate tech feed. You know, you could also do. It's really interesting. Well, here's an interesting idea for a feed.

I want feeds that I want a feed of the most interesting political discussions by people using the least charge language. Right. So I'm trying to get to intellectually interesting. So I want the political discussions. and news discussions. I want news discussions, global news discussions, by people who have the highest reading level.

I'm sorry, the highest verbal ability. So instead of people writing fragments of sentences and using an eighth grade level or a fifth grade level, I want the people who are writing on a 12th grade level and who are writing intelligent things. And, you know, I'm not saying that algorithm works, but if you have a thousand algorithms being made,

it's a star. 100%. Somebody's going to figure it out. They're like, There are linguistics professors who can literally create a heat index of the emotional temperature behind a tweet. So that even if the vocabulary level is high, there might still be a lot of heat in the tweet. Like I'm thinking Glenn Greenwald, for example, very, very smart, hella heated sometimes. Maybe you want that.

Yeah, most passionate. Maybe you want that or maybe you don't. Maybe you literally have a heat index for your tweets. Like, I would like to filter my news by low heat. I want the most passionate and highest reading level, you know, highest verbal ability, you know. I want the most concise. Yeah. I want the ones by people who are followed by.

I want the political discussion of people followed by politicians. Okay, that's interesting. I want ones of people not followed by politics. I don't know. There's some vector here, you know. I would like to see what all the people on the right, right? Like I would love to have a feed that was like, here's like the David Sachs, Glenn Greenwald, you know, right side feed.

So before I do all in, I can see what they're seeing, right? I can see what they're geeking out to. What does their world look like, right? I want the Ben Shapiro, you know, David Sachs, Glenn Greenwald, you know, daily wire feed. And I want to just consume that and see what it's about. Just as what I did during the whole Trump era, I would listen to a little bit of Ben Shapiro, a little bit of Rachel Maddow, and I listened to him back to back. And they would be covering the same topic.

And it was just like, really? Is there this much between the two? And then I would listen to the economist or, you know, at the times, the New York Times wasn't as far left. But I would just try to find things in between the two, you know? Lawfare is a good podcast. You know, and I just try to find some things in the middle. So, but everybody's got a different media diet they want. So this is going to be awesome.

Could solve a lot of problems for people. Honestly, that's what I'm sort of waiting to see is I wonder if it'll solve a lot of problems for people. I'm curious to see if that will be the case. I hope so. Well, it's certainly going to educate people as to the algorithm and give them agency. Right now, we have zero agency when it comes to the algorithm. There is no choice but to accept the algorithm from TikTok as is. Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Instagram.

I think Facebook and Twitter you're allowed to at least do, you can change it to chronological. Chronological. Which actually is a pretty remarkable experiment. And what I think, yeah, for sure. What we'll find is an interesting, like real time. social experiment in what people actually want versus what they think they want. Because a lot of times they turn on the chronological and they're like, actually, I just want you to give me the most interesting tweets.

And then companies are like, we did all research. And it turns out that you think is interesting is really bad for you. But it's interesting. Here's the thing. What I would like to do, I've thought about a slider for my feed. I would like to have a slider that says make it 50% reverse chronological and 50% best of. And when it's best of, put it in a light orange background.

some, you know, an orange, you know, uh, rule around it. That's like a thin line. Put a little orange line around it. So I know that's like, is, you know, orange to red is how hot the tweet is, but it's from the last 24 hours or since I was last online. And then the 50% is, you know, reverse chronological. So when I'm scrolling through, I'm getting the most recent combined with, you know, the most, uh, trending.

That's the feat I'm looking for. Yeah. It's like, but I want to, I want to control the slider too. So, because I want to, I want to alter it in real time, right? I want to be like, ooh, Twitter is really making me mad today to lower the heat. Just like, give me Star Wars. Okay. So you want the heat one, right?

Yeah, anger. Yeah. Or percentage politics, right? Or percentage politics, exactly. Like, I might actually, there might be days where I take news down. Yes, no more news. It's just like, I can't, right? I'm too upset, whatever it is, yeah.

You know, one of the things I'm doing is trying to find some content like a master class or I got my master class going again and I'm going to do some of those 30-day like courses there and I do my MIT course where I'm trying to find things like that that are you know just build my knowledge base and make me feel enriched so I'm looking for if people have suggestions from email producers out or just at Jason May on social I'm looking for things like a playlist of things that'll make me smarter or you know like entertainment educational education what we use for education What we use is about edutainment. I'll get smarter,

but it's presented in a way that like this podcast, hopefully is entertaining in some way. So that's what I'm looking for more up. Because the doom scrolling is not working for me. Like I realize with this gun stuff and the school shooting, like, it kind of broke my brain. And I was just like,

I got to stay off this news. It's just too, making me too, I don't want to say it, but it's making me depressed. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I, yes. and almost by design.

And it's just not. I know. Like, this is so embarrassing, but I'm so grateful that one, I'm so busy here that I, like literally yesterday, I had no time for Twitter. Like somebody told me something that was happening on Twitter that was everybody was talking about. And I was like, yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. Thank God. And then second, I installed Candy Crush. Because during those rando 20 minutes, when I might be tempted to look at Twitter, I'm now setting a timer.

and I'm playing Candy Crushions. Well, I mean, if you want to. My son is like, you're a boomer. You're officially a boomer. You're like turning into Auntie Molly. When it gets too hard, I uninstall it and then I put a new, I'm hurt of fresh and saw. You know, I play threes or, you know, I like to play Age of Empires

or these kind of like real-time strategy. I like strategy games. They're good for letting your brain get into a flow state, but without all the, you know, emotional baggage that comes from the game of doom scrolling, which is pretty gross. Listen, one of the hardest things in business is turning a lead into a customer, right? You get that lead, but now you got to close that customer and keeping that customer around for the long term, right?

It's a funnel. Do people even know who you are? Did you get that lead? Did you turn them into a customer? And did they stick with you? Well, one of the best ways to do that is by having a seamless customer experience. So you'll save time and provide a tailored experience. at scale. Active campaign helps you automate email marketing, sales pipelines, reporting,

follow-up, scheduling, notifications, and more. The whole process is dialed in. And it's going to cut out all those tedious manual tasks like moving information around cutting and pasting, checking for customer replies and sending emails. You want to have a great process. You want to refine that process and you need a great tool. And that great tool is active campaign. So start creating personalized customer experiences and get 10% off your active campaign subscription today at activecampaign.com slash promo slash twist. That's activecampaign.com slash promo slash twist for 10% off and most importantly to let them know that you're a fan of this week in startups. In our startup of the day segment, Molly, we all know companies like Microsoft, City and Verizon, you know, are always

trying to get talented people. But not everybody wants to go to college. And so there should be some new career pathways and one of those is apprenticeships and I've always, we invested in one apprenticeship company. I've looked at a lot of them. People are resistant to apprenticeships. They kind of put them into like maybe predatory. I'll say like if they're, if you're paying for an apprenticeship, should you be paying to do work? People look at them as like unpaid internships. That's triggering for people. They feel there's an inequity. They're not equitable, I guess is what some people argue. You could understand that. I guess, although I'm more in the camp of like free will.

People should be able to do what they want to do, but I get the counter arguments. But it does seem to me that an apprenticeship is a quick way, or if you call it an unpaid internship, but one with more training involved in it, if there is actual training and it's not just going to get lattes for people, is a really cool way to, you know, get a career path. So tell us about multiverse. Yeah. I mean, I think it all sounds. It's all wonderful.

I'm surprised to hear there's that backlash, but I guess I just hadn't paid that attention. Multiverse, however, is a company that's just raised a $220 million series D at a $1.7 billion valuation to offer tuition-free programs in areas like software engineering, digital marketing, and data analysis. These are apprenticeships that last 12 to 15 months. They blend on-the-job training with online education and a community, and they're paid. So they're paid apprenticeships at these companies like City of Verizon, Microsoft, and KPMG. According to, and unlike some something like a massively, you know, what is a massively, the online courses, the free MOOCs. Mostly online courses.

Moops. Yes. Yeah. Unlike some of those, which can have a lower completion rate because, you know, you're sort of doing that on your own time and you're not doing it as part of a real job. According to Multiverse, the software engineering apprenticeship has an 85% completion rate. Wow. And the companies are hoping to develop a pipeline of talent for these in-demand digital skills

because it's hard to hire people into these jobs. and also find underrepresented talent that isn't surfaced in the typical university path. You may have people who aren't getting into college or just don't test well or all of the things that might or can't afford it, right? All the things that might keep somebody out of university, but you might still have a really great engineer on your hands. Yeah. It's, you know, if they're paying people to come to the apprenticeship, well, then it's, yeah, how could you complain about that? Even if they were paying the minimum wage, you're at least getting paid for your time and they're teaching you. So that is kind of the Holy Grail.

Now, of course, I wonder, the devil's in the details here, I wonder what you need to have in order to get one of these apprenticeships. It does seem to me you're going to have to have some aptitude. I don't know that if you're not, you know, a top flight, you know, high school student with great math, you're getting into a developer apprenticeship. If you don't have great English and verbal ability, I doubt you're getting that marketing one, digital marketing. If you are not great with logic, physics, math, science, I don't know you're getting the data analysis one.

So, you know, this, there could be. I would assume it's not, yeah, it's not for people starting at zero. Yeah. It's like maybe you had a great high school experience, but you don't want to go to college or you can't afford it or you, you know, who knows what all the reasons are that that might not work out. And you could, you know, young and bankrupt in our note again is like, college doesn't pay you and charges $200,000 for the piece of paper. maybe you could just do this instead. I mean, this is great. Like, we've been talking about this

at the government level forever. Yes. Here's a thing. There are careers that pay incredibly well, and those careers should be ones that were willing to give loans or companies should defer. And then there are degrees

which seem like luxurious pursuits that maybe have no career opportunity directly associated with them. And I think that's where, again, a very nuanced discussion about loans and about fairness, equity, yada, yada, all this stuff. Let's just take a very pragmatic look at this. Does the degree get you a job? How much does the degree cost?

How much does the job pay? That's like the beginning and the end of this. Anything beyond, you know, a four-year pursued two-year degree, four-year degree, six year degree, whatever you wind up doing, if it doesn't actually result in a job, you better have your antennae up when you look at that cost. Yep. Or else you are going to get buried with loans that you have no hope of paying being, you know, a retail worker or, you know, whatever it is.

And you have to do some hard pivot. And I love this focus on this is about outcomes. Yeah. Like get paid to learn the thing that you want to do. Has always been sort of the holy grail and the opposite of college, whatever you want to say about the college experience at some high level in terms of your life experience and your blah, blah, blah. Producers gave us the, for the digital marketing job.

It says you have to have the right to work in the U.S., undertake any other work, to not undertake any other work or schooling during the apprenticeship. You've got to be focused, okay? You have to demonstrate interest in coding through personal academic or professional projects. Okay, there you go. So you have to have shown some aptitude here. Like demonstrated interest, I think means you have written. The software engineering one.

Yeah, the software engineering one, I think you have to have written code yourself. So you probably have to go spend six months on your own exploring, you know, YouTube videos, whatever. Or maybe you took some coding in high school, which a lot of people do now. A lot of them do, right? So they have it, folks. Pretty cool. On the issue of internships, just to fill you in, unpaid internships are considered very polarizing because, and I did see this experience.

And to be honest, I was on the other end of it. I needed to make money in the summer because I had to pay for my college for the past year. I was in arrears. I was, I owed forward to money. I was in debt and had to work that whole summer, 60, 70 hours a week, three different jobs, no vacation, zero days off, zero spending to just pay off last year's tuition so that I could get the burst or let me sign up for new classes in September or late August. And so when you've got rich parents, you can take a free internship, a Condonest.

It actually pissed me off. I was jealous. I felt the world was unfair, put a fire in my belly, you know, and I took it out. on, you know, everybody by just, you know, becoming really good at my job and then dunking on these weak privileged kids and then starting my own magazine and hiring them to come work for me and then torturing them, you know, on the regular. You know what? It's a long game he's playing people.

It's a long game. I'm playing a long, vicious game here. But that was how I basically, you know, took it out on people. But, you know, so now there's been a movement that no unpaid internships. But now there's also, you know, having been an employer. I don't want to do internships because internships are a drain on everybody's productivity. You have to pay somebody to waste, you know, somebody important, you know, like if I had an intern here and they had to work with you, they're going to screw up your life, Molly.

Like, you're going to be like, why do I have to do this? Because like, and the only time I do it, you know, sorry, sorry slash not sorry, I do it as a favor bank. I do it for friends of mine's kids. Is the world not fair? Am I doing a favor bank? Heck, yes, I am. I got three daughters. I want to be able to call those favors in.

So I will literally tell my friends, if your kid needs an internship, let me know. I'll give them a 10-week internship. And I pay them. And it's such a net loss for me in the short term because it's going to take somebody else's time up, you know, on my team. And I have to pay because if you don't pay, even though these kids don't need it, it creates a weird dynamic that they're doing free work. And you can get sued. So they're basically becoming illegal to do these free internships. So now internships are kind of going away.

I would rather see apprentices than internships. internships, I think that, you know, it makes a lot of sense. In a company of the size where you can actually afford the resources, because like, listen, for a small company, yes, it is a resource train to have an intern. It just is. I was thinking the other day, I was like, I need to find an assistant. Like, maybe I can get an assistant who wants to like learn about something that I've done and then they'll also help me with just like the house.

You know, I was like brainstorming ways to. Yeah. And then I was just like, I can't know. I'm going to have to teach the idiot stuff. Like, I don't have time for that. Well, I mean, like, it seems so great to, you know, like, well, I could be a mentor to someone. Nah, there's no time to me.

They used to call, there was a sexist term for it in business. It used to be called like a Friday girl or a girl Friday. Girl Friday. Basically, you would, if you had a small business, like a little construction company, you know, you're a plumber. You would have some lady come every Friday and be an office manager. And it was like a specific type of, but I remember it was like a Friday, a Girl Friday or something.

And it was just like somebody to come once a week, just to clean up the mess. Girl Friday. Was that it? Girl Friday. Yeah. And so that's like a personal assistant or an office manager, but for one or two days a week.

And that typically worked, you know, in the mix of women going back into the workforce, but not being wanting to work full time. So this is like a remnant of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Totally. I need that. I need a 50s. I need a 15th's,

Girl Friday. You need a non-gender-based Friday person. You need a Friday person. Exactly. Speaking of ladies, I have chosen. I have chosen. I actually want to combine these next few stories into a little quick hit because you know what a freaking finance nerd I am. And I think these are both big trends.

So two headlines that are related. One, according to Coin desk sources, Citadel Securities, which has been the target of like the retail. investor meme apes and GameStop and AMC investors is now building

that's Ken Griffin, right? That's Ken Griffin. Exactly. Like he's like enemy number one for the redditors. He bought the Constitution just like to like

He puts the plus one dollar just to screw with the Dow. Exactly. He likes to poke the tiger. That guy. Yeah. I love that guy. They're now starting

a crypto trading marketplace. What? What? Yep. Yeah. Wow. This is the guy, Ken Griffin, crypto skeptic, so much so that at one point he said that crypto was a quote, jihadist call against the U.S. dollar. I love it. He is, of course, also the one who outbid the Constitution Dow for that copy of the Constitution. He said, let's see, the, and then Coin Desk is reporting, quote, the current crypto market structure is deficient and inhibits wider adoption from a lot of investors, which is what Citadel Securities is, trading consortium is addressing earlier this year, Sequoia and CryptoVC firm Paradigm invested $1.15 billion in Citadel.

Got it. Both of them also invested in the institutional focused crypto exchange FTC. So this represents an institutional takeover of this, of the crypto exchange. Part of this, which is something that we keep talking about, right? Like everything, all the money in crypto seems to be in exchanges and not products. and value creation of product. And then on the other hand, so that's one example of institutions coming for upstarts.

And then the other, potentially, is SEC chair, Gary Gensler, hinting that there might be some big overhauls coming to retail investing, specifically around this idea of payment for order flow, which, of course, as we know, is the business model that has enabled Robin Hood, and then every copycat sends up to it, including like Schwab,

yeah, to offer free trades. Yep. And so the SEC is making some noises about the idea that that may, that payment for order flow may present a number of conflicts of interest and that there may need to be more transparency for retail investors. He does note, and this is important, right now there is not a level playing field among different parts of the market, wholesalers, dark pools, and lit exchanges. That's true. But it also feels like some of the, I would imagine that in corners of Wall Street bets right now, this is being interpreted. as a crackdown on retail investing, which has been disruptive to the broader market. So let's do the first one first. Yeah. Getting into crypto in 2022, as it's crashing, I mean, is...

By the ultimate by the dip? It's either the ultimate by the dip or like, I'm going to catch all the knives. Like, yeah. Really, isn't Coinbase, like, got serious challenges right now? and so Citadel wants to literally stand under like, you know, and like you unload a dump truck and all the stuff comes flying out of the back?

Like Ken Griffith is like literally at the back. Somebody put all their knives in there. They opened up the dump truck and he's standing there at the back. Like, I'll catch every knife. It's like, I don't know you can catch all these knives, Ken. Or, I mean, yes. Yes. Or he wants to deliver the death blow.

Like he wants to. bring the machete to Coinbase. Yeah, maybe. I don't, right? Like, I don't know. I mean, Citadel, like, the guy who would buy the Constitution for a dollar more than the Dow just to be like double barrel. This guy's like the Joker of finance.

He's like he's like he's literally like Heath Ledger's Joker. Like he really, I could imagine him taking that $1 billion. I'm just being like, I'm putting Coinbase down. I'm putting that dog down. If you're good at something, Molly, never do it for free. Never do it. If I'm going to cause chaos in the crypto market, it is. I'm sure I'm going to get paid.

He's like, you know what? I broke the global economy once and I'll do it again. Nick, by the way, producer Nick, unironically loves Ken Griffin. This is exactly the kind of energy that producer Nick is here for. Yeah. So, you know, here's the thing about crypto right now. As we were just talking about Byrd, we talked yesterday about BuzzFeed, and we talked two weeks ago about Peloton, right? We're having this ongoing discussion about what is a viable concern going forward.

Well, when these shakeouts occur, you quickly learn what's not working. Like, these things are seriously broken, and some of them will have the risk of ruin, or there'll be features, or there'll be, you know, business lines of bigger companies. But if you don't die during a downturn, then by definition, you deserve to exist. So if you survive, you know, like this crazy nuclear winter, you're going to be so strong. You're going to be like a shark or a crocodile. or a cockroach, you know, the animals that make it through to the other side when we have these cataclysmic events, like sharks have been here for a long time, alligators, you know,

cockroaches, these things have made their way across many different cycles. If you make it to the other side, you know, you're good by definition. So what is going to make it through this long, cold, you know, winter when all the food goes away? And there's no free money. There's, you know, there's no fruit and leaves on the trees. And there'll be some things in crypto that actually make it to the other side, right? Yeah, for sure. Maybe that's his thesis. Or maybe you had this thesis underway.

Yeah, that's what it is. They had this thesis underway in the up market, and they're still executing it. So he didn't just pop this idea out. When they raised that money from Sequoia and Paradigm, that billion dollars, that was the plan. So when they did that earlier this year, that means they were probably doing it six months before that. So, yeah, that's what's going on here. I got all excited while you're talking, thinking about how if you want to survive a siege, you want to be in a literal citadel. Like a big job.

What's the difference between a citadel and a keep? Is that the same thing? I don't know. A castle, a citadel a keep. Difference between a Citadel. Lord of the Ring nerds. Get in here. And a keep.

I know there is a nody nerd here who can tell us. There definitely is. Oh my God. I just came across like a writing forum that's like, I'm working out of fantasy. novel set in a non-terran world, and I need to know the right language. Do I want Castle, Keep, Citadel, or Fortress? Okay. Okay. I'm off the rails. I'm off the rails. No, I, uh, what about the SEC? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, anyway, uh, so then going on to pay for order flow. Yes. SEC, uh, actually trying to create a fairer playing field spurred by Robin Hood and

trades like that or are they trying to like shut down this pesky retail trading situation? So it does seem to me that more disclosure here would be better. I'm always in favor of more disclosure. So if you chose to, I'll leave out the name of the companies that do this since I own shares in one of them, Robin Hood. So to just make this like more generically, should people be able to do payment for order flow? In other words, should people be able to have this data, front run the market, should consumers be able to trade the fact that they're buying shares to get free trades? seems to me consumers should be able to make that decision for themselves. If you're holding the stock forever and you're paying a fraction of a penny difference in a share

or somebody's looking for data to make big trends based on the retail market, you're making independent decisions. Does it matter to you? It probably doesn't. Right. But you should know. But you should know. Right.

And so how do you let people know this? And I think it's just, you know, listen, people, you know, we are selling your data to other firms. So they know your trades. they know everybody's trades. And that's why it's free. And here is the opportunity to pay $29 a month to get 10 trades a month. And then after that, it's $3 a trade. So you just have a choice, which is what I've always felt about Facebook as well.

I feel consumers should have the right to use Facebook, not use Facebook. But if they do choose to use Facebook, the higher order, you know, offering should be, would you like to pay $7.99 a month for Facebook with no ads and no tracking? Or would you like to have it free? and we're going to sell your information down to the articles you read, you know, and the web pages you go to and your time on site and who your friends are, two advertisers in aggregate so they can target answer to you. You pick.

Right. Right. So it should be a you should know. You should know, yes. Right. Like, you can only pick if you know. What is also interesting is that Gensler and the SEC aren't necessarily calling for an actual ban.

They're talking about this kind of interesting middle ground, possibly, creating an order by order auction mechanism to help. retail traders get the best price possible. So to mitigate the potential conflict of interest built into the arrangement, which I like. This is like one of those times where I feel like the SEC might be working toward a good solution to what is a real issue, the transparency specifically. I mean, this all has to do with high frequency trading. What was that book Flash Boys or Flash trades, whatever it was, the Michael.

I think it's Flash Boys, yeah, about Brad Cautzeiama. I've talked to him, by the way, great interview. So smart. No, no, no, Brad Katziyama is the guy who's building IEX, which is the exchange that was supposed to mitigate for the high frequency trading. It's a speed bump. It's got a speed bump built into every trade. So, you know, I always felt the high frequency trading thing was Flash Boys.

I felt that that felt to me like unfair. That because somebody put their server closer to the other server, paid for a fiber line, upgraded their fiber line. Like, it just felt. icky. It feels to me like the stuff should be more transparent and people shouldn't be able to get that edge. It would be like they're, I'm trying to think of the analogy in gambling or sports. Like, I don't think somebody should get like a little edge in a basketball game that they know who you're running the play for, you know, or whatever it is. Like, so it just felt like

icky to me. I like the idea of there being like auctions and tracking, just like with the shorting of stocks. My understanding of the shorting is nobody has to disclose who's shorting, the big positions, whatever. But, you know, if you own stock in a company and you have a certain percentage of it, you do need to, you know, if you're an employee, say if you're selling or not, like that kind of stuff. I felt like shorts over a certain percentage should need to be listed something. Should have to disclose that. That makes a ton of sense because shorting can be, shorting can be a great check and balance in the market where others do not exist

but it should be more transparent and the reason it should be everything. Well, if you're shorting and you've got a big position and nobody knows it's you and then you're doing like gnarly memes

or bot armies like you should own you should own your short like it'd be good to know if Bill Gates does have a billion dollar short on Tesla I kind of want to know that so when I see him on TV and he's talking bullshit like exactly what is his position here? Now, if he had a million dollar short, like, does it matter or a hundred thousand dollar short?

Maybe under a million dollars shorts don't matter. Right. But over 10 million or over a million, you know, or over 10 million or over X percentage of the stock or the top 100 shorts, whatever it is. Come up with something. Because how is that not manipulation? It is. It should be disclosed.

And that's why some people who take these short positions as like, you know, is the reason to etra, like the reason they're running their companies, they come out and say, we're shorting, Herbalife, here's our slide deck of why we think this whole thing's a scam. We went, we did the training, it's a multi-level marketing thing. None of this stuff exists. We went to, like, when that guy shorted her herbal life,

and I think he got barbecued on it. Yeah. He, like, they, I don't know if you ever saw that deck in the presentation. Like, he was finding, like, herbal lives in the back of, like, this deli was the address for the herbal life thing. And they were running it out of the back of the deli, but there was nobody ever there.

And it was like, they did this with like 20 of them. They couldn't find all the affiliates. So people were, the affiliates, were doing all kinds of weird stuff. But they were still had good sales. It might have been sloppy or even, you know, smarmy, but it was still working. All right, as we wrap here,

little media media meditation. Yeah. I guess we have two things. We can talk about my hit on Megan Kelly or your tweet storm about ownership. Why don't we start with yours? Yeah, you sure. We can do it.

That's up to you. We're right here. We're right here. This is the end of the show, folks. We're going to get through these two things. Yeah. We are. Let's talk about Megan Kelly. Let's go there. Because I feel like what I feel like you had an interesting, I mean, for one thing you had a really interesting hit, but also you had a like front row seat to this thing that we've been talking about, which is the incentives in media that are making people get potentially more and more extreme as they go independent. Yeah. So, um, you got, you got ambushed a little bit. I don't know. I don't feel like I got ambushed. I went in knowing Megan Kelly was, I didn't know she was like full.

and I still don't know if she's full like alt-right or whatever but she seems to be like I guess down that in that Tucker zone which is I would say far right for entertainment persons far right entertainment yeah absolutely but I know that she was doing like YouTube and so I was like okay Sachs is doing it I recognize the name I know she had this huge contract

I think with NBC at some point so to be honest I didn't think it through Sacks was doing it he asked me to do it I was like okay fun. It should be an interesting adventure. Yeah, somebody here is saying in the comments, and prophet saying, Megan is like, Tucker Light. Okay, fine, right? So maybe she's just a little. That's fair. That's fair, probably.

So I didn't go in with a lot of expectations, but at some point we get to, and it was on the eve of the Chesa Boudin recall, which I was not a supporter financially and I didn't start the recall movement. I did a random act of journalism where I hired a journalist where I did a go-fund me. I put in $500 the rest of the community in San Francisco put in $60,000 or so. We gave it to a woman named Susan Reynolds who covers crime.

And I said, this is exclusively to do feature stories on victims. Will you agree to that? She agreed to that. We gave her the money. I didn't make any money off it. I just passed it through, got some insurance. And that was it. I thought this would be an interesting experiment for me.

So I'm associated with it. And I don't live in San Francisco anymore. I live in the wider Bay area, but I do have a property there. And so I do have some sort of vested interest in the future of the So we talked about that. And for those of you don't know, Chesa Putin got recalled. San Francisco is 6% Republican,

but somehow those Republicans figured out how to get like 65% of the recall votes. So this massive Republican GOP wave, or maybe they did 10 votes each, I don't know what these GOP Rite fingers are doing in San Francisco, but somehow they figured out the... Oh, my God.

I think there's like four Republican billionaires in San Francisco, and I'm friends with two of them. And they all went for this campaign big time. Well, I mean, it's a, you know, they were doing it maybe for, you know, more sinister dunking reasons, but the people of San Francisco had enough of the experiment of not, um, prosecuting violent crime. That's basically what it comes down to. People had enough of it. Um, it was a little too far, even for the, the thing. So we talked about that. It was fine. Um, oh my God, Megan had a $69 million contract

from NBC. Oh my God. Oh, if that's true, really? So, um, at some point during the show, Great. Super complimentary to you. I understand. I did not. What's that? It started out great. It sounds like it was she was super complimentary to you. Yes, because I think she saw me as an ally for dunking on the left. But most people think I'm on the left. So here I am in my no man's land. I'm just like, I have no home. I am literally a ron in with no political party. I got my own wacky views of the world. And people are claiming me for one party or putting me in the other depending on their party. So then she gets into this gun control thing and she's like, and by the way,

the left is using this gun thing to show bo, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, they're even mistaking the, you know, what is a mass shooting? And I was like, well, that's interesting. Like, what is a mass shooting? Just like, you know, so I thought that was like a pretty, because you know how I am about these topics?

I like to problem solve. I'm the problem solver in the relationship. So I immediately go to problem solving. I'm like, okay, if the problem is the definition of mass shootings, let's all get consensus on that. So I'm looking online. I see the FBI, USA Today, victim rights group. Everybody says four is the number for mass.

And so I ask her, like, what I think is a very straightforward question, you know, Megan, how many people have to be killed or shot in order for you to consider a mass shooting? And this, like, trigger warning, she starts to lose her cool. and I was like, oh, I've seen this before. When I had the Palmer Lucky interview, I asked them three times, how, why were you fired from Facebook? So here we are again.

This person is like, and she asked this like bizarrely convoluted question. That really wasn't a question. It seemed to be saying that Democrats were calling all shootings, mass shootings, unfairly so that they could justify taking away guns and avoid their record on crime, which was the, that's the shortest possible version.

Exactly. And then Jason's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. how many people need to be shot for it to be considered a mass shooting. And then we got to the all caps. All caps. I'm the interviewer. You are not. And then bad words.

Yeah, she called me a prick. And then she was like, how about you answer my questions? And I was talking to somebody else who was on her show and they're like, oh, that's what she does. She like warms you up and then she attacks you. Like, that's her, that's her stic. I was like, oh my God, this is entertaining.

I'm like, oh my God, she's losing her mind. Jake How's loving it. I'm loving it. I was like, I was also like, wait a second, is this person a professional? Like, she's like, you don't even know me and you may be number 26 in the rankings. And I'm like, oh my Lord. So you know what some, it was like a, she's a Karen. She went full Republican Karen.

So she loses her minds in Starbucks. She starts knocking everything off the counter. She goes full Karen. I step back. I'm like, I don't need to be part of this. You don't know me. I'm like, so everybody starts taking out their phones and taking. Muging Megan Karen.

And so, of course, full disclosure, I'm like, I can't believe we went on the show. And then, you know, like, I'm like. I had the same thought. I'm like, you're just chipping away. I had the same thought. Like, here I am. I spent the whole morning yesterday from 7 a.m. to 10, like making our show better.

And he's out here making sure that there are people who are not going to want to come on our show anymore. And I'm like, what is happening here? No, no, no. But I think it's like such an interesting. But then it's this whole question about who you engage with. with, who you, who you quote unquote platform, why, like, who's acting in good faith out here to bring us information? And this is like one of those cases where I'm like, sorry, but no, she's not,

you are. Yes. But does it matter if you go on this show where the whole show is not in good faith? Okay. Well, here's the reaction on Twitter. These are me like, I was like, oh, who, it's like, I love it. Sax looks like emperor palpitous. This is mid. Jason, do you want me to upload the clip and I'll play the curb your disease? Oh, my God, no. Oh, play the curb clip. No, no, this is funny. Watch this. The whole thing?

No, no, not the whole thing. No, no, not the whole thing. It's like a 45 seconds. I'll leave it. We'll put it in the show notes. You guys listen to this. But this is Nick's, Nick did this as like a goof to our group chat. Oh, nice.

Okay. I mean, Sacks does look like I like Palpatine. I like somebody could Photoshop Sacks with the Palpatine hood. And, you know, like he looks like Palpatine. And I'm like, oh, I'm like, hello there. I'm like, oh, I'm like, hello that. So anyway, there was a big, this thing went viral yesterday. There was a lot of support for me.

And I got a lot of DMs. We were like, wow, this is the best moment you've ever had in media. Yeah. You know, and it wasn't like a dunking thing. It was, I think what people saw in that moment was the complete insincerity of her argument. Yes. And some people thought I was a little rough on her because she demanded that I respond. She said, well, answer my question.

And then you did. Well, I said to her, was there a question? Can you tell me the question? She says, well, I gave you a framework or whatever. I want your reaction to what I said. I said, okay, I'll give you the reaction to what I said. And the first thing that came to my mind was you've just, you've just, and I can say this, I think on all in or here, and there'll be no problem.

I think you've conflated a bunch of issues in a partisan way. And I probably didn't need to add this last part. But I was in full candid J-Cal mode and I said for ratings. Yeah. And I think all so true that it triggered a volcano. Whoa, that was the game over moment. And I said, I think you've conflated a lot of, you know, important issues here in a partisan way. That was like trigger number one.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then I was like, because you're a carrot. And it was because you want ratings. that's sincerely what I thought she was doing. That's what I sincerely thought she was doing. Now, was that rude of me as the guest to say that? I don't know.

If somebody said it to me, I would be able to in a calm fashion say, no, it's not for ratings. Let me unpart. What part did you think was partisan? And if it's convoluted and it's three or four issues, let's take one issue at a time. I'll put aside the ratings thing. But if you think it's convoluted,

I'll break it down into three parts. Number one, you know, gang shootings of one, One person is not a mass shooting and handguns are not weapons. And why are we including these statistics in this argument as, you know, this person did? Right. And so if you want to make that argument, we can have that argument, right? And I think that's the nuance argument that would have been better. Right. I think she's programmed to be partisan.

I think she's programmed to do cliffhangers. And she's still in that like MS, whatever, I don't know what network she was on Fox, NBC. But she's in that network opinion news thing. Right. We're at the end of the clip, you know, you're trying to make these hangers so that you can stay tuned through the, you know, whatever Omaha Steaks commercial. And then we get you back after it. Yeah. Which was like the tease and the biz.

The tease, yeah, like these super teas. And so I don't think she's actually got her. And I think she's smart. I mean, I don't know how smart she is or, but I think she's so in a certain. like a format. Right. I think the format she uses is completely different than what we do here, completely different than All In, which is similar to what we do here,

is honest discussion based on facts. Yeah. And completely different than a highly produced NPR piece where you do a lot of research and you edit it and you tell a story kind of thing and it takes two days to produce it. She's doing something completely different and she's not going to have a nuance point-by-point debate because that doesn't serve her audience. And she picked one side of the audience. That side of the audience wants to have a party.

Dungfest. And I'm not there for a partisan dunk fest. I don't care what side says. What? I want to have a detailed, nuanced discussion. And so I feel like as much as I was like, I can't believe you went on that show, why you're trying to ruin my life all the time. Um, explain to people why this ruins your life, Cinderella. Because then I get a thing that's like, I can't believe you work for this guy. You got to quit. You got to come work for me. You're do you're like causing harm in the world. Like it's like my job to clean it up like Cinderella. Yes. I'm like, A, I'm not on that other show. be a better one. They're like, Beating and the Beasts is an excellent one. Exactly.

Who goes out and just like, and if you could just do better, you could turn him into a normal man instead of a beast. Right. Yes. Yes. Beating the beast, by the way,

the single most damaging fairy tale that has ever come along for women. Exactly. So that was the thought I was having. And then you see what happens when, because you do have all of these bad faith actors in media. On every, on, you know, and there are extremes on both side,

although the far right is the most extreme right now. But it is about incentives. It's about staying relevant. It's about engaging and having it like a, it's really, I keep saying like, of course, everybody wants to trigger the libs. It's fun. Lips are the worst. Sometimes I literally feel like in the room like the mom, like being a buzzkill about like,

well, actually, it's really true though that people do get discriminated against in the real world. Right. So what happened really, though, is that what she's in is a bubble of constant positive reinforcement for everything that she says. and you went in and punctured the bubble. Yeah. Here's reality. And it was actually fascinating to watch.

Yeah. And to be totally honest, I did not go in there try to dunk on here. I did what I always do. Just want to have like a reasonable discussion. Let's get into the facts. Let's problem solve. And that's not what's happened in bubbles. That's what happening there.

So it became like a John Stewart moment. I don't remember when John Stewart, I think was, I think there was one where he talked to Jim Kramer and he became sort of serious about stuff or there was another one where, you know, like you're just kind of being serious. Right. I actually, lo and behold, I became the serious person here who was like,

well, how many, so I asked for three times. Yeah. So how many people do you want to play? Do you want, okay, so here,

what's just a funny one. This is just the funny clip. All right. It's pretty funny. Now we can just enjoy that after mass. Before we have to go back to work. How many people do need to die in a mass shooting for it to be? Why don't you answer my question?

What was the question? Was there a question? Yeah. I thought we're here to have a dialogue, Meg. I thought you were, I'm shooting the point at you, and I'm asking for your reaction. Okay.

I think you're conflating a lot of different issues in a very partisan way to get ratings. That's bull-h-h-hob. Don't question my motives. This is where you turn into an asshole. You asked me what I think. That's what I said. That's what I think. I think you're complaining a lot of issues here.

I think we need to have a realistic discussion about gun control in this country. No, no, no. Let me just stop. Let's have the actual thing. What you said that there's a reason. I'm giving you my honest analysis. And for you to say that I am misleading the audience for ratings is a prick thing to say. You don't know me.

All right? I've made my name and I've made my business based on honest journalism. I realize you may be number 26 worldwide, but you've never done real journalism at the level I have in your life. So I don't need a lecture from you about ratings. I'm here to deliver honest information in my audience. That's what I'm doing.

Oh my God. Well, well played. Nick. Nick. Nick, you're just... It's too funny. Oh, God. You know that there's that new, like, that new emoji that's like this? Oh yeah, when you look through your fingers your eyes like, oh, it's like a horror movie.

That was too good. Sax, I'm crying. Sax's reaction was just so great. She was just, he was like, he's like, yes. I feel like at first he's like watching it happen like, oh no,

Megan's going down. And then pretty soon he's like, we are 26 in the world. Boom. Well, I mean, well, and you know, she asked us about, hey, the pot's done so amazing. I was like, yeah, no, it's crazy.

It's like a phenomenon. I can't believe it hit number 26 the other week. So then that was very revealing. You know, when people lose their cool, Molly, it becomes very revealing what they say. She, that whole time she was interviewing me was thinking, how the fuck are these guys 26, and I'm 2,600. I'm stuck on Sirius. I am on Sirius Channel 273. Yeah.

I have 49,000 Twitter followers. J-Cal's got 500,000. I am a professional journalist this guy's a fucking hack You see how she tried to dismiss me Yeah 100% You have never done journalism at my level I've never done jurisdiction

No me I ran a magazine I sold a company for $30 million I created the number one blog in the world For a period of time And Gage was the number one blog for like two years When I mean at least Pretty much changed digital journalism pull stop

Yeah And come on man Like I'm not trying to get a Pulitzer over here But you don't have to like Attack me You may be 26, but I, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, somebody needs to talk to their therapist about this because, like, come on. Like, really, you're that angry at me?

And maybe, listen, maybe it's always like that. Bill Simmons is number one. And he's just talking about the Celtics guy. But why should Bill Simmons be number one? You know, like, I'm like, stokes for Bill Simmons to be number one. I love his podcast. You're her, you're her, Scott. Calloway.

I'm not scared. I love playing. Speaking of Scott Gallo. And maybe, look, maybe the show's like that all the time. I don't know. But to me, it seemed like what happened is you got accidentally inside the bubble.

I did. You made a good, you made a like a reason, you were like, let's have a real conversation about this. And you had a good one liner that was somewhat devastating in its unvarnished truth.

And bubble burst. Bubble bursting. All right. And Karas Fischer is leaving her role Losa Colleen. And also Carousewiswis, she's leaving her role as column. And podcast are at New York Times. After, I don't know how long she was there for like a year doing sway, which was great, great interview show.

Maybe longer. And was an opinion contributor? I don't know if she still will be doing that. But yeah, is going back to Vox. Going back to Vox, which walk code. Pivot's been a great success. She's been doing that with Scott Galloway, Professor Coltex for about four years. Swisher said she became very interested in owning intellectual property and sharing the

benefits of building a business alongside a partner. So what I would take from that is she has ownership in Pivot now. It's not just a paid gig. And they did a conference and the Code Conference. I think they're going to do one more year of that and end it. So maybe it will just be like the Pivot Conference. We'll take that. And she, you know, she's 60 now, as she said.

And she looks right for 60, by the way, and great energy. You know, when you're 60, Molly, you probably have one more good pushing you to build a brand. And she probably wants to create a legacy here. And she wants to own that legacy. This is about the New York Times. But also yes. Oh, okay. Yeah.

So explain that because you were there. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think what's so interesting is that what we're seeing is that legacy media, such as the New York Times, she's leaving for almost all the same reasons that Taylor Lorenz left, which is that the New York Times is that the New York Times.

That they're not interested. And, you know, full disclosure, neither is American public media, the parent company of Marketplace, interested in having their talent own, even apart, let alone all, of the products that they create in-house. And so what Kara said is not only is she very interested in owning intellectual

property and sharing in the benefits of building a business alongside a partner, she said these organizations need to start thinking about talent. Yeah. And I think it's just a really, it's a big change. You created I mean, you've created a number of brands. And when I say created, I'm not

saying you co-hosted. Like, I created this weekend startups, you co-hosted. Somebody created marketplace, you co-hosted. What people don't know is, make me smarter, and correct me if I'm wrong here, make me smarter. I know for a fact, how we survive, you came up with those names and those concepts, executed on them, and now the company owns it, which is how it works. If you work for a company, they own your IP, they pay you a salary, you take no risk, they take the risk, boom. But you did create those two brands, am I right? I don't want to

misspe. I created those two brands. I'm not mispeaking. Tom and I created, Tom and I created Buzz Out Loud, first CET, which was the first successful, you know, commercially successful podcast on. I created The Buzz Report. I created Always On. I even wrote a business plan for it. So what you're seeing in media, like, this is the way of work. Yeah. But in media, like, creativity, increasingly, I'm realizing that creativity is a product that creates value. And so you're having these legacy media operations have a brain drain because it's, because they're disincentivizing us to bring our best ideas to work. At some point, after I had argued with the last place, enough times about ownership and equity or even freaking bonuses around products, I created inside my own brain

and inspired others to execute. You get to the point where you're like, okay, I'm not going to bring you my good ideas anymore. I'm going to start my own thing and own them on the side. And I think it's just very interesting in the media landscape that that's what Taylor and Kara and And all of the creators who have chosen to remain Joe Rogan, right? Like you see people saying, I'm not participating in this thing where I give you my creativity for free because it's a really valuable product. Yeah. And I think this is kind of a hybrid. So there really is like three models here.

You're Joe Rogan or this weekend startups or whatever. You're a solo person. You take all the risk. You pay the staff. You own it. And then there's I work for somebody full time. they own my IP. I get all these, I take no risk.

If they hire staff, I don't have to pay them and worry about their staff. I don't have to get a second mortgage on my house or whatever to pay for this endeavor, you know, not knowing if it's going to work or not. But there is something in the middle. There's something in the middle. And increasingly, the thing in the middle, you know, could take a couple of different forms. Here, I'm just taking a guess. I don't have inside information, but Bankoff did buy weblogs, Inc, which was like kind of the precursor to Vox, you know, the verge was based on

gadget, you know, and their video game was based on joystick. And he's giving me credit for that, so I don't need to belabor it. But, you know, they are clearly going to give Caras Swisher ownership in this new brand. And they're going to put up the money to make it. So maybe it's a 50-50 partnership. Maybe she owns the majority of it. And they own, or maybe she said to them, I own it, you get to monetize it for 10 years. And I'm doing a licensing deal with you, which is the deal that Joe Rogan did with Spotify. Joe Rogan still owns. all his IP. He just gave exclusive rights to it for a time period to Spotify. So there's different flavors of this and people need to realize that, right? They do. I think legacy media needs to

realize that because they've got a big brain drain problem. And they have people choosing to be YouTube creators and Instagram creators and be on Spotify and they have every opportunity to make their own podcast. And platforms still matter. Like, people call you back a lot faster when you're at the New York Times than when you're not. Yeah. But I just, I just, I I think it's like a big, you're starting to see a big power shift. And it's, I think it's great to see, you know, when Taylor does it, she went to the Washington Post. So it's going to be all the same issues, respectfully, as it was in some ways. But when Kara stands up and is like, no.

Yeah. Right. Like I have given you my product for free this whole time. No, not for free. Not for free. You got ownership. I was a paid servant. I was a paid, right.

Yes. And maybe, you know, you have to try to benefit in outside ways by like, getting speaking gigs that the New York Times never lets you take and all of these other things. And it's just like exhausting. So good for her. Yeah, I mean, you can make the choice. As a content creator, it really is. How much risk do you want to dial up?

If you want to take the risk, you get the reward. If you want to just show up for work for 40 hours a week or whatever number and, you know, just rest. You can take that option too. And then there's everything in between, you know. Yeah. And so congratulations, Caroushisher's making money moves. Great.

Good for her. making money moves moves all right speaking of which we are supposed podcast in the morning and invest in the afternoon and we are well into the afternoon that's interesting that's interesting tomorrow we have a little notice give a thumbs up

if you're watching on YouTube YouTube.com says this weekend this weekend yeah and then tomorrow to those notice we'll be back at 9 a.m. Pacific with a special guest oh special guest oh oh oh oh so just oh I know with you prepared early you're doing

the show without me tomorrow yes I am but with a fan favorite guest. Special guest, empty chair. Just kidding. Fan favorite. Fan favorite. Is it a lady boss? It is a lady boss. We got a lady boss. Here we go. It's going to be a great show. All right. It's going to be a great show. We'll see you all tomorrow. See you then. Bye. If you are a founder of a pre-series A company, you haven't raised that series A yet, which is really hard. Well, we wanted to invite you to Founder University. This is a two-day intensive course. It takes place on June 13th and 14th. It's remote.

It's free. We limit the number of people who can come. We ask you to apply. And this virtual workshop is free for founders and helps you understand how to fundraise and pitch, how to hire great people, how to build a world-class product, how to execute on your sales and marketing and some growth techniques as well. The launch team and I have been doing this for a long time. It has been amazing for us to get to know founders. And that's why we do it. Of course, we want to help folks as many as possible. That's part of our mandate. But really our mandate at launch here at this week in and the syndicate, which is where we invest, we meet and invest in companies,

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