This Week in Startups - Digital surveillance risks post-Roe v. Wade ruling with Legal Voice’s Kim Clark + PE firm acquires Zendesk for $10.2B | E1494

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Today, we bring on Kim Clark, an attorney at Legal Voice, who reached out to Molly after listening to our shows last week that mentioned the impacts of surveillance on healthcare privacy, notably abortion (2:13). And in related news, today’s Startup of the day is Stardust, an end-to-end encrypted Period Tracking App (39:13). Then, we cover a non-Roe v. Wade story: Zendesk will be acquired by an investor group in an all-cash transaction valuing it at around $10.2B (42:45). (0:00) Jason and Molly intro today’s show! (2:13) Roe v. Wade overturned: Kim Clark, Senior Attorney at Seattle-based Legal Voice, joins to discuss (10:51) LinkedIn - Post your first job for free at https://linkedIn.com/twist (12:06) Digital surveillance of pregnant women or women trying to become pregnant (24:07) Bubbles - Get your point across with unlimited screen and video recordings for free at https://usebubbles.com/twist (25:24) Period tracking apps and user data (27:06) Medication abortions (31:42) Wealthfront - Get your first $5,000 managed for free, for life at https://wealthfront.com/TWIST (33:00) Best thing to do if you care about this issue (39:13) Startup of the Day: Stardust, a privacy-first Period Tracker App (42:45) Zendesk has agreed to be acquired by investor group in all-cash transaction valuing it at around $10.2 billion (51:15) We’re doing our 12-week Founder University program! Head to founder.university and sign up

All right, hey, everybody. Welcome back. It is Monday. It's going to be a big show today on this weekend startups. I hope you relaxed over the weekend and listen to our wonderful Sunday show, BC Sunday School, and this weekend climate startups. Yeah, and today we're going to bring you Kim Clark. She's an attorney at Legal Voice. And she actually reached out to Molly over LinkedIn after listening to our shows where we mentioned we talk about the impacts of the surveillance state regarding health care privacy notably abortion. So we're going to talk a little bit about Roe v. Wade at the top of the show. Yeah, and Kim is not just a lawyer focusing on reproductive rights. She is also an angel investor. So there's a whole bunch of tech and startup angle to this also. It's a great conversation. Kim was amazing. And then related today's startup of the day is Stardust, an end-to-end encrypted period tracking app.

Privacy for your period people. Absolutely. And then we're going to cover some non-Rovie Wade stories as well. Zendes is going to be acquired by an investor group and an all-cash transaction valuing them at about 10. billion dollars. That is a true sign of a bottom when private companies with a lot of cash, a lot of revenue public companies get taken private. So we'll have a little talk about that. It's going to be a great show. It's a great show. Stick with us. Stick with us. This week in

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go to wealthfront.com slash twist. All right, we're going to break down this topic as promised. We needed the weekend to digest it. And then as it happened, our guest, Kim Clark, who's a senior attorney at Seattle-based legal voice, is here now to talk to us. Reach out to me over the weekend on LinkedIn because we had specifically mentioned this question of this ruling coming down in an age of near complete digital surveillance. And there's been a lot of conversation about what, you know, when you have

states that have not only outlawed abortion, but made the practice of providing an abortion punishable by life in prison, I think it's Alabama that had that trigger law in the books, which is now the case, that all of a sudden, the fact that your phone knows when you have your period, when you don't, not to mention every other thing about you. Location comes to mind. Location comes to mind. It gets a little more terrifying than maybe it even was back in the 60s and 70s and all the years before that. So Kim reached out to me on LinkedIn, said, I happen to be an expert on this topic and an angel investor.

Oh, wow. And I was like, well, done and done. So welcome, Kim. Welcome, Kim. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much for hosting this podcast on this really important. important subject.

Yeah, it's kind of shocking, even though we had four months to prepare for this with the leak. And I guess, you know, right off the bat, all of these laws that were, and I guess this is a few as well,

all these laws that were on the books, I guess these trigger laws. I'm trying to understand. I've been hearing on the news so much different information. Some people are saying there's, they're 30 days. Some people are saying they're triggered

and they're actually on the books now. What is the state of affairs? Can anybody explain to me, you know, where we're at, here we are on day three after the ruling? Yeah, maybe Kim, jump in there and tell us a little bit about what legal voice does and how this is so, you know, related to the work that you do. Yeah, of course. So I am senior attorney for reproductive rights, health and justice at Legal Voice, which is a legal advocacy organization that advances gender equity throughout the Pacific Northwest through high impact, litigation. policy advocacy and legal rights education. So my work focuses specifically on reproductive rights

and spans the entire Pacific Northwest. And Jason, to answer your question, so we've all heard that there are 26 states that are basically poised to ban abortion with the issuance of this decision. And it just varies by state whether, you know, at which point those statutes go into effect. The closest state to, I'm in the state of Washington, the closest state to Washington that has an abortion ban is Idaho. That statute goes into effect 30 days after the decision, although it's actually going to take a little bit longer than that because it requires judicial action. But it just varies, it varies by state. In some states, there are prosecutors who are already seeking to enforce the bans. It's, suffice to say, it's going to be a lot of work for lawyers.

And when we look at the like Idaho as an example, I guess the question is, how aggressive do you predict these states that are banning abortion or putting additional regulation are going to be in terms of pursuing folks who leave the state to have an abortion? This seems to be, at least from all of the Sunday shows I listen to, the big debate or question. And you're obviously on the inside of this. So what does your gut tell you? Because I don't know that there's precedent for this, right? Or is there precedent of, you know, some prosecutor from Idaho going into Oregon or, you know, wherever? That's a great question. And I think the answer is, unfortunately, the law is less well settled than even most of us lawyers might have assumed.

So that is the question that advocates across the country are really grappling with. and I think it's just going to play itself out in the courts over the course of, you know, the next, you know, the immediate future. And that's part of the reason I say there's just going to be a lot of work for, for lawyers. But, but that is, that's a huge concern. Certainly, you know, for providers, you know, but also for people who are helping folks cross state lines in order to access care. Right. It seems like we have this sort of double situation. One is, you know, is that there will almost certainly become illegal abortion providers in these states where it's illegal, because it just won't be feasible for everybody to travel out of state. It's just not an option for a lot of the people who will find themselves in the situation.

And then there's the question of pursuance out of state and Texas and Oklahoma both have those laws that basically say, if you aid and abet an abortion, that you can be sued, which would also suggest that they might be pursuing, know, if I'm like, hey, if you're in Texas and you need an abortion, come stay at my house, then all of a sudden somebody in Texas might say, I'm going to sue you, take you to court. That's exactly right. And actually, Idaho also has a Texas SB8 like statute on the books. And I think what I would add is that, and one of the issues that I think is relevant to this conversation is cyber attacks. What those SB8 likes, I've been, a lot of folks have asked me, you know, is there really any point in having those statutes that impose civil liability or, or, or, um, deputize individuals to bring civil claims against providers now that these bans can go into effect.

And I think one of the advantages of having those statutes on the book in anti-abortion states is that they create an incentive for vigilantes to engage in exactly the kind of medical surveillance that we're about to talk about. Right, because you get, you can be awarded $10,000 for basically snitching, turning somebody in. That's exactly right. Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, the, you know, I hate to be an optimist in a dark time like this, but it's just kind of how my brain works. One of the things I thought was super optimistic or made me at least a little bit optimistic this weekend was the number of companies that came out and said, we are going to provide explicitly an abortion benefit. We're going to pay $4,000, whatever it is. I mean, and this was not like, you know, a virtue signaling small group of small companies.

This was JPMorgan, this was meta, this was Yelp, this was Levi Schrauss, Tesla, Microsoft, Starbucks, DoorDash, Lyft, Bank of America. I mean, it was essentially, you know, every major company, almost every major company you could think of, came out and said, hey, explicitly, we're going to do this. So does that mean these companies then, by providing that, are explicitly, you know, thumbing their noses at and challenge? these state legal regulations. Yeah, the incentives of these states. I mean, it sounds like they're really saying, hey, this is outrageous. We're going to challenge us because, hey, we have unlimited resources to fight a legal battle, whereas some individual might not. That's right. And I think all of those are open questions, really. It's really a question of how the state law is written, to what extent it imposes aid or in a better liability.

and then how aggressively states will pursue claims against or seek to assert jurisdiction over conduct that takes place even outside of their borders. So all of those are legal questions that have yet to be resolved. But I too have been really encouraged by the number of employers who have come out to offer those kinds of supports. I think there are also major questions about how those programs will work, how the mechanics of that will work without, you know, violating. the employee privacy as well. But I, you know, I'm... What do you mean by that?

I guess. Oh, that in order to take advantage of those benefits, you know, how do you do that without disclosing to your employer that that's what you're doing? Yeah. Which can, you know, could put the employee at risk as well as the employer potentially. Because in a normal situation, you would go to your health care provider and they would obscureify that from the HR department now. Now the, now a woman has to go to the HR.

department say, can I have my benefit? And that is something they may not want to share with the HR department. Exactly. Exactly. So such a good point. Okay, everybody, it's summer of 2020. And right now is a great time to grow your small business. LinkedIn jobs is going to help you find great candidates faster. And your first job post is free. You heard that correct. Now, of course, you know LinkedIn jobs is the best hiring platform out there. And we use it all the time at launch and inside. In fact, we're hiring another producer for this very show this week in startups. What makes LinkedIn job so good? Why are we so obsessed with it? Well, you know, LinkedIn's the world's largest professional network with over 810 million people. When we started these ads, I think it was at 300 or 400 million. You can create your

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It's also a great segue into this surveillance question and all of the ways that, our technology now makes this hellscape even more hellish. Yes. One of the most straightforward things that has come up in recent months since the leak draft was period tracking apps. But what else, what are we not thinking of around all the ways that we can sort of be stalked? Yeah, I was so glad when I heard you talk about this, Molly, on Friday, because, you know,

this is an issue that I have been concerned about for a long time. There are so many ways in which personal health information of pregnant people is being collected, and there is almost nothing to do, nothing to prevent the disclosure of that information. And that information can be used now not just to harass and intimidate patients and providers, which has been going on for a long time, and it's been a major strategy of the anti-abortion movement. But now it can be used to support the, you know, support these civil and criminal cases, against pregnant people and their providers. And I think there's so little awareness of this issue,

not just among, you know, tech companies, but among the, you know, the communities who are going to be most impacted by these bans. So it's just such an important issue to bring attention to. And as I said earlier, the proliferation of these Texas SB8-like statutes just encourages this kind of surveillance even further. And while all of this has been a major risk, you know,

and people have been aware, I think, you know, that, you know, our information is being collected and it's going places we may not, you know, we may not realize. But I think this, this just raises the stakes tremendously. So I think there are, you know, there are concerns for tech startups and employers. There are concerns for advocacy organizations and abortion funds. And we can talk about all of those. But, yeah, I just really appreciate your, you're raising the issue. What are the ways? Like, help us understand the specifics. Like, there are so many ways that we're being tracked. We sort of know that, but we also know we can't opt out. Like, can you make that more concrete for us when it comes down to pregnancy beyond just like going to Google, God help you in searching help I need an abortion, which. Yeah.

We can start with Google. I mean, I should start by saying I become aware of new ways. It seems like every day. So we won't even be able to identify all the rest. But I will say that the anti-abortion movement is really acquainted with this strategy as a means, I guess, historically as a means of intimidating and harassing patients and providers. But again, now there's sort of the stakes are even higher. But I would say you mentioned Google. Let's start there. One of the challenges is that when folks search for abortion on Google, a lot of these search engines, the first thing that will come up are crisis pregnancy centers. And crisis pregnancy centers for those who don't know, They're also known as limited service pregnancy centers or pregnancy help centers, pregnancy resource centers, are these fake clinics that exist for no purpose other than to dissuade people from accessing abortion and contraception or to delay them from accessing care to a point where they can no longer access care.

And the problem is that these crisis pregnancy centers, first of all, they outnumber legitimate reproductive health care facilities by three or four to one across the country. and because they are only masquerading as legitimate reproductive health care facilities, they are not covered by HIPAA because the vast majority of crisis pregnancy centers provide no health services whatsoever. They provide sort of drugstore pregnancy tests and these keepsake ultrasounds, which are basically like a souvenir. But, you know, they look like real reproductive health care facilities. Their staff wear white coats.

I mean, they're set up like doctor's offices. And the Supreme Court has a, has essentially endorsed this model and said that there's really not much you can do from a policy standpoint to address their deceptive practices. So setting all of that aside, they are in a position to collect a ton of private health information from folks. So folks will go on, you know, Google and do a search for abortion services and the first 10 sites that come up are crisis pregnancy centers. You know, you go on the websites of those crisis pregnancy centers and now they have your information. You go to those crisis pregnancy centers and now they have more information.

And there have been reports of crisis pregnancy centers sharing that information with Facebook and other entities because of course all of that can be monetized. They also, of course, use it for movement building purposes to themselves, harass and intimidate, you know, patients and providers. But and then now again, they're perfectly positioned to support these prosecutions. But so that. So this is something Google could really help is, you know, checking these results and then making sure that SEO optimization isn't happening in a fairest way. I just did abortion providers, Texas, Alabama, and a couple of searches. And, you know, it looked from the surface level. I didn't have, you know, all the time in the world to do this. But this is something if there are people at Google who are

listening right now for sure. So for people at Google or any search engine, this is something to to basically look for is people trying to redirect traffic to these nefarious sites. And in fairness to Google, Google is definitely aware of the concern and I think is working to address it. But so that is that is one concern is the confusion over the difference between and is particularly online, the difference between legitimate reproductive health care facilities and crisis pregnancy centers. Because even as a trained lawyer familiar with the issue, can sometimes be hard to tell. So that's one.

But then, Molly, you also talked about period tracker apps. So it's not just period tracker apps, but, you know, even, so period tracker apps are relevant because they too are collecting personal health information, but they're not subject to HIPAA. And it may even be part of their business model to share information, you know, to share some of the information that they're collecting. And some collect more information than others. So, you know, that, those, you know, companies, well-intentioned as they may be, could be subject to subpoenas, which they then, you know, would have to comply with. And then, again, that information, you know, could be used to advance these kinds of cases.

And then, you know, in the health, women's health innovation space, also reproductive health, you know, companies that are offering medication abortion, even those that are based out of state and are only providing care out of state. they too while they're protected by you they're they're subject to HIPAA even HIPAA allows for the disclosure of personal health information in in conjunction with a subpoena. So there's not there's not a lot you can do there, but one thing for those types of companies to be concerned about and really thinking about is cybersecurity. I was just on a call with Bethany Corbin, who's an attorney at Nixon Gwil, built, which is a law firm that represents health startups in sort of the Femtech space, was talking about this concern. And yeah, and so just the, just cyber security will be a huge issue, not just tech companies and tech startups, but also for providers and abortion funds and advocacy organizations and, you know, basically all those community organizations that are trying to

help members of their community access care. So that's a, you know, a huge. issue. We talked about employers, you know, who are offering these employee benefits. You know, they too may, you know, unknowingly be creating a tool for cyber attackers to, you know, to use, to collect information that could be used to bring these claims. So they too have to be conscious of, you know, cyber attacks. So, yeah. If I'm wrong, every time we have a crisis like this, it creates a moment for everybody to review all these attack vectors. And it was nice to see.

Yeah, and this can happen on a personal basis. People could, you know, really get educated on which search engines track you using incognito and a VPN and all this kind of stuff, which is a great first step. And then I noticed the period tracker companies saying, hey, we're going to add end-to-end encryption. We're going to have anonymous mode. Flow, I think, is the popular one I was reading, said they're going to come up with an anonymous mode.

Here's the notice. You know, one thing I would add here for the team at Flow is if you're going to add something like anonymous mode, what really matters is the default. I would just encourage everybody to just default all of these things. Defaults matter is something we say in the industry over and over again. Just default all this stuff to being private. And the iPhone is obviously exceptional at this because they'll obscureify your email address for you and everything else. So I'm sure the team at Apple is looking at the app store. I'm sure the team at Google is looking at the app store.

and saying, hey, how do we make sure that people can't track the use of these apps for some nefarious reasons? And then maybe even putting a higher bar on these apps in terms of approving them, because people do, like those interception sites for those routing of women nefariously, it's completely possible somebody could get into the Google Play Store, less likely into the Apple Store, an app that actually tracks you. You think you're tracking your period and it's actually redirecting you. So just, I hate to be cynical and expect the worst. but I think with this contingent of people,

that is kind of their point. Kind of have to, yeah. Kind of have to. And like you were saying, Kim, I mean, it's going to be incumbent on these companies and startups to explain exactly what anonymous mode is, right?

Anonymous mode does not mean that your information can't, under threat of subpoena or under an actual subpoena, then be aggregated to your actual identity based on your IP address or your, like, I think we don't, you know, there's, last week I brought it,

the fact that I keep this, Shoshana, well, Shoshana Zuboff book on my shelf, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Like, we have no idea how many layers of surveillance are baked into everything we do. There was a story 10 years ago about how Target was sending pregnancy flyers to like the home of pregnant people, in some cases outing them to their parents. There was like one specific case where there was a teenage girl because, and that was a

decade ago because your shopping patterns, your search patterns, you know, if you, if there is a cookie that knows that you order tampons from Target every 28 days and all of a sudden you don't, there's nothing that you can do to opt out. There's no app in the world that's going to be able to anonymize what you buy. That's a great example of what I mean when I say I learn of a new risk every day, it seems. That's one I hadn't thought about, but yes, that's a great, that's a great point. would be a great solution would be also if planned parenthood, Planned Parenthood should set up this benefit and then just tell, you know, Tesla or Uber or J.P. Morgan, hey, three people chose to elect for this benefit.

We funded them for $12,000. You can, you know, keep money in account here at Planned Parenthood for this service. Then it would, the person would call Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood would verify they're an employee. And then, you know, they could, because in all likelihood may be going to go to a Planned Parenthood. Right. Unfortunately, there are some really great legal minds that are thinking about models exactly

like that. I don't know that they involve Planned Parenthood. But yeah, that's exactly. That's a great point. The promise of remote work was more flexibility, more time back and more freedom, but in reality, many of us are more bogged down than ever. Why? Because of the nonstop messages, emails, and video calls.

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Last year, the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with a popular fertility and period tracking app amid allegations that it misled users about the disclosure of their personal health date of the statement followed a 2019 Wall Street Journal investigation that found the app informed Facebook when a user was having their period or if they informed the app they were intending to get pregnant. obviously this has nothing to do with abortion in all likelihood. They were just probably trying to make money to sell that data for people to, you know, get in on the bonanza that is a pregnancy in terms of spending. Right. But still, the unintended consequence here is obvious. Yeah. I think that raises a great point that it behooves technology companies to really be looking at

their privacy policies, making sure that they're very, very clear. and prominently, you know, displayed so that users really know what they're, you know, accepting. And then also how that information, not just how the information will be used, you know, having a really clear data map of the flow of information, I think is really important. I mean, especially because I think most of these companies, you know, their purpose is to advance women's health, not to undermine it. So. Yeah. And here we go.

over the weekend, just some more data points. The period tracking app called Star Dust became the number one free app and Apple's App Store, partially due to the fact that they offer end-to-end encryption. So pretty interesting there as well. Let me ask a question about Plan B the pill. And I'm not, you know, I don't have, I've been trying to educate myself how many abortions occur, how many of those are Plan B. I haven't been able to get that data.

I don't know if you have it. But would one solution here to alleviate pain and suffering and inequality be to make this pill more widely available? And can women have this pill proactively? In other words, can they keep it on hand? You know, men can keep condoms on hand, you know, and other birth control on hand. People can keep things on hand. Are you allowed to have it on hand as opposed to having to make this mad dash to get it? So a lot of great questions there.

First of all, I want to clarify there's a difference between Plan B, which is the emergency, which is emergency contraception. It's basically a big dose of, yeah, that you take. Yeah. And so that's theoretically not implicated by these abortion bans. But medication abortion, which is a combination of Miphypristone and misoprostol, there are two pills that you take sequentially. That's what folks are referring to when they talk about medication abortion. and it does require a prescription. So it's not the kind of thing that in theory you could have on hand.

That said, there are, and I think to answer your question about how prevalent medication abortion is, it's available up to 11 weeks of pregnancy and the Gutmacher Institute, which is the sort of premier organization that, you know, collects all of this type of data. reports, I think, that over 50% of abortions now, particularly during the pandemic, were medication abortions. And the vast majority of abortions do take place early in pregnancy in the first trimester. And you can see why medication abortion would be appealing because it's something that you can take in the privacy of your own home.

But so very prevalent. And it is, I mean, thank goodness, it is what distinguishes, you know, where we are now from, you know, where we were. in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided. There are organizations that, you know, abroad that prescribe medication abortion and will send it through the mail. And so folks are accessing it that way, you know, especially in states like Texas where there are already bans in place.

Most of the statutes that are, the bans that are being passed criminalized providers, not pregnant people for now. And so what that means is if you do have access to medication abortion, you should be free from criminal liability for taking advantage of that. And we should note here too that right now, at least lawmakers have said that these medications manifesto, I can't remember how you pronounce that is that those that they're, because they are FDA approved, that. states cannot restrict access to them. I'm certain that they will be looking for ways to do so, but that does seem to be at least right now a loophole. Yeah, that too, I think, is an open question. So you're right, Merrick Garland, the Justice Department has said that because the FDA has taken the position that, you know, it has approved these two drugs, the state, and it basically has

occupied the field, which means it preempts any state legislation that would ban the use of these two drugs. I think it's, you know, it's definitely an open legal question as to how the court would receive that claim. And of course, you know, it's the very same court that just issued the decision in Dobbs that would be reviewing that claim. And of course, it's also subject to change by the FDA at any time, which could be a function of who's in office. So while that's very encouraging, and I think it's, you know, it's something. I think it's, it may not be. We're grasping at straws at this point, is what you're saying? Well, no, I mean, I am.

I think that's, I think it's a, we should try everything we can. Yeah. It was interesting. I was listening to Face the Nation and Margaret Brennan was interviewing Governor Christy Noem from South Dakota. And she has a bill to ban telemedicine abortions or what she described as telemedicine abortions. And so the ability to get these drugs, she's trying to explicitly ban it. And so this feels like it's going to be a battleground on.

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at wealthfront.com slash twist. Best thing people can do if they care about this issue, short-term, long-term, Kim, is what? Well, if you care about this deeply, what can we do in the short term this week, this year, and overtime? So I think for individuals, I think the most immediate thing, and you've probably been hearing this everywhere, is to support your local abortion funds, which help people, who will be helping people on the ground who need to travel across state lines to access care, which can be tremendously expensive. And, you know, for those who, you know, are, you know, working multiple jobs and have children and, you know, are living in with poverty, it's, you know, you know, can be prohibitively so. So those funds could be a non-starter, right?

Oh, there are so many. So many barriers to access to care already. And then the idea of having to cross state lines and travel, it just compounds things tremendously. So those kinds of organizations like really, truly need support. I think for, you know, for tech companies, I would say, you know, who maybe, you know, a big part of your audience, you know, obviously we've talked about kind of getting, getting their own houses in order and making sure their data is.

they're collecting as little data as possible and that it's to accomplish their goals they're seeking to accomplish. And then making sure that their data is secure. But then for those companies that have cybersecurity expertise, you know, offering that support to, you know, abortion funds and QT, BIPAC or community-based organizations that are going to be helping, you know, folks cross state lines to access care and advocacy organizations like mine. And, you know, just making sure that all of this data remains secure and even thinking about the development of new technologies that would help tools to help people detect and alert people to these many different risks. At this point, I think it's sort of a full-time job.

I mean, Molly held up the book that she was reading on cybersecurity that's, I don't know, like 1,500 pages long it looked like. There are just so many risks and just helping people to get their arms around that. and to know what to do to protect themselves. I've seen a lot of like the security people that I follow on Twitter saying, you know, we really need to set up essentially an education pipeline, like a hotline that's just like how to tell people how to try to keep themselves

as anonymous as they can. And I love the idea of companies that have expertise in this doing training with providers and even potentially with individuals. Actually, that's a great idea. And then I would end with one, really interesting, very new and innovative idea that I had not heard before, but I just heard sort of referenced on the Ark Invest podcast, which talked about using blockchain technology, tokens to protect personal health information and give ownership to people over their personal

health information so that it's, as it's transmitted from point A to point B, not only are you aware of it, but you can actually, you know, that has value and you can actually, you know, benefit from that. So that's something that's far off in the future, but I would love to see technology companies explore that. There are people saying this is like, we're predicting like two or three jumps here. Somebody wants to pursue a case.

Then they're going to subpoena this information. And for those folks, I would encourage you to look at the fact that Texas, in fact, enacted this law to create vigilantes months before, or the year before Rovuey was overturned, Trump explicitly said during the debates in 2016, I tweeted the video this weekend, if you follow me on Twitter, that he was going to stack the deck in order to do this. So if you are giving the benefit of the doubt right now that this isn't going to happen and this seems, you know, like something out of, you know, a Margaret

novel, well, here we are. Like, you just have to sort of pay attention to what's occurring. The last four or five years, there's been an exception. explicit plan in place to do this. So I don't think it's far reaching to think that some states, not all, not all prosecutors, but the ones on the extreme are going to subpoena women's data in order to prosecute them or the people who help them. It's kind of sounds to me like it's not going to happen all the time, but it is going to happen.

It is a certainty in my mind that there will be deranged people who will chase a woman down and the people who took her in the Uber or, you know, the hotel that put her up that night or whoever helped her, you know, get basic health care. So, um, really appreciate you for doing all this work. Thank you for spending time with us. To the audience, if you're part of the, you know, whatever 15, 20% of the country who feels passionately that there should be a national ban on abortion, you know, I don't know what to tell you. Like, the majority of the country doesn't want this. I want to respect your religious beliefs, but I think the majority of us would like women to make this decision. So apologies if this is super hard for you to listen to, but this is what

the majority of us want. I know I'm going to get some blowback for even having this on discussion on the pod. So, or don't listen. Thank you so much for having me. You don't know, you don't have to subscribe to this pod. I can go find another one. I'm like, if you're in that 15 percent, oh, I don't care. I don't want to hear it. I mean, I really don't. Maybe there's a pro-life tech podcast you can listen to. Protects us from the tyranny of religious lawmaking.

So it's not my problem. Exactly. Anyway, Kim, thank you so much for coming on. I let the rage out of the box just for a tiny minute. You're alive. Thank you so much. Really appreciate this. Please keep us posted on what's happening in the

in the Femtech space around this, in the legal space. This is like you're a jackpot. You're bringing the world together. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. All right. And we'll have you on again to talk about angel investing. But I was going to make the segue here.

And I was like, I just don't want to, yeah, segue out of this important discussion for that discussion, which is also important, but not as important as this one today. So we'll have you on another time to talk about your name and the best thing. Thanks. Thanks, Kim. Kim, thank you. Take good care. You too. All right.

All right. So quick startup of the day, which we already just mentioned, actually, is Stardust, this privacy first period tracker app offering end-to-end encryption. It was actually founded in September 2020 by Rachel Moranis, Rick Moran. Vanessa's daughter. Oh, really? We can all agree that when there's a Ghostbusters tie-in, you're going to go big. I love it. Right now, it is number two in the app store.

I assume the iOS app store is lifestyle rankings ahead of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. So that's always like a little bit encouraging. And they made a TikTok about it. Let's watch the TikTok and then we'll go to the news. Republican control Supreme Court has achieved their dark, extreme goal. I was going to announce this next week, but this just happened. We are now the first period tracker. to implement end-to-end encryption.

Here's what it looks like. We spent the last month racing to build this. What this means is that if we get subpoenaed by the government, we will not be able to hand over any of your period tracking data. It is completely anonymized from your login data. We can't view it. You are the only person that can see this. Data encryption will go live on Tuesday morning with the Android release and iOS update.

Amazing. Amazing. That should frankly be standard when any. health information is on the line, but it's good to know that that's the kind of, that is the kind of innovation that will come out of this. There's always an equal and opposite reaction to everything that happens. The equal and opposite reaction, I hope, to this, is more privacy. As healthcare moves online, people get prescriptions online, they do doctors visits online. This has always been a blocker for providing telemedicine, and then the catalyst for

telemedicine, obviously, became COVID. And so now this is another catalyst. And all it's really doing is raising people's awareness and giving them more options. So you'll have more options to choose from, to visit your doctor, you know, online, which is great. But we also have to then keep up and have good hygiene when it comes to, you know, tech audits and making sure that you and only you or the people you choose have access to your data. And a lot of companies that are advertising based, you know, have an incentive to not do this. So if there's advertising and the product is free, you're the customer. Keep that in mind. Yeah.

And this is where a paid social network is going to be imminent. At some point, somebody will have a paid feature for your social network without advertising. And that could be the game changer here where you're just not collecting it. Or a paid search engine or just a paid, it would be amazing if somebody created a hybrid of, you know, the Google slash Facebook stack of like, here's your social networking, here's your YouTube and here's your search engine, you know, three or four big things you do online. and you pay 15 bucks a month for it and you don't get track. So if somebody wants to build that startup, DuckDuggo is supposed to be building it,

but then I read that they're giving data to Microsoft because they use Microsoft's being search results. That was a little overstated. Was it overstated? I had a good breakdown about that. It was overstated. Like DuckDuggo is still a privacy per search engine. Yeah.

And you can add to all of this by just turning cookies off, use the Brave browser, use a VPN and you can get multi-layers of this, and create a fake persona for yourself, which I did, You know, just have a fake persona. I mean, I guess if it gets unveiled, people will find out like...

I don't like, are you doing that right now? I'm a 15-year-old from Tokyo. I'm a 15-year-old cosplaying girl from Tokyo online. Nobody knows, but... Nobody knows, but it's really fun. All right, let's do some tech news. We have actually been waiting for the right time to talk about this, because I think it may be broke on Friday.

It did break on Friday. I brought it up. It broke on Friday. it's super interesting. This is important. Yeah, this is important as a, you know, I was giving people signs, Molly, of like, when you know we're hitting the bottom, here we go. Okay.

I know. I can't wait to hear the analysis of that part of it. So Zendesk has agreed to be acquired by an investor group in an all-cash transaction valuing it at about $10.2 billion. Zendesk, of course, is that customer service, customer experience software company. And notably turned down a similar acquisition earlier this year that would have been. a $17 billion acquisition. Yeah.

And so now they're going to get acquired. And what this shows is, so just to pause for a second, being a public company, you have this incredible benefit. You can freely trade the shares. Your employees can benefit from those freely trading. People join your company. They get RSUs, restricted stock units. They get to participate.

The public has this great interest. You know, everybody gets to buy your shares. When you're private, only a small group of people get to buy your shares. and you don't change the price, you know, whatever number of days a year, 250 days a year. So there seems to be like this incredible benefit to being public. Until the public markets value you so poorly, Molly, that a private player says, you know what, I'm going to take this huge pile of cash I have here. This company is so undervalued that I'll just take it off the market, clean it up, fix it,

optimize it privately, and then put it back on the market. So this always was confusing to me when I was younger. Like, why are these companies going public and private and then public again? And then who are these people taking them private? And what happens is people are studying the market. They look for an asset that they think is dramatically undervalued, that they can put effort into optimizing and turn into a money printing machine and then eventually have another exit.

So this is to me a really good sign of bouncing along the bottom. My prediction has been three to five quarter recession-like environment. Everybody knows a recession to two sequential quarters of negative GDP. We had one, who knows what Q2 is going to look like, maybe it will be flat. But essentially, we know this is going to be a down market. I predict three to five quarters, which means sometime in the first quarter of next year in all likelihood, we would start to see things, you know, maybe not spike or surge, but at least feel like we're in a growing economy again as we work out all the stuff. This to me is like an early sign of that.

So early signs I've been telling people pay cuts at company. So we've seen the layoffs. We've seen hiring freezes. We saw hiring freezes layoffs than rescinding offers, right? And remember each one of those feels like a little more gnarly. Like, oh, my God, you rescinded an offer? The person quit their job. They're coming.

Like, that feels really bad. How about you show up for working the bus? Like, by the way, everybody's getting a 20% pay cut. And if you don't like it, I understand. if you want to leave, but I'm now challenging you to go find a better offer in the market. It's really hard for a manager to do that. Can you imagine the morale head? If you tell everybody they've got to take a 20% pay cut when there's 8% inflation,

yada, yada, that's going to be the next piece to, that'd be the next shoe to drop. And so this is another shoe to drop, which is, you know, I started about Peloton, like maybe this company goes private or, you know, a company gets bought because they have so much cash like BuzzFeed is making, I saw BuzzFeed. feed this week, it was like $250 million valuation, but they're making $3 or $400 billion. So when these kind of disconnects happen where you can't understand the logic, that's a sign of a real bottom. And it doesn't mean you're going to go back to the previous highs.

That's not what's going to happen. But it does mean you could start to grow from this point forward. So this could be a really interesting sign that a SaaS company is going private. Mm-hmm. Taking off the public markets. So just mark my word. You may see two or three more of these. Good analysis.

All right. And their revenue was one, by the way, $201.3 billion in revenue. So it's seven times. And I just saw something go across my desk, another seven, eight times for SaaS revenue company as opposed to 50 or 100, you know, and we're just seeing it in the private markets,

you know, 10x is the, you know, the new 50X. X is the new 50X is a really good t-shirt. Sorry. Also of note, also of note Zendesk has a billion five in cash and securities. So even with a billion dollars in cash, you would take the $9 billion market cap down to eight, right?

Because you could just distribute the cash. So you have $8 billion that's getting bought for, which maybe even is less than $7.7. $8 billion would be less. So you're saying it's a bottom partly because, sorry, not to belabor this, but partly because a company that has a billion and a half dollars in revenue and a billion dollars in cash is still weak enough to be a big acquisition target?

They don't need to go private. They're seeing that opportunity. They're seeing that choice as more beneficial to shareholders than staying public. Because of the current conditions and just the fact that the stock price isn't going to go up. Yeah, I think they feel like if they were private, they could do things quietly to clean up the business. Maybe it's layoffs. Maybe it's raising prices, shutting down certain things, selling off certain assets, buying other assets from other companies. There could be some two, three-year plan to make this business look even stronger.

and when the markets are stronger, come back at again and then get rewarded. So some group of people are saying, I want to do that work because I see an opportunity. That's where... I'm going to flip this house. I'm going to buy it, renovate it. Basically, that's a good one.

Yeah. I'm going to buy this house in Oakland. You know, it just sold for... Because there's a little bit of a downturn. This is my chance. Yeah. It sold for $2 million. I'm going to buy it for $1.5.

Clean it up. I'm going to add $1,000, I'm going to add a thousand square feet, redo the kitchen, and I'm going to flip it in two years. Yeah. I see some opportunity. there because the public markets are not valuing this. And that will be the other one that we will be tracking for the second half of 2022. We've got to have Glenn on from Redfin and anybody else we've got in our short list of

folks in real estate because the real estate market, Adina would be great. Adina. From Divi Holmes. We should have a little roundtable on housing because it's going to come apart over the coming six to 12 months. it's usually very slow, Molly, because people can live in their houses. And Keith, who's coming back on in August. Perfect.

We're going to have a really interesting, that's the last asset bubble to, you know, work its way from. Well, it takes time because you can live in your house. And so, you know, if you were thinking of selling your house and buying a new one, upgrading, downgrading, moving across the country, now you're faced with 6%, 7% mortgage. Yeah. If you qualify, which is your payment's going to be huge compared to what it was. last year, if you even qualify, and the number of homes on the market is surging, and the number of mortgages being originated is plummeting.

So when you see that happen, it's like this real flippening. We're like, oh, my God, there's so much inventory. Like, there was never any inventory. Oh, and you can't get a mortgage. So somebody I know who's selling a house in L.A. was like, they just told me there's no buyers, but just keep the faith. And lowering the price doesn't matter. It's just there's no buyers.

Wow. So very interesting, candidness in the, you know, that I was able to hear about. So I think it's- Bloody. Also, I had somebody who was a broker in Austin contact me because we were considering a move there. And they're like, hey, you know, now's a great time. There's a lot more inventory. I was like, oh, boy, they're so desperate that they're pinging people who were considering

last year during the pandemic moving to Austin. They're pinging them. They're going down their list looking for buyers. And they were even like, or an investment home. I was like, oh, well, that's super interesting. You can't move any houses. Like, because from what I understand, people I know who moved to Austin, they were like, you know, pen offers, you know, things, you know,

never even making it to the public listings, pocket listings getting sold. And now they're shaking the trees trying to find buyers overnight. That's so interesting because there was a New York Times story over the weekend just about, you know, buyers in Georgia like facing multiple offers and trying to get in right now and the mortgage rates going up and whatever. And it feels like the last time that story is going to be written for the next two of five years, you know. All right.

Thanks everybody for tuning in. Wanted to let you know that we're going to be doing our 12-week founder university program done by Charlie Putty, who is amazing. He's on the launch team here and makes great curriculum. This will be our third cohort. It's a 12-week class. It's for people who want to, Molly, start a company, but maybe they haven't incorporated. Maybe they have an idea.

They have a co-founder. They don't have a co-founder. It's their side hustle. You're kind of just thinking about doing it. So it's not an accelerator where we invest in the companies, like launch accelerator, Y Combinator, TechStars, and those great programs. This is you're kind of thinking about it. Once or twice a week, I think they go twice a week now, 12 weeks,

and we came up with a really cool way to do this. You pay $700 to go to this course. If you complete all 12 weeks, we don't need the money. You get your money back because we wanted people to complete the course and go to all 12 weeks. And if you're like sick or something, we're not going to stick you to it. And so we have 90% of people plus complete the course, which is amazing, which is our goal. And we've invested in a couple of the companies. I think every class we wind up investing in four or five of the companies.

Yeah. So really, it's great program. I hope you go to it. It was my way of giving back to the community and meeting entrepreneurs earlier in their careers. It's fantastic. And live notification, be sure to turn on your notifications. Go to YouTube. This Weekend Startups.com slash YouTube.

Put the notification bell on. And then later this week, you will catch, among other things like our whole week's slate of shows, our chat with investor downtown Josh Brown later this week. Yes. And then, of course, all the good behind the scenes that you only get. And it's important when you hit that subscribe. You should put the bell next to it. There's a little bell. And tune in tomorrow.

We're going to talk about Sam Bankman freed filling out the entire crypto. industry.