This Week in Startups - E1023: News Roundtable! Machine Zone CEO Kristen Dumont & The Register’s Iain Thomson on Bezos phone hack, Tesla valuation skyrocketing, DJ Elon, Coronavirus, Barstool Sports funding, unions, proposed Uber/DoorDash merger & more!

Episode Date: February 1, 2020

0:48 Jason intros Iain Thomson & Kristen Dumont 1:58 Iain on the grim state of his WeWork office 4:34 Bezos phone hack, Saudi interference 15:12 DJ Elon plays Jason out of the break 16:45 $TSLA vs. $TSLAQ, Elon haters & more 23:07 Airborne Tesla in LA 27:30 Coronavirus effects on business, are China's numbers legit? 35:27 How regulated are food markets in China? 47:46 Iain's thoughts on Brexit 50:19 Barstool Sports, unions, do modern unions disincentivize top performers? 1:06:37 Uber/DoorDash proposed merger, is SoftBank getting desperate? 1:17:15 Leaked Column deck, founder derangement 1:28:35 France/UK big-tech tax, should Amazon pay extra? 1:34:31 Who wins the 2020 Election? 1:41:36 Jason gets Ben Horowitz on the line to end the sho

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Get NetSuite's free guide seven key strategies to grow your profits when you go to netsuite.com slash twist. Hey, everybody, welcome to this weekend startups. It's your boy, Jason Kelloggattison. Yes, I have a bit of a sore throat, but don't worry. I've got two very talkative people with me for today's news roundtable. You guys have been complaining. We haven't done a news roundtable in a while, and you're right.

We need to do more news roundtables, and that's one of our big goals for 2020. Back on the program for his ninth appearance, Ian Thompson is with us. He is with The Register, where he is a journalist and an editor. The Register is an antagonistic, journalistic publication in tech. We call it like we see it. The motto is biting the hand that feeds IT. Right. But, yeah, we generally when PR has asked me, you know, it's like, how do we,

get into the register, the simplest, well, just screw up really badly, we'll be there for you. Yes. And Kristen Dumont is back with us. I threatened that after she did an amazing appearance on episode 975, talking about Machine Zone and her journey from a partner at Wilson Sincini to being the CEO of Machine Zone and then taking it over is back on the program. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. We had a great time when you were on the pod. Yes, we got to talk about We work.

We got to talk about Wework and a bunch of stuff. Arnold Schwarzenegger, all kinds of fun stuff. Oh, thank you. You did your impression. I did. Don't get me started on Wework. We're in one of their offices at the moment. Are you? Grim. Really grim.

How so? How is it? Oh, they've started cutting back on everything. So, you know, there's been a piece of gum in the urinal in the toilet for the last five days. They've taken away the free beer. That's only on one floor now. And instead, we've got a salsa water. What's the free beer?

Well, exactly. Yeah. I mean, particularly for British journalists. I thought it was pretty lame when we were there that they were so antagonistic with the cleaning staff. That was a big tell for me that this guy, Adam, was a huge. D-bag was they kept going on strike and I'm like okay wait a second these are the people who are cleaning the bathrooms and making us coffee does it actually matter if they get paid 1520 or 25 dollars an hour and get benefits or you have to make

them contractors and try to squeeze the people who are making the least in the building the building is filled with professionals we work has raised tens whatever over ten billion dollars or something or billions at the time and they're they're giving a hard time to the cleaning staff and the whole purpose is the space. The space is beautiful. Come be in our space. It actually makes no sense. It would be like having a restaurant and be like, you know what, I'm going to just

squeeze the life out of the waiters and the prep chefs and roaches are fine. Yeah, just who cares about the quality of the product. It shows you how deranged. They're also massively sensitive about social media because when they took the beer away, I tweeted out a photo of it with WeWork tagged. Within three

hours, I'd had a WeWork staffer come up and apologize to me and ask if I wouldn't mind taking down the tweet. Oh my God. And it's just like, you can't run a company on social media. It's stupid. This is when you know your company and when your company and you have made bad life choices is when you're asking people to take tweets down. Yeah.

Like when you're playing that level of defense, it's time for a little introspection, perhaps. I think there's a lot of introspection going on right now, don't you think, that we were? Oh, it's brutal. I would think so. You know, there's a lot of people who are pursuing the business model. Yeah. And we've got a couple of companies that are in space-related businesses, not directly competitive. It's a smart space.

Yeah, it was a great business. And there's a lot of interesting business models around there. But once somebody basically, you know, spoils it for everybody, now all these companies are having a hard time. Because people are like, oh, the space is radioactive. Let's stay away from it. I mean, while Adam walks off with his billion to wander barefoot through the streets of New York. That was also like, I mean, what a hit and run. Oh, yeah.

He liked, in order to get him out of the company, they just have. to pay a billion on the way out or something crazy. It baffles the mind. Softbanks really lost the plot at the moment. It's stunning. All right. Let's get right into it. Right off the bat, Bezos's phone was allegedly hacked by not only Saudi Arabia, but MBS,

Mohammed bin Salim, Solomon, colloquially known as MBS, who did a big tour of Silicon Valley a couple of years ago. It was a lot of pictures of people cozing up to him like Zuckerberg, et cetera. Mark Andreessen, et cetera. And now the claim is that Bezos received a WhatsApp text from MBS. It had an MP4 file, which Bezos opened. I think that's a video file. And before the hack, he had 430 kilobits of data coming from his phone per day.

And after it, he had 101 megabits, 232X increase, which would lead one to believe they were taking everything off of his phone. And then there was this claim that he was taunting him about his extramarital affair as well, MBS, that is. What do you think? I mean, you're pretty close to the hacking and that space, Ian. What do you think? Well, did MBS do it? It's kind of outrageous, which is kind of his wheelhouse. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't doubt that he'd have the will to do it.

I think what worries me about this and what worries a lot of people in the community is the, the figure you just mentioned, the 430 megabyte base use, a kilobytes, sorry, base use for a phone, which just makes no sense because just turning a phone on should produce higher data rate than that. Unless, you know, people who are in his position have multiple phones typically. Yeah.

And they might have one just for WhatsApp, just in a pouch to not be tracked it. Exactly. Or just for having an affair. Yeah, well, you said it, not me. But yeah, he might have a burner phone. Yeah. I mean, it's a possibility. They haven't found the malware either, which it could have, it could have deleted it. It could have been set to delete itself afterwards. But if you go to all that trouble to get it on there, why not leave it on there? And the only technical sort of deep, deep dive into this has been from a firm hired by Jeff Bezos. So there's no real consistency to, or no way of whether you can trust the data without actually getting in there. Oh, he hired that guy, the physical security guy. Yeah.

De Becker. Yeah, Gavin. Gavin. Gavin. I know Gavin. One of his guys trained me to use my test. He's a physical security guy. Yeah, no, I mean, literally when I had a stalker issue,

somebody put me in touch with one of Gavin's guys. And he trained me on how to use my firearm, which was kind of cool to have like a CIA, green beret guy shut down. I mean, it's expensive, but it's worth it when you have security concerns. But that doesn't make sense because it's security concerns. Well, I mean, he's got a good reputation in the industry, but he was talking about the Saudi links from months ago. Yeah.

And this report is sort of, it's, seem to confirm it. And I mean... But wasn't the report commissioned to go find something? That's what's suspicious about it. Here, spend whatever you got to spend. And please go find that the Saudis hacked my phone. Yeah.

I mean, I understand he's really pissed off about the blackmail attempt. I'm very respectful in the way. He handled it perfectly. He went bulls out and just said, you know, these photos exist, so to speak, yes. But just like these photos exist, I'm not particularly embarrassed about them. I'm the richest man in the world. Do what you want. or they're going to come out anyway, so let me pretend I'm being super brave.

But, I mean, the alternative thing is that his paramour sent her brother the pictures, which why would you do that in the first place? That is the most creepy thing ever. I'm going to go ahead and tell my siblings right now. Yeah, check this out. No. Jamie Josh, no. Don't send me anything. Check out the nudes.

Well, also, I mean, if he, and if that wasn't the case, he hasn't sued the National Enquirer, but then again, you do need an awful lot of money to sue the National Enquirer. The choir also has links with the Saudis, but it's just so, there's so much fluff going around and there's no proof. And as a, you know, from a hacking perspective, you need proof and you need something which will stand up. And we don't have it as yet. I think the PR strategists who came up with this deserve the round of applause here. It's like sex, Sanchez and Saudis. It's like, it's just so much clickbait.

It's pretty great. And so everyone just went bananas and suspended all in a lot of. intellectual rigor and loved it, but it was supposedly the Saudis. I mean, this is thin, thin, evidence. That report is extraordinarily thin. And it was much more pedestrian than that. She got nudes. She shows them to her brother, whether or not that was nefarious or not or part of a plot. Other people, I'm sure, will speculate about that. And then he tries to sell him to the inquirer. And then, you know, now we're all sort of getting trolled. My hot take on this is don't take nudes.

I know. Yeah. No, men don't take nudes. I'm going to just say overall don't take nudes. And if you don't explicitly want them on the interwebs, because that's where they all wind up eventually. It always does. It always does.

It's like 100% of the time that happens. And then also if you're incredibly powerful, don't buy a newspaper and go to war with the president. And then expect nothing's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, this president and MBS are very good at retribution. It's kind of their speciality. is to exact restitution.

The Saudis have built an entire government little system about it. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to finger the Saudis. It's Occam's razor would suggest it's the brother. But we know it's the brother. Well, we don't know that the brother doesn't hacking. Something potentially odd is happening on his phone. That's literally it. We don't know anything beyond that except that the brother said,

I'm going to sell the photos for 200 grand. And that's it. But those are the facts. I'm going to make a hard link here, a hard turn. I just realized Jeff Bezos actually went down in a helicopter crash, I believe, when he was looking at a ranch. Can you fact-check that, Nick? Do a search for Jeff Bezos helicopter crash.

And Sanchez is a helicopter pilot. Right. Like, she is, I think she may even be a stunt pilot. I think that's right. And isn't that how they met? It might be. I tell all my friends, stay out of helicopters. Rest in peace, Kobe, and his daughter and everybody else who was in passing.

acted by that. Here we go. Jeff Bezos had a brush with death. He did. The billionaire was, I mean, look at these oppressive ads on Business Insider. Yeah, he was scouting for a large ranch to buy in 2003. I remember this like it was yesterday. And a pilot named Cheater. Come on. That can't be true. I believe it. All of these, the dynamic with all of this and it's a really is a tragedy with all these kids dying as well. It's just brutal to watch. Pilots who have rich, powerful clients take crazy chances all the time. And it, or not all of them all the time, but with one pilot, I think that guy would take that risk. If there had been two pilots, they would have looked at each other and said,

No to what. They just told us to stay out of there. Should we do it? No, you have kids. I got kids. But when it's one pilot and they have the high profile client, they're like, and that some of these guys are hot dogs, right? Or gals, maybe Sanchez is as well. But maybe they were in Nam, maybe they're in the Army.

And then all the rich people I know who get pilots, they get these ones who have 50 years or 40 years. They're 50-year-olds, they're gray hairs. They may have been in Vietnam. They may have done all these crazy missions. It's only a matter of time before you take a risk that you shouldn't take. I've seen it. I saw it up close and personal once.

I was flying on somebody else's plane and they had too many bags. And we were coming from a ski resort and the pilot's like too many bags. And then one of, I won't say who, but one of the passengers were like, oh yeah, can we make it this way? Can we fit it this way? And I just said, listen. When the pilot says too many, the pilot said too many, like, are we really arguing with the pilot about the weight on the plane? You're not an expert on this.

It was uncomfortable for me because I'm saying this to somebody whose plane it is. I was like, I don't really think we should be debating this with the pilot, right? Yeah, I mean, there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there aren't old bold pilots. Yeah, I read that on Reddit. Yeah. But, no, I mean, I know what you mean. I was taking a helicopter back from the British Grand Prix, and the pilot was just like, right, okay,

should we have some fun and started doing some mini aerobatics? He's just like, I'm hoping you know what you're doing, because I have not a clue, and this feels really quite unnerving. All right, when we get back from this quick break, DJ Elon, DJ EDM, take us to commercial with a little don't doubt your vibe, but my boy, EDM. We'll be right back. It's too good.

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Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. All right, welcome back. It's the Z-Mourning Zoo and that is DJEDM with Don't Doubt your vibe. Actually, that's Elon Musk from EmoG Records. And his new track, don't doubt your vibe. Sweeping the Nation and the Intraweens. It's the inspirational track of 2020. It is.

I feel like any time you do the short burn of the century, you're well within your right to release an EDM track. It's the gloat song. It is pretty clear what's happening here. I've got to say, though, as someone who still goes out clubbing, you know, weekends, if you put that on the dance floor at 2 o'clock in the morning at Public Works, you'll clear the floor. It's terrible. I know, but if your lead-in was, this is for everybody who ever doubted you,

who ever held you down, who didn't believe in you. Take it back. If only there was someone close to him who understood music who could explain to him that this is really, really bad. I don't know. I have to feel like it. I'm going to go ahead and this, I think this has Blood Pop's hands on it, a music producer I know in L.A. who we're mutual friends with.

This feels like a blood pop production to me. I'm not certain. He could have done it on his own. I mean, fair play to do what you want. Well, actually, it's the follow-up track, which Elon DM to me. What's the follow-up track? Screw you, short-sellers. It's called Tesla Q.

Oh, good, great. Tesla Q, Tesla Q, Tesla Q. But in all seriousness, oh, my Lord. Yes. The people who shorted this stock at 150 or 200, I'm not perfect at math, but I think they lost a ton of money and he told them not to do it. It's like a billion in a day. And I was on CNBC. I think it was three years ago.

And they're like, what do you think about the short sales? I was like, you know, if there's somebody you want to bet against, go ahead and tell you, not Elon Musk, not Steve Jobs. Like there's some people, Zuckerberg, you really don't want to bet against them. like pick a better target to bet against. Yep. Because these are people who will just work, outwork anybody. Yep. And I'm sympathetic to them. I'm sympathetic to the shorts because it doesn't make any sense. The stock price makes absolutely no sense. Explain. And you just have to decide it was not the Tesla IPO. It's the Elon Musk IPO. And so that's what we're trading on is sort of the Elon Musk personality. Because it's not a novel business. It's a low margin business.

Selling cars. Yes. but self-driving cars, big question mark of how great that comes. Yeah, but when are they? Well, I mean, based on what I know, you know, as a driver to the car, and based on speculation, I can infer from public tweets and whatnot, I think they're a full 70, 80% of the way there of miles driven. And I think when he says feature complete, he doesn't mean you can leave the car and take the steering wheel out.

He means it's feature complete that it will go from one location to the other, but with you having the ability to take over if it needs to. I think he's pretty close. And people believe in him. Again, it's the Elon Musk IPO, right? It's all about the future. You're selling me a dream and I like it. But the stock price doesn't make any sense

unless you're buying for the very long term. Correct. Which I'm not sure how many retail investors are. Yeah. I'm not sure they're not, though, because this is a new phenomenon. Like having a bunch of people on Robin Hood, full disclosure, I'm an investor.

That's a strange flex, but okay. Okay, boomer. Full disclosure, I came here. Full disclosure, I traded some shares on Robin Hood on my way here in Uber. Okay, and I'm meditating with column after this. But I think they, of the hundred billion, what is future Elon Musk value versus the value of the business now? 70-30, it's got to be a 30 billion dollar business. I would say it's 90-10, it's what?

$300 million in operating income. Something like that, isn't that right? Yeah. It's something like that. Yeah, I mean, they're not trying to make a profit right now. Toyota's got, what, $20 billion in operating income? Yeah, I mean, they've got the German and Chinese factories still to come online. Unfortunately, the Chinese factory is going to be delayed because of this virus outbreak.

Well, they started delivering some cars from it. And from what I understand, like, they got that done faster than anybody could have imagined. Like, building in China is amazing. Yeah. You could have hospital in 15 days, apparently. What's that? You can put a hospital in 15 days, apparently, as they're doing it. Yeah, that's our next story, too.

Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, Germany's going to take a while longer. The Gigafactory out in Nevada seems to be doing good stuff. And that's the really interesting part of this, to my mind. And I do think Elon leverages social media brilliantly. Yes. People love it. They just eat it up.

They do. I mean, except when he swings the sword and hits himself in the leg, which, you know, those kind of moments are ones he's, I think, learned to not do. He doesn't cut deep enough that is really a deterrent. I mean, the SEC stuff was, I think, pretty cute. Yeah. I mean, that was very serious. But what was it, a $20 million fine or something like that? I mean, that's...

Yeah, it's just not where you... There's a lot to spend for a dumb tweet. Yeah, and also, like, probably not a group of people you want to get into it with. True, but a $20 million fine and then how much value are you accreeding later? So, I don't know, I might pay that $20 million. It's like an investment. In a way, it's true. like the amount of press he's gotten and the amount of attention.

And the amount of wealth he's created for people is extraordinary. So he's saying, look, I'm going to make $20 million mistakes here and there. But I'm going to make you rich. So there we go. That's the trade we're making. Yeah. And I think it's these Robin Hood investors. They might hold it forever.

Like young people buying, you know, two shares of it, three shares of it, and then holding and then maybe buying another share every year and they want to own 20 of it. They might actually be getting it long term correct. That's actually a good point. That actually makes sense. If they're holding it for the long term, it does make some sense. But based on what it's doing right now, It's very divorced from just the math.

Yeah, the question is when he puts up five of these factories and they're producing 500,000 cars each and he starts producing 2 million of them. And so all the arguments of why he wouldn't get there have now been proven wrong. I agree the stock is just some percentage of this is the short squeeze. Maybe half, maybe a third is the short squeeze. Yeah, because I'm having to buy to make sure. A third is the, you know, Elon as Thomas Edison, you know, theory. Like, it's going to be more incredible things that blow your mind coming out of this company. But, yeah, the shorts are, I mean, they're desperate now.

Who doesn't cover at this point? Well, I mean, did you see the complaint that was filed a couple of months ago to the National Transport Safety Bureau? And it was from a short seller. And he said, I don't own a Tesla myself, but this accident and this accident and this accident is something you should be looking into. It was so desperate. It's painfully bad. Yeah, I mean, they're going after like the Tesla. fires and it's like they're such a low percentage.

And like, compared to gasoline. I was going to say gas and diesel cars don't catch on fire. I think it's a factor of 10x that they catch on fire. Yeah. They're going, people who own the stock think they're part of something bigger and really special. It's hard to then be very pedestrian about it and say, be very concerned about these random fires over here.

People say, you know what, it's for the greater good. Yeah. And I think that these cars are going to get cheaper and cheaper to produce. And that's going to be part of the magic. is that I don't think people understand how quickly in a decade he went from $150,000 cars to $45,000, you know, took two thirds of the price off. I think there's actually another 50% coming off. I think he'll have a $15,000 to $25,000 car.

And more importantly, he's made electric cars cool. You know, I mean, kickstarted the entire, the entire. Yes, we had electric cars before, but they were boring and they didn't go very far between recharges. He actually put a coherent platform forward and kickstarted the electric car industry. just as he's revolutionizing. I do think they need to get an IQ test for when you buy one and just have a certain minimum IQ.

I don't know if you guys saw the white Tesla getting airborne on Twitter. Nick's gonna find it in about 90 seconds. I miss this idiot and he might be a YouTuber. I need to know who this person is and I'm not gonna like report them

to the NTSP, but somebody needs to find out who this person is so they can lose their license. It's a white Tesla getting air. This is it. Watch this. This is going to blow your mind. White Tesla

and the sound on this when it makes a crunch. And there's like two different views of it. So they obviously set this up. And this got to be L.A. Or somewhere in California. It looks like L.A. It looks like L.A. to me. And when you see this thing, I mean,

you just type Tesla airborne and not the security footage one, but this white one, when it goes airborne. Well, you're saying IQ test the owners. You really think these are the owners of the car doing this? Yeah, I know. I was actually thinking that as well. It's a lot of it. rented this.

No, it's a parking valley. Oh, the poor, I mean, this thing gets so airborne. The front suspension on that's going to need a tweak. It makes a crunching sound and, you know, this thing's got batteries in the floorboard, so you want to be really careful with this idea, but these things are way powerful when you put them on ludicrous mode. Oh, the torque on them is amazing. Yeah, but at least now they have, you can cap the speed. So I've capped the speed on all of our Tesla because they got pulled over twice on the 280,

going slightly faster than you're supposed to. I apologize to CHP. It's not going to happen again. Slightly, we're talking, what, 50, 60 miles over, or wrong? I don't want to talk about it.

This way, I still have my license, but... The acceleration is terrifying on those. The problem, I think, with, like, the Mercedes and the Tesla like sort of breed of cars

is weird flex, but okay, is when you're going fast in them, you don't feel it. Yeah. You know, like, I feel it. Does that get you out of tickets? No.

But I don't feel. It gets me out of tickets. tickets. I just start apologizing. I am so sorry, officer. I wasn't looking at the speed. When I looked down, I was over the speed limit and I apologize. I'm just heading home to put the kids to bed. I'm heading to a charity event. No. No, but then they... For the disadvantage. Almost every time they put it down 10 miles or whatever, they kind of give you a little break for being courteous. So I think they did that both times. I got like five or 10 miles off.

Whereas if when they come up and you go, am I being detained, it's like, oh, you're in trouble now. All right. When we get back from this quick break, we're going to talk about the coronavirus I've apparently have a 50-50 chance of having right at this very moment. Sorry to my co-guests today. Apple and we're going to talk a little bit about barstool sports raising money through gambling online, which I know both of you have some thoughts on when we get back on this week in startups. Shipping can be complex. We all know that and with the uncertainty over cost and deciding which carrier to use. Plus going and tracking your packages, things can get confusing quick. Well, with Send Pro, arm line. It's easy to save time and money no matter where you send from, from letters to

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them in here in America. I think we had our first transfer in America of the virus. And the stock market is in a panic now that this is going to cause tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, which makes sense. Because my mailbox today was three different conferences. One of them in Hong Kong postponed. One conference in Park City I'm going to next week, they asked anybody who had been to China in the last three months to not come to the event, take a rain check. And then another one was like... China's been, well, not canceled, but they're saying delayed, but it's been pulled off. Yeah.

But, yeah. Oh my God, this poor guy. I know. It's just a look on his face. It's just like, why didn't I call in sick before going into work today? All right. So this is. I think is the point of discussion. Are people being too conservative with letting people back into countries and was the reaction too slow here? I think honestly, based on current data and bear in mind all the data we're getting is from the Chinese government. Who has a vested interest in playing this down. On current stats, we lose more people to flu every year by a factor of like 100 than what we're seeing at the moment. But this is Chinese government figures and I don't trust them further than I can throw them.

And yeah, so I think countries were a little slow in locking down, but it's looking now as though China's getting very locked down in terms of flights going in and out. Russia's closed. It's border with China as well. One of the great things is when these things happen, people opt out of flying, which then gives the airlines a really easy way to say we're canceling these flights because it's 20 people on them. They can't function. What's your take on it? Do we react too slow? Absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, what a week ago? I was saying, I can't even believe we have employees just making it personal of the, you know, employers here in the valley. We have employees who are flying back. What are we going to do? Are we going to let them in the office or not? No. Right. Everybody's lying.

There's absolutely no truth coming out of China. Shocking. Yeah. And so we don't even know if people are contagious when they're asymptomatic. That'll be terrifying. Right. And then you've got the people going, no, no, no, this is just the common flu. Yeah, well, first of all, you don't know how many people actually have died.

That's the rough. The number of people who are dying in terms of, you know, the rapidity of the death rate is terrifying, right? I'm sure the proportion of death to those who are infected is higher than SARS, flu, et cetera. So I actually think it actually is terrifying and it's going to have a very, very significant impact on commerce. So we're even feeling the impact in our games. We leverage a lot of art studios in China. Oh, they're not going to work. Everything's shut.

Good it. So we're having to frantically find, you know, new sources of labor. And so if we can't put new art in our games, you know, their games as a service. So sorry, players, you're going to see some old art. Yeah, you're not going to have as many swords. Yeah, it's exactly right. Swords are important. Yeah, less swords and shields and.

That's right. Orbs of invisibility or something. I don't know how these nerds are going to get through. This is the real tragedy at all. The tragedy. You really thought it was about something else. The good news is they're going to be able to play in their mom's basements for a lot longer because there's schools closed.

It's always the good thing about natural disasters is mobile gaming revenue goes through the roof. It does. It does. We like hurricanes. Everything like that. Big hurricane coming in. Everybody bunkers down.

I am here for you. There's a natural disaster. I'm here for you. Wow. It is crazy. It's also apparently, I mean, I've seen a couple of reports that this is kind of showing some of the weaknesses in the Chinese social control model. because apparently eight people were prosecuted in January for spreading false information about a new virus outbreak,

and they were all doctors, and they were re-educated, as it were. So it's possible that they were aware of this, and then just keep a lid on bad news, and now we've got the outbreak. Yeah, we have, I have somebody who was saying, you know, she's from China. Oh, I called my parents and they said, no, no, everything is fine in my town. Really? You believe that? Yeah. It's a little terrifying what people will believe. Also, we're taking Where is the mandatory quarantine?

Like if I was coming back From China I know they check doctors, check them twice But they're just checking for fever. They're just saying if it's symptomatic, then we'll check you or something. It's two weeks. Yeah, in Australia it's two weeks.

They're flying them to Christmas Island and keeping them there for two weeks, keep an eye on them. In the US, I think I heard that one of the flights got taken to an Air Force base. One flight went to Alaska. They deplane

everyone and check them out. But you don't know what the latency is on this. I know that one of the planes came into SFO here in San Francisco and they didn't do anything. They didn't do anything. It was not quarantines. There was nothing. They just walked straight through the airport. I would if it was me, I would welcome being in quarantine for two weeks for the better good of society. When you go to Japan, people who are sick, people, anybody, anytime you go your first time to Japan, have you ever been? Yes. And no. So when you first see people wearing masks in the street, you're like, what is that about? Is it smog? And it's like, no, they're sick. and they don't want to get their fellow citizens.

That's what it is. It's courtesy. And the common courtesy is if you were potentially exposed, like just chill on Christmas Island, it sounds delightful. Yeah, I mean, I got swine flu and isolated myself. And it was just after I came to San Francisco. Wow.

And my girlfriend, now wife, God bless her, would go out to get ingredients for chicken soup, leave them on the door, ring the doorbell, and then run. Well, step back 20 paces, and then we'd have a chat. She still does it actually It's become their tradition for the weekend

Ding dog Enjoy your burrito I'm out I'm sorry Honey I'm just reminiscing about the past You remember that time I didn't see you for a month It was awesome Let's recreate that It's terrifying

And also there seems to be I heard one report that there are these wet markets they call them which are exotic animals and a lot of like raw meat. And is it true that this was potentially from a bat soup? Yeah, I've heard about the bat soup thing. This is where the xenophobia stuff is coming up. Yeah. That if you criticize bat soup, you're xenophobic.

No, no, no. We've lost our minds. Literally, that's just, that's like the one percent of liberal, historical liberal people. I had a historical liberal person arguing with me about how China has done so much more than America in reducing poverty. And I said, what, what, what? Have they been to China? Well, and it is true that a large, on a gross number basis, a large number of hundreds

of millions of people have gone from poverty to the middle class as they have built iPhones and Amazon products from Americans, for Americans who are responsible for the standard of living increasing in China because we are their big customer. Well, kind of. I mean, also you've got a factor in that the government has, the Chinese government has been spending enormously on infrastructure, you know, on schooling and education in particular. And re-education camps. Oh, there is that. Yeah.

And disappearing people, you know, who, oh, yeah. Disagreeing. Trust me. I mean, I have no qualms about criticizing the Chinese government, although, you know, I welcome on new. Our masters for the next century. But, I mean, the Chinese government's done a certain amount to live people out of poverty. American markets have done even more. But I think coming back to the food thing, if you've been to a food market in China, it's an eye-opener.

You know, I mean, it's kind of how I imagined food markets in the U.S. 100 years ago. You know, things are sold live because that's the way to guarantee they're fresh. Meat is left open. You know, refrigeration is just an afterthought. It's not xenophobic to say you should have health standards and health inspectors. That's logic. Like, humanity has learned this already. But that's the beauty of, right?

radicalism is you can just call you a xenophobe. Yeah. And there you go. It just makes it true. Yeah. Square points. You're a bigot. You're a bigot.

You don't want to. I like exotic foods. Don't get me wrong. But the point is to just say we think the origin of it was bat soup and then to be called a bigot is absurd. And so, but that's already popping up in the last two days is that we can't actually talk about the origin of it because now you're getting dangerously close to being racist. Oh, for goodness.

This is how humanity fails. It's, you know, I mean, when the last time it was birth. It was the bird flu. Bird flu, yeah. I mean, but you see, we've always had this ever since we've domesticated animals. You know, we got pneumonia from cows. We got flu from chickens. We get an awful lot from pigs.

Yeah. You know, transgenic stuff has always happened, and you've just got to roll with it and learn how to deal with it. Yeah. I think shutting the borders quicker. Like, we need to have strong leadership across the world to just say, when this stuff happens, we just have to take a much harder line. You know who does this really well? Japan.

Japan is like the last time SARS happened, they were just like, yeah, we're done. Sorry, nobody's coming in. Nobody's coming in. And if you are a Japanese citizen, you can come in, but we're going to quarantine you. And we're going to take this seriously because we want to protect our people. Yeah. And we got a lot of, yeah, it's the common good. And there's so many people in such a dense area.

So with cities and airplanes, so you have these like 30 million, 20, 30, 40 million person cities in China. And then you have airplanes coming in out of them. I don't know the last time you've been to China or. No. I mean, the airports there are getting humongous. It's like five SFOs, 10 JFKs in one. So the amount of planes coming in and out of China now is just... Well, particularly over Chinese New Year, which is one that sort of really

came up. Oh, that was the other meeting. Which is really interesting. Yeah. Well, when protecting your own people protects the world, it makes sense from every angle, but I'm not sure we're being logical at this point. But it at least contains the spread of the virus. The reason it's becoming so terrifying is how many countries it's spreading in.

And then the virus is going to continue to mute. in very different ways across each of those continents and then it just becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. Yeah. Yeah, the Australians have had some luck. They've actually managed to recreate it in the lab for the first time. Oh, really? I didn't know that.

Yeah, they announced it yesterday. So, I mean, there are possibilities that this could be moving faster, but we're not going to know because the Chinese authorities aren't going to give us the information to need. And then we're going to have a vaccine to an old version of the virus. By the time we have a vaccine, it'll be useless. A lot of my friends, one of my poker groups has like a threat. and they all bought masks because they all travel internationally

and one of them was able to get 100 of these, what do they call them? N95s, 99. Somebody I know bought like a gross of them and is like giving them to all their friends as a gift. Well, since all things relate to video games, the plague game.

Oh yeah, I love that game. It's a good game and has actually had a huge burst in downloads. Yeah. As people try and track. It actually crashed at one point, didn't it? Because so many people were doing it. I kind of like played that game.

like 10 years ago when the iPad came out. It's like, it's cool. You just can't get Madagascar. It's still on my, you can't get money. It's still on my iPad. And every now and then I open it up.

And I'm like, I still don't understand how to win this game or how it works, but. Don't use our game for Corona. That's crazy. Yeah, it's a game people. That's the headline is pretty funny. It is a video game and indeed we shouldn't use it for modeling.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say, yeah, that's not for science. Listen to the scientists maybe. Well, the other thing that's happening is I think... But the scientists are going a little often very different directions too. Are they? Yes.

Oh, how so? Well, you've got a lot... Several scientists are saying, look, the infection rate is much higher than China saying. Right. The death rate is terrifying. And I'm a scientist and I'm scared, which makes everyone else extremely scared. Yeah. And then you've got a whole other side of people saying, can everyone calm down?

This is the flu. Why are you being so hysterical? So which is it? Yeah, I'm going to air on. caution. Me too. Because this is one of those things where we're tempting fate. I mean, it's pretty clear that one of these is going to be able to wipe out millions of

people if we don't get better at this. What's the downside to being a smidge paranoid and taking a breath and saying, let's see what it is? I think also there's a very different attitude. I was listening to the World Service last night. There's a very different attitude between doctors in first world countries who are like, it's just a flu. You go to hospital.

They'll give you, you know, they'll look after you and chances are you get through it. But they interviewed an Indian doctor and said, look, if this gets into some of the into Mumbai, where we've got very overstretched health services, the transmission, if it's person to person transmission, you've got a massive problem on your hands. Yeah, also, the infrastructure in those places is much different. You could have infrastructure issues with sewage, with the number of hospitals, with hospitals and how clean they are. Oh, I'm sorry, is that a racist? Did I just say that? Like, there's different levels of cleanliness in different hospitals and different hospitals and different. locations in the world. Oh, no. I can't believe that. Please don't cancel me for saying that different people get different scores on their health ratings like A, B, and C and restaurants. The other thing is the Chinese government I understand is they're not able to, they're usually able to stomp down any dissent on WhatsApp and other messaging apps. I heard that this time

they can't. It's just too many people who are crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like I am perceiving the Chinese government as being very weak right now. after Hong Kong, Taiwan, and now this, it feels like the citizens are feeling a little more emboldened. And when you see a million people come out for different protests in Hong Kong or Taiwan, and then this, people are speaking up and saying, you're not doing enough. The citizenry is now demanding more of the Chinese government. That's actually a very positive sign. I think they overplayed their hand. I mean, you saw last year with the Chinese government, I mean, last year, Winnie the Pooh, sorry,

declared himself, you know, he would be leader from now on in. And the Chinese Communist Party has been cracking down on dissent hard. And there's a backlash. And there's going to continue to be backlashes. And you're right, this makes the Chinese government. Their sole argument for the populace is we have the best system

because we look after you. And when that breaks down, it all breaks down. All right, we get back for this quick break. We're going to talk about gambling and Apple just printing money by squeezing their customers. with absurdly expensive products and just building a stockpile of cash. We get back on speaking service.

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to download your free guide. Seven key strategies to grow your profits. Netsuite.com slash twist. All right, welcome back to this week and Staris is our news round table. Kristen Dumont is back on the pod after a really great interview in episode 975.

If you haven't watched it, go ahead and watch it. She's from Machine Zone. They make games. And if you're a developer, they've got openings. They're always hiring. It's going well.

It's going very well. We have a new game coming out. Oh, really? Yes. When does it drop? I'm nervous to say but I'm pretty locked in now February 18th

Oh boy Yes Does that mean the whole company Goes on lockdown Like everybody's there Every Saturday Sunday Yes Really

Yeah you're getting me on no sleep Wow Yeah see that's what people don't understand About like games Movies and magazines They're extremely intense There's a deadline It's extremely intense

Even operating systems and apps I mean it's just like When there's a new version of windows coming out Then everyone's in there 24 7 Just to update it Back in the day When they did it

release new versions. I miss the finality of producing a magazine. The, the, spree to corpse. Yeah, and the espried to corpse when we were, you know, everybody was there until, you know, seven, eight a.m. And then somebody would take the zip drives to FedEx to send them to the, we had to send the magazine by FedEx, or sometimes people get on a plane and take it to the middle of America or Canada, wherever we were printing from at the time, and bring them the tapes. And we'd make two copies of it. Like, it was like sending the football or something, you know. Yeah, we had our computer. The first print journal job I had in early 90s, we had our computers stolen, office break-in, and they took all the computers, and we were just about to put an issue to bed, and we had three days to do. There was no, no, no, had to do the entire thing, and it was the first 100-hour week I'd ever worked.

It was pretty brutal. Yeah, and what's intense about mobile gaming is you're operating it every day, so the day you launch it is just really day zero. Right. So now the new sort of fatigue sets in. It's basically you run a marathon, and when you get to the finish line, hundred more. On the other side of where it says finish line, it says starting line. That's right. You get one step. Oh, screw. Yeah. It's very different than the days when you used to wait till they got on the shelves and they were so excited. Your game is done. What's going to happen?

I have a profession. I've been playing StarCraft too. And it is amazing. I love playing StarCraft. It is so much fun. It's like playing chess or something for me or poker. It's like so strategic. You get it to the machine zone. Exactly. No, like 10 years ago, my team at Mahalo back in the day would play this at night and they'd be there until three in morning playing the same game. You guys are huge nerds. And then I went in there and I still had my list and I saw all my developers. And one of them had played and one hadn't played in two years. And I was like, oh, I miss those guys.

It was kind of fun day. Yeah. You have a nice visceral response to games. It was a great game called Elite in the mid-80s, which actually loaded up with a cassette and tone control. And I've just found an open source version of it. And that was last weekend gone. It was just like, yeah.

Yeah, I want to get my 10-year-old daughter to get into video games. I got her into archery and skiing. I need more girls to get into games. Yeah. Actually, poker is the one I'm trying. I was speaking at Stanford, and I just asked who plays poker in the room. And like, almost every guy had played poker and, like, only two women had played poker. And it was 50-50.

And I was like, you really should get a group together to learn poker because it's like strategy and deception and aggression and math and all these great things. All the things that make humans great. Well, yeah, all the things. I think what I said in the class, again, getting myself canceled, is all the things that when I was growing up at least, they steered women. away from and girls away from in school, aggressive behavior, deception, math, you know, and strategy. They were just like not for, not for girls, right? Like, only for boys. Ian Thompson is with us in his ninth. We've got to do some for your 10th. We'll get a little cake or something here in Cupcake. From the register, he is Ian Thompson, spelled incorrectly I-A-I-M-T-H-O-M-S-O-N.

My parents not had words. He's with the register and congratulations. Today is Brexit. Oh, God. So now you guys have just totally... We have a bunch of people standing on the white cliffs of Dover shouting at the French, leave the cheese and wine and bugger off. You know, it's just...

But on a realistic basis, I mean, I went from Garnord or a pancreas station to Garnord, took the train through the tunnel from London to Paris. It's delightful. And you don't have to do anything. You just take the train. Nope. No, no, you get your passport. checked in at some pancreas and then you get off at Gardinor and you're right in the centre of

Paris. Now what's going to happen? I think I'm just like, there'll be, well, I mean, we still have the passport check. I mean, we're still in the European Union effectively until for the next 11 months. But then, and we always still have passport checks because we always had passport checks. It was a negotiated settlement that we did with the EU. But what it's going to mean in 11 months is that if you're British, you don't know, no longer have the right to work and live in Europe, which is going to harm an awful lot of people.

a lot of my friends who do a lot of business in Europe are now sorting out citizenship in foreign countries. Having an Irish passport is like gold. You know, the number of Irish people applying for Irish passports, which you can do if you got, I think it's like a grandparent who was Irish. It actually crashed the Irish passport system for a while. Wow. Because so many people were trying to get on there. It's a, personally, I think it's a disaster for the country, and we'll go back cap in hand in five or ten years and ask to be let back in.

but in the meantime it's a heartbreaking though for you know the empire that you know went around the world and tried to you know now consist of the foreclan islands spread democracy around the world right like for white people yeah

yeah i mean i'm not saying it was perfect you know it was a to close the borders for a country that tried to you know also i mean i'm sorry Britain was made on immigration you know it's like the huguenots came in and kick started the you know the finance

and jewelry business the, you know, we've had waves of people coming in and improving the country. I mean, until we had the mass Indian migrations, Curry was a rarity. And it's just like,

what are you going to do on a Friday night after you got lashed up at the pub? Go to the scone house. Can anybody can try to latch up at the pub? Is that when you locked your horse up? Getting lashed, getting a wee bit merry. Drunk.

Our director, Sir Charles, is also crying right now. All right, guys, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. I think more people care about Megxit than they care about Brexit. All right. Barstool Sports is now valued at $450 million.

Pan-national gaming bought 36% of it. Barstall did somewhere between $90 and $100 million in revenue last year with podcast merch and gambling. And the explicit play, according to the video I watched on the Twitter, was wagering and gaming is now going to be legal in the United States. there was some referendum passed by the Supreme Court, I believe. It basically said it's a state's rights issue. States rights issue. And so we have now invested in two wagering companies. Neither one is operating the U.S. yet.

But we did that. And Dracchings just went public. Oh, yeah. Via SPAC, but they're now public, basically on this news. Yeah. And so here is the, I guess this is the founder. And he speaks about, help us help you. I'm locked in.

Dan's locked in. Eric is locked in. The key people aren't going. I'm telling you, just like I said, people grew the day when they passed on us, I don't know, 10 years ago, anybody who doubts us will pay the price in spades. We are going to become the biggest gambling company in the country. Why? Penn National has the infrastructure. We have the audience, and we know this space.

I'm telling you, better than everyone. Anybody. If you believe in me, believe in us, get on board the rocket ship, because the next stop is literally the moon. music. New Elon Musk's song. That resonates with everyone. Your five. But the crazy thing about this is he's talking about buying the stock,

which is generally something you don't do, is encourage people to buy your stock in this way that you're going to the moon. I don't know what this person was thinking, but... Yeah, he's got his own problems with union busting as well. He should just pay a big fine on that. Oh, yeah, did he say... Oh, union. Oh, right. He was the guy who said. Yeah, he was the guy.

He tweeted, I will never let a union in my place or something like that. Oh, no, he also set up a fake bustle union Twitter account. Yeah, I was to say, I think there was a whole faux persona where he was, it was really him saying what he thought. But he got to disassociate himself. We were talking about Elon's $20 million to eat. I mean, this doesn't like unions either. No, but I mean, this guy is going to pay out far more for this. Is he going to get in trouble for that? Is that, is that?

Oh, yeah, he's already in trouble for it. They're definitely not kidding. You can do. In trouble how? Because it's illegal. No, I know that. It's not. Yeah.

Well, no, complaints have been filed and there's an investigation ongoing at the moment. Oh, wow. For the interested people who are pro-union. So that'll be fair. Oh, wow. Yeah, he's going to face labor. Wow, his threats are under investigation. Yeah, I didn't know.

who tweets down. Oh, that was the penalty? Oh, that was the sole penalty. That's it? That's pretty light. That's pretty light. Yeah, that's pretty light, actually. Because Elon had to read a statement.

I've broken the law. Here are all the ways I've broken the law. Confess. Did he say break the law? I don't think he said broke the law. Supposedly. Oh. The ruling from the judge was that he had to issue a statement saying.

Allocution or something? Yes, exactly. But he had broken the law and discouraged union organizing. The crazy part of this whole unions in the media companies is like it's literally like the kitchen crew and the, you know, the deck hands on the Titanic forming a union. It's like we want more money. It's like the ship is sinking. We need to get on those boats quickly. Like we're all going to die in freezing water.

I mean, obviously. Don't tell me you like unions. I'm a union man. Really? I'm a member of the National Union of Journalists. What does the Union do for you? It's honestly, it's one of the unions. the most, it's one of the most useless unions out there because it's so broad.

Everybody says that. But what you are seeing is with things like Art Technica and other publications, their staff are unionizing. And a union is never really the best option. But if management is that bad, you have to unionize, that's a sign that something weird's going on. What do they get you? So you unionize and then what? Collective bargaining is the key thing. And then what do you get out of it?

Better pay. Oh, is out of it. But how do you know that you wouldn't have gotten the better pay without the collective bargaining? Because you can hold management over, basically hold management's feet to the fire. If one person goes on strike, it's no effect. Isn't it better to just create sufficient market demand for talent so that then free market forces handle it? It's a cute theory in practice. It's actually not a cute theory.

It absolutely works, which is, do you think tech workers are better off or worse off? They're way better off because there's such high demand for their skill set that I can't mess around. If I want to screw around and underpay somebody, I just lose them. So what's the point? Yeah. Like the best way to actually inflate weight. is to create demand for that talent. What I think unions do is it essentially protects people who are incompetent.

It really says the high performers lose their voice and the low performers get a disproportionate say at the table. That's outrageous. And it basically says we're all the same. Humans don't like homogeneity. Ian, counterpoint. Are you part of the lower third of the register writers drafting off the first third? I've survived various journalists.

culls. I've sort of done this, done this for 25 years. The point about collective bargaining, yes, individuals can negotiate higher deals for themselves. But when you've got management that decides to lower wages across the board, yeah, some people are going to leave. But particularly why it's so popular in the journalism industry at the moment is the journalism is contracting so sharply. There aren't other jobs to go to within your field. But I don't think management sits around and says like, I know, let me screw them on wages. Everyone's running a business. Like the markets are speaking as to what the markets demand and the markets want profits. And so you need to figure out, you either have to scale revenue, right? You've got to scale down cost. You've got to do a little bit of

journalism. In journalism, there are too many writers. It's not as... Well, there's not enough revenue, basically. Google and Facebook have taken an awful lot of the ad revenue. And margins are tight. Print companies who went into online. One of the reasons the regists always been profitable is because we weren't a print company in the foot. We didn't have the art editors. We didn't have the accountants and the Human Resource Department, everyone either wrote, sold, or edited, and that's it. And we had one accountant.

What I don't understand about these unions in the negotiation is if somebody like, let's say Jim Bankoff, who at Vox, I guess, managed this, I think relatively well, if he just said, okay, you guys want a union, that's fine. I'm going to pay everybody a 50K base, and then I'm going to base a bonus on performance that will be between $0 and $100,000,

and that'll be at the sole direction of your manager, who will then report to their manager and I'll approve everything. I would love to see a union that said that that was okay. That's exactly what they don't want. Is everyone gets sort of same. Yeah. I want the same.

Now, unions were super valuable. Unions used to be extraordinarily valuable. And the reason we have these laws that people are getting in trouble for is largely because of unions. So I don't want to take away from the fact that there was an incredible matter of social and legislative change. That was led by the unions. But I don't really know that there's a time and place for them now. I really have never met a union member who has a compelling argument of here's how I benefited from being in the union that couldn't have been achieved a different way. Personally, I benefit from the union because I get free legal cover from them.

But the unions have to, you get free legal cover from your employer anyway. So in California, for example, you get free legal cover. If you're a freelance journalist, you don't have that. Then you should be fighting for employment, right? Well, no, because some people prefer to work freelance. I mean, it gives you a certain amount of freedom to do things. and the unions have done good things. Weekends are pretty good.

The five-day working week is down to union, down to unions, getting decent working conditions for factory workers, all down to unions. I agree with that. I think factory workers have benefited incredibly from safety rules that were put in place by unions. You lose me, though, when you start saying, I get to work less because of my union. But isn't that precisely what's wrong? But no one's saying that.

What they're saying is we demand a fair wage for our work. So do tech workers. Tech workers demand a fair wage for their work. And sometimes you need to work six days and seven days. And it shouldn't be that somehow there's some protection, there's some protecto bubble of you can never require of me to work more than five days a week because the union has spoken. The business needs to succeed. It really sets up this versatility. The one thing I thought was interesting, though, and the one thing I thought was interesting in fairness to the unions was they did require as part of the Vox settlement because there was a.

pay in equality. I think they discovered between people who had been there because they had acquired a bunch of businesses. So somebody at one unit with five years' experience might be getting paid radically different. And then it might have actually split on gender in some cases. And they were able to fix those things. And then also, I think they had like a problem where most management was white males. And they said, hey, for any management positions going forward until there's more balance, we want to see at least two viable candidates. You don't have to pick somebody based on not being white, but there needs to be two candidates that make it to the final five that are not a white guy or something to that effect. So it's not a quota system for who gets the job,

but it is a quota system for at least finding some viable candidates. What do you think of that? I have so many thoughts. First of all, that's discrimination. It's saying I'm going to I'm going to take account of your gender, your race, or your ethnicity for some point of the hiring or promotion process. It doesn't matter if you're white or African American or female. That's discrimination to look at those things. Now, it can be aspirational. Of course, I want to make sure I have an extraordinarily diverse workplace. Why?

Because I want to have a competitive advantage. And having diverse points of view, having a ton of diversity, I think makes a company stronger. Mandating it is discrimination. Then to your force point, there's already laws that prevent that. And there's a ton of plaintiffs lawyers running around willing to take that case. And you don't even have to hire a lawyer. All you have to say is, I'm an employee of Exco, and I'm noticing a disparity in pay. That's enough to get everyone's attention, legality, management, and people really take it seriously and they look into it.

People don't, they're not intentionally discriminating. Yeah. What they would doing, I think, also at Vox, is, oh, here we go, the Ringer Union. at Ringer Union. It's been two weeks since we formally asked ringer management address reports of a potential acquisition. They have not done so. Yeah, the union doesn't get to be part of that discussion. Sorry. And neither do any of the other people. It's confidential. And going out on Twitter and complaining that you're not part of the M&A talks. It's ridiculous. I mean, different countries do it differently. I mean, in Germany, for example, then unions and management

work very closely together on these sort of things. And, you know, German manufacturing seems to work pretty well. Norway's gone a bit further. They, I think, have a law mandated. that you have to have a woman on the board, which seems to be taking a little fuck. California has that. Oh, really? California has that. And now Goldman Sachs is not underwriting IPOs

that don't have some sort of gender representation. I don't know what the actual status. Yeah, I mean, if things are so bad for so long, putting in some backstop, I guess, is a reasonable accommodation is what people feel. Hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's, I know it's a cliche, but the broculture is pretty grim at times in Silicon Valley.

And tech journalism still or no? Not in tech journalism. No, because I mean, that seems like representation is really good in tech. Oh, no. Representation is very good. And actually, and that's down to, as you pointed out, companies saying, you know, let's just look outside the box a bit and consider people who 50 years ago wouldn't have been considered and the results have been fantastic. Yeah. I don't think union solved that problem.

I think it's just our fundamental disagreement. Yeah. But I like you anyway. Oh, and love likewise. Yeah. I find the union thing really interesting that it is the industry that's failing and everybody is scrambling to just try to save it. It might, I think actually the unions wind up saving money ultimately for Vox in these places

because they can just say when somebody comes for a raise and they're an all-star and they're like, I've been here for 10 years and I'm an all-star, I need more money and I bring a lot of traffic. They're like, okay, yeah, according to the union scale, you're paid what you're supposed to be getting paid. And they say, well, but I have a bigger brand. I have more followers on Twitter. I get more retweets. I want more money. I don't think they're saying that you can't incentivize with bonuses.

They're just saying for a flat rate, we want a living wage on a flat rate. And then you can put bonuses up there if you want. And then if you do that for one person, then the union can back and say, well, that person's getting more. Everybody else needs to get more. And so management can, I think what management winds up doing in these is they just, they can very easily build a business model around the union pay scale, right? Which suppresses wages. which I think ultimately will suppress wages. Yes.

So I think overall wages will be more fair and it will be a very clear system for the writers. They know what they have to do to get the next 7%, next 15% bump, whatever it is. They know what to expect for each position. So there's clarity. But when you can negotiate for yourself, you might be able to negotiate for more than the average

and make a compelling case and that's over. I think they're just going to say, you know what? We have 500 journalists here. No one makes or breaks the athletic. No one journalist makes or breaks the ringer. No one podcast are there is going to change their fate. Right.

It eviscerates differentiation, which I just don't think humans like. On the other hand, though, it does ensure that you actually get paid a living wage and a decent money. But if you're succeeding, you're going to pay it a living wage anyway. If you're the top person who's succeeding more, you're going to get paid. I'm not sure what we should define living wage, but I. Yeah, living wage is really highly dependent on what city you're in. Yeah. I was talking to somebody.

They told me they had hired somebody for $45,000 in San Francisco. go for like an entry level operations position. And I was like, did they not punch you in the face when you told them the salary? Like you hired for somebody for $45,000 in the Bay Area. They're like, yeah. I'm like, they go to work in the city every day. Yeah. I said, how is that possible?

How are you not possible? Yeah. I mean, every job under 70K, 60K is out of San Francisco. It doesn't exist here anymore. Yeah. You see, I can speak for my industry, but wages are fairly low in the journalism industry. and have been sinking for a number of years simply because, you know.

Isn't it just because there's surplus supply? No, it's because there's lack of advertising revenue mainly. I mean, that's what's really... If we want to blend to duopoly, I'm in. Yeah, I mean, the duopoly is just like, we'll take... I mean, I see it at Inside.com. People will advertise at Inside.com in our newsletters. And then, you know, they can only put a small amount of money to work.

They get an each audience, but then they have this retargeting ability and this data from Google and Facebook, that's extraordinary that no small publisher can provide. So I've been looking at inside and saying, you know, although we're doing low seven figures and ad revenue, I think it's more sustainable to be subscription-based now because you start every month with last month's revenue minus churn, which so you're either, or people might expand their spend, so you're either at 95 to 105% of last month. Whereas with advertising, you start over every month. That's right. People work up to a certain extent.

It is still possible to get an ad sponsor publication, which is profitable. We are certainly. But I think paywalls, if you're a brand name, I mean, the FT were the first publication to do this because they have a very loyal, well-off subscriber base. The New York Times has made it work. The Guardian has gone the donations route. That seems to work for some people. But they started with a subscription base, which is. Washington Post makes it work.

Yeah. People were used to paying a subscription for their news. So then if it's essentially just more digital. You also only need to get somewhere between 1 and 5% of your audience to pay and you're good. It pays for everybody else. And it pays for everybody else. So you can still give something for free. I think you can see a variety of revenue models certainly in the industry.

Okay. Next up. Uber and DoorDash had merger talks after a push from SoftBank to consolidate. The last round for DoorDash was 13 billion. But as Bill Gurley's research on Twitter, back of the envelope, based on, you know, whisper is that DoorDash is out of money in 12 months at the current burn rate. DoorDash holds 37% of delivery market Uber eats has 21%. Uber has like five years of capital in the bank or six years, and they're quickly closing in on

break even from everything that people are saying publicly. So I don't understand why it makes sense for Uber to, if it was a $13 million, to give a 20% of company to DoorDash. Why not just wait them out? Until they run out of cash. Yeah, or maybe they stopped discounting and burning so much cash. It used to be that people, my understanding was people were making two or three dollars per food delivery. And then with this crazy competition based on Masayoshi's money given to DoorDash and to Uber,

which is crazy to have two competitors. You're basically giving a dump truck full of money to two. One's going to get shot. It makes no sense. Makes no sense. Because it's all about scale. You've got to get scale for this. An awful lot of some banks decisions don't make sense, but this was egregiously stupid.

Well, I think that they were trying to avoid what's going to happen, which is one's going to have to die. So can't I just make them a better combined investment? But Uber's in a tough spot because they have to get to profitability by, I think he said he was going to do it by next year. So can't gobble up a bunch of unprofitable businesses and think you're going to get there. No, there's no way to buy DoorDash, unless you were like, we're going to cut half the staff and raise. prices. It was like a parent who has warring family members and you put them in a room, please. Can you guys get a lot? It's a, I'll be honest, it's a bit of a shell game that I've seen where people don't want to admit failure with the business. So they sell it to another person.

They get equity in that company. Yeah. And they'll do this just to have like a safe landing and then maybe some potential upside. But it never actually comes to fruition or rarely does. But it let you mark on your books, not a shutdown, but an acquisition. That's right. You still have some equity in it. Yeah. And generally a nice price, right? Everybody gets to market in their books at some sort of profit and everybody looks

good. Yeah. I mean, certainly the word we're hearing is that VC funds have tightened up considerably in the last year. So DoorsDash are going to have more problems, getting more funding in. It's over. Yeah, there's no more funding. There's nobody after Masayoshi's on except the public markets and they have spoken.

Yeah. So the party is over for an awful lot of companies. It's just a question of how soon they stop twitching. Is the party over? It is. It's for sure over. No, I can tell you.

After like Pets.com, we're like, it's done. Now we want profits only. Well, this party's over. And that doesn't mean in, you know, next summer, we're not going to have another kick-ass party. Fair. But the cops showed up. They put the lights on.

Okay. They told everybody to get out. But aren't we all going to the neighbor's house and having the next party? It's, I mean, it's up. Suns up on this one. It's crazy. It's over.

It's cyclical. There's something like sunlight to kill everything. Everybody's going to get a Rudy, too, Dutie, fresh and fruity. Everybody's going to Denny's. A couple of months after I came here in 2008, the market just dropped. It died.

And I forget which VC firm it was, but basically they set up a gravestone. That was Sequoia, rest of peace. That was Sequoia, right. Yeah, just like get a break even. Then you had two or three hard years and then the party started again. Yeah.

These things come and go. Yeah, and growth at any cost, doesn't work anymore. No. It is, as I tweeted, like, racing towards, I don't know if we have my tweet, but racing towards the cliff, hoping a bridge will suddenly be built by the time you get to it at 100 miles per hour. Like, that's worked. Like people are just like, let's go faster. And then somebody will build a bridge across, you know, that great ravine and we'll just keep going. And now it's like, yeah, there's nobody

to build that bridge for you anymore. There's nobody who's going to give you another billion dollars and bail you out. And my fear with DoorDash is that round they did was internal. It wasn't outside investors. So once the internal investors have to pick up the tab, that's another sign of weakness that they couldn't get somebody externally to give them more money. And that means they're probably pumping the brakes and they're going to, Nick, you have my tweet? In funding terms, that's like saying, well, my car can go on 120 miles an hour if I drive it off a cliff. You know, it's just, it makes no sense. Well, I do think it's an interesting story about SoftBank because what SoftBank was offering everybody with that huge fund was you actually don't.

need to go public, right? You come to us. We're going to be the next, you know, sort of the only show in town where everybody ultimately has to go to soft bank as its final stop rather than the capital markets. I called it the Masa P.O. It was like, you know, and I benefited from it. I sold them some of my shares in Uber. It was like a smart move to do, I think. Yeah, here's what I put. DoorDash and Postmates will likely pump the brakes next as accelerating towards a cliff hoping a new bridge will appear is now a bad idea. Used to work fine. Look, a new bridge, hit the gas. It's now the age accountability, thank God. And this is because Lyft is cutting jobs this week because I think they are very quickly

running out of cash. And they're, I mean, the one speculation I haven't seen it is putting Lyft and DoorDash together. If you put Lyft and DoorDash together, certainly they would have to cut all the employees or like a large number of them and stop the discounting. But maybe that's a good idea. I just don't want to see Uber, which I still have a major, I'm not a major shareholder, but I have a major amount of shares. I don't want to see them acquired DoorDash

unless it was for $2 or $3 billion, not for $13 billion. And perhaps I misunderstand the businesses, but what's the moat to these? How comes anybody can't just come in and say, wait a minute, me and my buddies, we're all going to drive around, we'll go pick up the food and we'll deliver it.

When you have like hundreds of... But is there that much stickiness from the consumer base? Yeah, it's really hard to download an app and put your credit card in. But I use them all. I use DoorDash. I use Uber Eats. I use Postmates.

So the question is, if the fifth one, one, to go to those restaurants, it'd be the fifth tablet in and be the fifth app on your phone. It gets harder and harder. I get it. At some point, you have consumer fatigue. But where I was sort of headed was if fundamentally it's a good business, if you're running out of cash, it's oftentimes, as I'm sure you know, that last money in can be probably the best money, right? Because you have the most leverage.

What's tough about these businesses is, huh, is it fundamentally a good business? It is if you don't have four competitors discounting against each other. A race to a bottom. Yeah, because Grubhub went public and other people went public and they were making $3 a delivery at the end of the day. It doesn't seem like a lot until you do, I think Uber did like $1.5 billion or $1.7 billion rides, which includes eats, cars, bikes, everything. That's right. And none of these are employees, correct? Aren't they all contractors?

I think they are. Yeah. I mean, I think actually... So then your profit margins get worse. if you're in any way going to have to convert those people to employees? I think actually converting to employees would be the ultimate win for Uber because then if you're a full-time employee, you can't work for another company. So they could say, yeah, you either work for Uber.

But they have to have done the math on that. And they just have to raise prices slightly. But I think consumers would tolerate it. Consumers will tolerate it. And then they could tell people what shifts to work. So then it's like, you're a full-time employee. you've got to work Thanksgiving, you've got to work Christmas, you've got to work Friday and Saturday night when we're peak.

Right now, the drivers... Which people might not want to if it's at minimum wage. Like right now, if you work Christmas Eve or you work Thanksgiving or you work any of those days, New Year's Eve, you get paid three or four times per ride for, you know, giving up your holiday or giving up your Friday and Saturday night. There are some people who drive into San Francisco

just to do Thursday Friday, Saturday. And they sleep in their cars. Yeah, but if they became employees, they would get holiday pay. No, because you'd be able to dictate that in order to be full-time, you have to work. It's just like Amazon can say, we're our busy season is the holiday. In order to work your full-time, you've got to work those days. If you get time off into view, that would certainly be legal.

But I think consumers are getting slightly wiser about this. I was over in New York a couple of months ago and was talking to someone because I was going to order a lift and go to the next. Oh, no, no, no, no. You don't order a lift at night. You order a lift during the day when you can't get a taxi. You order a taxi at night because they don't search price. So people are getting, getting, yeah, they're getting, they're getting, they, they know what's going on and people are getting smarter about this.

The other rumor is Lyft and Uber are going to either raise the prices on Uber pool and Lyft line or deprecate those services. Yeah, they're going to have to raise prices. Yeah. How long can you run at losses? And if they, if those systems don't work, yeah, maybe they just go with UberX and they just, you give up 5% of the rides or 10% of the rides to have more profit. I mean, you can't have a service where basically a VC is paying 30% of your fare that it doesn't work in the long come. It comes back to what we were talking about. But that was soft bank's bet, right?

Yeah, I know. We actually can fund those losses as soft bank. And so you achieve such scale that then you're essentially the monopoly of who can charge whatever you want. And hasn't that worked marvels for them? Well, if it had worked. Well, it worked well for Amazon, I'll say that. I was to say it's worked many, many times. Yeah.

It's very uncomfortable for people to see companies losing money over a decade or two. It's just, I think, civilians and even people who are professionals in the stock market, they just don't understand it. So look what they did to Amazon for a decade. They were like, this company is a disaster. Now they are throwing money at it. It's a trillion-dollar company. And so, you know, the public market is just want to have an idea that Uber and Lyft can be profitable at some point. And now you saw Uber got rid of the Uber Eats in India.

They sold to the local competitor and got 10% or 20% of it. And same pattern in China a few years back. Yeah, they did that with D.D. And they own 17% of DEDY, which is 100, I think will be $100, $200 billion company. So they'll make, you know, $17 billion just doing that. Well, I mean, Yahoo steak and Alibaba kept that. I just was going to say that. Yeah, I mean, that kept them afloat for years.

I think that was the motivating factor. And I think Bill Gurley's fingerprints are on that. Like, if we can't win China, like, let's get a piece of the winner. And that strategy is working. So I think Uber is going to wind up racing to profitability very quickly. faster than people think. I don't have inside information anymore. I did when it was a private company,

but as a public company, I don't know anybody over there anymore, but they're going to race there. Did you guys see this column deck for the... I heard about it this morning. Yeah. All right. So here's the background.

There is a person named Dr. Aaron Ping, D'Souza. He's the CEO of this, maybe. Or Sarah Cohn, who's opinionated, spirited. I'll use the word. venture capitalist who's blocked me on Twitter. And she and he may or may not be the CEOs of this company. One of them is the CEO. And their deck leaked to MIT.

And it's a pretty good idea, I think. Get a bunch of influencers to invest $100,000 and get 500 of them or 250 of them to fund the company. So it'd be like starting Facebook over and saying, Oprah, Obama, whoever use this social network and give us 100K, which CAA had a Twitter clone.

I forgot the name of it. But Endeavor or CAA had a Twitter clone. You can look it up, Nick, the CIA Twitter clone, and they were paying their stars to... Their talent to tweet it, but the thing that was particularly deranged about this

was this slide. Where... This looks like a mess. This is embarrassing. It's so... so embarrassing and deranged. So when you're fundraising, you have a pipeline.

These are your targets. And in this deck that they're sending to people, they say they have Peter Thiel and Rob Hayes, who's Rob Hayes is a friend of mine. Peter Thiel has been on the pod. Rob Hayes has been on the pod, I'm not sure. And then they put that those two are committed for the founding columns.

The idea is a column is like a newspaper column. Yeah. That they have a meeting scheduled with one person. and they're in discussions with Mark Bennyoff. And they have an intro to LDC at Arianna Huffington and Kanye and Nicholas Brugrew. And then they need an intro to Bill Gates and Michael D Allen, Aaron Sorkin. Who's on it? Come on.

D. And Obama, one word. And DVF, which is Diane. Are they because Jeremy Clarkson on that? Anyway. And then they have founding launch partners, social impact capital, which is... This is real? Literally, this would be like, it's so deranged and bizarre that they're sharing who they want to be their investors and partners for this in their deck.

It looks so corny and deranged. And talk about scaring off your people who are already committed. Yeah, that's not good. Yeah, I mean, these are the, when you have just four founders watching, when an investor asked, I get this question a lot from people I invest in young founders. When they ask you who you're talking to, they're pro. you're not obligated to tell them who you're talking to. You can say, yeah, you know, we've got meetings with the usual suspects. We've had a lot of inbound. And so we're doing two weeks of meetings. And then we're going to ask people to have their term sheet in in the third week of February.

And then we're going to go to our board and the founders are going to discuss the term sheets. And we're going to make a decision by March 1st. That's our process. We'd love to have you participating. Is there anything? They say, oh, yeah. So who's on the short list? And you say, you know, we obviously wouldn't tell people that we're talking to you. We want to keep that private for all parties, you know. But, you know, usual suspects. We met with everybody. That's how you answer that question.

Putting it in your deck of who your targets are is so thirsty. Is that the word the kids are using, Nick? Thirsty? Yeah, that's a good one. They're so thirsty and deranged. I think this is a try hard. Trying too hard. T.T.H.

Yes. But Thursday is what came after T.T.H. Okay, boomer? You're hipper than me. I'm totally boomering out right now. You are. But you're not a boomer. You're Gen X.

I told anybody says, okay, boomer to me on Twitter. and this has been proven, I will, if you say, okay, boomers to me, I will say, okay, Snowflake, and then I block you. Okay, so my kids say it to me all the time. Do they really? Now they're retort, because I'm not a boomer.

That's a joke. Mom, it's a state of mind. Exactly. Yes. Wait, how old are these kids? They're teenagers. Oh, okay. That's 14, 16.

Here's the thing. There are ramifications. That's one of the great things about parenting. There can be, there can be ramifications to behavior. Has London okay boomered you yet? Oh, London, my daughter, has not okay boomered me.

I get it almost every single day. But she is the... And I'm pretty hip. And I get an okay boomered all the time. The... Now they lose their phones. The biggest mistake I made when my daughter was I taught her how to negotiate.

Of course you did. And that was the stupidest thing I could have ever done. Because she's like, can we talk? And I'm just like, here we go. Oh, no. Here we go. Sit down, dad.

And she's like, you know, I saw the IT trailer and it was very scary two years ago. But I'm two years older. And I'm not actually scared at the trailer because I watched it on my iPad. So I kind of feel like I should see it. And I'm like, I know you feel like that. But I am not going to parent-teacher meeting saying I let you watch the most gory insane horrific flick about murdering and eating children by a deranged clown. Sorry, London.

Yeah. Imagine me trying to moderate screen time on video games. Oh, yeah. Oh, you don't have the high ground. They're like, mom. No moral high ground. Mom, this is paying for my dress bun. The more I play.

Yes, Mom. The more I get paid, I'm working right now, mom. I'm doing user testing. I'm doing research for you. Yes, they are. They're doing market research is what I'm hearing lately. Oh, my God. So anyway, I like the idea column.

This is an idea that's been out there for a long time. I tried to find somebody, and I love the idea of getting 250 creators together. Didn't Paul Allen try to come up with something like this? It's possible. It's like dating myself, but I feel like a long time ago you wanted to do. What what people wanted to do was, this is my tweet. The idea is great. And I got pitched this for YouTube competitors when that was happening.

And the idea for the YouTube one was get 20. And I talked to Casey Neistad about it, who was on the pod and other people. And I said, do you think this is viable? And they're like, well, we're not going to leave YouTube. Nobody's leaving YouTube. But I was like, what if you got 250 YouTubers together? Ask them to put $25,000 into this company. And they get 80% of the shares.

And then 20% is kept by the management team. to hire great managers. And it's, you know, a parallel YouTube universe that you can promote. And then if it goes public, they own 1% each or 2% each. This could be amazing. If it was 80 of them, let's say,

and they each owned 1%. We'll just make the intro to Obama because he's going to be in. Well, I think the targets are deranged. The check rights itself. The other thing about the target list here is it's so thirsty and it's such a flex to be like

Obama and DVF and, like, these people are not But I love that they're putting it on everybody else. Like, so get on that potential investor. I need my intro to Obama. Oh, yeah, that is like implied. I think this is leaked. This clearly was leaked.

I'm just not sure I believe that it's real. It's so crazy. Some of those names, though, they're controversial names. Is that the idea? Well, the guy is the guy who, oh, I forgot to mention this. The guy, Dr. DeSuzza, who's the CEO, or maybe Sarah Cohn is the CEO. She claimed she's the CEO. so that bodes well for the investments when the two founders don't know who the CEO is.

One of the CEOs has a venture fund that's funding it, which is also bizarre when a VC decides they're going to be CEO of a company they're funding. That's a huge red flag. But DeSosa is the guy who architected Peter Thiel's takedown of Gawker, which I loved the takedown of Gawker because they were doing such horrible things to, you know, gay man and outing them and revenge porn and all this horrible stuff. I don't like the idea of being able to sue publishers into oblivion. I'm sure you have strong feelings on this. Very strong feelings on that. But he's the guy who architected. He came to Peter and said,

did you know that I could, if you gave me 10 million bucks, manage a bunch of lawsuits because there's so many people disgruntled who can't sue Gawker. But if we did that, they would have like a dozen lawsuits that they wouldn't be able to fight and eventually they would go bankrupt

and then we could buy it. And I think the pitch had a call to social good as well. It was if you don't do it, who's going to fight for these people? Yeah, that was Peters. Like, Peter's like, only I can defend myself

and spend millions of dollars fighting this. Yeah, you're right, I don't like seeing publications sued out of, into oblivion. I have to say,

Gawker in the court case just made it very hard to like them. It's just like, is it anything you wouldn't print something? If somebody was like 12 or something, you know, goodness. That absurdest answer.

I know the guy who said that and I felt bad for him because he was clearly being absurdist. They're like, is there an age at which you wouldn't publish a sex tape? And he was like, obviously. And then he made a joke. He's like eight years old. But you never make a joke in court.

Like just generally speaking in court, not the time for jokes. The lawyers wanted to like crawl under the table. I don't know who briefed this person. Like, don't make jokes. Here's your standard answers. And certainly pedophilia jokes. Pito jokes are going to tell you like. Yeah, probably not a great place.

They might even get you sued for defamation. All roads lead back to Elon Musk. All right. He won. He did win. He beat Pito Guy. Because I love him. He was like, it's a playground.

I'm sorry, not Pito Guy. Don't sue me Pito Guy. I mean not Pito guy. It's a new playground. When I say Pito guy, I mean creepy guy. Doesn't everybody know that? That's what I meant. It was an interesting legal argument, I have to say.

I was surprised by that verdict. Well, it played a juror's common sense. I thought it was actually brilliant. Yeah, when Elon was like, I'm not suing him for saying that I should make love to my submarine. Which is what he told me. He should not take it literally on Twitter when two 12-year-olds are making fun of each other. This is not. What I thought was hilarious was that we say this all the time in South Africa.

Hello. Oh, grief. Very common insult in South Africa. Yeah. As a journalist, I have to say the thing that just when it first came out, that he'd sent an email to a journalist saying, this is off the record. It is never off the record unless you and the journalist agree it. And even that it's a handshake.

Even I didn't know that until that whole thing came out. So understand that's a handshake. So if you tell a journalist something that is so juicy that they're willing to burn you on it or if you told them about a crime or something, they're going to... That's the one time you could... I think ethically, that's the one time you could burn someone if there was a serious crime involved. A serious crime. But if they were...

I've never broken off the record, but then again, I don't do a lot of background briefings and I don't like doing off the record because if you're not prepared to put your name to it, I'm not prepared to print it. But can't you take the offer records off and then go source it somewhere else? You can, and it's useful for that sometimes. But one thing, a trend we've seen in certain Apple pioneered this and a lot of tech firms have done it is when you go to a PR for a comment, they will say, right, well, we can give you just a we have no comment, but we can talk to you on background. And that's really divisive because it's basically saying, this is the narrative we want to tell you, but we're not going to put our name to it. And yeah, in certain cases, you can source it from outside.

But nine times out of ten, it's just we don't want to make a public record, but here's our take on it. On background. Maybe you'd like to see it. On background, maybe you'd like to add that into your piece. And I'm sorry, if you don't, if you're not prepared to put your name on it, it shouldn't be printed. All right, wrapping up here, the UK and France have digital taxes. France, UK and other EU countries want to limit tech giants ability to avoid taxes. They argue taxes should be based on where digital activity takes place, not where the firms are headquartered. US has threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on $2.4 billion in French goods, including champagne and cheese. After the tax passed in July 19.

Well, they announced a whiskey tariff as well. And I immediately went out and Panic bought because, you know, it's like I'm half-scores. You can't get by without that, not with Burnside coming up. Panic bought, is that really your cover for buying two cases of Jameson, really? It's my story and I'm sticking to it. Five minutes. France has agreed to delay the tax. Oh, the friend surrendered.

Shocked. The friends have agreed. Sorry, to the French command or more than my favorite French joke. Why is the Chonsalise lined with trees? It's so the German army can march in the shade. France has agreed to delay the tax until the end of 2020. Approachment was a result of conversion, conversations between Trump and President Macron on Monday.

Yeah, the UK will cave too. Of course. They've got a trade deal coming up. I'm torn on this because I think the tech industries. But you like unions, so of course you are. No, no. I think the tech industries have made a rod for their own back in that, yes, a certain amount of tax avoidance is expected, but they've really been taking the piss with

this in Europe. This is where people are using the service. Yeah, but I mean, they're paying, if someone like Amazon, for example, is selling a billion dollars worth of good. goods in the UK and paying maybe under 100,000 in corporation tax, you can't help feeling that there is something out of kilter there. What are they getting? What's the corporation getting from paying the tax in another country?

But the whole purpose of tax is there's an exchange. I'm paying a tax because you're providing me something. I mean, some infrastructure or something. There's some benefit. There's some trade here. My employees are in school. They drive on the streets. The police are there.

So when I use up your resources, then, okay, I'm going to pay some tax for that. Yeah, Amazon drives on the road. So why not pay their fair share for that? But this is somebody sitting in like, so if there's an app and someone's getting revenue from the app in France, what's going to happen is that's going to pay for this. The corporations aren't going to say like, you know what, you're right. Let me pay way more in taxes and not pass that along to the consumer. Which is why these sort of bills are now being floated and they are severely flawed bills. But this is exactly why these sort of bills are being.

It should be something reasonable. They should just come up with something that says, like, listen, if you make a billion dollars on advertising in Europe, you pay something, 2% of the top line, you know, to the EU countries or whatever. The double Irish and the Dutch tax dollars, they have been stretched to the absolute limit and people are getting really, really angry. Well, how do people perceive the Irish doing this? Because everybody, Ireland let people put their headquarters there for background and not pay any taxes or pay one percent. Or pay ridiculous. Or even a flat number, I think. Yeah, when the EU actually went through and said, you know, this is unlawful,

they actually, the Irish government fought for Apple not to pay taxes. It was that serious. And people actually, my favorite story, you two, were famously headquartered an island because of the artist's thing. And then when that got taken away, they moved to Denmark, they moved to the Netherlands, sorry. And the edge gave the most fantastic rock and roll quote, which was, who wouldn't want to be more tax-efficient? You're like, yeah, play that concern. Yeah, fighting the man. Yeah, rock and roll.

Sunday, bloody Sunday. Yeah, really. Wow, we've come so far. Ah, indeed. Yeah, it's... Jurisdictions have the right to offer better tax incentives. That's part of the game. That's right. They want the companies there.

You know what the stupid thing is of these companies is? The companies should be self-aware enough to know that paying no taxes... Yeah. ...is not sustaining. Yeah, and the optics are so bad that on an optics basis to just do it so efficiently that you pay no taxes, it's just ridiculous. There should be some self-awareness about that and just say, you know, listen, I'm Jeff Bezos.

I'm the richest guy on the planet. I'm going to make sure Amazon pays its fair share. Or. But what's fair share, isn't that though? That just has been some minimum. That's tough. At the moment. Yeah, philosophically agree.

It's like just when you get into the specifics, it's tough. It's like, what is fair share? What's the, I would say one percent of top line? Even if you're losing money, you should say one percent of top line. Even if I've lost money that year, I pay 1% of top line. Just something to have skin in the game. And shareholders are okay with that? I think that they should be because they're literally like building guillotine on Marcus

Street here in San Francisco. Like they're, they're the, I mean, you have a, the two candidates that are, you know, leading the pack of Warren and Bernie for a reason. Yeah. I mean, they want to come to Silicon Valley and chop our heads off, you know, or not me, but people with more money than me. I don't know. It'll get to you.

to pay for their plans. It's going to get to you. I know eventually. There's no way they can pay for it with the people that are talking about. But it's really great to say like tax those people. Not you. It's those people. Yeah. I mean, this is the problem I have with Bernie.

But I mean, it's just as I think it comes back to, I cover financials. You know, we're just coming into the end of the financial results week and I'm sick of covering financial stories. I bet. But at the same time, when you go through them and you look at the figures and you see how much tax these companies aren't paying, it's really, it's a, it's a really bad look and it will that's the thing that leads to populism and burn the purchase. I don't understand Trump's tax break was like completely unnecessary and the debt was going out of control.

So why don't we consider doing another tax break? Why don't we just pay down the debt a bit or wouldn't it be a little bit more conservative when it comes to fiscal stuff and I. All right. Let's talk about the election. Exploded. Here we go. Oh, no.

I am wearing my mic. I am for Mike. I like Mike. I'm all Mike Bloomberg. I'm all in. Mike Bloomberg is at 13. or 14% in the trading markets where people are putting dollars,

which tells you something, and then he shot up to 7 or 8% and then 13% in some polls. Mike's going to win. You heard it here first. Trump's going to win. I'm assuming, no, I think Trump's going to lose to burn.

I think Trump is going to win. Yeah. Okay. I think Trump wins in a landslide. Wow. It's going to be embarrassing. Really? Yes.

Your boy Mike's going to get smashed. Really? Yes. Why? Why do you think that? I think people. We're on the coast, so I don't think we get it. I don't think we truly understand how much people feel like he speaks for them.

Yeah. And all the stuff about the impeachment is just calling more and more and more votes for him. Well, here are the odds. Party nomination odds plus 900, which means if you bet a dollar, you get nine. Correct, Nick? President election odds plus 16. You bet a dollar, you get $16. dollars. Pretty good bet.

I gotta say you're the first person I've met who was considering voting for Mike Bloomberg. No one seems to like him. I think when he gets into the debates, when he gets into the debates, people are going to appreciate him. He is the most qualified of anybody. There's nobody more qualified. Twelve years is New York City's mayor. He did a great job. Running Bloomberg, amazing job.

Correct. I just want the most qualified person. But that's not who's going to win. You just asked who was going to win. I think politics are. Who are people voting for here? No, you know, you're never going to get anybody's honest answer. Everyone's going to lie to you.

Really? That's what happened last time. Yeah. Everybody lied. That's what happened in the UK election last time as well. I was like, oh, no, I would vote for Boris. Okay. My tax is coming down.

No, they didn't. There were so many, there were clearly so many Trump voters who didn't admit they were Trump voters. And so everyone's going to pretend they're not a Trump voter now. I know a non-zero, a non-one number of people in Silicon Valley who, if faced with Warren or Bernie. And these are as left as left comes people. Say that's too far left.

And I would vote for Trump if forced to vote for Warren or Bernie. Because I don't want to send the remaining a capitalist society as opposed to going that far into the socialist sort of realm or wealth tax plus, you know, banning the billionaire's rhetoric. They just think, or splitting up tech companies. They just think it's too much. overreaching and they would hold their nose and vote for Trump. But if there's somebody who's a more centrist candidate. Biden. Yeah.

I actually think if it's Biden and Trump. He's just such a pillock. I mean, I'm sorry. I need some translation here. Charles, he's drunk. He's drunk. It's just such a dofuss.

It's just, you know, I mean, he got caught, uh, Knicking Neil Kinnock's speeches. He's been lying about what he's doing. All right. Charles, Nicking. stealing, sorry. Okay, Nicking, got it. It's just, you know, and I know people who would like to vote for Bernie or Warren or, you know, other candidates.

But it's just they look at Biden. It's like Hillary Mark 2. And Trump will beat him like a red-headed stepchild. It's just, he's going to lose against Trump. I think you just got canceled on Twitter. I mean, I know Kristen and I, we both got canceled in the first. A long time ago. We were done.

You took you three segments. Congratulations. The gingers are going to be on Twitter and they are not a forgiving bunch. You are screwed. They're going to cancel. Well, but I mean, it's the one thing I would say in favor of Warren and Bernie is that you've got to sort out the health care system in this country. Absolutely. Because we would love to hire in this country, but we can't afford to because the medical premiums are so high.

That's crazy. But then you need to handle lawyers. I totally agree with you. But it's like, we solve these problems in the most ridiculous way, but we have a completely out of control toward system. We're paying the most and getting the least. Yeah. Correct. And this is where I think somebody like Bloomberg can actually be super.

effective because he might come out and say, you know, here's something reasonable that we can all agree on that brings us closer to, you know, getting more value per dollar we spend. Do you think anything reasonable is going to win? That's the rub. You know, here's the thing. I thought Biden was going to trounce him because it was looking so good. But I think Biden's son, Hunter, is so dirty and corrupt that there's going to be two or three things that come out.

I don't think Americans really understand what's going on, but they think it's. Oh, 100. There's nobody more corrupt than the Trump family. I think that like the made-offs look at them as like, you know, like a clear path to being more just in life. Right. Yeah. That's their like model for maybe redemption as being as corrupt as the Trump's. But it's, it's a, it's putting America as a serious competitive disadvantage.

Do you know anybody who ever? What's the most? You've been on boards of companies? No. Okay. You have people who are boards on your company. Yes, of course. And you know all about boards.

You've heard of different friends who are on boards. What is the most a board member ever got paid in your experience? In cash or end or the cash equivalent in stock over whatever number of years. Cash for going to board meetings. I could only think of a couple cases where it's even millions. Yeah, in stock. Correct. Never in cash.

Have you ever heard of cash compensation for a board? It has. It's like sometimes it goes through peaks and valleys. It becomes the thing to jour. 25K, 50K. It's de minimis. It's so small what they make. It literally would be like 25 or 50-day.

And you get travel. I've been on boards where they paid for business class travel for me. Very nice. And late stage you might get paid a little bit more. But this is not. Talking about 2550K. A year, maybe 100 grand. I got offered 100 grand recently to be on a board.

I wouldn't say what it is. And considering it, I don't know, I don't need the money, but it's kind of stupid to not take it, I guess. And it was kind of intellectually interesting. Yeah. It was 100 times. I need money because I got free girls. I got expenses. Anyway, yeah, that to me, the Hunter Biden thing is tragic because Joe Biden, I think, would have won.

And I think the Republicans got what they wanted, which was to just hammer home exactly how corrupt he is. And if one of my kids, I'm just, yeah, there's that too. He's got a creepy factor. He got a little creepy factor. He does like to put his hands on people. It's like smelling people. Like he just does weird things. Or like he just, there was a video of him tapping.

somebody on the chest who disagree with him. A little too physical. He looked a little aggressive. As a foreigners are an immigrant to this country, this is what I find so bizarre. Yes, you're right. He is creepy and he is touchy. But we've got Mr. Grabbing by the B. He is the president. Oh, sorry,

I couldn't say, okay. Oh, I'm going to have to go ahead and peep that one. Okay. Trying to keep ourselves on iTunes. I'm sorry, Tim Cook. My apologies. That was interesting. Apologies to Tim Cook. All right. Well, as we as we wrap up here, we're going to have a quick call-in

from Ben Horowitz wanted to call in and give his view on the column deck because I just got a text from Ben Horowitz that he was going to call in because he's considering he was on the column deck. Okay. So can we get Ben on the line?

All right, well, we couldn't get Ben on the line. I don't know what's going on. He just texted me, so I apologize. But we'll have Ben on the next show. You know, obviously a big fan. He actually wrote a really nice tweet about the show, so thank you, Ben, for that. All right. I think we talked about everything.

Let's all get back to work. Ian Thompson on the Twitter, I-A-I-N-T-H-O-M-S-O-N. And he is over at the Register. Great publication. Read it every day. And, of course, Kristen Dumont, is for Machine Zone. If you are into games, casual games on your phone, more than casual, right? Mid to Hardcore, remember?

Mid to Hardcore, right. Yeah, yeah. What's the line again between casual and mid to hardcore? Essentially, it's strategy. How, you know. I've been playing Polytopia? Can everyone play it or can only smart people play it? Ah, the onboarding time. Yeah, to learn the game is intense. Yeah, that's what I, when I started. It's not like two minutes or less and you pick up the whole game. These games take a lot of time to learn them.

And is it revealed complexity where you give people like little educations during the game? Correct. That's what I found with StarCraft is I've started, like, all of a sudden this guy had like these crazy robots going against me. I was like, how do you make those? And I had to look it up. And then you get curious, then you get hooked. And deeper and deeper you go.

And then I was like, I'm a 49 year old man with three kids and 200 investments. What am I doing here? I'm playing a game. You know what it does? I find before I go to bed, if I play a game and like listen to a podcast and just have a cup of tea, it kind of winds me down for the evening. It's more interesting than watching a TV show I'm finding. That calm app changed my life.

Oh, yum, yum, really? Literally, I mean, I cannot sleep, period. That Calm app is awesome. All right. Thank you for that. And Com is hiring a creative director. And I'm not an investor. And I own five or six percent of the company.

Oh, you do? Oh, yeah. It's my second biggest investment. My God, it's fantastic. Like no more Ambien, nothing. It's like, it is unbelievable. If you're taking Ambien or other Lunesta or any of the stuff. I think, I don't know this, but you should do research and consult with your doctor

because I think Ambien and Lunasta are horrible for your brain. Yeah, they're taking them off the market and it's terrifying. I took it once for a trip for a flight back to London. I've done that. The next day I was sitting, I was supposed to be someone for lunch. It was 11 o'clock. I'll have a cup of tea and then get moving, woke up at 3 o'clock, drool coming down my face, just blanked completely.

I just fallen asleep. It's horrifying stuff. Yeah, it's kind of scary. I've taken it to travel and then I heard, started to hear rumors about it. And it's actually quite scary. So I tried melatonin, all kinds of stuff. It doesn't matter. that there's some sort of tea you can drink

nothing nothing nothing I've done the ambient thing on flights and then I know people have done the Provisal or Mondafel which is the anti-narcolepsy drug and I just met an artist I'd say top 30 music artist in the world right now top 20 maybe even behind Elon?

They behind Elon yeah and they were on provisial permanently and I was like you need to check with your doctor like that's not a good thing and they were they I'm not going to reveal the gender said that it helped them with their ADHD or something. And I was like, wow, people who are famous can get whatever they want.

But don't take Ambien Provisional or Linesta without talking to your, getting multiple doctor recommendations. My understanding is these things are doing weird stuff to people's brains. Yeah. As are the SRIs. It's totally altering the chemistry of the brain. Nobody knows. And I'm in my school.

And they are very, the teachers don't do this, but the consultants are like, you know, Yeah, your kid's not writing perfect penmanship. I'm like, you know, cares. Yeah. Like, they're going to be typing anyway. Like, is this a big deal? And there are parents, I know a parent, who put their kid on one of these SRIs and riddle in or whatever. And they're like, yeah, it's amazing.

Like, they went from like not being good at math to being ahead in math and now they're writing. And I'm like, is that worth messing with your child's brain chemistry to be six months ahead instead of six months behind or have the penmanship? Some schools are now enforcing, you know, this kid has. has ADHD, therefore it must be on Ritalin. And you're like, and who's the school to say that anyway? Exactly. It's outrageous, especially, I mean, I have a little girl, but my boys, I used to fight this fight at school all the time.

They actually have a ton of energy. And the thing you do when they're misbehaving is then you bench them so that they can't go out in recess, which is the very thing they need to do. They need to go run around. Yeah. So I think schools are now adapting for them. A completely different way to learn. And they're adapting now where the kids with ADHD, they're saying, go ahead and go for a run

in the yard. They're actually encouraging them to do that. Like, go for a walk around the building and come. back, which is easy to do in California. We have these nice outdoor schools, but harder to do in the Bronx. Yeah, well, not to plug your call app. I'm telling you. That thing is, there's nothing has worked and that thing is unbelievable. Okay. I agree. It's amazing. All right, anything else? I got everything, right, Nick? We're good. All right, we'll see you all. And thanks. Sorry to Ben Horowitz, apologies again, but we'll get you on the next pod because we're just running out of time and

you're not picking up your phone. So I'll see you at the Warriors game. And, uh, We're going to keep the news roundtable going. Bye-bye.