This Week in Startups - How to supercharge your network + $GOOG & $MSFT earnings & $SHOP layoffs with Deirdre Bosa | E1519

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

BIG variety show today! Jason kicks off the show with Part 3 of "The Blueprint" series (1:43), then, CNBC's Deirdre Bosa joins to break down $GOOG and $MSFT earnings, $SHOP layoffs, and $COIN's SEC probe (17:23), and we wrap with Producer Rachel joining to break down the Kylie/Kim vs. Instagram feud! (45:42) (0:00) Molly tees up today's variety show: The Blueprint Part 3, big tech earnings with Deirdre Bosa, and Kylie/Kim vs. Instagram with Producer Rachel! (1:43) The Blueprint Part 3: Jason explains how to build and supercharge your network (16:27) Visa - Learn more about Visa’s online Small Business Hub at Visa.com/smallbusinesshub (17:23) CNBC's Deirdre Bosa joins to talk big tech earnings (19:21) $MSFT earnings for fiscal Q4 and FY2022 (25:18) LinkedIn Marketing -  Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at https://linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups (26:45) $GOOG Q2 earnings (33:05) $SHOP lays off 10% of employees (~1000), Tobi Lutke's blog post, Q2 earnings (37:45) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist (39:00) $COIN faces new SEC probe regarding whether or not they allowed investors to trade unregulated securities (45:42) Molly brings on Producer Rachel to break down the recent backlash against Instagram from celebrities and TikTok's superiority regarding creator monetization

All right, everybody, super fun Wednesday variety show for you today. First up, Jason is back for another episode of The Blueprint, which is everyone's new favorite. This week, he's talking about how to build and leverage a network, something he is really good at. I think we can all agree. Then we have CNBC's Dear Drubosa, Debo back on the show to cover a bunch of big tech topics. We got Google and Microsoft earnings, Coinbase's new SEC probe, and the potential ramifications, Shopify layoffs. We sort of preview the rest of the big tech earnings this week. And finally, producer Rachel comes on to talk about Kim and Kylie versus Instagram,

what the Gen Zs are doing on the socials and the battle. I'm really like who's going to become more irrelevant first. It's a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Visa. Are you a small business owner? Did you know that Visa's online small business hub has tools, discounts, and resources to help you run your business? Learn more at visa.com slash small business hub. LinkedIn

Marketing. To redeem a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups. And Open Phone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back. But using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. Open phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices. Visit openphone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months. All right, everybody, it's time for episode three of the blueprint. I get this question a lot on how to be successful in your career. Well, one of the things you need to do to be successful in your career is leverage your network. Now, when people talk about a network, they're talking about

the people you have relationships with and who can help you find opportunities and who you, conversely, can help bring into opportunities that you find in the world. That's basically what the network helps you do. Now, if you go work at companies, you're going to slowly build a network of people you meet in the industry. If you sit next to somebody and you build that relationship, they leave the company. They might tell you, hey, I went to this other great company. They're hiring for this position. That's like networking 101, the people you've worked with. But in today's market, it's more dynamic. You're going to switch jobs more often.

You're going to start companies. You're going to be an investor. Whatever your bag is, you're going to probably need strategies for building a bigger network, faster and a deeper network. It's not about how many cards you can collect at a conference. That was the old advice we used to get. Go to a conference, collect as many cards as you can, write them a follow-up letter, like literally a physical letter back in the day.

Then it became a follow-up email. And today, we have social networks that exist, which lets you keep in touch with people in a bionic way. And of course, we have video conferencing and different communities online, whether it's Reddit or Hacker News or inside.com or Discord. So if you leverage these connections, you can get things done that you have on your plate, things that you've thought of. But there's a secondary thing that happens is people will introduce you to opportunities you didn't know exist. and that's where networking can become very, very powerful. Today, I'm going to give you but three of my best tips for how to build a really large, powerful network.

I'm not talking about an organic network. I'm talking about jump starting it, right? Now, there are many different ways to do this. These are the ones that worked for me that I'm going to share with you. There are many other ways to do this, and this is just a starting point, but that's what I'm trying to do here

with these 10, 15-minute blueprints is to just give you a very, tactical things and tell you why they're important. So you know the why they're important. You might have things you need to get done in your career that require meeting people and finding contacts. Then the second piece and probably more important is the random things that can be brought to you in your network that you didn't anticipate happening, but that massively increased your chances of success, your joy in life, and just help your career, generally speaking. So first, be the host.

Okay, this is my first framework for you. This has become my calling card. When I was young, I was in New York, I started this magazine Silicon Alley Reporter. It was about technology. It was about the internet, online services, CD-ROMs. And I started hosting parties and dinners for people. I didn't have a lot of money, so sometimes I'd partner with people. I partnered with my friend Nicholas Butterworth.

We did a party at SonicNet back in the day. And what did we do? We took $200 out of all. out of the ATM and we bought cases of beer and brought them back to his office space and people came. And then we met people who I later covered in the magazine or advertised in the magazine. And when I would go to events, I would get lucky enough to go to E-Tech because Tim O'Reilly would give me a ticket for free. Or I would go to the All Things D conference because Walt Mossberg and Caroushuisher would gift me a ticket as a journalist for Engadget. I just got lucky to

have built that fabric as a journalist and got invited to some things. But I wanted to go deeper. So I was at the event already, but I wanted to build deeper relationships. So I'd find one or two people who I knew, and I'd say, hey, what are you doing for dinner? This is when conferences didn't always have dinners. You were on your own for dinner. I said, well, I'm going to the best Mexican joint in San Diego. I got a table. You want to grab dinner at 6 o'clock?

Part of says, yes, great. I might have to ask two or three people. Then I asked a person, hey, you know, I have two extra seats. Do you want to invite somebody? Or is anybody interesting? Yeah, yeah, I'll bring this other founder I know. Then I would go to the next person. I'd say, hey, myself, Fred Wilson and this other founder of his are going to dinner,

would you like to join us? And then, oh, this person would say, sure, I'd love to meet them. Next person would say, sure, I'd love to meet them. All of a sudden, I'd have an eight-person dinner. And then I would order sangria, appetizers, everything for the table. I tell the waiter, don't bring any menus, just bring food the second people come. And I'm going to just tell you, bring cassidias, nachos, one of each, you know, chicken, shrimp, and beef, bring around to frohitas.

Everybody have a great time. Nobody had to worry about ordering food. and I kept the budget low because there was no waste. I didn't have everybody order an appetizer, an entree, and dessert. We ate family style. This type of mini events, you know, where you're just trying to get four people, eight people, 12 people can have a way of building upon themselves and you build deeper relationships with people.

Make sure, of course, you set up both sides of the table. You greet people. Another little tip, I would introduce each person at the table and tell you a little bit about them, maybe give you a story about them. So they didn't have to introduce themselves. I would say, hey, everybody, I just want to introduce everybody. and I would say what that person meant to me in our relationship. What that did was, and I would do it in like 30 seconds each, so it would only take five minutes.

It reinforced with everybody at the event that I had a relationship with those people and that I was a super networker. And eventually the New Yorker wrote a story about me called The Connector. And if you just type Jason Calacanis, The Connector or The Connector New Yorker, you'll find that long story about how I was The Connector in Silicon Valley and everybody needed to know me because I could put together the people who were investing in startups, the people who worked at startups, attorneys, all the power brokers and, you know, help get deals done as this journalist. So those were, that was something I didn't anticipate happening, but those were the second order effects. Sometimes the venture capitalists would ask me, do you know any founders? Sometimes the founders would say, do you know any great investors? And there was the beginnings of my career, which you see today as a 51 year old adult in the industry with 30 years of experience.

Those early dinners I did in the 90s really paid off. Okay, framework number two. Start some niche content. We see a lot of people copying me, you know, in my blogging and newsletters and events. Now it seems like to be a venture capitalist. You have to have a podcast. You don't. Trust me. You could start a TikTok. You could just be really good on Twitter.

You could start a newsletter. You could write a blog. There's a lot of different ways to make high quality content. And you just have to know what you're good at. Are you good at writing? Are you good at being in front of a camera? Being in front of a camera? Are you good at answering questions?

Are you good at interviewing somebody? And by the way, if you're in a niche, and this is what's super important. If you're in a niche, you don't need to be that good at it. Now, if you want to write fiction, if you want to write for the New York Times and be a journalist covering general news, well, you need to be elite at it. But because in a niche, there's a drought of content, well, you can be one of the best writers. So when Bitcoin first came out, I wrote a little bit about Bitcoin, but there were other people who were writing about it on the regular or cryptocurrency, and they didn't need to be great writers or need to be great podcasters. They could learn as they

as they went along because they were the only people offering that content. So think about what vertical you're in. The more narrow, the better. So forget about crypto. That's too wide. But if you were just in smart contracts, go for that. If you're a venture capitalist, just go for seed investing or running an accelerator or fintech.

Be known for something really tight. Tight is right in this regard. Why? Because it's going to give you, you'll know what to write about, and you'll be an expert on it, and people will seek it out. because it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. And you're just going to learn a ton. You know, if you look at what I do here on this week in startups,

six days a week, 300 episodes a year. I do most of them with Molly. I take some off, but not many. And for me, it's one hour a day. Instead of eating lunch with anybody,

I just have a quick salad at my desk. It takes me 10 minutes to eat it. So I skip lunch every day. I just do the podcast, right? A lot of people go out to lunches. My lunch is doing the podcast. So I could have lunch with one person or I could have lunch with hundreds of thousands of people.

So I've learned this little hack where media can be this incredible multiplier effect on your networking. It doesn't replace that intimate networking, but it is a multiplier on it. And then third, this is a framework I teach at my Angel University course, which I call a pop-up network strategy. And it really is amazing that I didn't think of this earlier. But when you're an investor in companies, that's but one example. you will be in a deal with no less than 30 or 40 other investors. If you get the cap table or you look on one of the online databases, crunch base,

pitch book, et cetera, you're going to be able to see the other investors. Maybe you just see the firm. Maybe then you go to the firm's website. You see the who partners are. You see which partner is on the board of this company you invested in. And so I got to know Jet Katz from Javelin because he did the Series A in Thumbtack after I had done the seed round, the angel round, and we became friends and we shared deals

and we know each other. So you can do this over and over again by just emailing people and saying, hey, we're both investors in Thumbtack, would you like to take a look at this new investment in Com or have a cup of coffee, I'll be in town on this date? And then you just build a spreadsheet

or use a CRM or you put it in code or notion or whatever tool you use. And over time, you can then tap this list by city when you're in a city to say, hey, we'd love to catch up, just trade notes, short email and a short request. Want to grab coffee or a quick breakfast? I'm available anywhere from 7 to 10 a.m.

on these three dates, I'll be in your hood. Boom. And over time, you know, this might work for you as a founder of a company because you both went through an accelerator class at TechStars. You find the other founders. Who's the most successful founders? You reach out to them. I went to TechStars.

You went to TechStars. I'm going to be in your area. I've raised my angel around. I see you've done your Series A. We'd love to trade notes with you. Grab a beer. I'm available 24 hours a day, these three days of the week. I'll be in Palo Alto.

Very simple way to network. You find some common ground. It used to be what school you went to. Now it would be maybe you share investors. Maybe you're in the same vertical. And you should just make sure you make this into a bit of a process. Every time you go to a new city, you find 20 new liege. You email all 20 and you try to meet with four or five of them.

Now, when you meet with those four or five, what I used to always do is say to that same person, who else is interesting in town? doing interesting things that I should meet. And they would usually introduce me to with three people. Now, by the time I got to the third or fourth person, they would be telling me the same people. And I used to be on that list. People come to New York, oh, you got to meet Jason Calacanis, Silicon Island reporter. He's a really dope guy. Or, oh, you know, oh, you're in Silicon Valley. Oh, you got to meet Rulof Both. He's like this new hot shot partner at Sequoia. That's what starts to happen is you become part of that short list. And you're always wondering,

how do these things happen? They happen one relationship at a time and they build and they build. and then all of a sudden, something flips in your career. Instead of you being the person on the outside, trying to get in, trying to get opportunities, trying to be part of something, all of a sudden you're inside the tent and you're part of it. And then after a little bit of time, you're the person when you come inside the tent

and you come to the party that everybody looks at it and says, oh, I know that guy, I should say hi to Jason. Or, you know, you're the person that people want to meet. It's going to happen over decades for you. So you're playing the long game here when you're building your network. Don't be discouraged if you're just meeting, you know,

a bunch of quote unquote nobody's. I was meeting a bunch of quote unquote nobody's back in the day. And somebody was like, hey, you know, you should meet Travis. He's doing this company Scour. And then he went on to do two companies later Uber.

Or, hey, you should meet this guy who did zip two and, uh, he was part of PayPal and he's doing some rocket ship company. He lives near you in Los Angeles, Elon Musk. You know,

like I met all these people just through my just basic networking and I built lifelong friendships with him. Somebody said, oh, you should meet this guy, Sam Harris. You have the same book agent. All of a sudden, we became friends. He starts doing podcast. I helped him with his podcast. He was on my podcast. I had a dinner for him one time when he was in San Francisco and I introduced him to people in the tech community. And these things tend to flow and all of a sudden you look around and you're like, wow, I'm hanging out with the most interesting people in the world. Well, that happened for me over 30 years, very slowly, just by every week meeting a couple of people

and also being helpful to people. Hey, what are you working on? Anything I can be helpful with? And I would tell people, hey, don't be afraid to reach out if you need help with anything. And then I started saying to people, hey, if I met their kids,

I'd say, hey, you know, I'd say to the kid, you know, if you ever need an internship when you're 16 years old, let me know. And all of a sudden, every year I have a couple of friends of mine who are like, hey, you know, you told my son, my daughter, that if they ever needed an internship, they could go to you. And every summer, one or two of my friends,

I'll host one of their kids for an internship for just, you know, sometimes it's two weeks, sometimes it's six. But it lets them put something on their resume, it lets me help out their kids. So eventually, when my kids are going to do internships, I can then go to my network and say, hey, do you have any internships? And that's how the world works. You want to be authentic about this. Some people find networking and building these networks as like maybe a little calculated

and cold and cutthroat. I wouldn't look at it that way. I would look at it as there's a lot of interesting people in the world that you can learn from and have a laugh with and share a meal with. And that's what life's all about. So take the approach here that you're an interesting person doing interesting things in the world and you want to meet other interesting people and maybe collaborate or maybe just hear their stories and maybe share a little bit of what you're doing.

You want to be able to ask people interesting questions. Hey, what are you working on? What's challenging about that? How does it work? And I just did that over and over in my career. And I got to meet some of the most interesting people in the world. I was literally at a party and I met Harrison Ford or John Favro or any number of of interesting person from Hollywood when I lived in L.A. or interesting authors when I lived in New York,

magazine published. I got to meet Grading Carter, or Jan Wenter from Rolling Stone earlier in my career. And they were super helpful for me in terms of thinking about my magazine. So the world is out there with all these interesting people, host some parties, make some content, and be deliberate, but authentic in your pursuit of building a wider network. It'll pay off, but don't look for a short payoff. Play the long game. Think about this in decades, especially if you're a young person. about it every 10 years what your career is going to look like and who you can introduce people to to that would be a creative and fun and joyful for them as well. I hope you enjoyed the blueprint. If you have any ideas for other episodes of the blueprint or follow up questions, just hit me on

Twitter.com slash Jason. I reply to my tweets or DM me. I reply to as many as I can. Or you can email me, Jason at calicanus.com, where you can email the producers here at this week in startups anytime with any idea. Producers at this week and startups.com. Hope you enjoy this segment and I'll talk to you soon. Are you a small business owner? Did you know that Visa's online small business hub has tools, discounts, and resources to help you run your business. So whether you're a business beginner or an entrepreneurial expert, find the solutions, tools, and tips you need to help take your business to the next level. Plus, if you have a Visa business credit card or debit card, you can get access to cardholder benefits like Visa Savings Edge, a savings program which can help you save on everyday business expenses like Office Essentials,

travel, and more. When you enroll your Visa Business Card in Visa Savings Edge, you'll have access to valuable offers, which can help turn qualifying business purchases made with your enroll Visa business card into savings for your business. Learn more at Visa.com slash Small Business Hub. Once again, that's visa.com slash small business hub. Visa, a network working for everyone.

It really could not have worked out better that Jason went on vacation in Big Tech Earnings Week because welcome to Wednesday with Deer Jarbosa. Thanks for coming back. Hello, Nodes. Hello, everyone. I am so excited to be here. Molly and I have been geeking out about this being the Super Bowl of Tech earnings right now. So I'm all about it. Let's jump in.

They just had 11 Red Bulls and run up and down the Rocky stairs. Let's go. I've read about 100 earnings transcripts. I have my giant Pete's coffee. Yes, let's go. All right, well, should we start with Microsoft or do you want to give me like, what's the one you're really waiting for that maybe hasn't happened yet or the one you think is the most telling? Well, I can't. I mean, you're asking me to choose like my favorite child, right, this week of all the mega caps.

I can't do it. But I will say, I love it slash hate it when they all report in the same week. It gives me so much work to do and little sleep. However, what it does do is give us a really good view of tech. I mean, these four companies plus meta, the mega caps, give us such a good view of where tech is. going, that has been such a major theme, no matter where you are in the markets this year, they make up, you know, I think nearly 40% of the NASDAQ, 100, nearly 30% of the S&P. So what they report matters for the entire market. And what we got so far from Microsoft and Alphabet is not as bad as feared. Sometimes we say better than expected, but that's not really accurate in this case,

because everyone was kind of expecting or maybe worried about a bloodbath, right? we've seen these stocks just crater this year, more than 20%. And those are the ones, the high quality names, the mega caps that are better off. And what Microsoft and Alphabet told us is that, you know what, they're pretty resilient. So collective sigh relief for now doesn't tell us what's going to happen for the rest of the year, however, and that is riskier, I'd say. Right. But could have been worse is a win right now.

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. All right. Well, let's dig into Microsoft in particular, because I, do think when you, resilient is such a good word. And when you look at resilient and you look at the moves that Microsoft has made over the past, I mean, arguably decade to put itself in the position to absorb a lot of shock. I think that showed in this report. Now, granted, Microsoft did miss on revenue slightly. The stock dipped a little bit, but it's been rebounding today. Year to date,

like you said, down slightly over 20 percent. They're still worth a trillion dollars. Let me do some numbers here. Q4 revenue, $51.9 billion, up 12% year over here. Fine. That's fine. Almost $2 trillion. I'm sorry. That was a verbal typo because it just did not seem possible that that was true.

But yes, they are worth almost $2 trillion. Microsoft disclosed fiscal 2022 full year numbers, which were crazy. I mean, I think we can agree. 2022 full year revenue, $198 billion, up 18%. And full year net income for the year, $72.2 billion. So almost $200 billion in revenue on over $70 billion of profits and high quality revenue, right? These numbers are just wild. I mean, we bow down to Satya and Adela.

The CEO has just done an incredible job essentially creating a fortress. And that is what we are seeing now. I mean, this business is so resilient. Let's dig into cloud specifically, Molly, because they've. forecast that it's going to be 40 plus percent growth next quarter to be able to do that in the current macro environment when a lot of their customers are looking at raining in costs is pretty incredible. Does raise a question, do they have a good grasp? But it's Microsoft, so you have to assume that they do. That is just a huge amount of growth. The other thing,

Molly, and we talk about this a lot on Tech Check, Microsoft is in this really unique position. They already have all of these enterprise customers. So the fact that they're signing, you know, A billion-dollar cloud contracts shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but it does make you wonder what the other hypers, Google and Amazon, are doing what the trajectory of the cloud market is in the future. You know, is Microsoft in a better position with all of their enterprise customers, with their focus on cybersecurity? Another thing when companies are pulling back on enterprise spending, there's this whole idea of sweets, Microsoft and their office product versus best of breed, the snowflakes, the octas, the pager duty. Do you pull back, do customers, companies spending on enterprise, that enterprise spending, do they pull back on those best to breed and just go with Microsoft? Because Microsoft is sitting on so much cash, so many customers that they can just bundle stuff together, which I think, Molly, maybe raises a risk in the future of antitrust regulation. No one talks about that with Microsoft.

I think in these moments, that advantage becomes really evident. Well, and it's going to be interesting, and I'm really happy you brought that up because the bundle is coming back, right? this is what got Microsoft in trouble in the 90s. Yes. And really did, you know, it was extremely transformative for that business. You could argue that it cost Microsoft certainly a solid decade. That's why, you know, Microsoft didn't do a mobile phone. There was like a lost decade of innovation and acquisition.

Then there was sort of a decade of stabilization. This is actually a good time to bring up this chart of leadership at Microsoft. Like if you look at kind of the consistency of revenue, you know, you obviously had the boom times under Bill Gates. Back when Bill Gates was the other kind of bad guy, not the conspiracy theory kind, the kind to just, I mean, you know, when I was coming up in the tech industry, there was no more Darth Vader than Bill Gates and Microsoft. They bought everything. They shut it down. It was catch and kill galore. But they made insane amounts of money. And then you move into this Balmer territory. for those of you who are not looking at this chart,

you know, around the year 2000 revenue falls off a cliff. There's 10 years of Steve Balmer and revenue is just, we're all over the place. Super spiky. There's a massive drop around, you know, 2008, 2009,

not resilient to that particular crash. Super spiky revenue. And then Nadella comes in and specifically I would argue over the last like five years, five to seven years. It just goes flat. line goes stable? You know, stable, I would love to overlay this chart with one of Microsoft's stock

chart, because honestly, this is, it's so interesting. Yeah, look at, oh, you know me so well, Molly. Look at this. Nick's like, no problem. I'm on it. Despite just, I mean, just stabilizing revenue growth, he has gotten so much credit for markets for this. But to your point of Darth Vader, I mean, there are so many other Darth Vader's in the tech ecosystem. now that I understand why Wall Street kind of ignores that antitrust threat because there are so many to pick off. And lawmakers, regulators are so bad at doing this. I mean, Microsoft in the 90s is a cautionary tale, but there's just so much to look at now that maybe that risk is less. But you're right.

I mean, the whole question of bundling and the fact that it's coming back and hurting some of the smaller players or could hurt the smaller players is fair game. I mean, that's an important question. When do regulators start to think about that? Do they care more than what Apple and Google are doing? Amazon, Facebook, meta. Those are harder to ignore, but I did write a column for the Atlantic just a couple of years ago about how Microsoft is just like, man, we're skating right under. Just cruising under by just being the good guys.

But I think you're absolutely right that especially if there is that pullback in spending, those bundles will become more appealing to enterprise customers, but become a lot more interesting to the aiming. Pubishires of the world. Hey, everybody. I'm here with my pal, Tom Eschbacher. He is the senior sales manager at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. And today, we're going to talk about marketing for startups. And LinkedIn did a great new internal report called Today in Startup Marketing. Welcome to the program, Tom. Thanks, Jason. We all know organic reach, super important. You make great content. You get your likes. You get your shares. You get your comments. But what people don't know is that you can

boost organic and it creates a bit of momentum on your site. Can you unpack that for people? Definitely. So organic is just going to go to the audience who's already following you and then a smaller group of members who are connected to any of those audiences. So what we often encourage is keep an eye on your organic engagement metrics and who are the people and companies and segments that are engaging most frequently with your content and then amplify that reach via our best in class paid advertising targeting. So what that means and what we've seen, especially for seed and series A companies, is by boosting successful organic posts with paid, it results in a 13X lift in unique reach.

And that's really meaningful insights that can help inform your product and go to marketing strategies and open up new audiences for you. You can go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups and get the report for free, as well as a hundi, $100 from Tom. Speaking of non-threatening CEOs, at least putting that image out, there's also Senator Pichai, right? I mean, even though Google is under a lot more of that scrutiny, he also comes across as someone who's very thoughtful, someone who's very soft-spoken, and Google another

company that is winning relative at the moment. I mean, it's results too. They missed. They weren't spectacular. Growth in YouTube, down 5%, which is a huge slowdown from the quarter before, even bigger so down from the year previously. But there's a lot of opportunity and has been opportunity that Alphabet is capitalizing on, given what's going on in the whole ad tech,

ad spending environment. A hundred percent. Again, a story of a could have been. I play this video game with my kid called Gang Beast, where you're just like a doofy, floppy creature and you try to grab each other and throw each other off of stuff and like sharks. It's just absurd. And he is better than me because he is a teenage boy.

And I'm always, every time I'm like, a draw is as good as a win. And he's like, no, it's not. And I'm like, yes, it is. Google, like the alphabet earnings, much like the Microsoft earnings, are a story of how a draw is as good as a win. They did just fine. There was a tweet, I think actually, that summed it up really well. Fin twit account, Wasteland Capital, said the earnings were meh.

Not great. Explosion in employees, but all the businesses, except search and cloud, are now X growth. I think that actually the interesting thing to me is this TikTok story. YouTube is seeing the full TikTok impact. Most shocking IMO is that Play Store, YouTube subs and hardware have all stopped growing. But we saw this YouTube, this TikTok story play out with Snap 2, where people were like, wait, this isn't the ad market talking.

This is TikTok. Yeah. And I think we're trying to figure out now, right? Meta reports tonight, is it going to be more of a Snap? or is it going to be more of an alphabet? And I think that that YouTube revenue growth does not bode well because as you said, it's facing that competition. Search isn't facing competition from TikTok.

Search remains very strong, but TikTok does. I would also argue, though, that this is also Apple privacy at play here. Because YouTube has a bit more of that effect. We know the effect on meta. It's huge. So again, all signs don't bode well, but is it going to be another example of meh is okay? for meta, for Amazon, for Apple.

And I mean, the fundamentals, though. We talked about this at the start of the show this morning. Be careful because meh is okay for now. It's seeing jumps in the stocks. But later on in the air, there's certainly more room to fall. And I would note as well that Alphabet in the earnings call, they were asked time and time again by analysts, what does cloud demand look like?

And they wouldn't really say, they said the macro is uncertain, but they don't issue projections or guidance. But they avoided that question of cloud demand. And that's, you know, big offset. Yeah. And also an interesting set of numbers here. Cloud revenue was up 35% year over year, 6.2 billion overall in Q2,

but it also lost 858 million in the quarter. That was a 45% larger loss year over year. What do we attribute? Is that like an energy cost loss? Like, what does that mean? That, put simply, is Google being by far the number three player. I mean, they are so far behind Amazon and Microsoft Cloud. They have to spend money.

They have to cut deals that are more beneficial to the customer, i.e. cost them more money, and able to really gain a foothold in this space. So they have to spend more, especially now. We talked about Microsoft bundling. I mean, there's things in levers that Microsoft can pull that perhaps Google cannot because they don't have that same enterprise presence. But you know what? What are they sitting on, Molly, in terms of cash?

Yeah. Well, over a $1 billion. Ripping. Market cap is still just under a trillion and a half. They can definitely, like, subsidize some drivers, right? Every time I talked to Ruth Porra at the CFO every quarter, and I was asked her, you know, losses in cloud, when does that focus turn on the path to profitability? And she always says the same thing. This quarter more important than ever because of the different market backdrop.

But essentially, she says, you know, there's no way. we're going to scale back in cloud. This is a long-term investment, and the whole pie is going to be growing. So, no surprise there. But again, Google can do so. Some of the smaller cloud companies, I'm thinking like Qualtrix and Snowflake,

they are suffering more in the current environment. And they may not have as much cash for. Right? I mean, I'm even thinking of like Oracle, which has been trying, which has been pushing so hard to get into the cloud. And it's sort of like at this point, is anybody going to take a risk?

Well, speaking of Oracle, at least I got TikTok now. Right? They're going to be hosting. Bravo. Yeah, they're going to be hosting TikTok. Yeah, exactly. It could be an important customer.

Yep. So there you go. That's a big boost. There you go, Oracle. You're coming for Google. I still, I will never not have questions about Alphabet's focus. I know that Ruth Porat tells you all the time that cloud is a long-term play and it's a long-term focus. But I look at what Alphabet has done over the years.

And it's like, I would never be an early adopter of an alphabet product, whether that product was hardware or putting my business in the cloud. because they just don't, they don't stick with it. Well, it raises the question. I mean, they don't really need to stick with anything else because they have, arguably one of the best business models in the entire world, which is search, which is why it still makes up some 80% of revenue, which is why I was able to grow YouTube. In terms of their acquisitions, though, that's a little interesting.

I mean, they've made some very, very good choices. It's amazing to look at how much they picked up YouTube for and the revenue that it's pulling in now, even though that has slowed. So I don't, but cloud, I'm willing to, willing to bet it's there for the long term. The money is going to be, I think what they've probably figured out is that unlike hardware, Cloud has the potential to be the money printing machine that the ad business currently is. I'm not betting on hardware either for, way mode, maybe. That's true.

Well, and Nest. I mean, there's a whole kind of universe. It's just so interesting to think what all of those companies would be on their own. Yeah. Still, you know. Let's talk Shopify while we are doing. in Super Bowl here. Shopify a little less meh and a little more yikes. Shopify stock was down 14% primarily because they're reporting earnings this morning, possibly as we are talking, but they

laid off about 1,000 employees yesterday, 10% of workforce. And that stock is down, let's see, 13% over the past five days, down about 75% year to date. You remember at the beginning of the pandemic, this was like such the interesting story. Shopping. Shopify is common for Amazon. They're going to roll up all those small businesses who are unhappy with Amazon. Oh, it turns out Shopify already reported earnings today. Stock is up as much as 8% on earnings. So were these layoffs, which seemed bad at first, actually a sign of like discipline?

I mean, I think that it was down so much yesterday, not necessarily on the layoffs. Investors, unfortunately, like to see layoffs because it means cost cutting. But that note from Dubai is Luke Gay, the same. CEO was remarkable how he posted that chart of e-commerce growth. It goes like this, Molly, if you can't see me because you're listening to the podcast. It goes straight up and then down significantly reversion to the mean, which is one of the biggest themes in the market right now, all these companies that saw that huge pandemic boost reverting to the mean. And he just says straight up, he got it wrong. And it goes back to our discussion as well, Molly, about the mega cap.

versus the smaller players. I mean, the market change before Shopify, excuse me, was able to turn into an Amazon. So it's spent, it's trying to shift into or continue to be a fulfillment company which requires so much capital expenditures and the market turned on them. So they're going to have a really hard time. And I would also, I have to mention Canadian company. I wrote an article at the beginning of the pandemic talking about.

Remember, just Canadian. Exactly. How it took the crown for the largest Canadian company by market cap and how that was actually, could be a curse. Remember Blackberry? Blackberry. Yeah. Yes. I certainly do. Oh, that's terrible. It is really, that's such an interesting observation that what they did is go hard on those on those COVID trends, basically, the e-commerce trends that were driven so heavily by the pandemic. And I also have to think that in, investors would have said it was a mistake not to do that, but they ran out a runway. Like literally, they were trying to, you know, get a big plane into the sky and ran out of road. Yeah. I mean, lesson also never listened to investors. You need a CEO like Tobias, OK?

I don't think that's what he was doing. I think he's building for the long term. And you know what, though? Maybe that does position him well going forward because e-commerce, like cloud, is another one of these secular shifts. I mean, it may not be going straight up as the chart was initially. officially showing, but the pie is going to be increasing. And Amazon, of course, is certainly well positioned for that, but maybe Shopify will continue to be once we get out of this, once consumers do

come back and the slowdown, the economic slowdown turns around eventually. Yeah. I mean, when you look at that line, the regression to the mean is still a mean that's headed in the right direction. Ecommerce is not going away. It's not going to disappear. That shark fin is going to haunt Toby Lukey's dreams like Jaws for a while. It is Shark Week. I don't know if you can tell. I've totally been watching it nonstop. I love Shark Week.

But right? Like, look, it's total. But it still is a good line. It still seems like a good business to be in. And yes, we should definitely acknowledge it is not often that you see a CEO so directly and specifically take such overwhelming responsibility for a billion. By the way, if you're an investor in Shopify and you like to buy Slutke, and you think that he has a good long-term vision, guess what?

he's going to be there. Do you remember, Molly, when they did the stock split? That just went through, I think, a few weeks or a few months ago. But there was also a provision in there that gave him, I think, called Founders Share. So he's fully in control of this company. He has the power for better or for worse. He's like a mini Zuckerberg. Yep. And he did this like right at the exact right moment. Yeah. I mean, it was literally like a day before the downturn. But activist investors, they're looking at companies. They've taken name of PayPal. Elliot management, if you're going to do that with a Shopify, you can't get Tobias out now. Yeah, he is locked in. Super voting shares galore.

Listen, lots of founders are Lucy Goosey with their personal numbers. They put them in company documents. They use them for sales calls, all this stuff. And to make matters even more messy, when you do that, you don't know who's calling. Is it a sales prospect? Is it somebody you're trying to hire? Or is it somebody from your kid's school? I don't know. It could be anybody. It could be an old flame. You don't want to get random calls during your summer barbecue. That's where Open Phone comes in.

They let you create business phone numbers. You just go to their website, openphone.com slash Twist. You can create a phone number and account in under a minute. I kid you not. And you give everybody on your team a phone number. Then they download an app and you're done. It really is that simple. You can also do Round Robin.

So we have a general sales call number and it goes from one person to the next to the next. Or you can have everybody's phone ring at the same time. First person to pick it up gets the call. That's the way to do it for customer service. This isn't like the old days. we have to buy a bunch of hardware. No, this is all done in software. And that's why it's so affordable. Open phone has a starting price of just $10 a month. I kid you not. But Twist listeners can get 20% off any plan for the first six months by signing up at openphone.com slash twist.

If you have an existing number, they'll pour it over for free. O-P-E-H-O-N-P-H-O-N-E.com slash Twist. Openphone.com slash twist. I think we have a couple of minutes still to do Coinbase. Yes. which is just never, never not interesting day by day. Did you see that Kathy Woods, Ark Fund sold a few shares? Still owns a large percentage, but it's been brutal. It's been brutal for her. It's been even more brutal for Coinbase, right?

What is it, 80% down from its peak or year to date, I can't remember. There's been so much bad news, but the news yesterday of that SEC investigation and how they may have been letting their users trade secure. There's just so many different sides of this, Molly. They started very cautious, you know, saying we're only going to have a certain amount of tokens, the ones that are tried and true. And then they started to lose to the competition. So they added a ton more.

And that has gotten them in trouble. Yeah. And if you have the SEC saying, hey, it looks like maybe like nine of the 25 tokens that you're trading on your platform are securities. You have opened the door, as we said, I think, when we briefly talked about this on Monday, like, you've opened the door to just a world of lawsuits because you've effectively thrown out the possibility that everybody has been trading in unregistered securities and that the entire business model, the entire concept. And look, I mean, there is definitely the, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck and it looks like a damn security, it's probably a security. There was always that risk. Howie tests. for those nerds out there. Yep, exactly. But now it looks even more obvious. And the SEC, after taking, frankly, abominably long time to offer the kind of clarity that would keep people

out of long-running lawsuits when they probably legitimately thought they weren't doing anything wrong, does seem to be, I mean, that was a tidal wave, right? That was an underwater earthquake tsunami situation. I mean, the defiance from Coinbase has just been incredible. They're just like, no, we don't have any securities on our platform. We reject your interpretation, the Howie Test that is from the 1930s. You know what this reminds me of this moment, only this moment, Molly, I wish Jason was here. It reminds me of Uber. Move fast.

Who cares what the regulator say? Because we're going to provide a service that consumers love. But here's the thing. The consumers love crypto right now. There's a lot of folks that have been burned that may not be behind Coinbase at this moment, but it feels like this sort of combative with the regulators. We're going to do what we want. They're also spending a ton of money on lobbying.

You know what? It's actually really interesting because it suggests that Coinbase is on a trajectory that's similar to the Microsoft story we just told and even the Google eventually becoming alphabet story that we just told, which is like you move fast, you break a lot of things, you get in some trouble, you get regulatory scrutiny, you bring in like a nice grownup to stabilize things and play by the rules. And that is also the Uber story. And so it does, you know, make me think that Coinbase like isn't going to go away, but we'll start to have to be a like rules based playground and me and time will tell whether Brian Armstrong is the

guided to make that shift. That's a great point. Will they get? get the opportunity, though. I mean, this is serious. That's why you saw a shares down, what, 15% yesterday? Even Kathy Wood sold shares, my initial point. I mean, that's bad. You know, you might expect her to pick up some shares when you're down 15% but to sell.

And it raises the question, will Coinbase even have that chance? Depending on how swiftly the SEC moves, which I don't have a lot of faith in. Coinbase may not even be able to operate here in the U.S. And that would just be, I mean, we're not talking about it. pivot here. We're talking about an existential threat. Yeah, that is very true. And there's, I mean, so much so that there was an interesting tweet yesterday, I should clarify, I said nine of the tokens that were front run by the insider traders at Coinbase of about 30 overall are the ones that they said might be securities. Overall, Coinbase lists about 150 tokens.

But there was an interesting tweet yesterday pointing out that if the SEC concludes that tokens listed by Coinbase are securities, then a bunch of business as usual by name brand BC firms could now be considered securities fraud. And all of the insider trading pump and dump schemes and Ponzi's will become illegal overnight. This could be overstating things, but it sounds like you're saying also maybe not. Yeah, it does raise so many questions. I think there's just so much scrutiny, so much fire now in this space. I mean, did you see this was just this morning, Molly? Tether came out and said that they don't own any Chinese commercial paper. This has been something that we've been hitting them for for so long.

I did a big live stream with two of their executives about a year ago. And I asked them specifically, do you hold any Chinese paper? They were unwilling to say no. In a way, if you're a crypto company and you have made it this far and you're still solvent, you better get your books in order quickly. So in a way, Tether should thank us, Jason, too, for this amount of scrutiny that we put on them. the tough questions we ask them because it's possible they held Chinese paper. I mean, why not when I was asking them about it?

Why wouldn't they just say no? And they've cleaned up their balance sheet now at a $70 billion market cap, which is easier to do and earn a return than it is at a $10 or $20 billion market cap. So the ones that remain may be better quality. The question is, then the question for Coinbase. Will you have time? Will the market give you time to do so to clean up? Very true.

who will remain. Well, no matter what, who stays and who goes, you're still coming back. Dear Dr. Rosa, thanks. Thanks for joining us for Super Bowl week. I will continue my Super Bowl week.

I know. Seriously, get some rest. We still got Amazon, meta, Apple. All this week, right? Yep. Oh, my God. Yeah, we might have to, we're either going to have to get a drink

or do a show again on Friday. And sorry, now I'm going to use your platform as a pitch. Friday. Do it. wondering how the whole week shaped up. We're going to do a special. I'm going to do a special on CNBC at 3 p.m. Pacific time, 6 p.m. Eastern time just to go through all of the earnings.

Molly, maybe you got to come on. What do you think? I got time. All right. Let's do it. Okay. Cool. All right.

We'll talk after. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Deirdre. Thanks, Deirdre. Bye. All right, everybody. Thanks so much to Deirdre for coming on. What a blast, as always. And we're just going to keep the fun rolling because ladies are doing it.

Bring it back. Producer Rachel. Hello. Hello. Okay, this is just shameless. We're just straight up going to be like, what do the Zs think about the internet right now? And the newspeg for this is that Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian,

arguably at this point the grandmothers of social media, out, told Instagram to stop trying to be TikTok. And it kind of turns out that maybe everyone agrees with them. The two have a combined 686 million followers and they both shared the same meme on their Instagram stories saying, make Instagram Instagram again. Stop trying to be TikTok. I just want to see cute photos of my friends.

Sincerely, everyone. Rachel, is this a thing? Can you confirm? Definitely is a thing. And this was really interesting because Kylie Jenner has actually made pretty big waves in terms of social media before, not just in terms of what she's posting. But back in 2018, she actually tweeted that she didn't use Snapchat anymore.

and like right after the stock fell like a crazy amount. It felt like 8%. And business insider thinks that they actually lost like $1 billion in market value during that. So although Instagram or the parent company more so meta didn't drop that much, a bunch of people responded and basically said they agreed with her. And a bunch of them were other famous people. So interesting to see what's going to happen. Yeah.

I mean, this is one of those stories where it's like, you think one notie, I'm looking at you, you think you don't care about what Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian are doing, but actually, like, markets really do care. This is a power play. It has worked in the past. As you said, meta went down, you know, about 4.5%. But this is certainly a conversation that's not going away. People are responding, including, of course, Instagram head Adam Messary. He released a video saying he was hearing people's concerns about the app shifting more to video. He said, quote, we're going to continue to support photos. It's part of our heritage.

But he also went on to say that he does, quote, believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time. Now, I do sort of feel like if TikTok is taking all of this share from Instagram, is Adam Messary actually wrong? I actually saw something before we went on and it's not included any of the notes that we wrote up for today. But in the beginning, I was like, you know what? This guy's absolutely crazy. He's not listening to anybody. We have a ton of screenshots that we can share with you guys about different celebrities, journalists,

people from all over the internet basically commented on the video being like, dude, you're not listening to anything your users have to say. But on the other hand, somebody made a really good point and said that new features basically take a lot longer to adopt. So though people are pretty upset about it now, like who knows later down the line,

this might be a good move for them. But for right now, people are definitely not happy. my favorite celebrity backlash had to be Chrissy Teagans, who just responded right, right, underneath his video. We don't want to make videos at him, L.O.L. And that got like 4,000 likes, which I thought was really, really funny. And they had this back and forth that will pull up for those of you who are watching the video on YouTube.com slash this weekend or on Spotify. He said, if you don't want to make videos, it's better not to. What I want is an Instagram that is about photos for people who, I assume this is missing, for people who prefer photos.

and is about video for those who prefer that format. And she said, I guess for me, it's not just that I suck at making videos. It's that I don't see my actual friends posts and they don't see mine. And I see the same people over and over and over. And then the feed goes, you're all caught up. Yep. And Miseri's response, and this was interesting, is to respond and say, friends post a lot more to stories and send a lot more DMs than they post to feed.

If you want to make sure you never miss a feed post from a friend, then add them to your favorites, and they'll show up at the top. I definitely agree with her. I don't know if you've used, like, even Facebook, to be honest with you, I've basically stopped using Facebook completely after graduating college. The only reason I still used it in college was to find a roommate and to join, like, different groups for clubs. But I don't even know if people use that anymore.

But I recently went back on to Facebook because we just took some family photos, and that's where my mom posts them. And I couldn't get through anything without seeing, like, granted, they were like cute videos of animals, but I was like, this is not what the app is intended for. Instagram, I can't scroll without seeing like two ads on a screen even sometimes, which I find just is super annoying. There's actually a really funny video.

I don't know if we're allowed to have it on because there's two F bombs, but at the bottom of our notes, Victoria Paris, who I consider to be like are now new. She's definitely pretty controversial, but she is an influencer over on TikTok and she's probably one of the hottest influencers right now. So just how we mentioned, like, Kim Kardashian is like more of like the grandma of social media. I see like this new wave coming up with Emma Chamberlain, Victoria Paris, who started on YouTube and TikTok. And basically she said in the video like, oh, if you have any scandalous photos to post, you could post any video or photo you wanted because no one's going to see it anyway because the algorithm sucks. And I thought that was really funny.

So she's like, yeah, I have any scandalous photos? Like throw them up. Well, and I want, yes. So this is where I wonder. Adam Messery might be right, but he might be right for the wrong reason. Like he points out that most people are not using posts, right? They're using stories and DMs. I think that is 100% true.

Like, I'm doing that and I see my kid doing that. And he and all his friends, you know, they're 15. They're like, they never post anything that they keep up there. I have this whole like old lady archive of photos that I posted on Instagram. But I would, but when I look at it now, it's like months long gaps. Because mostly I just use stories. And I think mostly they're using it for communication. So that raises two questions.

One, is Instagram right? Like, are they saying people are changing the way they use Instagram and they don't care that much about what they're scrolling through? Or did people change the way they use Instagram? Because scrolling through it started to suck because you started to see so many ads and, you know, you would get this like stuff dropped in there that wasn't yours. Like, it seems like a chicken and egg question. I think it's kind of twofold because like, I think at least my generation wants more and more

and more instant gratification. You want to see what your friends are doing right now at this very moment. So having that archive doesn't like serve that purpose as well. That being said, even when I do go to stories, which fulfills that like little dopamine hit of wanting to know what people are doing all the time, I can't scroll through my stories even without seeing my big thing is Amazon, Amazon ads. And I get Amazon ads for anything under the sun. Like sometimes they're not even things that I'm necessarily that into, which is something that I think is really annoying. So even if they are shifting to video, my big thing is I'm just over having being, I feel like I'm a billboard. Like my, like this is a commodity situation. And that's something that is really frustrating.

And you're starting to see like even more social apps pop up because they know people are frustrated about this. Like again, with the twofold situation, everybody wants like right now, what are people doing in this exact moment? And how can we see what people are doing in this exact moment without ads. Yeah, it is. I mean, I really actually do think that's probably what really happened with Instagram is that like it just started shoving ads. And the ads just like, sure, sometimes they're scarily accurate and I buy stuff on them.

But they don't, it's not a fun experience, right? And it also is just, it's sort of like it's combined with all the things that were already wrong. And I agree with you. I went to Facebook the other day just out of curiosity. And I was like, what is happening? It, I don't. It's not even, it wasn't even stuff I would want to.

look at ever. And then I was like, who the hell are these people? Like, just, it's baffling. So the question really is twofold. One, what does this mean for meta the business, right? Because this morning, Taylor Lorenz wrote a piece in Washington Post that reported, among other things, that meta is forming an advisory board, which they love to do. They love an advisory board with entertainment executives, managers, and publicists, according to an inside source. Apparently, this has been in the works for more than a year, but then this outreach to prospective members started this week. The board will not advise on specific product changes, but will be able to focus on how meta can work more with the entertainment industry. So maybe this is peacemaking with the Kardashian family, or maybe it's a way

to sort of say, like, how can we, I don't know. Do people care about celebrities anymore even? It's kind of one of those things, though, where it's an advisory board is just that. It's like an advisory board. She does like make a note in the article as well, that's the, these people aren't actually, like, creating the rules. They're not, you know, they're not in this voting process. I'm pretty sure. It's just an advisory board. And they can advise META do as much as they want. Like, is META going to do it?

I'm just not confident that they're going to take an advisory board's, you know, thoughts into consideration if they're already not taking in the consideration of, you know, so many prominent people that have already kind of voice their thoughts. And also, this just seems like really taped together. Like, they said they were working on this for over a year and I get things work really slow in big corporations. Like, wow, what a coincidence that, like, you started reaching out to people just this week. Yeah.

And meta has, and actually, a search dog, Arnodi, just made this point. And this is 100% true. I mean, I remember doing a story five years ago about, like, why does Instagram not have a better creator program? It has not ever worked directly with creators to sort of build out that part of the platform and the extent to which people have managed to use Instagram to become. creators, it's like, it was all bootstrapped, right? It was people making merch deals on their own. It didn't have a rev share. Like, they didn't build that love with creators. And there's a part of them that

just does not, like, I don't think fundamentally meta understands what makes people want to watch specific creators. It's also like I feel, so I was in the TikTok creator program, separate from Twist. You only need to have like 10,000 followers on TikTok to get it. And I joined it a while ago. and you don't make a ton of money off of it granted, but the fact that TikTok had implemented basically since my beginning of use, a creator-friendly platform, rather than you kind of using the platform

and finding brands to partner with, which is how it started off with Instagram, I think speaks volumes and think about at least the demographic that I see if you're watching, like, lifestyle videos or girls posting, like, what am I doing in a day? A lot of times, there are these sponsored products, and they're going to create higher quality videos

because there's money behind them. And if there's money behind using TikTok or even the potential to hit that 10,000 followers to unlock that feature to make money, like, of course they're going to freaking, you know, blow up. I just don't see Instagram, even in terms of like making money. I don't see it. I don't know. I don't know. Well, now whenever I load Instagram, I get this like weird message.

I think it's on my pro stagram, the more public facing one that's like, your reels could be making you $1,200. Yeah. And it's just so ham-handed. Like, I'm like, okay, well, first of all, I don't even know what how would I do, right? There's no like, and here's how you could do that. Like, and also it's just, you know what it is? It's EQ.

Meta has no EQ. No emotional intelligence whatsoever. Figures. Figures. Like they're just like, robot, copy the thing, make money on reels. I'm like, no, thank you. Could I make money on reels by just copying over my TikToks, which is what everybody else does on reals?

all they ever are. Which is super annoying because there's that. I actually also heard that if you do that now, those reels aren't getting pushed out as much because there is a watermark that kind of travels throughout the page if you download a TikTok. And Instagram Reels apparently has not been boosting those as much. But really interested to see what's going to happen with Instagram within the next few months. I'm not, I then again, like I see a bunch of other apps a few that like we've even tested out and are testing out, one of which being Be Real, which I love, that I just don't see them necessarily being able to take that spot because Instagram is such a legacy app. Right. So I'm glad you said that because that is my second question is like, okay,

there's TikTok clearly. And then obviously there's a lot of controversy about TikTok and its origins and whatever. But then there is this class of would-be disruptors. And people have come for the king before. And it is really hard not to miss because network effects are massive. So I guess the question is like if you look at, you know, paparazzi, which doesn't let users tag pictures of themselves, Dispo, which makes users wait for the photos to develop lock it, which says you can only have 20 friends. And then the one that we're all weirdly obsessed with, which is be real, except seriously, I am not. I'm going to, I'm going to delete it again unless they stop. Like, why do I look like a goblin? It's because it's like, every photo.

I think it's like the wide angle effect, but I love, Prush and me and you, I was Landon from inside. It's basically like a team. It's a team app for me at this point. Yeah. I mean, it is really fun except for the goblin stretch. Like, dude, I know it's a front-facing photo, but I take a lot of selfies that don't make me look like Barbara Stryzan. Yeah. From Yenta.

Yenthal or whatever. Like not even pretty Barbara. My favorite is my friends are starting to flip the cameras. So the selfie is somebody else and then they flip the camera and the back camera makes it look like they have like, a really long arm to take the photo, which I really like. But I think BeRail, besides the fact that the app, you know, is still working through kinks, it's, I find it should be fairly buggy. You know, you try to press, press on the notification when you say it's time to be real.

Press that notification doesn't necessarily, you know, take you straight to the app or sometimes let you take a photo. But I feel like that's expected with that many people going to the same app at the same time. I can't imagine what that server is looking like, probably like fry an egg on it. But it's doing what people want. It's going back to basics. There aren't any filters. There are no ads.

Obviously, that means like it's probably not making any money, but it's what users want right now. And that's why it's going viral, you know, on TikTok, on Twitter, we even see memes of it. Yep. Well, and the Washington Post pointed out.

And so did this guy in our Noddy gang right now, Jason Kalakanis, points out. And I think this is probably, this is what the post said. and it is probably true. Instagram should ignore the Kardashians. The TikTok format has won. It's a hundred times more addicting than static images.

And so the question will become, did Instagram break its own product, or did TikTok come and disrupt and they're copying a format that people will eventually like, which is basically what has happened in the past. And I am with you, like I have a hard time thinking any of these new apps will ever get to the scale of Instagram and Facebook,

but it doesn't. I mean that, you know, TikTok won't win. And, oh, Jason, you miss us. Well, and Jason's right, you know, because it doesn't, I don't know if you've ever tracked how much time you've spent on your apps, but TikTok has always been like that dominator for me. It's so easy to doomscroll. It's like, I think it's, it goes like Slack for me is probably the second one. Because Slack I always have open on my screen, like kind of like a third, third screen during

the workday. And then TikTok. And it's like, what the heck are you doing? doing on it. But, you know, I don't know. Interested to see where it's going to happen. Like I said, it doesn't make money. Would I personally invest in it? Probably not. I don't really understand like the problem. Social platforms and CPG companies like actually solved. But is B-Rail super duper fun? Yes, I definitely think so. I mean, I have said it a million times and I will say it again.

I message could be the social network of the future. Like turn on some fun photo sharing, turn on a feed, be cross-platform. everybody else is done so. You know what? Those, I think it's called Pigeon is like the games that you can do like pool. If a pigeon version of Be Real came and you can do it with your group chat, like send it in. I have a group chat of my friends from high school. It's like 20 people.

Send in that as like a pigeon game. Have it be like, you know, ongoing for the next. Like set a duration would be even cooler. Like make the game go for two months or, you know, whatever it is up till like, I have a friend getting married soon. So maybe do it like up until her wedding. like Be Real up until her wedding in that group chat like that'd be so fun. I mean, that would be like casual games is where Be Real should go next because it's just a blast.

All right. Amazing. This has been an absolutely awesome show chopping it up. It was so fun that even J-Cal couldn't stay away. Miss you, buddy. Miss you, Jason. You should vacation. Right.

Chill out. All right. Thanks, Molly. J-Cal Nowanoti. Thanks, Rachel. Bye. All right. That was a fantastic show.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow we have an incredible interview. Jason and I interviewed anchor, founder, and former Spotify exec, Mike McNano. It is a great conversation about like our old school time in the industry, RSS, open platforms, the innovators dilemma, breaking podcast standards, you know, that kind of thing, and much more. And then Friday, don't worry. Jason, we'll be back for some news. It's going to be a great rest of the week. See you tomorrow.