This Week in Startups - New worker classification test proposal, Getir in talks to acquire Gorillas & more | E1583

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

J+M kick off the show by catching up after Molly's speaking gig yesterday (2:31), before breaking down the US Labor Dept proposing new rules for worker classification (16:23). Then, they discuss self-driving food-running robots (49:11) before discussing potential consolidation in the instant-delivery space! (58:39) (0:00) J+M tee up today's topics! (2:31) Molly's keynote, Jason teaching the next Founder University, data defaults, and liability (14:57) LinkedIn Marketing -  Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at https://linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups (16:23) US Labor Dept proposes new test for employee vs. independent contractor classification, understanding the history of worker classification (26:17) Policygenius - Go to https://policygenius.com to get a free life insurance quote (27:39) Creating better benchmarks for employees (35:35) Revelo - Get 20% off the first 3 months by mentioning TWIST at https://revelo.io/twist (37:02) Uber's proactive attempt at a "third way" solution between independent contractors and employees (49:11) Startup of the Day: Bear Robotics is creating self-driving food-running robots for restaurants (58:39) Potential consolidation in the instant-delivery market: Getir is in advanced talks to acquire Gorillas FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Hey, everybody. It is Tuesday. It is, we got some Tuesday energy today. Who, spicy Tuesday. Spicy Tuesday. What are we talking about today? Is anything on the day? We have a long talk about the labor department's new proposed test for gig economy workers. It sounds so you think that like labor policy is not that interesting, but it turns out it relates to startups in a big way, right? 100%. 100% does. All of these startup labor laws are critically important, whether you're hiring a freelance designer or your company is based on gig workers. And it's a big issue for America.

And we chop it up for longer than I expected to get a little bit of spice in there. I'll be honest, medium spice. Just if you want to understand what we're saying, listen to all the words, everybody. I'm just going to tell you that up front. Listen to all the words. And then we talk. And then we will talk about robots. Eventually, we will get to robots.

We're going to talk about bear robotics, a startup building self-driving food, running robots. we're going to talk about when robots can work and when they try too hard. Yes. And finally, we'll do some M&A talk. It looks like the instant delivery space, which Molly has been a bit skeptical about, and I don't disagree with her.

There's some consolidation coming. Gidear is looking to acquire guerrillas. So consolidation is what we see in a down market. It's healthy. It's painful. And it's upon us. And should you want to understand JCal's worldview? Seriously. Yes. It comes from his

his life. And we just get a great 1980s Brooklyn story from Jason. It's just another peak behind the credit. Just another layer of the onion. Stay tuned for that. It's going to be great. It's paradoxically about gig workers. Just a different type. Yeah. Stick with us. This Week in Startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing. To redeem a free

$100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups. Policy Genius. You could save 50% or more on life insurance. by comparing quotes with PolicyGenius. Options start at just $17 per month for $500,000 of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. And Revello.

Looking to affordably scale your product development with global tech talent in U.S. time zones, hire vetted remote developers in Latin America with Revello. Get 20% off for the first three months at Revello. dot com slash twist. All right, everybody, it's Tuesday. Molly is back. How's this being gig, Molly? I'm back.

It was amazing. I get a little nervous. Keynotes. I do a lot of panels, do a lot of moderating. I don't do a ton of keynote, so I was a little like, so I really prepared. And I just got some feedback that the initial response

from the audience is that I was the best keynote speaker they've ever had. Oh, wow. That's fantastic, right? I'm like on Cloud 9 right now. Keynote achievement unlocked. I am going to write up a keynote. You know, I'm going to be teaching Foundry University, by the way. Yes.

So I have this incredible. Do you guys all know this, by the way? J-Cal is going to be teaching it himself. Yeah. I decided, you know, sometimes like... Proff J. Prof J. Proff J.

If you will. Anyway, I just realized we are finding incredible companies in Founder University. We've invested in 18 of them or something to that effect. And I like to go earlier. And so the inception point where people decide, I have an idea, has not been the purview of venture capital or funds. It's too much work. Let's be honest. And too much work, when I hear too much work, you know what I think?

Let's go. All right. Great. Totally. It's just my idea. Sounds like opportunity to me. Well, exactly. It's like, you know, if you look at Y Combinator and TechStars and Launch Accelerator, most funds will dabble in an accelerator.

fact, Sequoia is doing one right now. It's not exactly accelerate. It's a three-week program where they kind of teach their growth philosophy, so it's not even like 16 weeks or 12 weeks like some of the other ones out there. But every firm at some point says, oh, we should do that. And Sequoias is called Arc, by the way. It's amazing. I highly recommend it. I think it's like sort of

a PhD program, maybe. If we're graduate school and then there's other places that are undergrad, just kind of like, you know, PhD program or professional development kind of But anyway, putting that aside, Molly, a fund starts an accelerator. And then you know what the fund managers realize? Oh, my Lord, this is work. Yep.

Yeah. When you have one company that has 100 customers and 12 employees and their accounting is nice and tight, their serial entrepreneurs, you know what that is for an investor? Easy. Right. That's easy. Yeah, rubber stamp? Yeah, you kind of go to the board meeting.

They present everything nice and tight. It's a very fully baked, refined team. It's like, you know, somebody who's been a restaurant tour for 20 years, they come to you with their latest fast casual concept. I'm going to make a burger joint. Here's what it's going to be. And I'm bringing my chef from, you know, this Michelin Star restaurant to do the menu. And then we're going to train people and we'll have some supervisors from our other Michelin Star places come by every weekend and train the stuff. Okay, easy, easy, lemon, squeasy.

No work on the VC's part. especially if you're investing in that founder for the second or third time. Wonderful. Now, you find somebody who's like, I want to start a food truck. And I did a pop-up. And I couldn't get the, people paid 50 bucks to come to my pop-up. And I couldn't even keep up with the number of people came. I didn't collect, you know, I didn't collect the money in advance.

People stiffed me. People walked out. Service was a disaster. It's kind of like the bear. You see the TV show The Bear yet? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember in The Bear, he's dealing with like a bunch of raw talent. who nobody's ever believed in.

That's kind of my jam. I kind of like that energy. I kind of like it. Yeah. And so we're now like sort of embracing that with Founder University. It starts November 14th. It's 500 bucks to go to this. If you come to all 12 weeks, we give you back the 500.

Which, by the way, it's costed me thousands of dollars. I just found out that we have to pick up the refund fees. We, oh, yeah. So I'm actually losing money on that. But anyway. But no, we're not. Not in the long term because we're doing the work. Precisely. It's an investment.

But anyway, this is, somebody just wrote a wonderful review and did a YouTube video on this. So Founding University is going to be the big investment for me personally over the next couple of months. Because I just want to meet founders earlier. Did you say you're also going to turn it into a keynote? It's a TED Talk. Thank you. You're welcome. I created this curriculum with our curriculum designer, Charlie, who's amazing.

But I'm going to kind of 2.0 it as we go there. And so I'm going to do the curriculum, but then I decided it could be like a freestyle after. Because when I went to Stanford on Friday, an unpaid speaking gig, I took nine pitches and it was an hour and a half. But then I took an hour and a half of questions and then had a dialogue with the audience. And I was like, wow, this is great. And of the 150 people who packed into a 75 seat room, a hundred of them came for burgers and beers afterwards. And then we talked for another two or three hours. It was like six hours.

I came out of 1130 at night. I was so pumped. Couldn't sleep until 2 o'clock. had a million ideas. So that's what I'm going to do with this founder university. I want to find a classroom where I can actually go teach it in person and let some people come in person too. Amazing. Yeah. So anyway, it's got my creative juices for I'm very excited about it. I wish you would, if you're listening to this, apply. Here's what you need. A work ethic, an open mind and maybe or maybe not an idea. But you got to come to all 12 weeks. If you miss a week, we keep your 500 bucks.

I mean, if it's a death in the family, we'll make an exception or something like that. It's a kids rehearsal. You know, obviously I get it. But anyway, I'm very excited to do it. based on yesterday's speaking gig, I would like to say, if you are considering coming to Founder University, I have a request for startup, which is data lineage. So the talk I gave yesterday was about the data economy, the kind of precarious state of the data economy. There's a lot more regulation. We now know that targeting and retargeting technology and too much information leads directly to disinformation, right? Like, help. to propagate that. So there's a lot of risk now in the way that people have always done things with

respect to data collection. So after, which is like you said, the best time is always like the Q&A and then after when everybody's like telling you the real scoop about what they're dealing with, a lot of these cybersecurity executives are dealing with this question of data lineage. Like how do you even do an audit? That technology doesn't really exist yet. And I'm like, this is like the most obvious. What's another word for lineage? to I understand or maybe an example. Right.

It would be kind of like if you were lawyers going to trial and you have to create a chain of custody of evidence. Like you're basically just tracing it. So you'd be in the case of a data audit, it would be like, okay,

how much data is here? What is it? When did we collect it? Where did we put it? How is it all classified? It's literally just a freaking card catalog system for the data that an enterprise has.

Right. Which right now, a lot of times, just like a big pile of unstructured data because storage is really, their storage is really cheap. Sounds like it could be a use case for blockchain, but it doesn't have to be provenance. Probably don't need to put it on it.

It's a database for data. Yeah. I mean, there are databases that are much faster and secure and changeable. Like, you know, blockchain is for immutable when the public needs to see it. Everybody needs to have access to it. It's kind of a different use case. And from a privacy perspective, that's actually not good, because a lot of times if you're doing this data audit,

what you want to find out is what you can delete. Because having all this data around forever is just a privacy violation waiting to happen. I mean, a breach that will cost you mind. This is the key thing that I think we have to get to as a society. The French, I remember reading this, you know, the wonderful group of people, very unique in their outlook in life.

They were like, eh, why do you need to have phone records for more than a year? We're like, well, sir, we need to have your phone records for the past 10 years. So if you dispute the bill, you know, we can pull up the phone number or whatever. And they say, why would I dispute the bill? It's three years old.

You don't need to dispute this three years old. That's all. Life is moving forward. It's extreme. We're not going upstream to see the bill from 2019. What's the point? So anyway, they don't, I've got to work on that. They don't work on.

They don't keep, they don't allow the phone companies to keep records past a certain point. And they don't need to. We should just say to Google. We should say any search that's over a hundred, days old, the default should be gone. Yep. Any profile data over a year old, default should be gone. And I should have to opt in. Would you like to keep your data? We currently keep your search history for

100 days. We currently keep this for a year. Would you like to turn them off? Exactly. Those kind of common sense defaults would be a wonderful thing for people do. And some people, you know, are like, why are this, this data becomes a liability. So I think it's a good idea. Like if you were had a way to audit data or just let people know, hey, look, we looked at all your databases. We found phone numbers over here. We found dates of birth over here. We found keywords about health over here.

You could just be like, here are the things that will get you in trouble. Right. Social security numbers. It's a massive. It is a massive opportunity right now because of the way the regulations are changing and all of that. Yeah, this is a huge opportunity. So founders, I'm talking to you. And the name of my talk, ironically, is it's minimum viable data.

Minimum viable data is a great idea. Yeah. I mean, and then, you know, where does the data reside? I think I really like this idea that on my phone, Apple knows my preferences. And this relates to our discussion about algorithms the other week, which we had one and all in and you and I've had that conversation a couple of times here. Just if I, if my profile on my phone would tell me, hey, on a topic basis, here are the topics we see you going to in the Apple news, Apple music, and your apps writ large. So Netflix, this thing. So we know you like Queen's Gambit. We see you use the chess app. We have you pinned as like into chess and poker and the Knicks and the Warriors yada, yada, yada. Would you like to delete any of these? And I could say yes. You know, I don't want people to know I'm into chess as much as I am. It could be another topic, let's say, that maybe, you, you know, I'm kind of fronting here that I'm into chess. Just go with chess. Let's go with chess. But you know, you're into, hmm. Yeah, no, I got you.

Picking up what you're laying down. You're really listening to a lot of Britney Spears and liking a lot of Britney Spears. There we go. You're spending a lot of time on Britney Spears post on Instagram and you're listening to a lot of Britney. I just say, you know what? Britney is like my own personal obsession. So I am going to say, not only delete Brittany from my algorithm, which is private and my preferences on my phone, I want you to permanently never record my Britney activity.

This would be something humans are capable of. of. But we're sitting here going, oh, humans are just not sophisticated enough to do it. It's BS. It's BS. And this is where empowering consumers is always the right thing to do. I think my operating philosophy, when I create my political party, common sense party, whatever I'm going to call it. Oh, dear. Empowering individuals to have agency and choice is going to be a core tenant of this because I think it's something that's been lost a bit. And it kind of leads into our first. It certainly has in the tech industry 100%. Even all of the privacy moves that Apple's making, like, that's lovely, but I don't see Apple giving me the tools that you just described, which is let me edit my own algorithm, if you will.

But they do. They did screw up the retail business by not letting people retarget people. So they do seem to be. Absolutely. I think they're sincere about it. Oh, they're 100%. You know, there's still this outstanding question is like, is what they're doing with my data better, but they're very serious. about it as a business.

And that tells you, Apple knows a little something about business and consumers. That tells you what's going to happen going forward. Like if you have not disrupted your data as usual plan, now's the time. It does seem like Apple is skating to where the puck is going, as Steve Jobs would always say from the Wayne Gretzky quote. Because they see it as an inevitability that consumers will take control of their privacy. So why not start that process early? And they don't make any money from this stuff. So what's the point?

You know, it's the, you know, empowering individuals, I think is a big part of what gig work has done. Let's talk about this controversial issue. Smooth. 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

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 weekend startups

and get the report for free as well as a Hyundai, $100 from Tom. There is reporting out today from the New York Times that the U.S. Labor Department has announced a new proposal that would change the classification test for gig workers.

So you may recall that under the Trump administration, the Labor Department created tests for how to classify gig workers, and that is whether they are contractors or full-time employees. Yeah. And currently, the test is under those Trump-era Labor Department rules, that there are two main factors to be considered when you're determining if a worker is an employer or contractor. One, the degree of control a company has over the worker.

And two, the extent to which a worker can increase their income by taking entrepreneurial initiative, like marketing their services. So this was like pretty broad. It was considered pretty broad, right? It suggested that, for example, gig workers like Uber drivers would likely be considered independent contractors. And, you know, people representing gig workers thought that it was too broad because it allowed companies to classify all kinds of workers as gig workers when they should have been employees. So now Biden's Labor Department approach, which I believe is not yet confirmed, but that they're thinking about is would argue that more factors have to be weighed when you try to figure out a worker classification. And among the additional factors are whether

the work being performed is central to a company's business. So this would 100% reopen the Uber question in terms of drivers, for example. And then what kinds of investments workers make to do their jobs, such as buying their own equipment? Right. This used to be very easy. We had a 20-point test the IRS used to do, and we would just run through this test back in the day if they're freelance or full-time. You can look up 20-point test. It's deprecated now. But the 20-point test, I'll just give you a couple of them. Instructions. Does the worker need to comply with employee instructions on how, where, and when to work? You know, where and when to work, for gig economy workers, we'll expand it beyond Uber, which I'm still shareholder in, but just for

any of that gig work. And if you included freelance writers, where and when they work, nobody cares. Who cares? Who cares? How you were? It depends, right? I mean, it depends on who's hiring. Like, the thing is that this question of contract work expanded to all kinds of things. So people would be hiring contractor engineers. Yeah. Who would they, who they would effectively classify as gig workers, but say you have to come into the office and write code for us every day. Yeah. And so that would break the rule of where and when. So once you put a shift on it and a location, you've broken the number of, one in the 20 factor test. So this is where Microsoft used to put people on contract. And they had a thing where like the duration of it, like three months or six months. And then you would cancel the person was a contractor. And then you had to rehire them and do a process again. So this was all

open to interpretation. Training. Just a work, receive periodic or ongoing training performing services rendered. Well, no, of course not like a, you know, if you're a freelance writer, if you're a hair stylist, a barber, if you are a real estate broker, there are a number of categories like this where people could provide services. Integration and business operations. Does the service is rendered by the worker

a core business activity? This is one of those tests that they're still struggling with. Does the business of success heavily rely on the worker's performance? Well, of course it does. And this is like a very general one. So you could fail this one

but past the other ones and still be considered a freelancer. And you can set hours for work was the big one, right? Is it mandatory for them to work at a certain time? Is full-time work required? And, you know, what we see is when you have a Republican in office, people are very much in favor of freelance and people having agency and being able to choose. When you have old-school Democrats in, like Biden, who are very pro-union, they're kind of living in the 1950s, you know, where they expect. And this is the problem I have with this is they are dictating to people how they work.

and where they work. And you know who I think suffers the most from this? I think women suffer the most from this. This is living. I will tell you my position, you can fight it. I believe that this is incredibly anti-state-at-home parent, which statistically, more often than not, is a female. This is a lot of women who come back to the workplace

do it through freelancing. And that's why when you look at real estate agents, this was a primarily female, at least in California, way to get back into the workforce or if you had kids and you were the stay-at-home parent, so I'm painting with a broad brush here, but the statistics are the statistics, that was a job that many women would take to get back into the career. Freelance writing, another one. And increasingly with gig economy, you're seeing that. I think that people should be able to make their own decision and companies should treat these

employees really well. And if you look at what Uber did, Uber picked a third way to do this. They started giving people a contribution if they worked more than 15 hours a week. This seems perfectly reasonable to me. There needs to be a place between being a pure freelancer, which is your right as an American to be a freelancer or being full-time. And the issue here is benefits. And the other issue for certain people is, can we increase the number of people in a union? Because they get put in office by unions.

There's the end of my rant. Go ahead, Molly. You may have strong feelings otherwise. Um, take down what I got wrong. Or what you disagree with. I'm going to try to go for it. I was so much in there. Go for point by point.

I've been on this issue as a hire of freelancers. You can't hire freelance writers in California anymore because of this insanity. I am aware that you can't hire freelance writers anymore because of this insanity. I think that. In order to- You don't care or you do care? No, I'm aware. I am aware.

I am aware. That is true. So there's, okay, so there's the one issue of policy. On the one hand, there was a rise in gig work. Some people like the freedom and agency that they get from gig work. However, many, many companies abused the gig worker status. True. Underpaid people.

Hired contractors and gig workers instead of them. employees, and therefore, because this is what we do in the area of policy and politics, we overcorrected to solve for those abuses, which were real. Unfortunately, the way that we have overcorrected is to try to re-implement the way that work has always been done. So, nine to five, 40 hours a week, doesn't work for stay-at-home moms or all kinds of people who want some sort of work flexibility and maybe a scenario that would allow dads to, like, be more involved parents because they would have more work flexibility. What we do need is,

it is disappointing to me that we keep coming up with policy that doesn't address this kind of third way, that if there were pooled benefits, if we were able to solve the question of health care, you could give people a more flexible work environment in which to operate that is not either one or the other, right? Gig work, you are at the mercy of whatever happens to you in life, for the most part versus you will do, you will show up and be exactly where your boss tells you all the time with absolutely no flexibility whatsoever. I really, really want there to be a compromise position. And I would have love to see the labor department take some steps in that direction. I do think that asking these fundamental questions, do you have to buy your own equipment to do this?

And then asking this question is the work being performed central to a company's business? those are, those sound like common sense questions in terms of determining. Okay, hold on. You said I could go do my rent. Okay. However, I will not accept the framing that somehow this is like about Republicans wanting more freedom. The reason that we are having this debate, the reason that Uber did institute some, you will have to give back some, you know, you can contribute if you drive 15 hours is because many, many, many, many, companies abused and misclassified their workers as gig workers.

That is not. So this idea that like then Democrats come in and it's just like a union thing is like, no. Are they defaulting to old thinking with respect to employment? Sure. Of course. Yeah. But I'm not going to sit here and say that workers have not been wholesale class.

And look, the media or going to be. All for true. Media was terrible about this. Terrible. Like public media in particular. was excoriated because we constantly hired contractors instead of full-time employees. Constantly. What you're saying was hypocritical.

You would have somebody like NPR or New York Times hiring freelancers constantly. Constantly. Not having, because they didn't want to have to pay benefits. And then they would be riding the gig work economy while they were on the other side of their mouths hiring freelance editors, engineers, fact checkers, etc. I'm saying every industry was doing this. Yes. And that is why now we can't even really have a reasoned conversation about it because it like

was it started with an over it started with abuse it ended with over correction yep we need to get somewhere in the middle and frankly universal freaking healthcare would solve almost of this like it would solve 85 freaking percent of this 100 percent yeah it's just ridiculous I do like your framing of this I think it's very intellectually honest there was abuse there was hypocrisy and it became political politicized all right everybody listen life insurance is so so important and getting it will create amazing peace of mind for you and your loved ones, your co-workers, your investors. And when you're a founder or startup employee, peace of mind, it's hard to come by, right?

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And PolicyGenius has licensed agents who can help you find options that offer coverage in as little as a week. And this helps avoid unnecessary medical exams. And these agents work for you, not the insurance companies. Plus, policy genius doesn't add on extra fees and they won't sell your data the third parties. Your loved ones deserve a financial safety net. You deserve a smart way to find and buy it. So head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description of this podcast to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policy genius.com. I think if you just think from first principles, when does a person deserve to be a full-time employee? What would be a benchmark that is reasonable?

Because saying that they contribute to the business, well, that's anybody who's working for a business is contributing to the business. That's a very hard argument to make. Like, your outside account, inside lawyers. They're saying central. Central to a company's business. For example, drivers for Uber and Lyft. Right. And so, and real estate brokers and hairdresser.

So that, when you say central, that means all freelancers are basically cut out. Because any engineer at NPR or- A hairdresser is not central to a salon. It's not. It's the exact same thing. hairdressing is central to a salon. Yes. But an individual hair, but the salon, like if you've got one person, you're a salon.

Yes. And if you have one driver, you're, you know, DoorDash. The point is, if you have no drivers, you're not Uber, DoorDash, or Lyft. And if you have no hairdressers, you're not a salon. No, you could be cutting hair. Yes. And then so every hairdresser has to then start their own entity. And that's not what hairdressers want to do.

Hairdressers want to pick their hours. They want to work Monday, Wednesday, day Friday, they want to have their book of business. They want to have their equipment. They do not want the equipment given to them. And they don't want to come on a shift. They want to pick their time. And then those are industries that have been, those are industries that now had a model that worked fine for everybody, sort of, right? I mean, hairdressers would be like, I pay 70% of my profits for the seed. And that could be abusive on its own. But what, it's just a question of scale. It's like, once the abuses get to a certain scale, then you got to overcorrect at the same scale. And

Unfortunately, we haven't yet seen, I don't think, a really forward-looking purple well. I mean, it's only the one. It's universal health care. Really, the industry policed itself. I talk about this on the podcast all the time. If you want to, you know, have great success. You should have great responsibility. And you should try to do more than what the law is asking of you, right? The problem is, the law is so politicized with one side wanting no regulation. And that could be because of abuses or just being free market months. or just believing wholly in the free market.

Like there are some people who don't believe in a minimum wage. They believe the market should set it. And then on the other side, people who just want the union rolls to grow because the unions vote in unison. So putting those two things aside, it's a pretty simple test here. It's a third way. It's very simple. You just look at the number of hours, a person works.

And if they are forced to come to a location and work on a shift, that's what defines an employee. And when you control their time, when you control how they do their job, and they work over a certain number of hours, that's a full-time employee. And it's somewhere around 30 hours a week, commonsensical. And do they have other jobs that they can work? In other words, can you demand they work for you today? You know, Uber and Lyft and DoorDash, we've all seen it. People will have two phones so they can keep both ops up on the same time. We'll have an Android phone with Lyft or whatever, they can leave at any time and work for a different service. And most of them will take calls from multiple services depending on the spiff that they give

them. The real problem here, Molly, which people don't understand is very nuanced. You have to pick one. You're not allowed to have two different modalities or else you break the law. You have to treat all employees the same. What employees should do is every three months they should elect. I want to be full-time and I commit to this set. I will wear the Uber logo on a polo. I will pick a shift from the open shifts and I'll get benefits and the lacrew and I'll get time off, yada, yada. Or they say, I'm not wearing an Uber or, you know, DoorDash hat and looking like a dork and I'm not putting a DoorDash logo on the side of my car and like, you know, with a metallic thing like Domino's people have to do. No way am I doing that. I don't want that. I just want to go

out, do three rides before my kids get home from school so that I can pay for it, whether you're the mom, dad, or both. That is the easy solution. But you're not allowed to implement that solution. You're not allowed to let individuals have agency. That's the screwed up part. That's what I object to. I object to individuals, not being able to make their own decisions, not be entrepreneurial. And you know who they do this to? They do it to the people who are up and coming. They carved out lawyers. They carved out real estate broker. So if you're rich or you're in the upper third, you're specifically talking about AB5, right? California. Okay. Well, and then in general, when these laws are enacted, a group of people who have lobbies and money, which tend to be the real estate

brokers, the lawyers, etc. They say, yeah, we can't be part of that. And whoever's doing it says, okay, yeah, sure, we'll let you out of that. And then who do they force to do it? They force to do the entry-level jobs because those people don't have representation. And they're like, no, you have to join. You as a driver are not smart enough, don't have enough agency. You don't get to choose. You know what? They do have the intelligence to choose. And there is a free market and they should be able to choose. I mean, I guess that the counter argument is that those are also the workers that need the most protection because they have the least power, make the least amount of money, and cannot organize into a lobbying and don't necessarily have the same earning potential as the lawyers

and the real estate agents. I'm just saying, if you... A lot like that is designed to protect. It might be the least powerful among us. And I think that they don't need protection is the point. I think they can leave Uber and go to Lyft. They can leave Lyft and go to DoorDash. They can leave DoorDash and go to Starbucks and go to Target. We have six.

If this was a situation where we had no jobs available, we still have 10 million job openings. We have 62% labor participation. We peaked at 70. That was not the case when these laws were conceived. It was. Not when AB5 was conceived. Oh, yes, it was. We were at 61, 62%.

labor participation. This has been the big issue is people don't want to work full-time work, Molly. They don't want that job. And that's why people will participate. People don't want to go to 40. Who wants to go drag their ass to target and work an eight-hour shift and get there at 6 a.m. Have to put their makeup and take a shower and put on a dorky target, be a Walmart reader. It's oppressive when compared to doing three door dash rides in the afternoon. This is why we don't have labor participation because we're not giving people enough choice. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. I just feel like people should make their own decisions in life. I mean, I hear you. I just also think that like if you made a living wage at Target and you got health insurance, you'd be fine with it. Right? Like, why is it a terrible, awful, horrible grind? Because you get paid nothing and you could get let go anytime and you don't have health insurance. Like there's, you know, there's this sort of alternative idea or question about why people don't want to work. It's either they're lazy or they don't get paid enough.

they don't get enough protection to make it worthwhile. There's actually multiple things going on in this regard. You have rich kids who have rich parents, and this is big wealth transfer that's going to happen and they're being subsidized. The second one is people have enough ways to make money as freelancers that they refuse to take the oppressive jobs. And they would rather make less money or have less benefits, but have more flexibility. And that's a choice humans can make.

You know, like, do you want to work five, 10-hour shifts at Target? Or would you rather work 30 hours going across the different? you know, gig works. People have chosen, you know, people are making their own choices, choices in real time. They're making their own choices, but they're still in a situation where if something bad happens to them,

they die because they don't have health insurance. Like, you're still choosing, you're still, you have agency, but you're not necessarily choosing, like, between two awesome opportunities.

And this is where looking at what Uber did. I just want that third way. I just want that one thing solved. Third way is the solution. It's the solution. One fact. that you need to know about startups. Finding engineers is super time-consuming and super expensive.

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GitHub, 4Square, carda, Indiegogo, Kickstarter. I mean, this is a who's who of successful company. So go to Ravelto.com slash twist and mention twist to get 20% off your first three months. Plus, they offer 100% risk-free 14-day trial period. If you're not satisfied, you pay nothing. So head to, R-E-V-E-L-O dot com slash twist and mention twist to get that 20% off. And then if you look at this Uber thing, you know, this is, came out of while back, but, you know, Uber specifically, you know, I know this because I was, you know, obviously discussing this with the founders and the team. They have guaranteed minimum earnings. They have injury protection. They basically got ahead of this. And they did a health care stipend.

They weren't forced to do this stuff. They did this proactively. They were going to the government. They were going to specifically the Democrats on that side and saying, here, how about this? And they said, nope, the only thing we'll accept is a union. And to be treated. and have shifts. That was the only way the Democrats would do this. Or is Democrats and unions? That was the only way

they refused to do any other way. I know this up front. I think this is a leak in the Democrats game. They are actually working against. That I have never heard. I've heard that the Democrats were like, no, it has to be full employment, and it was this really,

and it was very irritating. And it has to be union. Yeah. That was their position. And I watched it up close and personal, especially in California. They were absolutely rigid. And this is why the Democrats, I think, are losing this contingent of individuals.

Those people don't want to be part of a union and they want to make their own decisions in life. And this patriarchal, was it parochial? What's the better word for, like, making this parochial. This parochial, like, I'm going to make the decision for you, I think is why some of those people are going to the Republican Party and secretly like Trump. And like, it's just really bad. You should give people choice. Don't force people to be in a union. don't force people to work 12-hour shifts.

They want to work four hours and go see their kids. Let people have choice. I mean, this is a miracle. I 100% agree. I think there is some perception that I don't agree with you when I say over and over and over and over. And yes, I'm talking to you, Nauties. I want there to be a third way for employees.

Yes. Like, I want them to have choice and I want them to have protection. And I do not think that anything about that is some sort of radical leftist opinion. I think what's. For God's sake. People see you as being default democratic when you're actually... Because they don't listen. Well, I think you are...

My perception of you and how you're perceived is that you are an independent critical thinker who has strong feelings about employees having protections and you're looking at the history of them being abused and saying, if there's abuse, well, that's the price you pay is that you're going to get regulated. If you get ahead of it... I think like I'm... I can most accurately be described as a populist. Populist, okay. Yeah.

Like, before populace became a dirty word, I'm just a populace. I'm for the people. Like, yes, you should have choice and flexibility. And no, you should not be forced to, like, die in a gutter if you get hurt because you don't have any health care. Like, this is not a hard. This is not a hard place to land. Well, I mean, see, see, this is the argument, the challenge, the challenging part of being a populist, I think, is our unions in their current execution in 2022, What does populism have to do with unions?

Well, I'll tell you. Because it doesn't to me. It doesn't necessarily. But when looking at unions, do people who are being forced to go into unions want to be in unions or not? And is it a populist view, which is the more populous view, let people have agency and make decisions or force them to be in a union? And I think this is one of the defining issues of our time is, are these unions? actually helping or hurting the people who are in them. And are they acting in their interest, the union's interest, and the politicians who benefit

from these unions, or are they acting in the individual's interest? And I think it's a case-by-case basis. Yeah, I mean, this is where I would say, I would just reframe the question. Is the rise in interest in unions and is the kind of equal and opposite reaction of the Democratic Party to say everybody needs to be in a union? Yeah. Is that the equal and opposite reaction to worker abuse? It doesn't mean that unions, I am sitting here saying, again, over and over and over,

I don't think unions are the better answer. They're not. Oh, I never heard you say that. No, that's what I keep saying by third way. Third way. Right. Not this. You're open to the idea that the unions are not acting in the best interest of their employees,

of their members at all times. I don't understand how I became in any way, some sort of a mouthpiece for unions. unions. Like, I want there to be a third way. There needs to be a third way. The reason that everybody is pushing toward things like unions is in reaction to worker abuses and they can't come up with a better solution. But they need one. I can tell you, I can tell you, in practice of care, as I said, pretty clearly, it's all of 80% of those. Because I watched as Uber and all these folks offered the third way and the Democrats and the unions held the line and said, no. That's totally true. I'm not saying it's not an overreaction. That's what I just said. It's an overreaction.

It is an over correction. Yeah. That's what we do. I'm disappointed that the administration didn't come out and offer a third way. Okay, there we go. And so what this means for you, if you're going to do gig workers, is you better limit, you better look at these tests and just anticipate. This is the takeaway for startups. Yeah.

Make sure that the people who are freelancers for you feel so good about being a freelancer that they will fight for you and with you. against these things, which is what ultimately happened with the drivers and the delivery people. They actually were like, please don't screw this up. Please don't make me work, shift work.

Please don't make me putting uniform on. Please don't tell me what hours to work. And that's why Uber won over and Lyft and DoorDash, that whole group won because they were so good to the drivers. And I know people have this perception. Oh, the drivers hate these services. They do not.

They may want to get paid more money, of course. they may want more rides, of course, but they are voting with their time and their support of being freelancers and their actual behavior. The average person, I don't know the statistics today, but back in the day, Molly,

the average person who worked like 15 or 20 hours this week would work five or 10 the next week. The variability of, like it was like 70% of people would switch by 50% the number of hours they work per week. It was really crazy. And it turned out people use this to pay acute bills in their life or they had more free time because of school or kids or whatever. And the variability was bonkers. People would disappear from the network for 10 days.

Then they would work 10 days in a row. They would do three hours a day for every other day. And then they would do 10 hours a day for three days. It was really weird. And it turned out they were trying to game the system. Eventually what happened was the equilibrium of where demand was. The drivers, as a group collectively started gaming the algorithms, they'd say, I'm not going to work these hours. I'm going to wait until Friday and Saturday night. I'm going to get those, you know, those premium rides that are, you know, where I'm only going to do airport rides. They actually became very entrepreneurial in how they approached using it. But what a mess. What a mess. It's a mess. It's going to stay a mess. This is, we should be clear, these labor department guidelines have not officially come out.

It's intended the proposal as an interpretive rule that does not have the legal force. of a regulation specifically authorized by Congress. So it would be different from the existing IRS rules. The Labor Department guidelines what they often become, though, the thing that people hire to because you don't want to have to be the person who like explains to a judge why you didn't. And the states tend to follow these. The states tend to follow these.

Yeah, guidelines. So they do have major influence anyway. Yeah. Trade employees well and give people choice, I think is the basic interpretation. And I think to certainly cleaning up. cleaning up the criteria, setting aside unions and all of that other noise, cleaning up the criteria will prevent abuse that will hopefully lessen the kind of extreme responses to the topic.

Just like make it clear. Just make it clear when you're an employee and when you're not. And then anybody who skirts it is in trouble, you know? The area where you get into trouble with this was there was a company called TaskRabbit. I don't know if it still exists, but TaskRabbit was particularly... Did they really? Oh, right, because the major thing for TaskRabits was put together IKEA furniture. Now, here was the problem.

People would say, hey, I want you to come do this task. And then they would auction it off. Okay, sounds fair. I want you to build these three IKEA things for me. Great. I'll do it for $50. Molly says, I'll do it for $40. Somebody else says, I'll do it for $35.

They really need the work. They show up. It takes four hours. Okay. Now they're going to pay $9 an hour. or something in that range. And the minimum wage in San Francisco is 15. Federal minimum wage might be eight.

Then the person complains about it, and you know, and you have this back and forth. And this is what happens with a lot of, what are they called, you know, like handymen, but there's a non-sexist word for handyman, handy people. Anyway, people who do projects, project-based, you know, whatever. they give you a price based on the project and sometimes the project takes longer and it's their fault. Sometimes it takes shorter and they get the benefit and you feel like you're overpaid.

Whatever. But TaskRabbit made this into such an efficient system and there were so many people looking for work in these tasks that too often people were under minimum wage. That was the main issue. So TaskRabbit is a bad guy here. I think it was a really great idea to have a reverse. auction so that consumers could get the best price and you have price discovery. The problem was they never had the foresight to say with a minimum of $15 an hour. So this cannot go below, if they just put that in the terms of service, you know, you can, people can battle it out

for how much they'll pay to do this. Boom. The other one was, by the way, Amazon Turk. Remember that one, mechanical Turk? So mechanical Turk would put in like, hey, tag this photo and tell us three things in the photo. Oh, that's an orange and a flower and a vase. Should you be able to have that be the lowest possible price globally? Or do you need to have a minimum wage there? Because if you did one of these every, if you made, if you said, I'll do it for five cents and you did, I don't know, three an hour, 15 cents. Yeah, you might get to like seven bucks an hour or something. Yeah, maybe, you know, if you're in California, you're now broken labor loss. Should you be able to put that

kind of task on the web on a global basis? I don't know how you feel about that. If people are opting into it, should they be able to do that? I think, I think what I said. I think there were lots of abuses over here, lots of over correction over here. I think we are still trying to figure this out. This is a pretty nascent tsunami in the labor world, but it's not a conversation that's going away, obviously. Yeah. That's the one that I struggle with is mechanical Turk. Because it's like anonymous work that people are doing while they're at work in a lot of cases. All right. That's what it really comes down to.

Jaycal just can't stand it. He's like, you too, anyway, okay, let's do this start a day. I mean, it seems to me like if you were the security guard and I guess you were supposed

to be looking at stuff. Anyway, I just, the free market person in me believes like, yeah, the people, it would be kind of cool if people in, you know,

I don't know, Alabama and people in Manila were both, you know, able to do mechanical Turk at home. But do the people in Alabama deserve to get paid more than people in Manila? I don't know. It's a very hard. When you get to globalization, it gets pretty hard. Yes, that's true.

And that is a conversation we do not have time for because we can do that all day. Startup of the day. Let's just talk about this adorable, freaking startup, bear robotics. First of all, cutest name ever. Bravo, Bear Robotics, which makes, these adorable little self-driving robots that run food and restaurants, which is also, this is also a labor story. But exactly, here we go.

Back in March, I'm telling labor is everything. Back in March, bear robotics raise an $81 million series B at a $481 million valuation led by the private equity firm, IMM. Back in 2020, you had Dishcraft Robotics CEO Linda Pooley out on the podcast to talk about dishwashing robots. Yes. This is like all of a piece in 2021. One, miso-robotic CEO, Mike Bell, came on to talk about burger-flipping robots.

Yes. And then now, as we know, restaurants are having a hard time hiring dishwashers and bussers for low hourly rates. So can it all be done by adorable little robots? This is the, if you're watching us, by the way, you're seeing the flippy, which is the burger flipping robot. Yeah. It's common. Robots have taken a long time.

Well, yeah, I mean, I guess that's the question, right? It's like robots are expensive to produce. They have to get it right every time in a restaurant environment or anywhere, especially actually, even more in a manufacturing environment. The mission matters. So the mission matters. So the complexity of the mission, you know, and then time is what matters. So, you know, obviously we're big investors in CafeX, you know, making somebody a drink. Literally, CafeX arm takes a cup of different sizes, fills.

it with ice, then pours an espresso over the ice, or pour some milk in there, gets the espresso on top of it, then does foam from another machine. So you can do any combination of those things. You could pull the tap, Molly, and get green tea. Then you could do a little foam on top of it after getting the ice, and then you can get some cookies. So the reason we invested in that is because when I looked at the dishwasher, when I looked at the pizza, Zoom, the burger, there was a full burger place. It was flippy. I also looked at tea, smoothies, and ramen. I looked at all of these five, six years ago. There were only two that did the whole mission. The dishwashing robot, because they used their specific plates. They narrowed the mission. It was only for cafeterias.

You had to use their plates. So when their plates came across the conveyor belt, the robotic arm had a magnet, and it knew the size of it, boom, we put it in. It wasn't China. It wasn't a wine glass combined with a glass, combined with a, you know, you get the idea. Yep. It was a conveyor belt system. Yeah. Yeah. And it was pretty straightforward. Now, look at this. one, bare robotics. What's the mission? The mission is take plates around, right? It seems like... Over here. They look like, just for people who are watching, R2D2, and they have sometimes multiple platforms on them. So imagine R2D2, but with three shelves on it. Now, when you're in the kitchen, this is what I believe happens. You know, the four of us go to lunch. There's two

burritos, there's a chimichunga, which I think is a deep-fried burrito. Kind of like that one. And then somebody gets the fracas. Perfect. Boom. Okay, that's got to get from the kitchen to table number two. It's a booth. They put those on there.

It goes to the table. Now, what I'm unsure of is, does the server take them off there or does the customer? In the video, it looks like the customer is just like grabbing it, although there is also some video where the server can do it. So apparently he does both. Yeah, you can do either. And so this is kind of cool. to your specific restaurant, right? Like, do you want just to bring it to the server and the server does it?

Or, and then you can put the dirty dishes. This is a mate. This would actually save a lot of server time and let servers be much more interactive. Because then you could put the dirty dishes. I mean, it's literally just like the running. It's the busing. And the bringing it out and the taking it back. And you have this ring fenced kind of environment where the robots are like,

I can only go to table three, six, nine, ten, 15, you know. Limited mission. This is great. narrowed the mission. What I like is the busing is a really good one, too, because you imagine the bus. I used to be called the buss boy. What do you call them? Busers. Buser. Okay, the buser comes. You remember sometimes you go to a restaurant like a TGI Friday's and they bring the bucket with them? And you're like, eh, but usually you have to leave and they bring the big bucket and they put everything in it and then they bring it to the kitchen. Well, here the robot comes next to them. They fill the robot and the robot leaves. That's kind of cool.

When you think about it, they don't have to carry it back to the kitchen, right? And this is for running. So what a lot of, I don't know if you're seeing this experience, but because of the lack of servers, running is becoming a thing now where you order at your table and then your food just comes with a runner. Now, if you had an ordering system like toast is the one I see come up most often, you order from toast on your phone, and then this would come and you take your plates off. There's never an error. This eliminates the error of like, hey, here's your food. And then you start eating. You're like, wait a second, I didn't order that. I didn't order jalapeno poppers.

and it's like, oh, that was other tables, keep it. So this is going to reduce a lot of errors. I love this idea. I don't know that it's a great investment, but it's a great idea. Yeah, it's obviously a lot of technology and hardware and sales and deployment and you're going to, you know, you're going to have the labor disruption question, but I do love it and it is the future without a doubt. Are you concerned about the food being open and coming to you on an open robot? It'd be coming to me in someone's open hand. I guess that's right.

As an alternative. Yeah. They are doing room service, by the way. I've seen room service robots for this. That makes the most sense to me. Imagine you're in a hotel and I slide in in a clothes thing. You know, your eggs Benedict. Some waffles, whatever you're getting there.

And then it's outside your door and it rings your bell automatically because it's, you know, why not? And it's like it's outside the door and then you open it. The things open. You take your food. Boom. I desperately want that because room service is one of the most awkward human interaction. of all. And like, they're like, can I come in? And you're like in your bathroom because that's because I always get breakfast. That's my one room service thing. I have a whole system. You're in your

bathroom. And they're like, can I come in? And then you like, you know that they're like, the tips already been written into there. But then they're standing there. And like, it's just, I just want that to be a robot. And then you got to figure out how to like get the tray outside and hold the door open and not have the door close on you while you're trying to like get so that. Please bring me the robot. For that. Everybody wants these jobs, these jobs. in America. They suck everywhere. I mean, some jobs just suck. And you know what? Like, I, if I could go to a Michelin Star restaurant and not have to deal with the server and just order for my phone, I would prefer it. I know that's sacrilege to people. I'd love ordering on my phone,

especially when you have kids and they want more spatsal or they want an extra order of deviled eggs and I can just bang, order it. I don't have to find a server. And when you have, when you have two six-year-old Raptors like I do, I mean, they're at every other restaurant. And then at a Michelin Star restaurant, I want like the best, nicest person who knows everything about the food and they tell you exactly how to eat it. Like this thing, it's molecular gastronomy. So it looks like a leaf. So it's actually food. And you can eat that.

And, you know, like, give me the like, give me the then make it a VIP server experience. And they don't have to worry about taking plates back and forth because a robot's doing that. Then it's perfect. Yeah. Nick's pointing out that this one doesn't eliminate the server. It could. I think what these robotic companies do, they're very concerned about the eliminating jobs angle. Yes.

Because every time the press calls them, and I saw this with CafeX, it's like, oh, so you're eliminating jobs. Eliminating jobs. It's like, okay, I think everybody realizes right now, like, that ship has sailed. Nobody wants to go into fields and pick strawberries, let robots do it. Just like we used to have humans, like, pulling wheat out of the ground. Like, that used to be done with the sickle, right? Like, this was backbreaking labor. Like, just everybody knows.

Okay, everybody. No, no. Robots. Fantastic. Moralaga are robots. All right, let's move on to the next. Just in case you wanted to drive home here. But no, the point is.

The point here is. Exactly. I know what? The point here is. No, why you're being so baity. I'm not trying to be. I just, I haven't think about it. Behind the scenes, by the way, J-Cal called me a Karen before we even started rolling today.

I didn't. I said you. I'm like, what is this? It's like, it's like a setup. It's like you set me up to fail today. He was like, yeah, super Karen. Your hair cut. Before we even started.

Like your zero dark 30. You look like a CIA agent. He's like, who's the mentally ill woman on, who's the union guy? He's out here like, he's out here like Molly's Jimmy Hoffa. Who's the mentally ill woman on,

I don't know, I don't watch it. But I love where this is going on. Oh, the woman's got schizophrenia and she's the greatest CIA agent of all time. It's amazing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Oh, my haircut does look like hers. Yeah, clear days. It looks exactly like her. I'm not saying you've got suffering from schizophrenia or anything. But that was the best part of the character. I'm a schizophrenic Karen who just wants everybody to be in union. That's my role here today, apparently.

It's not, don't do that. No, you look like Zero Doc 30. Who is the woman from Zero Doc 30? That movie was incredible. That one who killed Osama bin Laden. Yeah. That's the vibe I'm getting. With the black turtleneck or whatever, the black sweater and the perfect hair cut.

That's it. Maybe I do feel a little murdery today. All right. Anyway, let's do one quick M&A before we got to get out of here. Was it an M&A? Yeah, there's like, uh, consolidation happening. This is one of those

good. Simulte. Yeah, exactly. This is a like bouncing along the bottom like you've been saying. Yeah. Combined with exits of a type.

Consolidation is the key to like shaking out a healthy industry. It's painful, but it has to happen and it's starting. Instant delivery startup get here is in advanced talks to acquire its competitor gorillas. These are both rapid delivery companies

primarily operating in I think Latin America Latin America, Gatira, Gatira is based in Istanbul. Burillas is Berlin based. I guess they must operate in those markets also, I would imagine. Gatier last raised, this is amazing. This is Sequoia Joint. Last raised, $768 million at an $11.8 billion valuation in March.

Sequoia is an investor, not the lead investor. Gorillas last raised $950 million at a $3 billion valuation in September 2021. Gorillas has previously held talks with competitors about merging or selling its business. The startups both reportedly had trouble raising from investors in 2022 because they were burning cash fast for expansion. Yeah. I mean, listen, everybody is not doing right now. Everybody copied the Uber Playbook, which was, you know, get to as many cities as possible,

have a decentralized organization and move quick. That's great when you have free money. We don't have free money anymore. Therefore, you have to hit profitability before you fight a war on a third. you know, a thousand fronts or dozens of fronts, you know, that's a capital intensive, inefficient way to do it. And you give up the efficiency, Molly, for speed. Now the market wants something different. Even for the mighty Uber and Airbnb, everybody else, they're like, show us the money, show us the profits. And that's why, you know, the idea of like, hey,

we're going to fight a war on all fronts is over. And what this consolidation does is, it stops the wars where people are discounting and using VC dollars to gain market share and they fight this battle which you know like many wars and this is not war with people dying so I'm not making light of it or anything

but in these battles between companies they both lose because they're both losing money each time and it's not healthy it's fine for a while but it truly becomes unsustainable prolonged wars like this, everybody loses.

And this is a healthy part. You know, like they can't get more money so you consolidate. You're not discounting each other. And this should have happened with Uber and Lyft. There was a moment of time

where Lyft almost went to Uber and where DoorDash almost went to Uber. And if that had, if one of those two had happened, all of these companies the entire sector would be looked at well, kind of like it's being looked at now, which is, okay, it's going to be profitable.

But it wouldn't have had this five years of this can never be profitable. Is that? And I asked this sincerely, is that how people are looking at instant delivery specifically? Because I feel like there still is not a proof point for delivery being profitable. Like we're still not there. I was looking at ride chairing of food delivery, which, you know, now is proven that it can be profitable. Instant delivery is, I think it can be.

So your question was, do people look at it that way? No, they still have to prove it. Right. Because it hasn't ever been so far still, right? Yeah. We talked about this at one point. No one's delivering food profitably? You can deliver food profitally for sure. You can do ride-chairing profitably for sure.

This one, I am not sure that people will pay. I don't know, I'm not sure how many missions there are where people are willing to pay $20 or $30 on top of their $30.711 bill or their Walgreens bill, right? Real delivery cost I put at $2030 per order because that's what you wind up paying, right? If you use postmates Uber Eats, Storedish, it winds up being plus $20,000. to $30 for the consumer. That's fine on dinner. Is that fine for deodorant and soap and a gallon of milk? Probably not.

So I think this is a very narrow use case. You're in a city. You're a young urban professional. You need cigarettes and booze. Deodorant, shaving cream, quarter milk, whatever it is, diapers. Yeah. I wonder if that go-puff guy would come back on. I just still think the jury is out on this whole business model and has been out since 2001.

you know? The jury's out, I think, because nobody needs something that quickly. Or the times you do need it that quickly are few and far between. Yeah. You know, like, I don't know how often, even with like Uber, I want to use Uber for delivery of like soap and, you know, other stuff. But I kind of have it on Instacart and subscribe and save the items I use most frequently. So I find I don't as somebody who's a planner.

Not a prepper like you, but a planner. You know, like, you're way ahead of the curve. I'm kind of like right behind you. This is for like, I think millennials who are like young people who don't do any planning, right? Yeah. Or it's like you want to, you all of a sudden decide you want to make something and you need the ingredients. That happens right now because my son is going through a cooking phase. Like that's when we'll do this.

It's pretty far. Right, exactly. We need lemons. And like he decided you want to make pecan pie the other night. So we're like, oh, let's store d out some stuff. Yeah. No, it's a real fun phase, by the way. And thanks to the bear.

is why it's happening. Oh, really? He watched the bear and he got into cooking. Yeah, we watched it together and now he wants to cook. It's the best. I just love that series.

I mean, is there going to be a second version of that? I was out of one and done. I don't know. I hope there's more. I love the season two coming. Actually, the guy who's the brother

in that or the cousin, the tall guy is in Andor. He's in And I love him. And he was in girls. And he's same personality. And I still don't know his name. He played John Carrieroo in the dropout too.

He did. That's right. Oh my God. Eben boss something. I love this guy. That's right. He's going to wind up getting. This guy's going to win an Oscar.

Somebody's going to put him in something good. This guy's getting some good scripts. I bet you he gets nominated for an Oscar next to a three years. He does this type too really well. This kind of like crabby, slightly damaged, neurotic. Yeah, he's got a type. Yeah. It works.

It works. It's just love the fact that he's dealing. It's wonderful. He's dealing blow out of the restaurant. I mean. I'm like, go right back to my childhood. Literally this is my child. Mali, like at my dad's bar, at a certain age, it all became revealed to me.

Bookie, Coke dealer, Lone Shark, Hell's Angel, cop. Cop who could solve problems for you. Like, literally, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. This whole cast of characters who I knew and were, like, run and get cigarettes for, this one guy, He would give me He'd say, hey, kid Come here How'd you pop?

Good? Okay. Go get me two packs of Marlboro lights. Marlboro lights were a buck 50 at the time. He'd give me a 20, sometimes a 50. I would go run. He'd say, run, get me two packs of 50. He'd like to see me run.

I run, I get two packs of Marlboro lights. I bring him the change. 17 bucks, sometimes 47 bucks. Say, keep it, kid. I keep it. I love this guy. I'm not going to say his name.

Rest in peace. This guy was running. running, he had services that were available. And in Brooklyn, every establishment had services available. Now, my dad wasn't running the services, but he wasn't also kicking the people out. And so as part of the keeping the piece, he would tip the proprietor, my dad's kids who were working in the restaurant with extraordinary tips. He was a bookie. Yeah, I got, yeah.

He was the bookie. I never told you the story of this one. Wow. So one time, this is great for the show. Anyway, I go to the bathroom. I had to clean the bathrooms in this joint. So I go to the bathroom to, you know, every couple hours I go clean the others. Go clean the bathroom.

Place is a mess, whatever. I'm like 13 years old. I look on the side of the toilet, and there is a wad of cash with a rubber band around it. We call this a knot in Brooklyn. There's a knot. And you could always tell like a serious knot. Some knots have around them like a broccoli rubber band. Mm-hmm.

Some knots are so big They got a little thin rubber band around them A couple times Anyway This is a big freaking knot of money It's a couple of Gs So I pick it up I bring it to my dad

My dad looks at it Like he's looking at like An oyster or something And he like kind of does a thing With his hand where he kind of weighs it He looks at it from like one or two angles He goes, oh that's Ardi's Hands it back to me give it to Artie

I'm like he's not here He's like he'll be back So now I'm holding $7,000 in my pocket all of a sudden I see Artie come through the thing I said oh Artie and he looks at me goes yeah let me have it he knows I have it because he knows nobody's gonna take that right because in Brooklyn you know who's not

it's not because you see people take these knots out you know this is Artis not so I handed it to him I kid you not good kid pills off a hundred off the top gives to me it was all hundreds there wasn't a 50 in here he literally this is in 1982 he peels off a hundy for jac

This is when I was like, whoa, money's cool. All right, that's it, everybody. This week in Brooklyn stories from the 70s and 80s. What a show. I'm J-Cow. She's 0.30. A lot happened today. A lot happened today.

Oh, my Lord. Tomorrow, we got a crypto roundtable. We got another big show coming tomorrow. Nothing controversial there. Nothing controversial there. Any perp walks this week? I read a super fun story about how all that energy savings from the ethmerge just got rolled right into Bitcoin's highest energy consumption ever.

True story. Yeah, we'll talk about that tomorrow. We're going to have a good time. And then we got another episode of the next unicorns. One of the most fun interviews I've done in ages with Liquid Death CEO, Mike Cesario. Good time. Oh, yes, Liquid Death. I want to hear that one.

All right. It's freaking great. Great show tomorrow's. We'll see you then. Bye-bye.