This Week in Startups - Spotify's saga continues, $FB warns of EU exit, GoFundMe's protest refund, Peloton's suitors | E1380

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

Molly and Jason catch up on the big news stories from the weekend. First, we talk about the Joe Rogan & Spotify saga (1:51) and size up the odds of Rogan finishing out his contract with Spotify (15:41). Then, we cover Facebook warning about pulling Instagram and Facebook out of Europe due to privacy regulations (29:54). Next, we cover GoFundMe’s decision to pull funding for the “Freedom Convoy” protesters in Canada. We wrap with a discussion of the WSJ's reporting that Amazon is considering acquiring Peloton (57:26). 0:00 Jason and Molly intro today’s topics! 1:51 Daniel Ek’s comments on the newest Joe Rogan controversy: Is Spotify a publisher? Why or why not? 14:26 Ourcrowd - Check out the deal of the week at https://ourcrowd.com/twist 15:41 Jason predicts the endgame for Joe Rogan and Spotify, Molly and Jason break down the odds of Rogan finishing out his contract with Spotify 27:45 Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist 29:03 Wrapping on Rogan/Spotify 29:54 $FB warns the SEC and shareholders they could pull out of Europe pending new privacy laws, how Meta could win over public sentiment 39:29 Superside - Go to https://superside.com/twist to get $3000 or more in credits when you sign up for an annual subscription 40:51 Meta’s need for a “coalition,” does $FB need new leadership? Plus, Jason fixes Meta’s PR mess 45:52 GoFundMe’s controversial decision re: Canadian truckers “Freedom Convoy” 57:26 Amazon rumored to be looking at a potential Peloton acquisition, Jason takes credit for a hot take FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

All right, everybody, welcome back to this weekend startups. It's another full news Monday because the weekend just keeps delivering. God, we are going to have to go seven days a week. Well, the Sunday show was great. Because it just kept coming. So it's a wrap-up show today, news wrap-up. We're going to talk about the Joe Rogan, Spotify, Fallout. It just continues.

And we basically set some odds. Will Joe Rogan finish his contract with Spotify? Molly and I place some bets. Then we cover Facebook or, you know, meta, warning about how. how they are going to have to pull their services out of Europe due to privacy regulations, a threat that might not be as scary as they think it is. And then we cover the GoFundMe decision to pull funding for the Canadian Truckers Convoy and get a chance to do a 360 dunk with an incredibly perfectly timed layup alleyup pass from Maliwood.

About Amazon buying Peloton. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Our Crowd helps you invest early in pre-IPO companies alongside professional VCs. If you're interested in investing, you can join Our Crowd for free at OUR, CROWD.com

slash twist, lemon.io. Need to speed up your product development without draining your budget? Hire vetted engineers from Europe at lemon. Go to lemon.io slash twist to get 15% off for the first four weeks. And SuperSide, ambitious companies need the right design partner in their text act, one that doesn't sacrifice quality for speed. Get $3,000 or more in credits when you sign up for an annual subscription at superside.com slash twist.

Hey, everyone. So, okay, it is a news show today. Heaven help us. We wish this were not the case, but it is the case. The Spotify story just keeps going. Reports emerged over the weekend, a video, in fact, by the singer India Ari who has joined the cavalcade of musicians asking for her music to be removed from Spotify. She posted a video, essentially a supercut of Joe Rogan repeatedly using the N-word over the years in his podcast. Over the weekend, also Spotify just went ahead and disappeared about 70 different episodes of the podcast in which the word was used.

Today, I think, or late yesterday, Spotify CEO Daniel Eck, we're recording this on Monday. Of course, you're hearing it on Monday. Spotify CEO Daniel Eck apologized to staff over basically how hard this is for everybody, the usage, everything that is happening, but reiterated that Spotify does not want to, quote, silence Joe Rogan, that that would be the wrong response. And then on top of that, I like don't even want to fall into the trap of calling it pro-free speech, but the platforms that are labeling themselves pro-free speech, in this case the video platform Rumble,

came along and offered Joe Rogan $100 million, apparently not believing Daniel Eck when he says, we're going to keep him on the platform and said, come on over here, we're ready to fight alongside you. Let's freaking go. This is, by the way, he says, totally legit. Wait, what is this? Oh, that's the letter.

This is the letter from the CEO of Rumble. If you're watching the video, which you can do on Spotify now with their news. A nice one. There you go. Thank you, Daniel, for including us in the video trial, which will probably be kicked out of

because we're going to criticize Spotify. Any minute now. We're going to get hit out. Any minute now, we're going to be banned from Spotify. I mean, this is such a circular story because here we are

as a Spotify partner talking about it. Podcasts are taking themselves off. I was on a previous episode telling Spotify don't break standards. I mean, this whole thing is so convoluted. I want to double click on one thing here. And it's not the end.

debate. Let's put that on the side for now. That's not our show. That's not exactly what we do here, but maybe we'll get into it a little bit later in the show. But let's talk about one thing here, which I think is, I think, intellectually dishonest by Daniel Eck. And I disagree with him on. All right. So he says, I don't believe that silencing Joe is the answer. We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voice is a slippery slope. Okay. Sure.

okay, that's like a generic sentence that none of us can kind of disagree with. We silence it. Nobody wants to silence voices. Right. You know, everybody wants to have clear lines, although clear lines are really hard, because in the case of this word, it's, as Joe Rogan said in his, like, apology, Miyakopa, whatever. He said, like, his thoughts on this word have changed because it's a unique word in the English

language and some people are allowed to use that other people aren't, yada, yada, standards have changed. putting all that aside. Daniel X. says, we are not the publisher of J.R.E. Joe Rogan experience. But perception due to our exclusive license implies otherwise. So I am committing to an incremental investment

of $100 million for the licensing, developing, and marketing of music, artist, surveys, and audio content from historically marginalized groups. So here we go. This is the standard, you know, oh my goodness, you're finding me $25,000. I'll donate $25,000 to charity move.

it is a meaningless move because it's such a large amount of money that, you know, like it doesn't I kind of find when people do this, it's like for somebody with whatever tens of billions of dollars of companies worth, it's kind of like a window dressing kind of thing.

I don't like these kind of moves because it's trying to divert you from the real issue. And the real issue here is, but perception due to our exclusive license implies otherwise. I have talked many times about what makes a publisher.

And over the weekend, when I was skiing, it clicked for me. If you pay, promote, or publish, you're a publisher. Yeah. Okay? I use three P, so it's easy. This is Jason's rule of if you're a publisher. This is the test. Do you promote, pay, and publish?

If you do two of those things, you're a publisher. Yep. If you do all three, certainly. But two or more, you're now a publisher. So let's go through those. Is Spotify paying Joe Rogan? Yes. Are they promoting Joe Rogan?

Yes. And are they publishing Joe Rogan? Not exactly because Joe Rogan publishes his original audio feeds and they just take them, just like they take ours and any other publisher. So I'm trying to hold up half a finger for those who are on the audio. Perfect. Yes. So it is.

It hurts. It's 2.5. I would add one more criteria. Okay, go ahead. Sure. And this to me is, the nail in the coffin of this argument. And that is, do you choose the content?

Oh, right. Sorry. I messed up my own piece. So like not only. It was four peas. Produce was my other P. Start the whole. Produce is a little bit different though.

Produce would imply, do you, are your producers involved in choosing the content? Do you edit it yourselves? So take out publishing. Say produce. Yeah. Good. Is chosen. Yes.

They went out. They made an editorial choice. Yes. They pursued him. They pursued him a $100 million exclusive license to publish his show. They made that editorial choice. And in attempting to resolve the issue in some way, what Daniel Eck announced was more editorial choices. Now, I have to give full credit to Alex, our friend Alex Wilhelm on the Equity Podcasts were pointing out this morning.

But it's like you're trying to counter your editorial choice by making more editorial. editorial choices. So that shows that it's just general. So let me restate my rule. If CBS did that, there would be rules. So this is why I came

with a two or three. You nailed it. God, you're so smart. If you pay, promote, or produce, not publisher. I meant produce. Produce. If you do two of those three,

you're a publisher. So do they produce Joe Rogan? No, they do not pick the guests. They do not edit it. But they do the other two. Therefore, under the new rule, for the internet. This is the new interweb rule. If you do two of those three, you are. Now, let's take

YouTube as an example, and let's take our show on YouTube. Do they pay us? Nope. No, they pay other people, but they don't pay us. So no pay. Do they produce us? Obviously not. And do they promote us? No, there is an algorithm, but that's not promotion in my mind. That's just the algorithm showing you things you might like. If they did pick, like, hey, we're featuring these people because they're paid partners, yes. So there are people on YouTube who get paid. They are promoted. There's a group of people who they do promote at YouTube, right, that they have relationships with. But when they do like their year-end roundup of the best of YouTube, that's promotion, and they might promote people in promotion slots. And then the third one is do they produce and they don't produce. So there are some cases on

YouTube where they are doing two and three. Right. And so absolutely, Spotify is absolutely the publisher of JRE. So stop with that, Daniel. You are wrong. You are the publisher of JRE. You're not the producer, but you are the publisher because you have an exclusive,

you pay, and you promote. We're done here. And Spotify has made multiple editorial decisions with other podcasts that they have not yet made with Joe Rogan with respect to COVID-19 content.

They have made editorial decisions when they published his catalog originally. They made editorial decisions and removed a bunch of shows. they have now taken the step of making an editorial decision to remove 70 episodes in which he says the N-word. So, like, there's no question that that argument is dishonest. And that that is why, frankly,

that's why this is an ongoing problem for Spotify from a business perspective, because this is an indefensible argument. However, it's also representative of a failure of regulation all the way down, right? the United States government has been sidestepping this exact conversation for 15 years. Yeah. What is a publisher and what, like we, and again, I'm not necessarily arguing for regulation in this case. What I'm saying is there aren't clear rules for this whole massive swath of our economy, but there are clear rules for newspapers and for broadcasters, right?

So if you are CBS, like let's explain the mechanics of TV for a minute. CBS has lots of shows that it airs on cable television that are subject to the rules of the Federal Communications Commission with respect to obscenity and indecency and all of the weird rules, nips, lip stuff. And most of those shows, CBS chooses editorial, editorially, pays for, and promotes and does not produce. They hire outside production companies exactly like Joe Rogans to make TV shows for them that they have commissioned and, chosen and they put on the air. And as a result, CBS is a publisher of those shows, even though they were not filmed in CBS studios or edited by CBS staff. So you have a situation where on cable television, for example, one set of rules applies. And you have huge streaming platforms that are commissioning and distributing exclusive content. And those rules don't apply at all. And that is the situation we find ourselves in. And frankly, we have never had an example is clear cut as Spotify to work with. I think this is actually, I think the new test that I came up with is the new test and you refined.

Here is the new test. And it really should have been obvious to everybody. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are doing less than two of the three, right? You post an update to Twitter if it's a video or TikTok or any of these social networks. They didn't pay you in most cases, almost all cases. They didn't promote you in all cases, and they certainly didn't produce it. So zero of three on platforms. So let's look at the platforms, WordPress, Squarespace, Twitter, Facebook.

Now, when those services start sharing revenue with you, they now have turned on one of the three lights. Okay? We get flipped on the switch. If you join the creator program on TikTok, if you join the creator program on YouTube, now they're moving more towards publishing, but they're not quite there yet, are they? they're just sharing revenue, they still don't promote you, and they still don't produce you.

Sharing revenue, I don't think, makes you a publisher. Sharing revenue makes you a platform that shares revenue. But now you turn on any of those other two lights, now you're in the danger territory. The second you promote it, in order to get more money

for you and the partner, you're now making an editorial decision. You are a producer. Or if you say, I think if you, in retrospect, say we're going to start taking stuff down, because it impedes our ability to make money because it creates, you know, negative, whatever.

I think now you're also starting to get into that. So it's like, I guess my question to you, Molly, is retroactively turning stuff off. Is that producing or is it like banning stuff that is against the terms of service? I can see both arguments. Retroactively, oh, well, this is why we have dot, this I think is exactly why your question

is exactly why regulators and everybody else have totally dodged the question of platform versus publisher, because it's super messy on every level. And even as much as we want the YouTube delineation to be different, it's not because they have a maker studio where they actually have people come and use their own production resources to create. Which is producing.

That one's clearly producing. Facebook has commissioned editorial and makes a ton of editorial decisions about what is or is not on the platform, and yet is constantly insisting that it's not a publisher, right? And it's skated the line. What I think makes Spotify so, so we've just been like, You know what? It's too messy.

We're just going to like, I don't know. We're going to let them have this because business and blah, blah, blah. Spotify now comes along and is this very clear-cut situation where they have paid for, where they've done all the piece, right? And we don't know what to do. It's time for another Our Crowd deal of the week. Right now you can join Our Crowd's investment in HIL Applied Medical. According to the deal memo, they are using Nobel Prize winning technology to bring the most

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This heat ain't stomping. No, not at all. It's going to double down. They're going to find even more offensive stuff that comedian Joe Rogan has said. Because what we have here is a very unique situation. And I want to get your take on this. Joe Rogan is the most successful podcaster of all time.

Do we agree on that premise? Yeah, that's fair. been paid the most. He hit number one. I mean, I don't know what criteria we're using here. Certainly the most influential. He gets the most listens per episode. He is the most influential.

He gets the top guests. Mm-hmm. Okay. So whatever criteria, money, listens, and guests, he's number one. Yeah. Fine. He's number one, and he's doing random acts of journalism. He is interviewing presidential candidates

in addition to MMA fighters or comedians or whatever. So his influence is so great. that he dwarfs the media who are covering him. Many of the people in the media who are covering him have podcasts. And they have vibrant podcast business. Now, I don't want to be a conspiracy there is here, but I do think part of what we're seeing here is the media institutions.

I'm talking New York Times or Fox or whatever group it is, is looking at Joe Rogan saying, this guy's number one. And we're on the podcasting business as well. I think there's a little bit of jealousy here on the position he's gone to. And a little bit of questioning of, why is he getting 10, 100 times the amount of traffic we're getting for our top podcasts? What do you think of this angle to the story?

That Joe Rogan is now the most influential interviewer in the world, which is an act of journalism? What do you think of that? What is the end result of what you're asking? Are you asking, is there also a media conspiracy to take down Joe Rogan? Not conspiracy. I don't think it's a coordinated effort. But do you think there is a, this guy's competitive with what we do pile on?

Could be happening more on an individual basis, let's say, where people who are commentators in the space are a little jealous of what he's achieved. Could be unconscious, could be conscious. I can't, you know, it's hard to judge if there's an unconscious bias here. But he is an outsider who has beaten all media outlets in this medium. I think that there is probably, there's without a doubt, frustration, I think, among members of the media about how hard, about the sense that like, I mean, I used to make this joke all the time way back in 2006 or seven when I was like working hard to write funny jokes for a web show.

then people would blow up on YouTube for falling off a chair, right? I was like, why am I, like, researching this and making sure it's correct and toiling and doing all this work and then carefully crafting a joke to deliver it when I could just be falling off my chair and making tons of money. So there probably is some sense of just like, what the hell? And then also people come along and they're like, I don't listen to you anymore, New York Times. I listen to Joe Rogan. Yes, got to be frustrating.

And Joe Rogan doesn't have a team of editors making sure that the things he's just like, I'm just a comedian. just following questions asking questions i don't prepare i don't prepare so of course that feels crappy when you work your entire life right like there's no question that that feels crappy yeah but i think then what happens is so sure right there are probably tons of people who have just been waiting for this waiting for they've just been waiting for joe rogan's step ever since spotify frankly signed him right because that was always like by the way talk about wandering into a minefield as soon as Spotify signed him,

they became responsible for all the stuff he says on some level in people's minds. And everybody's just been sitting here like, waiting. Waiting. He's going to say something. We get to trounce him, yes. No question. But I think that's still very separate

from the business decision that Spotify has made in the situation they find themselves in now. But it definitely means, to your point, is not going away at all. Everybody's in love with the Joe Rogan story, whether they're pro, Joe, or like have been waiting for him

to inevitably take a fall. Okay. So here we go. Now we start setting some odds. We start making some gambling. As my influence over poor Molly and making her a degenerate gambler like me continues. Betting on startups. Now we're going to get a little sushi bet going here.

Oh, God. Let's go. We got to come up with odds for, I may need Nick to get in here because he's a gambler as well. How should we set odds producer Nick for and leave this in the show, please, Nick, because I want this, you giving some. This is on the record, Nick. It's on the record stuff here. Oh, I'm sorry. That's what we don't have to say that.

Start your quick time, Nick. Nick, how many seconds is your quick time? I wasn't prepared for this. You weren't prepared for this. You can come on air too if you want. How should we set a line producer, Nick, for Joe Rogan not continuing with Spotify? Should we lay odds five to one? Should we do the number of months and he stays on air because we don't know how long his contract is?

How would you frame a bet of Joe Rogan continues with Spotify or not in this contract? His contract ends early, let's say, in some way. You can't really make it a yes or no. because his contract is going to end at some point. So it would have to be, does he make it to the end of his contract? Yes or no. I think it's a good way to frame it. Another way could be the, if you actually think that, you know, you'd have to know from

this point forward, what are the amount of months he has left on the deal? Which we don't know. People say it could be three, four or five years is what I've heard. And what? It was $100 million a year or $100 million? No, $100 million was a total value. So if it was three years, it was $33 million, $3 million, $3.5, it was $20. So we don't actually know that.

We know that his contract has at least another year on it, right? I think we'd all agree. Has to. Has to. There wouldn't be this much hullabaloo if there wasn't that much time left. So I guess the way we could do it is, Joe Rogan completes another year of his contract. Look, I'm going to ask you to set a line for us. Could be finished his contract or we could do like a number of months.

Or we could set, let's set both lines. These lines are, they change rapidly. Like if you watch the line for the election this past or in 2020, you know, Trump at one point, at like 8 p.m. was minus 350. And then two hours later when you found out that Philly hadn't reported yet, and that was the biggest thing in Pennsylvania and that was going to swing the state, then Biden went to almost even. And Biden was like plus a ton of money.

Right. So these things rapidly changed. So I'm making these lines based of Daniel Eck defending Rogan yesterday. Yes. For people watching. It could change if the employees decide they're going to do a walkout strike. Obviously the line would swing the other way. But right now.

What if a bunch of sponsors say they're not going to advertise? Totally. Right. But right now, all information considered, I think Rogan leaving, not ending 2022 with the Spotify deal is like plus 450. So if you bet $10, you would win 45. So pretty long odds, I think. Because you think it's very unlikely. I think it's relatively unlikely based on every. He will not finish his contract or 2022? 2022. He's going to end 2022 as a Spotify employee, I think.

Or a Spotify partnership, exclusive, whatever. And another reason why is I just dropped this in there, but Nalai Patel, who is the editor-in-chief at the verge, he was retweeted by Kara Swisher. He made a really, really good point. I just added it to the notes, but I can bring it up. Essentially saying Spotify has been struggling to make deals with critical hardware partners like Amazon, Google, and Tesla because they're all building similar streaming services. And to combat this, Spotify said that they needed to find some leverage.

And one way they did that was in the form of exclusives. So they're using Rogan as a way to deals with other big tech players. So it seems like he's actually weirdly important to them and how they're going to be bargaining. Weirdly. But if that's the case, could he, is there an equally strong argument to be made that he is now liability in that effort? Yeah. Right. And I would say that's equally strong.

Okay. Give us the line on him finishing his contract too. Probably like plus 250. I knew you were to say plus 250. Yeah. The year one, right, that's 2022. He won't finish 2020 with Spotify. Those are longer odds, meaning that there's a less likely chance I think of that happening, right?

So that's plus 450. That's 200 points higher. You would bet 100 and you would win 250 if he ended his contract before 2025 or whatever. Now, what if I wanted to do the opposite? I wanted to bet that he stays to the end of his contract. the odds would be shorter because that's a higher likelihood or that's a lower likelihood. So you would bet $2.50 to get $100? No, it would, they would change because there used to be a VIG.

So it's like usually, you know, it might be like minus $200. For simplicity here. Yeah, you'd probably bet $200 to win $100, something like that. Right. So if you take the other odds, you would be betting $200 to win $100, let's say, let's just do the, he finishes his contract. It's easier. So here we go.

200 to win $100 that he finishes his contract, 100 to win $250. that he doesn't finish his contract. I am going to bet 200 to win 100 that he does finish his contract. I think he's going to finish his contract. I'm going to bet 100 to win whatever more that he doesn't finish his contract. Okay, great. And here's why. I think it will be his decision because I think that the time,

I think this is almost, we are almost certainly at an inflection point for the thing that my friend and I have been talking about for years, which is like any minute now, there's going to be the formation of basically a men's network. It's just going to be like all the red pills. It's going to be all the exiles. It's going to be your Bill O'Reilly's.

It's called calling by David Sachs. Dude tube. Dude tube. Dude tube. Oh my God. Oh, my God. I believe that Joe Rogan will voluntarily leave Spotify to lead the formation of Men's Network.

He resigns with Spotify's blessing. Oh, no. There will be like some messy lawsuits. Or maybe they just weren't. Daniel will actually be thrilled, right? Like Daniel Eck will be thrilled. Because he will be... No, that's what I'm saying is, I think Daniel's move would be.

If it did happen that he resigned, say, I didn't even consider this. If he said, I asked to be let out of my contract, I won't take the last year's money. Daniel, that gave me my blessing. We'll still be on Spotify, which won't be exclusive. That's a... And then they fund the Men's Network. With Elon, totally. Like, right?

Like, there's just going to be, and they'll be like, yay, the truckers, which is, God help us our next story. Here we go. Next story. That is my bet. I'll take $1,000 for that. That's how gambling works, right? Okay, we got our bets on him finishing his contract. I believe he's going to finish it.

Molly believes. He will not. What would you take, Nick? Does he finish his contract or not since you set plans? I don't think he will. Wow. I don't think you will. I think it's, it's, uh, fascinating.

The storm is rising. It really feels like it's getting like crazy right now. Well, that's how these cancellations thing goes. There's momentum. Oh, is that, is that a Q and non thing? Storm is rising? I mean, a lot of people are talking about it on Twitter. And I think it's going to be like,

These big tech companies, the employees have so much power. And if all Spotify employees are just like, hey, we're not coming to work until he's off the platform, I don't know what they're going to do, you know. I think the advertisers hold more power than the employees. I think if we, and also those distribution partners. I think those two actually have more impact. That hardware thing, I did not know that. And I actually think that's a big problem for Daniel, like then I would have even, then he was already in now. I don't know if the hardware partners want to lose Spotify.

So that seems to me like a big risk. Like you were saying in the pre-show, like how frustrated you were, that Spotify didn't work really well in the dashboard of like a Tesla. It was like a limited version, right? So I think people love that Spotify interface. I don't know. Bro Rogan. Funny.

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I want you to go to lemon.io slash twist. Again, lemon.com. And you're going to receive a 15% discount for the first four weeks of work with a developer. What a great deal. He's doing his own comedy club thing with Spotify's money, like in Austin. So that's kind of his thing to do his own comedy clubs,

support other comedians. So if he did like his own Comedy Central slash Joe Rogan Network and he gave everybody shows, because remember, I think he inspired a bunch of people. Like Lex Friedman, I think he inspired to do a show. and I think Kevin Rose inspired

Tim Ferriss to do his show so you could see like a Tim Ferriss Joe Rogan co-lab to create a like a bro network

it's gonna happen oh actually if you got Lex if you had Lex Tim Ferriss Joe Rogan man that would be

the number one podcasting network in the world immediately then you get a little Ben Shapiro in there

oh boy All right. We're now to the part that I don't want to talk about anymore. Facebook and meta. No, God, is that still going on too? Jesus. Back when Facebook, back when Europe passed the GDPR, the general data protection rule,

which is basically their big privacy framework in 2016. So initially the GDPR said, you know, this is not going to be possible. You're not going to be able to transfer data. And every company in the world freaked out. And the, you know, United States, the Department of Commerce, the EU and the Swiss, administration all came in and said, well, maybe we can come up with a loophole. And they came up

with this idea of the privacy shield. If you can transfer this data super securely, then we'll allow it. But then in 2020, the European Court of Justice said, no way. Like, first of all, there's no way you're going to be able to transfer this data securely. Second, it is ultimately in violation of the GDPR. And so Facebook and meta have said, okay, now this is a giant business risk for us. And it's under scrutiny, so the flip-flopping continues. So the flip-flopping continues, and meta is now warning shareholders and the SEC that they might, and this is where it just gets sort of dishy and like, really, has now warning shareholders in the SEC that they might just have to stop doing business in the European

Union. We're going to leave. Wow. Holy cow. So wait a second. They're going to pull an Uber lift kind of move where when they said, hey, listen, we're going to regulate you really hard. We're going to cap the number of ride sharing cars.

famously Uber and Lyft took a very aggressive approach, which was to go to their user base and say, hey, email DeBlazio or whoever and tell them you want to be able to take Uber because if not, we're just going to take our service. And they actually did that in Austin. They paused the Austin service. It created like a third-party app called Rye sharing Austin or something that tried to sort of compete with Uber and Lyft. And then finally, I think they gave in. And this is what Bradley Tusk, who is kind of a lawyer, lobbyist type, who knows how to have a, like manage these relationships. He came on the podcast. He had worked with Uber on this.

And he had, I think, you know, helped refine this aggressive stance. So what we're saying here is, and that was episode 1327, if you want to go into the Archives family, what when Bradley Tusk was on. So the Facebook and Instagram and just turn off in the EU for a week.

Yeah. That would be wild. Yeah. I mean, I think that the question is like, is this a giant bluff by Facebook and meta? If they did turn it off, what would happen, like, or would European users be like, that's cool. We have TikTok, so we're fine. Yeah.

That would be the, I mean, can you imagine you wake up to Instagram like, hey, by the way, December 31st, 2020, will be 2022, but the last day you can use Instagram in Europe. I mean, if you'd like to contact your legislature, click here. Do we believe, so here's what a meta spokesperson said to City A.m., which is like a London publication, we have absolutely no desire and no plans to withdraw from Europe, but the simple reality is that META and many other businesses, organizations, and services rely on data transfers between the EU and the U.S. in order to operate global services. Do we believe that META simply cannot? There is just no technical way for them to do business

without sending data from the EU to the U.S. I think it would be a hassle. And what would happen is you'd have to place your ads twice. as an ad, you know, as a marketer, you'd have to go into the interface, I guess, twice. It's technically completely possible. So I think maybe it's inconvenient for them, but completely possible. Just like other things, you know, if you want to sell something in the EU, and let's say you make a product, a physical product in the world. There are EU regulations around electricity or chemicals or whatever.

If you're a manufacturer or a product maker, you have to pass the United States, North America certification, have to pass the EU. certification. So I think hardware people have to do this. Food, people have to do that, right? Yeah. So, yeah. It sounds crazy that an internet company would have to do it, but it's completely possible. It doesn't seem like it's that hard work. And it seems like them saber rattling, if I'm being honest. Yeah, I think so too. I think they're just saying, I mean, they could, without a doubt, honestly, I think it's probably a bigger burden for smaller companies who would have to have a physical infrastructure in both.

Like, I'm not questioning that for a company, the size of meta, this is a difficult proposition, right? Because if you're just serving Facebook and Instagram to users across Europe, some of them might be Americans, some of them might be citizens of some other country. That's not a member of the EU. Some of them might be EU citizens. Separating out that data is super tricky. Now, you could spin up a physical infrastructure in both places and never share that data,

but then that would mean that you wouldn't have that data to share with your advertising. advertisers, and that's the lifeblood of your business. Like, I do sort of get that it would be a little bit tricky. I think it's probably harder for small businesses, and I'm totally with you that they have the money to do this. They just don't want to, and they are trying to scare people into thinking, you're not going to have any more Facebook. And I'll be real interested to see, you know, we talk about, I have talked for years,

and I think I even saw somebody talking about this with earnings, saying, like, Like, we're really starting to separate out the essential from the voluntary, right? Like, Facebook is a purely voluntary service in many ways, not completely, because a lot of small businesses rely on it. Right. But, like, do you need Instagram? No. Maybe not. If Amazon said, we're going to leave Europe.

That's different. That's different. Or Uber or DoorDash. Like, I can't get from point A to point B. I'm stranded at the airport or, yeah, I can't get an Airbnb. B and I, you know, I guess I could stay in a hotel, but, you know, it's cross-prohibitive for me. I just want to also point out, like, this is continuing the slide. I was just looking at my stock chart.

The peak 52-week high was 384 for meta. They're at 225 now. I think they're down from the peak in the past six months, like 38%. Like, this is becoming existential. I mean, is it going to be a Peloton-like collapse? Price earnings ratio for meta is now. down to 16. So as we do our fun with numbers, you know, as we're apt to do here on this pod, it's starting to look like a buy. But in terms of separating out data sets, let's not be

ridiculous that this is impossible for a company with Facebook's technical ability. Apple, as but one example, operates in China. They have their ICloud service there. They have a local partner. All data for Chinese customers on their iPhones is done with a third-party partnership. Why did Apple do that? So they're They don't have to turn over dissidents. So they don't have to turn over journalists. So they can say, we don't do iCloud. I mean, it's called iCloud and has all the same functionality.

But we don't do it. It's done by this other third party in this province in China. Yep. We don't talk about Apple's Chinese business because we love Apple. But I mean, Apple is literally, Apple is probably turned over more dissidents for torture than and use more slave labor than any company, maybe with the exception of Nike. just so we're clear. Yeah, just so we're 100% clear.

But that really gets to two, you get to two really important points here. One is like sentiment. Sentiment really matters. If you like the product, you will defend them, as we have seen in our YouTube comments all day long. If you don't,

you probably won't. So Facebook is in a doubly weak position here. One is sentiment. Like there are plenty of European users who, given this challenge, might just be like, okay, peace out, you know, moving on.

I'm going to build a website for my small business instead of using Facebook. And two, they're in a financially weak position. Like you just said, like here Facebook is in a total stock market slide. It's power and influence declining dramatically before our very eyes. And this is the moment that they're going to try to make a like, users love us stand a power move. Yeah. I mean, they're going for a knockout punch now.

I mean, I'm sitting here with my new ship, Power Bob, and I'm like, that's a bad move. bad move. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, like if you're going to try to throw a haymaker, you know,

while you're already, like, beat up a little bit in the like seventh or eighth round of a fight, like, it's a high risk maneuver. And,

uh, this is not the time. They're so weak right now. This is like they're going to throw an interception. Like, it's a really bad situation for them. They're hated. Nobody's rooting for them.

Yeah. And this is where, you know, I said this for years, they should have shared a revenue with, content creators and publishers. I hate to tell people this,

but if the New York Times and a bunch of other news organizations were printing money with Facebook and a bunch of creators were printing money with Facebook and they were sharing the wealth and they were protecting people's privacy by letting them pay for a,

you know, ad free collection free, there would be some people rooting for that. Like when YouTube has, when people challenge YouTube, the creators are like, what are talking about? YouTube's great. Facebook, they've never given any money to any partners.

They've always taken 100% of the money. If they had made the same deal with Instagrammers that YouTube made, you take 55, we take 45. Think of all the Instagram people who'd be like, hey, don't mess with Instagram. It's great. They would be the first people talking to the EU regulators or whoever. Hey, man, Facebook's not that bad. I make a living on Facebook. Are you having design problems?

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That's S-U-P-E-R-S-I-D-E dot com slash twist to get $3,000 in credits when you sign up for that annual plan. And the only people Facebook could ever bring up, and you actually brought it up was like, hey, small businesses rely on them. But those small businesses are spending money with Facebook, aren't they? They're spending money on the ad network. So it's kind of like, I mean, they'll spend it somewhere else. So I think you have to build a coalition. And the coalition for Airbnb is the hosts and the fans of that product. Coalition for DoorDash, the drivers, and the people who love to get food.

Same thing with Uber, Lyft, and everybody else. You have to build a coalition of people who you're in business with so that when you do have problems, they fight for you. And Apple users who are delighted with the products fight for them as well. Joe Rogan's people fighting for him. Who's fighting for Facebook right now? 100%. Zero. 100%.

And on top of that, Facebook has quietly behind the scenes and they aren't. very loud about it, but it's pissed off every advertiser it has ever had. Like, advertisers hate working with Facebook because they're so arrogant and their numbers are always wrong. And frankly, it sometimes seems like they just straight about straight up lie about their metrics. So all these, so even though Facebook and Google have the lion's share of digital advertisers right now, you know that advertisers are like, we do sort of wish we had an alternative. Mm-hmm. Oh, God. No one. No one is taking their, like, is going to put in their flag and be like, No.

Is there any path to turning it or if you, I mean, I think we did this on last week, but if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, we started a PR firm, you know, Wooden Calacanus, uh, PR services and we just decided to secure the bag being high price marketing agency. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. What would our crisis advice be to Zuckerberg at this point? I mean, I'm sorry, but it's new C. Like, Mark needs to poll Aleri and Sergey. Yeah. You're the chief product officer. You're the executive chair.

Executive chair. But honestly, the only thing that will give people confidence at this point is like a leadership change. Mark and Cheryl. Oh, really? I thought Cheryl taking the top spot might be an interesting thing. So like she could bridge it like, okay, I know what we did and here's how we make it better. and here's the changes. Okay, so then total leadership.

I mean, Cheryl's like literally complicit in every I mean, honestly, the architect of a lot of this. Of the ad network, for sure. I mean, she architected both ad networks. Yeah. All right. It might work for her to stay, but not be CEO. President.

She becomes president. So, and then you bring in a CEO who, softer, kind, or gentler, CEO. Yeah. Get your, get your, uh, Sundar. Or you're shocked at you. Yeah, you go. Yeah, so she is currently C-O, so she becomes president and you bring in a new C-E-O and C-O-O.

Mm-hmm. And you just start moving towards a kind of gentler. Here's my top two things. Today we're announcing our creator program. Our creator program gives 55% of all revenue to the creators who join the program, and we have a special fund of $250 million for underrepresented creatives. Yada, yada, yada. super cynical move, I know, but I just talked about how cynical those moves are.

We did something really bad. So now we're going to pretend we're going to do something really good over here. Also, like, we're going to give Joe Rogan $100 million, and then we're going to give all these other creators from underrepresented groups, like, I don't know, a million. How does that help? A million each. A hundred million total for Joe.

Right. That's actually a really good point where you look at it. It's like, we're going to give this white comedian a hundred million dollars, and then we're going to give all of the underrepresented black folks in the program. We're going to split the exact same thing. same amount because we just want it to look as bad as possible. It's a little bit of a breadcrumb kind of like, here's some crumbs off the edge of the table kind of situation.

Yeah. Okay, so anyway, there's my first one. And then my second one, we now have a program for $49 a year, $5 a month, where we will delete all of your data and not track you if you pay for the service and we'll remove all I add so you can have a delightful experience. You do those two things. You do those two things. The entire ship turns around.

New. With a new CEO, the stock rally. these 30%. Yeah. 10% on the 10, 15% on the CEO announcement, 5, 10% on each of the other two. You now have an ad-free, tracking-free version that's paid, and we'll share what percentage of people use it for regulators to see how effective it is. And the second one is, listen, we're going to share the wealth with news organizations and, oh, that's the other piece. So the creators include news organizations. So any news organization can put their full stories on the site and we'll get them 55% of the revenue to those pages.

So if you're the New York Times or you're this week in startups or anybody in between the verge, you can publish your content like Google AMP and we will just pay you on those pages and you can display your full story in Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. And when you see the full story there, we'll just ship you 55% of the revenue and link back to you. So you get a little SEO juice. It's all good in the hood. It's all good.

All right. GoFundMe is returning 7.8 million in USD, 10 million Canadian. of donations intended for the convoy of Canadian truckers protesting Canadian vaccine mandates. The protest call called the Freedom Convoy has been underway since January 29th, if you've been living under Iraq. According to the Ottawa police, there have been seven people arrested 100 tickets issued. 60 criminal investors so far, mischief thefts, hay crimes, property damage, whatever. GoFundMe was created to pay for food, fuel, and other expenses for the Freedom Convoy. Originally, GoFundMe, cut off the funding after determined the protests violated the sites,

terms of service due to unlawful activity? Okay. I don't understand that. I thought it was civil disobedience, but maybe there was inciting violence. Okay, fair enough. That would be, if they are inciting violence, that would be totally valid. Violence has occurred. Violence has occurred. Okay. And so I guess we have to make that.

That's a jump. That's a decision they have to make. That's a hard one to make, but I guess they made it. There were also sidings of not seeing Confederate flags at the protest. Okay. Not good. Quote from GoFundMe Medium Post. Following a review of relevant facts and multiple discussions with local law enforcement and city officials,

the fundraiser is now in violation of our terms of service, term eight, which prohibits the promotion of violence or harassment, has been removed from the platform. According to GoFundMe's first update, we will work with Organized to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2020 organized as and verified by GoFundMe. People went nuts in response to this, being accused of fraud by the likes of Governor DeSantis from Florida. In response to the backlash, GoFundMe decided to refund all the updates. The update we issued earlier below enabled all donors to get a refund as outlined and a plan to distribute remaining funds to verify charities selected by Freedom Convoy organized.

However, due to donor feedback, we are simply simplifying the process. We will automatically confront all contributions directly, which makes sense. That is the right move. Thoughts on this one. I mean, you can't do that. You can't say, we're canceling this fundraiser and we're redistributing the money to charity because you're not the, you're not a government. Like, I think initially GoFundMe,

made an emotional decision here in the face of the fact that as this protest got bigger, thanks to the support of various people including Joe Rob. Yep. What it did was start to attract a bunch of January 6 types. Yes. No, I mean, look, it started to attract a bunch of people who have been essentially engaging in an ongoing campaign of harassment and occasionally violence to get what they want, right, to stop, to like protest vaccine mandates and to say that their freedom is paramount

above all. And so you see Info Wars flags. You get the Confederate flag, right? You have a bunch of randos. You get the wacky fringe. So GoFundMe is looking at this and they're like, oh, good. Now we're part of a terrorist movement, right? Like, because these tactics are fundamentally terroristic and they're like, okay, well, if we were law enforcement, we'd be like, oh, you were raising money in pursuit of this thing that is going to inevitably turn violent and we can seize the funds and do whatever we want. That's like what the government would do. Yes. Go fund. We can't do that. Right. And that was a, that was a mistake. This is the problem. This is exactly the same question as Spotify. What do you do when everybody is insane? Right. And everyone is chasing this,

this, this, like, super fired up base. Yes. Such a grip too. Yeah. They can't do that. But the thing is, then someone came to their senses and a lawyer was like, you can't do that. Like, I get what you're saying, but you can't do that. And now they're refunding the money and the story's over other than the fact that, like, it's a, other than the fact that the city of Ottawa is like under, you know, like complete state of emergency. Yeah. Because this is this is completely out of freaking hand. I tell you, I would have had no problem with the January 6 protests if all these folks surrounded, you know, the Capitol, sat down, took out their guitars.

and saying we shall overcome. Totally fine. Civil disobedience. We believe something was wrong. The second you start beating up cops, breaking windows, you now have opted into violence and committing crimes, and you go to jail. And then if you decide you're going to bring a bunch of long rifles

and you have a plan to take over the building violently, I don't care if you're on the left and, you know, you're a part of the weather underground in the 60s, and those are liberals, you know, committing violence and crime and killing people and beating up cops. That was terrorism, too. or you're on the right. It's all the same violence, right?

Unacceptable. And that's what happened here. You know, this could have been a nonviolent protest, which is completely allowable. And if people don't want to get the vaccine and die, I'm really sad about that, but I don't want to hold people down to give them shots either.

This is literally people, nobody's holding down these truckers and trying to give them shots. This is literally like they're saying, if you want to come into our city, Ottawa, which has a 90% vaccination rate, and you want to bring this virus with you because you won't get vaccinated for work. Right.

Like, your company and or a country has a right to set its own rules. And if you don't want them and you don't like them, go get another job. Move on. Yeah. I see, this is the one where it's a jump ball for me. I understand for frontline workers. I understand pilots and people working on airplanes, closed spaces, teachers.

Yeah, like if you're going to be interfacing with the public, that organization has a right for. you to require you to get a vaccine. I don't know with truckers. Are they? Hmm. I don't know. Are they interfacing?

Should they be forced to get it? I don't know. Where do you think the line is where people should be forced to get a vaccine in their jobs? To keep their job. Do you have a feeling on it? It's like, for me, it's a, if you're publicly facing a teacher, healthcare worker, and the whole system shuts down. If you're an independent contractor working from home, no.

If you're a trucker, are you interfacing with that many people? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Like, why wouldn't any company say, I don't care if you work at home. If you get it, you're a productivity risk for us. Either you get sick and you miss a bunch of days of work or you get, you know, you die, right? Like, you're in insurance risk. Like, every company has a right to make a risk-based analysis for itself.

And if a trucker who is unvaccinated gets COVID and is out for five days to forever, As a result, that's a business risk. So do they have the right to make that call as a business? Sure. Yeah. And then I guess mitigating all this is the fact that Omicron is not as deadly, yada, yada, and we're kind of at the tail end of this. I just can't wait for this to be over.

We can stop fighting about this, like, group of people, the 20% of people who refuse to get vaccinated. Who don't just refuse to get vaccinated, who refuse to get vaccinated violently. Yeah, okay, that's a subsection of the 20%. There's a subset of the 20%. Yeah, and that part is just like, I'm sorry, that's indefensible. Finally, it should never be condoned if they are, in fact, being violent, I have no sympathy. They should be arrested for beating up cops or anybody else, period under story.

I cannot believe that this is going to be considered a lefty position. I think a business has an inalienable right to make decisions that are in the best interest of its business. Yeah, you're a capitalist. I mean, I think that's a capitalist position. And if I'm a company and I want to make money and I want to maximize my productivity, I don't want my people getting. sick. Yeah. Or having an outbreak.

I mean, it's actually, you're pretty closely aligned with how a lot of factories are looking at this. Yeah. I was actually watching. This is a productivity question.

It's super freaking mercenary. It is pretty mercenary. Yeah. Anyway, this pandemic has got to be over. Please, Lord, let this be over.

Because we're literally fighting over. Oh, now I feel like everybody is fighting over the end game now. And then it's going to be fighting over the blame game, right? That's the next phase, I predict. It's like the second half of the year. It's going to be years.

is going to be like the 9-11 commission. It's going to be like the, you know, Russian investigation. It's going to be years of like, who made a bad decision in the middle of a hundred-year pandemic? Like, kind of hard to make these decisions. Yeah. I mean, like, the mask band-aids one is like, was there any downside to wearing masks when we didn't know how deadly this was and the hospitals were full? No.

No. And now is there, conversely with Omicron, like, and if the masks are in fact doing nothing. I mean, we're wearing a mask from the, literally, you know, I'm up here in the mountains and like, nobody's wearing a mask, not even from the front desk to the table at the restaurant and then taking them off. Like that whole thing or like on the mountain skiing, there's nobody wearing a mask. And everybody sitting next to each other on the six person lift, no masks. And this is liberal country. This is not Tennessee or something or Texas. We're not in Texas or Florida here.

Liberals have given up on mass mandates. I mean, are you, what are you seeing in the Bay Area? Are people still wearing masks? Oh, they'll be, I mean, it's a cold dead hand situation in the area. Like, I'm going to be out here, like, take your fricker mask off, like, give it up. And it's not going to happen. I mean, I think Aaron Staley in our chat makes a really good point. Every single leader in the world made a bad decision and a whole series of them.

And they continue to make the bad. And now the decisions are emotional and they're political. And they're not about, right, like the completely obvious statement that a business has a right to make decisions. that are in the best interest of its business at the end. Exactly. We are so far past that when you can, at the snap of a finger, whip up, you know, an insane series of protests with Nazi flags out front because you don't want to do that.

The, like, the repercussions of this are going to last for years. I'll tell you what I found most offensive. This is a nightmare. This was the one I thought was the most offensive. If you are anti-vax and you want to do a protest and you want to do a sit-in, okay fine do your sitting do not bring your nine year old and then have them have yourself get arrested and then have your nine year old taken by police because you and the two parents have been arrested and there's nobody else to take care of your nine year old that you're scarring by bringing them to

this goddamn protest did you see that in new york no somebody sent me the video like this is a lot of bad parenting you guys are doing you're arresting eight year olds and it's like then somebody's like jake how don't fall for this nonsense the eight year old or nine years year old is being gently taken by two female police officers. It's a little girl. They're being incredibly compassionate talking to her, trying to calm her down, putting her in the back of a police car because they have to take responsibility for an eight-year-old who's alone in New York City, while these dips, parents went into protest, not being able to go to the museum without a Vax car. And it's like, literally, you brought your eight-year-old or nine-year-old to a protest to be

abandoned and scarred for life. Like, not a good move. Seriously, as like one parent, to another, how dare you? If it was a non-violent protest where you're singing kumbaya and we shall overcome on the steps of the museum, okay, fine. You made a parenting decision. I might not agree with it. But don't get arrested and abandon your child for your own. It's really gross. I'm really upset about that one. If it's true, I mean, who knows what's true? Somebody can fact check me because people are releasing videos on Twitter and like, I don't know the providence of what's happening and have these videos, and then people are like, take a position. I'm like, I'm literally not taking a position on a random viral video without context.

Yeah. That being the number one one. Let's change the subject briefly, shall we? Okay. To another startup. To another startup, Peloton, which, I know, totally. Our companies are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We're going to have to, like, bring it back down to startup plan.

However, we talked, time has no meaning last week, I guess, about Peloton's massive stock drop and whether it had started to potentially become an acquisition target. We talked about like, who on earth would ever buy them? And I, of course, was like, well, the design aesthetic would suggest Apple, no question. And then Jason was like, no, no, no, Amazon. And then sure enough, here comes the Wall Street Journal to be like, turns out Amazon and others are indeed sniffing around Peloton to potentially buy it. Of course.

Explain again, because this was such a great insight, explain again why Peloton. I mean, I'm sorry, why Amazon? Why Amazon? Okay. All right, let's roll the clip and hear what I said, and then I'll add some commentary to it. Three, two, go.

Because Amazon could move these, like nobody's business. Amazon should buy it. $400 knockoff, though. I know, but if Amazon owned Peloton and they made it part of Amazon Prime, your Amazon Prime membership gets you, you don't have to pay the $40 for it, And it just makes more people not unsubscribe from prime because it's a sticky product.

Mm-hmm. And they don't have health right now. So if you want to keep people from unsubscribing. So that's like it. It's really about churn and adding new members. So let's take a look. If Peloton had two or three million members, what percentage are Amazon Prime members? Let's say 50%, 60%.

What's the overlap? You know, Amazon could quickly figure that out. They literally just during due diligence, get the email list, get the names. They have a data scientist to take. that and they can do this with an NDA as part of the M&A process or a third party could do it. And they can just tell them, we estimate 50% overlap. You know what that means? That means a million more prime members?

Oh, my Lord. And what it means is then Amazon does not need to make a profit off of Peloton. What's the number one complaint about Peloton? Too expensive. Right. 40 bucks a month, 30 bucks a month times 12 months. You keep the thing for 50 months. you're starting to talk about $2,000, $1,500 in fees.

Well, if you bundle that, now the Amazon Prime just gets bigger and bigger, or the family plan from Apple would be more robust. And so I think Apple and Amazon are the two logical folks, but I think Amazon more logical because they have that supply chain. They're making white label products in China. They have their, we talked about that brand from India. What's that, slow-mo? Dang it.

We keep talking about it, and I forget the name every time. It's the worst name ever. Solina. Salomon. I don't know. Saramon. It's the Saramon brand. Saramon.

Solimo. Solimo. The worst branding ever. But anyway, I have those Solimo vitamins. I take them every day. Yeah. And so I think they could produce it cheaper, reduce the margin on it. Say, you know what?

We don't need to make money on this. What we need to do is make an impact and get to 10 million members and then keep them. So that's one of the things when you watch these acquisitions. When they occur, somebody in the business development unit has a thesis. And the thesis here is more prime members, which was the same Whole Foods concept. Whole Foods became a way to sign people up for Amazon Prime. You ever go to a supermarket modeling? They're like, do you have a Safeway number?

Do you have this number? Do you have that number? Right aid, whatever they want your phone number? Same thing. That's why they bought Amazon. That's why they bought Whole Foods. Yeah. I mean, honestly, and Amazon is already in a hardware and a fulfillment business.

They would have economies of scale around the supply chain issues. I've already said, like, that's not really a thing for us. I mean, I think it makes a ton of sense. There were some interesting other potential buyers in that article, but I can't remember what they were. Yeah, I don't think they were any... Basically, what we're saying is here, like, that was a cute idea I had about Apple buying them,

but this is why Jason's so good at this, because Amazon makes so much sense. I would say... So much sense. I would rank... I think it's 60-70% chance. If there is a buyer, I would say 70% Amazon, 20% Apple, 10% other, if I was handicapping.

It would legitimately move units. Like, I have a knockoff, right? I have the mixed bike and I'm paying 30 bucks a month for the subscription. And I bought it. Well, I bought it from their site. But if Amazon all of a sudden came along, it was like, we sell pelotones and PS are 20% cheaper. And the membership is rolled in with Prime. But you already have?

I would actually buy a Pelot. Like, there's no need for me to do. do that. I have an exercise bike and I still would be like, oh, that's great because I don't want to pay for this other thing. Like genius. Genius. What a great episode. Thanks for watching everybody and we'll see you next time on this week's service. Bye bye. Bye. Hey guys, Rachel reporting here. On February 14th and 15th, we'll be hosting Founder University Intensive. This is a two-day program for Founders. Now, this course is only open to women founders. We'll be hosting a course open to everyone on May 9th and 10. You can apply for both at founder.com.

And applications for the longer 12-week Founder University program are due on February 14th, and you can also apply for those at Founder.university. Follow Jason and Molly on Twitter at Jason and at Molly Wood. If you're not a boomer and prefer TikTok, search for this week in startups to find the fan account at this underscore week underscore in underscore startups. And our official account at TWA startups, but honestly the fan account is way better than ours. And if you're still not tired of hearing from Jason, and six days a week, you can hear him read his book, Angel at angelthebook.com slash audible.