Airbnb’s IPO, Amazon breaks into the pharmacy business, and predictions on a CNN sale

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Mm-hmm.

How are you doing?

Mm-hmm.

I'm good.

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, or as I call it, the Festival of Millions of Regrets.

Are you having a big...

Don't tell me you're having a big Thanksgiving, Scott.

Don't.

You know, I no longer do big Thanksgivings, Kara, because I find out every holiday that my family is more racist than I thought.

Last Thanksgiving,

I brought home my boyfriend, who is a person of color, and my wife and kids were rude to him.

They were rude to him.

Don't, don't do it.

That is good Thanksgiving, humor.

That is good Thanksgiving.

That is good Thanksgiving.

I hope you're having a small Thanksgiving.

I think it's very important that everyone just sucks it up and realizes what an incredible

siege we're under right now.

It happens to be at a higher point than the summer, and so we have to all behave ourselves and

stop making this so ridiculous.

It's such a silly thing.

We have to get back to business.

So put on your masks, social distance, have small Thanksgivings and Christmases.

That's just the way it's going to be.

Thank you.

I'm going a little foxy on this.

I think people need to make their own decisions with the right data and right information.

It's fine.

But Scott, that's what we've been doing the whole time.

And we're an embarrassment across the world.

I agree with you there, sister.

But you know what?

A lot of it is

the biggest, in my opinion.

What?

And this wasn't in our banter.

You know what it's just so ridiculous and makes people lose faith in their government?

What?

Mayor de Blasio has figured out a way to keep restaurants open but not schools open.

Yeah, I know.

So great.

I can go to Shake Shack, but my kids are at home.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, if you wanted to take some of that,

if you wanted to take some of that $700 billion in PPP so we could keep fucking Lasquina open or give small business owners who are the wealthiest people in America a bailout, take a tenth of that and give it to schools so schools can remain open, that's how you save a tragedy to the comments.

I think that was a bad thing.

There was nothing more important than keeping our schools open.

And the government has,

this was a huge opportunity for them to really make a difference in people's lives.

50% of low-income kids who were tracking with their higher-income cohort or peers at public schools have fallen off the map when it comes to math.

We are losing it.

We're literally losing a generation of kids.

And everyone's like, oh my gosh, I hope Strand Bookstore doesn't go out of business.

Who gives a fuck?

Okay.

Now you're going to get emails from Strand or people, but that's okay.

Owned by someone who's worth $50 to $100 million and is now making public pleas to bail her out.

Yeah, I know.

I'm aware of this.

The school thing was a real miss.

It really was.

And I wonder how other schools across the country are dealing with it.

Some are still open, some are not.

But that should be our resources.

That should be our absolute priority, 100%.

I'll tell you if they're open or not.

Do they have resources?

That's all it comes down to.

Plexiglass, distancing, low-density classes, testing every week.

It's about resources.

Full stop.

You are 100% correct, Scott.

Scott, where are your kids in school?

Are they on Zoom school?

Oh, wait.

I've also made a discovery.

I'm sort of into BDSM.

You want to know how to figure that out?

No, no, what?

Oh, no.

Okay.

So bad jokes.

Random pivot.

So it's like 10.30 at night.

What was it?

Monday night.

And I get a call late at night from Stephanie Ruhl, and I answer, thinking, okay, someone's dead.

Brian Williams is dead or something.

And I pick up the phone and I hear literally, you motherfucker, you sack of shit.

You think you're so important.

You can count.

And I'm giving you the PG-13 version of what you said.

I've gotten that call from Anthony Rule.

And so, of course, the first thing I say is, mom, just to dial things down a little.

And I had a couple observations.

The first is.

Why was she yelling at you?

She thought I'd canceled on her for the next day.

I was supposed to go on the next day.

And it ends up that FDA, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb had canceled on her.

Oh.

And she thought it was me.

And I made some observations.

One, there are not that many Scots who have accomplished anything in the world.

Yeah.

They're just on.

They're Scottish.

They're Scott Ellis.

And then, so, oh, by the way, I told her Scott Bale canceled on her the next day.

That's the only one I can think of.

That's a bad name.

You're bad.

And two, when a woman calls me late at night and starts hurling expletives at me, I kind of enjoyed it.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

We're moving along.

We're talking things.

I don't even know how to get out of this one.

In any case, I'm moving on to actual stories instead of

your various idiotic jokes by before early school early pretty good listen apple oh yeah made a move apple is cutting half its fee it takes from small app developers in its app stores the company faces multiple allegations of bullying and antitrust violations in their app store i thought this was a master stroke as usual we talked about them doing this remember i said i thought they would just take care of it um i think it was the smart move it starts the discussions off with its app developers it cuts the legs out from all their complainers a little bit uh i thought it was pretty sharp i thought it was a pretty sharp move on Apple's part.

And why not?

Instead of just, they were sort of in a class by themselves.

They weren't sort of in the Google, Facebook, Amazon area, but they certainly were under fire.

And

I thought it was a smart move on their part.

What do you think?

I think if there was a Sesame Street version of Dick Cheney, and that is someone you took who is incredibly smart, incredibly shrewd, but also much more likable, it'd be Tim Cook.

I think this guy is literally the most strategic thinker in the world.

Let's talk about this man, okay?

All right, all right, all right.

So they get a press release, and the press release is we're cutting app fees by half for small businesses.

That is a great release.

And by the way, the DOJ gets that and thinks, well,

they are attempting to take the wind out of antitrust sales before the boats even show up to the shores.

But let's look at what it really means for Apple.

Do you know what percentage of revenue they get from small business apps that are under $1 million a year in revenue?

Zero.

5%, which means in exchange for a great press release, in exchange for potentially not inoculating, but a bit of a booster shot or a flu shot against antitrust, they give up 2.5% of their revenue.

But what is the telling thing here that any economist will say that this reflects?

This shows that Apple is in fact absolutely 100% a monopoly.

Because in healthy markets, the biggest companies are able to reduce rents.

So Epic Games should be able to take that 30% down to 25% or 20%, but they can't.

And the small guys should have no pricing power.

And what it ends up is because Apple is a monopoly and owns the Rails, the biggest companies, for example, Walmart.

It can give dispensation to whoever it wants.

It's a price maker.

It's a monopoly.

It's a price maker.

But if P ⁇ G shows up to Walmart and says we have to raise our prices 1%, they can do it.

And the little guys have no power because that is what I'd call a natural economic ecosystem.

With Apple, the biggest players, Epic literally, which is a juggernaut, Epic is a a juggernaut, threatens to pull out, threatens lawsuits.

And it's literally like a gnat flying into the windshield that is the monopoly that is Apple.

I find this fascinating, Kara.

So, what are they going to do?

What is Epic going to do?

What is Epic going to do?

They're going to swallow that jagged little bill of monopoly power called Apple.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where it goes, but I thought it was a nice move on their part.

I think they'll still have to make continued concessions.

They have to make continued concessions.

Super smart.

But this is a nice beginning of a concession in that it helps Apple in every way.

What company could announce their cutting prices in half and lose 2.5% of the revenue?

Yeah.

Anyway, super smart.

Super smart.

Dick Chandey on Sesame Street.

Dick Chandey.

Don't care.

Dick Cheney.

That's not nice.

Dick Chaney is smart.

I understand that, but there's a little bit of a history.

Deeply misunderstood, man.

He didn't invade the people who weren't.

Deeply misunderstood.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

I think we understand him quite well.

I think there's such a thing.

His wife's the gangster.

His wife's the strongest.

She is.

I met her years ago when she was an editor of Washingtonia magazine, and I was going to work on some pieces for her.

She scared me even back then, I have to tell you.

I was a young, young reporter,

and she was very sharp.

She was quite a sharp cookie.

Yeah, impressive woman.

In any case,

a couple little other things we have talked about.

Obviously, President Trump fired Chris Krebs, the U.S.

director of cybersecurity.

What's going on there?

What's going on there?

I'm trying to get him to talk to me.

I will find out when he talks to me.

But he rejected Trump's claims of voter fraud.

He didn't, but the office he ran did because it's true.

And therefore, because he told the truth, Trump fired him and announced it over Twitter.

It's just it's just ridiculous.

It's sort of these last gasp attacks on people who are.

I'm sorry.

Isn't that you isn't that isn't being fired right now?

Like, that's it.

You'd have to get off the Titanic.

That's it.

We're putting you on a line.

He's from Microsoft.

He's, you know, he was doing his job.

And anybody doing their job, you get fired because pointing out the obvious is not what they want to do.

And I would talk about, we don't even want to talk about

the testifying in front of Congress by Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, although his beard looked even better, I thought, Jack Dorsey's.

And so there was nothing that happened there.

It was ridiculous.

It was Lindsey Graham, you know, twirling around doing whatever the hell Lindsey Graham does all day long.

And Ted Cruz being irritating as usual.

That's pretty much my take.

Thank you.

That's my report from watching those things all day.

It was ridiculous.

Nothing, no blow was landed.

A lot of bullshit was slung.

And

the only interesting was Mark's not going to kick off Steve Bannon until he threatens to kill three or four people, I guess.

Something like that.

Hmm.

That's my entire,

everybody was mad at Mark.

That's your deep investigative journalism.

Everybody's mad at Mark.

Jack

water off a duck's back.

Nothing, nothing, big lot of nothing.

So nothing.

These are ridiculous calling these people up to yell at them over things that aren't true.

In any case, we're not going to talk about it because we have other big stories to talk about.

There's so many.

So on to big stories.

Airbnb finally filed to go public this week and unveiled its S1.

The company filed for a billion-dollar IPO, which is expected to price in December.

So, they're going to be public very soon.

A good move, a big, bold move by them in this very depressed economic environment.

Their S1 detailed the expanding travel giant, but also massive losses the company took because of the pandemic, which they've talked about.

He talked about on my podcast, and

everybody understood this.

Airbnb reported nearly a 700 million net loss in the first nine months of 2020 as they reconfigured their businesses, but it also reported $219 million in profits for the third quarter, which Brian Chesky had also talked about as bookings picked up more speed, and it shifted to closer-to-home stuff.

So they moved rather quickly, this company, in dealing with the pandemic, and I thought rather well.

So, Scott, give us an overview of the S1, and

how do you think this is going to go?

As you know, I think you think this is a big stock, big important stock.

Yeah, so

I think this company is going to to be arguably the next kind of tech company we look back on and think, I wish I'd gotten involved in that early on.

If you think about DoorDash, I think DoorDash is going public because of the pandemic.

Obviously, food delivery has skyrocketed.

I think the revenues have almost doubled.

Whereas Airbnb is going public despite a pandemic.

And that is, this company is so strong and so robust that in the face of an unprecedented destruction in travel and hospitality, in Q3, which looked more like the world was supposed to look, that was our bit of a head fake that things are getting better.

The company clocked almost a quarter of a billion dollars in profits.

And there's just so much here in terms of monopoly power.

The most exciting stat from the S1, which I did read, was that: get this, get this.

Approximately 91% of all traffic to Airbnb is coming through direct or unpaid channels.

Meaning, meaning

they may be the first first consumer tech company

to exit or be released from the Facebook Google stranglehold.

Well, Amazon, but go ahead.

Amazon is Google's biggest customer.

I know that, but I think Amazon is now, you go to Amazon directly, but go ahead.

Yes.

Okay.

I'd love to see those statistics.

But you're right.

You're right.

That's a really interesting thing that you found in there.

It's worked out.

Airbnb and Amazon.

What other, I don't care if you're Chanel or Delta Airlines.

You don't have 91% of your traffic for free.

I mean, that's just staggering.

You have

7 million homes, more than any other brand combined.

It's already, I mean, I'm a brand guy, right?

If you type in, if you took the 50 biggest tourist destinations, let's pick Orlando, and you went,

Orlando, Marriott, Orlando, Hilton, Orlando, Stay, Orlando, Airbnb.

The amount of searches for Orlando or the city in Airbnb across the 50 biggest tourist destinations, those searches are greater than every other travel search combined.

This is, this is, Airbnb, as we sit here today, is the strongest traveler hospitality brand in history.

There is no travel brand that has the global differentiation and the global relevance of Airbnb.

And typically, when you have the strongest brand in your sector, market capitalization catches up.

In addition, they're going into a market where all their competition is impaired.

All their competition is getting the shit kicked out of it.

They They can't make a capex investment.

Those hotels have to become technological like Airbnb is.

They are forced into

that.

Exactly.

They're all owned by wealthy people, and then a flag comes in like Marriott that takes 8% to 12% of the revenue and runs the reservation system and gives you the brand.

So

they don't have the coordinated deep pockets to, it's the problem with the franchise model.

I think Airbnb can come in here and sweep up a lot of the stuff that it wants, you know, a lot of these hotels or new hotel configurations.

Let's talk about the pandemic.

Oh, what do you know?

The study comes out in the New York Times that the four super spreader venues are gyms, full service restaurants, cafes, and hotels.

So all of a sudden, Airbnb used to be kind of the place where you went if you're a little younger, a little scrappier.

Now it's going to be where people go for a premium non-COVID

experience.

When you think about this thing, when you think about, oh, and by the way, they've decided they want to exit the arbitrage of human capital.

They are arbitraging assets.

They've set up a fund for their host.

Do you know that 71% of their units are single-site?

I mean, they do have some problems.

They can talk about institutional ownership.

The average Airbnb host is a woman in her 30s.

I mean, there's just so many things to like about this company.

And if you think about when it comes back, I'm trying to put a value on it.

They say they're going to go value or they're going to go public at a valuation of 30 billion.

I think asset light model, global brand equity.

Technology.

Technology.

I'm trying to think who is like that.

The only companies that I can think are like that are a little bit booking.com, which trades at five times revenues, or

MasterCard and Visa.

That's owned by the Snapchat.

MasterCard and Visa, which trade at 20 times revenues.

So if this thing does $6 billion next year,

you're talking about something that probably is $50 to $100 billion plus within its first year of trading.

I just think I absolutely love this thing.

I think it's going to be a case study for a long time.

I think the other interesting thing culturally is that if you look at the leadership of Snap, Pinterest, and Airbnb, their backgrounds aren't in technology.

Their backgrounds are in design.

Well, some of them are.

Yes, Brian's is, but they have technology people.

Some of the founders are quite technical.

It used to be,

LBC said, who's the tech guy, right?

And what's interesting.

There's four of them.

There's four founders, which is people don't realize.

Brian, of course, gets a lot of the attention, but there's four.

I actually, you know, it's so weird.

I met them for coffee when they started the company at a place in San Francisco, the four of them.

There were four young guys, and they were just trying to house people.

There was an event in San Francisco and they just started the company.

And one of them was highly technical.

I don't even remember meeting which one was which, but it was really interesting as they began to talk about it, you know, in doing that.

But I think they always put tech at the heart of what they were doing.

But they also added, like Steve Jobs did, design.

Design was just as critically important.

Ease of use, simplicity of platform.

And when they ran into problems like the orgy thing, or they ran into a bunch, the party thing, the orgy thing.

It's always around the same thing.

Or the fight.

That's a feature, not a bug.

That's a feature, not a bug.

I told you that's a good thing.

I immediately want to book an Airbnb now.

I don't even know what you're talking about.

There was the thing where the people had the orgy and made a mess of that woman's apartment.

Oh, that never happens in a hotel room.

Just so you know, that never happens in a hotel room.

Why do you say that?

Because I had Brian, I've known Brian for a long time and I have a lot of regard for him.

And he,

I have to say, I think he's possibly my favorite of the internet people that I talk to because he's a decent man and he's really, he changes and evolves in a way that's really I agree, except I would phrase it, he's the one I hate the least.

Okay.

You're right.

That's a fair point.

But I had him on stage, I think, with a hotel person at something very early on, right after the orgy problem, which was big.

It got a lot of attention.

And Brian obviously was under siege, a very inexperienced young CEO, didn't know how to deal with this.

But I'll never forget.

And I said, well, what are you going going to do about this?

How do you respond to this hotel person that's saying all these problems?

And he looked up, and I'll never forget the CEOs.

People have been having orders in hotels for decades now.

So I don't really know why I'm getting all the crap.

It was like so fantastic.

And I decided he was fine.

I thought that was a really interesting thing.

And then I read news.

I remember reading news that someone trashed, you know, someone, they had to call the police because someone trashed an Airbnb.

And I'm like, well, have you ever seen Johnny Depp check into a hotel?

I mean, anyways, there is.

Wasn't good.

They didn't handle it well.

They They didn't handle it well initially.

I'll tell you that.

That was one because they were a very new and nascent company.

And then they immediately put in insurance in place and a bunch of things.

Then this party houses happened, which they didn't deal with quickly, but then they did.

Obviously, they made a lot of miscues around cities.

They're still at war with New York in a lot of ways.

They had a series of posters that were sort of ill, stupid.

You know, you're welcome for the money we're giving you.

But they did move to correct it in terms of paying taxes and different things like that.

Now, there's still all kinds of issues, and the hotel unions are really on them like crazy.

But I think the hotel unions, just like with Uber and the taxi unions,

taxi groups, have lost.

They have lost this fight with Airbnb.

People like it.

It's easy to use.

It talks to small business and this problems that they cause, this idea of taking all the rentals out of San Francisco and putting them to Airbnb doesn't matter anymore right now because of the pandemic.

And so the hotel unions have lost the narrative that they had around this company.

I've always compared them to Uber, and I think this company, I mean, their last quarter, that quarter of a billion-dollar profit, I'm not sure Uber's ever even gotten even threatened to do that.

No.

Their hosts or their people they're working with, their quote-unquote partners, are setting up, you know, do actually pretty well.

Yeah.

And if you look at the growth, it has the same asset life.

And by the way, Uber has an $81 billion market capitalization.

So if Airbnb sitting here today is 30 and

Uber's 80, I think those numbers are going to flip

in the next 24 months.

Anyways,

I'm obviously like, I'm just in love with this company.

And

I go on the app.

I like the design.

It's intuitive.

It feels instinctive.

I like the fact they're arbitraging assets.

They're treating their 4 million hosts like actual partners.

They've set up an equity fund, and they were smart.

They obviously have empathy.

They set it up before the stock goes up 10x

so that these people might actually develop their own economic security instead of just the nice white college-educated people at HQ.

So I'm a, I'm, anyway.

You know, what's interesting is he's had a lot of management turmoil.

He had someone come in.

He had a big problem with one of

sort of the kind of a,

I would call it a slick guy that came in and was trying to boss Brian around, and they had a big falling out, which I agreed with Brian on this particular situation.

But, you know, he's struggling.

A little like Jeff Bezos, he's moved forward and learned.

And I think that's,

not all founders make it to the next level.

And I think he's done a lot of stuff that has given him credit to make it not always perfect.

And one of the things when I talked, I did a podcast with him last, and I'm hoping to do one really soon, is

he really

learned from his mistakes, which I think is, and admits it and stuff like that.

And he couldn't be more polar opposite than Travis Kalinek, I remember at the time.

But one of the things that's important that they have there is they also took a lot of great ideas that he loved, like the airline.

There was an airline thing they were working on.

The magazine, the movie.

The magazine, the content, which are good ideas.

They're all good ideas, by the way.

And he just put them in the drawer.

Like, that's really hard to do, right?

He immediately put them in the drawer.

And I don't, I think they've got a lot of things that they can now move into once the pandemic is over.

And by the way, when the pandemic is over, people are renting Airbnbs close to home.

It's going to explode.

People are going to be like, let me out of here.

Let me get to Italy.

Let me get to wherever.

And I think their business is going to explode.

There's a key point in what you said, and it's a lesson.

We always talk about big companies, but it's a lesson for small business.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

And every company should be looking at every expense and saying, how do I reduce it, negotiate it, or eliminate it?

And they went, they used this crisis.

They cut a billion dollars in marketing expense.

They laid off 25%

of their staff, which isn't easy.

The executive management forego their salaries.

And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, so they get in fighting shape.

They massively reduce costs.

And then what happens when the market comes back?

All of a sudden, they're like, oh, what do you know?

We're profitable.

Whereas they were talking about profitability in several years.

All of a sudden, they were for a while.

All of a sudden, the market came back and they do a quarter of a billion dollars in profits.

So, I mean, getting in fighting shape, losing weight, getting in fighting shape.

I hope that's not fat shaming.

Anyways, getting in fighting shape.

Once the winds come back, once the tide is on your side, you can cover a ton of ground.

Yeah, I think they'll come back with a lot of those.

I think they'll get into airlines.

I think that's an area that's ripe for disruption in terms of charters and things like that.

It's difficult business, but boy is that an area to be.

Another, you know, right now, especially the airlines where they are, it just shows how airlines have just been financial vehicles and not innovation vehicles.

And so I think you'll see that.

I think you'll see a whole bunch of stuff from them that they'll bring back.

And it'll put them hotels.

I think they'll probably get into hotels in a little bit more significant.

They bought...

One of my favorite apps, and I'm totally blanking on it.

What did they buy?

Hotels tonight.

Hotels tonight.

Excuse me.

It's one of my favorite apps that I do.

I agree.

I love it.

I love that app.

And

they'll get into hotels in a really interesting way.

And

it's going to be pick of the litter for them.

What are they going to do?

I think you're right.

I think with the kind of momentum and access to cheap capital they're going to have, the gangster move they'll need to make is to go vertical.

The question is where they'll go vertical.

I think that they'll go vertical around, I think in every major work center, they're going to go vertical and have effectively a we work.

I think they're going to go co-working.

Huh.

That's exactly what we're doing.

If they have 40 million people on their platform and these people travel and they say, Scott, we saw you rented an Airbnb for the summer in London.

Do you need a cool place to work?

Yep.

And we'll sell it.

Yeah, full-service travel company, the travel company.

And whether business travel comes back or not, there's all sorts of needs you have in travel.

Their experiences, I thought they did a great idea.

I took a bunch of their experiences, which they had to scale back on.

Fantastic.

Everything just, I don't know how they scale it, but I was like, I would do this when I go to a city over and over again, different weird things.

I did them even in my own city.

When I was in San Francisco, like I made noodles with my family at Christmas once.

It was really fun.

And I took pictures during one.

I did one with a sake tasting.

They were, they just, they were really well done.

I can't even, I hadn't, there was not a glitch in them.

And I did them all through them.

Anyway, they've got lots of directions to go.

Yes, this is going to be a big deal.

It's really ballsy to go out in the middle of a pandemic, but good for them.

And we'll see how it goes, Scott.

We'll see if you're correct.

We'll see.

All right, Scott, let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we're going to talk about Amazon's move into prescription drugs and a listener wrote a question once again.

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Okay, we're back.

Amazon launched Amazon Pharmacy this week, something that many people thought were coming, including Scott Galloway.

I had talked about a lot.

I think we talked about a year ago.

The company will now sell and deliver prescription drugs to prime members.

As we've talked about before, Amazon Amazon has been quietly pushing into the space for years.

They've acquired the company Pill Pack in 2017 and have been building their infrastructure since.

Pharmacies represent a $300 billion market, which Amazon will now own probably eventually

by Tuesday, maybe.

After the announcement on Tuesday, pharmacy stocks tumbled following the launch of Amazon Pharmacy.

CBS shares fell 8.6%.

Walgreens dropped 9.6%.

Scott, what do you say?

I think they're in trouble.

I mean, they're not bad at their business.

They just don't do delivery.

They don't do everything else.

Please tell me what you think about this

and about how you had thought about that they were going to do this.

A lot of people had talked about this.

What do you think is going to happen?

Well, we said two years ago that

the fastest growing healthcare company in the world would be Amazon.

Yeah.

If there's anything, the most disruptible business, if you're an economic animal coming out of business school right now or college or anywhere, you want to be at the intersection of technology and what is the most disruptible business in history.

And that is the 17% of the U.S.

economy, arguably the largest business in the world, that also has the worst customer satisfaction of any business in America, and that's healthcare.

Can you imagine going into a Sephora and saying, I want some block, and some woman doesn't get out of her seat, or some guy and just rolls back a plexiglass and gives you a clipboard with a bunch of paper and says, fill this out, sit down, and someone will maybe be with you in 30 minutes?

I mean,

I don't think it's that bad, but go ahead.

Healthcare, healthcare, healthcare.

Pharmacies.

Yes, healthcare is.

I was talking about doctors.

I don't have a terrible time at pharmacies.

I think they're fine, but they're not innovative.

But go ahead.

You wait and launch.

I mean, but that's because you've been trained to have a really shitty experience.

So when the pharmacist looks up and is fairly nice to you and only makes you wait and go look at mouthwash and diamond waters, and then you come back 20 minutes later and they say, oh, just another five minutes.

Well, couldn't a technology, when I sent in the script, didn't you know I was going to be here?

Yeah.

Anyway, and by the way, why do I need to be there?

If you think about what Amazon is doing, first off, first off,

the easiest prediction in the world that Amazon was going to go into healthcare.

Why?

Because in order to continue to grow into its incredible valuation, they have to add a half a trillion dollars in top line revenue in the next three to five years.

Now, what does that mean?

It means there's only a few industries they can go into.

And the thought is, well, they could keep going in retailer e-commerce.

Yeah, but they've basically kicked the shit out of everybody there.

Even more on delivery restaurants.

More on fulfillment.

But where's the biggest carcass in the world?

Healthcare.

So they're not going into healthcare because they want to.

They're going into healthcare because they have to.

And they have been lining up their tanks, their Air Force, and their artillery.

Look at what they're going to have here.

Nobody in healthcare has a holistic picture.

of your health.

Nobody knows what you eat, i.e., can track your purchases at Whole Foods.

No one knows your body mass index, can create a 3D image of who you are and what your body might look like or where the danger zones.

Nobody knows your pharmaceutical, your pharmaceutical or your prescriptions.

Nobody knows the products you're ordering at home.

Nobody knows your dent.

They can build a full, holistic health picture of it, of you, and then start recommending products, foods, and then get you your prescriptions.

And by the way, those nice pharmacists are going to be available 24 by 7 on your goddamn phone.

Yeah.

I mean, and, oh, and what are they going to do?

They're going to offer discounts on prescriptions to, you guessed it, prime members.

This is what's going to happen, Kara.

Yep.

You know, it's the whole, the whole concept is you don't wait for it.

It waits for you.

And it knows you actually before you know yourself.

Just the other day, well, I think Walgreens is the one I use.

They are now fulfilling my prescriptions without me having to bring them in, but it took years to do that.

I used to always say, why don't you just, you know, you have me, you know, I have to take this monthly thing.

Why don't you just fulfill it for me and then send me an email, right?

Or send me a text.

And they finally did it this year, which was sort of like, it was a really interesting thing.

But you're right.

They're not innovative.

These companies are not innovative.

They're just sort of,

you know, as I just interviewed Shimoth Paliapatiya, they're just sort of zombie companies that don't go along and don't innovate.

And anyone that doesn't innovate their product is finished, you know, who doesn't continue to.

Now, what do these companies do?

Because they do have, you know, they have a lot of retail presence.

People do still have these practices.

What do you imagine happening to these

CVSs and Walgreens of the world, which have gotten bulked up themselves?

They've sort of bought a bunch of, you know, they're pretty much the two biggest chains, I guess.

And they own Rite 8.

One of them owns Rite Aid and et cetera.

They're going to have to bulk up like crazy.

I think Aetna bought one of them.

They're going to have to get just so, I mean, I hate to say this, but the primary way they've

innovated has been through regulation that makes it hard to innovate.

Yeah.

They're almost, I mean, if you look at what's happened in healthcare, the healthcare providers actually haven't done that well over the last 20 years.

They used to be, you know, the doctor used to be the guy with the biggest house who got to play golf on Wednesdays.

If you want to hear a total like complaint fest, invite doctors over there for dinner.

My brother complains complains a lot.

Oh, my gosh.

They thought they were going to be masters of the universe.

Well, yeah, it's called, that's a name for that, a doctor.

I mean, they've just, they anchor off the 70s and 80s where doctors were the bomb, and now they're just doctors, and they all wish they'd gone to work for Google or Microsoft.

It's you're going to see, you're going to see, and then all the, all the

value has migrated to the insurance carriers and some of the HMOs and some of the hospital systems who have just killed it.

And it's the innovator's dilemma.

They have an entrenched interest in maintaining the status quo.

But you're going to see Amazon continue to conduct Jedi mind tricks on not only, not only drugstore companies or retailers, but also the pharmaceutical firms themselves.

Because once Amazon is on the front end of those purchases, they're going to turn around to

Pfizer, GSK, and all those guys and say, you know what?

We need this diabetes medication for a lot less than you've been providing it to us for.

So it's going to be, like anything, it's going to be really good for consumers in the short run.

It's going to be really good for Amazon shareholders.

Over the long run, we'll have to decide what it means when one company is sucking the oxygen out of the air for everyone in healthcare, which has been a growth industry adding jobs every year.

It's going to be

complicated and fascinating, but absolutely, Amazon.

What area do you think they're going to get into after pharmacy?

Delivering tests.

Like as we said, we wished Amazon was delivering tests to us.

Every Thursday morning, a woman in a nice white lab coat shows up in a mask and she puts a swab in my family's nose.

And then that night we go onto a website.

It's complicated.

It's clunky.

And we get our test results.

We're getting tested every week.

That woman, soon enough, is going to get out of a sprinter van with a smile.

And she's going to deliver my Nespresso pods and our groceries.

And then while she's here, she's going to run a swab in our nose or

she's going to tune up the machine we have.

They're going to get into diagnostics.

Your Amazon show, your Amazon Alexa are going to turn into diagnostics machines.

I think the best doctor's office in the world is the same, is the exact same location as the best theater in the world, your living room or your kitchen.

The doctor's office is about, think about the hospital and the doctor's office.

Think about the fact that 99% of the people who contracted, endured, and developed the antibodies for the novel coronavirus didn't enter a doctor's office, much less a hospital.

It's all moving to the home.

And the company that has the infrastructure, the liquidity, the capital, the training, the compensation, and not only that, most importantly, and it's not sexy, but it's incredibly important, the investor base willing to endure tens of billions of investment, i.e.

losses.

There's only one company that has it on.

Which area are they going to go?

Diagnostics?

I think diagnostics and testing.

And then the second area, if I came home and Amazon Alexa, just as it says, you know, what are the 10 hottest places on earth,

say, Alexa, tell me more about hot weather.

It's going to say,

Scott, would you like to cut your health insurance costs in half?

If yes, say, Alexa, tell me more about Amazon Prime Insurance.

They'll go into insurance because they will be able to look at a family and say, this family has a low body mass index.

They are in monogamous relationships.

They eat well.

That means actuarily they are a good risk.

So we're going to offer them, we're going to offer them better insurance costs.

And we'll do it at 3% margin instead of 45% margin.

And And all of a sudden people are going to go, oh my gosh, I can get health insurance for less.

And one of the things, one of the things, if you read the announcement around Pill Pack, is they're going after uninsured.

They're saying, if you're uninsured, it's not a problem and we're going to negotiate on your behalf.

We're going to be a fiduciary for you.

Whereas if you're uninsured,

you're taught to believe by the industry that you're being irresponsible, that you're a bad person.

You're a bad father.

And they're actually saying it's a cohort, it's a big cohort, and we're going to negotiate on

Which is their next area of attack, I suppose.

It's a great analogy.

It's a great analogy.

You know, it's really, it's just shitty experiences for people who don't have money.

And the people who have money have to pay out the nose too.

Like the idea of going into a doctor's office, like, especially during the pandemic, is,

you know, dentists are one thing.

You kind of have to arrive with your teeth, right?

You have to sort of have them work on your actual teeth.

But a lot of the stuff you go to the doctors for is so useless.

It's information, which can be digitized.

Yeah.

except for some of the diagnostic stuff, some of the very serious stuff.

Like, I'm just thinking, the only doctor I've been to during this pandemic is a dentist because I have some dental issues.

And

you have to.

And they're great, by the way.

I've never had a dentist.

I never feel like unhappy with my service there.

But people have to be thinking more about service around health care.

And healthcare workers better be thinking around service,

which I think is for the vast majority of people.

And again, you're right.

Amazon could really take aim at people who feel left out of the healthcare system, which is interesting since

politicians are going to have to wrestle with Medicare for all or one single payer, et cetera, et cetera.

It is an opportunity.

It also is a frightening prospect that Amazon would have all your health information along with all your eating and consuming information.

So there's a lot of people.

Consumers will fork it over in a hot minute because

they can, but they'll get so much utility in experience.

They're also going to become a big fat target for government.

Yeah, but around antitrust, but around data.

And you know, I'm no fan of Amazon.

They're one of the few companies that really hasn't experienced a major hack.

Although you and I have a bond, the only place, one of the few places I've been to a couple of times, not since the pandemic began, is in fact the dentist.

And I don't have serious issues, but I go, I absolutely love it.

I get nitrous.

I listen to Super Tramp.

I think, I'm serious.

I'm totally.

This is 100% serious.

I think about my mom.

I think about my kids.

And I have a good cry and I leave feeling better.

It's literally my dentist is my therapist.

It's totally my therapist.

Okay.

Everything I just said is true.

Seriously.

What is the problem?

Because you did attack Amazon last year and so much so that they were actually a sponsor for one of our events.

They were like, we are never coming back.

And because of Scott Galloway, I'm like, fine.

See you later.

Oh, no.

Let me be clear.

Let me be clear.

Amazon should be broken up.

They should be broken up.

And while I get huge enjoyment out of being a spectator to what is the mother of all midlife crises unfolding, i.e.

Jeff Bezos and his adventures in amateur photography.

Oh my God, don't say that about Jeff.

Don't say that about Jeff.

He's an innovator.

Anyways,

anyways,

while I'm enjoying it, oh, they should absolutely be broken up into Amazon, AWS, and Amazon Fulfillment.

But look, there's just no getting around it.

Jeff Bezos will go down as the most innovative, biggest brain business thinker in the history of business.

Full stop.

I would agree.

I would agree.

I think we're all on the same page there, but we're all terrified of him in any case, nonetheless.

Though he's not a particularly terrifying person.

And I'm glad that his wife has gotten so much of the stock that she can give away the money.

Well, let me let me do that.

I mean, think, okay, you want to talk about money?

Yeah.

You and I have both been divorced.

Did you get wealthier in the year you got divorced?

His wealth has increased $30 billion.

I was wealthy as my ex.

I didn't take very much money.

Yeah.

But I'm going to.

I mean, I did for work.

Okay, so you got wealthier.

Jeff Bezos increased his wealth by about $50 billion the same year he got divorced.

That gives you a sense of just much, how much I did an infographic on what this guy could buy with his wealth.

Do you realize right now Jeff Bezos is worth more than every person living in D.C.,

Wyoming, Alaska, Kentucky, and I think over the last two weeks, he's added Montana.

Yeah, everybody.

Everybody.

He's worth more

than big swaths of America right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's worth it.

They hit someone later.

Oh, but we have to close our schools.

America.

America.

For every home America.

I got straight because there was this idea that if Jeff Bezos gave $100,000 to every one of his employees,

he could do it in four seconds or whatever.

I was like, why does he have to do that?

And everyone was like, he should because he's rich.

And I'm like, doesn't have to be that.

That makes sense.

He should pay taxes is what he should do.

Yes, exactly.

That's what I said.

That was my answer.

Anyway, okay, Scott, let's go to a listener.

Mail question.

You got, you got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman.

You, you, you got mail.

Hi, Karen Scott.

This is Bob in Brooklyn.

I really love your work, and I have followed the breakdown of the WeWork debacle very closely.

I believe this story is an important cautionary tale, but not in the terms that it's often discussed.

This kind of toxic charisma that's weaponized by mounds of cash is the central story, I think.

The biggest victims being the many idealistic young people that Newman convinced to waste years of their lives serving his ego without fair compensation or the big promise to pay out at the end.

Since we know that good relationships and mentorship is so essential to prosperity and happiness, what advice do you have for young people just starting out in their careers that might help them avoid being exploited?

Specifically, I'm curious what telltale signs you've noticed over your long careers that indicate someone might be using their charisma to swindle time or money from you or someone else.

Thanks so much.

Jesus,

that guy's a sexy beast.

Bob is my new partner on Pivot.

What a genius.

Will that guy marry me or adopt me?

I feel so much safer just listening to him.

Bob, toxic charisma.

I think you have toxic charisma, Scott Galloway.

Really?

I think that's the thing.

I'm one of those things.

And unfortunately, it's the toxic part.

A little low on the charisma.

I have been talking about this charisma thing this week for some reason because someone was, I written a story about the sort of the sheen is off.

I think the sheen is off Donald Trump, but he has toxic charisma.

And whenever I say that, people go crazy.

They're like, he's not charismatic.

I'm like, no, he is, whether you like it or not.

And I think toxic charisma is really a better way to put it, that they will calm themselves down.

This is a really good question.

Where should we start, Scott?

Would you like to start?

What advice would you have?

There are differences between a Steve Jobs and an Adam Newman, and there's a lot of people in between, and there's people with no charisma whatsoever at the same time who do very well.

So talk about this issue about mentorship and that.

Well,

this is a deep issue that we should have Esther Perel or someone who actually knows what they're talking about on, who has actual training domain expertise.

But what he's basically talking about is a sociopath.

Cult leaders are very, very charismatic.

And so are sociopaths.

You know,

I forget the guy's name, the guy.

Keith Ranieri.

Yeah, I mean, they are very captivating.

And not only that,

I wouldn't describe Steve Jobs' charisma.

Look, Steve Jobs, the Jesus Christ of our information age, is a man who denied his own blood under oath to avoid child support payments when he was worth a quarter of a billion dollars.

And that's our hero.

And so I would argue that Steve Jobs is guilty of that same.

I don't think Donald Trump.

It's a little more complex than that, but

I'll let it go.

Well, go ahead.

That's unforgivable.

Full stop.

Unforgivable.

Okay.

All right.

The story is a little more complex, but go ahead.

Go ahead.

Anyways,

okay.

You're not going to argue about it.

Nonetheless, he's not on the line.

Call me late at night and curse at me.

Call me late at night and curse me.

God, Stephanie, you're all that must have been.

I mean, I was like, go on.

Yeah, I figured you'd like that.

Speaking of toxic charisma.

Associate Fast, look,

what are the tests?

I think the tests are, first off,

and I don't think Trump didn't have the really dangerous toxic because you noticed it with Trump.

There are some people.

So, for example, Michael Bloomberg was happy to sit in the back and let other people take credit.

I think when people are always, it's always about them.

That's a bad sign.

I think when people, I think you look at the relationships they have with people who are close to them.

Are they generous, loving people?

I always say to women, and I know this sounds weird, find out if your boyfriend, what his relationship is like with his mother and check out his Netflix home screen.

Those are the two tests or Rochard tests

into someone's soul.

But I think there's a variety of tests around spotting a sociopath.

Do they have a victim complex?

Do they have huge delusions of their, do they exaggerate their own success and their own grandeur?

There are a list of things that you can go through, which quite frankly

reads like the public behavior of Mark Zuckerberg and Shell Sandberg.

They are literally, they define sociopathy if you look at their behavior, in my opinion, over the last 30 years.

Most of them have charisma, I would say.

Shell Samberg is hugely charismatic.

She is, but she's now

put herself in a hole, essentially.

But Mark is a bitch.

She's jiggers up.

But she's hugely charismatic.

Yeah, she is for sure.

But I don't think it was overwhelming in this same way.

I think Mark is sort of the anti-charisma kind of person.

But what do you think?

How do you think you recognize toxic charisma?

You know, it's interesting.

I think victimization, whenever they feel attacked, the people I've covered who I find the most toxic are, I'm thinking of Travis Kalinek, very charismatic, very great presenter, great people.

There's a really good story in the Washington Post today by Ben Terris, who's one of my favorite writers, about Trump's guys, right?

This guy has guys around him, and they listed Michael Cohen and et cetera, et cetera.

There's lots of them.

And they interviewed one of them.

What's his name?

The guy who did...

bad stuff about Hillary,

Goldstone, Rob Goldstone, whatever.

It was really interesting because they all sort of fell for this guy and then got screwed essentially.

And so,

and you see it in tech too,

when you look around at all these people, and they do, they have, they have persecution complexes, or which are, which become clear once you start pushing back on them.

They have, they're really, you can't look away from them.

That's one of the things.

You really are interested in how they present and you listen to them.

They've got incredibly loyal people around them who then turn on them later.

You know what I mean?

They always have that.

There's always sort of a, I loved him, now I hate him kind of thing, which is really fascinating to me.

And when you're in that situation, when you take advantage of it, it's when you're a young person going into one of these companies, you kind of like that leader.

You like that leader to, because you don't want a leader who's soft or seems weak or tells you that the world is complex.

You want a leader that tells you, no, everything's, we're going to go this way and this is the way to go.

And so I think what you have to do is realize that life is complex.

And when a leader is telling you it's going to be difficult and here's the upsides and downsides, don't think of that as weak.

And you do hear that from young people.

They're, oh, they told me it's going to be hard or this is going to be this.

And so anyone who tells you things, you know, we're going to push through or you have,

you know, it sounds dumb, but when the boardroom, the boardroom at Uber was called War Room or something like that.

It was some aggressive name.

And I was like, oh, that's not good.

When stuff like that happens, it's not, you have to sort of start to wonder why you need to show that level of insecurity.

I was visiting someone, he had a everything in his office was aggressive.

And I was like, oh, what is this guy?

What insecurity is this guy hiding?

And so I think those are the kind of signs when you have to sort of be part of a cheer squad or there's short little phrases or you have like saying like that kind of stuff can be good, but it actually mostly seems to be bad.

Scott?

I look at this through the lens of small business and what I coach young people around or my observation around different types of leadership attributes and who you want to be drawn to and get as mentors.

I find there's, loosely speaking, two types of leaders.

And that is the inspiring leader who can really rally a room, outline a vision, motivate you, bring everyone together, the kind of all hands, I'm calling in all hands right away, make people feel as if they have a purpose.

And then there's what I call the player coach.

And the player coach is the person that pulls up their chair next to you as you're doing, putting together a deck for the board.

And they help you get through it.

They teach you.

They provide feedback.

But I call it the people who pull their chair up next to yours and help you learn.

So, and this sounds

self-aggrandizing, you know, like a sociopath.

I'm the first.

I can pull together a group of people in a room and tell them this is why we're here.

That's very inspiring.

I'm great at that.

My co-founder at L2 is the ultimate player coach, Catherine Dillon.

I constantly saw her sitting at other people's desks, not only telling them what to do, but teaching them how to do it.

And when she walked away, they were better professionals.

The latter

is much more important and much better for the long term of a company because ultimately over time, if you're at a company long enough, you're going to start to realize that a lot of what that person is saying, the inspiring one, is recycled bullshit.

Yeah.

And it's the person who's willing to invest in your skills and has the discipline.

In other words, really observe people's behavior and try and ignore their words.

You know, really look at how they behave, how much they invest in other people, how much empathy they have.

You know, look at their actions.

Just sort of ignore the words for a while.

Because the reality is, I've always said that men get turned on with their eyes.

Women get turned on with their ears.

Ignore your ears and just watch how this person behaves.

Because there's inspiring leaders and there's player coaches.

But in terms of mentors, find the player coaches that are going to invest in you.

Yeah.

And you do have to have a certainty level when you're a leader.

You have to, when people are nervous, but don't be afraid of people who are complex.

That's the one thing that people are like, oh, they're not strong.

And I'm like, they're just not stupid.

They're not saying dumb things with certainty.

A lot of people can say things with certainty and then it not be true.

You know, like I'm frequently wrong, but never a doubt is really something I think about a lot, that idea.

So when you're a young person, you're going to put up a level of those inspirational leaders, those never a doubt leaders and things like that.

And you really should find people who want to, who aren't

using you to pull their chariot to greater glory.

Although you can do well with those kind of leaders too, because they're so ambitious and you're useful, but often they discard you.

And so one of the,

I was thinking of one person who I always used to joke that I would pull his chariot to greater glory.

It didn't hurt me.

That didn't hurt me in that relationship, but it definitely didn't help me.

I wasn't better for it.

but riding along with a leader like that sometimes can work, but you just have to be aware that you are just so much fodder for them to get to where they want to go.

Well,

the key thing, though, is he asked about mentorship, looking at a lot of it is which stakeholder are you?

If you're a younger person looking for a mentor, I think it's the player or coach.

If you're a shareholder, If you're a shareholder, you want the person who's borderline associopath.

Because that person has to be able to get up in front of shareholders and say, yeah, I'm putting someone on Mars, and along the way, I'm going to figure out a way to make $50 million by taking them to the space station, and I'm going to electrify the world, and I'm going to have a million autonomous taxis within 12 months.

It'll be Tesla taxis.

I mean, you have to have...

to be a really unfortunately storytelling verging verging on I don't want to call it fraud but let's just call it exaggeration is the new skill set.

Typically in corporate America, what was rewarded in the markets was under-promising and over-delivering.

Now it is totally flipped.

It's all about the narrative.

It's all about over-promising and sort of delivering, most delivering enough to show that

you may get there at some point.

But I always think about Elizabeth Holmes, who was also very charismatic.

What would have happened if she'd raised another billion dollars and had gotten lucky?

She'd still be, I think, on the cover of Forbes.

So there's a fine line between that kind of storytelling charisma and exaggeration, and then, you know, what I'll call near fraud.

It's fascinating.

But if you're a shareholder, you absolutely want that kind of crazy, charismatic,

cult-like.

I mean, there's a reason that company culture is based off the word cult.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

You're right.

You're 100%.

That is 100% right.

Although I do think storytelling is good.

Like sometimes when I'm going in a direction, I repeat it over and over again publicly so I can sort of try it out.

I must get to the dentist.

I must get to the dentist.

You know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, Bob from Brooklyn.

Listen, the minute, Scott,

adopt us, Bob.

Bob, you are in.

Let me just tell you something.

The minute I stumbled.

I'm literally, I'm like the third season of Twin Peaks or the fourth season of Ozarks.

I have a loyal following, but I'm always very close to being canceled.

Canceled.

You're not canceled.

Very close to being canceled.

We are together strapped to the mast until this ship goes down.

That's how it's going for you.

All right, Scott.

One more quick break.

We'll get back for predictions.

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Okay, Scott, there's only six weeks left in this crazy year, which means about 26 more ridiculous lawsuits from President Trump until we kick him out of his home right now.

What do you predict we'll see as we draw 2020 to a close?

Well, my predictions are boring.

I'm just, I think this, I think Amazon.

I don't lead with that.

That's not very inspiring.

Try again, inspiring.

But player coach.

This will happen.

Love me.

Love me.

And all of you brand the dog on your hip and have sex with me.

Anyways,

that was anxiom reference.

Yeah, that was an axiom reference.

That was incredible that they did that.

Anyway, go ahead.

Sorry.

Yeah, you got to think, like, okay, put him in jail, but I'm sorry.

Someone brands you.

I think you got to take a little responsibility for that.

I honestly, like, what could make people?

I think there was a lot of coercion going on, but it boy.

I mean, but boy.

That's a little weird.

That's some power over people.

Anyway, go ahead.

Yeah, that's a little weird.

I'd be like, what?

No.

Like, no.

I know.

I've been putting off my vasectomy for two years, but someone was going to brand me?

No fucking way.

All right.

Six, give me your boring predictions.

By the way, my doctor.

Goddamn branding.

No joke.

No joke.

I went in for the consultation and he said we're going to do a needle vasectomy.

And I said, hey, it's cold in here.

Oh, my God.

That is good vasectomy humor.

I don't want any vasectomy.

This is good vasectomy amount of vasectomy humor I want on this show, and now we have a minute of it.

Okay, look.

Predictions, please.

And it better not relate to your people.

I don't know if this is a prediction or a suggestion.

I think Walmart and Amazon, who have the two best supply chains in the world, should distribute and administer the vaccine.

Oh, it's the Army right now.

I love the Army, but that is what I would call the typical macho stupidity.

I don't want to call it stupidity.

I have tremendous.

Okay, good.

Logistics, they're good at logistics.

Yeah, but not at, I'm not, okay.

They're really good at supplying submarines and aircraft carriers, but are they good at really going into residential and suburban areas and dealing with the public?

I don't see a lot of guys.

The last time I saw a guy with a fatigue and

an AR-15 or an M2, whatever the rifle is called, was back in the L.A.

riots

when they dispatched them to every corner of Los Angeles.

I don't know if they're the right, let me put it this way.

I just think Amazon is in everyone's home.

Walmart has an incredible supply chain.

I think they're the two best supply chains to figure out a way to distribute any product that needs to be absorbed by a consumer quickly, efficiently, and economically.

And I also think it would be a great PR move for them.

So Walmart and Amazon, I think you should play a key role in distributing and administering the vaccine.

Nobody can get you ginger ale faster and less expensively and more deftly than Amazon or Walmart.

Why would we think it's any different than any other liquid in a vial?

Aaron Powell, well, there's issues around the vaccines.

But yes, I see your point.

There's issues.

There's a third one that now they were talking about being encouraging, which doesn't, I think it's a single shot, the one in at Oxford.

So they're moving really quickly on these.

And I think distribution is going to be where the next game is, the distribution of these things.

They're apparently distributing the early versions.

There's very few doses that are coming to this country right away.

They're going to dose people who are under older people and

people who have existing conditions that are dangerous that would be hospitalized.

So they're trying to relieve the hospital system, then healthcare workers, and then the general public.

And what's really interesting about the whole distribution system is even with 90 to 95% efficacy,

only half of the people in the United States are allegedly going to take it.

And then it, and then only 90% of those it's going to work on.

So it's really not a big part of the population that's going to get vaccinated right away,

even though they should, 100% of the population should be.

It's going to be a much smaller group of people that are in the 30s that are going to get vaccinated which will take relief off the hospital system but certainly won't solve the problem uh so that's really it's going to be a pr move to get people to take it i agree you know to and that's going to be the real you know especially since Trump has done so much to get to make masks a controversy.

He's still there for a little while of this.

And so as he's going to muck up this effort, they're not giving the Biden administration any kind of information.

So the initial stages stages of this distribution are going to be fucked up.

I mean, that's my, I mean, really, truly fucked up because he can't possibly not want to burn to the ground everything behind him as he leaves office, including

including something like this.

There's no index.

I wouldn't underestimate his,

this isn't sociopathy, it's psychopathy.

I don't think he gives a good goddamn.

I really don't think this is an individual with any empathy for anybody else.

Do you want a business prediction?

Yeah.

In the next six months, CNN is going to be sold.

Oh, all right.

To whom?

It's always going to almost be sold.

So let me, this has been a long-running rumor about HBO and CNN.

Which one will be sold?

HBO should be spun.

HBO should be spun because it would get a higher price.

But

I don't have a dialogue.

I don't have any inside information, but I've gotten into a little bit some of the people at ATT, and they are smart people.

Yeah.

And they have an amazing business called Wireless.

It's a $150 billion amazing business.

And unfortunately, that great business.

And they're going to find their purchases.

Okay.

Yeah.

It'll be interesting.

Two of the worst acquisitions have the term Time Warner in them.

But you're going to see.

It could either merge with all the Comcast assets so they could bulk up.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

It'll be very interesting to see.

But

if I'm running ATT, I want to sell CNN right now because CNN will announce a sugar-high, amazing quarter because the election, instead of going four hours, went four days.

Still going.

CNN is going to have its best ratings since the Iraq war, and they are going to kill it in terms of revenues this quarter.

It is the perfect time to pretty up that bitch and put it on the market.

And that's what they're going to do.

Your boyfriend's for singing.

Yeah, he's up for sale.

So is Fareed, my professional role model, Fareed Zakaria.

Seriously.

I love it.

Comcast makes sense.

That makes sense.

That it's actually in their ballpark, and they can double down.

They bulk up, and it's still a melting ice.

That was not rejected out of the Comcast system the way ATT and CNN are rejected.

You know, I mean, it doesn't, the host.

Yeah, but here's the thing: it's the key to private equity.

It's all about how you buy it.

ATT spent $110 billion for assets a lot of people, and Tom Rogers pointed out to me, that weren't as strong or a little bit stronger than

what Comcast got with Universal.

And Universal's assets they purchased for about a quarter of that price.

So the bottom line is,

you know, Time Order is amazing assets, but ATT probably overpaid for it.

And it's now this $30 billion business that's running up headlong against companies with deeper pockets has stolen the narrative of an amazing $150 billion business called 5G, called Wireless, called AT ⁇ T.

So you're going to see divestiture of assets.

And I think probably the first to go, although I don't think it should be the first to go, I think it should be HBO, but I think probably the first to go will be CNN.

Okay, give me another buyer besides ComCaps.

Comcast makes sense to me.

Well, it might be a spin on its own.

Or, okay, so you know who could buy CNN?

You know who should buy CNN?

Bloomberg.

Mark Benioff.

I mean, if you think about news, news plays such an important role in our society.

And news used to be a civic duty.

And that is, ABC said, okay, we're killing it selling tang and Chevrolet ads on the Brady Bunch and the Partridge family.

And we have a civic responsibility, which no one feels anymore.

He does have that, you're right.

To put up the news.

And news was a money loser.

And then Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch said, well, if you mix in some novelty, a partisanship or bullshit or lies, you can start turning the news into a money-making enterprise.

And the news has come off the fucking rails, and it's been really bad.

There is no truth anymore.

There is no news.

And so similar, and I don't like to say this, but Jeff Bezos has been a very responsible steward for the Washington Post.

We are better off because of the Washington Post.

Rupert Murdoch, I hate to say this too.

I actually think the Wall Street Journal has played a key role, although for some reason he's totally fucked up the news at Fox.

Anyways, I think Mark Benioff.

He likes to have a lot of different dishes on his table, but go ahead.

But think about how interesting this would be.

What if Time,

the magazine he purchased in 2018, reunited with Warner, specifically CNN?

Wow.

So

Mark Benioff has the cabbage.

I think he's worth like $80 or $100 billion.

He, unlike Rupert Murdoch or Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sanders.

He likes attention.

He also isn't, he likes attention.

Well, but most importantly, unlike Mark Zuckerberg or Rupert Murdoch, Mark Benioff took civics in high school.

I think he actually thinks about how his actions and his power and his shareholder value have an impact on.

Many, many consider that bullshit with him.

I don't, actually.

I've spent a lot of time with him.

For real?

And he is.

He's a bit of a showman and he likes the attention, but I don't mind it.

I don't mind the way he likes attention.

It's okay.

It's part showmanship is part of his job.

And speaking of charismatic leaders, he really is one.

And it's not toxic charisma.

It's charisma.

And he definitely sometimes is a showboat.

But I think he's really, you're right.

That's a really interesting idea.

I like it.

I like it.

I wonder if he has the sex.

Just in terms of showboating, I don't know.

I don't know Mark Benioff.

Well, you know him better than me, but I know a decent number of people who work for nonprofits who say that when they're in the tight spot, they call Mark Benioff.

Yeah, he's the hospital stuff in San Francisco.

He says he says yes before he hangs up the phone and he does want a press release and he doesn't want recognition for it.

And I think

he'd be a good like a Chan Zuckerberg initiative.

He's going to give time more heft.

You know what I mean?

Like he's sort of buying time, it's just too small.

He'd be a great owner.

Or, or you want to know what the gangster really interesting move would be, Carrie?

All right, last one.

I'm sorry, I'm going on here.

This is a good one.

I like it.

Twitter should buy CNN.

Twitter needs to bust a move to subscription, which means they need to go vertical with proprietary content.

They're basically a news organization, and CNN has the largest news gathering.

I like that.

That's a good one.

The news gathering net in the world.

And then you could milk the advertising to hold on to those revenues.

Twitter has a $30 billion market cap.

CNN goes for somewhere between $7 and $8 billion.

See, you know, when I knock your head, you come out with some good ideas.

This is really good.

My last question then, I'm going to press you.

Where does Donald Trump go?

The Newsmax guy said he's not selling his assets.

I think he's just going to get a contract with Fox or Newsmax.

He's not starting his own company.

Good luck, Mr.

Trump.

Not happening.

He may get a lot of money, but he's so bad at execution.

That's exactly right.

He's going to run it.

You know, I was thinking about this the other day.

Trump stakes is not a bad idea.

Neither was Trump University.

They just, they just affiliate with great

Trump Vodka.

And

they're just shitty people, and they do it in a shitty, short-term way.

You know, none of these are bad ideas.

So

he should not start his own media company.

He should affiliate with one that's run well.

So which one do you think?

Well, the latest one I heard was that he was going to start his own paid over-the-top thing.

That won't work.

He's Android.

His users, his customer base is the Fox customer base, where, quite frankly, the economy has not been kind to them and they are willing to endure a lot of ads about opioid-induced constipation in exchange for free content.

But you zeroed on exactly the right

attribute.

Running a media company is hard.

I lived in New York for 20 years.

I know a lot of people that did business tangentially with Trump-related organizations.

They had a reputation as incompetent operators.

Yep.

The only thing they ever made money on was Donald Trump firing Omarosa or putting his name on a building and then getting out of the way and collecting his 2% or 3%.

Because when it actually came to operating or running anything,

Donald Trump and the seven dwarves, i.e., children,

were not known as great operators.

And so the idea,

you want a difficult organization to operate.

Try operating a media company.

I mean, for God's sakes, can you won't be able to do that?

We'll put in shitty people.

Think about the bullshit Bank Off puts up with us.

And we're fairly reasonable.

We're not.

Or bank off.

Poor bankoff.

Poor bankoff.

Anyway, in any case, that's what I'm saying.

What do you think he's going to do?

What do you think he's going to do?

I think he's going to take a, like, a, he's going to get a two, six million dollars from Fox or something, whatever, whatever the price is, whatever the highest price is, and then he'll double it in fakeness.

And that'll be that.

That's what I think he's going to do.

I think it's start.

He'll get a lot of money thrown at him by dubious sources.

And then he'll get, he's too old.

And he's going to be stuck in lawsuits.

And

just the fading of Donald Trump, everyone says he's not.

I'm gonna, I'm making the bet.

This is my prediction, which I made this week, and that things it will fade faster than the apprentice ratings do.

I just think

people love him, but not in three years, not when he's older, not when he's more crazy, not when he's people get tired of your drunkle at Thanksgiving.

I just Jimmy Carter was a terrible president, but a good man.

His post-presidency goes up, strong men and a hung upside down with

bullet holes in the house.

He's got nowhere to go but down and nowhere to go with, but more

you and I are both

just the counter to that.

I couldn't, I was just blown away.

I went to Atlantic Avenue down at Delray Beach and there was a parade.

Yep, I get it.

And I just couldn't get over how passionate.

I get it.

Charisma.

Toxic charisma.

All right.

We're going to end the show on toxic charisma.

It does last, but then it dies rather quickly.

Okay, that's the show.

This is a very long show, but that's all right.

We're brilliant.

Email us with questions about companies and trends in tech and business at pivot at Voxmedia.com.

We love your questions.

Scott, please read us out.

Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Fernando Finite engineered this episode.

Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burroughs.

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