Facebook pushes e-commerce business, Uber in trouble, eyes on Amazon Media Group… and a prediction: Sonos gets acquired

Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.
CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part?

Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try Odoo for free at Odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Support for the show comes from AT ⁇ T, the network that helps Americans make connections. When you compare it, there's no comparison.
AT ⁇ T.

Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher. And I am nauseous.
You're going to the New York York Times to do a podcast. That's how you do it.

I write for the New York Times. This is just an extension of our

relationship.

That's like MSNBC ate Bernie Sanders and then threw up and created this monster called the New York Times podcast with Kara Swisher. This is just

going to be lit. Let me just say.
What's it called? What's it called? It's called I Love Scott Galloway and Other Stories of My Life. Yeah.
No.

It has no name. It has no name.
It has no name yet. It is unnamed.
Remember how we named Pivot? So you know what we are? How did we name Pivot? How did we come up with a name for Pivot?

You came up with a name. I didn't like it.

I wanted to call it Stable Genius. Oh, yeah.
That was

no. Yeah.
Because it was stupid. But go ahead.

There's that. Yeah.
And then, oh, wait. So wait, back to us.
Did you ever see the movie Broadway Danny Rose with Woody Allen? A long time ago. I don't try.
Woody Allen gives me the creeps. So, no.

Well, I think he gives everyone the creeps now. But, anyways, back when he was just,

I saw, but I don't remember.

um yeah before he was sleeping with a stepdaughter or whatever it was so anyways uh that's about an agent this kind of tier two agent who represents this lounge singer who hits a big and the moment the lounge singer hits a big he drops his agent

you and i are are are have decided to use vox as woody allen and then the moment we get a little scotia fame just a scotia fame you go to the new york times which i tell you

i go to i go to vice because ad supported linear tv is coming back. Bartender! Netflix

didn't call back. Let's make that a t-shirt.
Netflix didn't call back. Why, Vice? Because Netflix didn't call us back.
Guess what?

If we do a TV show, now Netflix will call back because Kara Swisher has

TV show. Have you seen us look at us right now? This is not TV.
I got rained on today, so I look like a wet dog. We look like the only TV we're going to get is we look like the opening

scene of Law and Order when they show the dead people. You and I look like good victims.
Yeah, and then Jerry Orbach Orbach standing over us speaking.

My friends have been calling me and saying they saw the piece.

By the way, I'm doing a show called No Mercy in a Mouse Bonweis. And they're like, I don't even know where to watch this.

Neither do I. Linear, linear ad-supported TV.
It's coming back. Bartender, get me my horse.

A white guy. Get me my horse.
A white guy ranting. It's just, that's what you said, right? It's just what

it's hilarious. Listen, ad-supported television.
It's making a comeback, Carol. Here's our relationship.
You are naughty and like,

you know, vicey, and I class up the joint and it works well. That is what's happening here.
And I'm trying to further class up trade.

By the way, we're still doing Pivot with Vox Media at New York Magazine, which we love. And I got to tell you, Pivot is a, is a big, has money legs, not just your beautiful legs with many legs.

And then, uh, and then I'm. Money legs or many legs? Many, lots of legs.
It has legs. It has legs.
I'm trying to use a Broadway term, whatever. Okay.

And then secondly, I'm still doing the code conference when we have to, we're moving it around and deciding on different things. And you and I are going to do events.
So just relax. Everything.

We are tethered together on this ship and wherever it goes, down, up,

Hawaii, we're together. So don't worry about it.

I get it. So, but I am.

I'm just dating the New York Times on the side. You didn't ask me.

You didn't ask me to ask this, but what's going to be different about your podcast at the New York Times other than Michelle Obama will come speak to you at the New York Times?

Oh, that's one of the things. What is different about it? That's one of the the things.
I'm going to really, I've been expanding Rico Dico. It's been mostly focused on tech.

And I really am very interested in the ideas around power, who has it, what it means, how power is changing,

putting a lot of attention on power in different forms and not just the traditional forms like the big giant evil tech companies kind of idea.

But what is power and what should it be and how should it change? You know, I think post-coronavirus, we're all going to be rethinking lots of everything about our lives.

And so I think power is always used in this way that I think is not so. So I want to bring to light a lot more a wide-ranging things that I don't do in a tech podcast.

I have been doing regulators and politicians and some entertainment people, but I really want to dip heavy into cultural stuff, into ideas, academics,

going directions

that is a little bit more. But power would be the thing I would say is

what I'm, what is power?

Thank you. That is what I'm going to say.
By the way, at the New York Times, there are a bunch of perverts and freaks. You know that, right?

there are some dirty little minces over at the mit

that's why that's why they will never let me bring you in the building i know you've been there before and got tossed out summarily but here's it i did get tossed you got the right word right um by the way i love you know what i love about vox they didn't take any they didn't apply for ppp unlike those bitches over at action they gave it back they gave it back because they were shamed into it we're going to find out that about 30 000 or if not 3 million organizations who instead of dipping into the wealthy investors' pockets, instead of forcing their millionaire owners to actually

buck up and turn and maintain our, you know, we need a nation of soldiers, not little bitch companies. We're going to find out that PPP call them little bitch companies.
I'm serious.

PPP is made off times a thousand. This is going to be one of the biggest scandals that we start to uncover.
There's so much money.

How can there be? There are private schools. There are private schools in Santa Monica taking PPP PPP that have the wealthiest parents in the world.

It is striking the level of graft we're going to see. I have a friend.
Graft in plain sight. It's different.
It's not fraud. It's just sort of like.
But it's like anything else.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste to a certain extent. You have to admire the Trump administration.
It's like, I know, let's take the future generations.

of

every person right now and borrow money against them to get the current rich richer. Yeah.
And flatten the curve of the decline of wealth of wealthy people. This is all we do.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I like your whole, I like when you go into this mode.

But listen, before we're going to get started on other things, but just the message we want to give, because a lot of people on Twitter were confused, that pivot isn't going anywhere.

Pivot is saying it is getting bigger. We're working on all kinds of stuff.

I should so be your last guest.

I should so be your last guest. I mean, let's really burn the bridges.
Let's burn the bridges of reach out.

Done. Salt in the ground behind you.
And done. Sorry, Eric Anderson, but that's happening.
Okay. All right.
Let's go ahead. Sorry.
Vote for Pivot for the Webby Award for Best Business Podcast.

Voting is open till May 7th. We are in.
We're talking a lot about Pivot. We should probably give the people.
I know that, but I'm just saying.

We want to win because we're super insecure and we need more awards. That's really the situation.
Anyway, let us start on stories.

We'll get eventually to Elon Musk's thing, Free America Now. How about imprison Elon? I'm starting it.
I'm starting it. Don't.
Incarceration.

That guy off. Let me just say.
All right. Oh, yeah.
He's scary, right? Let's talk about about our favorite supervillain, Mark Zuckerberg. It's called.
Let's move supervillains over.

Wednesday night, despite declines in ab revenue in March, Facebook beat expectations, bringing in $17.7 billion in revenue in the first quarter. That's up from $15.1 billion a year.
That's impressive.

On the earnings call, Facebook said usage is up due to the lockdowns around the globe. Messaging has risen about 50%.

Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg positioned small business front and center at the call and the importance of Facebook and their economic recovery and encourage them to build digital presences and storefronts on Facebook and Instagram.

Zuckerberg also talked about the importance of their geo investment in India and converting bricks and mortar to e-commerce capabilities on WhatsApp.

Talked a lot about WhatsApp and the untapped monetization.

And the company isn't providing any revenue guidance for Q2. It was, you know, all of the stocks of tech companies are up.
I was just

looking at all the stocks.

They dipped, of course, except for Amazon, but they all dipped and now they're headed back way up.

Any surprises about these earnings? What do you think about this?

What do you think about what's happening? All the surprises are just incredible. There's now, I mean, think about this, there's 3 billion people using one of their or all of one or more of their apps.

So there has never been a religion, an economic construct, a nation, a flag that has ever been as

big and as powerful as Facebook. There are more people that have a relationship with Facebook than Jesus, Allah, communism, capitalism, whatever it is.
It's bigger than any continent at this point.

So, and their ability to find new ways to monetize is striking. And in addition, that there's this notion of.

I'm trying to understand more about time.

So, time is based on the notion that there was this little dot and then it exploded and all time, supposedly before that, there was no time, which is hard to imagine.

That basically time is a function of motion now, right?

The moon rotates around us every 24 hours. We rotate around the sun every 365, but it's days, but it's linked to progress.

I like Stephen Hawking, Scott, but go ahead, keep going. Oh, this is such a Joey Bag of Donuts version of Stephen Hawking.
Go ahead.

Anyways, but this notion of time as it relates to progress and motion, and I think that during periods of crisis, for some people, time stands still, and for some people, it accelerates in terms of their progress.

And while every media company in the world, with the exception of Facebook and Google, is trying to figure out how many people they furlough, how they do chapter 11 again, if you're a radio company, Facebook is accelerating time around progress.

Everyone else is trying to stop time. Everyone else is trying to say, okay, we don't want time to come forward because every day we're losing money.
So we're trying to delay time.

We're trying to push off the inevitable.

Whereas Facebook is doing deals in India to monetize WhatsApp,

they are absolutely playing offense. And

think about if you're a marketer and you want to do print or TV. You can't do print or TV right now.
Where do you go to do a print ad right now?

Where do you go to shoot a television commercial right now?

If you're at WPP or any of these firms, all you're doing is talking about triage. Like, how do we save? How do we fix things, right?

Yeah, how do we, and then whereas Facebook, if you want to, if all of a sudden you're making face masks and selling hand gel, well, how do I i market it i go on facebook or google and i can have ads running in 60 minutes so it's just

we're in the what i would call until about a week ago we were even just 48 hours ago what this earnings season marks is it marks the transition from the pandemic portion of the crisis that was crisis to consolidation.

And that is now these companies are starting to consolidate their markets. They're going in, they're going for the jugular.

You're going to see them swoop in and hire the best people from old media companies. You're going to see them play offense.
You're going to see them do deals.

You're going to see them establish new relationships from the holdouts that were still spending money on other, you know, on Yelp or wherever it was, and then you are on BuzzFeed.

And you're going to see the percentage of digital marketing dollars from Facebook and Google go from 61 or 62 cents to 72. And as the wind is going to return into even bigger sales.

And they have money.

They can get talent. They can do everything.
This is, you know, it'll be interesting.

What I think is the most interesting part of this is the competition between these giants, you know, as they move into each other's businesses.

You know, Facebook and Amazon and e-commerce and entertainment,

you know, they're all, of course, making Zoom copies, which is, that's the other danger. Now, luckily, they're getting bad reviews.
The Google one is doing one. Facebook is doing one.

Have you tried the Facebook one? Have you heard anything about it? No, I haven't. I just, it's what I've seen, none of them are getting good reviews.
The Google one, particularly, is getting slammed.

And, you know, they weren't doing it for the longest time. And then now they're doing it.
It's just, they're like a big, they're waving a red flag in the face of regulators.

Like now that Zoom has got this, we're going to grab it.

It shows like, oh, like they sort of like giants that suddenly, oh, look over here. Here's one piece of.
a piece of gold I haven't picked up. I need to pick that one up too.
100%.

It's Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer for free as opposed to, and what is Facebook doing? They're like, well, we don't have a better product. I know.

Let's offer it for free and take advantage of our incumbents and our monopoly power. Yeah, they have some issues around dial-in.
They don't let anyway, you know, it's not free.

Free ain't free at any of these services. And they would be, I would stick with Zoom in a second.
The question is: will Zoom get bought? Or, you know, at the price, it won't, of course, because it's

not at this price. But, you know,

they literally can go anywhere they want now. And the question is, you know, if you go to each of them, you know, Facebook and Google will accelerate in advertising and move into commerce.

Amazon will accelerate in cloud. So will Microsoft.
Just the acceleration rate for these companies is so massive.

And the idea that they're going to be regulated is has diminished considerably, even though there's some noise out of, but, you know, look at this, this FTC thing we talked about.

You know, it just is, there's not a lot in their way. The highway is clear for them.
And everybody else is sort of have has broken legs, essentially, and can't really, they can't even.

They don't have cars. They don't have anything.
And everyone will be struggling. And these companies will rush into the breach, whether it's retail, advertising.

So what do we do now that we have the power shifting to the New York Times and Kara Swisher? What do we do? We start to say nice things about Facebook.

No, we start to discuss this, what power is, and really give backbone to people who are regulating these companies and who are

that they're and citizens, the idea that citizens do have some ability. There is the governed and the governors and they are not elected governors.

And, you know, whatever you think of any of these people, they were elected. Like whatever side you're on, they were elected.

And you can talk about like difficult elections or voter fraud, but on the whole, this is an elected, these are elected officials and therefore

they deserve to have the power. And so the question is, will they be, you know, when you, when you combine

this financial might,

the might they have with the power over data, with the power over technology, with the power over talent, it's just,

it's mind-blowing what they could do coming out of this. I mean, I know

they are doing and they will do it. It just accelerates existing trends, but it truly accelerates them because it gets, it sweeps stuff out of their way.
So

the other ones that are coming are Apple and I think Amazon today is Amazon. Amazon's today.
Yeah. What do you expect from them? Well, I'm already skipping.

Well, I already kind of, I'll make another prediction, but I skipped my prediction. I think Amazon becomes the second most valuable company today.

I think that their earnings, I mean, look at the business that are in. We didn't, okay, obviously e-commerce,

we know that's going to be crazy up. It's just a a matter of how much crazy up.
AWS is probably going to see a surge in activity.

The thing that people don't talk about, what's the fastest-growing media company over a billion dollars in the world right now?

It's Amazon Media Group.

So Amazon Media Group is now, it's soon probably going to be one of the five biggest media companies in the world. I'm not talking about Amazon Prime Video.

I'm talking about Amazon Media Group, where you buy ads such that once you have Huggies in your basket,

PNG can advertise Pampers and say, no, look over here. And it becomes impossible.

The in-store shopper marketing, if you will, is a bigger business than advertising.

And Amazon's about to make it a bigger business than almost every digital media company with the exception of Facebook and Google.

So it just doesn't, whether it's e-commerce, whether it's cloud, whether there are more households have a relationship with Prime or go to church or have a pet or decorate a Christmas tree.

So

biggest cable company, biggest, fastest-growing media company, fastest-growing cloud company, fastest growing e-commerce company, fastest growing or most competent back-end fulfillment logistics company in the world.

So, look, tonight, post-earnings, and it's always dangerous to make these calls.

Amazon becomes the second most valuable company in the world and it's marched to being the most valuable company in the world within the next year, if not the next 90 days.

But you could see Amazon add the value of Boeing at 4:01 p.m. today.
I think the earnings and the

earn, it's going to be almost scary to listen to the earnings call tonight. Scary? Let me read you a quote of that.
This is part of a column that's about to go up in the Times.

But in the time this after this crisis is over, I can say that I fear them more because they will be more unfettered than ever with much less pushback on them from regulators and politicians that had been building decent momentum before coronavirus.

Instead, it has accelerated their speed and tightened their grip on our lives.

And this kind of consolidation of power combined with a stronghold on data, automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, media, advertising, entertainment, retail, and even autonomous tech is daunting.

It's daunting. Daunting.
Well, look,

I think Biden,

his VP, especially if it was Elizabeth Warren, I think one of them. That's the only thing that'll do it.
Warren is VP. I think

Warren's the only one that's knowledgeable enough and can even speak articulate enough to it and isn't afraid of these guys. Everyone else is afraid.
Warren.

So, but I think it's almost uh a presidential platform to say that the best way to ensure we don't step towards tyranny the best way to restore income inequality the best way to bust out of this dangerous cycle of the gross idolatry of innovators the best way to ensure the stock market continues to go up and that our innovators and true engine of growth small business is is oxygenated would be would be uh a breakup we are tripling the budgets the dog i i know i sound like they're not going to do it they're not going to do it in the middle of the

crisis i'm not i I think they're not going to do it. I don't think Biden has the

set to do it. Anyway, in any case, we're going to take a quick break.

And when we get back, we're going to talk about things that aren't doing so well, Uber and how they're faring these days. Spoil alert, not well, as you know, and a listener mail question.

Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odo comes in.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. ODU is an all-in-one fully integrated platform that handles everything.
That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com.
That's odoo.com.

Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odo comes in.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.
That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters: running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com.
That's odoo.com.

Welcome back, Scott. It's Kara Swisher, who works for everybody.
Uber is reportedly on the brink of laying out. You are so easy.
Seriously. What is the definition? I mean, you are

literally like.

I like myself. I don't know.
I'm not going to apologize for that.

Other than Fox, who don't you work for? Oh, I'm not working for Fox. And that is a no comment on that situation.
Because you already work for them. I don't.

You already worked for Newscore. I did.
I worked for Uber Murdoch. I spent a lot of time with him incredibly.
It was interesting. It's kind of fun to be a little bit dirty, isn't it?

I go on on Fox every once in a while. I like it.
I was not happy with that period of my life.

Anyway, Uber is reportedly on the brink of laying off 20% of their employees as the company's CTO steps down. He's a really interesting person, that CTO, by the way.

The information was the first outlet to report that the company is planning tiered layoffs that result in letting go of 5,400 employees. Wow.

Separately, Tuan Phomm, who is really interesting, he's the chief technology officer stepping down the company announced this week.

Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrashahi, said that its bookings in most major cities was down by as much as 70%.

But the company has seen recent gains with Uber Eats, obviously, even as Lyft has tried to launch a food delivery service, which you really can't do in the middle of a pandemic.

But will this be enough to keep Uber afloat through the pandemic downturn? Scott, what do you think of Rideshare?

I haven't been in an Uber for months, for months, I guess, or two months, a month and a half. This is the first year Uber and Lyft were publicly listed companies.

So. Yeah, right.
Well, look, Ryan's telling, it's ground zero for, you know, this is the good news is they can variabilize down their cost structure.

I think a lot of people are looking at ride-hailing and saying, okay,

is this, is, should this be a static, ubiquitous part of our society? Should 30-year-olds who make a good living, but not a great living, be taking suburbans to the airport?

Should they be, Should there be kind of a swarm of people turning on their phone because they don't have minimum wage protection at their job, much less this job? There's a lot of flexibility there.

Gig work works, but should we be putting them in this construct that is effectively a payday loan where they just borrow against the value of their car in the form of deferred maintenance?

Have we set up the ultimate hunger games where the people at headquarters split the value of Ford and General Motors until the stock decline? Now it's just the value of Fiat Chrysler.

I think Uber survives, Lyft goes away or gets acquired. Maybe Uber consolidates them, but Uber is going to, as it should be, it'll survive.
It's a great global brand, great execution.

Uber Eats has now got new life because of what's going on. They'll get some money.
They'll get money. Like Airbnb.
Like Airbnb.

It'll just be a shitty stock to own, and they're going to be a fraction of their former selves. And people are going to rethink in a new world with consumer confidence way down.

Should 28-year-olds be taken off the subway and put in cars roaming around? It's just not going to stay in Uber. I think the trend is useful.
I find Uber useful. I don't, you know what I mean?

Like, I don't use it as much as I, when I used to. I used it more in San Francisco than here because it's, they have better public transportation and I happen to like it.

But I do think, and there's now scooters and other choices, some of which are owned by

Uber, and some of the bikes, which are really helpful. I'm going to be trying out a couple of electric bikes in the next couple of weeks.

But it's,

I think it's not, you're right.

It's going to be a smaller version of what it was and the uber eats you know amazon has been in this food delivery business the others have been eating around the edges so to speak um but you know they people like uber eats but i've been using caviar i've been using grubhub and stuff i like caviar too yeah it has the best restaurants i have to say it has really good restaurants on it i think it's sort of the fancy version you know uh for some

they do they do they're great their app is great um but i i suspect the issues around all these things is the amount they take from these restaurants which is you know i think is really daunting for a lot of restaurant owners um but i i do think you're right smaller it'll be um i don't know maybe it won't even be public anymore i mean sometimes you know if it's sort of in this sort of shitty zone of stocks what what does that do um

Yeah, but still, a take private on Uber would be huge. And typically companies get taken private when they're profitable and they want to layer on debt to finance the acquisition of ongoing private.

It'd be hard to imagine somebody

financing the take private of Uber, given that even at this stop, I'm thinking of one person

who would take advantage of this. Is it so

sun because he is in all of them? He's, I always used to think he was going to consolidate all of them globally in order to finally make money. Um, but can you see the Saudis in him coming in here?

And like, they have pieces of Didi, they've got pieces of Ola, I think.

He's got pieces of all of them, and so uh, I'm not sure about Lyft, and maybe he's even in Lyft, but I just think a global uh ride-sharing business with delivery attached to it and other things.

So why? What economies of scale do you have other than brand out of rolling? You have DD and grab and all those. Brand.
Brand. Yeah, I don't know.
I think right now, I would bet Moss.

There's probably logistics and computing above them all. I think Moss and Piff right now are probably, they've had their eyebrows singed so badly.
So he's going right back in.

I think you don't know him. I think he's like, what can I, yeah.
You know, you saw the Saudis buying a piece of Live Nation.

They're going to, this is like people with money are gonna leap in here and get i mean if you had bought into facebook or apple or amazon about a month ago you'd have done rather well especially amazon because they all dipped like crazy and then well amazon's up 30 this year to date it's i mean so i was you would have done rather well and i think a lot of people with cash like the saudis are gonna just jump right in there um but so so lift what you think lift will be gone just gone just gone lift doesn't have the brand i mean it has all the all of the calories and none of the great taste of Uber.

It's, you know, ride-hailing is a menace to society. It's bad for the environment.

It absolutely accelerates income inequality.

It takes people off of transportation and reduces the need to make the requisite investments in long-term thinking around infrastructure and investing. But it doesn't have the global brand.

Yeah, it doesn't only us, right? Yeah. And so I'm not sure.
Yeah, it doesn't have the scale. It doesn't have Uber Eats.
It doesn't have Uber freight. So I think Lyft is mostly.

Why would Uber buy them? Why would Uber buy them? Oh, just for scale and to get rid of a competitor. You know, you just overnight you're the only game in town.

Well, that's that's what's interesting here. Is this consolidation or is this Cosmo and Urban Fetch? Right.
Where it just becomes such a bad business and it starts a downward spiral.

But to your point, there's still a lot of wealthy people. I love, I absolutely love Uber.
I spend $2,000 to $3,000 a month

on it. And I hate myself for it.
I think it's the price. It's the price that's going to change.
And I think that's an issue.

Now, it's interesting, ironic, that you were talking about, you know, the damages that these ride-sharing services, because John Zimmer was the guy who was the CEO president.

He talked a lot about sort of the saving of the environment early on when I met him. And he was, he kept talking about 80% of the car isn't in use.

And it was started in a much more hippie, hippie sort of style, that company.

And had that, had that, has that reputation and has that vibe compared to sort of the death star that was Travis Kalanik at Uber.

And so it's interesting that, you know, again, lovely guys,

much

less aggressive than Uber was, but you're right. I think

they've got a lot of, that's a tough business.

But you were zeroing in on the thing here, and that is if a company has a lot of negative externalities associated with it as it relates to society, if they are resulting, if their workers aren't making enough money, then it's simple.

You tax them and you enforce minimum wage and employee, not contractor standards. And

Uber goes on to be a great company that's only worth Clorox, not worth General Motors. So it can be fixed.
It's a great service. And then they'll have lots of drivers.

Then they'll have lots of drivers' ability as long as they, I think they'll be pressured to giving them rights. I think this that they will have to treat them that way.

So costs will go up, but they will also have a bigger pool of drivers. Right.

And better smaller, it'll be a it'll be a smaller, more, I would call just business.

And okay, that the, what is it, 16,000 people at headquarters now don't make as much money on their stock options, but there's a redistribution of some of that, some of that

income security to their drivers. And quite frankly, riders should be paying more.
So there just needs to be a redistribution of stakeholder value here. Things to come at Uber.

I'm sure Dara Kostrashahi did not think this is what he signed up for. He was already, you know, he thought a very different scenario here.
Anyway, we got a listener mail, Scott.

Scott you've got you've got can't believe I'm gonna be your mailman you you've got mail

hi Kara and Scott this is Derek from New Zealand some countries such as my own and others like Australia and Germany are starting to get this crisis seriously under control while America doesn't have in place the testing and contact tracing that successful countries say are key to their progress What would you do to protect the international brand of America after not being able to handle this crisis as well as others.

Are there any equivalents to this situation in business? Does America need to pivot? Oh my God, we just got dunked on by New Zealand. What the heck, Derek? By the way, let me just say

it's a nation of not that big a nation, but Jacinda, it's five million people, I think. Jacinda Ardern has done like incredible leadership there.

And again, it's a smaller country, it's more, there's more land and everything else, but nonetheless, they've done a great job.

And so has Germany under Angela Merkel, who I would be dating if I could.

But

that's a twist. I wasn't expecting that.
I don't need to add that in there. No, I love it.
I love Angela Merkel. You love Angela? I love her.

I love Jacinda Ardairn. I love all these lady leaders.
I mean, I think PhD in quantum chemistry

on my new podcast. I will have Angela on.
We will have a ball. I mean, we'll drink a little bit.

Versus Fordham attendee Donald Trump. He doesn't talk much about his ears at Fordham.
He would love to have Donald Trump. He'd never, he'd never never sit across from me.
Anyway, Angala. Angala.

But here's the deal.

Does America, oh, I love their accents, but they just dunked on us. So what do you think? Scott, if you were in charge of brand U.S., what would you do? And

what would you do? How do you rebrand the United States? Mr. Marketing Professor Man?

Well, in the short term, it's all about we screwed up, but we're in the seventh or, you know, we don't know if we're in the second inning or the seventh ending of this pandemic.

And regardless, the key to restoring our brand in the short term

around, you know, and trying to dial down the gross incompetence of, I mean, there's a couple of things.

One, a brand is you want to do your brand image, the positives and negatives, and then say what negatives are getting in the way of us reaching our aspirational

brand identity. Right now, we have this incredibly negative brand image that is what we are, and that is we are grossly incompetent.
That's not really a branding event, is it?

Well, that's my point, but it's part of our image.

So in the short term, all we need to do or all we have to do, or all we should be focused on in the short term, is dialing down this association of gross incompetence that this administration has levied across a nation of 6% of the people that now has a third of the deaths globally.

As far as we know, a lot of people, Trumpers, will dive into my Twitter and say, well, you don't know the numbers are real. There's just no getting around it.

We have fucked this up like seven days and on Sunday. We have to manage.

the apex of the relapse, whether it's an army of tracers, whether it's more vigilant testing, whether it's being the first to find and distribute a vaccine or a therapy, our chance to pull

a semi-dead rabbit out of the hat here will be how well or not well we manage the peak or the apex of the relapse.

And then long term, medium term, there's really, and again, we get a ton of, I'll get a ton of crap for this. And people always say to me the same thing on pivot.
Stick to business, stay in your lane.

The branding event, the branding event for America that re-cements our position as the good guys and the good gals is simple. Biden takes 42 of 50 states in November.
Everything about

the brand that has been eroded here that is wonderful about America, and that is empathy, generosity, courage, a comity of man,

a lack of steep. It's got a good motto.
It's morning. 42 of 50 states.
How about it's morning in America? It's morning again in America.

Anyone who's not, who's young will not know that's Ronald Reagan's. I have a post, that poster, it's morning and I thought that was so brilliant at the time.
I was in college.

I was like, whoa, do you remember that? Yeah, all my friends are total.

I was close to liking Reagan and I did, you know, the stuff he did around the agenda. Everybody liked Reagan.
Well, the age crisis thing really soured me on him very badly. Yeah.

Because I was right in the middle of that. But

I, that was a great brand. Make America Radiant is so obnoxious, but it's Morning in America was really so effective.
It was hopeful. It was, and so was Obama's also.

Um, but I people forget that it's morning in America. So, would it be like that? What, what would be the what is the pivot? What do we say? Now, with 100% less suckage,

like, well, I don't know. I almost think like you could just draft off.
I think you just take the MAGA and you just take

away,

you just take make, you got to get away from it. You take, hold on, all right.
Just take the make and grade it out of it. Just call it America again.
Oh, and just

boom, shout out. I just thought of that.
Oh, Oh my gosh. America again.
Great.

America again.

Scott, that's oh, I can't stand it.

I should do this for a living. Oh my God, you're really smart.
You know? I keep this up. I'm going to have a show on vice.
Every time I'm going to go. No one can find.
Who is no one can find?

Every time I go, who is? She doesn't cuss on vice. What's the point of being on vice if you can't drop that bomb? What? You're not allowed to curse.
What?

We cannot make a deal in which we cannot be bleeped. Okay.
Let me just, let's just put that in our contract along with some other stuff we're going to ask for. Let's ask for

stuff. Okay, so America again.

What do you think? What do you think we do? Answer the Kiwi's is Kiwi a restaurant?

No, I don't know. I used to call that Chris Liddell, who now works at the White House, used to be CFO, and he was fine when I used that.
What do you think?

How do you think we restore the brand America? That's a delicious fruit, by the way.

I think we

pretend it didn't happen, as we are so good at doing. We pretend it didn't happen.
The pandemic or Trump? Trump, the whole thing. Just yeah, 40, 40 of 50 states.
Right. We screwed up.

We're correcting our mistake. Right.
Not we're back. Not America.
Again, I like that. I like that.
I'm trying to think, but I think we, we just act like it was a terrible nightmare.

The nightmare is over kind of thing. And but say the word nightmare.

You know, something like time to dream, you know, wake up. wake up from your nightmare.
It's time to dream. Something like that.
How do you like that? No? Yes.

Yeah, sure.

That feels like. I don't know.

How about all of us need to be one cell on the hand that bitch slaps that bigoted fucking weirdo? How about that?

Will that go on a bumper sticker? No. Will that go on a bumper sticker? No.

No. I like America again.
I like it. Let's go for it.
Hey, Derek from New Zealand.

Sell us all you want, but we come up with good advertising here. I got to tell you.
But hello to Jacinda Ardern. I'd love her to have her on the podcast.
Thank you very much. Will you ask her?

Thank you. All right.
So, Scott, we're going to take one more quick break after that brilliance from you and we'll be back for predictions.

Support for the show comes from Vanguard. The lineup includes over 80 bond funds.
To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk about bonds for a moment.

Capturing value and fixed income is not easy. Bond markets can be massive, murky, and let's be real, a lot of firms throw a couple flashy funds your way and call it a day, but not Vanguard.

Vanguard bonds are institutional quality. They're actively managed by a a 200-person global squad of sector specialists, analysts, and traders.

Lots of firms love to highlight their star portfolio managers, like it's all about that one brilliant mind making the magic happen. Vanguard's philosophy is a little different.

They believe the best active strategies should be shared across the team. That way, every client benefits from the collective brain power, not just one individual take.

So, if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com/slash audio. That's vanguard.com/slash audio.

All investing is subject to risk, Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor.

Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odo comes in.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.
That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odu for free at odu.com.
That's odoo.com.

Scott, earlier this week, we talked about whether the government should temporarily ban mergers for big companies during the pandemic. It's been discussed in Congress.

AOC and Elizabeth Warren teamed up on a new bill proposing that since what we last spoke. What else should listeners be ahead of the curve curve on? Predict something, please.

I'm going to do a quick prediction before you start, by the way. So AMC is feuding with Universal Studios, the theater chain, and said it would ban their theater release after Universal CEOs.

The company plans to release more of its movies straight to streaming. I think Trolls was done.
There's all this anger among theater owners. I feel like theater owners are.

just going to go there and eventually will own all these uh will own all these chains you know disney will own the chain um and i think they're just saying full steam you mean the the studio? Studios

own the distribution. Right.
But I think it's going to be full steam ahead on these releases and as people get used to them. And too bad, AMC.
You're going to get bought.

And it's going to be just one more means of distribution. And I think the government's going to let it happen because there's so many ways to watch movies now.
Thank you. Well,

there's a lot there.

And that is if you look at companies that have added more than $100 billion in, say, a two or three year period, they all have one thing in common, and that is they've made extraordinary investments in being vertical, whether it's Apple opening stores.

If you think about Facebook and Google, they've manufacture, design, and distribute their products.

And it's only a matter of time before Disney and the major content players that have the capital go vertical. And that is, you're right.
They not only acquire AMC or iPic, they acquire Xbox handsets

or they require Roku. So going vertical is key.

The other thing that's playing out here is that As When I was growing up, my dad's boss had a slightly bigger house, but was in the same neighborhood.

and all of the kids went to the same place because he made twice what my dad made. Now the CEO of a company no longer makes 20 to 30 times the average salary of an employee.

They make 300 to 400 times. So there has been a marketplace shift and adaption or adaptation to

the extreme amount of wealth and the variance in the amount of money people have through extreme segmentation. I'll use two examples.

I'll come back to what I think is going to happen in movie theaters. You used to go to Disneyland and it was $19.95 to get in.
And then you bought these stupid books of tickets.

An A ticket was for Lame Dumbo Ride and an E ticket was for Pirates of the Caribbean. And then

you had to strategize and spend a ton of time thinking about, okay, does mom get to go on Pirates of the Caribbean or does she have to go on Bear Country Jamboree, which is only a D ticket.

And then slowly but surely, as wealth, as people, successful people were no longer

making millions, they were making tens of millions or hundreds of millions. They adapted and they said, okay, now we have FastPass.
And for an extra $20, or $30, you get to cut the line.

And then we had VIP tours, where for $5,000, you and eight people not only cut the line, you go in the employee entrance.

And if you just give the operator a hand signal, you get to ride it over and over and over again. So they have segmented the shit.

out of this product such that they can attract and tap into extremely wealthy people. The same thing is going to happen in movies.
And that is within

12 to 24 months, you and me or anybody else are going to be able to watch the next installment of Star Wars for $250 at home seven days before it comes out in the theaters because there is a large population of wealthy people who will pay hundreds of dollars to watch the new minions at home in the comfort of their own home.

And the really sad thing about it is this is that One of the things that was a blessing, I mean, a real blessing for me going to university high school in Santa Monica or West LA is there were kids a lot wealthier than me, and I developed aspiration.

It's like, okay, that kid's going to Stanford. He's smarter and harder working than me, but he's not much smarter and harder working than me.
Maybe I could go to a good college.

And then there were kids a lot less fortunate than me. And I remember developing a sense of kind of empathy for them.

And when we take this segmentation of our society and put everyone in their own weight class, it reduces a level of aspiration and confidence to the upside and reduces a level of empathy to the downside.

And what are we doing now? We're going to take everyone out of movie theater. People, income and demographic segments used to mix at movie theaters, and now they're not going to.

I think people are going to watch it at home. No, I think there's going to be movie theaters.
And I would love Disney to run a movie theater because it would be a nice experience.

Like the Alamo Draft House. You will not go back to a regular movie theater.
You'll go to Draft Paper.

That's segmentation. You're wrong.
You'll go to Draft House or IPIC. You won't go to a regular movie theater.
No, but I will go to movie theaters if they were even slightly niche.

There has been no innovation in movie theater. They're still ganky since since I was a kid.
Well, that's it. I pick.
Yeah. Then

I like, I go to Alamo Draft House. They're segmenting.
I actively go there. I actively go there.
They're segmenting. They're going, okay, you're not rich.
You go to a place with sticky floors.

Yeah, but it's not that much

price difference. I'll tell you that.
The difference in ticket price at Alamo Draft is just you can eat there.

The price difference is not. Oh my gosh, you're such a New York Times podcast elitist.
People can't. 95% of America cannot go to afford to go to IPIC.
It's $25 a seat.

It is not at Alamo draft house, but it's the food that they make the money on, I suspect.

It's less, I'm just saying, ticket prices.

Dog loves taking his kids to a kid's show and getting drunk. They take the prices down and make a great Disney.

Let me just say, as I know you haven't been on a Disney cruise, and I, Karis Wisher, have, let me just say.

What did you think of it? I'm kind of interested. It was,

I was trying to get Bob Iger to come to something, and he said I had to go on a cruise in order to do it. I paid for it myself.
I went. I asked it.
I thought it was flawless.

I hated every minute of it, but it was flawless. The experience.

Yes. And by the way, they had tiered people, had better rooms, had less better rooms.
That's a Titanic room. Right, exactly.
But the rooms that the less better people were great. The food was fine.

It wasn't great, but it was good. And I have to say, one thing they did, everybody got soft served all the time.

It just was, even though I just was like dying inside, I could not deny the quality of it. I went to their crazy.
I wanted to do Disney. It was.
I'm past that, though.

I'm more about, I want to go on a virgin cruise because I think I'll maybe have my first threesome with a bunch of hairdressers. That's how I imagine a virgin cruise.

Isn't that you imagine a virgin cruise? No. Hairdressers and the dog mixing it up a little bit.

Why would hairdressers talk to you?

I don't know. All right.
So, is that your prediction? What is your prediction?

I consider that. Okay, so I got a bunch.
All right, no. Amazon, and this is dangerous.
Amazon becomes the second most valuable company in the world this afternoon.

Zoom, we predicted last week, was going to go down to 100 bucks. It's already dropped from 170 to I think 170.
Well, that was because of the Facebook, Google stuff. yeah

um and you're gonna see um you're gonna see an absolute we're gonna see big tech go from 24 percent of the s p by the end of the year to 28 to 30 as the market wakes up from its concentral hallucination and absolutely throws up and tests new lows in the next 90 days but anyways my real prediction is today post earnings amazon becomes the second most valuable company in the world that's a good one that's important and then we will see what they will do with that power and jeff bezos has made a lot of money in the past couple of months i'll tell you that what is he going to do with it?

He's going to Mars, apparently. Yeah, no, he's doing what he should be doing.
He's not going to a movie theater. I'll tell you what.

No, no. He could buy, he could, he could, I was thinking about he could buy Paramount Pictures, he could, or Paramount, who owns Paramount Viacom.
Is that Viacom? I think it's Viacom.

He could buy Ferrari. Ferrari's $24 billion.
That would be a baller move to buy Ferrari in the midst of a midlife crisis. Why? That's insane.
Because he can't. That's even a

lift for him. That's a lift for him, $24 billion.
That'd be awesome. Own a car car company.
Would you do that if you were him?

Of course you would. I would do that if I were him.
Of course, you wouldn't. I don't know.
I can't even do that. I'm going to ask you a final question where we go.

What would you buy if you had Jeff Bezos level? One thing. What would you buy?

Fox News and shut that shit down. Oh, I like it.
Together we would do that. That's exactly what I would do.
Actually, you couldn't do it because something else would just reemerge.

Everyone said Bloomberg should buy it. But oh, another prediction here.
I'm sorry. Sonos is going to be acquired.
Oh,

the home. The home is going to increase in importance for all of us with distancing and with work from home.
And we're going to invest more in our homes.

And the number, the most undervalued brand in the home that collides technology with leisure and entertainment is Sonos. I love Sonos.

I have them.

It's got great MPS scores. It's got a great CEO there.

And right now,

we had Sonos at one of our All Things D conferences early on to debut them. And it's been interesting.
They were also, can I tell a very quick story here?

They came to our our All Things D conference and we used to have a room we called the science fair where sponsors used to show off their stuff.

And they were showing off their first, their first thing had a little box with a wheel on it, if you remember,

the thing that controlled the Sonos device. Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember.
And we had Steve Jobs that year. And so we were walking, he wanted to see the science fair.

So Walt Mossberg and I were walking him around.

And John Earnhardt, I think that was the founder, CEO, was there and he was, he was a Steve Jobs fan. Like you could not believe.
Just one of those, just like, I love Steve Jobs. He's my God.

And Steve Jobs zeroed in on the Sonos display and he walked over to the guy and the guy's like, oh my God, I get to meet Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs pointed a finger at him and he goes, I'm going to sue you. You have copied

the iPod with the wheel. That is our wheel.
He started like he, I'm going to sue you. You jack it.
He was like amazing. And he was a sponsor of ours.
And

he walked away. And I was like, thank you for sponsoring all things digital.
And he was thrilled to be screamed at by Steve Jobs, but it was a really interesting moment.

Yeah, Patrick Spence is the CEO there now. He's very good.
It's a company that doesn't, it's, I mean, if you think about it, what other company has that kind of technology

in the home with a billion dollar market cap?

You're right.

Somebody's going to acquire it.

And it might be a strange one. It might be like a Samsung or something.
I like that. Okay, I like that, Scott, that this is

so full of information this particular pivot, which just goes to show we are here for the long run. We are going to keep making these fantastic insights.

We've gotten a lot of really nice tweets about people who are lifting their spirits in this time of woe. And I oh, yeah, what a thrill.
You're welcome. You know what? You're welcome.
You know what?

We are. So just accept the love that is given to you by our fans.
Anyway, Scott, it's time to get out of here.

Don't forget, if there's a story in the news and you're curious about it and want to hear our opinion on, email us at pivot at boxmedia.com to be featured on the show and vote for Pivot for the Webby Awards Best Business Podcast.

We want to beat Reid Hoffman. And if Masters of Scale wins, I'm not going to be happy about the situation.
Anyway, Scott, read us out.

Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Our executive producer is Erica Anderson.
Special thanks to Drew Burroughs and Rebecca Castro.

If you like what you heard, please hit the subscribe button or download wherever you find your podcast. Join us at the beginning of next week.
It feels almost borderline optimistic, Kara.

We hope some of that optimism is creeping back into everyone's lives. Stay safe, and we'll speak to you next week.

Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. ODU is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.
That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odo for free at odoo.com.
That's odoo.com.

Support for this show comes from S. Steve Johnson.
We've all been there.

Choosing not to wear your new white shoes because there's a 10% chance of rain, bending awkwardly over the tiny coffee table to enjoy a sip of your latte.

Not ordering the red sauce. Those feelings of dread are what we call stainsiety.

But now you can break free from your stainsiety with Shout's Triple Acting Spray that has stain-fighting ingredients to remove a huge variety of stains so you can live in the moment and clean up later.

Just breathe and shout with Shout Triple Acting Spray. Learn more at shoutitout.com.