"Woke" is the 2019 business strategy

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher, back from Hawaii and now in frigid Washington, D.C.

And I'm Scott Galloway here to publicly disclose for the first time that I am in a relationship with Jeff Bezos.

It could happen, Kara.

Hey, Alive girl.

It could happen.

By the way, I don't know what it means, but I think I've been upgraded to the next level of prime membership because I just got a picture of someone's junk.

Oh, you know what?

As usual, you take a very delicate situation and make it horrible.

Well, you're in Paris.

I'm only going to give you time off because you're in Paris right now.

I'm so jelly.

Yeah, I am in a basement somewhere in the city.

of lights.

But by the way, just back to the whole, the whole Bezos.

We're going to get to Bezos.

We're going to get to Bezos.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I'm so excited about that I can't I can't hold back I'm so ready what do you go for it what have you heard what's going on here

he's well he's not a very good texter right let's just be clear about that although I I'm gonna get to that in a second um I think you know I I know

I used to know them very well, and I haven't spent a lot of time with them since they both become zigzagillionaires or any time.

But in the early days, I did.

I spent a lot of time with them.

And Mackenzie Bezos is a wonderful and smart and very integral part of the beginning of Amazon, as I recall.

And she also, I don't see that she will be, this will be a very difficult, I'd be surprised if it burst out into a horrible fight.

It's not her nature, and it's not his nature either.

They seem to have gotten ahead of it.

It looks like they just were married, and then he met someone else.

I don't want to go into the

who did what to whom, because I think marriages are complicated.

We really don't know what happened.

But I think the focus for me is that I don't think it'll affect the business.

I think the issues I think probably anyone who's an investor is the focus, like where he needs his focus, where is his focus and stuff like that.

And so

when you, anytime you have personal issues and he's got four kids and obviously a new relationship, there's going to be questions about where his focus is.

And I think the same thing happened with Sergey Brin at Google, although he was not nearly, in fact, not at all, a part of the critical management staff at Google.

But, you know, you see this happen to VCs, to CEOs, and things like that.

I think the only thing business people think is, where's the focus?

And how will it affect the stock?

I don't think it'll affect the stock at all or anything else.

So that's how I come down.

Yeah,

Scott.

It appears

they have mutual shared interest in that they don't want, they're both large shareholders of a company.

They don't want this to spill out into the public.

I thought the press release was awfully strange or the thing that he posted on his Facebook page.

Well, he did that to get ahead of the, you know, the National International.

The Inquirer story.

But it was so you kind of knew something was up because I don't know.

I'm sure you read it, but there was a sense in there saying, we look forward to new ventures and adventures together.

And I thought, that describes divorce perfectly.

You know, that it's not.

They probably own a lot of stuff together.

I'm guessing they do.

They probably have a lot of investments.

I know, but it's like.

Well, you know, Sergei, Brennan, and Wojski do.

They own like half a town and they have investments all over the place.

So you have to stay, and they have children, obviously, besides, which is the best investment.

But I think, yeah, I know it was odd.

I think they were just rushing.

I think that was a rush job.

You know what I mean?

Like, what are we going to do?

What I found fascinating is that he didn't imagine that he was going to be the subject of scrutiny by Trump.

affiliated people, especially with the Washington Post ownership.

And sort of shock, I think they were probably a little caught like, oh, they're following us.

He's not the subject of interest.

and the fact that a man who puts echoes in everybody's home and, you know, and listening devices in everyone's home doesn't realize he could be, you know, easily hacked in some way.

Yeah, and it's, it just goes to show,

you know, everyone,

everyone's human, right?

And I don't want to make excuses for the guy, but I think we all sort of assume that Bezos was kind of the least human in that as he seems somewhat infallible.

The story, the story, the frame, the picture, it just all was pretty perfect.

Yeah.

Very much so.

And, you know, you get it's easy to be, it's easy to be glib about it, and then you think about, well, they have four kids, and I know you've been through it, I've been through it.

But at that press release, they made it sound like their divorce wasn't tearing, you know, it wasn't a tragedy and a breakup of a family, but they were going on a Disney cruise of the Bahamas.

The whole thing just sounded like

when Gwyneth Paltrow started doing them, remember?

Conscious uncoupling?

Conscious uncoupling, whatever the hell that was.

Yeah, yeah, you know, ups and downs.

But

another thing that was interesting was the focus on the text and how it became a Twitter meme, obviously.

It was kind of crazy.

And it was interesting.

I ran into someone yesterday who said, I wish I could text like that.

Like, and I was in love so much that I texted like that, even though it was super awkward.

The hey, alive girl, whatever that meant, and things like that.

I think he's sexy.

I think it's romantic.

I thought it was very sweet.

It was very nice.

I think he's really,

someone was like, if I was the world's richest man, I would be like, have like 93 supermodel girlfriends.

And it was interesting.

It was very sweet.

I thought it was very sweet.

Yeah.

So there you have it.

There you have it.

Best of luck to all of them.

Love is a constantly turning

something.

There you go, Kara.

That is funny.

There you go.

But you're right.

He becomes human.

He becomes more human for sure.

Yeah.

Also, I'm curious on your take.

My sense is that the media has actually shown a great deal of restraint and is being pretty, I don't know, old school about this and not.

Yeah.

What are you going to do?

What are you going to do?

Oh my gosh.

Well, I mean, it's not like Harvey.

It's not like, you know, it's just,

you know, it's so not, given how all the much revelations this year, I mean, including at Amazon with its own executives, you know, Roy Price and the whole thing like that.

That's like, that's different.

That's malevolent.

This is just human beings' relationships.

This is just

midlife crisis.

Yeah, or something.

You know, the bulking up might have been a sign, I suppose.

But

well,

it's just, or the rise, I don't know.

I just think it's, I think as a reporter, you're like, oh, we had, let me very briefly tell you, we were, when we were covering what happened with Sergey Brin,

I was very, when they called to talk,

they essentially told us what was going on.

And

when I, at first, I was like, no, thank you.

We're not writing about this because it's not our area of people breaking up.

And the only thing of interest was the stock, right?

That there was, he had a certain amount of stock that was controlling shareholder stock.

And so that was of interest.

And then the second shoe dropped is that he was seeing someone who had literally, I had just been

seen with another executive at Google who was going out with another executive.

So, and that guy left, Hugo Berra, who's now at Facebook.

And it was at that one, then it was like, oh, great, this is like invade, it's a whole workplace thing.

And so then we did write about it.

But it was, it was definitely,

it was hard to do.

We felt we had to think about what was important.

In that case, a major executive who was running its Android division left because of this romance drama that was going on at Google.

And then there were issues of things in the workplace.

This guy was, you know what I mean?

And stuff like that.

But that was more after the Yugo thing happened.

I think that was, it became pertinent.

It became much more pertinent.

So, yeah.

Don't love writing these.

I can't, I tell you, I don't like, I don't, I don't really care what people do

unless it affects their business.

But yeah, you're right.

People are very prim and proper and stuff about it.

And people don't like to judge.

People try not, I mean, even though the press seems super judgy, they don't like to judge.

But speaking of judging, tell us your virtue signaling thing turned out to be, here we have a big thing this week.

Yeah,

we talked about this, Kara, before you went to Kauai.

By the way, how was Hawaii?

It was beautiful.

Was it nice?

Oh, it was beautiful.

There's some flooding in Hana Lai where I was.

but it was beautiful.

It's like, it's gorgeous.

I love Hawaii.

It's one of my favorite places on earth.

I went, did a lot of hiking, some stand-up paddleboarding.

I don't like to swim, but I even went into the ocean and did some

boogie bar, whatever they're called.

Boogie board.

So, yes, it was great.

And the food was great.

And the pineapples, obviously, were delicious.

So it was great.

Good for you.

I enjoyed your podcast with John.

Yeah, did you?

Yeah, I did like it.

Although I'm a little bit jealous.

Were you jealous?

For listeners who didn't catch it, let me just summarize it.

So you would say, John, are there going to be, who is the Democratic nominee going to be?

And he would say something like, well, I really don't know.

I'm not in the business of predictions.

And you would go, oh, my God, you're so thoughtful.

Can I rub your feet?

I mean, I thought you guys were going to start making out.

No worries.

That was ridiculous.

That was totally ridiculous.

Not that there's anything wrong with two gay people getting together, but.

Oh, my gosh.

I've never been able to get to that.

His bird box rant was fantastic.

Come on.

It was very good.

I admit it.

It was good.

You're just jealous.

A little bit.

Let's get to virtue signaling.

I'm giving you a cool compliment here.

I'm trying to give you a compliment.

Other than success.

All right, fine.

Other than success, looks, and intelligence.

That guy has nothing on me.

He has nothing on me.

Okay, virtue signaling.

So we talked about.

Yes, okay.

Yeah.

All right, virtue signaling.

We're going to see, we made a prediction that 19, we're going to see a lot of virtue signaling or a lot of woke as a business strategy.

So explain what that means for the people who don't understand virtue signaling.

Sure.

So 70% of our elected elected officials in the Senate at least

represent 30% of the population.

That a lot of red states don't have a big population.

So politically, conservative values are overrepresented.

But economically,

kind of progressives are capturing the majority of the income.

So there's a very smart, if you just do the math,

there's a solid shareholder-driven business strategy in promoting and being very open about your progressive values.

Because the bottom line is that audience is the one that's captured the majority of the income gains over the last 10 years.

So CC dicks banning assault rifles.

You see,

what's the big one?

Gosh, I'm missing.

Oh, Nike, the big one with Colin Kaepernick.

And then most recently, just

two days ago, literally, the Gillette ad.

Bullying.

The Me Too movement against sexual harassment.

You know, the best.

Basically saying, you know, really calling out men on some of these issues.

And have you seen the ad?

It's been going on far too long.

We can't laugh it off.

Who's the daddy?

What I actually think she's trying to say.

Making the same old excuses.

Yes, I love it.

I gave it to, I made my sons watch it.

One of them, who seems to

argued with me about it, saying it was man-bashing, and the other loved it.

My older son loved it.

I thought it was great.

I actually watched it again because I wanted to, when I had this debate with my son, I was like, it actually wasn't.

It said, we believe

men are great.

They did say it several times.

I think people only saw the guys on the

guys on the barbecue saying boys will be boys, that part.

But

every depiction of the good men, you know what it was?

It was bad men bashing.

It certainly was that.

And that's okay.

I'm good with that.

And I think most men should be good with that.

Or all men should be be good with bad men bashing.

But I think most of the men depicted were good, like the guy who was talking to his daughter, the guy who rescued the kid from the bully in front of his son, or the father who pulled the two people apart.

Every example is a man doing something.

laudable in the thing.

I loved it.

I know it was manipulative to sell.

I know it's to sell to women.

Women loved it, which was fascinating.

When I tweeted about it, I said, I know this is marketing,

and I know that I'm being manipulated, but it's not since the Kodak commercial, which is the Paul Anca song, Good Morning Yesterday.

You remember that song?

Yep.

The time of your life?

Or I had not been so moved by it by an ad.

Wow.

That's

sons.

I have sons.

I think about it a lot.

Yeah.

It's been it's caused a ton of controversy.

And I was

has it caused a ton of cry?

Because like there was a good story

in the Daily Beast that showed the people that were saying there was controversy had like four followers and linked to things.

Like I have a feeling it's not.

I think it's just a couple of loud bad men on Twitter, essentially, versus, but then my son had the reaction.

So I can see, what did you think?

Did you like insulted as a man?

I was conflicted by it because I think that I think the dialogue is an important one.

I like PNG.

I love it when companies take risks like this.

I think it shows a willingness to move outside their comfort zone.

It wasn't a safe thing to run.

So I think it's, you know, hats off to them.

I didn't like the execution on it.

Because

it felt a little,

I don't know, a little hitting you over the head with it.

I felt it was a little, a little passe.

And I worry that, I don't worry that, but in every, it feels like

white heterosexual men have become the generally accepted oppressors in our society.

And I wonder if that's...

Which is factually currently.

Which

you think is accurate?

Okay.

And they feel bad when we point it out now.

See, people are pointing it out now and

the I feel bad things.

I'm sorry.

It's always the people with the gun to the head of society that say they're the victims, but go ahead.

Yeah.

I'm not sure, though.

I'm not sure.

What do you think it does?

So in terms of moving the debate forward, you think the progress is that your sons see it and it educates them?

I think it was interesting that one thought it was great and he understood he was being manipulated.

He also was like, yeah, I was one of those manipulative ads, but he liked it.

He liked the messaging and it it, and he and he thought it was good.

He was well done.

Um, and my other son was wary of it, like, why are they picking on men?

Why are they doing this?

And I said, I want, I want him to watch it again because when I watched it again, I didn't, I actually thought, no, they really aren't.

They are, but it's how you see something.

And I, but I do like that Gilettas do it.

Like, I love ads like this.

They're, they, they,

you know, they engage you, they make you feel something and they make you talk about something.

So, I loved, I had this amazing debate and discussion with my son about it.

So, in that way, it was great.

And I don't know if it was quite as gorgeous as Nike's Colin

Kaepernick ad, but

it wasn't as beautifully wrought as that one, but it was pretty good.

It was, I don't know, I don't know.

I'm not an ad person.

You're more, that's more your area.

It's spilling over, though, into tech.

So Saud Undell announces that they're going to allocate a half a billion dollars to try and help with housing affordability and donate a bunch of money to homeless causes in the Seattle area.

And again, we have another company kind of, I think, pressing on the soft tissue of Amazon who fought the tax in Seattle such that it was going to help fund some low-income housing.

But these guys, essentially, they're kind of pulling out, they're battling with their conscience.

You know, they're saying we're the good guys.

There was the Facebook with the 300 million.

I didn't think that was very much money at all, actually.

I was like,

I like 500 million of Microsoft, but I like a billion.

Like, I want everyone to start with a billion, and then we can go up from there.

That's my feeling.

I think it's great that Saatchi did this.

I think it's, I'm not sure what I think of the Facebook thing yet because I'm sure what they're up to.

And it seems like there's a lot of, it's very hooky into Facebook.

But

I would like them, you know, I have an expression, you're so poor, all you have is money.

And

I think it's...

We'll talk later about the column I wrote about Alexandria Casio, but she's managed to get people to start talking about this issue of the really rich people grabbing for everything that I think is really catching fire.

And I think, in a way, she's doing it in exactly the right way.

Speaking of really rich people, so I'm headed to the conference.

I think we're actually when I met, I'm headed to DLD in Munich.

You're going to Davos after that?

No, I haven't been invited to Davos since I was 30.

I peaked when I was very young, and I got invited when I was 29, 30, and 31.

And I've been invited to the future.

I hate that place.

I hate that place.

It's rich people licking each other up and down in the frigid cold weather.

But go ahead.

I like the analogy when your guest said that it's a fire safety convention that just invites a bunch of arsonists.

Hey, everybody,

to solve the world's problems, let's get all the people who have fucked it up together in one place in the mountains.

It's funny.

But anyway, so I'm doing the keynote on Monday.

I recognize I'm boasting.

And you know who's doing it on Sunday?

Who?

It's Cheryl Sandberg.

Oh, will you sit in the front row for me and videotape that, please?

And the theme of the conference is optimism and courage.

So I'm titling my talk, Pessimism and Cowardice.

What do you think?

I love it.

Oh, good, good.

I need you to go to the Sheryl Samurai.

I want you to, I want to hear about it.

I want your thoughts.

I want to talk about it next week.

All right.

You have to do that.

It'll be interesting.

She's been getting out a lot more.

I've been hearing.

She was at CES, I think.

And so it's interesting.

But before we finish this section, William Barr, you wanted to talk about it because

of,

not because of the whole Mueller thing, because he talked about that a lot.

And he was trying to seem like he wasn't crazy.

That seemed to be, I am not crazy, and I will be strong kind of of thing although who knows who knows with these people um but talk about uh why you think this is important

well we thought that so everyone was sort of expecting a lot of questions around protecting mueller and he essentially said yeah i i think this investigation should come to its

you know should be protected and should should kind of go where it goes so the the the thing that came out of it that was sort of unexpected was that three senators republican senators all brought up the issue and asked for his viewpoint on whether tech had gotten too big and that the concentration of power was detrimental to competition and privacy.

And his viewpoint was clearly that this is something that warrants additional scrutiny, most likely from the FTC.

And everyone's been talking about the DOJ.

And the FTC, in some ways, for reasons I don't entirely understand, might have more teeth around doing something here expeditiously.

So just going back to another prediction in addition to kind of woke as a business strategy, we talked about that 2019 might actually be the year that the breakup of big tech happens.

And it looks like the Attorney General is kind of on board with that.

And this might be a rare bipartisan issue because

let's listen to newbie Senator Josh Hawley from

Missouri.

He is the former AG of Missouri, and he beat out Claire McCaskill.

Let me ask you more broadly about the question of antitrust and mergers.

And you gestured towards this earlier in your testimony.

I'm increasingly worried that the Department is not enforcing vigorously the antitrust statutes in many sectors of the economy, not just technology.

We see, again, as you have alluded to, we see growing concentration of power in various sectors held by just a few firms.

And if you look at recent trends in the Department's scrutiny of proposed mergers, it is at record lows.

Last year, for instance, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division scrutinized mergers through second requests for information in less than 1 percent of all eligible cases.

That is, I believe, the lowest level of merger scrutiny recorded since the FTC started tracking those statistics back in 1981.

And just for comparison purposes, in 1981, that review was five times higher than it was in 2018.

My question is: do you think that this record low level of merger scrutiny is appropriate?

And if you are confirmed as Attorney General, what might you do to ensure that the Antitrust Division faithfully and vigorously enforces the law?

Well,

I am for vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws to preserve competition.

And as I said, this is going to be an area I'm going to want to get into.

Okay, what he's saying that he's going to push very hard on this.

This was one of his topics, for sure.

And you think the AG will be with them and Democrats, too.

Democrats, for sure.

You know, you have Corey Booker and others

sort of interested in this.

Yeah, they're angry for different reasons.

So the Democrats believe that

these guys

basically

helped manipulate the elections to an outcome they didn't like in 2016.

But I've always felt that actually the people who are really going to go a gangster on big tech are these red state senators who have seen their few ad agencies, their corner store,

their newspapers, their media companies have really gotten

away from if you think about this, these companies have been incredible vessels of the transfer of wealth from the rest of the the world to the U.S.

and then from the middle of the U.S.

to the coasts.

So Kansas and Mississippi and Iowa, you know, big tech hasn't done much for them.

I mean, granted, they can do their searches in 0.055 seconds, but in terms of actual economic growth and what it's done for the state and employment and the tax base, it's probably net net and negative.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Although, really, is that their job?

They should think of something.

I'm sorry.

That's not really.

You think so?

Yeah.

Like, think of, take Kansas, figure it out yourself.

Like, come on, can do, right?

Can do Kansas or whatever.

Or Oklahoma, okay.

Oklahoma, okay, okay, Oklahoma.

Make something.

Can do Kansas.

I'm just, now I'll get all these messages from Kansas, and I don't care.

Make something.

If you want to stop complaining, make something.

Anyway, we're going to take a short break when you get back, talk wins and fails, and hamburgers.

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off.

Back to our show, hamburgers.

There's so many things to talk about.

I'm going to give

you there's so many fails.

There's hamburgers, which was the Trump thing he tweeted.

This is the new shutdown cuisine.

There's the shutdown.

There's Iowa Representative Stephen King for being the horrible racist that took so long to be chastised for this.

And he's the one also in the in the here, one of the hearings he did with such with Sundar Pichai.

He didn't know who makes the iPhone.

But I think I'm going to do a win this week.

I'm going to do Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who gets a lot of attention, obviously.

But I wrote a column about how she's really owning, own extremely online.

I said she was extremely online, and she is really causing,

creating, controlling, and pushing forward narratives that she's interested in, including

pay inequity and income inequity and all kinds of things.

And she manages to shut down her critics, the right-wing.

They just, they cannot stop her.

And she's, she's, it's a really interesting way.

She, she's never aggrieved.

She's just very funny and very strong-minded and also serious.

And one of my favorites was when Joe, from her own side of the aisle, Joe Lieberman, who's sort of a conservative senator, but he said she wasn't the future.

This is a, I don't know how old he is, but he's been around the block for lots of blocks for many years.

And he said she wasn't the future of the Democratic Party.

And she, she, she tweeted back at it.

She tweeted back at the story.

And she goes, yeah, new Congress, who dis?

Yeah, she's she's outstanding.

What is it about her Twitter?

I heard she was giving lessons to her colleagues on how to use tools.

You can't give lessons in this.

You know, I compared her to Trump.

Trump is a very, Trump, I think, is very effective.

And she's not afraid.

She's not interested in party hierarchy.

You can imagine Pelosi and Schumer or whoever it is sit her down and say, or Stanny Horror say, this is how we get things done.

Your time will come.

Play ball.

And she's just not having any of it.

No, but everybody is talking about income.

And by the way, they agree with her and the way she's explaining it, she's doing something.

You were going to talk, like, it is like, you know, Kennedy and television.

How do you look at that?

Like, she knows how to, there's something different in how she's using it compared to everybody else, I think.

Well, typically, these seminal leaders have always figured out a way to master new medium.

And, you know, some, unfortunately, some very damaging leaders in the middle of the 20th century were really good with radio.

But,

you know, Kennedy and TV, we talked about this.

Some people have mastered the in-person medium, but she is definitely somebody who's kind of on a rocket ship.

I mean, what is she?

What does she care?

She's 29?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just the performance is, I mean, and she also messes up in a really good way.

I just, it's a really interesting, I think, you know, everyone's sort of waiting for the fall.

Like, this is going to fall, but I don't know.

She's, I just, the, the, the, I find the Twitter, just the Twitter performance is so flawless.

It's like she lands it with a 10.

She sticks it.

Yeah.

I think.

She's fantastic.

It's going to be very.

And you're watching the next six months.

My kid loves her who's voting in the next election.

He was like, she's amazing.

she's like he was he he's never been excited about a politician trust me although i do think nancy pelosi is doing great too is this the one that likes the gillette ad or the one that daughter yes the one who likes the gillette ad um but she also you know but nancy pelosi is also not doing bad herself her all

her little asides

all her asides and then not disinviting him and stuff i think she's yeah she's doing a good job too the ladies are in charge scott what are your wins and fails uh so actually i agree with you i think i think uh pelosi has really kind of, I don't know, reinvigorated or burnished her reputation as a real leader.

I think she comes out of this looking good.

I think the Democratic Party, you know, we're great at sort of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

And it feels as if around the shutdown that it has squarely landed on the president's desk.

And as much as you hate to see it, what's going on, I do think that it's, every day, I just think it gets a little bit worse for the president and the Republicans.

Giuliani, what happened with Giuliani today?

Maybe there was collude.

Wait, no collusion, no collusion.

All right, maybe a little collusion off to the left.

A tiny bit.

There was collude.

Oh, it was a little bit of a bad thing.

There was collude.

You know how that mold is, that collusion is.

It just gets in, and you just can't get it out.

What was he said?

He said, I never said the campaign didn't collude.

No, but they did.

But they did.

Like, it's just astonishing.

They don't think we have tape.

It's just the weirdest thing.

What else do you think is a win or a fail

uh so i'm trying to think what what else did we have and oh i fail or prediction government shut down the everything there's a lot going on i i'm trying to bring this back to big tech i don't know if you saw i think that and this is both a

snapchat a lose and a prediction for 2019 It ends up that the CEO of WeWork has investment interests and properties that they've been leasing or that WeWork has been leasing from.

And as long as it was disclosed and his investors knew about it, it's fine.

But my prediction is 19 is going to be a very bad year for WeWork.

Oh, interesting.

And if you saw what happened with the limiteds of SoftBank, including some of the Middle Eastern sovereigns funds, who actually stepped in and blocked this massive investment that SoftBank was about to make in WeWork, when your limited partners step in and actually block an investment,

say to the general partnership, the guys allocating the capital, no, we're not comfortable with this.

That is pretty extraordinary.

You don't see that a lot.

And

if you look at the economics of WeWork, valuation of $48 billion, and yet Regis, kind of a similar but lamer potted plants, bad cherry wood version of WeWork, has twice as many desks, but trades at 1 16th the value.

And while WeWorks can create a great brand and

they don't have kombucha on tap.

Yeah, they don't have pale ale.

No, they have pale ale or whatever.

But if you look at WeWork, WeWork is now, by a lot of analyses, the floor they own in a large building is technically worth more than the building itself that it leases that floor from.

And it's hard to see what kind of network effects or technology.

Yeah, it just doesn't.

I think WeWork is going to be in the news for all the wrong reasons in 2000 and

2019.

Okay, what about Snap, given the changes?

I was in Snapchat.

I was at Snapchat yes two days ago.

Do you know the CFO there?

Do you know, do you have any backstory there?

I do not.

I need to find out.

I do need to find out.

They did add some really good people, also, like Julie Henderson from Fox, who I have great regard for.

I don't know.

I'm not clear what's going on.

There's definitely, I mean, they're definitely having a hard time competing

with what was a very innovative product.

And again, my kid still uses it, and both of them do.

But

it's just hard.

I think it's a really hard go.

And this management, the inability of Evan to keep this management team together is something you definitely have to look at.

So this is a broader topic, but I want to talk a little bit about isms, right?

So whenever there's a movement or there's a polemic that we discuss in our society, I oftentimes think

it's too late.

So in the 70s and 80s, we talked a lot about how people of color, specifically African Americans, had a much more difficult time in the workplace.

And that was a worthwhile discussion.

But I always felt as the son of a single mother who could either be a travel agent or a secretary, that was literally the choices for a woman in the 70s, that it was really that

the cohort that was most discriminated against was, in fact, women.

And since then, women with college educations have actually closed the gap.

It's women with children that are still having a tough time in the workplace that the corporate America just hasn't figured out a role for them.

But I would argue the next cohort that's going to get more attention and what actually doesn't get enough attention now is ageism especially in tech and I think it's going to become a big issue in 2019 I think if you walk into a conference room or a meeting at a technology firm and you're over the age of 45 and you're not a billionaire you're kind of seen as a loser and I think there's a pretty big wait that's that's richism but go ahead well you know what I'm saying I think that if if you're not if you haven't really killed it by the time you're 40 or 45 in tech, I think there's an inherent assumption that you're just not very good at what you do.

And I think these cultures are pretty ageist.

And I think that's going to start getting more attention.

That would be, there's some laws, there's lawsuits, there's been lawsuits and things like that.

You know, someone who talks about this a lot is Dan Lyons, who has a new book out

about, he did it in his last book, talking about ageism and things like that.

But I agree.

It's a really interesting issue,

being a really old person, although I don't suffer from that because I'm better than they are.

It's true.

That was easy.

Come on.

It's not even hard.

But tying this back to Evan and even Mark Zuckerberg, I think something else that's going to get a lot of scrutiny is that these two-class shareholder stocks,

these two-class shareholder stocks protect these managers.

So I believe the reason Shell Sandberg hasn't been fired is because they can't fire, or they don't think they can fire Mark Zuckerberg because of this two-class shareholder system.

Snap has the same two-class shareholder system.

You have a young man who's already a billionaire.

And if it wasn't a two-class shareholder company, I think they probably would have done something.

I think they probably would have sold by now.

And this is the problem with two-class shareholder stocks: right now, he doesn't really need to be a fiduciary for other shareholders.

He's banked his billion bucks.

He's off to the races.

He thinks he has a viewpoint or a vision, which he has been totally unable to articulate what it is exactly they're going to do here.

You know, the redesign didn't work.

They're getting killed.

Well, he had a very good vision initially, right?

It's a really fresh vision.

Everyone stole it.

Oh, sure.

It's a great company.

And I find, I have to say, of a lot of the people I talk to, I really enjoy talking to him because I always have a really,

he's a, I wouldn't, visionary is a good word.

He actually, you're always like, oh, I didn't thought of it that way.

But you're right.

It's the execution.

Vision can only get you so far.

And so that's what

he really has the issues with around PR.

Not just every, every part of it is problematic, has been problematic for them.

But the CFO leaving, it kind of punctures another prediction we had a few months ago where I thought that Amazon was a likely acquirer because the CFO was a 20-year veteran of Amazon.

And the fact that someone who was at Amazon for 20 years, you could hardly describe this person as a flake or someone who just kind of goes off half-cocked, leaves Snap after six months, is a very negative, forward-looking indicator.

Because this is the individual, I always see the CFO in any company as the source of truth.

If I'm ever in a board meeting and I hear talk and I don't know what's going on, I sequester the CFO for 10 minutes.

I'm like, okay, what's going on here?

And they basically, you know, they take the entire board meeting and they put Wonder Woman's Golden Lasso on it and they say, this is the truth.

This is what's going on.

And when the person who knows the truth after six months at SNAP decides, I'm out of here.

I'm sorry, eight months,

I think that's more, you know, kind of trouble in Mudville.

Definitely.

I will look into it.

If you will go see Sheryl Sandberg in Germany, in Munich,

I will go find out about this.

You know what I'm doing before that, Kara?

You're in Paris.

Don't.

Okay, I'm in Paris.

Hold on, hold on.

No, this is.

You're going to have snails on the Seine.

What?

This is the worst flex in the world.

I'm meeting a buddy of mine, and we decided to go to Vienna, and we're seeing those dancing horses.

So, this is how old and pathetic I am.

Yeah, the lip and sogs.

Yeah, whatever.

Dancing horses.

Lipen sogs.

Lip and sides.

Lip and something.

Lipsides.

10 years ago, last time we got together, he and I went to Stockholm.

We went to some rave and I tried experimental drugs.

Now we go see dancing horses.

We might as well go to Denny's and get the Grand Slam special and go.

Oh, like the river dance of like

Austria.

Isn't that like?

first?

We need to sterilize our cats.

Isn't that like going to like Guy Fairies, Broadway, whatever?

You're going to see horses dance?

All right.

We're going to see horses.

I don't know how we ended up there.

How did I get so old?

How did I get so old, Carol?

I'd go looking for alt-right people in Austria.

They're all over the place again.

The family von Trapp.

The von Trapp family singers.

The family von Trapp.

Remember that scene?

Adelaide.

Wow.

You sound very relaxed.

You sound

very chill.

Kakuna Matata, baby, or whatever.

What is nice?

I was in the town, Lilo, and Stitch was set in.

Lovely.

Hana Peepee or something like that.

It was great.

It was lovely.

Yeah.

Good for you.

Yeah.

Anyway, well, I'm here in D.C.

for a long, long time for the freezing cold weather for the next couple of weeks.

So we'll be talking from here.

So I will go around and see how badly the government is shut down.

I'm going to see a senator very soon.

I'm going to get on the metro right now and go visit Senator Michael Bennett from Colorado.

I love Senator Bennett.

Do you?

Does he

close?

I met with him.

I can finally flex back.

I met with Senator Bennett about six weeks ago to talk about antitrust.

Well, good.

You know what he asked me?

What?

He said to me, he said, give me 10 ideas to restore the middle class.

Oh, all right.

He's like right there.

He's like, give me 10 ideas to restore the middle class.

This guy,

talk about the kind of guy you want as an elected official.

You know, you did before.

He was a superintendent of schools.

Well, I can, I am so excited.

He reached out to me and said, can we meet?

So

he's making the rounds, I guess, of smart people.

He's a very decent man.

Yeah.

I was really.

I watched him.

I'm excited.

I'm excited.

I'm meeting all the politicians.

That's my, I'm going to do that in the next few weeks.

I'm going to meet all the politicians.

And then this afternoon, I'm going to be doing a podcast with the CEO of Landa Lakes, Beth Ford.

She is the, she's openly, she's a lesbian, very open.

She's running this thing.

And she was the, they were the first company, one of the.

companies to push back on King and take away his money and stuff.

And so we're going to talk about that.

We're going to talk about the technology beyond agricultural technology.

It should be interesting.

There's all kinds of, and we're reaching out to the real people, Scott, aren't we?

Yeah, we're keeping it real.

We're keeping it real in Paris and DC.

All right.

Go enjoy Paris, the city of lights.

Thanks very much.

It's one of my favorite places.

Next week, we'll talk about all kinds of things.

I want to eat some stories from there and stuff that was talked to at DLD and stuff like that.

I'm excited to hear

what went on there and what the big topics were.

Anyway, enjoy yourself.

Rebecca Senanis produces this show.

Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Thanks also to Eric Johnson.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media.

We'll be back next week for more of a breakdown of all things tech and business.

And welcome back, Scott.

I did not leave you for John Lovett.

It was just a short affair.

And I know you saw it somewhere too.

If you like what you've heard, please subscribe on Apple, Podcast, or wherever you're listening.

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