SPEAKER_00: okay everybody uh welcome to this weekend startups earnings season is starting up again and so we're doing another new show because there's so much of it yeah and uh we'll be

SPEAKER_01: covering all of these different uh earnings and looking at the why behind it and first up today

SPEAKER_03: we have netflix showing a huge loss in net subscribers for the first time ever stock down

Jason Calacanis: 35 now what a miss absolutely brutal we have a great conversation about netflix's content strategy and where they might have gone wrong we have a lot of thoughts i'm just saying we're here for uh to be

SPEAKER_07: put on retainer because we got ideas for you and then jason and trust me you want to stay for this jason goes ahead and pitches jared kushner's leaked vc deck that is a real thing that i just said unlike

SPEAKER_01: everything that is said in the pitch deck uh it's the worst pitch deck ever done and i have a hard

SPEAKER_10: time getting through it i mean it's the craziest word salad but he raised two or three billion so go figure he knows something i don't finally uh two crazy stories uh back to back uh two huge disasters in uh the business space it seems like everything is uh people flipping the car right now cnn plus

SPEAKER_12: might be on the chopping block just three weeks after launching and we're going to cover just eats and their acquisition of grubhub which just happened and now they want to sell the company i don't understand what's happening in the world everything is coming apart everything is coming

Jason Calacanis: apart and that's why you need our amazing show so stick with us you're gonna you're gonna learn

SPEAKER_16: a lot of things today lots to learn this week in startups is brought to you by open phone as a startup founder a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back but using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them open phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices visit open phone dot co slash twist to get 20 off your first six months coda coda is the all-in-one dock for teams if you've got a stack of niche workflow tools or if you're buried in docks and spreadsheets coda is the dock that brings it all together startups can get a one thousand dollar credit at coda dot io slash twist and odoo odoo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business your first app is free forever and right now odoo is offering one thousand dollars off your first implementation pack at odoo dot com slash twist

SPEAKER_20: that's o-d-o-o dot com slash twist hey everybody welcome to your wednesday episode of this week in

SPEAKER_22: startups with me of course is my co-host with the most what's up partner what's up partner what's up partner uh mollywood she was just on cnbc talking about netflix i'm going to talk about it here

SPEAKER_03: netflix uh i don't know what happened all of a sudden my twitter stream went bonkers and i saw the headline now down 200 000 subscribers unexpected growth of 2.5 and the stock tanking 25 molly what

SPEAKER_25: is going on here why did netflix miss their numbers so brutally what's the background here gang so this

Jason Calacanis: is uh we should say netflix's first ever drop in net subscribers so that all by itself is a shock to investors right that like after the moon ever growing it turns out these numbers can go down it is astonishing though that it sounds like investors were still expecting effectively pandemic type growth they were expecting two and a half million additional subscribers and then netflix was like actually we lost 200 000 because we raised prices at exactly the wrong time which we can discuss in a minute this is uh overall q1 revenue increased 9.8 percent year over year to 7.9 billion that is growth they didn't lose money they lost subscribers but it's growing at a much lower rate than q1 2021 when they grew at 24.2 percent um net income was 1.6 billion the operating margin was 25 which was not a drop in performance we actually have a clip if we want of the ceo reed

SPEAKER_28: hastings co-ceo i believe um reed hastings trying to make sense of these numbers about 38 seconds okay

SPEAKER_36: let's let's hear from reed kovid created a lot of noise and how to read the situation you know boosted us a lot in 2020 um and then in 2021 uh i think we you know thoughtfully said it was mostly pull forward which was the logical conclusion but now coming into 2022 that you know doesn't really hold so then pushing into it we realized you know with uh all of the account sharing which we've always had that's not a new thing um but when you add that up together we're getting pretty high market penetration and that combined with the competition is really you know what we think is driving uh the lower

SPEAKER_40: acquisition and lower growth so this is a hot button issue um the sharing of accounts they have made it very simple and they've never policed uh people adding accounts because like microsoft or adobe in the past what they realized was the people who are taking the time to pirate software

SPEAKER_03: previously steal mp3s previously uh or you know piggyback on their parents or friends netflix accounts

SPEAKER_40: those people probably didn't have the extra money available to buy it or um they eventually would

SPEAKER_03: and they would not want to share because they wouldn't want to share their preferences or whatever there'd be some reason to off-board them but in a growth situation if you're growing anyway it's kind of like you're marketing to those people and and you're part of the zeitgeist in other words they're using windows or they're using photoshop and eventually they'll wind up paying if they get enough value from it so there's a sort of like be a little permissive um it's okay to have a little bit of leakage yeah now what they're realizing is when you start to hit what i call the natural audience for any service in other words the people who need it when you have a hundred percent penetration of

SPEAKER_44: those people like we do for phones and laptops and internet connections movie theaters barnes and

SPEAKER_10: nobles starbucks you hit saturation when you hit saturation okay how do you deal with that you either

SPEAKER_45: have to find a new market and listen they're they've got libraries in latin america europe uh in asia they're really going for it internationally and that's been a big focus for them so they did realize hey let's find new subscribers in new locations because we're going to reach saturation in the united states like facebook did right um so then you have a choice one you can charge more for the product okay check they did that over and over and over again until people were like wait what am i paying right which is interesting in and of itself that people don't know like what they're paying for the service it's which is a sign that the service is good right we talked about this with amazon prime it's so good you know if they doubled the price increase the price 10 percent like there's some percentage that you might be annoyed but you're not canceling so that's pretty great product

SPEAKER_10: market fit and then the second thing you do is you would look for that leakage and breakage and you would start charging for that people who are sneaking into the amusement park so to speak uh or um using counterfeit you know product and so that's what they're doing is they're just sort of cleaning up those last little bits now if you do introduce friction in other words okay we know

SPEAKER_45: this is one household with one ip address and the second ip address in another time zone is using it okay we got that that's an easy one different time zone different ip range turn it off and then people could fight over and say like oh that's me i was traveling my husband was traveling my wife was traveling my kid was traveling but but when you see it every day okay so in 30 days 10 days in another ip address 10 days 10 instances in another geo um you could start to say hey your account's been suspended but that also creates a lot of user animosity and friction as you go to turn those things off it's not a perfect science in other words like if you own two homes do i what do i do if i own a second home do do i pay for two netflixes that's what hulu is doing to me right now i can't get hulu to work on my apple tvs in the second home they're like you switch your locations too many times you can only switch locations four times but then it works fine on my phone so then i'm mirroring like it's just too complicated complex so that i think there's going to be a big cleanup project uh to

SPEAKER_10: attract the most value um and then obviously competition we'll talk about in a second yeah

SPEAKER_52: no i totally agree and i will tell you that it's interesting because that hulu that specific hulu

SPEAKER_28: thing i mean that's such an easy solve right just get an authentication process right to show that it's

Jason Calacanis: you jason and not you different house like that is just like and it's been driving me crazy that hulu does that because it's like dude i'm just in a different location you could authenticate me via two

SPEAKER_52: factor or a facial wreck you know like give me a break you'd be fine yeah two factors would be fine

Jason Calacanis: yeah in the case of netflix like this was the year i think and i've been saying it on this show like this was the year that netflix got pay attention expensive and so then they have an earnings report where they got pay attention expensive i like cut the 4k i was like i don't need the 4k give me a freaking break right i actually cut it down because i was like this is too expensive and then you find out that you've got a hundred million people sharing passwords and netflix says like they're freeloaders and i'm subsidizing them as a person who is now paying pay attention money monthly for this service when on top of that the content is constant but it's not premium so i'm paying so i feel like netflix like doubled down on growing in all the wrong ways one through the freaking black hole of more and more and more and more content which you actually have to figure out how to innovate on the content you have and then on top of that just kept getting more expensive so now i'm paying like gourmet

SPEAKER_01: grocery prices for safeway and it just doesn't make sense i think that's an issue like they're

SPEAKER_12: and this thing i don't understand the 700 the 200 000 that went down i remember them saying 700 000 people in russia have been removed from the service now when did that occur did that occur during during

SPEAKER_03: this or after this time period because that would also be material and i didn't hear it come up so this is q1 earnings report and it's april now but it's so this 2.7 million users off either way right

SPEAKER_28: because they had expected two and a half million user growth and instead they reported to 200 000 loss

SPEAKER_72: so either way even if they kicked a bunch of russians but if they lost 700 000 due to if they

SPEAKER_45: lost 700 000 due to russia then it would be a gain of 500 000 so they would have hit 20 of their 2.5 million so that's what i'm trying to get clarity on maybe yeah it's basically the balloon is bouncing

SPEAKER_03: along the ceiling there is there isn't much more value to get here from at least the u.s subscriber base

Jason Calacanis: and so but maybe there is though this is what is annoying me about netflix don't just make me don't like slice and dice your tears if you have a hundred million people out there who aren't paying but they use it all the time yeah charge them six bucks or offer a tier that's like just for the library like mostly all we watch on netflix is like office remember like 30 rock reruns and love is blind

SPEAKER_87: so just let me pay like nine dollars a month for yeah there's a nine dollar that's possible for an archive price i don't know but like innovate yeah i'm just thinking about how to communicate it to

SPEAKER_89: users as possible i think the advertising thing is you know the most interesting possibility here

SPEAKER_03: because disney is going to do that too i think what people are realizing is there's a cohort of people who really want free and they're going to hold out i think you should hold the line netflix should hold the line and not do an advertising business i think they should see if they can clean up these free subscribers and how many they get over because here's my fear they start going down that

SPEAKER_10: advertising path they get kind of addicted to it and then they just start inserting ads everywhere and then people start downgrading their subscriptions to go to the advertising tier and i just find it so annoying that i pay for no ads on hulu and i still get ads or i pay for less ads or something i don't

SPEAKER_45: know why i'm paying extra but i still see ads and i i think hbo disney apple plus like i think they

SPEAKER_92: figured it out like don't put ads in this and just let people pay for it because anybody can afford this

SPEAKER_91: yeah it's and when it's the same price as one hour of labor and you're gonna get a hundred hours a month or 50 hours a month out of entertainment that's a fine trade-off that's perhaps one of the best trade-offs in the world i think video games are the only trade-off in terms of cost per hour

SPEAKER_45: like people will pay a video game video game like but what's this elder scrolls or elden rings or something that people are losing their minds over they sold 12 million copies so it's like one or one or the other or both of those but yeah elder people are losing their mind over this game anyway from what i understand it's like it's like one of these like free world games where you can just go crazy for hours so like people are playing it for five ten hours a day and whatever these things cost if they cost 20 bucks a month or 60 bucks to buy the game on a console like you think about the number

SPEAKER_10: of hours you're getting it's a penny an hour 10 cents an hour um and netflix is one of those similar things so um i think the bigger issue is expensive i really do listen lots of founders are loosey-goosey

SPEAKER_03: with their personal phone numbers they put them on company documents they use them for sales calls

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Jason Calacanis: and it's too expensive in the competitive landscape because disney that's it right if it was the only game in town no problem but disney is giving you everything everything i care about is on disney plus

SPEAKER_106: for eight dollars a month yeah here's the thing bananas people people are going to spend i believe

SPEAKER_80: 50 to 100 bucks a month on this and i'm talking every socioeconomic status uh please don't at me like with oh poor people can't afford it like well sure because they're paying that much for cable now

SPEAKER_111: so if they get rid of cable then yeah that's where they end up they're going to spend 50 to 100 everybody's going to spend 50 to 100 bucks on this so when you're starting doing your math if you're

SPEAKER_42: a price insensitive person you just buy everything so if you're in the 100 a month category none of

SPEAKER_112: this matters like if you're a family and you're lower middle class or above 100 bucks a year for 100 bucks a month for this level of entertainment is absurdly a great deal compared to going to the movies going out to dinner going to a sporting event cable it's just obvious you just buy everything and don't worry about it if you're middle class or above or lower even lower middle class above and

SPEAKER_42: then for everybody else you're going to have to pick and choose now if you pick and choose we've been through this before if i give you the big four hulu hbo max uh disney plus and netflix

SPEAKER_115: you have to get rid of one who are you killing if you're a family you're killing netflix i think i

Jason Calacanis: think you are i really think you are and you're killing it at 20 bucks a month for sure well isn't hulu

SPEAKER_42: disney plus espn package like 20 bucks a month or 30 bucks a month i have a package i think so but

Jason Calacanis: it's the package you know and there's no and i keep saying 20 bucks a month because that's the premium that the high def i don't even i don't know what you get with basic at 10 bucks a month i don't like

SPEAKER_119: if i let's go through your top five shows for the past year for you all right top five shows past year

SPEAKER_125: for you that you really enjoyed really really like had to sit down and watch yeah so we crashed

SPEAKER_126: and drop out dope sick euphoria uh billions okay i think those are mine and we also do my wife's you know the ones we love watching together because we're not a couple you know we watch everything

SPEAKER_127: together we don't go ahead of each other molly i don't know what's going on in your relationship but

SPEAKER_130: we i am stalling i'm literally trying to figure out when to get that man over to watch severance because i don't want to ruin the relationship over the show exactly exactly it's serious

SPEAKER_75: anyway look at those five i just rattled them off i don't know what channels are on but i think let's see i know drop out were hulu euphoria's hbo billions of showtime which i get through my hulu

SPEAKER_80: bundle and then what was the last one i said i gotta get up on this hulu bundle i don't think

SPEAKER_28: i know about this i'm just paying for everything individually like a dumb i liked i mean succession

SPEAKER_07: i got really excited about foundation and committed to watching all of it even though like whatever

SPEAKER_45: fine um we crashed in the dropout that's what i can't watch because of relationship issues

SPEAKER_140: my wife wants to watch it and i watch like the first episode and a half and you know it's like super dope but we just don't have enough time we can't even keep up with uh oh secession hbo is on

Jason Calacanis: yeah succession is hbo there's uh you know there's the mandalorian disney there's loki there's all those good disney plus shows i mean if i think about it's actually just a sheer accident that right now i've gotten into love is blind and that's all on netflix and that's just trash like i want to be clear that's the safeway part right that's just like if i had to let that go i would let that go but i would not let go waiting for the next season of succession or the next beautiful apple t it means severance i just

SPEAKER_119: i do think netflix is not focused on making great content i think weirdly technology they're

SPEAKER_22: underestimating their audience and making milk toast yeah you know adam sandler bull like no

SPEAKER_07: offense to adam make that but then only charge i mean maybe i'm maybe like my problem is that i pay

SPEAKER_11: for the top tier and the 9.99 would make me happy and then i'd be like sure great i'm paying for like happy content for 9.99 i don't know what i get for that uh inside analyst friend of the pod

SPEAKER_152: lon harris at lon's tweeted this disney plus hey we made a tv show out of every movie you've ever

SPEAKER_112: watched cbs we've reunited the entire cast of every star trek hbo what if game of thrones but the watchman amazon you guys like fantasy novels because we purchased all of them in netflix murder mystery

SPEAKER_156: adam sandler and i mean come on he tweeted this in in july 2019 when netflix was like ripping and

SPEAKER_158: and he got a ton of flack for this and then he quote tweeted it yesterday with and you'll see these in the next couple tweets basically telling everybody i told you so yes and so here's lon's

SPEAKER_22: redunk on the dunk because this was a three-year-old tweet three years ago when i tweeted this everyone said i was crazy to doubt netflix supremacy they created the streaming market everyone has netflix it

SPEAKER_115: doesn't even matter if the shows and films are good they said but this is what happens when you spend years turning out tons of content but it's all disposable and designed to be devoured in a single

SPEAKER_07: sitting he's absolutely correct like such an interesting point too that came up on cnbc the

Jason Calacanis: binge ability is almost its own trap because if you dole out content once a week then people have to keep paying but if you put something out all at once and you can binge it then one they're done and two it's a flywheel because you have to keep creating more content like if i make a cake for a teenager and he eats it all in one sitting yes oh crap i have to make more and more and more and more and that's kind of what they did there too which is really interesting they thought it was to create stickiness but actually it just put them in this like nightmarish sarlacc pit of having to make more

SPEAKER_165: content every day so to speak good stuff on the sarlacc spit thanks thanks uh that's on disney plus

SPEAKER_112: but when you think about why you love netflix previously it was like oh they did all the daredevil cool stuff they did oranges the new black house of cards what was their big one right

SPEAKER_168: they really backed interesting projects right different projects niche projects and now they're

SPEAKER_03: going for like adam sandler goofy movies no offense if you like those if that's your bag it's all good comedy it's gonna be fun it's not my bag but it's all good um and then a bunch of reality tv stuff

SPEAKER_170: like like i'm gonna say it populist trash at premium prices i'm not into that right like and that but

SPEAKER_92: then look what hbo did right and secession euphoria then you look at what disney did boba fett mandalorian now obi-wan like uh scarlet witch and yeah uh loki which was so risky and interesting interesting

SPEAKER_91: avant-garde i dare i say like marvel doing avant-garde stuff like interesting for adult adults and kids like really interesting um choices i think netflix programming sucks and i think that they're caught up in like a bunch of you know other culture war things that are nonsensical i mean i don't know if it's woke content i think that's like happening across the entire sphere but i do think like the chappelle thing showed a little bit of distraction of like oh my god like are we going to me are we comedy was their thing like and are they going to keep doing comedy i thought that was

SPEAKER_00: their strongest piece would they ever do another chappelle whatsoever that netflix is going to stop doing comedy or even dump chappelle which they did not i don't even understand where you're getting

SPEAKER_13: i don't know if they give another 75 million to chappelle i don't know if they do it maybe they

SPEAKER_97: don't but i don't think that's a what i think that netflix has a woke distraction problem i think there

SPEAKER_91: is like i don't think their eyes on the ball of and i think they're maybe risk averse for doing like avant-garde hardcore stuff that maybe hbo max would do right i think that however thanks to the notice

Jason Calacanis: for pointing out they did black mirror and squid game they bought squid game right they didn't they

SPEAKER_179: didn't actually but they bought it they bought that but they did they do get credit for black mirror

SPEAKER_97: what's going on what was the last black mirror series wasn't that like 10 years ago so they acquired

SPEAKER_185: black mirror also uh yeah black mirror is great but they stopped making it i don't know understand what happened to that anthology series i would watch everything if you want

SPEAKER_56: then you make populous trash right like if growth is your goal if you want a lot of people

Jason Calacanis: you make populous trash like there's not as big an audience for like really smart high quality there just isn't and so if you're gonna do that it's a very specific strategy and netflix clearly said like we want everybody so we're gonna make content for everybody but they missed in the quest for everybody the one thing that actually gets everybody which is probably sports yeah sports i don't know if they

SPEAKER_140: can actually do profitably because i think that google's of the world the apples of the world would take sports oh they can't they like missed it they missed it well i think it's also a loss leader

SPEAKER_45: for those places probably i think it's a loss leader for apple they want to sell more phones you put monday night football thursday night football whatever yep you know if youtube was going after it for a while and like youtube be like okay if we lose a billion dollars on this but we make 50 billion in advertising okay that's fine right it drew it drew those final group of people who don't

SPEAKER_28: have the youtube app onto the app yeah and you can see why they didn't do it because it's stupidly expensive and a loss leader but now all those deals are made and they're like oh how do we keep growing

SPEAKER_101: efficiency is one of the main components in startup success everybody knows this and that's what coda is all about coda is the all-in-one document for teams your text and tables live together in the same document which helps any team collaborate more efficiently they've got thousands of templates to work with or you can repurpose templates published by some of their best innovators out there for yourself coda works out of the box and it's super customizable so you can create a wiki or a knowledge hub for your team you can onboard new hires quickly and you can adapt fast to major or minor changes in your business and here is how we use code at this week in startups my guy presh made a beautiful upvoting system on coda for questions and topics on twist so if you go to thisweekinstartups.com slash questions you can submit a question for the show for an ask jason ask molly segment or you can tell us what topics you want to include in the show how awesome is that and of course you can copy that template and use it for your podcast or for your internal friday all hands meeting etc etc coda has an amazing program for startups to help them optimize and support all of your documents go to coda.io slash twist to get one thousand dollars in credits i kid you not thousand dollars waiting for you at coda.io slash twist um and nick points out that netflix is mostly algorithm driven in the content

Jason Calacanis: creation so the algorithm is clearly telling them and listen i will happily sit down and watch whatever stupid explodey pretty people movie or show is on tv for years my literal favorite show was the end of whatever action movie was on fx like i get i am a movie i'm all in on this i'm all in on this but if there's competition and the price keeps getting higher that's a problem i just think like nick's pointing

SPEAKER_206: it out too is this like hbo taking a lot of chances like secession was like a big risk i feel like

SPEAKER_45: euphoria was a huge risk like these things were really out there i may destroy you which was a more

SPEAKER_10: niche content that didn't probably get as much attention as it should have but i thought that was like one of the most excellent one of the most excellent things they've done in a long time yeah

SPEAKER_03: just so much more risk-taking there and then even apple in their corny kind of way you know with their

SPEAKER_112: milk to well with their like family fair kind of stuff yeah they they kind of took a risk with ted

SPEAKER_108: lasso and with refresh and they hit both of those out of the park yeah so i just think netflix is not

SPEAKER_28: competing severance we can't bring it separate content that morning show show show was actually

SPEAKER_170: really good on apple tv yeah uh and foundation for aniston in that you know i was prepared to hate it

SPEAKER_56: and she take her is fantastic because she's basically just doing well she it's like if they turned her

SPEAKER_28: into herself as a morning show personality and so it totally works because you're like yeah it doesn't matter that you're not acting and it doesn't matter that your face is weird and kind of can't move very well because that's like the whole point you're a morning show personality and totally works i'm with

Jason Calacanis: gerald one of the noties who's like netflix if they just cut the crap focus dollars on big stuff and switch to weekly releases available for binging later that's a tough pill to swallow but it gets them

SPEAKER_80: a lot of the way there's one show that i was really obsessed with was ozark um ozark is a great

SPEAKER_223: show uh on yeah that's a netflix that's great it's so dark well i like jason bateman he's an

SPEAKER_112: incredible actress the woman uh is it oh laura linney i always get her oh yeah i love her laura linney

SPEAKER_17: she's great and then ruth julia gardner is incredible i mean the performances are just

Jason Calacanis: next level in that show and i like jason bateman there's good stuff there's just too much stuff right like competition came and netflix didn't netflix i think i think doubled down on the exact wrong strategies to try to build a moat which is more and more content black hole right black hole spending and growth even when that growth was free and i would have loved to see them instead like they sort of barely have that like the the watch together like i would have loved to see them roll out features that make it easier to use and the streaming experience better and like watch together and maybe one person rents a movie and maybe tears where you just subscribe to movies or you just subscribe to the library like there was so much that could have happened in the last decade

SPEAKER_170: and it just let everybody come in and eat their lunch here's the thing once they figured out that

SPEAKER_44: like action movies and rom-coms became like a draw like the algorithm figured that out yeah then remember they did like a will smith action film it was like completely gemini man i don't know what

SPEAKER_01: it was they did like two or three action films back to back i was like wow these are good trailers

SPEAKER_05: and these are terrible films and then the movies are not and i have the lowest bar ever for stupid action movies and even i was like i'm like that for sci-fi and they did a couple ryan reynolds ones

SPEAKER_42: and then they did the same thing with rom-coms where they're just like we're going to do every rom-com

SPEAKER_111: possible and i'm like you know what i need you to just maybe a little more polish yeah maybe a little bit of a unique spin bring it up a little just level it up i i'm dying for a great rom-com

SPEAKER_07: anybody got a rom-com for me i'm just going to go back and watch nodding hill again i know i'm dying for a kick-ass action movie like gimme where is jack ryan 2 that was a great action movie moon

SPEAKER_165: night is fantastic moon night i'm getting all my action picks on disney here's the thing with

SPEAKER_42: marvel and disney like you think they're gonna make the same cookie cutter marvel stuff like because

SPEAKER_03: the movies kind of did get predictable like are we gonna laugh we're gonna have quips we're gonna have a big battle sequence it's never gonna end it's gonna move quickly we're gonna introduce new characters fan service the end two more fan services really this is the end it was like a really tight formula and then they do the tv shows and they're like yeah moon night's got this weird director and

SPEAKER_112: this thing's gonna meander and be a lot of dialogue and i was like my daughter's gonna hate this they love it yeah they love it there's like one fight scene for 30 seconds every film and it's like

SPEAKER_91: wow what a great development they did there and then the same thing with the um scarlet witch one because they're like yeah we're gonna have this concept of like tv shows through the air and my again i thought my daughter's gonna hate this there's no action it's like very intellectual and ephemeral what's going on here and they loved it so there's something they're doing and the same

SPEAKER_03: thing happened with boba fett mandalorian it was like okay are these going to be interesting yep

SPEAKER_238: they're super interesting and different it's really interesting watching all the it's really

SPEAKER_28: interesting watching all the shows pop up to from the notice like they canceled altered carbon which was a really interesting risky premise super cool action show like it is they really something about their algorithm seems to have told them to just like keep playing it safe with stupid stuff

Jason Calacanis: and then suddenly you have no black mirror and you have no altered carbon and you you're losing these kind of risky cool shows and at some point like everybody ods on candy let auteurs

SPEAKER_92: auteur like let some artists make weird cool yeah that's the best advice for netflix let people make weird stuff and then see what breaks out you got to take some more chances here and you know hbo takes

SPEAKER_91: has incredible taste i when i see the hbo logo or when they play that little tiffany like hbo thing you know what i think this is going to be well crafted and then when i see the netflix thing come

SPEAKER_249: up i'm like um this is probably going to be bad isn't it i'm like this is how i'm going to kill

Jason Calacanis: netflix is like i need to kill 45 minutes before i go to bed because i've tapped out on energy and time right like i can't i can't i'd rather listen to any more emails and i'm super pooper and i'm just going to see if there's anything good on netflix and it's probably going to be the great breaking

SPEAKER_92: show rather listen to a podcast rather listen to a podcast yeah or read a book yeah um this is the thing about like do you remember the original hbo logo hbo tiffany kind of tiffany like when they oh my god through the town into like down the chimney into somebody's tv like so good it just made you feel like okay something good's coming here and i feel that same way with the showtime logo now the showtime logo comes up i'm like oh billions like it's going to be good oh um a homeland so oh yeah i think like your brand has to stand for something the hbo brand the showtime brand man those just get me pumped for whatever's coming next yeah yeah that's such a good point

SPEAKER_264: netflix stands for time wasting it's gonna be a gobbly gobbly gobbly gobbly adam shenner

SPEAKER_28: uh i'll just wait while you want to do more of that because that's no i don't have an adam

SPEAKER_45: sandler i'm gonna have that i've never i've never completed an adam sandler film oh my gosh i don't have anything against adam sandler he's a cool guy you are such a liar you've never finished happy

SPEAKER_14: gilmore billy madison no specifically those actually the one i love is the one everybody adam's every adam sandler film funny people is my favorite i'm incredible incredible i do want to

SPEAKER_97: say i'm caught i felt like that was hard and that was him doing like bill murray first dates there's some great adam sandler like i'm not this is not bashan was he in forgetting sarah marshall

SPEAKER_276: no no that's jason no that's jason what's his butt it's like all it's equal not not

SPEAKER_277: are you for scuba are you for scuba listen when you start scaling quickly your company needs to be

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SPEAKER_44: the mood to do impressions oh okay here we go i don't have a jerry kushner impression dialed in but i'm gonna just make it like um nerd just like the crappy pit yeah i love this okay so happy patch

SPEAKER_37: and the most exciting news to come along and just for sheer schadenfreude jared kushner's three

Jason Calacanis: billion dollar vc pitch deck the deck that he used to raise three billion dollars from the saudis after he sold it classified information you got two from them two from um i think he raised three billion overall so it was leaked by the intercept and it is exactly what you might expect for a little background here last summer former president trump's former top aide and son-in-law jared kushner of course formed this global investment firm called affinity partners it raised more than three billion dollars in funding from lps it targeted large american and foreign lps it sounded like mostly uh where the where most of the money came from last week the new york times reported that six months after kushner left the white house affinity closed a two billion dollar investment commitment from the saudi crown prince despite objections from the funds advisors who were like hmm this guy

SPEAKER_56: seems like a dumb dumb i might be paraphrasing but that's basically what they said i'm gonna do this

SPEAKER_92: i'm gonna do a cold do that i've skimmed the deck but i'm gonna do this cold i'm gonna pitch affinity

SPEAKER_290: partners right oh my god okay i'm gonna be i'm gonna play lp wait you can play from the um sovereign

SPEAKER_12: wealth fund of the kingdom saudi arabia i don't know about that let's let's ever be uh lp from yale

SPEAKER_07: endowment lp from yale endowment perfect wait i'm switching out i'm switching to my smart person specs

SPEAKER_12: i got a lot of okay members of the yale endowment thank you for taking the time today especially uh

SPEAKER_03: chairperson of the board ms mollywood we appreciate your time and i'm super excited to share with you the opportunity to join affinity partners now if you're asking what we're going to do we're accelerating transformation through connectivity and let's look at each of these words accelerating we want to go

SPEAKER_92: fast we want the future to arrive quicker and we can only accelerate that is if if we transform everything and how will we transform everything well we're going to network it together through connectivity because this accelerated transformation can only happen if everybody participates it and we want to bring everybody along so here is your opportunity affinity invest in opportunities where we can add value that's right we are not going to invest unless we can add strategic enablement now you're asking these two words sound terrible together this makes no logical sense what is strategic enabling well we're going to enable people to think strategically because most people who are building businesses

SPEAKER_112: are not strategic thinkers i guess here on the left you see in this incredible fan fold and we do think about the fan because we want to blow smoke and oxygen and build this fire even hotter we do not want to invest in the early to mid-stage venture space where all the opportunity is and no we don't want to do buyouts no we want to exist between the early and the late stage that's why

SPEAKER_185: you see our logo there doing strategic enablement i just i'd like to um if i may interject for just a

SPEAKER_292: moment you can hold your questions to the end or you can ask me now yes we'll take questions just a

SPEAKER_91: quick one before we move on is that a real word well you know we enable uh would like to creatively create a new vernacular that we can all agree on to really take advantage of this unique opportunity in the world and strategic enablement uh we think summarizes it best most people are incapable of thinking strategically but through the accords and the peace in the middle east which i created along with the saudis uh you saw that strategic enablement in work uh you know just really

SPEAKER_03: at work so our unique experience and perspective allows us to tie macro and government policy

SPEAKER_42: trends to economic themes and investment opportunities we know the big picture and how that will trickle down into economic themes and investment opportunities uh this isn't easy

SPEAKER_112: i'm having a hard time slinging this holy crap okay we approach opportunities creatively based on the

SPEAKER_261: concept that aligned economic interests can solve intractable problems and create previously unrealized

SPEAKER_112: value yes that is a full sentence that some human being wrote okay we approach opportunities creatively

SPEAKER_17: so we we do not come at them with you know a boring playbook we do it creatively no cookie cutter crap here no we're not we're not we're not drawing inside the lines here but we look at these opportunities

SPEAKER_119: molly you understand and certainly yell can understand this we are going to creatively approach these opportunities on the concept is this even good english that aligned economic interests in other words

SPEAKER_261: everybody's thinking with their pocketbooks if everybody is creatively thinking about their own self

SPEAKER_112: interests if i can translate what i wrote uh we will solve intractable problems these are the problems

SPEAKER_28: that nobody can solve global warming uh so if you primarily think about your self-interest you'll

SPEAKER_261: definitely work together better yes if you're thinking only about your economic interest you'll solve

SPEAKER_112: the problems that nobody else can solve and this will create previously unrealized value because unrealized value by definition is previously unrealized it's kind of implied but we wanted to put more words in here and make the sentence even more words harder to understand because you know what you

SPEAKER_17: know what people love in slides lots of words we wanted to go for a long sentence class that was

SPEAKER_91: impossible to follow and that we think is the best undecipherable statement in the deck actually so you can just put a little yeah put a little post-it on it but let's see if we can one-up it uh we integrate our geopolitical experience i worked for my father-in-law global connectivity which is kind of like i can send an email to anybody um and then it could be subpoenaed um by the government and um problem-solving approach with rigorous private equity growth investing driven by an experienced team and analytical research process

SPEAKER_140: i don't even know what i read like literally four words later i still don't know where i started

SPEAKER_37: hold on let's try one more time i just keep putting up the red flag because i just can't put it away

SPEAKER_322: crazy all right try that again wait try that again i'm sure we can get this political this is the

SPEAKER_323: worst written sentence actually the previous one is terrible this is worse because this one wraps

SPEAKER_14: four times we integrate our geopolitical experience okay integrate our okay we're experienced we're

SPEAKER_325: worldly just to take those four words we're worldly we have traveled a lot the world is yes we've

SPEAKER_91: been we've met a lot of politicians yes we've been around the world and the world is connected and we have a problem-solving approach with rigorous private equity growth investing

SPEAKER_332: and problem-solving rigorous private equity growth investing driven that makes no sense the sentence is

SPEAKER_333: not proper english oh wait i think i got it i think i got it i think i got it i think i'm

SPEAKER_206: solving approach with rigor like equity growth investing driven by an experienced team and analytical

Jason Calacanis: research process yeah that's part two of the sandwich here so that so bread one is the geopolitical experience so they're like a we have geopolitical experience global connectivity and a problem

SPEAKER_28: solving approach and then when we combine that with rigorous private equity growth investing driven by an

SPEAKER_108: experienced team and analytical research process then boom can i interest you in a period like this could be two sentences or a comma or a comma or maybe just take out the word global connectivity because

SPEAKER_56: what is that serving there what does that even mean and also like we have an email account and sometimes and what is problem solving approach like you need an adjective there a good problem solving approach uh innovative uh like unique like i tried and true we just have one battle tested okay i just

SPEAKER_119: have one anyway let's put up a slide this slide is value add partnership not value added it's just value add

SPEAKER_42: partnership we consider this between who affinity's unique network and experience makes us a differentiated partner for companies navigating the rapidly evolving global political and economic environment drawing on operation geopolitical experience of the unique affinity network driving international expansion and accessing new markets navigating critical government challenges and opportunities we pay people off

SPEAKER_40: offering unique problem solving experiences like smoothing over a coup inside of the kingdom and

SPEAKER_10: getting you out from under that bone saw murder of a journalist all of these value adds are possible in our partnership this is another terrible slide this makes no sense we identify transformation opportunities in technology media telecom healthcare blah blah blah all the ones affinity partners focus on

SPEAKER_115: five key verticals and seeks to identify specifics wait i'm sure we're going to get specifics here right

SPEAKER_133: five key verticals yes secular winners okay i'm trying to hang and find high growth companies in scalable

SPEAKER_12: markets okay so you want high growth you want companies that are growing in big markets got it

SPEAKER_282: all right don't we all if i may interject here from my position as yale investor mswood from uh yeah i've noticed

SPEAKER_28: that as your five key verticals you've uh identified technology media and telecom health care financial services and institutions consumer services and sustainable energy and growth infrastructure akk

SPEAKER_03: every industry in the world yes we're we're we're focusing on these five which encompass all categories yes all well but we're what we're narrowly focused on these five which define all opportunities

SPEAKER_359: globally in the history of humanity we left out tulips but we are focused

SPEAKER_170: focused on five actually to be fair there's no crypto on here so so in fairness but we put that under financial services services if you double click on the slide you'll see hold on oh my god and here is

SPEAKER_91: your uh and here's uh page eight uh slide eight this is where we have our obligatory flywheel technology

SPEAKER_364: innovation leads to rising expectations which leads to leapfrogging progress leapfrogging progress wait you're gonna jump over progress we're leapfrogging now i mean this is a stupid i've ever read i'm a i'm a writer and i'm so insulted by the words on this page who wrote this this is literally written

SPEAKER_91: by some person whose parents photoshopped that i guarantee you this is written by somebody whose parents photoshopped them into a lacrosse photo in order to get them into an ivy league school this

SPEAKER_206: person is the worst writer on the planet let me try this this is wow all over the world accelerating innovation breakthroughs accelerating innovation breakthroughs so we're describing breakthroughs

SPEAKER_91: okay the breakthroughs that themselves are breakthroughs that are innovation based and that are accelerating okay are causing massive changes to the way we live

SPEAKER_173: no example with the passive voice why with the passive voice our understanding of the nexus of

SPEAKER_91: god of industry and country trends provides differentiated insights wait a second we needed

SPEAKER_332: drinks for this our understanding of the nexus of industry and country trends provides differentiated

SPEAKER_170: insights is wait is that a proper sentence is that grammar i just want to go back and say that this

SPEAKER_28: raised three billion dollars i mean not this really it's the selling of the classified secrets and it's the active of there was a two billion dollar payoff in exchange for getting them off the hook for the khashoggi murder and also evidently some really classified information somebody

SPEAKER_379: you investigate this i mean literally i mean why are everybody's kids why are the kids of every

David Friedberg: president and grifters and and the and the son-in-laws this is just grift central nick says we have to

SPEAKER_356: uh cruise to the diligence slide because i'm just going to read this amazing every traditional industry

SPEAKER_119: will be transformed by new technologies in the next wave of the industrial revolution this this statement was incredibly valid in 1992 um our approach oh my god this isn't even a funnel chart what is this flow

SPEAKER_385: whoa we have transformational opportunities in every sector on the planet affinity carries out a

SPEAKER_381: thorough and in-depth assessment of potential investments and examines a range of quantitative

SPEAKER_158: and qualitative factors this is it literally as if someone asked them just write that you do diligence in the most convoluted and hard to understand way possible okay sourcing and screening of investment

SPEAKER_188: opportunities results in weekly investment discussions they have a weekly meeting every

SPEAKER_112: week and they put that in the slide yes and then resources are allocated based on that preliminary investment review p-i-r that's peer here we do our peer and investment

SPEAKER_42: investment if you give it an acronym it'll sound like a real then the investment committee gets the investment memorandum and the peer and then it goes back and forth i wish that everyone

SPEAKER_56: listening to this would be watching the video because you've got to see the arrows

Jason Calacanis: on this so dumb like some arrows go down and then some are like but the the preliminary investment review we have an email oh my god or chart too and the investment memorandum which is a deal memo and then the committee what they do is they email each other and then they talk and then they write a memo and decide i mean you put this in a slide i mean this

SPEAKER_396: here's how an investment decision work at a job affinity carries out a thorough and in-depth

SPEAKER_03: assessment of potential investments and examines a range of quantitative and qualitative factors

SPEAKER_10: well well there's a decision-making process here are a bunch of disturbing sociopathic looking individuals on slide 15 um this should appeal to any dictatorship um these men will do whatever it takes to win and have um not been convicted of any felonies yeah uh here's a general who is 20 years older than that photo uh and has no idea what we do but we gave him 75 000 a year to put him in the deck uh here's one woman who works on our team in operations uh she's our cfo she's super annoying

SPEAKER_208: um but we needed a woman in the company so we put we added her um you don't know she's annoying oh there

SPEAKER_412: he is this is jared kushner's thing yeah he's like here's my 12 person team here's like a lady woman

SPEAKER_416: but i do yeah we we none of us like her but you know she's and then jared gets his own slide and

SPEAKER_126: then here i am i have no discernible um intelligence and or ability except being born into the lucky sperm club my dad made money in real estate and i married another he went to jail my wife's dad made money in real estate and they both committed a lot of crimes it's yeah uh the end all right here's some

SPEAKER_22: disclosures i am a complete dip um but i did uh smooth over the khashoggi killing and i got you a billion dollars worth of armaments and i made you a partner to the united states and the end you owe me

SPEAKER_126: to i owe you two billion uh let's see if they can figure out a way to stop us so on this note i feel

Jason Calacanis: that i now want to read word for word some of the concerns that the new york times noted that the advisory panel uh on from the saudi crown prince fund raised quote the inexperience of the affinity fund management the possibility that the kingdom would end up responsible for quote the bulk of the

SPEAKER_56: investment and risk due diligence on the fledgling firm's operations found them quote unsatisfactory in

SPEAKER_422: all aspects which there was all yeah all aspects i think we covered that on slide i call that the

SPEAKER_425: two red flagger the double barrel nothing yeah everything we looked at was concerning was a

SPEAKER_75: disaster it's like can you imagine you go into a house and you're like it's kind of a fixer-upper and like you're like okay what needs to be fixed up you're like well the foundation and the plumbing the electrical and the roof uh and the mold and the windows and all the appliances but other than

SPEAKER_434: that other than that it's fine it's just like a light remodel they noted that the proposed asset

Jason Calacanis: management fee quote seems excessive and finally that there might be a quote public relations risk from mr kushner's prior role as a senior advisor to former trump during which he completely botched for

SPEAKER_437: example america's pandemic response leading to he's like like a million what is the price uh for you

SPEAKER_44: uh what do i owe you for the khashoggi and the armaments what is your commission again i'm sorry my

SPEAKER_92: investment yes my payoff my iou is what what's my what's my tab how many bottles of a word salad is

SPEAKER_442: not a two million one point five round it up to two you're i this sounds like you're uh like you're uh

SPEAKER_445: you're a newman a little bit yeah it's my generic middle eastern yeah yeah i uh i don't think that a

Jason Calacanis: word salad is necessarily disqualifying like our you know our producers are pointing out that this is sort of mckenzie speak like i hate it right but apparently people raise money on this kind of crap all the time because mckenzie is still in business but like what do you do they do nothing this is basically like give us a couple of billion dollars so that we can just smooth over relationships

SPEAKER_04: which by the way no you can't because you're not your dad is not your father-in-law is not an office here's my new launch for a pitch deck this inspired me to make it even more plain spoken

SPEAKER_112: we invest early we build a large position we sell uh after we return 50x and we start clearing that

SPEAKER_10: position and we're trying to invest in many more early stage companies so that we can have many many more large positions in those winners the end and we meet companies early and build a position in them

SPEAKER_03: over time yeah we try to be as supportive as possible and help them avoid mistakes we believe in proper

SPEAKER_10: governance so we know so we can protect lp's interests and we know when a company is doing well so we can make them unsolicited offers to invest more money in their companies the end the end oh we have really

SPEAKER_459: smart people with proven track records we have here are their cvs we we have a track record we have a

SPEAKER_42: track record that's a good one we have a track record we meet with 60 companies a week we invest in

SPEAKER_464: the best one meet with 60 invest in the best one it's not rocket science folks here literally that's

SPEAKER_92: gonna be my new pitch that's it it's not rocket science folks meet 3000 qualified companies invest in the top 50.

SPEAKER_07: i mean you could even boil it down to we invested in this many companies and we made this much money

SPEAKER_468: yes the end right i mean it's really this is our ir here's drop the mic exactly here's the ir

SPEAKER_208: america all right speaking about um just absolute utter shows and i'm reticent to to dunk in this

SPEAKER_91: because people think i'm going to be just dunking on a certain individual but media is my beat obviously and uh axios has reported that cnn plus which you may or may not have heard of probably haven't uh is in danger of being canned just three weeks after launching while i bring us through uh the

Jason Calacanis: incredible axios reporting here yeah this is a phenomenal scoop by axio so the facts as we know them cnn plus launched march 29th just over three weeks ago 300 million dollars and then some 300 million dollars plus has already been invested in hundreds of jobs thank you to create the service cnn plus has about 150 000 subscribers so far paying either six dollars a month or sixty dollars a year it was

SPEAKER_01: actually fact check three dollars a month if you signed up in the first month oh okay so there's a

SPEAKER_28: lot of them are probably only paying three dollars however at six dollars a month per user let's even

Jason Calacanis: say three million dollars a month per at six million that would be ten million dollars in yearly revenue sure i'm gonna go back to they spent 300 million so that's not great but you know i think you could safely file this maybe under slow start and you got to build to success however uh a couple things are going on all at the same time cnn is under new management because discovery ceo david zaslob became the new ceo of the merged entity it was under the warner media umbrella which was owned by att until about two weeks ago when this merger was finalized so what they did is they started a big launch a long time ago probably a year or more maybe two or three years uh of a product and then they have new management coming in cnn also has this new incoming ceo chris licht who starts on may's first or second so it launched during this kind of turnover executive turnover and it's having a slow start and now according to axios warner brothers discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for cnn plus has laid off cnn's long-time cfo brad ferrer and replaced him with discoveries cfo neil chagani not you know unheard of in a merger um and axios also reported that other high-level positions at warner media are likely to be eliminated to cut costs and streamline leadership all of which

SPEAKER_56: is leading to the potential conclusion that after three weeks and 300 million dollars cnn or discovery

SPEAKER_475: might be preparing to take plus out back and shoot it all right wow yeah i gave my mini review um

SPEAKER_119: you know they i think it was like one of these situations where they executed extremely poorly but there might actually be just adjacent to what they did i think with three iteration two or three iterations they could actually build a product that would be worth paying for now let me explain what

SPEAKER_10: that is um i paid for the service i checked it out i buy every service some you know cover media they

SPEAKER_119: did magazine style shows in the style of anthony bourdain not realizing that in order to make a magazine style show work you kind of need somebody as the host who is so absurdly compelling that you

SPEAKER_112: cannot take your eyes off of them and you can't stop listening to what they're saying the magic of anthony bourdain was he was a writer was him yeah but also he's a writer and he wrote his own monologues

SPEAKER_44: so when you consumed you know an anthony bourdain magazine style show you were listening to an essay

SPEAKER_119: with gorgeous visuals travel is one of the few places where a magazine style show works and if you

SPEAKER_232: look at the confluence of events that happen with anthony bourdain he was a unique individual in all the

SPEAKER_119: world so personality he was a gifted writer and actually put the work into writing his monologues

SPEAKER_112: which were so compelling it's amazing and then the one genre where you really can make this work is i think travel it's incredibly visual and you can pick a place and you know sometimes people will just

SPEAKER_12: look at their apple screensaver and say wow look at the harbor of hong kong it's gorgeous so that combination of those three things you put those three circles together anthony bourdain's in the middle now you try to recreate that and what do you wind up with you know like uh the tucci show

SPEAKER_91: which is nice but not must see none of them well the tucci i think you know is trying to do something similar and he is like unique as a personality but not a writer like anthony bourdain so it's missing

SPEAKER_12: that piece for me but it is beautiful and the the tucci show is actually not anthony bourdain but it's fine it's it's almost there yeah um now they then did prof g in that

SPEAKER_119: format uh the guy um uh who i like who does state jake tapper jake tapper who i like a lot he's an

SPEAKER_44: interesting personality they did him on a book club uh and then they did um anderson cooper doing parenting

SPEAKER_119: now i watched all three of those shows from start to end none of them were good okay why aren't they good they felt like they were not written by the hosts the hosts were not super compelling jake tapper was the most compelling to be if i'm being honest but then they kind of milk toasted it because it was like 21 minutes or whatever like very short and i just thought podcasting is much better than all of this jake tappers book club had some potential um and so i think over time if they kind of let it run it could work but anyway i think those magazine style shows were the worst of what they did yeah and they were lazily put together there wasn't like a soul to any of them with the exception of i think jake and and maybe a little bit anderson putting those aside they just weren't well executed they did do live news like we're doing right now with the nodies and comments but they didn't let raw comments through right you had to put a question in and then they would anoint the questions so what happens there's no risk there's no energy and those shows were kind of interesting

SPEAKER_112: even without that because you're like okay it's people at a desk responding to questions and

SPEAKER_03: they were doing the you know the smack by will smith um so you know obviously it was like a interesting topic that was right of the moment but then the guy who left fox news who i like chris wallace

SPEAKER_91: he was not putting his live show in front of that format so they just had him on like he was normally on cnn or fox with no questions being allowed so they should have done here's cnn you get c and you don't get cnn with cnn plus which is the most confusing thing ever that would be like buying hbo max and not getting sopranos it would be like buying disney plus and not getting mickey mouse like talk about it like an idiotic expectation so it's not even like a bundle

SPEAKER_12: it should have just included cnn it should have included cnn without ads so when they went to ads they should have just shown you the studio like a wide shot which is what you get on nba league passes is really interesting like we'll show you the arena they should have just shown anderson cooper moving his papers getting his makeup touched up would be dope yeah to have cnn on and see the

SPEAKER_91: thing in the background and see him getting prepared for that of course the talent maybe wouldn't do that that my idea was you take the you know have like an anchor desk that does in between commentary when

SPEAKER_12: the anchors on cnn go to commercial so imagine if you and i went to cur instead of you and i took a break here on this live thing and rachel and justin came up as producers and just talked about the next segment and queued it up and talked about the previous segment the audience would be like oh wow it's kind of

SPEAKER_261: behind the scenesy you know actually leo laporte used to do this on twit he would show you the studio

SPEAKER_91: live and he would be live the whole time i mean sometimes people clip him having conversations

SPEAKER_14: for yelling at somebody and be like oh he's chewing somebody out for you know so but anyway uh it's a complete disaster it's not worth paying for uh whoever came up with the creative idea should be fired but there is something about a news network without advertising that would be super compelling

SPEAKER_202: i agree with you and i think that it would be a mistake to take it out back and shoot it now because

SPEAKER_28: i think there is really a way to you know there's been a lot made of the fact that chris licht wants to come in and he did this actually with the cbs uh early show which is now called cbs this morning

Jason Calacanis: i think um took it from fluffy bunny magazine show to a news show like really put a lot more news on there and he wants to do the same thing with cnn like get rid of some of this like super analysis evening programming cuomo and all that um and make it because what used to happen you kids will not remember this but there was a time in our world when news would break and you would turn on cnn because you'd be like oh my god i need to know what's happening the news right i don't want to know what people are thinking about the news i want to know the news and that completely stopped at cnn and they leaned into personalities and analysis and then you know trump came and it was like oh that's

SPEAKER_56: all well just that's all we'll talk about i would love an option where cnn is the news and cnn plus

Jason Calacanis: is the analysis like take that and then put your magazine shows there sure but also have your round tables like bring all in like buy all in not buy it whatever right but some version yeah of a show that is really like if i want to because what i feel in the news landscape right now is that all i don't know anything i just know what people think about things so give me a channel where i can find

SPEAKER_01: out what's happening and then let me have an add on cue up the facts like we go through the facts here

Chamath Palihapitiya: on the show and we give you the facts and then we'll do a little analysis but they're just doing all

SPEAKER_56: analysis and opinion and it's on both but i think there still is a chance right there still is a chance

Jason Calacanis: to merge these two products to make cnn more newsy yeah and then have plus b analysis round tables

SPEAKER_119: magazines it's a great idea great idea that would be a great way if you could just flip the channel back and forth back and forth okay i just want to go straight news so whatever's in the news just like the bbc does on their channel or cnbc is doing like a more news desky feel where you're just rolling through segments boom boom boom boom 10 minute segment five minute segment get me caught up so

SPEAKER_44: anyway i i think they have to iterate twice on it i think just kill all these magazine shows and start over yeah um and uh but they're probably just gonna kill it because they're so weird right now it's like such a weird management disaster yeah i mean i guess these are good businesses they get to like a million or two million people watching them at night but you know it's it's kind of laughable that like joe rogan gets 10 million people listening to an episode uh you know ben shapiro or the new york times daily probably gets to like low millions like they actually get more listeners than cnn and

SPEAKER_12: they're spending all this money i mean for 300 million dollars they could have come and bought 30 of the top podcasts in the world for 10 million dollars right and think what you and i could have

SPEAKER_514: done with 300 million dollars to build a content empire forget it ridiculous ridiculous like and

SPEAKER_91: how much of that actually wound up on the screen i have no idea but uh you know we you know like as a but an example like this show probably gets similar you know ratings to cnbc and all in goes way past it right um and so you know the the podcasting area is much more interesting and i think you if they had made cnn plus in an era before podcasting you might be like oh wow i can get a little deeper into

SPEAKER_92: tech i can get a little deeper into books i can scratch this itch you know of uh you know 30 minutes on one topic food whatever parenting but now it's like if you type in parenting there must be 50 incredible

SPEAKER_91: parenting you know companies and like let's face it face it cnn could have bought could have done what spotify did they bought gimlet for a couple hundred million and they bought the ringer cnn could have bought the ringer or gimlet and had a much better content strategy than what they made at home which means the people who work at cnn are not good at making shows yeah full stop they are not good at

SPEAKER_56: making shows and you can see i know everybody i know listeners that our content roots are showing here because we can't let go of this because it's such a miss that it's just like i i will obsess upon

SPEAKER_28: this forever the only thing i've obsessed about more today is the leadership change at the new york

Jason Calacanis: times but that's different um what i leadership change at the new york times yeah yeah they're getting

SPEAKER_28: a new bouquet is retiring and they're getting a new executive editor and the new york times has

Jason Calacanis: declared that everything is fine at the new york times it's perfect so we're just um basically putting in the ultimate like long-time insider who won't change a thing um i just bought 9.1

SPEAKER_17: great plan guys great i just bought i just bought 9.1 of the non-voting shares all right exactly um

SPEAKER_148: seeing a futile takeover the other thing that's crazy about cnn is that clearly by developing plus instead

SPEAKER_56: of buying the ringer instead of bringing in new exciting talent instead of like seeding new

Jason Calacanis: ground they were like everyone loves our stars so much they don't they don't everyone loves our stars so much that they'll watch jake tapper who's a a hardcore political commentator at this point right

SPEAKER_133: he's the opinion slinger don't give a about his book club anderson cooper is a wartime reporter i don't want to know i'm not interested in this parenting like get what the hell this was another

SPEAKER_119: like mistake they they should have looked i mean here's a there's so many strategies that would have

SPEAKER_10: worked better that you just have to think that there's just utter complete incompetence at cnn in terms of making shows and then anybody who's working there must be there just for the paycheck and to

SPEAKER_03: not work because there was so little craftsmanship put into this stuff that or thought you could have just went to the podcasting ranks and found five podcasts and just licensed the frick out of them

SPEAKER_44: seriously for less money i mean they only made like six or seven new shows i think and if you just had to get seven shows well then just go straight down the line pick one in the best one in each category and buy a license to them and put them there yeah um and the when you look at making a show like these magazine shows you're talking about you know it's a it's a running gun shoot so you probably have i would say between six and twelve staff you know like doing this run and gun type of production on the street maybe with anderson cooper it's more maybe he demands more but you can do running gun style magazine shows with a with a tight group six people 12 people yeah um of those six to 12 people

SPEAKER_119: i would say let's just say it's 10 people nine i did one i did one with five you did one with five

SPEAKER_509: for which i did one with five it was a half hour always on it was a half hour magazine style show broadcast quality show we were a five person crew right so somebody like cnn is going to double that

SPEAKER_44: right because they're just right because they're just going to throw money away yeah they just we do it

SPEAKER_119: the right way so anyway let's say they have 10 people yep of those 10 how many are doing the content

SPEAKER_03: the words the moments two one or two how many are doing the sound two or three how many doing the video four or five so you have eight people doing the sound and audio and capturing it and you have one

SPEAKER_12: or two people making it plus the host so you arguably have like two or three people and then when you have podcasting it's the opposite you have like one person recording it on zoom or whatever doing the audio and the editing and then you have four or five people doing the content that's the right ratio more

SPEAKER_261: of the dollar molly has to go into the content in order to compete against you know someone like bill simmons or us or whoever you have to put more money into the production of the words the actual opinions

SPEAKER_91: the content that's where the magic happens and they're doing like you know flyby shots and drone shots and lighting oh that's the other thing lighting you know oh my god you got two lighting people and so

SPEAKER_13: much equipment oh yeah and they're holding the thing up i'm working with thirty dollars in lights

SPEAKER_28: here i think well that's not true 130 um jay i just want to shout out jay and the noda gang for this lovely compliment and i think it's freaking true given how well twist is run i imagine it would take out bloomberg with a 300 million dollar budget well let's get there let's do it let's do this let's do

SPEAKER_112: it let's go let's do it wait we got we got we got uh rachel reporting and training where we're

SPEAKER_528: building up our back look how fast the producers pulled that that comment up like i scrolled way down for that

SPEAKER_119: boom that's what i'm talking about okay let's talk about just eat takeaway announcing they're looking

SPEAKER_292: to sell grubhub wait what yeah speaking of headwinds friends this makes no sense okay well to the wait

SPEAKER_232: because wasn't uber trying to buy grubhub at some point this was like in play and then they went with

SPEAKER_28: just eat takeaway what happened yeah so uh yeah just eat takeaway and finalized a 7.3 billion dollar acquisition of grubhub just 10 months ago just eat takeaway is that netherlands based food delivery company that agreed to acquire grubhub into 2020 took a full year for the deal to be realized everything was looking great for food delivery during that year the deal was an all-stock transaction over

Jason Calacanis: the last year just eat peaked at about 20 billion dollar market cap now trading at six and a half billion dollars roughly and then earlier wednesday just eat sent this note quote the management board confirms

SPEAKER_56: its alignment with shareholders in wanting to both create and realize value from the company's highly attractive portfolio of assets as such management is currently together with its advisors actively exploring the introduction of a strategic partner into and or the partial or full sale of grubhub

Jason Calacanis: interest there can be no certainty that any such strategic actions will be agreed or what the timing of such agreements will be further announcements will be made as and when appropriate

SPEAKER_28: so i think i translate that as we've made a terrible mistake or uh uber was trying to buy it i believe

SPEAKER_12: and i think doordash was considering it and perhaps they're looking at this situation saying we bought this for seven billion when our stock was and it was an all-stock deal our stock is worth what now what's the total market cap of the two companies i guess the question would be and then do they think by selling this to uber or doordash or lyft or somebody else who wants to be in the space would that create more

SPEAKER_28: right right so now currently they're trading at about a six and a half billion dollar market cap and

Jason Calacanis: combine steel has that's the total for just eat which has finalized this agreement so yeah combined

SPEAKER_12: six and a half so that would be combined so they had a 20 billion market cap now they're down to 6.5 billion they bought it for 7 billion so the combined entity is worth more than the value of the purchase but they purchased it when they had a 20 billion market cap so they probably gave up a third of their company for it if they did all stock right 7 billion be a third of 21 billion or something like that yeah so now they're probably thinking our stock is undervalued at 6.5 billion could we sell this for what we paid for it 7 billion and then double our value or can we sell it for 4 billion and then our market cap goes down to 4 billion or 5 billion and then we have 4 billion in cash anyway it uh i thought

SPEAKER_03: it was bizarre that uber eats or doordash didn't get this or somebody else they also announced in the update uh year over year numbers for just eats q1 order growth and gross transaction volume were super disappointing total orders decreased one percent year over year from 2021 to 2022 from 267 million to 264 so when your business gets flat man that is the kiss of death in the public markets private markets i just had this conversation with the founder i was on a board call the other day and i was like listen if we're flat how do we expect to raise money like there's other businesses that are growing we have to get this growth turned around you can't be flat and expect people to invest

SPEAKER_07: that's just yeah that's just gnarly is i mean i think we have to ask this question i have two

SPEAKER_28: questions about this one did everybody literally think the pandemic was not going to end because the

Jason Calacanis: short-term thinking in terms of making a seven and a half billion dollar acquisition based on pandemic

SPEAKER_119: purchase trends yes raises questions to me but also okay so in that one what i would say is they did they had experienced a massive uptick in their value and they did an all-stock transaction so it

Jason Calacanis: wasn't like they bur they paid cash right they didn't pay cash so that's smart but at the same time they did an acquisition based on growing this particular business food delivery which has been a kiss of death business for decades like you and i have a little margin business that you need scale and operational efficiency are we about to discover that i mean i really sincerely believe the landscape

SPEAKER_56: has changed based on just how much i use food delivery but i also are we about to learn this lesson all over again that like ride hailing and food delivery that these are businesses that just don't

SPEAKER_12: work they at scale no they work at scale they don't work without scale uh with an asset heavy infrastructure so the problem is if you pay for the cars which is what you know like web van did they they own the vans you know i think when it's asset heavy it's very problematic uh because you have just too much infrastructure cost and without scale you know if you're making two or three dollars per

SPEAKER_03: delivery like well who cares if you're doing a million deliveries but if you're doing a billion deliveries and it's global well yeah that's going to be pretty great and if people are buying and

SPEAKER_91: riding in your app so i think being either or is challenging but being both is kind of the big win

SPEAKER_03: so i think that's why uber is probably cementing its position um like you have to have something else you

SPEAKER_28: can't just be food delivery you can be food delivery and ride hailing or maybe just eats was thinking

Jason Calacanis: you can do this at mega scale you can do it if you have enough volume to make up for any margin weakness

SPEAKER_12: i mean jordash and uber eats are both crushing it and they're both um you know increasing prices and

SPEAKER_03: uber and lyft have been increasing prices to get to profitability so profitability is just starting to happen with those businesses because they are not being subsidized by investors anymore so i think they'll both be highly profitable businesses uh doordash and uber but i do think if you're just one it's a little bit harder because you have to every time you acquire a driver every time uber acquires a driver they acquire them for two potential missions food or people and if lyft it's one mission and with doordash it's one mission so you just don't have the same operational efficiencies this is why i

SPEAKER_12: think uber is going for the um super app as well if they can get you to buy your ferry ticket as well

SPEAKER_03: your hotel your you know uh get a restaurant reservation all of that's going to be the super

SPEAKER_92: app and uber is going to mean booking something it's not that you know uber will mean booking something

SPEAKER_10: you know getting something done is what uber will ultimately mean um so i'm still long on it i do think these businesses are hard to do and and that's the defensibility of them right because if

SPEAKER_119: you do figure out it's hard but it has to be asset light that's the major issue once you start you know and you have to charge the right fees if you if people complain that it costs forty dollars to have their food delivered or thirty dollars have their food delivered and they want it to cost ten well there's not enough in the united states in a major city ten dollars isn't going to get it done it's just not going to get it done the person who's delivering the food needs the 10 bucks and the company's got to make 10 bucks so there needs to really be 20 bucks in fees and and profit on top of

Jason Calacanis: you picking it up yeah it has to be more but to our point way way back at the beginning of the show

SPEAKER_232: everything has to be a little more expensive well i mean and then you can't sit here and complain like

SPEAKER_119: oh we want no immigration and we don't want any you know people who are starting on the first rung of their career well if you don't want immigration and you want people who are high school educated or perhaps even college educated to deliver your food you're not going to be able to pay the minimum wage you have to pay the minimum wage plus plus plus yeah and if we want to have unions and we want to have a standard of living and we want people to have health care well okay you're not going

SPEAKER_232: to get your doordash or your lyft or your uber ride for the same cheap price you got it so as a society we're making a decision to to bake in a lot of costs and it's probably the right move

SPEAKER_586: actually that things are more expensive i mean that article consumption goes down a little bit

SPEAKER_28: exactly the article about the death of the subsidized millennial lifestyle

SPEAKER_00: yeah so it's more true every day like it just it was never sustainable free delivery

SPEAKER_28: and super cheap uber rides like those five dollar fast sweatshirts yeah hoodies sorry god sorry

SPEAKER_593: millennials no more five dollar hoodies for you no more hoodies for you dom i love you dom shout out to dom somebody somebody text me i don't know who nick loves more dom or adam newman

SPEAKER_596: adam newman it's like this is a tough one my two favorite my two guys i love it and two homies

SPEAKER_246: oh my god that would be great if we had the failure panel at all in summit it'd be great it'd be be amazing dissecting failure would be an amazing world failure is a good thing in our business i

SPEAKER_600: thought so somebody was like hey i can get you the guy did build a massive business dude he secured

SPEAKER_603: the bag he got 1.7 billion on the way out it's my hero awesome product i can't say awesome business because they were losing we love dollars but adam awesome we work as a great product i will stand

SPEAKER_609: by that perfect product i understand we work as the perfect product i understand and molly also had

SPEAKER_612: a hilarious comment we we grow we grow he did a couple months ago with um with dealbook it's

SPEAKER_615: freaking incredible yeah he was so good i understand 20 minutes in oh i didn't see that one yet well

Jason Calacanis: that's why i keep saying i understand so don't play a drinking game with i understand in that

SPEAKER_509: interview but it is phenomenal like you don't know we should do a watch for that it's a 28 minute

SPEAKER_619: interview and i sat there like riveted with um the the best interviewer on cnbc i can't yeah andrew

SPEAKER_624: and he challenges adam he's good in the interview it's a tough interview oh yeah

SPEAKER_56: adam newman i i understand with ars i like him he's great he's incredible also though and just

Jason Calacanis: side note the visual of the interview is amazing because andrew ross orkin is not a big man and adam newman of course is a freaking giant he's like six seven or whatever and so the the like in addition to him being so fascinating you almost have to go back and watch it over again just to like appreciate this small man in this huge chair and then this huge man in what looks like a small chair because

SPEAKER_619: visually it's amazing amazing he hits him like directly about buying buildings under his own name

SPEAKER_630: and then leasing them out to we work and then andrew andrew we grew we grew fast you have to understand

SPEAKER_632: in real estate we have this connected party systems he says something like that he's like no no this

SPEAKER_635: is normal in our business that's not too worried about the press makes it don't worry it's growing

SPEAKER_636: and nobody had a problem when it's growing okay babushka so calm and collected throughout the whole

SPEAKER_637: thing i'm like this is legitimately awesome this guy it's so great i would invest in anything he did

SPEAKER_75: with the understanding that he's going to screw me in some way but i'm still going to be out

SPEAKER_639: 10x he's definitely is great in some ways when they crawl knee pads for baby i understand every

SPEAKER_28: time like he hits him with the hard question and adam's like andrew i want to say to you i understand

SPEAKER_01: i understand people have concerns i mean it is incredible this is my these are my dms you guys we get closer to the all-in summit and we're like 30 days uh we're coming in on like the 30-day window we're dialing everything in now all the people who want to speak are coming out of the woodwork and like they were like hey uh you want to have i can get ryan breslau and i was like hard pass and they're like hey i can get dom i was like hard pass i was like no yeah adam newman

SPEAKER_649: get adam adam newman keynote all in summit 100 yes i may have another major drop coming please

SPEAKER_651: that's what i'm saying oh god i haven't really had nightmares about it jack literally a nightmare i

SPEAKER_654: i'm gonna i'm gonna work on jack i'm or i should say i'm working on jack i i think we might get

SPEAKER_10: a couple of more drops are coming a couple of more cool drops but you're did you go to the space

SPEAKER_80: we can talk a little bit about all in summit here as we wrap the show up did you go see the space

SPEAKER_528: where you're seeing that today nick yes next that is incredible great okay it's amazing okay good

SPEAKER_660: yeah all right we have a couple of things for you to review in this life actually toby points out

SPEAKER_661: that we may have to have adam adam newman would be at the three parties yeah now we're just toby

SPEAKER_394: toby just pointed out we need to just have to get a lot of planet we just need to plan it

SPEAKER_664: he'll just be like cell phones at the door no cameras tequila it's gonna look like the summer camp

SPEAKER_133: that's accurate whatever that also whatever that two-foot bottle of tequila is that they kept drinking like i want some amigos is that that's my drink no is it like a thousand dollar piece

SPEAKER_667: i don't remember it's like two feet tall don julio no no no the one that looks like a mantelpiece jason

SPEAKER_670: you always well there's no there's the white one that looks like a mantelpiece yeah yeah that one that's like a brown one no it's not casamigos it's something else casa azul no casa azul that's

SPEAKER_286: exactly what it is hold on i gotta look at it's casa azul it's exactly what it is but the casa azul also comes in a brown bottle in addition to you actually are right it's don julio the one that they're

SPEAKER_12: drinking hold on i'm putting it in that right here don julio 1942 yes that is the uh there's

SPEAKER_679: two that's the one yes these are the two in the movie yeah sure here are two in the same picture

SPEAKER_91: so casa azul is the white one with a silver top that i think you can actually use to drink it out

SPEAKER_12: it was like a shot glass and then the one he likes was a don julio 1942 which is that brown

SPEAKER_17: amber bottle that he was like pouring on the steps outside his office um and by the way it's like

Jason Calacanis: two hundred dollars a bottle yeah which is why you have that scene where they try it and they're like

SPEAKER_28: oh damn yeah there you go i mean a good will change your entire uh outlook on tequila like once you

SPEAKER_05: realize it's a sipping drink and not a like mixing throw up drink yes it's not for shots it's for

SPEAKER_686: sipping if you're doing shots with that stuff you're crazy hey everyone producer nick here i

SPEAKER_687: want to tell you about the sas syndicate if you're a founder of a sas company with a product and market our investment team wants to talk to you head over to the syndicate.com slash sas s-a-a-s to apply to raise from the sas syndicate and you can join jason syndicate of over 9 000 accredited investors at

SPEAKER_689: the syndicate.com producer justin here know a cool startup check out openscouting.com where anyone can refer a startup to our investment team here at launch even if you don't know the founder if you're the first to flag a company for us and we decide to invest you'll get 5k in cash or 10 of our carry

SPEAKER_692: hey everybody producer rachel here are you an early stage startup that has product and market some traction and are looking to raise at least five hundred thousand dollars apply today to remote demo day for your chance to pitch to over 9 000 investors in jason's syndicate submit your application at remotedemoday.com our next event is on april 27th and if you want to learn how to

SPEAKER_687: invest in startups from the world's greatest angel investor and no we're not talking about chris sacca then head to angel.university to apply the four-hour workshop costs 300 and all proceeds are donated to charity to date we've donated over a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars to various charities and you can see the full list at angel.university slash charity