Kara Swisher · 48:19
And so tech... TikTok was having a lot of parties at Gong. So I don't know. What do you what do you
Scott Galloway · 48:24
Look. I think TikTok is the most undervalued company in tech right now. It's trading at the same valuation as OpenAI with 15 times the revenue. It's trading at, like, one and a half to three times revenues depending on if you're looking at forward or trailing twelve months. Everyone thinks, oh, well, what about the insecurity, the overhang that's keeping that valuation low because of, insecurity around The US market? It's clear that Trump has decided he likes TikTok. He's not taken seriously. It's likely not gonna be banned right now. Jeff Yass owns 15% of the company, gave a $100,000,000 to Republican candidates, and only 20% of the revenue comes from The United States. So this thing is a juggernaut. And, also, just personally, I think it's the most addictive of all the platforms. I could, right now, go upstairs, take off my shoes, take an edible, and be on TikTok for twenty eight hours and not know what happened. I just think it is in... That algorithm is incredible. They continue to grow. And the notion somehow that it keeps extending these deadlines, I mean, they they will never come to the table. Why would they? Mhmm. Why on earth would they take anything this guy takes seriously? So I think it's an incredible company. I think they're gonna be one of the... If they ever decide to go public, if the Chinese will let them go public, it'll be. I was even... And I like to talk about what I'm doing to to show, you know, rather than giving financial advice, what am I doing? Mhmm. I have been diversifying out of US stocks into European stocks for the better part of a year now. Yep. I'm also contemplating going into the private market and going to one of these secondary markets, whether it's Sutter or some of the others, and seeing if and when I can pick up a block of ByteDance. Because I think at a valuation of 300,000,000,000, I think this there is no company performing as well Right. At this price to sales ratio as TikTok. The overhang of the geopolitical risk of The US is vastly overestimated in terms of TikTok's valuation or ByteDance's valuation.
Kara Swisher · 50:22
Yep. Yep. So we'll see. They're probably gonna do nothing. They'll probably just decide suddenly, and we'll have some strange deal. But, certainly, Elon's not... May not be part of it the way that people thought would be. They're... He... They thought he had the inside trick.
Scott Galloway · 50:34
President Xi doesn't scare this. All this arm waving that Larry Ellison... That that Trump's gonna get to carve up ByteDance's US operations like a like a cake and give it to his Republican buddies, she's just like, let... Yeah. Let... Have at it.
Kara Swisher · 50:48
Go ahead. Good luck.
Scott Galloway · 50:49
Yeah. Go. See. Do what you want. Waste your time.
Kara Swisher · 50:51
We're gonna continue to excel. Anyway
Scott Galloway · 50:54
Waste your time.
Kara Swisher · 50:54
We'll see. Probably will. They'll probably do it sometime around the next election would be my guess.
Scott Galloway · 50:59
We make the mistake of believing that Chinese companies like America are run for profits and shareholder value. They're run for control. He's not going to give up control even if it costs a lot in shareholder value.
Kara Swisher · 51:10
Anyway, Trump made a big deal of it, and now, of course, it's off to the side. As it's mostly the same thing. We're on to something else. Alright. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.
[Ad break]
— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 53:38
Okay, Scott. Let's hear some wins and fails. I'm... Shall I start?
Scott Galloway · 53:43
Yes, please.
Kara Swisher · 53:45
I I actually was very, with some stuff in Los Angeles, both Bob Iger's, the... I think it's the Angels soccer team and others, and the Dodgers have donated... Have... I mean, doing things, donate... In the case of the Dodgers, they donated a million dollars to assist families impacted by immigration raids. It's a small amount of money, but I kinda like that they stood up a little bit there. People are showing little signs that even Bob Iger would... They put out t shirts about immigration for their... The soccer team did. I like little stand ups. I'm I'm seeing a lot of really cool little stand ups all over the place, but people who should have stood up a long time ago. But I really appreciate them. And the one I appreciate the most, in terms of a win was your, your side piece, Jessica Tarloff, on Raging Moderates, your cohost. Trump called her a disgrace to television broadcasting. I think she's killing it on the five, and she does a very good job in your show, but on the five is where he notices it, just so you know. I thought that was great that she got... I loved it. I was like, go Jessica. She's a stand up gal is what she is, and I really appreciate how she does that. I really... I like... And she sticks to it. She's very firm, very clever. She's very funny. And so I like all these people that are doing little stand ups that are... That they do, but she's my favorite this week of all of the different ones. My fail are the the Medicaid cuts that are coming. Well, I had two fails, but this is... These cuts that are coming to Medicaid are gonna eviscerate certain states like West Virginia and others. It's gonna be so bad when these... If these cuts are passed. Now I know it seems like we've forgotten about the big beautiful bill, but when it goes into effect, I think it's gonna have some of the worst. States like West Virginia, Kentucky, others, they're reliant on this program, and these deep spending reductions with the states taking over them. In those states, it's not gonna happen. And so that's... I feel sorry for these people, even though they... I think the way they voted was against their self interest. But it still is... You know, these are states that are behind already, and they're gonna be more behind going forward, and that's unfortunate.
Scott Galloway · 55:46
Yeah. So I I love your... I was not expecting it. I love your your win. That'll mean a lot to Jess. She has a a lot of respect for you. Opinion matters a lot to her, and you know she's doing something right when Trump calls her out. So I think she wears that correctly. She should as a badge of honor. Yeah. I have sort of two wins or a win and a prediction. My first win is a little less serious. Have you seen the series Mobland?
Kara Swisher · 56:09
No. Not not yet.
Scott Galloway · 56:10
No. It's outstanding.
Kara Swisher · 56:12
Is it?
Scott Galloway · 56:12
Yeah. Really, just the Cool. The cast, the writing, really just fantastic. Tom Hardy, who I think is just a movie star.
Kara Swisher · 56:21
Oh, it's with... Who who else is in it?
Scott Galloway · 56:22
Pierce Brosnan.
Kara Swisher · 56:23
Pierce Brosnan. I love him. He's a sexy mother.
Scott Galloway · 56:26
Yeah. He's great. He's really... I wouldn't be surprised if he gets an award. I think it's time for him to get some recognition.
Kara Swisher · 56:31
I love him.
Scott Galloway · 56:32
He's very handsome. Patty Considine, who actually played one of the leads in house of dragons is in it. There's just... The cast is just... The cast is fantastic. Mob. It's very violent. I I like my mob story about The UK. The guy who plays Daniel Betts, he plays the rival family, the Pierce Brosnan character, the the patriarch of the rival mob family. It's just outstanding. It's such good entertainment. And, also, it took me... It's taken me about four hours to figure out how to fucking download Paramount plus. I mean, it's like, I haven't watched a lot on Paramount plus, and boy, it's not easy. But, anyways, my win is... And for those of you who who enjoy media, Mobland's fantastic. My other win is more of a prediction, and that is is Reed Hastings and my prediction joining the board of Anthropic. And the reason why is I think Reed is arguably one of the brightest business people in the world in terms of pulling off the biggest pivots.
[Ad break]
Scott Galloway · 57:32
And when I look at Netflix's Achilles heel, it's the following. YouTube is able to capture a minute for half the price or 40% of the price of Netflix. Why? Because they pay the creators directly, and it's a commission based program. So if Netflix could say to a doc person, I'll give you $1,000,000 for your documentary, knowing they'll get 2,000,000 back, that's a superior business model, and that's what YouTube has. And I think YouTube is going to do potentially to Netflix what Netflix did to Comcast and Fox. So as a result, I think Reed Hastings, now on the board of Anthropic, is going to announce within twelve months that he is partnering with Anthropic, who, by the way, is looking for big, big deals to take some oxygen away from the number one OpenAI, and that Netflix and Anthropic are gonna announce a TikTok like competitor that slices and dices the fattest long tail of content in history, and that is the Netflix library of which 99% probably gets 1% viewership. Yeah. And they'll slice it and dice it, have it be open source so creators can add voiceovers to have fun with it, and they'll launch a competitor that attempts to recognize that this newest generation is so attention diffused, and TikTok is so strong that they'll take the AI from Anthropic and the content of Netflix and launch a TikTok competitor.
Kara Swisher · 58:57
I think what's interesting about YouTube is they have no production costs away.
Scott Galloway · 59:00
That's right. No means of production.
Kara Swisher · 59:02
Now there was an interesting thing, that this great analyst always does is that
Scott Galloway · 59:07
Or TikTok. You know?
Kara Swisher · 59:08
And then there's Tubi, which sort of does that too. Right? It goes to the... It's been growing like crazy because of the way it selects things for people in the long tail of content, essentially. And what's interesting about it is that they can survive together because some creators want the want the money to develop. On YouTube, you know, it's bring your own liquor to the restaurant. And so I think they could live together, but you're right. Netflix is... Will be under siege from YouTube if YouTube starts to pay for production a little bit more. Anyway, it's an interesting it's an interesting time. It certainly is. That's a really good one. Anyway, we wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 And elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week is on with Kara Swisher. I spoke with writer and political commentator Molly Jungfest about her new memoir, which details her relationship with her mother. Let's listen to a clip.
— Predictions segment ends —
Guest · 1:00:04
Sometimes the children of narcissists become stuck on trying to fix their relationships with their narcissistic parents Mhmm. Despite the fact that there's not any role for them to play. Mhmm. They over sort of become overly guilty because of that. And that made so much sense that it made me think that that's what I did.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:26
I know all about that. Anyway, it was a great interview. Do you remember
Scott Galloway · 1:00:31
Erica Jong, fear of flying?
Kara Swisher · 1:00:33
Yeah. It's a great book. Let me
Scott Galloway · 1:00:34
tell All my mom's friends
Kara Swisher · 1:00:35
had that book. Yeah. Yep. Well, this is a daughter who's a really good political commentator now. And this book is really good, actually. It's a really interesting, and it's not very long.
[Ad break]
Scott Galloway · 1:00:45
Always a thoughtful one.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:46
She is. But this book, I was I was sort of... Well, I have similar experiences. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to PIVOT. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out.
Scott Galloway · 1:00:59
Today's show is produced by Lara Nayman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, Kevin Oliver, and Corinne Ruff. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Musevero, Dan Shalon, and Kate Gallagher. Nishat Karowas, Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Women out there, do you really want men who are more sensitive and more in touch with their feelings. All that gets us is two people crying in the car trying to parallel park.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:34
Happy wedding, Jeff Bezos.
[Ad break]
