Pivot · May 17, 2019

Alabama's big fail, Uber's disastrous IPO, and the Facebook breakup debate

Automatic transcript of the end of the episode, from 24:58. Speakers are labeled by software and may contain errors. Highlighted passages are Scott’s predictions.

Scott Galloway · 24:58 But he's come out and he said, we're gonna try and step in to the void here. So kudos to him and his leadership. But the fact that states Mhmm. I mean, this isn't even about resources. It's about a mentality. Kara Swisher · 25:08 Yeah. Right. Scott Galloway · 25:08 When the people elected by the populace are saying, no. We're taking women back to old Spain. It's just... It's... You know, there's just no getting around it. It's really discouraging. Kara Swisher · 25:18 Yep. I agree. I agree. It's really... You know, you're gonna see a lot more of this going on. Lots of things, let's say, not just tech stuff, but these kind of very serious issues. It was settled law. Yeah. Which which Kavanaugh said it was, but now it's questionable once it reaches the Supreme Court what's gonna happen with them. Anyway, what is your fail this week or when? Scott Galloway · 25:37 So my fail is there was an article in Business Insider. And I don't want to say his name because I don't I don't want to personalize this. But a senior level executive did one of these, I hate these articles, about his hiring strategy. And that is he said, what's the one question? He says, this is the one question I ask every employee at Lyft. And he said that the question is, he asked them, who is their mentor? And if they don't have a good answer for Yeah. That, he doesn't hire And you know, it's just such incredible bullshit. Because most of the research shows, and I'm, you know, I've hired and fired, know, hundreds or probably more than a thousand people at this point. And the reality is, in terms of interviewing, is so 30% or 20, 30% of the people you interview, you know, okay, this isn't gonna be a fit. 10% are just so outstanding and, you know, think with such a clear blue flame, you know, this person would be great. But the majority of interviews are worthless. And that is if I were to take all the people who have really driven value at my firms and then look at their... How they did in their interviews, there isn't a very strong correlation. Google spent a ton of time looking at data around who to hire, etcetera. And they found over time that, nope. We can't figure it out either. It's really about They had those references. Yeah. Background, personal references. But all these these early '30 something or these tech companies like to like to to pretend that they're just not lucky, their their success because of their insight into management, and they do these stupid articles on the one question I would ask. So my my suggestion to this person at Lyft Yeah. Is I would like him to go... First off, I've been asking Lyft drivers, did you get interviewed by this person? Mhmm. He says he's interviewed almost everybody, and there's 1,400,000 drivers. So far, I haven't heard from any of them that he was interviewed by them. And I have a... I have better questions for him to ask the 1,400,000 people who he has basically gotten rich off the sweat of their backs. I think some of the questions he should be thinking about in terms of the drivers are, one, when you're working eleven hours a day in New York City, where will you urinate? What's your plan for actually taking a break and going to the bathroom? Two, how do you feel about making the equivalent of $22,000 a year when a guy at headquarters is making approximately a thousand times? How do you feel how do you feel about that? Those are the two interview questions I would like to see this guy ask, quote, unquote, everybody interviews, which is amazing because there's about 1,400,000 people. Oh, wait. Maybe it doesn't mean those people. But these articles that claim that people have insight into the one question that this person asked to build a great culture... So my my lose here or my fail is Lyft and pretending they have some insight into the questions to ask their employees, not recognizing it's not the 4,000 people at HQ. It's the 1,400,000 people out there that they're throwing a dime at their head for each ride in appreciation of their IPO. Kara Swisher · 28:30 Scott. Man. Who is your mentor, Scott? Scott Galloway · 28:34 My mentor? I have several. Kara Swisher · 28:38 Because I'm thinking about hiring you. Yeah. Scott Galloway · 28:40 Pat Connolly, the former CMO of William Sonoma, super generous. Todd Benson. Oh, see. A wonderful guy. Kara Swisher · 28:47 I don't think it means anything, but it's very lovely to hear you say. Scott Galloway · 28:50 No. I have a lot of... I'm blessed with mentors. The thing about mentors is you don't realize at the time that they're your mentor. Kara Swisher · 28:55 Right. That's true. Scott Galloway · 28:56 That's true. And then you wake up five years later and think, you know, this person took a vested interest in me and said a lot of things that were correct. And David Auker, my professor at at Secondary Business School. Anyways, I... You're probably not asking for that much detail. Who are your mentors, Kara? Kara Swisher · 29:11 Walt Mossberg. Scott Galloway · 29:12 Really? Kara Swisher · 29:13 That's it. Scott Galloway · 29:14 That's nice. And and around professional and personal or just professional? Kara Swisher · 29:18 Yeah. He walked me down the aisle at my wedding, even though the wedding... The marriage didn't work out, but it was a long marriage. Scott Galloway · 29:24 Yeah. That's really nice. Yeah. Well... What a wonderful thing to say about Walt. Kara Swisher · 29:27 Mossberg is the best. He also gave my mother the what for when she was being a pain when I got pregnant. He did a lot. He's done amazing things. Scott Galloway · 29:34 That's nice. Kara Swisher · 29:35 He has always been the mensch. He's a mensch. That would be it. Otherwise, nobody else. Him. Maybe my grandmother. Anyway, my fail was, continues to be Alabama. And the win I had was, Elizabeth Warren turning down Fox town hall invite denouncing network as a hate for profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists. I like that. I think that says it all. I don't have to go along. Scott Galloway · 29:58 That Elizabeth Kara Swisher · 29:59 Warren really does come through with some great stuff. Scott Galloway · 30:02 I get it, but I don't know. I like what Bill Maher said. If you claim to be part of the resistance, you go behind enemy lines. Kara Swisher · 30:07 Ugh. Please. They were going behind enemy lines in order to, like... We would just want... Come on. I love it. Scott Galloway · 30:11 Whatever. Fox is the most famous network in America. If you can't hold if you can't hold your... I go on Fox once a week, so I'm talking about it. But if you can't hold if you can't hold your own on Fox, you can't hold your own Kara Swisher · 30:21 They're not good interviewers, please. Scott Galloway · 30:23 That's not true. Neil Cavuto, Stu Varni, both good interviewers. Okay. Okay. If you can't hold your own on Fox, you can't hold your own Kara Swisher · 30:29 on business. That's different. Sean Hannity, Scott Galloway · 30:33 would you Kara Swisher · 30:33 go on Sean Hannity? Scott Galloway · 30:34 Alright. Then get out of the kitchen. I'm Kara Swisher · 30:36 not gonna get out of the Scott Galloway · 30:36 kitchen. Hannity's not... Is Hannity moderating those town halls? No. Kara Swisher · 30:39 I don't know. Scott Galloway · 30:40 He's not gonna moderate. They're gonna bring on someone sane like Shepherd. Kara Swisher · 30:43 I guess. I only know about this all because my mother watches it. Scott Galloway · 30:46 Don't know. Elizabeth, you want into this... Or Senator Warren, you want into the kitchen, get used to it. Go go on Fox. Kara Swisher · 30:52 Okay. You're hard on Elizabeth. I think Elizabeth's... At least she's causing some Scott Galloway · 30:56 stuff. She's saying something. She's She's actually saying Kara Swisher · 30:59 She's got proposals. She's got policies. I like that. Scott Galloway · 31:02 I got a plan. Kara Swisher · 31:03 She's got plans. And then she's actually got them. Anyway Scott Galloway · 31:05 Oh, by the way, I I don't know if this is another news, but did you see Beto O'Rourke on The View? Kara Swisher · 31:09 Beto, your boyfriend. As I was Senator. Scott Galloway · 31:12 Can I say, Kara Swisher · 31:13 for the predictions, I get to get that one? I get that one. I was... I I called him in. Over yet. Go ahead. Scott Galloway · 31:18 You know what is you know what is a definite negative forward looking indicator? Is he looked like he belonged on the view. I don't think anyone who's... Who... I don't think anyone who's can be president should look comfortable on the view. He literally looked like, oh, they got a guy on the view now. He just kinda fit in. Whereas they have Biden on, it's like, okay. Clearly, this guy is not supposed to be there. Yeah. So he just looked a little too comfortable You Kara Swisher · 31:41 love that view. Scott Galloway · 31:42 On the view, but he had... Oh my god. Open collar shirt. Dreamy. Kara Swisher · 31:45 You love that. As I predicted, he was a whole lot of nothing. He's been a whole lot nothing. Scott Galloway · 31:49 Well, we don't know that yet. Kara Swisher · 31:51 Don't Yes. Know that We do. Hold on. Keep holding. Scott Galloway · 31:53 Oh, it's early. Kara Swisher · 31:54 Dream until your dreams come true, Scott. It's not Scott Galloway · 31:56 coming It's early. Kara Swisher · 31:57 Your Beto dream ain't coming true. — Predictions segment begins — Scott Galloway · 32:00 What about... Okay. So when away is a big win Right. Oh, you know what? Let's revisit our predictions. Kara Swisher · 32:05 What? Okay. Scott Galloway · 32:06 Okay. So one of our predictions we got Kara Swisher · 32:08 go ahead. Scott Galloway · 32:09 One right and one wrong. And that is I said last week that Uber, the IPO would be meh and then hold. I was wrong. It was meh slash disaster. Kara Swisher · 32:19 It was. Scott Galloway · 32:21 So I would argue that it probably hit a new time... All time low today, which will be an all time high looking back. This Kara Swisher · 32:29 company Okay. You're gonna take this down. Scott Galloway · 32:31 Well, it's not that it's not a great company, if you will, or or that it's a... It has incredible potential. It's just that the valuation Mhmm. Is well beyond anything this company can execute against. It's just not... I don't see how this company grows into that valuation. And if you're watching CNBC, it's literally just been a stream of excuses. They're like, oh, it's China. It's the bad it's the bad... They went public into a bad tape. No. They didn't. This company is overvalued. And so if this company executes perfectly, it might be worth 20, maybe $25,000,000,000, which by the way, is about 60% less than it's trading today. And Lyft, I mean, there is no hope for Lyft. Lyft doesn't have the flywheel effect, doesn't have anything. But the Uber IPO was one of our predictions. I got that wrong. But one of our predictions is turning out to be right. That is we said, if you look at 19 across the entire unicorn class going public, I said that they post their opening trade will lose money. That these companies will be worth less than the opening trade of their IPOs where CNBC retail investors and these companies have all entered into consensual hallucination about what these companies are worth. And I think that's panning out. I think Uber's losses on its own have wiped out all of the market cap gains of some of the other guys, including Zoom or even Beyond Meat, which went which went crazy. So so far, I think the unicorn class Yeah. Not bad. Failing in the public markets. Kara Swisher · 33:56 So Slack might be coming? Airbnb, maybe. Not for a while. Yeah. Scott Galloway · 34:01 Both those companies Kara Swisher · 34:02 Do think they went too late? Scott Galloway · 34:03 They're both gonna do well. No. Because the private the private markets were the gift that kept on giving. The the public markets are actually more rational, which is unusual. It's usually the private markets that are a little bit more rational. And what you see in the private markets is, again, to Tim's comments, all this capital has had to move downstream. And you can get liquidity through secondary offerings. You can get... Raise a ton of capital. And you can maintain sort of this sort of the what I'll call this Halcyon effect because you don't have to mark your book, and you don't have to provide the type of transparency that the public markets demand. So once people actually go, okay. This is a company that lost $3,000,000,000. How does this ever get to a point where it's spending the kind of free cash flow it needs to justify the current valuation? And the public markets have said nine. And they can only foist so many shares when they raise $8,000,000,000 on retail investors. So I think you're gonna see... I mean, the ride hailing business is probably gonna be one of the greatest value destructions from retail shareholders that we've seen in a long time. You're talking about a loss probably in my view over the next six to twelve months between Lyft and Uber. A loss of... A destruction of 20 to $30,000,000,000 in shareholder value. And I mean, that is real pain for people out there. Kara Swisher · 35:22 Yep. It is. It is. And so you're not gonna see that come back. You're not gonna see... You don't see any promising ones in that group. Scott Galloway · 35:28 I think I think Uber could execute perfectly and be worth half what it is right now. Kara Swisher · 35:32 Yeah. Alright. That's not good. Yeah. That's not good. Yeah. That's not good. That's a lot of money loss. All that all that investor money, including all that Saudi money. Scott Galloway · 35:42 Well, do you realize that Kara Swisher · 35:43 Couldn't have happened to a nicer group of people. Scott Galloway · 35:45 Here's an interesting stat. Since 2000... As of today, no investor who's invested in the last four years in Uber Yeah. Has not lost money. Mhmm. So, basically, the private markets, this whole... So far, this whole IPO... Rush of IPOs has said stay private longer. Stay private longer. Kara Swisher · 36:04 Really? Or forever? Scott Galloway · 36:06 Well, it's it's interesting. Kara Swisher · 36:07 Public sooner. Scott Galloway · 36:08 You know... No. Stay... Well, that's an interesting point. But then if you're public sooner, you can't spend the kind of money you need. I don't know. I think this all this all goes one direction, and that is you know who's going out of business is the Nasdaq and the NYSE. We have 50% fewer stocks than we had twenty, thirty Kara Swisher · 36:24 years put together a new long term stock exchange in Silicon Valley. Scott Galloway · 36:29 Listings. In the private markets, you can get almost everything you need from the public markets now. Plus, don't have Kara Swisher · 36:34 to There's a prediction, Scott. Scott Galloway · 36:37 The Nasdaq and the NYSE are going out of business? Now my prediction is my... You're gonna like this prediction more. Kara Swisher · 36:42 Okay. Scott Galloway · 36:43 I have another prediction, Carol. Kara Swisher · 36:44 Alright. Quickly. Scott Galloway · 36:45 And this is unfortunate. But in the next ninety days Mhmm. I think people are starting nibbling around the edges. And I I... I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to talk about politics, but I can't help it. I think people are starting, unfortunately, geopolitically to test this administration. We have rockets going off in Nor... In North Korea. That is a pure test. I think the Chinese who think in twenty and thirty year increments have seen a guy who's trying to wage a unilateral tariff war instead of partnering with our allies who's... He's alienated. And by the way, I think he's right on on trade with China. I think essentially at universities, we spend a lot of time creating incredible human capital that takes advantage of an incredible financial market to create innovation that the Chinese then steal and sell back to us for for, you know, 30¢ on the dollar. So I think that conversation was overdue. But as as one would suspect, the conversation has been handled really in a very clumsy way without the benefit of our allies who could speak with a much bigger stick. But bottom line is I think we're unfortunately in the next ninety days gonna see what I'll call more a significant test who senses weakness amongst an individual who is consistently every day with his bluster, his insecurity, and his lack of empathy demonstrates weakness every day. — Predictions segment ends — Kara Swisher · 38:02 Maybe we should send him your book. That Scott Galloway · 38:06 hurts. Come on. Kara Swisher · 38:08 Let's do it. Let's go to the White House and deliver it ourselves. That's You think? Yeah. Come down to DC. Look at that. Scott Galloway · 38:13 I like Kara Swisher · 38:13 that. Together. Will say we think the occupant Scott Galloway · 38:17 Number 30. Thirtieth best selling book on Amazon. Kara Swisher · 38:19 I'm very excited. I'm gonna... Everybody go out and by The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway · 38:23 Scott Alright. Kara Swisher · 38:24 We gotta go. That's it for this week. Have a good week. What do Scott Galloway · 38:27 you do? What do you have on top this week? What do you have on top? Kara Swisher · 38:29 I'm coming to New York. You're not gonna be there to do an event at Scott Galloway · 38:33 What's the event? Kara Swisher · 38:33 At WeWork, actually. Then I have to take my son to some colleges up there, including the Culinary Institute of America. It's his birthday today. He's 17. I'm very excited. Scott Galloway · 38:45 Wow. And he's... He likes cooking. He's a chef. Kara Swisher · 38:47 He's a great cook. Yes. Indeed. Oh, that's a very good restaurant tonight because that's what he wanted. And then, we'll go to a different... I forget we're gonna go to... Somewhere we're going in New York. I forget. He picks... He decides all the food places we go when we travel. But it's always a weird place. He always finds a weird little joint sandwich shop that is famous and he read read about and stuff. So he's like Scott Galloway · 39:06 So by the way, your opening line at WeWork should be, and this is true now that Uber is public. Mhmm. It's great to be in the bowels of the most overvalued private company in the world. Kara Swisher · 39:14 Okay. I'll do that. That's what I'll do. Do that. Do Boom. I'm Carrie Swisher. I have a lot going on, but I'll be here in DC next week, and I hope that you will come down soon. And, of course, I'll see you at the Code conference. Anyway, Nishat Kerwat is the show's executive producer. Thanks also to Eric Johnson. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Make sure you subscribe to Pivot on Apple Podcast. If you like this week's episode, leave us a review. It really helps more people find out about the show.