Guest · 1:00:15
You know, what... Campbelled in twenty years ago to be the same twenty years from now.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:18
I got that. You said that in the passive voice when you actually have an active power to do so. Just FYI. Just... You can actually put your foot on board. Alright. We'd like to see that. I would like to
Guest · 1:00:28
see that.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:29
Alright. Alright. Game on. Last question here. Alright. Game on. You know how much I poke you on these things. I think that would be great. When will we see an acceleration in automated and driverless customer interactions? That was a big area of investment earlier. Where are you on driverless cars at this moment?
Guest · 1:00:45
It's it's super hard tech to build. We have great team that can... The advantage that we have is essentially we can automate the simplest, shortest, let's say, least value routes relative to the difficulty because we have all that data in our network. I think it's still going to be three to five years from now, but the technology is getting better and it's being built. And our being able to grow it inside of our network, I think is a huge advantage that is under
Kara Swisher · 1:01:17
Are you going rely on others? Are you going to run others? Is it going to be your technology? Cause that... That's a big investment for
Guest · 1:01:23
a small company. We're we're... Want... Do you think that there's advantage in building some of this tech in house? Because, again, we can build it to suit for the network, but we will absolutely also work with third parties on the tech. Ultimately, just like we want, you know, any car on the network, we're gonna want any robot driver on the network as well.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:40
Scott, do have anything final? Anything else?
Scott Galloway · 1:01:42
Yeah. It feels to me like... I mean, Uber has pulled off. We talked about this earlier, Dara. Uber has pulled off assuming it's successful, what will appear to be one of the great pivots. You're no longer really a ride hailing company or a food delivery company. Is that accurate?
Guest · 1:01:55
Well, I I like to be both. Like, it's it's to me if we can be... If we can build a real logistics network that gets people from point B, brings anything commerce from point B to A, that's a really powerful position.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:13
So what's a third leg of that stool? Do you get into last mile delivery? Do you... What is... Yeah. I predicted incorrectly seven years ago that Uber would take on Amazon Prime Fulfillment, that you would be in the business of last mile. What's the third leg? If it's ride hailing and there might not be a third leg, if it's ride hailing and food delivery, is there a third leg and what is that?
Guest · 1:02:34
It's ride hailing is going to turn into mobility. So any way getting point A to B, it might be our drivers who use our network, it might be taxi cabs, it might be mass transit. Any way you want to get from point A to B, all the information real time payments done incredibly smooth. And then on the delivery side, it's going to go from food. We're already in groceries, and essentially, we're going into every other local commerce category. So Amazon is going have a huge business and they've gone from three days to two days to one day, etcetera. We're going to go from thirty minutes, you know, five minutes for rides to thirty minutes and extend. And we want to build that real time logistics local engine. And again, it's about people and things. And the frequency that we have with customers is gonna be pretty incredible.
Kara Swisher · 1:03:25
Alright, Dara. We really appreciate it. Wish you had more time. There's so many areas to talk about, including scooters and stuff like that. We appreciate you being here. And, again, we're so excited for your employee representation on the board. We're, you know, a driver representative. It's gonna be great. I'm excited when you announce that, like, next week. And we'll see what happens this week in California and how that goes. So this is gonna be a a big week for you, I think. And we... No. Okay. But but... Okay. Luck.
Scott Galloway · 1:03:50
We're wishing someone luck, Dara. We are wishing people luck.
Guest · 1:03:53
Please. It's a better way. It's a better way, actually. Let's let's wish for something I
Scott Galloway · 1:03:58
think it's your way.
Kara Swisher · 1:04:00
It's it's a way. It's a way. I... I'm not gonna pick it. Okay. And I want drivers to get paid well and be protected. I'd love you to have a great business altogether. How's that? I'd like everything you win.
Scott Galloway · 1:04:10
Yes.
Kara Swisher · 1:04:11
Alright. Okay.
Guest · 1:04:11
I agree.
Kara Swisher · 1:04:12
Alright, Dara. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on.
Scott Galloway · 1:04:15
Thank you, Sarah. Bye.
Kara Swisher · 1:04:16
Alright. Now it's time for listener mail. First, we have a video question from Susan in France. Let's watch.
Speaker · 1:04:22
Hi, Karen Scott. Sue Veronabagena calling in from North Of Paris in Trelleboyle, France. And I know that you guys are usually following GAFA and consumer related tech, but wondering what you think about the aeronautics and space industry, given, what's happening with COVID and the investments coming in from the European Union to the... On the order of €17,000,000,000 for especially, green initiatives in the sector. Would love to hear your points of view, and, I'm loving the webcast.
Kara Swisher · 1:04:59
Thank you. Scott, would you like to start?
Scott Galloway · 1:05:01
No. I I don't. The aerospace industry going green? What what is she talking about?
Kara Swisher · 1:05:06
No. I think she's, like, two different things. She thinks she's asking two different questions. One is about aeronautics and space industry. It is obviously going private. That is really pretty much what's happened here is that the privatization of everything, including, by the way, the sharing economy. Dara very quietly talked about paying for everything, but I think his goal is to pay... You get on a subway, you pay using Uber. Then they become a payments company. So I do think just like that, the aeronautics industry, whether it's Elon Musk or others, Elon just got this massive defense contract. I'm gonna be talking to him about it soon. But that he has broken into the to the field of defense contractors, and the continued privatization of this area is is obvious. They will also have better outfits per Virgin Galactic and and that. In any case, I think there'll be... There... There's gonna... There should be more investment in this area, in my opinion. As to climate tech, I think, as I've said, we should be doing a lot more of it in this country. We are not investing in the same way other governments are, and we're missing a massive opportunity. Scott, I don't know how you feel about climate change tech or things like that.
Scott Galloway · 1:06:10
Well, I was just thinking of... The best and brightest used to go to work for NASA. Now they go to work for hedge funds and Tesla. And it strikes me that NASA would have been a great place to get return on investment in terms of the American brand. I remember when I was a kid ordering Franklin Mint special coins of the space and of the Soyuz docking in what seemed like extraordinarily bilateral cooperation, it feels like we've kind of I don't want to say we've given up on science, but we've you know, we've defunded all of our institutions. And what would, I think, be really exciting is if we decided that it was a government that was going commit to winning the space race. And if you look at the other side, big tech has to go after the biggest industries in the world in order to maintain their unquenchable thirst to increase their top line. They've kind of increased their top line about threefour of $1,000,000,000,000 over the next five years to maintain their stock velocity. And there's only a few industries they can go after, education, health care. And then the biggest industry, government. And you see Palantir going into government. You see the JEDI contract cloud selling. So you're going to see these companies start to say, okay, we're not only selling into government, but we can be better at government. I think you will absolutely see big tech start to take over large swaths the government because we have decided. We've decided that they're The smarter than the problem is they're profit motivated and you can never make the requisite investments in highways and dams and trains up and down the Eastern Seaboard if you're totally profit motivated. I So think it's an unhealthy thing, but unfortunately, we're gonna see more of it.
Kara Swisher · 1:07:48
Okay. We have two questions from the audience. One is, what do you make of Dara's final comment about being a logistics business or something, when we asked him about the food delivery service? Do you think... You asked if he was gonna take on Amazon or had abandoned it. Do you think they are gonna take on Amazon? They don't really have the warehouses and things like that. I don't see that happening. But what do you think?
Scott Galloway · 1:08:08
Yeah. It it strikes me that the thing I picked up... The reason I love these, the reason I watch... I love to your interviews is occasionally you find an unscripted moment, a tone or inflection or whatever it is or pause and you think, okay, I've got some insight there. The insight I took from that interview with Dara was the following. They made a huge investment and they were in the space race of driverless cars. What I took from his body language watching him is they are going to exit that space race. That they are going to make some minimal investments, try and incorporate other people's technology, but they are going to have to pull Asatya Nadella and say, okay, it's time to be grownups. We can't be in phones. We can't be in social. We need to focus on what we're good at. And the thing is he can't be, in my opinion, he can't be transparent about this because there's probably still a lot of people working with Carnegie Mellon on Driverless. But the bottom line is he doesn't have the deep pockets of Google or Waymo or Tesla. And I think he's going to basically say, we're going to let other people, we're going to free ride off of other people's tech. But I think what I took from that interview is that Uber is getting out of self driving technology as it relates to big capital investments or leading the pack there.
Kara Swisher · 1:09:13
Well, when he first got there, there was the accident. You know, someone was killed. And I think it's a very difficult area. It sort of has
Scott Galloway · 1:09:20
to be Top business.
Kara Swisher · 1:09:21
Big spenders. It is. And it was... You know, Travis is the one that put them in that business in a big way and and was very into it and answered that famous question to me that he wants to get rid of the drivers, which I think would solve... Would have solved his... In his mind their problems. So... Yeah. I do. I agree with you. I think they have to sort of be a platform and then let everyone be on it, that kind of thing as a as a platform play. If that's the case if that's the case. Or someone of these companies buys Uber, and then they become the reservation system, one or one or the other. Hey. It's Kara interrupting myself to tell you that we had some technical difficulties in this live broadcast. Scott's Internet broke right before we got to predictions. He was able to rejoin after a few minutes, but let's jump ahead to our special guest prediction from former Facebook adviser Roger McNamee. Okay. We have a video. We have a special guest who sent a video with their prediction. Let's play it.
Speaker · 1:10:19
Kara, Scott, I have just got the inside skinny. The Trump administration has finally figured out how it's gonna prosecute the antitrust case against Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon and solve the problem with TikTok all in one thing. They're gonna condemn the four CEOs to spend a year on TikTok as dance instructors.
— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 1:10:44
Okay. That was Roger McNamee. Oh, that was funny. Okay, Roger. I don't want them to be dance instructors on TikTok. That would ruin the service. Alright. So Scott coming back, people? Is he coming back at all, is it just me here? Oh, we got him now. Wait. A thrill. We can hear you.
Scott Galloway · 1:10:59
What a thrill. We did that on purpose just to train a little scarcity around the luxury brand that is the dough.
Kara Swisher · 1:11:04
Have good Internet? You you... Can you plug it into the wall? That's kinda thing. Is that possible for you? No. I don't know. I need to make a prediction.
Scott Galloway · 1:11:11
String and tape. Well, my prediction I made earlier, and that is you're going to see a bunch of companies leak a rumor that they're being acquired or they're in talks to acquire TikTok. And basically, President Xi Jinping will pull Sheryl Sandberg and act very earnest and do nothing. And he will he's 81 out or seventy eight days out from the election. So they'll pretend to entertain these talks. He's going to sell to no one. The Chinese our superpower as a species is cooperation. European superpower is an appreciation for life and art. American superpower is our optimism. The Chinese superpower is their long term thinking and they win here. So you're going to see a bunch of there's going to be a half a dozen companies quote unquote in serious talks to acquire TikTok. TikTok will not be acquired by an American firm.
Kara Swisher · 1:12:01
Oh, okay. So they're gonna wait them out. They're gonna wait them out. Right? Because, know, it's till January. He's still... Well, he's still president until January, so he can do things. Like, he can still be... Do whatever.
Scott Galloway · 1:12:11
Is How he gonna ban TikTok from The United States? And I like that. If you look at the swing states, there's somewhere between one and three million TikTok users in every swing state. Does he really wanna cement his position as as the boomer? Yeah. The Chinese... I don't think the Chinese are gonna blink on this one.
— Predictions segment ends —
Kara Swisher · 1:12:26
Wait it out. Okay. Let me ask you a quick question before we go. The DNC, convention. I really love the roll call. It was charming. It was fantastic. I thought it... Did you watch it? All the little states doing their little number? The guy from... The calamari guys, the the guy in Iowa was hysterical. Did you... I like this better. I like these conventions just like this. I think it's nice, quick and quick and, entertaining and fast. What do you think?
Scott Galloway · 1:12:50
Yeah. I'm really I'm really... I mean, it's it's it's interesting to see how people are innovating. Quite frankly, I thought this played pretty well to the Democrats' strengths. I thought some of the speeches felt very cooked and rehearsed. And you obviously don't have the electricity. But just as you know, we would love to be in some windowless ballroom at an Arizona hotel doing this live, we're doing this. And I thought the DNC, I thought it was very interesting to see the innovation. Was upset that AOC didn't have more time. But look, I thought it was, I would give them a B plus but this is a difficult this is a difficult environment to score an a in right now. What did you think? What did you think were the highlights?
Kara Swisher · 1:13:29
I thought it was quite good. I'd like... Michelle Obama's total shade. That was a fantastic. She... When she go... When we go high, she goes with a knife to the heart. I thought that she was great. I think certain people shown and others didn't, but they wasn't that... Nobody was terrible, and that was charming the the the way they did it. I think they'll never go back to conventions again. I don't know why you would.
Guest · 1:13:48
This is
Scott Galloway · 1:13:48
Do you think this is it?
Kara Swisher · 1:13:49
Yes. It was Twitter moments or Instagram moments or whatever. It was very well done in that way. By the way, Karl Rove even complimented that that said they stayed on message. And, you know, it was like a lot... It was already a long infomercial, so this was a really good infomercial. Like, well done.
Scott Galloway · 1:14:04
I like Kasich too. I think Kasich may be in the cabinet.
Kara Swisher · 1:14:07
I think I think they
Scott Galloway · 1:14:08
should have given him a
Kara Swisher · 1:14:10
lot more time. AOC deserves a lot more time. She's incredibly telegenic and smart and is great in these mediums, and they they should... What she says does well on Twitter, etcetera. But I thought Michelle Obama was probably the star of all of it, and they kept Clinton from talking too much. Anyway, Scott, I think he's gone away again. So we're we're gonna be... Goodbye, Scott. Oh, there you are. Oh, now I just hear your voice. Oh my god. It's like a godlike Scott.
Scott Galloway · 1:14:34
Okay. I'm much more handsome when it's just my voice. Three down. Two to go. Next week's Linda for China, gangster professor Tim Wu. Guy is literally
Kara Swisher · 1:14:43
There we go. Alright. Right? You're god, Scott. Yes. We can't hear you. Cut Scott off. Everybody, thank you so much for coming. We'll be back next week. Thank you everyone who joined us live for pivot school. Remember that if you pay for a ticket to the live show, you can watch the video replays of all five episodes of... At pivotschool.com. You can also buy pivot school swag at pivotschool.com/shop.
