Scott Galloway · 49:37
So an ecommerce company is not that likable, but transparent and media is really likable. And so what they're doing is basically Hollywood media and storytelling is so likable. So companies that make money selling handsets and by offering $129 a year service called Prime, if they can just make that a tiny bit more likable, a tiny bit more sticky, it makes those things much more so valuable. So a podcast that does $5,000,000 a year in revenue, but kind of owns the space, is likable, that is worth a lot of money to Spotify, Amazon, Apple, and there's probably two or three other bidders on that. And so you're gonna see every, it's pretty easy. Go through every category and podcast, take the top 10, look at the ones that are independent. In the next twelve months, they're all gonna get offers that are irrational based on the economics of that podcast itself. But we're about to see a ton of stuff go from ad supported to behind the wall to try and drive. There's gonna be Joe Rogan like deals across every Yeah.
Kara Swisher · 50:44
That... That's podcast. There is free, and most of it's not behind the wall. Spotify does have a subscription. That... It's to it's to advantage Spotify subscriptions as as do most of these things. What can you advantage? How can you get people to sign more... Up for more? And that's... That would be one of the reasons. I wanna get that. I wanna get this. It's it's really an interesting issue because advertising business can be very strong. It absolutely can be, and it can... And for certain podcasts, we do very well in advertising. But you do think really hard about a subscription model or a model where you wanna be independent, really, because you can... Like, look at Casey. Casey talked about it. I think he's making his salary right now already. You know? And the question is, it's uncertain, and it all relies on you. You know? So if you're not hooked up with someone... And it's the same thing like what's going on with a lot of creators with Netflix and and the the economics of Hollywood is it's changing. Do you wanna be paid up front, or do you want this back end deal? Most people don't make money from back end deals. Deals. Right? Most... Only a few people get the back end that they talk about. That's what they're arguing about, but I'm like, like, three of you get the back end, and the rest of you get nothing. There was a really well known producer who was who was like, I've only made money twice on back end. Right? Or... So the the the question is, do you want... How do you wanna get paid and in which way? And so a lot of people will be opting to be in a bigger company. The others will, like, have done really well. You know? You think about... You can see it in the journalism space a lot easier than the podcast space. But, you know, Joe Rogan's certainly the the one who's pioneered this idea with the deal with with... It's just not everybody can be Joe Rogan. That's the issue. Correct? I mean
Scott Galloway · 52:25
Well, it's it's gonna be... I mean you said a But lot there's a couple of things. One, your ability to go behind a wall and develop a direct to consumer, the dispersion of creativity where you bypass the traditional points of distribution if your own name establish a direct to consumer model. That's just a different means of getting paid. The the bigger shift here is that... So for example, you've already seen Warner's decision to go direct to consumer and launch on HBO Max at the same day, already pay dividends. I don't if you saw, but Roku has finally come to an agreement with HBO Max because they've decided all of a sudden the HBO Max app is much more valuable to the end Roku consumer. And what do you know? When they announced that they're taking Wonder Woman 1984 to the app the same day as theaters, all of a sudden Roku saw God and gave in to Warner's demands. And what do you know? Last night they came to an agreement. So this is already proving to be a smart gangster
Kara Swisher · 53:21
100%.
Scott Galloway · 53:21
Move. But what you're going to see is you're going to see, it's all about a ratio. If your NPS is greater, much greater than your revenue, as they are in podcasts, the amount of goodwill that people feel towards their favorite podcasters relative to the revenue they generate creates an arbitrage where an acquirer can come in and leverage that goodwill and monetize that
Kara Swisher · 53:46
goodwill In other ways, yeah.
Scott Galloway · 53:47
At an exponential rate, which means you're gonna see, just go through every podcast that's independent that gets more than half a million downloads a month. They're gonna start getting calls and getting offers.
Kara Swisher · 53:57
Yeah. One of the things I think you have to also think about, not just about doing things on your own, is that what do you need these companies for? And that's really... And what are you... How are you valuable to them? I think that's the real issue is, like, sometimes, like, how do they actually help these big companies actually help you? Does Spotify actually help you or just give you money? And so I think that's... That is... There's all kinds of... Scott's right. There's all... We're making... Everyone's making calculations, like, and figuring out how they wanna live and how they wanna do this and where it's going, right, ultimately, and where it's gonna go. Because, you know, as much as people worry about a glut of these shows and there's too many of them and this and that, there aren't too many good ones. There just aren't. As in all things, there aren't too many ones that really stand out, and they stand out because of the quality of the creativity of what they're doing. Whatever. Thank you.
Scott Galloway · 54:43
Well done. Join us on Sway.
Kara Swisher · 54:45
Join us on Sway.
Scott Galloway · 54:47
Or the professor g show.
Kara Swisher · 54:49
Anyway, reminder. Anyway, we'll see. Just watch this space, we say to you. Thank you for the great question. We really appreciate it, Kate Kate from New York City. And we hope you're doing well, and you'll apparently gonna be having mayor Andrew Yang or Mary Yang as your as your Yang. Yeah. Alright. Reminder for the month of December, we're partnering with Yappa to get more listener mail questions. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit your questions for the pivot podcast. Alright, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
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Kara Swisher · 56:13
Okay, Scott. We're back. Just for people who don't know, Scott's not gonna be here for the next couple of weeks because he's... Has to vacation again, and Carol Swisher keeps working as usual. We're gonna be doing
Scott Galloway · 56:24
week after are you
— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 56:25
talking Not next week. The week after next. Next week, we're doing our big prediction show... Wrap up show with the help of some friends of Pivot, and then Scott's gonna go on vacation. But to tide us over till then, give us a prediction, please. I mean, you have better come to some... We're gonna have people asking people predictions, but we need we need a lot from you. So I want one right now, and then I want you to have at least a dozen for next week.
Scott Galloway · 56:46
Well, I'm trying to come up with new ones, so I'm doing my prediction livestream tonight, which will be yesterday, if you've already listened to this, and I've had, where we've had 9,500 people sign up. But anyway, enough about me.
Kara Swisher · 56:57
That's good.
Scott Galloway · 56:58
That's a lot, right?
Kara Swisher · 56:59
Maybe you could
Scott Galloway · 57:00
do I a subscription could do a service. Anyways, Casey, Casey. So I wanted to come up with two predictions that aren't in my deck where I've spent a ton of time thinking about this stuff. A couple of things. One, I do think there's gonna be, I'm hoping that some of the momentum against the tyranny of big tech is spilling over and people are taking a harder look and saying, you know what, we need to inoculate ourselves. We need a vaccine against this virus that's plagued us and that is the idolatry of innovators. And specifically the menace that we are going to, I think try and beat back before it gets too powerful is Robinhood. And I think that Goldman Sachs and I think the IPO markets and I think regulators are gonna put up some speed bumps. I don't think that the Robinhood IPO is gonna go as swimmingly or even happen as soon as the investors would like to think. So my prediction is more to come on Robinhood. I think we're, the public is just getting educated And as to the damage to the then my other prediction, which is
Kara Swisher · 58:07
more talking to people.
Scott Galloway · 58:11
My my my pregnant pause is full of insight.
Kara Swisher · 58:15
I saw that.
Scott Galloway · 58:16
I did. You heard that? You felt that?
Kara Swisher · 58:18
Yes.
Scott Galloway · 58:18
Okay. So moving on. I think that Zoom Mhmm. Could be the AOL of 2021.
Kara Swisher · 58:27
Woah. Some people think it's gonna get sold, but go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 58:30
Well, that's it. As was AOL, Kara.
Kara Swisher · 58:32
Oh, right. Oh, fair. I thought you had
Scott Galloway · 58:33
And then it ended up being one of the worst acquisitions in history. When I look at Zoom, by the way, I love it. I love the product. It's got a market capitalization of about $120,000,000,000, which was approximately the market capitalization of AOL at the peak. I think of Zoom and I look at the competitive set, I look at Salesforce
Kara Swisher · 58:52
Teams.
Scott Galloway · 58:53
And Slack. I look at Microsoft and I look at Teams. And I think my guess is those companies, when they introduce a video product, could be very, very formidable competitors to Zoom. And I wonder if the vaccine and some of the biggest, baddest, most well resourced enterprise wide products showing up and taking on Zoom. I think Zoom is gonna do do a couple of things. I think Zoom is either gonna go out and merge with a gigantic telco or a gigantic company, or I think it's... It needs to start buying other things really fast. Yeah. I think looking back on 2021, whatever deal it does, I wonder if Zoom declines in value. I think Zoom could be our generation's AOL and that it is run by smart people. I think they will decide to cash in on this market capitalization and either go on an acquisition binge or merge with another very large kind of old mainline company.
Kara Swisher · 59:48
Yeah. They gotta sell. They gotta sell. They gotta sell or buy or merge.
Scott Galloway · 59:52
I'm not sure their moats. Love the product, but I think they are playing, you know, they're a fast growing beluga whale that's all of a sudden attracted the attention of orcas, the apex predators of the seas.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:08
Yeah, in a product that they can copy easily. Probably. Yeah. So It's not... They don't have a magic sauce. I agree. I think people use it and are used to it, and that's the magic sauce is that people during this pandemic started... I... It's a better product. By the way, it's better than Google stuff. I always have all kinds of glitchy problems with Google. It's because Google's not focusing on it as much as Zoom is.
Scott Galloway · 1:00:28
Great problem.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:28
But you're right. It's their it's their opportunity to move, and they should be moving. I'm assuming they are, because you sort of are like, should Slack have sold a lot earlier? Maybe they wouldn't have gotten as much money, but they certainly would have been bigger. Instagram sold early. A lot of people feel he, you know, he took a billion dollars. It was worth many, many, many more billions than he took. But that said, it was... It got bigger because of Facebook. I'm always, in this case, sell. Sell and sell for as much as you can.
Scott Galloway · 1:00:56
And 100%.
Kara Swisher · 1:00:57
And it... It's a big win. Everyone can high five. And to buy something, that's gonna require a whole lot of executive execution that they probably lack even if
Scott Galloway · 1:01:06
they're Or they can not merge with Atlassian and have more of a suite of products. But I actually think the one that is best poised and the product that I think is, it doesn't get the kudos it deserves in terms of product quality because we don't like to like them because they're so big and dominant. I think probably the best product in that space is Teams.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:25
I think Teams
Scott Galloway · 1:01:26
is a fantastic product.
Kara Swisher · 1:01:27
Yep. Having used them all, there's a... Google's just blown it. I've had so many glitchy problems with Google with Google Meet. It's just crazy. I'm like, put some smart people on it, Sundar. I'm I'm sure the people there are smart. It's just not as good. It's just not as good. It's simple. It doesn't work as well with with Apple and stuff. In any case, sell, sell, sell, sell now. Sell now like yesterday. I'm assuming they're in talks with people. So
Scott Galloway · 1:01:49
so two predictions. Robin Hood's menace, Robin Hood as a menace, the menace that is Robin Hood Mhmm. Is getting more warranted awareness, and I think there's gonna be action against them on several different dimensions. And two, I think looking back, and this is a prediction we have to look back in three years, I think Zoom is shaping up to be the AOL of 2021.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:08
Alright. Excellent prediction, Scott. And you will have a whole lot more next week. As a reminder, we love listener mail questions. We're trying something new. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit your question for the podcast. The link is also in our show notes. And if... When is your... Your thing is tonight's people already signed up, But listen to Scott Galloway's prediction show that he's doing today, the live one tonight. Is tonight correct?
— Predictions segment ends —
Scott Galloway · 1:02:34
Yes. It's tonight.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:36
Okay. So what you can do Zoom bomb?
Scott Galloway · 1:02:37
Do you wanna jump in?
Kara Swisher · 1:02:39
I could if you'd like. Let me know. That'd fun. Alright? You didn't invite me yet, like, the last minute.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:43
We got 170 slides in in forty five minutes, but I'll carve out time for you.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:47
Can I porn bomb them?
Scott Galloway · 1:02:50
That is always welcome. That is always welcome.
Kara Swisher · 1:02:52
Okay. Right. Anyway, read us out, Scott Galloway.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:55
Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Ernie Indradot engineered this episode. Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. Thanks also to Hana Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you like what you heard, please recommend it to a friend. Isn't the time to address a menace early? What could we do if we could go back in time and address Facebook? This is that moment with Robin Hood. Talk to your lawmaker.
Kara Swisher · 1:03:22
Share right now? If I could turn back time.
Scott Galloway · 1:03:26
That's where we should end. Have a good rest of the week. Have a great weekend.
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