X Blocked in Brazil, Nvidia Wipeout, and the Fuss Over Founder Mode

23:56Someone said, what's your portfolio? And he said, my portfolio is I invest in index funds. I never look at them. And I invest all of my time in becoming a better writer, a better content creator, a better podcaster. I never look at stocks. I don't. You have the exact right strategy. Someday I'll need it, then I'll pay attention, right? Just make sure you're diversified and it's low fees. That's correct. I have real estate. Another tech stock that's in trouble, Intel. Well, Intel was one of the first tech companies to join the Dow during the 90s dot-com boom. Once the hottest company, analysts and investors are now saying it's likely to be delisted from the index.

24:29Intel has nearly a 60 % decline in its shares this year, making the Dow's worst performer. Its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, I know him a little bit, is executive to present a plan later this month to cut unnecessary businesses and revamp capital spending, according to Reuters. It also received$20 billion in grants and loans back in March, a part of the chip building efforts by the Biden administration. This is a company that should be on the forefront or didn't make the switch, which NVIDIA had. Any thoughts on them? It's an astonishing decline in a company that really once ran the world. It's amazing.

25:06You want to talk about, I was even thinking it'd be fun just to take some money and put them in a basket of what I call fallen heroes. Starbucks, Intel, Estee Lauder. Because these companies have amazing assets, amazing brands. They have very strong human capital. They have a decent amount of IP. And I do think they're going to come back. And I think that the market never, you know, the chime on a clock is it's impossible to visually capture it at the very bottom, at the center. The market is the same way. It can never, it either over punishes or over rewards. And when I got out of business school, the best jobs you could get were to go to work for Dell or Intel, which kind of marks the age back then.

25:44And Intel just as recently as 2021 was worth three times as much as NVIDIA. NVIDIA, as a standard today, is worth 30 times as much as Intel. It's astonishing. And people on a very reductive, you know, the very simple kind of cliff notes here is they miss the transition from PCs to mobile and then even miss it by a greater leap, the transition to AI. Yeah. So it's what I want to do wins and losses today, even though even though wins and fails today, even though it's Thursday. But if I was doing a prediction, my prediction would be in the next 30 days, maybe 90 days. I always get the timing wrong.

26:21You're going to have an activist pop up at Intel and say you need to cut 40 percent of your people. You need to divest. Well, it sounds like the CEO. He's a very reasonable fellow. It just is. They're not. I love this basket of loser stock. That's interesting. You see Peloton came back a little bit with a new CEO and a bunch of - Yeah, but Peloton doesn't have, I mean, if you're talking about - No, I'm just saying a bunch of them like that. Peloton, Starbucks would be in there, Intel, what else? Well, you have the best one in my view - Estee Lauder. Estee Lauder, but the best one, the big one, in my opinion, is Nike.

26:55Nike, that's another one. So Peloton was just a COVID stock that it's a cute little company. I don't know if it's ever going to come back. Right. Whereas I've worked very closely with Estee Lauder, Nike, Starbucks, not with Intel. I don't know anyone there. But the previous three companies, amazing brands, amazing customer bases, super smart management. We should do a little basket and see how it does. A little basket of losers. We'll call it the loser basket. Well, I mean, just if you look at the brands that Estee Lauder has, if you look at the move towards beauty, if you look at. But, you know, they haven't kept up.

27:31Like there's these brands, these new brands that have just run circles around it. And it hasn't been even quick enough to buy them. The thing that's really hurt these guys is that the gift that kept on giving has now turned from a feature to a bug, and that is China. So all of these companies kind of went all in on China. And every earnings call, they kept saying, I mean, at one point, I think Starbucks was opening a store in China every two hours. And when China's economy turned down, everyone was like, uh-oh. So big, big branded companies with big exposure to China, like Starbucks, Nike, Estee Lauder, have just gotten killed.

28:08Anyway, last thing, social media regulation for kids is slowly happening on the national state level. This is important for something Scott talks about a lot, but Apple is pushing back on some age-gating measures, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Journal cites an accident in Louisiana where Apple lobbyists allegedly worked to kill a provision of the child safety bill. Apple says social media companies should be the ones verifying user ages. I've gotten a lot of communications from all these companies this week, as I talked about a little bit. Who do you think bears responsibility, the social media apps or the smartphone makers and app stores?

28:42And remember, the Senate passed a child online safety bill back in July. It's unclear where the House will take it up. But they're arguing over who should be responsible. My Kara Swisher take, both of them, all of them, all of the above. Exactly right. The answer is yes. I honestly can't, you know, I'm not surprised. They don't want responsibility for it. There are all kinds of privacy issues, obviously. But it seems like at the phone level, they know who has these phones, you know. 100%. They have arguments. I've heard their arguments that then all your phones have to be, you know, everyone gets tracked then.

29:14And they are against tracking. But it seems as if the social media companies cannot be the only ones doing this. It should be Google, Apple, and then the social media companies who bear most of the responsibility around these things. But it's very hard if you don't do it on the device level. Apple has done a masterful job of sort of starching their hat white and coming across as the good guys. And almost everyone I've heard, every nonprofit I've heard from who's focused on child safety, says that Apple has been awful. awful that they always get in the way of an attempt to reduce crimes against children, even thinks is heinous, is child pornography.

29:52And this bullshit that it's somehow going to violate the worry about violating users' privacy. The first thing that Apple does on my computer to make it more utile is it asks for my fingerprint. I mean, it knows my credit card number. It knows, I mean, it asked me to turn on location services. So it knows where I am. It knows my fingerprint. But, oh, we're worried that if we ask a 14-year-old what his or her age is, that that's somehow a privacy violation. I agree. Yeah. They need to stop hiding behind this bullshit. And we need laws. And your answer is exactly right. Should it be the apps or the platform or the phone maker's responsibility?

30:30The answer is yes. And if some 13-year-old, if something goes down here, they should all be in court. Well, one of the things, let me read this. An Apple spokesman said the websites and social media come to your best position to verify users. age and user privacy expectations would be violated if a company is required to share the age of its users with third-party apps. So that's a worry. That is a doubt. Apple provides tools that allow parents to control the devices of their children. So they're saying, although I have to say they're not as good. They're very kludgy in terms of controlling kids on those things.

31:03Now, a spokesman for Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and other apps, disputed the assertion saying that verifying a child's age by app isn't practical. And this is an interesting quote. Rather than putting the onus on parents to upload sensitive information or provide proof identity their child's teenage, their teen's age or every single app their children use, app stores can provide a central place for families to do this, the spokesman said. It does make a lot of sense. A match group person, this is Tinder and other dating apps, said kids are less safe when responsibility is limited only to developers.

31:35And the last thing, Alex Stamos, who we both like, noted that it's going to be a series of uploading, you know, your license to things. It's like the whole thing is problematic. And if they don't cooperate together, the companies who make the phones, both Google and Apple, there's just it's going to be hindered and children are going to be less safe, you know. Look, I got stopped at the airport. I was with my son, my 13-year-old son, and they wanted to see a letter from my spouse stating that it was okay for me to travel with him abroad. Oh, yeah. A kid can't get behind the wheel of a car without all sorts of verification and testing.

32:15This all comes down to the same thing, and that is we overprotect children offline and we underprotect them online. Oh, that's a really good way to make food. A basic check on whether an 11-year-old, if this person is 11 or 13, if I have food delivered to, I think it's Deliveroo here in London, and someone shows up and I've ordered a huge Indian meal with one beer, someone with a valid ID has to come to the door and show it to them. Is that a violation of privacy? I mean, enough of these excuses already. The damage and the dangers being presented to children absolutely outweigh any ridiculous hollow bullshit calls around the privacy of a 14-year-old.

32:58I mean, this is just a weapon of mass. This is jazz hands gone crazy, weapons of mass distraction. This is somewhere up around the league where all these tech brothers have decided that crime is speech and should be able to run unfettered on their platforms. Anyways, thank you for my TED Talk. I agree. Let me read Alex's thing because I want to do it. Setting an age per device is by far the best compromise solution out of a bunch of bad options. And I think he's right. If Apple keeps dragging their feet, eventually one of these state laws is going to stick and we're all going to end up sending pictures of our driver's licenses to a SCSI age verification company every time we install a new app.

33:34This really shouldn't hurt Apple and they could do a lot of good here. I don't get it. I agree. I think they could do a lot of good and take this off. This is right in their area and they should, you know, they should not resist this. It'd be on brand for them, too. Totally. Totally. Yeah. To say we're worried, we want to protect people, we need age. Christ, you know, at a bar right now. There's no good option here. Yeah. What? You get asked for your ID at a bar even when you look 49, 59. You do? Yeah, I get asked for ID all the time. Really? Scott. Well, no, there's some bars. There are a lot of bars now in certain districts where you have to ID everybody.

34:10All right. Okay. Everybody has to show their ID every time they want to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Okay. You don't buy it. I don't buy it in any way. But you don't look a day over 70. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about X getting banned in Brazil. And you'll tell us about Brazil and take a listener mail question about the value of Trump media shares.

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37:03Scott, we're back. Brazil's Supreme Court has unanimously voted to uphold a nationwide ban on Elon Musk's X. The social platform was suspended in Brazil late last week over concerns about disinformation and X's refusal to appoint a local legal representative. Elon's other companies are also impacted. SpaceX has moved to evacuate workers from Brazil. It's quite dramatic of them and warned employees against traveling to the country. Starlink initially said they would defy the ban, but later backtracked and is now complying. Starlink is a division of SpaceX, by the way. Talk a little bit about this.

37:35Do you think the ban is justified? It will set a precedent for other countries to deal with Elon? Now, I'm going to say two things before we go, because the Washington Post had the single stupidest editorial that I've seen of this. You might agree with Elon on this one, but he goes around the world and does censors when certain countries ask him to and doesn't when others do. So his whole free speech warrior thing is a canard. And I will not accept anyone saying that he's, he could, a broken clock could be right twice a day. But in this case, when he's in India or Turkey, he completely cooperates.

38:10And actually, X is one of the bigger cooperators with autocratic governments in censoring. So his excuse here is because he doesn't like the government. But go ahead. You just stole all my thunder. I think you're exactly right. And if he shows that they're being punitive and censoring him inconsistently with other media platforms, he has a really strong case. Your point is he's incredibly cynical because when Erdogan or Modi or any other autocrat says, I'd rather you just not do this, he's like, no problem. No problem. So he's totally inconsistent here. And to be clear, what they asked him to do was they asked him to appoint a legal representative to deal with requests to take down accounts allegedly involved in spreading political misinformation.

38:58They didn't mandate they'd take it down. They're like, we just want somebody to deal with. And here's the thing. Well, it's because they're scared about them being arrested because, you know, they're arrested in other parts of the world. This is China, though. Come on. Brazil is not going to arrest the representative from X. They're just not going to do it. And that's his excuse, just so you're where I'm just going to be fair to him. But I was down there. I think he'd have a solid case in court. But to your point, it's just totally inconsistent. And I don't know how he behaves in other countries as relevant in a Brazilian court.

39:31But here's the thing. I was in Brazil when this happened. And this is Pulse Marketing. I talked to quite a few people at this conference and went to the XP conference. It has 50 ,000 people there. And no one, we're talking more about it than they are. You know what? They don't care. They use WhatsApp. They use Instagram. They moved to a blue sky. A lot of the blue sky and threads saw big, especially blue sky, just for people to be aware. But it's just not irrelevant. It's a platform that is either not used or is easily substitutable. So it wasn't like people are running around angry at the government that they don't have their Twitter.

40:12I think this is part of a more meta trend, and it's the following, whether it's the CEO of Telegram being arrested, whether it's Google being found guilty of monopoly maintenance, whether it's a DOJ reaching out to NVIDIA. People have just decided they're fed up with a distinct set of rules and behavior for someone who is in technology versus the rest of us or technology firms. And I think this is just a continuation of that strategy. And his lack of concern around, I don't know if he's trying to be brilliant here and get a lot of press and say, I'm a free speech warrior, I'm not afraid to take on Brazil.

40:51But he's gotten into, if you were bored, you'd be saying, why are you personalizing this and getting into a pissing match with a judge in Brazil? How does that serve sureholder value? He also tweeted it as if he was going to invade Brazil. This is, I thought, was the best quote. It was Brazilian president, let me pronounce this correctly, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva. He said the Brazilian justice system may have given an important signal that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk's extreme right wing. Anything goes just because he is rich. I thought that was a perfect sentence as far as I thought.

41:25I thought it was a perfect sentence. But the fear here, or the bigger concern in my view, is what happens when Starlink, which is a superior product, is contracted, engaged, and used to download important data and basically operate or be the backbone of, say, hospital systems in Rio. And something like this happens, and I wouldn't put it past must to say, you know what, I'm going to turn off Starlink, and oh, if that means a bunch of hospital systems and your aircraft can't land, so be it. And this is the danger when one person aggregates too much wealth or power. I think the leverage he's going to have, quite frankly, around Starlink is much more frightening.

42:09And the fact that he— Well, the country threatened to take over the land. There's a bunch of— Well, the cash, right? No, no, not just the cash, but there's installations in Brazil that allow it to work better, and they were just going to take them over. Well, they have leverage over him right now because of nascent Starlink assets. At some point, I think he's going to have leverage over nations because of Starlink. You know, they have to have installations on the ground. They can always take those over. You know, I think it's stupid that he's fighting. He should sell his product and stop politicizing everything.

42:41That's my feeling is he's got a great product. Stop involving himself in every. He's fighting with Venezuela. He's fighting with Brazil. He's sucking up to India and Turkey. Like he's fighting, he fought with Ukraine, but then didn't fight with Ukraine. He should get the fuck out of foreign policy and just sell his stuff. That's my feeling. But he's not going to do that because his role in the potential Donald Trump administration is becoming more clear. Trump is set to share plans for government efficiency commission that Elon recommended in a speech at the Economic Club of New York this week, according to the Wall Street Journal.

43:12Elon weighed in on X saying, I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises. No pay, no title, no recognition is needed. What a crock of shit. All he wants is recognition. If he had been hugged more as a child, we'd all be in a better position with this guy. You know, he's going to fix our government, which is so full of conflicts of interest. I don't even want to say he's got defense contracts. He's got space contracts. He's got a car. You know, he should not be. He could be on a commission, but to have any real power would be terrifying, I think. So what I don't get is he claims that he wants to do away with all subsidies.

43:49Does that mean he's going to give a half a billion dollars back to the government for the subsidies he's received? Yeah. This is also cynical. And what is the strategy here? He's going to lay off 80 percent of government employees and not pay them severance, the legally obligated severance. That's what he does with his own employees. Is he going to accuse employees working in our civil service or defense department incorrectly of being sex criminals? Like, what does it mean when you're going to ask him to help with efficiency? I just, this is, it's sort of typical of both of them. I think it's just a gigantic press release.

44:22I mean, it's like shocking but not surprising this shit. It's like nothing surprises me anymore. Yeah, these two are linked together in a way that is really not going to be good for either of them, I think, personally. I think it'll end in disaster. By the way, one more thing before I forget. Tucker Carlson did a heinous interview with a historian who believes that Churchill, not Hitler. Hitler apologist. Yeah, Hitler apologist. And Elon retweeted it and then promptly took it down pretty quickly. And let me tell you why. This is the kind of shit that gets you banned in Europe because Germany, everywhere else.

44:58I know there was a big group of people from the right that won in Germany, but this stuff is no kidding in Europe on this stuff. And so if he wants to get in a fight now, he wants to get in a land war with Europe now, that's where it's headed. So, you know, this this guy is going to suck all the attention away from Trump, which I think is where they're going to fight. And by the way, he's not the only tech CEO making headlines. Scott wanted to talk about this. I thought he and I talked ourselves and I thought he had a really smart take on this. French authorities have charged Telegram. This happened while Scott was away.

45:30Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with multiple offenses following his arrest. The charges include enabling the distribution of child sex abuse material, drug trafficking, and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement. He suddenly started cooperating in South Korea, by the way. Telegram just suddenly did around child sex trafficking, sex abuse. I'd love to hear what you think. The Financial Times also dug into Telegram's finances and discovered about 40 percent of the company's revenue comes from crypto. So this is a, you know, I'd love to know what you think of this. Well, I think Telegram adds a lot of value.

46:07I think there's some very positive things about it. A lot of the best information coming out on Russia-Ukraine war is off of Telegram. A lot of people use it. But again, we have a tendency to go, well, on the whole, is it a net good? And if the answer is yes, then we don't do anything. And that doesn't make any sense. Fossil fuels and pesticides are a net good, but we still have emissions and standards and an FDA. And the way I see this is that if you and I owned a hotel and we knew that there was sex trafficking and child pornography taking place, and we knew that there were huge drug deals going down and that people were using our hotel for money laundering.

46:48And we not only knew about it, but we kind of positioned it such that it was easy to do it. Gave them extra keys. Yeah, yeah. And then the local authorities said, we need your help busting these people. And we did everything to kind of stiff arm them and make it difficult for them to pursue these crimes. We would be in a world of hurt, as we should be. And this entire blanket, ridiculous weapon of mass distraction that is the following, and it's not true. Crime is not speech. They immediately go to, well, this is you're inhibiting their speech. Yes, you're right. If I start communicating with people and planning a terrorist attack, my speech is not protected.

47:30And this guy, and I see this as part of an overdue trend, and that is these folks are saying any other media company, any other business. A bank. Can you imagine? Oh, no, the bank would be shut down. I wired a friend of mine 10 ,000 bucks and they called me and asked me what it was for. And they said, we need to have a reason. We need to know why you're doing this because we're worried it's for some sort of money. I'm a drug dealer, Scott Galloway, but go ahead. Well, and I'm like, okay, so let me get this. But these platforms can distribute, you know, pornographic imagery of children. And then when the authorities ask them for help, they say, no, it's free speech.

48:10This will send a chill, and it's an important one. And I think unless these guys start taking a little bit more, showing a little bit more concern for the Commonwealth and cooperating with the legal authorities in those nations, you're going to start seeing people pulled off their Global Expresses and their Gulfstream 650s and arrested. Yeah. You've talked about this. You've talked about this idea. No one else can get away with this shit. And I think people are finally saying, especially in Europe, because here's the bottom line. They get all of the downside of big tech, but there are very few hospital wings or universities named after Facebook or Google founders.

48:46Well, it's interesting because I think I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg put a check in with his lawyers if he should be careful. Now, if you show that you're trying to take it down, like they do have efforts on Facebook and other places are not successful as they need to be. To show effort and responsiveness is the critical part, like to at least acknowledge that child sex trafficking or child pornography is a problem. That's basically the lowest fucking bar in your. And by the way, you're you should be in jail if you don't think it is. You really should. if you facilitate it in any way. And so I think that they're all probably wondering how liable they are and how much, even if they have to do hand-waving stuff, how much they have to show in court that they're trying to shut down the criminal stuff, weapons trafficking.

49:36You know, it's so interesting because one of the things that's critically clear, which drives me crazy about the media, they were like, is this free speech? I'm like, it's crime. Like, what is wrong with you to question it? Same thing with with Musk in in Brazil. They were like, well, is it free speech? I'm like, but over in India, are you recognizing what he's doing over in India or rivers? Louis Swisher texted me. I put this up and I wrote I wrote him this. There's a front line. He loves front line investigating telegrams role in a string of recently far right acts of sabotage and murder and how the company's inaction has allowed extremists to plan and even advertise their crimes.

50:11And Louis wrote me back. Telegram is is and he uses the number for telegram is for drugs. and sex mom, everyone been knowing this website is for sin. Like, young people understand what's happening on this platform. The fact that media does not understand, it's been a real learning curve for many of these reporters. And I think they need to do a better job of understanding. When you took me to the White House, and we were talking to all those lovely young assistants and pages and everybody, and I started talking about TikTok, and they said, none of us have it. We're not allowed to be on it. I'm like, that's a bad thing.

50:46You don't realize that this could very easily be very anti-American content that is wrapped in cute dances. Yeah. Well, speaking of things I don't understand, this is my favorite one for you this week. Finally, so much things I want to talk to you about. It's crazy. There's a new buzzword in Silicon Valley, founder mode. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham wrote a viral blog post over the weekend urging startup founders to embrace a hands-on leadership style called Founder Mode. It was from a speech that Brian Chesky gave, which was a little taken out of context a little bit. According to Graham, founders should be involved in the minutia of running their businesses in contrast to manager mode, where leaders engage in their companies only through direct reports.

51:25There's been an he was inspired to write it after hearing a talk by Airbnb, Brian Chesky, who did involve himself back in the business after having hired too many professional executives. I think that was his point, which he's talked about before. Chesky also I've spoken to Chesky about this because I sent him all the funny memes about it you know Jesus was in founder mode with the loaves and fishes because it wouldn't scale until he got involved there's a bunch of very funny memes about it but he also posted on X that a lot of women founders have been reaching out to him about how they don't have permission to run their companies in founder mode like many wanted to say this needs to change I'd love to know what you think of this founder mode thing because there's some very good managers I'm thinking of Satya Nadella and Tim Cook and others.

52:12So thoughts on founder mode, given you're a founder? Me too. Well, so I'm of two minds at this. And that is, I spoke on a panel once when I think it was the founder of Away Luggage and a woman who was running. Oh, she's, yeah, she's a woman. Yeah, she's. Yeah, and then another person running one of the hot digital agencies. And they said, what is your management style as a CEO? And I was running L2 at the time. and one person said, it's all about empowering them and letting them take risks and letting them find their vision for the product and the company. And the other person was, it's all about making sure they have the right job description and being supportive of them.

52:54And they turned to me and I said, my management style is I'm all fucking over everyone all the fucking time. And that's true. When I start a company and I'm all in, I am harassing everybody. Did you do this? Did you do this? This is great. This sucks. What were you thinking with this? Who didn't prove this document? Have you called this person? Have you sent this? I'm all over everyone all the time. Now, a company can't scale beyond a certain point with that. That is key in the beginning. What I'll call kind of zero to 100 employees, zero to 10 million, whatever you want to call it. I think that's the right founder mode.

53:28You're all over everything. You are quality assurance. You are vision. You are making the product every day. Everybody needs to see that you are just maniacally focused on a better product and all over everybody and everything. That worked for me. You can't get beyond a certain point without doing what one of my venture capitalists and general catalysts, Larry Bono, has told me, and that is greatness is in the agency of others. And you could say scale is in the agency of others. At some point, You have to find really good people you think are as good or better at this than me and stay the fuck out of their way.

54:01Say, I'm a resource for you. I'm going to find capital and people for you and maybe clients for you. But this is you. You got to run with this. It's hard, though. Can I interject? Isn't it hard to make that transition, like to let people make mistakes on their own? And the danger, and I think what Brian was talking about, is he hired too many of the professional executives, right? So talk about that transition when you're doing that and scaling, because it's hard. Yeah, but I think it's, I mean, it's not only hard, I've never been able to do it. There's a reason why I've started a lot of companies.

54:36I sold one for$160 million, but I've never built a billion-dollar company. And I had access to capital. I'm good at what I do. I had world-class venture capitalists, because I've always had trouble kind of scaling a company beyond 100 or 200 people. And I also recognize that. So I would typically scale a company to 10 or 20 million and sell. And by the way, that was the right thing to do. I didn't want to take the additional risk of pivoting to a scalable company. I think that takes a different skill set. And most CEOs and founders can't make that transition. But some have. Steve Jobs was able to do it.

55:10Bill Gates was able to do it. Mark Zuckerberg, I would say 100%. The thing I don't like about this is it feels more like this idolatry of innovators where the founders of tech companies are the Yodas and all of America and big corporations should take their cues from them. And I remember in 1999 when I was invited to Davos because I peaked early and I was an internet guy. And I remember being invited to the session of the CEOs, a Q &A session featuring me, the founder of a decent but not by any means profound e-commerce company, Red Envelope, to give advice to the CEOs of the largest energy firms in the world.

55:50And how ridiculous, these people, mostly men, where we're going to forget more about management and business than I was ever going to know. But back then, there was such an idolatry of tech founders that, oh, he must have insight into how to run a company. And this feels a little bit like that. Like, oh, everybody should be taking cues from, it's not founders, it's tech founders. Let's be clear. Yeah, that's what they're talking about. I think one of the things is, and I think the correct criticism, and let me just say, I don't think Brian meant it that way. I think he said he lost sight of the product and he needed to be reengaged.

56:25And I think that was absolutely true. But in this case, it's sometimes an excuse for the toxicity of certain kinds of founders that they have to run to have the minutia to do everything. And there's very few founders that can be intimately involved that are effective once it scales, right? Again, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, I would say, for a while there. And I don't think others can. And you look, it is an attitude that actually Elon tweeted about the alpha male being the one to make decisions in life because women and men who are beta males can't. It's this sort of sick idea that they're trying to propagate that women shouldn't have the vote even, right?

57:07I think Peter Thiel talked about that, that things went sour when women got the vote. But that only a certain type of man, and it's a tech man, is able to make things great. And you're absolutely right. The professional CEOs right now, who you would consider professional, are some of the most successful right now. As much as the NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Wong, and he's the founder, definitely is important. Satya Nadella has took the company to greater heights than Bill Gates ever could. Tim Cook took the company to greater heights than Steve Jobs could. But Mark Zuckerberg is one of the few that can make it through.

57:45And I do think he's important. He's also a very good business person. You have to have a good business person. And so I think it's often an excuse for toxic feeling that only white men can make alpha males and they're always white can make decisions. And that's why it's kind of an ugly thing. It does feel a little bit like, again, these folks shouldn't be subject to the same scrutiny because they're in founder mode. And if they're a little bit, and quite frankly, Steve Jobs started it. Steve Jobs denied his own blood under oath to avoid child support payments when he was worth a quarter of a billion dollars, and yet he's our Jesus Christ because he invented an amazing phone.

58:23there's there's just a certain idolatry of these folks that they and everyone else propagates that they should be subject to a same a different a different standard than everyone else a different talk show but i think a really interesting one we don't like to talk about gender and testosterone and the fact that men do have different attributes than women and it's okay to say women are better managers you can say that but you can't say men are more decisive because anything that that places men in a positive light is seen as misogynist, but everyone just nods and says right on if you say positive things about women's managerial skills.

58:59And the reality is women demonstrate in many instances what I'll call more masculine attributes and men demonstrate more feminine attributes. And I think some of those feminine attributes lend themselves really well to being a good manager. And some of the male attributes lend themselves really, really well to being, quite frankly, more decisive. And we don't want to have an honest conversation about it. Because the fear is that you begin stereotyping everybody and say, he's a man or she's a woman, which means he or she would not be good for this role. Or maybe they've gamed the situation for themselves.

59:32And so they're always successful. I think a lot of women do feel that. I think it's just what it does is enter that toxicity into it rather than I prefer the really funny stuff. Let me just read this. Palo Alto based youth pastor strums guitar gently. Guys, the loaves and fishes weren't supposed to scale. But you know who went into founder mode? This is by Jim Prosser. He used to be head of PR at Twitter. Another one by Hunter Walk. About to go founder mode on this breakfast burrito. He died doing what he loved, going founder mode by Matt Margolis. Some of them are VC mode. By the pool in the Hamptons texting founders about founder mode.

1:00:09This is Matt Turk. So, you know, some of it's funny. Some of it does belie, I do think, a very negative and toxic version of masculinity that we talked about earlier. But, you know. You demonstrate, just to interrupt you to talk about it, you demonstrate founder mode in the positive sense. And that is when I've seen you in the businesses and the things you start, you are fearless, relentless, and all over people. Yeah. And emails at two in the morning. I mean, it just cracks me up that people think they're going to start a company and have balance. Right. I agree. I agree. You can't be all over everybody all the time.

1:00:45Everything. I do get what they're talking about here because I do make better decisions because it's mine, like on the things, right? Not that I can't hear people's opinions, but I want to do what I want to do. And there is a mode of being a founder that is. And by the way, I feel like if I fail, I fail. It's mine. And if I don't, I don't. But it's mine. And I think it's very hard. I think it's, I agree with you. I can't go beyond a certain size because I just don't want to give up control. And that because I'm a control freak or whatever. I think I like what I make. It's like being a chef in almost sort of chef mode, isn't it?

1:01:22Right. I'm just going to make my food. And if you don't like it, don't eat it. If you do, it's brilliant kind of thing. So it's an interesting question. It's deeper than that, though. But what you're talking about is one of the reasons that technology and Silicon Valley have provided such extraordinary returns. And that is they realized that giving everyone a sense of ownership resulted in much better run companies. So they kind of pioneered the idea of giving everyone equity. Yeah. That makes sense, though, right? It makes sense. It totally makes sense. But technology kind of, to a certain extent, was the first one to say, we're going to make everybody an owner here.

1:01:55And that is what I've tried to do. And I think you do it pretty well, too. At every company, you have to connect the outcome of the company to the person's economic well-being. Yes. Directly connect it. That's correct. That said, both of us like to run. Like, we just like to do it our way. It's surprising how well we get along, given we're both sort of founder personalities. Okay, Scott, let's pivot, pivot to a listener question.

1:02:26The question comes from Kisa, like Lisa, but Kisa, in Alameda, California. I'll read it. Hi, Kara and Scott. And I'll note Kara is first once again. I'm a huge fan of the show and I'm thrilled to be writing you. My question is, I know Trump's DJT shares will be eligible for unloading this month. What I'm wondering is, who would want to buy them? Truly, what is the opportunity here? I'm assuming any individual buyers who want it in already have made those purchases. So there is a large scale buyers who might see potential here, even knowing the price will likely drop after they buy it. Scott, please give me the investor's mindset on this one.

1:02:59And thank you so much, guys. Keep up the great work. Kesa, what a great question. Just for people who don't know, September 19th is when Trump and others can sell. This company loses enormous amounts of money and has very negligible revenues. It is not a company. But Scott, tell us what you think the opportunity here is, if any. What was our prediction five weeks ago? We made a specific prediction. I said it was going to be below 30 within a week. Yep. I mean, here's the thing. It's at its lowest level since it went public in March right now. And it's still massively overvalued. This is a company doing effectively no revenues, but it's losing a shit ton of money that has no user growth and has a$3.3 billion market cap after declining by 60 or 70 percent.

1:03:45In the last month, the last month, the stock is off 40 percent. This company has this is not a business. It was a tracking stock for Donald Trump's likelihood of being made president. And the fact that he can now or soon sell shares, he doesn't give a shit about these people. He doesn't give a shit about negative press. He's going to start hitting the sell button like crazy. You do not want to get anywhere near this thing. And also, I would be careful about shorting it because it's not there's not a lot of liquidity here. And if he has, for example, a good debate and people think, oh, he's going to be president and he'll figure out a way given he's a kleptocrat.

1:04:24to force everybody to use this, it could pop to 30 or 40 in one day. In sum, stay the fuck away from this thing. This is not a company. But who would buy it? I would think people who want to secretly support him, like it's a donation to his election is what it is. Or speculators who think that stock will go up if his likelihood of becoming president goes up. If he does. It's become a tracking stock. Well, the debate will have been over when the lockup ends. It's set to expire by the 25th, apparently, according to Vines. But I think the 19th was another number. Anyway, it will be post-debate, so we'll know a lot more.

1:04:57Should he sell it if he can? What should happen with those who—Trump has the biggest stake by far, but there's others who have stakes. What would you do if you were Trump? Well, it depends on liquidity. I know what he wants to do. He wants to sell as much as possible. The problem is, okay, if I were advising Donald Trump, I would tell him to put in place a planned selling program because that's your defense. That says this is neither a statement on whether I'm bullish or bearish on my own company. So you have planned sales where every 90 days you sell a certain amount and you can just throw your arms up and say, this has nothing to do with me or my views on the company.

1:05:35I just want diversification and some liquidity. And many CEOs have these planned sales programs. That's what I would do if I were him because he's going to have to file with the SEC when he starts selling. And when he starts selling, everybody knows this guy doesn't give a shit about anybody else but himself. But his pure objective here, full stop, is to get as much money out of this thing that is going to zero. I don't know if it goes to zero in 90 days or in three years, but be clear, there is no business here. So someone who's trying to support him could buy it to take a loss to keep it up, right?

1:06:10They could buy it to take a loss. They don't care. If they want to be supportive, if they want to make him richer, sure, have at it. I guess it's a form, some people would argue it's a form of a campaign donation. Yeah, it's a campaign. Say Jeff Yass or someone like that. I'd be curious to see who, I bet the SEC is watching this one very carefully, like of who buys it, because it has implications in the election. Would you, the selling plan for people who don't know is a lot of executives, they sell on a regular basis, right? They sell 50 ,000 shares every quarter or whatever it happens to be, correct?

1:06:44That's exactly right. I own 10 million shares. I'm going to sell 100 ,000 every quarter. I'm still very invested in the company. I want some liquidity. I want some money. And because it's a planned sale of a static amount, you can or should not read too deeply into what my sale thinks other than at some point I want some liquidity from my investment. And I'll sell even at the highs or lows. I'm just going to sell regularly. No matter what happens, every 90 days, I'm selling. Now they can break it. They can go out of it and buy more or whatever. But the moment they veer from it, if he has a filing the next day saying he sold 10 or 20 % of a stake, the thing goes to$2 a share.

1:07:24Yeah. Yeah, and then he screws all the people invested in him. But he doesn't care. He doesn't care. No, but he screwed himself, too. So what is your likely outcome here, your thought? What do you think he's going to do? I'm unsure on the timing. This stock is below one buck at some point. I don't know when that happens, but that is going to happen. I think he will probably not sell in the short term because he won't want the bad press. And then he'll think about a planned sale. But you know what? I cannot predict this guy's actions. What do you think? I have no idea what he's going to do. He should do a planned sale.

1:07:54That's how I would do it. If I were him, if I'm running for president, don't want to look like a... I think it gives Kamala Harris enormous amounts. Look, he just defrauded shareholders. You know what I mean? Look at... I think it gives her enormous amounts of, and everyone can, everyone understands this, including his own followers. He just fucked you. Just so you know, everybody, he just fucked you. And I think it's bad for his campaign. So he's kind of stuck with owning it. And then if he loses, the shares go to zero, like, or close to, like, it's a penny stock. Once he loses, if he wins, I don't know.

1:08:27Right? You don't know. That's the thing. Well, that's exactly right. So that's the bet. So there is a prospect there. The stock's lost two-thirds of its value in the last six months. 70%, right, yeah. And it's become a tracking stock. It really started diving when Biden dropped out of the race. Because people believe if he wins president, he'll find a way, legal or not, to crop this thing up. He'll try to find a way. This guy's got so much fraud surrounding him, it's really kind of nuts. But anyway, we'll see, everybody. So, Kisa, don't buy the shares. Don't. Just stay away from them. They're like, it's like, speaking of catching a falling knife, it's like catching a falling flaming knife.

1:09:08You really don't want to be around for this. There will be smart investors who will try to play it, but don't be one of those people because you're not smart. No one's smart enough to understand this lunatic and his various schemes to make money for himself. If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. But okay, Scott, one more quick break. This is a long show because we missed you. We'll be back. Go on. Wins and fails.

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1:12:34Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first? You go first, Cara. um i i i some wins look like some of these movies coming out of the venice film festival i'm excited for angelina jolie's maria callis movie uh there's a movie by nicole kidman where she plays a ceo who fucks around with an intern that looks fantastic um i'm very excited about the movie the fall movie scheme obviously i'm excited for wicked uh which is really doing a great job marking itself um it has an astonishing cast, and obviously Gladiator 2. So I'm kind of thinking I'm going to get into the theater a little bit this year.

1:13:12I'm not going to wait for Airlines. I definitely want to see Wicked and Gladiator in the theaters. The other is possibly I could see elsewhere. And Moana 2 I'm going to be going to, which is coming too. So that's my win. I'm very excited about the theater-going experience. I'll go in good theaters, not the shitty ones. But my fail is Tucker Carlson interviewing a Holocaust apologist, historian. He is a low bar, but he went even lower. Everyone has to be constantly reminded this guy is anti-Semitic, anti-everybody. It's really repulsive that he would interview. And I know he's like, I've got to hear from people, but he didn't push back.

1:13:52He didn't do anything. And then to retweet it is just grotesque. And the alpha male thing, they just keep showing us again and again and again who they are. And we really need to pay attention to this. And then those in the media that keep pretending this is normal, it is not normal to do this and to say these things. It softens people up for a really dire future, if that's the case. And so the idea that men should make better decisions than women is such a canard and that we're even arguing about it or that that Churchill was the villain. and Hitler was a hero is repulsive. And I know you can say it, but you're a terrible, awful person if you do.

1:14:33Yeah, back to movies. According to my film critic, Nolan Galloway, my 14-year-old son, the movie of the summer is Beetlejuice with our friend Justin Theroux. They said it's a great movie. The Michael Keaton is amazing. It's going to make a ton of money. Yeah. They think they're going to make$140 million in the theater. By the way, you know what I watched on the plane? Have you seen Salt Burn? I will not watch that. Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. I felt like I needed therapy after that thing. Yeah, this director is a rattling director. Yeah. I don't like those. I can't watch. I can't watch. Yeah, that was a lot.

1:15:07It was a lot. Okay, so my win is the parents of Hirsch Goldberg-Pollen, especially Rachel Goldberg-Pollen's eulogy for her son, who along with five other hostages was murdered last week. And I've been thinking a lot about grief lately, one, because I'm macabre, but two, I'm writing about it this week. She gave just the most powerful eulogy. I'll just read a couple lines of it. I have had a lot of time during the past 332 days to think about my sweet boy, my Hirsch. And one thing I keep thinking about is how of all the mothers in the world, God chose to give Hirsch to me. And she's really brought home for a lot of people, you know, some of the pain that parents are feeling on both sides of this tragedy.

1:15:52And as Stalin said, a million deaths is a statistic. One is a tragedy. And I think she's really helped a lot of people just understand the horror of what is going on over there on both sides. There's tremendous pain and suffering across parents on both sides. And I thought you and I both saw Hirsch's parents speak at the DNC. We did. Yeah, which was so just horrific when we found out. Such dignity. And, you know, you found out he was alive when they gave that speech. Anyways, but I think she has, I think she, his parents have really eloquently showed a lot of courage and composure in the face of what, you know, is every parent's worst nightmare.

1:16:36And I do think it brings us closer as a collective. And also, you know, at some point, if you will, grief is what people at some point decide they can no longer endure more grief and they're moved, hopefully, to peace. But anyways, my win is I thought the courage of Hirsch's parents, specifically Rachel Goldberg. For those who haven't seen it, she put together, she talked about him every day and they put together a thing. And it's a gut punch. I've had several friends who's lost their children recently. And I just, and to watch their dignity is, I mean, sometimes you pull away from that. Because if you have kids yourself, the idea is so terrible.

1:17:18You don't want to be around it, but their dignity and elegance and courage is the right word is really moving in a way that is hard to articulate, I think. Yeah, I was packing my son for his return to boarding school. And he's got these now these size 10 New Balance and cologne, which he wears too much of, and his first razor. Fragrance maxing. Yeah. Oh, God. But that was like my tip for the day to him. Like, no one should be able to smell your cologne unless you really want them to. If you know what I mean. No, that's not what they do. And, oh, my God. I walked into it. We dropped him off at his house.

1:17:56It was a Sunday afternoon. I could smell cologne when I walked in. They're all, you know, they're all at that age, right? It's called fragrance vaccine. That's what they're doing. I think it's called, yeah, it's called mating. It's like wanting to mate. Oh, it's not mating. Yeah. Yeah, that's anything but mating. But that was a very emotional day for me because it just brought home the importance of sons. Anyway, so my fail, I've been writing about grief for my newsletter this week. And I've learned a little bit about Arlington Cemetery. This is something, 400 ,000 people are interned there, basically the population of Miami.

1:18:33It's everyone from presidents to astronauts to Army nurses. And it doesn't cost anything for them. They do 6 ,000 burials a year, 4 ,000 ceremonies. And part of grieving is that as a collective, one of the reasons we grieve as a species is it creates attachment. And that is, I know you care about your kids because I care so much about mine that the idea of losing them makes you and me better parents. The idea of you losing them makes me a better citizen because I don't want anyone to feel the grief that I'm worried about feeling. in some of the ceremonies where we process grief. Every culture has ceremonies when people die because they realize how important it is for people to process grief and to attach to the community.

1:19:18And one of the ways we do that in the U.S. with our service people is Arlington. And it really is, and by the way, three and a half million people visit Arlington every year. And part of the way they honor the families and the dead is they say, this is so important to our nation that we're going to, we have a code here around in terms of the ceremony and the behavior we expect and do not expect at the cemetery. And one of those things is you are not allowed to film and produce content. And of course, the Trump administration saw a moment to produce content and started pulling out cameras and filming him giving a thumbs up.

1:20:01And an employee there said, you can't do that. And correctly, this employee became very upset and was very stern and got into a physical altercation with two Trump affiliates or two Trump personnel. And this is essentially, in my opinion, I mean, we just continue to set new standards for what is acceptable, vile behavior. And the fact that this individual is getting in the way and delegitimizing and mocking the ceremony and the process that families need to get through this incredibly hard period. And what was even more salt in the wound was he did it at Section 60, which is where this isn't tourism.

1:20:42This is where people are buried, people who died in the Afghanistan and Iraqi conflicts. So the people who come here are not tourists looking for JFK's memorial. They are people who are grieving people they've recently lost. And there is a word to describe what Trump did, and it's incredibly accurate. And the definition of the word is extreme violence towards a place of sacred meaning. And the word is desecration. So what we have right now is someone running for president who is almost tied, who is an insurrectionist, a rapist, and now a desecrate. This is behavior. If Vice President Harris went to Arlington and started filming herself and then her staff got into an altercation with someone at Arlington, the entire world would be running around with its hair on fire.

1:21:34So anyways, Donald Trump is now officially a desecrate. This behavior is totally unacceptable. Yep. I don't know what else to say. I have a father who was in the military. We had an opportunity, I think, to bury him there. And he's buried in West Virginia. But it's so offensive. And I don't care if some of the families invited you. Others didn't. They don't get to decide. That family doesn't get to decide. And the fact that they are letting someone politicize their dead relative, I don't know what to say to them. And, of course, Trump has been nothing but insulting to people in the military. He thinks they're losers, suckers.

1:22:14He said John McCain, you know, he isn't a hero because he got caught, essentially got captured. Yeah, people don't want captured. Captain Bones Burst can shut the fuck up on these kind of things. Lots of people go there. Lots of presidents go there. But it's always an official act. And it's always, it's never done like this. and to push around a person as a woman who was trying to stop it is grotesque in every single way. That's what autocrats do. And as a child of someone who's a career person who was in the military for most of their life, it's so offensive. I don't even know what to say. You're right, Scott.

1:22:53It's grotesque. Anyway, on that note, I'm going to end one quick thing. Happy 90th birthday to Lucretia Carney. And I do want to thank Scott. for allowing us to use his apartment. We had a lovely weekend last weekend. Really appreciate it. It made a big difference. But happy birthday, Lucky. You're still there. You're still there. You're still there. Still good for you. Was that on her cake? You're still here. You're still here. Anyway, happy birthday, Lucky. It's good to be back. Good to be back. It is good to be back. Let me just say, I really miss you. I know I say this every year, but I really do miss shooting the shit with you.

1:23:32And also not just that, but just getting your insight. When we were on the phone ourselves the other day separately, because we do talk during the week, when you were saying that crime is not free speech, you just encapsulated it perfectly. Like, I was like, oh, thank God you're back. Because sometimes you really encapsulate things beautifully. And it was really lovely for you to come back and excited for your penis jokes. You're a national treasure. And I mean the Nick Cage version. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. I'm pleased to say, please read us out.

1:24:33Lara and Kara it's great to be back thanks for all your good work in August

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