🏈 “Endorse My Ball” — Fernando Mendoza’s LinkedIn-ing. Intel’s chip-rip-dip. The Vatican’s AI savior. +Uber Spy Pricing

0:28This is Nick. first story. Fernando Mendoza was the number one draft pick in the NFL draft last week, and the Las Vegas Raiders are thrilled. But the real winner is actually LinkedIn. For our second story, chip stocks are up 18 straight days. Wow. And Intel just shockingly hit an all-time high. It's all because of the rule of Ips. When software dips, chips rip. And our third and final story, the world's biggest moves to regulate artificial intelligence are being made by one tiny nation. It's the Vatican. No joke, the Pope is leading a worldwide AI crusade. Ever heard of him? It's an awesome story.

1:07But yet he's before we hit that wonderful mix. What a mix of stories to kick off the week. No one else doing that mix, Jack. Nick and I have been chronicling the rise of something that is worse than surge pricing. Jack, I believe you're talking about surveillance pricing. Surveillance pricing. When a company stocks you online, uses the data to jack up the price on just you. Yeah, they're like, that dude drives a Porsche? Let's charge him a little extra. The lady lives in Beverly Hills? Add 10 % to the bill. And it all started back in December with Instacart. We covered it on the pod. Consumer Reports found that different people were seeing different prices for the same stuff on Instacart.

1:42$5 pickle for him,$6 pickle for her, and Jack's dropping$7.50 for a pickle? We don't like it, so we're making a personalized pricing burn book to shame these companies. Jack, we got a couple new entries to log from over the weekend, baby. It looks like Uber is now doing personalized surveillance pricing. Get this, one woman was charged different prices depending on which card she was swiping. And the video has gone viral because when she had her Visa card linked, it was a$20 ride. But then Jack, when her Amex Platinum was linked, it was a$33 ride. And then JetBlue did something similar, but they said the truth out loud by accident.

2:15That's right, someone complained on Twitter that JetBlue's prices rose$200 on a ticket in one single day. The customer sales rep replied to the tweet, Hey, go use your incognito browser. The price should come back down. Awkward. JetBlue deleted the tweet, which is basically, what would you call it, Jack? An admission of guilt. JetBlue is tracking your web activity to personalize your pricing. So, Yetis, if you see a case of spy pricing out there, slide it straight into our DMs. Because we're adding it to the surveillance pricing burn book. Remember, if you see pricing, say pricing. Tag us on Instagram if you see something.

2:50We're keeping track. If you see pricing, say pricing. Jack, let's go. 15 years before this song Two boys from the northeast met in the dorm They had an idea to cause a cultural storm It's the best one yet, but the best is the norm Jack Nick, that's it I don't even think they need to practice 50%, that's a fat tip T-Boy City on your at list If you know, you know, cause we ready to go We can't wait no more, so just start the show

3:19Start the show First, a quick word from our sponsor. Thank you.

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4:26Get ready to look and feel good for anything from head to toe by visiting Men's Warehouse today. Men's Warehouse. Love the way you look.

4:41For our first story, the number one pick in the NFL draft is Fernando Mendoza, the new franchise quarterback of the Las Vegas Raiders. Here's the surprise, though. He's winning on the field of LinkedIn, and there's a lesson in it that we can all learn. Yetis, let's start by sprinkling on some geopolitical context here. Pittsburgh's population, 300 ,000 humans. On Thursday night, the population more than doubled. Because Commissioner Goodell of the NFL says that 320 ,000 people came to Pittsburgh to watch round one of the football draft. Schools actually closed. That's how big a deal it was in Pittsburgh on Thursday.

5:20No joke. The black and yellow city ran out of pierogies, Heinz ketchup, and chipped ham. It was that big. That is a joke though, right? They didn't actually do those things, did they? I don't think you joke around about chipped ham in Pittsburgh, Jack. The NFL draft has become the off-season Super Bowl for the NFL. Get this, 14 million viewers now. That's more than the Grammys and twice as much as the Emmys. And they've turned it into a whole weekend extravaganza. What used to be just one night is now, what, three nights, right? And this year's number one pick was a foregone conclusion. Who is he, Jack?

5:49Fernando Mendoza. Or to quote the Princess Diaries, my name is Fernando Mendoza. After three years at Cal, he transferred to Indiana, a basketball school, where he went 16-0, won the Heisman Trophy, and a national championship, and he can pass! Nick, his senior year was immaculate. There's not a single blemish on what happened his senior year. I think you would end up, in this case, you might be his second string backup quarterback, Jack. And here's the wildest part. In high school, he was the 1 ,929th top recruit. And now he's the number one pick in the NFL draft, making even Boobie Miles jealous.

6:29And he's probably going to get the biggest rookie contract of all time. As well as as many chipped ham pierogies as he wants. But yet there's one fascinating detail here about Fernando, unlike any other college football player. Or pro football player. He's a LinkedIn power user. Get this, he's got 240 ,000 LinkedIn followers. Jack, what about TikTok and Instagram? He doesn't even have those on his phone, Nick. He's just on LinkedIn. And when he graduated early at Berkeley with a business degree, what did he do about it? Write a thought piece on LinkedIn. After winning the national title, he kind of went viral for posting on LinkedIn.

7:04what winning a national championship taught me about B2B sales. Kidding, kind of, but not really, because then he gave advice on taking career risks like going for it on fourth down. Which he famously did in the national championship game to seal the deal. Oh, you want more? After the season, he changed his LinkedIn status to open for work. He hadn't been drafted yet. And then he added his Heisman Trophy to his award section, just like you added your GMAT score. Wait, you publish your GMAT score on LinkedIn? I don't want to talk about it, Jack. Oh, and he's endorsed for Excel. Yeah, by multiple people.

7:37Next thing he's got to do is endorse his left tackle for reliability. And that love for LinkedIn has led to creative brand deal opportunities that he sticks in the bullet points of his resume. In the last four months, he announced that he's the chief financial playmaker for U.S. Bank, the franchise player at Taco Bell, and both in classic LinkedIn style, he posted life update statuses. Yes, this sounds like one long monologue joke, Yetis. we know, but everything we just said is absolutely true. Which is why LinkedIn just signed Fernando Mendoza to a TV commercial. And in it, he made his brand new job a LinkedIn official.

8:11NFL quarterback from the Haas School of Business and the University of Indiana. But I'm sorry, Jack, can we pause the pod for a sec? How about LinkedIn, which has quietly become Microsoft's MVP? It's on pace for over$20 billion in revenue this year. Besties, LinkedIn has become the luxury box of social media for the ad rates they're charging these days. Everybody's watching the field, which is like TikTok and Instagram viral videos. Exactly. But LinkedIn is the luxury box where the rich are rolling. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy Fernando Mendoza and everybody on LinkedIn? Scramble outside the pocket to find open space for your career.

8:49Yeti, the real insight here from Mendoza is how he stood out in an unlikely place to find a following. Instead of competing with celebrities and everybody on TikTok and Instagram, he scrambled over to LinkedIn, where he found some space and made a name for himself. Honestly, kind of reminds us of the old CEO of T-Mobile, right, Jack? Do you remember during the pandemic, he did slow cooker Sundays every week and broadcast it on Facebook Live from his kitchen? No one was doing Facebook Lives like that, so it helped make T-Mobile cool, and now it's worth more than Verizon and AT &T. We've said that the best businesses to be in are the ones where there's zero competition.

9:25Well, besties, to get noticed, you might try these slightly unglamorous and overlooked platforms as well. Because there's less competition there. NFL Draft Day just showed us a career hack. Scramble outside the pocket to find open space for your career. For our second story, Intel, the dinosaur tech company, just hit an all-time high for the first time since the dot-com bubble. Yeah, the Y2K dot-com bubble. This is the silicon inversion. As software stocks go down, chips go up. Chip rips. Software dips. But yetis, let's just start with like the most outrageously positive headlines for chip companies we've ever seen.

10:06I mean, Jack, what's going on here? All of these headlines we're about to tell you happened on Thursday or Friday of last week. Follow us on this, besties. Texas Instruments, you know, from the TI-83 calculator you had in high school, their stock jumped 19 % last week. The company who used to surreptitiously write love messages to the girl next to you in middle school math? What's going on in that class, Jack? It's still a publicly traded company, and their stock just had the best day since the year 2000. Okay, so that's a story for another pod, Jack. But in the meantime, this TI-83 calculator-making company jumped from calculators to data centers.

10:40No more square root of whatever your trigonometry teacher put on the blackboard. Their data center revenue was up 90 % year over year. Yeah, the TI-83, Never could have pulled that off during an SAT. All right, let's pivot over to Intel. The dinosaur has been of the tech industry. Well, it is back like Jurassic Park, baby. The stock rose 24 % on Friday to an all-time high. It's the first time Intel has hit an all-time high since the dot-com bubble. Oh, I'm sorry, Jack. I got one more for you. Broadcom, another chip company, closed Friday with a$2 trillion market cap for the first time. AMD and Arm, two other chip companies, both jumped 10 % on Friday.

11:17What the heck? Here's one more. TSMC, they make chips. Their stock just hit an all-time high. And it wasn't just Friday. It's been going on for a while. The iShares ETF that tracks 34 major chip companies has risen 18 straight trading days. Add it all up, Yetis, and grab that guac because chip companies are up 47 % this year. Nick, my father-in-law owns Broadcom stock. It's all he talked about all week to me. When a boomer owns a tech stock, they will talk about that more than their grandkids. But yet he's, their gain is someone else's pain. Their gain being chip companies. Because for software companies, it's been opposite day on the stock market.

11:56Let's look at Intuit. Not a chip company, a software company. Famous for TurboTax and QuickBooks. Now Jack, this tax season, you may have paid TurboTax 200 bucks to file your federal and state taxes like usual. Or maybe this year you said, Claude, I've uploaded my W-2s and my 1099s. I also uploaded my credit card statements. Why not? Do my taxes. You asked AI. In fact, you just watched a YouTube video about it. How to use Claude Code to automate taxes and bookkeeping. That video has 100 ,000 views and comments that show both individuals and companies are very interested in using Claude to do that work.

12:33Now remember, besties, Intuit does both tax filing and bookkeeping. So it's stock. It is down 52 % since last July. These Claude for tax filing and Claude for bookkeeping anecdotes, they explain two key things happening in the stock market right now. The two huge things happening in the market right now. First, why software stocks are down. They're down because people could use AI instead of use their software. And why chip stocks are up. Claude needs huge compute to do that software work, like to analyze your financial statements for potential tax breaks. And we brought the receipts yetis because the iShares Chip ETF, which is a fund of a bunch of chip companies, it's up 47 % so far this year.

13:12Like we said. Meanwhile, the iShares SaaS ETF, tracking software stocks, it's down 21%. So Jack and I call this phenomenon the Great Silicon Inversion. When chips rip, it's because software slips. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the investing game? There's a secret SOS signal from the stock market, and when you see it, you should be worried. Yeti's interesting thing about the software stocks plummeting, their sales are still rising. Look at ServiceNow, a software company that said on Wednesday, revenues rose 22 % last quarter. Their best quarter in three quarters. But then Jack, why did their stock shockingly plummet?

13:53Because their margin shrank. The profit they made for each buck of software sales fell from 81 % to 77%. Now ServiceNow blamed the shrinking profit on a deal that they just did, but Wall Street ain't buying that excuse. Wall Street's interpretation of that shrinking margin is that customers are sticking with ServiceNow. They're not using AI, but only after ServiceNow offered them discounts. You see, besties, widening margins is a sign of strength that you have pricing power and can bring in the profits. Shrinking margins is a sign of weakness. It means your customers are on the fence and you got to offer discounts.

14:25And that's the secret SOS signal for stocks, shrinking margins on the profit puppies. When you see it, don't say something, do something. Right away, right away. Now a quick word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Bill, the intelligent finance platform that helps businesses scale with proven results. Look, Yeti's paying and getting paid. That is a pain for small and medium businesses out there. Did you send the invoice? Did they see it? Did you remember to remind them to remember to pay it? Oh, I totally forgot, Jack. Besties, if you drop the ball on any of those, you don't get paid and you're missing out on cashflow.

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15:31That is proven infrastructure you can actually trust. Talk with an expert at bill.com slash proven and get a$250 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. Top hats, baseball hats, Von Dutch hats. We wear so many hats on this podcast. Honestly, we're not great at all of them. No, we've been avoiding hiring someone to wear those hats instead of us, especially the Von Dutch one, because hiring and training can take forever. Well, I'm proud to say that we are hiring right now at T-Boy, and this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

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16:34That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

16:44For our third and final story, the first police chief of AI, it could actually be the Pope. We'll tell you how the most promising AI regulator is actually the Vatican and how they may be building the truth engine. But yetis, before we share the whole story with you, just, you know, we're thinking of the besties out there who are affected by the insane number of layoffs from last week. On Thursday and Friday, from just two companies, 20 ,000 layoffs were announced from Meta and Microsoft. Painful to track. You also got Snapchat laying off 1 ,000, Nike laying off 1 ,500, and much of them citing the very same single reason.

17:20AI. It feels like the beginning of the mass extinction event that the techies have been warning about. So tens of millions of people who work at a computer, they have been worried you may be one of them. And yet, America's AI policy is just to get out of the way and let AI rip. Thus far, no national regulation yet on AI. We're still waiting for this stuff. Deepfake bans, chatbot rules, any guardwails for the AI companies at all? Anthropic and OpenAI, they've actually been asking for this for years to be regulated. That's how much we need this kind of a thing. They've asked the question, how do we redistribute the huge gains that are coming from AI to make sure millions of people aren't left behind?

17:55And besties, by the way, we should point out, it ain't just us, it ain't just America. No major Western country has come up with a comprehensive plan for what to do with AI. Except, record scratch. The Vatican, the Pope, just stood up and said, hey robots, hold my rope. The Holy See in Rome has assumed a leadership role in setting AI policy. The Pope says that since he doesn't have a military or any commercial interests, he is a uniquely neutral party. And given his status as head of the Catholic Church, he has a unique moral authority on the issue too. So the Pope is stepping up. He wants the Vatican to be the worldwide referee on what is real in the age of AI.

18:32The first move, the Vatican's been partnering with cybersecurity firms. To fortify St. Peter's Basilica, make sure the hackers can't mess with them right now. And then he told the priests not to use AI whenever you're writing sermons. Teach the book of John, not the book of Claude. And since the Vatican is a self-governing state, they set formal national policy for themselves on AI. No other country has done this, but the Vatican has. AI must never overtake or replace human beings is one of their rules. That's a direct quote from that rule book. Oh, and they banned AI that could manipulate, discriminate, or threaten security.

19:05They did that at the Vatican. Pause the pod, Nick. A 2 ,000-year-old institution has more AI rules than just about any country or any company? Holy GPU, Jack. Now, the Pope's hope is that the church becomes a model that the rest of the world can agree on. His other hope? That the Vatican becomes the worst enemy to AI misinformation. It's the most innovative move by the church since the steeple. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all the people wondering about AI? Who will create the world's first ever truth engine? Yetis, there's a concept in AI circles about something never before built. It's called the truth engine.

19:45A system that can verify anything to be authentic or fake, whether it's facts, photos, or videos. You see, in the age of AI-generated content, it is increasingly crucial for humankind to have this type of source of truth. An arbiter of truth, yeah. And no one's built one yet. Maybe because it would likely have to come from a non-profit like Wikipedia. That was like the original goal of OpenAI, by the way, which used to be a non-profit, but now it's closed AI. It's a for-profit. It's not going to pull that off. The Pope hasn't announced he's doing this yet, but the actions coming from the Vatican are causing rumors to swirl.

20:16Sorry, Jack. This sounds like the next Dan Brown novel, right? Like, but it could be the building of the world's first truth engine. The Vatican, it's got the resources. It's got the incentives and the momentum and the moral authority. Yeah, we're not sure they have the coders. but the Prope has been practicing some vibe coding after the masses from what we've been hearing. It's exciting to think about. In an age of AI misinformation, we need a truth engine. Yes, we do. Could it actually come from the Sistine Chapel? Jack, could you whip up the takeaway sports to kick off the week? Fernando Mendoza is a Heisman Trophy winner, a number one NFL draft pick, and an influencer on LinkedIn.

20:56The career hack lesson here, scramble outside the pocket where there's space, it's easier to get noticed. For our second story, software stocks led by Intel have risen 18 straight trading days as software dips, chips rip. Dips, chips, and rips. The secret SOS stock signal yetis shrinking margins. And our third and final story, the Pope is trying to fill the leadership vacuum on a framework to handle AI. Could the The Vatican build the first ever engine of truth. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, Elf and Lululemon have got an awkward situation going on, Jack.

21:33Both brands are getting sued by consumers in a class action fashion because they want their tariff refunds. Yeah, remember during the trade war? Elf raised makeup prices, Lululemon raised legging prices, and they both blamed the tariffs on it. Now that the government is refunding those tariffs, you want your 15 bucks back because that's how much the price got jacked up on your yoga pants. Those Align yoga pants, we paid a little extra for those bad boys. And as we mentioned last week, we think Lululemon should just give it out. It'd be a great marketing promotion. And second, we just got the biggest action yet to crack down on insider predicting in the prediction markets.

22:09The DOJ just charged a soldier with insider trading on when Nicolas Maduro would be captured. Why? Well, funny thing, because he was the special forces soldier who helped capture Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. And he allegedly bet on that confidential information on prediction markets, netting a$400 ,000 profit. And finally, the super story we'll be watching this week is Elon versus Altman, the billionaire beef of the century. The epic trial between tech's two biggest names today begins today in Oakland. Remember Yetis, Elon co-founded OpenAI And now he claims that Sam Altman and OpenAI defrauded him.

22:49Although Elon did tweet last year that if OpenAI changes their name to ClosedAI, he would drop the lawsuit. Which we hope is the plot twist here. If this gets any juicier besties, Andy Cohen is going to go turn this thing into a Bravo reality show. This is kind of a Bravo reunion show because those two used to be buddies and now they hate each other. Real housewives of Pacificites. Now time for the best fact yet, which because it's Monday means T-Boy insider trivia, Jack, what do we got today? 20 years ago last week, Spotify launched the first ever music streaming. And they celebrated the occasion last week by sharing the top played music, audiobooks, and podcasts since that day, 20 years ago.

23:28So here's the trivia. What was the most streamed song ever on Spotify over the last 20 years? Okay, you've seen this. I've not seen this yet. You're ready for this one, right? What surprised me is that it's not Taylor Swift, and it's not Bad Bunny, who are the number one and two most streamed musicians of the last 20 years. Okay. It's The Weeknd. Blinding Lights is the most streamed song ever on Spotify. The Weeknd. In fact, The Weeknd has two of the top four songs. Yetis, welcome back from The Weeknd. Yetis, you're looking fantastic. Jack, you are glowing over there. And as always, the pricing on this podcast remains free, baby.

24:07We ain't surveillance pricing you over here. Yeah. Our agent thinks that we should add an extra price for the Malibu listeners, but we're not doing it. No, we're not going to do it. Same price for everybody. But besties, if you see some spy pricing out there, remember, if you see pricing, say pricing. Nick and I will be back with you tomorrow.

24:29And before we go, a happy belated birthday to legendary Eddie Rodell in Whittier, California. This comes from Diana. If you know, you know. Happy 28th birthday to Mac Frederick, who's playing bagpipes in the San Diego, Scotland pipe band right now. Who would have thought? And Amanda Mondanedo is celebrating with her mom and six-month-old Luke, getting a much-deserved massage for the week. Happy birthday to Jeanette Rodriguez in Hollister, California. And Javier Ortiz, enjoy the birthday over in New Jersey. And happy birthday to Matt Levetsky, also in New Jersey. And Lindsay Lester, enjoy the 34th over in Reno.

25:03Happy birthday to Trusha Chandan in Brooklyn, just outside Manhattan, celebrating with Isha. Any restaurant wrecks, drop them in the comments. They want a good one for New York. And Robbie just earned his wings of gold for completing his training as a naval aviator in Florida, flying the old MH-60 Seahawk. A listener since 2019, back when he was in tech sales in San Francisco. Robbie, thank you for your service. And Emma Pellegrino just got a new job at the Aspen Institute, and she is crushing the triathlons while she does it. Happy 14-year anniversary to Taylor and Becca Vogan. And Liz DeHorn is crushing surgery like it's a walk in the park in Charleston.

25:38She's a gritty NBA.

25:45This is Jack, Nick on stock of Lululemon, and we both on stock of Spotify. This is Robert Mace from The Athletic Football Show. The men's warehouse is here to make you look and feel good no matter the occasion. From formal to casual, dressed down to dressed up, their in-store experts will help you find the right outfit for that thing you got on the calendar, and their on-site tailors will make sure the fit is perfect for your body. suits, tuxes, sport coats, jeans, shorts, chinos, t-shirts, polos, loafers, sneakers, sandals, underwear. Get ready to look and feel good for anything from head to toe by visiting Men's Warehouse today.

26:22Men's Warehouse. Love the way you look.