🍰 “Golden $CAKE” — Cheesecake Factory’s moment. WNBA’s 9am Final. Anthropic’s 1-person startup. +Halloween Purple

0:28This is Nick. the new berries. In the meantime, Jack, we got three fantastic stories for today's T-Boy. What have we got on the best show in biz? For our first story, the Cheesecake Factory is in the news because of presidential midterm politics. But Cheesecake Stock is in the news because big menus attract big parties. For our second story, Anthropic just acquired a startup that has just one employee. One. They acquired a solopreneur because the best way to save AI's brand is to cure cancer. And our third and final story, Game 6 of the WNBA Finals is causing drama because Tip-off is at 9.30 in the morning.

1:01This morning. We'll tell you why the WNBA stadium problem, though, is actually a good sign. It's a good thing. The brunch game, it's a good one. But yet, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. What a mix of stories. I love the mix for the new Friday, Jack. Why is the unofficial color of Halloween purple? Scary question. Sure, orange is the first color because of pumpkins, but why is purple second? The answer is not because all the other colors have been taken already. The answer is because of psychology. The answer is because of psychonomics. In the 1800s, the first Halloween colors were orange, yellow, and brown.

1:33Makes sense, the shades of the fall harvest. But in 1939, one of the first movies ever in color changed Halloween's colors. Because Halloween became green. Thanks to Best Picture nominee in 1939, The Wizard of Oz. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I do a very good Wicked Witch of the West impression. Just don't ask him to do the munchkins. But then, for some unknown reason about 50 years ago, purple became Halloween's main character. And we found a study in Scientific American that may explain why. First, because purple is historically mysterious, associated with wealth and magic. Second, because purple is not a natural color.

2:13Red, orange, black, yellow, those show up in nature. Purple barely does. But the biggest reason for purple's Halloween pop, what is it, Jack? It's because purple makes Halloween less scary for children. Purple had softened Halloween's darker imagery. Rainbows are purple. Toy ponies are purple. Barney the purple dinosaur, Nick. So besties, think of orange and black as Halloween's co-founders. But purple as its VP of marketing. Follow the Halloween money from the yellow brick road to Hocus Pocus. Because there's green in purple. Nick, is my Wicked Witch laugh the new Cookie Crisp? You're gonna have to ask those munchkins, Jack.

2:44I keep telling you, every week, ask the munchkins. Jack, grab some red and blue and let's hit our three stories. Dude, admit it. That's a good Wicked Witch. 15 years before this song, two boys from

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5:28For our first story, the Cheesecake Factory just got dragged into midterm politics. But Cheesecake's business is booming. The stock has tripled because its menu is veto-proof. Now, Eddies, you may have heard the saying, all press is good press, but we'd add to it, especially presidential press. From two presidents. Yeah, because last weekend, former president Barack Obama told a political rally that Trump's White House renovations looked like... Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. That's what he said. So President Trump responded that Cheesecake Factory is a very successful company. And the way we see it, honestly, both are correct.

6:02The columns, the murals. Cheesecake Factory is America's main street coliseum you can find in every suburb. But funny timing on Wall Street, Jack, because Cheesecake Factory just reported their earnings on Tuesday. And we got the receipts, Basties. Revenue at Cheesecake Factory was 15 % in Q3. That is twice as good as Texas Roadhouse. And their stock, which is ticker symbol C-A-K-E cake. Love it. It's tripled in two years, which is better than Chili's, the leading restaurant over the same period. Cheesecake Factory started in 1978 when a son quit law school to scale his mom's homemade cheesecake recipe.

6:33And the interior design, it actually was inspired by the Victorian mansions of San Francisco and even the Palace of Versailles. The engineers of ancient Rome would have been impressed. Would they, Nick? Well, they would have been full, Jack. They would have been satisfied and they would have left not hungry. I'll tell you that. But here's what we actually find fascinating, besties. You might not think that Cheesecake Factory is fancy, but investors do. Because the average Cheesecake Factory generates 14 million bucks a year per location. That's number six in the restaurant industry, according to the magazine Restaurant Business.

7:01There's only high-end steakhouses and Din Tai Fung that are doing better than these guys. Cheesecake Factory does three times more sales per location than the Olive Garden. And the key reason is the incredible complexity of the kitchen, which is usually a bad thing. You see, besties, the key to the restaurant industry profitability is efficiency. Chipotle basically recreated Henry Ford's assembly line, but for burritos. Efficiency. And over at the Olive Garden, 90 % of orders are just some combination of pasta, cheese, and sauce. Although I have no problem with that. Like, that's all I want at the Olive Garden.

7:32Well, you should disclose you're the five-time wine salesman of the month, Jack, so you have an upside-in. To be honest, I want multiple pastas, multiple cheeses, and multiple sauces in my day. As I told you, Yetis, this guy could sell ravioli to the gluten-free crowd. All right, so efficiency is the key to restaurant profitability. But at Cheesecake Factory, the menu is 21 pages. They offer 250 separate dishes. Nick, this is an epic of Homeric proportions. The waiter asks, if you're ready, I'm sorry, we're going to need a few more hours, ma 'am. 21 pages. What is this, my Brooklyn Bridge book that took me two years to read?

8:04I mean, is it Anna Karina, Jack? We went to like three Cheesecake Factories on a college lacrosse trip. I brought a bookmark for the third time. Now, when we say the menu is big, we're not talking about the calorie count on the Bistro Shrimp Pasta. Which is 2 ,290 calories, by the way. We mean that they sell three Korean dishes, seven mushroom dishes, and 10 different types of tacos at the Cheesecake Factory. That is an epicurean range Sasha Baron Cohen can only pull off. Now, we should point out, Cheesecake is the profit puppy at this restaurant. Yeah, because they only make the cheesecake in a central location, and one cake feeds multiple tables.

8:38But the extra-long menu is what gets butts in seats, because the menu is veto-proof. Ah, veto-proof. Jack, why don't you sprinkle in more context? The restaurant that your group ends up at on Friday night is the one that survived all the vetoes. But Cheesecake Factory had something for everyone in those 21 pages, so it's veto-proof. The long menu looks like operational chaos, but consider it really a marketing cost. The result? Cheesecake Factory is ideal for big groups. And big groups splurge on extras. Win the group chat, win the checks. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies at veto-proof Cheesecake Factory?

9:14Could the Cheesecake Factory be a model for U.S. healthcare? We're not kidding here, by the way. No, we're not yet. Harvard Medical School's academic journal actually published that question in 2012, and we dug it up to jump in T-boy style. The article asked this question. Cheesecake Factory has conquered complex logistics and delivers high quality at low cost consistently. Right. Why can't our U.S. healthcare system? So here is how Cheesecake Factory masters the insanely complex operations required of its epic menu. First, they don't do franchises. They centralized control and policies to ensure consistency.

9:46U.S. healthcare? Opposite. Second, they make hard dishes centrally, like the cheesecakes, and make the more simple dishes locally, like the salads. US Healthcare does a little of that, like with special surgical centers, but mostly doesn't. But most impressive at Cheesecake Factory, every dish gets a score between 1 to 10 before it leaves the kitchen and goes to a customer. Yeah, a manager grades every dish. 9 for near perfect, 8 for needs one fix, and 6 for send it back. That's quality control that your stethoscope would ironically kill for. Yeti's Cheesecake Factory created the longest menu in the industry to get your group in the door with no veto.

10:20And the operational acrobatics to pull that off could be a lesson for a broken healthcare system. Yes, chef.

10:29For our second story, Anthropic just acquired a startup with just one employee. Because that one person has a drug that could treat muscular dystrophy. Anthropic needs in-house drug development. Its brand depends on it. AI depends on it. But besties, the story really begins with at professor underscore oak underscore. That's a reference to Professor Oak, which is actually a Pokemon character. Yeah, it is. And Nick, that's just an X account that until Tuesday had remained anonymous for years. Yeah, that X account would post mysteriously analyzing biopharmaceutical industry news, providing smart takes on big drug breakthroughs.

11:10Buy side turned operator. That's the Twitter bio. So this person used to work on Wall Street covering biopharmaceutical stocks. But pause the pod, Jack. Because this unknown mystery man or woman owns a pharmaceutical business now? Yeah, they're an operator. Professor Oak actually announced on Tuesday that for the last 18 months, he was building Mithril Medicine. And then he announced that Anthropic had acquired his startup for an undisclosed price. Mithril. Mithril. Nick, I'm going to sprinkle on some context. because you pose as a Lord of the Rings stan, but we all know. Jack, go full Gandalf on me.

11:44The fellowship is listening. All right, so in Lord of the Rings, Mithril is a magical light metal that's as light as a feather, but as hard as dragon scales. I mean, forgive me if I'm wrong, Jack, but doesn't Bilbo give a Mithril chainmail shirt to Frodo, which he wears throughout the whole trilogy? Am I wrong in that? Can we fact check? Saves him like three or four times. But Mithril Medicine, a startup based just outside Boston, is developing a treatment for a rare form of muscular dystrophy that leaves most children who have it unable to walk. And now Mithril is part of Anthropic. Chobes to IPO in three weeks for a valuation up to$2 trillion.

12:19But yet, here's what Jack and I find fascinating. This is the first confirmed solopreneur we've ever covered on the pod. Because Mithril is just one guy. It's a dude. It turns out at prof underscore oak underscore is a real dude who came out yesterday. His name is Cody Tranbarger. And apparently his LinkedIn is worthy of Lord of the Rings because he's formerly a Goldman Sachs analyst, a Harvard Business School MBA, and now a one-man biopharmaceutical startup that he sold to Anthropic. So how did he pull it off? How do you do it, Jack? Well, this one man managed 11 different labs where workers were conducting his experiments.

12:53And critically, Claude was his right-hand man for all of those experiments. Or more likely, Claude was his entire staff of PhD-level agents, basically his co-worker AI scientists. Add it all up, and this is a solopreneur, a solo corn, if he did sell this one-man business for over a billion bucks. And by elevating this one man with an acquisition, it seems like Anthropic's real goal was to market itself. Exactly, because as Cody said in Tuesday's post, Mithril is just a, quote, single operator and a bunch of clod. And according to Anthropic, this one man and a bunch of clod solopreneur created a novel drug candidate to treat muscular dystrophy.

13:30Or as Todd put it, I developed BS-ABS for LAMA2-CMD and other ECM-related genetic diseases. That's the kind of sentence you can only pull off with a swarm of AI agents writing for you. I'm going to just say that Claude wrote that one, Jack. Oh, in Anthropic, they can now start clinical trials in humans for this treatment as soon as late 2028. If they pull this off, I'll be as sycophantic to Claude as Claude is sycophantic to me. The doctor will see you now and buy your company. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Anthropic? The best way to rebrand AI is to cure cancer. Yeah, Yetis, we're still reading Anthropic's potentially record-setting IPO 326-page paperwork.

14:12And in our light reading, we noticed that Anthropic used the word reputation 103 times. Now, Yetis, you know the vibe looking at the AI industry overall. The reputation is bad, really bad. It's the worst brand in business right now. Fixing that bad reputation, it's not going to happen with cute, cuddly, labubu-style AI chatbots. No, fixing AI's reputation happens by doing what AI has promised, to solve the big problems. Anthropic says its new drug development business will target diseases that the pharma industry has found unprofitable. That sounds awesome. That's what humanity universally wants AI working on.

14:46More curing, less coding. Less doing what human workers are already doing for cheaper, more doing what we haven't done yet. to cure cancer. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash because Apple Card holders earn 2 % daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone.

15:23I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2 % daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. You know what's a fun habit? Getting to hang with you guys every day on this show. It's what we do.

15:53Another fun habit, listening to audiobooks about habits. Like Atomic Habits, the legendary piece about building habits that better your life, right? And the Atomic Habits audiobook is on Audible. We're excited to collab with Audible because it's how we find our road trip companion. The written word, spoken. So besties, you can create a habit of enjoying audiobooks while you multitask. Which I believe is chapter three of Atomic Habits. That's right, Jack. Wash pots and pans, awkwardly fold those fitted bed sheets, floss your teeth while you're winding down listening on Audible. If your hands are full while listening to Audible, then you're doing it right.

16:25So summer's not over. Replace doom scrolling by listening to an audiobook that a human put all their thought and effort into. Audible. It's stories that speak to you. And new members can start listening with a 30-day free trial at audible.com slash tboy. That's a 30-day free trial at audible.com slash tboy. Take it from a couple guys with a lot of habits who have become your habit. For our third and final story, The Golden State Valkyries will try to clinch their first WNBA championship today in Atlanta against the Dream. But the game is this morning at 9.30 a.m. Pacific. Brunch. But Nick and I have a glass half full takeaway.

17:01Innovative move by the Golden State Valkyries. What was it, Jack? The first sports team to use lavender as their color. I mean, perfect timing for Halloween. In only their second year as a franchise, they are now competing in the WNBA finals, the Golden State Valkyries. And even though they're just two seasons old, this is the first WNBA franchise to get a$1 billion valuation. How'd they pull it off, Jack? Well, the same rule as real estate. Location, location, location. You see Besties the Valkyries, which by the way is the name of a Norse goddess, play their home games where the Golden State Warriors play.

17:33The Chase Center, aka Balhalla. Balhalla, the name of Norse heaven. I didn't realize San Francisco had like a Norse background, by the way. The Viking vibes are big in the marina, Jack. And the reason that location is key to the business model is the Valkyries are smack in between the new AI money of San Francisco and the old tech money of the Bay Area. The intersection of rich and rich. Total. The high willingness to pay from the tech elite and the high willingness to advertise to tech companies let the Valkyries generate$100 million in revenue this season. That's two and a half times the average WNBA team.

18:07Holy key is Stokes. What about the Atlanta Dream? Well, they're down three to two. But this Atlanta squad's got spunk neck. They swept your New York Liberty to get to the finals. And we're still feeling it, Jack. But tonight is game six of the WNBA finals. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This morning is game six. Yetis, East Coasters are going to be in line for their sweet green salad when this game tips off in Atlanta. Well, West Coasters will have just woke up. In fact, you may be watching the game on your morning commute right now. And this is a big scheduling mishap. Yeah. Now, to sprinkle on some context.

18:38Last Saturday, the Valkyrie beat the Dream, tying the series at 2-2 and guaranteeing that there would be a Game 6. Ah, but what's the problem with a Game 6 in this series, Jack? State Farm Arena in Atlanta was not available to host Game 6. Oh boy. It was being used by the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA. So on Monday, the WNBA finally announced the new plan. It's a bad plan. Game 6 is at 12.30 a.m. Eastern, 9.30 a.m. Pacific. Unheard of for a championship round. Good news for day drinking, bad news for employed people trying to watch the game. You're going to be at work. Who's taking a vacation day? You're going to be at a one-on-one meeting with your boss.

19:16And so, besties, we know what you are asking. Why can't the Hawks play during the day and let the WNBA Finals have prime time? Well, because the Cavs and the Hawks both had games the night before, so they can't finish at midnight and then fly to Atlanta and then play at noon the next day. That's actually against the NBA's rules. They have to have at least 22 hours off between games. Follow-up question here, Jack. Why can't they just move the game to Friday when State Farm Arena has nothing on the calendar? Because Game 7, if necessary, is on Saturday in San Francisco. So they'd have to reschedule Game 7 if Game 6 was on Friday.

19:49Also, the Warriors used the arena. So like a whole bunch of complicated scheduling problems. The Google calendars, a lot of color on those Google calendars right now. Last question. Why can't they play in State Farm Arena on Saturday and then play Game 7 in San Francisco on Tuesday? Ah, this is the perfect, oh wait, election day. The NBA and WNBA have a policy of no games on election day to encourage people to vote. Add it all up, besties, and all the reporting suggests the NBA and the Atlanta Hawks tried hard to accommodate the women. But playing today, game six at 1230 Eastern, 930 Pacific, is the best of the bad options.

20:27It's a brunch championship and that's what we're rolling with. Now, the biggest question is, why didn't they figure out what to do months ago? Why did they wait until Monday to solve this problem with a pretty bad solution? Well, the Atlanta Dream wrote a letter on Tuesday blaming the WNBA commissioner for the whole debacle. Based on our research, there was a leadership vacuum. Someone had to take control and the commissioner didn't. And that WNBA commissioner already announced her retirement at the end of this season. Instead of proactively handling the scheduling challenge, the WNBA reacted way too late.

20:56And maybe they were crossing their fingers, Jack. Maybe they were hoping for a four-game sweep on this one. Yeah, they were hoping game six wouldn't even happen, and they'd avoid the scheduling mishap altogether. But that's not a good policy, right? Again, you got to check the Google Cal. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the WNBA? Growth problems are ultimately good problems. Yetis, this is frustrating for the teams and for the fans. This is not the conversation anyone in the WNBA wants to be having during the finals right now. But buried beneath the scheduling mishap is an undeniably good sign for the league.

21:29The WNBA sells out NBA arenas. Remember, Besties, just a few years ago, the LA Sparks played playoff games in LBS Financial Credit Union Pyramid. Yeah, that is the home stadium of Long Beach State. In other words, in 2019, the WNBA played second fiddle to a second-tier college team. But today, the WNBA is a different breed of business. 17 ,000 people will watch the game this morning in State Farm Arena. That is a good sign. It shows there's huge demand to watch women's basketball. Sebasties, call this mismanagement a growing pain for a league that has tripled revenue in just six years. It'd be great if there was no problem, Nick.

22:04But growth problems are the best kind of problems. Jack, could you whip out the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? I mean, the new Friday. I apologize. Cheesecake Factory stock hit all-time highs, just as it had become a political football. But Cheesecake's mastery of complex kitchen logistics and the no-vito menu hold lessons for U.S. healthcare. Second, Anthropic acquired a solopreneur, a startup staffed by just one human and a whole bunch of clogs. It's a biopharma startup, because to improve AI's brand, we need less coding, more curing. And our third and final story. The WNBA Finals Game 6 tips off at 9.30 a.m.

22:43Pacific due to a scheduling mishap with the Atlanta arena. But growth problems are good problems. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. Well, we promised you earlier a supersized week of Wall Street. First, the Federal Reserve Bank announced no change to their interest rate policy, which was expected. And we also got yesterday some big earnings from Microsoft and Google after hours. Microsoft stock rose and reported to keep its data center splurging relatively under control. But Google stock fell 11 % after hours on signs their data center splurging is not under control.

23:15Well, next up is Amazon. They report today. We'll find out what they're doing data centers too. Second, Apple had another big product unveil yesterday, but we're not talking about the product unveil. We're talking about Crackgate. Yeah, Crackgate, because the big event was to unveil a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen, which they did. But the early iPhone duos out there, they keep on cracking. There's tons of pictures online of these$2 ,000 cracked phones, and they've gone viral. Foldable iPhones are cracking. Could Apple be forced to act like Acura and initiate a recall? And finally, if you want to apply to a top American business school, this is the year to do it.

23:49Oh, totally. We just got the numbers. MBA applications have dropped 27 % because of fewer international students this year. Personally, business school was my most international experience. I had buddies from South Korea, from Nigeria, from Egypt, from France, from Middle Earth. Are you going to do Lord of the Rings references on us next year? By the way, Besties, in the meantime, if you weren't going to apply to business school, Sweetgreen just said they're paying store managers$200 ,000 a year. Nick, that was one of the more elvish things you've said today. You know I'm fluent. You know I'm fluent.

24:20Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Caroline in lovely Los Angeles. Earlier this week, we did a football best fact yet about games getting longer. The average NFL game has lasted three hours and 11 minutes this season. But Caroline points out that movies are getting longer too. Get this, Stephen Follows ran the data on 36 ,431 films out there. For the last 50 years, the average movie length was 103 minutes. Okay, but since the pandemic, the length of theatrical releases is now at 114 minutes. Even though, according to survey results, the average American prefers a movie to be just 90 minutes.

24:54Full disclosure, this is Nick, and when Jack and I watched The Odyssey together, I had to take a bathroom break, it was getting so long. Although Christopher Nolan is very much an outlier in the film industry. Yet easy. You looked fantastic for the new Friday. Jack, you are glowing over there in what appears to be very nice corduroy, I should point out. Yes, and I'll be wearing warm clothing in Seattle. We are six days away from our live show. Corduroy's warm. That is a bridging to a topic we wanted to hit at a professional level I deeply admire, Jack. That is a pro move right there. You got to snag some tickets.

25:26We got links to our Seattle show in our episode description. It's our last show of the year. Go to tboypod.com or click the link in the episode description if you know. you know.

25:39And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yeti, Juan Barrows from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania listens to the whole episode, every episode since the Snacks era. Thank you, Juan. And happy birthday to Jamie Bailey of Portland, Oregon. Hopefully, more karaoke this year, right? Tommy Sonali, the best sales duo with another joint birthday celebrating the big one down in Austin. Happy birthday to Grady Kripka turning one year old in Costa Mesa, California. And Marjay Smiles II Turn in one as well down in Michigan. Another business school buddy of mine. The father of Marjays. Marjays Miles the first.

26:10Marjays Miles one. We love you too, buddy. And happy 12th birthday to Christina Ibarra. Turn in 12 on the 29th in Minneapolis. And finally, a shout out to Daniel Paul down in Denver again. He gave us a correction that the McRib is not being served at all locations this year. But there is a tracker at McRibLocator.com. And to anyone else who's celebrating something today, make it a team. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack, I own stock of Amazon, and Nick and I both own stock of Chipotle. Yetis, this holiday season, don't miss your chance to turn just looking into just bought it. Make it easy for your customers to say yes on the spot.

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