🛍️ “Neverlane” — Shein buys Everlane. Sama beats Elon. Mr Wonderful’s data center. +Crypto Etiquette Training

0:28This is Nick. Like if the Fed had a mascot, what would be its animal mascot, Jack? Pretty sure the bald eagle is all of the Fed's mascots. It's a trick question, Jack. We all know it's a liger. Jack, three fantastic stories for today's pod. What do we got on the T-boy? For our first story, the billionaire beef lawsuit between Elon Musk and Sam Altman just ended, and we have a winner. Elon lost on a technicality, but everyone really lost. Jack and I will share our verdict. For our second story, Eberlane, the most transparent clothing company ever, just sold to Shein, the least transparent clothing company ever.

1:00Sad moment for the millennial DTC business model. Good moment for brand washing. And our third and final story, 70 % of the world's internet goes through Data Center Alley. Data Center Alley. So NextEra is buying all of it for the fourth biggest deal in history. And one Shark Tank star wants in too. And for that reason, we're out. Actually, we're in. But yet, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. I mean, what a mix of stories. Love the mix, Jack. Welcome to etiquette school. Class is now in session. But besties, this etiquette school ain't for 16th century Elizabethan ladies. This one is for 21st century tech bros.

1:36Because get this, the venture capital firm Slow Ventures just wrote a modern etiquette handbook. For their coders who only type, don't talk, you know the type. And they've sold nearly a thousand copies in just their first month. So voila, now they're hosting four-hour courtesy classes to teach techies about manners. To train crypto bros how to be polite. It's basically a finishing school for founders to stop offending people. There's actually a session on wine pairings. Because Monster Energy is not the most social drink. There's a session on wardrobe pairings too. Because hoodies and sandals aren't the kind of business casual we're talking about.

2:08And how much cologne is too much cologne? Again, Jack, trick question. If you have to ask, that's a C grade. Here's the situation. A bunch of crypto and tech bros sold their company and they want to join civilized society with all that money. So now they're going full Jane Austen on their assets. But the techie etiquette class actually goes much deeper than just how to host a proper party. Just about caviar classes, it's how to engage, how to compliment, how to read a room. And those skills apply to all of us in the age of AI. Soft skills, to quote Mugatu, so hot right now. Because deals don't get done on the blockchain.

2:41No, deals are won on the pickleball court. By someone really good at remembering names. And who knows how to properly pronounce pet nut. To be clear, Nick's only 60 % sure he just pronounced that correctly. I saw the winery this week and I'm actually 0 % sure. Jack, let's get on three stories. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea that caused 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, because we're ready to go.

3:16We can't wait no more, so just start the show.

3:22Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

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4:25Solo corn. So if your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get your free business guide to mystifying AI at netsuite.com slash tboy. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash tboy. Netsuite.com slash tboy. Monarch. All right, Yetis, you're never going to be able to guess how many accounts Jack has linked to Monarch. 31. Are there even that many financial products out there? Yetis, he's got credit cards, checking accounts, brokerage accounts, retirement accounts. 529 college savings accounts for each kid and my nieces and nephews, Nick. Okay, I'm rounding up. Does that get us to 31?

4:57Where are we? Don't forget my mortgage, my house, the car I own. They're all linked and all their values in Monarch. You see, besties, Jack actually linked everything to Monarch one year ago during a little bit of spring cleaning. Until I used Monarch, I had a very messy, very chaotic spreadsheet, but now they're clean, synced, and automatic. Basically, Jack went full Marie Kondo on his finances and he did it with Monarch, which can do your financial spring cleaning for you. One dashboard that gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins. Just logins, investments, property, and more all in one place.

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5:46For our first story, Elon Musk lost his court battle against Sam Alban because the court doesn't run on an algorithm. It runs on rules. But we reached our own verdict. A better one, I would say. Yetis, the most viral trial of the year. Only took three weeks long. We already just finished it. Nick, call Dick Wolf and turn this into a Law & Order spinoff. Oh yeah, Billionaire Beef, the new show on CBS. TNT, my bad. Yetis, on Monday, after just 90 minutes of deliberation, A nine-person jury reached this unanimous verdict. Elon loses, but the reason, Jack? Elon's hate lawsuit against Sam Altman was simply filed too late.

6:24There's a three-year statute of limitations. Elon lost because of a calendar mistake, is what we're saying. Elon's complaint dates back to 2018, but that means the deadline was in 2021. But he filed the lawsuit in 2024. Ipso facto add it all up, and the calendar confusion basically meant he lost. The jury didn't say Elon was wrong, and the jury didn't say Sam was right. They simply said Elon was too late in filing this lawsuit, so we're not going to decide one way or the other. Basically, Elon, if you felt so strongly that you'd been wronged, you should have just filed a little bit earlier. Now, Elon is appealing, so it's possible we waste even more time and money on this tech bro catfight.

6:59Meow, Jack. Unsatisfying result, but Jack and I whipped out the paws and came up with our own verdict on the case. Yeah, it is. Nick and I followed this case closely, and this was Elon Musk's legal strategy. Here it is. tried to defy the rules of law with the rules of social media. While on the stand under oath, Elon described his vision for artificial intelligence. Peaceful, adventurous, nerdy, if you will. He said he was building an AI that would be like the AI in the movie Star Trek. Honestly, we're too young for Star Trek, so we were thinking Iron Man, Jarvis, but you know, help the good guys win.

7:32That's what he's going for. The alternative, Elon said, from the stand, was Skynet from Terminator. An evil AI that dominates and destroys humanity. Elon cast himself as the hero, fighting to prevent that Terminator future. Implying that anyone who sides against him is siding for an evil Terminator future. And then Elon said in very Elonian fashion, if you've seen the movie, it's not a good situation. You can see where the business beef lawsuit's going. Because the judges said over and over that he can't say that. Elon, this is a courtroom. This isn't some kind of a movie drinking game. The judge said, this isn't a case about the end of the world, this is a case about the facts.

8:10But Elon's team kept saying it over and over, making this Terminator versus Star Trek analogy. Elon's team wanted to change the question the jury was being asked to answer. If you want to save the world, side with Elon. If you want the bad guys to win, side with Sam Altman. Besties on X, Elon tweets wild stuff. His followers retweet it, his message wins the algorithm, and shows up at the top of everyone's feed. He basically tried the same strategy in court. and we actually thought it might work. We thought the jury would buy it, but they didn't. The jury ignored that Hollywood analogy and focused on the facts and the rules of the laws like the judge and our court told them to.

8:46Add it all up and brute algorithmic force works for Elon on X, but not with a jury of his peers in an Oakland courthouse. Although let's be honest, I don't think there's a peer of Elon Musk on this entire planet. In fact, the closest peer he has is actually Sam Altman, the guy on the other table. Jack, you know what that sounds like? A moment for that law and order ding. Cat fight. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the billionaire beef lawsuit? Our verdict? That the most infamous things said about Sam and Elon are both true. Yeti's, Elon's team showed witnesses and evidence of six former colleagues and business associates who basically said Sam Altman was a liar.

9:26Funny, Nick, because what was the reason that Opening Eyes board gave back in November of 2023 for suddenly firing Sam Altman? Jack, I believe the exact quote was, Sam Altman was not consistently candid in his communications. That's another way of saying he's a liar. So after this bruising three-week court case, there's a lot of evidence proving that to be true about Sam Altman. But Nick, what's the most infamous thing ever said about Elon Musk? Well, Jack, that was said by Sam Altman a couple years ago. That quote, Elon desperately wants the world to be saved, but only if he can be the one to save it.

9:56The evidence in this case showed that Elon was actually on board with the for-profit switcheroo of open AI that he now claims to be opposed to, but he was only on board if he would be named CEO. That's the core catfight drama. Once Sam was picked as CEO, not Elon, Elon quit and eventually sued. He desperately wants the world to be saved, but only if he can be the one to save it. Basties, this lawsuit, it could have ended in three minutes, not three weeks, because that whole calendar situation, Elon can't sue because he filed too late. But since the lawsuit did happen, we learned that the most damning things ever said about Elon and Sam are both true.

10:31Technically, Elon lost, but in reality, they both lost. For our second story, Everlane, the world's most transparent fashion brand, just got acquired by Shein, the world's least transparent fashion brand. We call the concept brand washing. And we'll tell you all about it. But Yetis, let's pause the pod for a sec. Jack, we are living in a millennial cringe moment for our millennial brands, are we not? BuzzFeed was bought for pennies. Lululemon's down 75%. And Casper? I don't even know if they're still a company anymore. No, it's like they're a ghost of themselves. Albert's so desperate, they're calling themselves an AI company right now.

11:09The latest to the list is Everlane. The ultimate millennial wardrobe staple has been tossed in the laundry chute. Everlane, it's like the Gap and Zara had a baby who studied business ethics over at Westland. Everlane, it's Patagonia, but it adds nutritional labels to the tag that the government didn't even ask them to put there. Oh, what the heck? I got one more, Jack. Everlane khakis are the kind of khaki that would tip 30 % on a restaurant bill if you went out to brunch with them. Yeah, they pack in like a health insurance subsidy. Totally. You see, besties, Everlane was founded in 2011, raised 65 million in venture capital money 2016, was doing 200 million sales by 2020.

11:46And they got bought by just over a half a billion dollars by private equity after that. Everlane, they told us to reject fast fashion and instead buy quality clothes and hang on to them for your dear lives. We millennials listened until we stopped listening, apparently. Because here's the wild news. San Francisco's Everlane was reportedly just acquired by China's Shein. And how about the wilder news, Jack? Shein bought Everlane off the sale rack. $100 million was the price tag, which is down 80 % from Everlane's peak valuation. Ironic. It's like Shein bought Everlane at a Shein price. But here's the wildest part.

12:19Everlane is the anti-Shein. It's being acquired by its arch nemesis. Because yet he's, have you ever heard of the term radical transparency? I think it's a Netflix thing. You tell someone what you really think about their work product with no filter. No filter. Well, Everlane applied that concept to clothes. They basically stuck their whole supply chain on the receipt. They listed the Chinese factory where your shirt was manufactured. Nike would never do that. Oh, Nike would never. For example, Jack, let's look at Everlane's cotton heather v-neck shirt. Very nice fit, very nice cloth. They clarified that the cotton for this shirt cost$4.28.

12:54The labor to produce this shirt was $4.65, and the transit to get it across the ocean to you was$0.20. It's all on the label, and the retail price we'd all pay at the store, Jack? $18. So they marked it up 2x from the costs, giving themselves a 51 % profit margin. And why would they just tell you the secret sauce behind all their financial numbers, man? Telling a customer that we marked this up by double what it cost us to make? That's the kind of thing most companies keep a secret. Here was Everlane's bold bet. Loyalty in transparency. Everlane figured if they're honest with us, we'll appreciate that honesty and we'll commit to them.

13:28Honest pricing is a competitive advantage. Maybe then, maybe, just maybe, you'll start to question those$80 J.Crew corduroys. What are you hiding, J.Crew? What are you hiding? Everlane's telling me how much their cost of materials was. What about you? What's in those spreadsheets, Mickey Drexler? 15 years ago, Everlane's core concept flipped the fashion industry more than Derek Zoolander. Because Everlane shared publicly what the rest of the industry considered an ugly secret. But today, 15 years later, they just sold for 80 % off to a Chinese fast fashion business. And Everlane's doing it from a position of weakness.

13:59Sales haven't grown in years. They probably hate that they have to sell the Shein, but it's their best offer and they have a fiduciary duty. Kind of like the baggy khakis that you have to wear now because everyone's doing it, but even though you know Slim Fit's coming back. Not sure that's how I'd describe fiduciary duty. Besties, all birds, it stood for sustainability. Everlane, it stood for accountability. But it turns out both, we millennial consumers, were more talk for than action. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Shein and Everlane? This is brand washing. Yetis, Shein, they're the opposite in every way of Everlane.

14:34They're not transparent. They're totally opaque. Everlane published videos, pictures, names of the factories their stuff was produced and vetted those factories for standards. Yeah, Shein doesn't publish its factories and they've been exposed a bunch of times for bad conditions in their factories. And yet Shein is reportedly doing$40 billion in annual revenue, which is 200 times more than Everlane. Why buy a company that's only 0.5 % of your sales? Well, they're not buying Everlane for profits, they're buying them for the brand. Everlane's ethical image has value, and now Shein hopes to get a halo effect from that.

15:05The optimistic take here, Shein can learn from Everlane, improve transparency, become a better for the world company. The more realistic take, though? This is brand washing. Buying a company so that its positive brand rubs off on you. Bestie, Sheehan isn't embracing radical transparency like Everlane, but they hope that you hope that they will. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Upwork. Yet he's scaling a business fast, requires the right people at the right time, including at Superhero Inc. Can we talk about how good Batman was at delegating, Nick? I mean, Jack, Robin was basically his chief of staff.

15:41Lucius was handling the R &D. And Alfred? He made sure the pasta was cooked al dente when they got home from fighting the bad guys. Yeah, that is the art of delegating. And Batman must have been using Upwork to pull it off. Because hiring is slow. Upworking freelancers is fast. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across software development, data analytics, marketing, and biz ops. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required.

16:14No one talks about this at the superhero sales conference. So true. But Batman was probably an Upwork power user. So besties, visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow right now. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. 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, 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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17:23That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

17:33for our third and final story mr wonderful from shark tank and the fourth biggest merger of all time oh yet he's both are happening because of data centers but we need to talk about the data center mirage it's the big short of the ai era before we tell you about that yet he's pretty cool resume here kevin o 'leary the self-proclaimed mr wonderful he got famous on shark tank he also recently had a cameo as a vampire entrepreneur, no joke, in the ping pong movie Marty Supreme. You can't write that kind of a role unless you're Mr. Wonderful Besties. But yet he apparently didn't see the university commencement speeches over the weekend, did he, Nick?

18:10Because not even a real housewife of Utah wants an AI data center in her backyard right now, Jack. But still, undeterred, the Shark Tank King Kevin O 'Leary announced he wants to build a 9 gigawatt data center on 40 ,000 acres of Utah land. Jack, nine gigawatts. I mean, that huge data center could put like, I don't know, give or take all of Utah out of work. The data center will cost$100 billion or more, and it will be powered by burning natural gas from a local Utah pipeline. Basties, this requires local approval, and given the incredible AI hate wave going on right now, might not actually get it.

18:46And for that reason, Utah's out. But yeties, let's not talk about future data centers, guess where 70 % of the world's compute is happening right now? And yes, we said world. 70 % of the world. 70 % of the world's compute is happening in Virginia. Virginia! It's happening in Virginia. Maryland does crab cakes. Virginia does data centers. And that's where headline number two happened yesterday. Next era, a Florida power company is buying Dominion, which is based in Virginia, for$124 billion in academia and debt. We're going to need a new bumper sticker. Virginia isn't for lovers. It's for data centers.

19:22And if approved, this would be the fourth biggest merger of all time. And it's all about data centers. You see what the UVA men's lacrosse team is wearing in the NCAA tournament, Jack? Data centers. They got data centers on their helmets. I'm not making it up. So yet he's, why does NextEra want Dominion so bad? It's because data center alley is in Virginia. Data center alley. Ever heard of it? Well, way before AI came around, back in 2011, Derek Thompson dubbed the area around Dulles Airport, the Silicon Valley of the East. Why? Interesting story. AOL was once the king of the internet, and they set up their headquarters just outside Washington, D.C., near Dulles International Airport.

19:58And in the pre-AI era, Virginia attracted data centers to compute plain old-fashioned internet, and they did it with tax incentives. So today, the state says that 70 % of the world's data compute happens there, and there are transatlantic cables that originate in Virginia. Sit down, stand up, and compute this again. Seven out of ten taps, slacks, and DMs is processed through a Virginian data center. Now, that number is almost certainly wrong and outdated, but Virginia leaders love touting that number anyway. And Jack, the reason there's actually truth to that wild stat? It's because the vast majority of the data centers that power the internet through the cloud today were built way before AI.

20:34So NextEra, in this fourth biggest deal in history, says that after they acquire Dominion, they'll have 130 gigawatts of data centers in the deal pipeline. But actually building those data centers could take forever or may never happen because of our takeaway. So Jack, what is the wonderful takeaway for our buddies wondering about energy? The new version of the big short, it's the AI infrastructure mirage. Yetis, the dirty secret of this economy is that you can't build a data center nearly fast enough to keep up with AI. That is the bottleneck. Tech critic Ed Zitron believes that the entire AI data center buildout is a smoke and mirrors operation.

21:13For like example, Jack, what about Elon's Colossus in Tennessee, which is the biggest data center in the world with two gigawatts of energy? Only phase one of Colossus has actually been built. Good point. And only part of it is operational. So what Colossus is today is 15 % as big as that advertised two gigawatt size. This is the Mirage thesis besties, that we're being distracted by commitments and total size, but not what's built and operational today. And that hides a bottleneck. Yep. According to this tech critic, two-thirds of NVIDIA's new chips are just unused in a warehouse, waiting for a data center to be installed into.

21:49Now, Mr. Wonderful and NextEra want to build a combined 139 gigawatts of data centers. That's huge. It's so huge, it would require one-third of the electricity the country currently consumes. And SpaceX, Cowboy Space, and others want to build data centers up in space. Wild, but that's years away. So our AI economic bull case is built on a belief that we can build data centers to match the AI demand. But the big short bet of today is that that's all a mirage. Now we're building them way slower than we're announcing them. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? Elon Musk lost the billionaire beef lawsuit that he's been fighting for two years because he filed three years too late.

22:29But we also learned the most damning things said about Elon and Sam are both true. For our second story, Everlane has sold to Shein for 80 % off, according to Puck News. A transparent but poor brand selling to a rich but opaque one? Looks like brand washing. And finally, Mr. Wonderful, NextEra, and Dominion all claim that they're building huge data centers. But Ed Zitron says that's a mirage. It's the big short of the AI era. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, NVIDIA earnings are coming out Wednesday after the market closes. Start tailgating, because this is the first time ever a company worth almost$6 trillion is going to report their earnings.

23:07But that's not all. On Wednesday, we're also expected to get SpaceX's IPO paperwork for us all to see a couple weeks early. Save the date. June 12th is when SpaceX is expected to start trading on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. Second, it's not just you. Everyone is confused by Spotify's new logo. What is this logo on my home screen? It's green, which is Spotify's main color, but is that a turtle? with like shimmery glitter on its back. It looks like a turtle that needs to see a vet, Jack. It's a green disco ball though, and it's meant to celebrate Spotify's 20th birthday. But instead of celebrating, Spotify's social team spent the entire birthday commenting that this is not a permanent logo.

23:46Sorry, the normal logo is coming back soon. So they've reversed course. They're bringing back the logo early. You know, it's my party. I can cry if I want to. Finally, we're flying to Los Angeles in two weeks, not just for a live show in LA, but also for James Bond. Bond, James Bond. because Amazon just kicked off auditions for who will be the next 007. Because remember, Amazon acquired the James Bond franchise from the family that owns it. So they get to say, Bezos gets to say who's the next Bond. And personally got a financial interest here because I've been collecting first edition mint condition James Bond books for the last few years.

24:20I got a lot riding on this pick, Jack. How many original books are there? All right, I've got five of the 11 right now. I got the like easier ones. It's gonna take a lifetime. It's gonna take a lifetime. And then you're going to leave them to me in your will. If I told you, Jack, I'd have to kill you. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one, an answer to our T-boy insider trivia sent in by a Lucas Schneider from lovely Valencia, Spain. What was the first publicly traded company of all time? We got a lot of great guesses in the comments yesterday from you. What was the first stock traded on the market?

24:49You know, some people thought PG &E, Lloyd's of London, Bank of New York, Kellogg was one of the guesses. Here's the answer. The Dutch East India Trading Company. They IPO'd back in 1602, right before we could jump in T-boy style to that S1. Before 1602, the large trading voyages were the investing opportunity that were making people rich. Like you bring back some nutmeg from the East Indies, those spices were profit puppies. But only the elites got the invite on that sweet exploration investment deal until this IPO. Then in 1602, basically anyone with a Robinhood account could buy stock in the Dutch East India Trading Company, Jack.

25:22Jack. Yetis, you look fantastic over there. Jack, you are glowing. We got one request before we head out. If you got a question you want us to ask the president of the Federal Reserve, let us know. Drop a question in the comments. We could ask the Fed Prez what you're thinking. Just don't ask him where the uninflated eggs are stored because he's not going to tell you.

25:48And before we go, a happy 12th birthday to legendary Eddie Max Fernald on the way to school with his dad in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. He wants a Midwest live show. Max, next for being a bestie. Happy birthday to Morgan McQueen in San Francisco. And Braden Boyd, enjoy the birthday down in Utah. Happy birthday to Miranda Aspa in Coeur d 'Alene, Idaho. And Captain John Demo, we see your birthday celebrated in North Carolina. And happy birthday to Marky, the turkey, who's celebrating with a big dinner in the East Village. And Lance P's commuting in from Nassau County, Long Island. Have a fun birthday, Lance.

26:18Happy anniversary to Patrick and Christina Gilday in Washington, D.C., who have been t-boying together for years. And Heath and Roe Lasher, we see your two-year wedding anniversary. Congratulations, guys. Congrats on the new job to Kevin Draw, who's working hard, playing harder in Frisco, Texas. And a special shout-out to Carter in Ashburn. a huge fan of the best idea yet, sent us the best video yet. Carter, we'd love to get you season two. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins.

26:48This is Jack. I'm on stock of Amazon, Nick on stock in Lululemon and Nike, and we both on stock in Spotify and Robinhood as well as some Bitcoin.

27:00Today, we're talking about how you don't have to earn more when you can save more. Okay, so you brought me this stat. T-Mobile customers had the lowest wireless bills versus Verizon and AT &T over the past five years. That seems surprising. Surprising, but true. Which honestly is what people need right now. Affordable wireless service isn't a perk. It's a difference. Based on HarrisX billing snapshots from Q321 and Q425 compared to average AT &T and Verizon bills. Comparison excludes discounts, credits, and optional charges. For more details, see HarrisX.com slash T-Mobile dash bills.