🍌 “Ripe $$$” — Instacart’s banana strategy. Bitcoin’s Ice Age. Kindred’s Airbnb swap. +SF Super Bowl conspiracy

0:29This is Nick. This is Jack. Banana. For our second story, one Airbnb home sharing rival, Kindred, just raised$125 million of venture capital. Okay, but there's one wild twist. If you want to book a home, you have to share your home. For our third and final story, the stock markets are at all-time highs, but there are three major potholes in your portfolio. So Jack and I will explain why software, silver, and so much crypto are dropping big right now. But yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. I mean, what a mix. love the mix, Jack. The Super Bowl this year is just outside San Francisco, which happens to be the techiest Super Bowl ever.

1:06Yeah, the NFL actually took over our podcast studio in the Ferry Building, so I couldn't even record from there today. But there's one wild big tech conspiracy theory that merges football with Facebook. Here's the question. Are the San Francisco 49ers getting injured because of Silicon Valley data centers? Here's the evidence. 12 years ago, the 49ers moved south to Levi's Stadium right near San Jose. And that newish stadium also happens to be next to a newish electrical station. And recent data shows a higher magnetic field around the football field as a result of that electrical substation. Pause the project because also in the last year, the 49ers football team has had the most injuries in the NFL.

1:45Coincidence? I don't think so. If you had George Kittle on your fantasy team this year, then you know this is a conspiracy. I mean, whip out the whiteboard, the lineman tore his ACL, a defensive end broke his ankle, and QB Brock Purdy crushed a toe last month. There's hard data to back this up. The 49ers have had twice as many Achilles injuries as the NFL average since moving into their new stadium. In fact, the Niners have been a top five most injured team 10 of the last 11 seasons they're in the new stadium. So back to the conspiracy. This stadium is in the heart of Silicon Valley during the AI boom.

2:16Jack, maybe the AI is causing injuries? They've always warned the AI could turn against us. I didn't realize they'd go for tight ends first. It's a fair question. is record-breaking AI demand also breaking ankles on the football field. Yeah, going from the AI to the IR. Hey, Niners, you can blame your last loss on ChatGPT. For the Super Bowl, maybe they should unplug that station and don't plug it back in. Hey, Sam Altman, we know you're a Bears fan, man. Jack, let's hit our three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in a dorm that had an idea to cause a cultural storm.

2:51It'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.

3:10Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

3:19So yeah, he's Jack's instituted a new business model for his Airbnb hosting. And Jack, Jack, what is it? Here it is. Host equals guest. Yes. I funnel all my revenue from being a host on Airbnb into one bank account and use that same bank account to book travel for myself. Basically, it's Jack's host guest bank account for when he hosts and when he's a guest somewhere else. When I lived in the city neck, every time my apartment was available on Airbnb, it would get booked like that. I mean, think about how often are you away from home? You got the bridesmaid, you got the shower, you got the bachelorette, you got the wedding.

3:50That's three weekends away just for one wedding right there. Plus, you got to visit your mother. Naturally. Well, that's a lot of potential hosting that you could be doing on Airbnb. Let someone else stay at your place while you're away. Take that host money and spend it when you're a guest somewhere else. Have a business model like me. If you want to travel more, hosting more is a great way to make it happen financially. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Top hats, baseball hats, Von Dutch hats. We wear so many hats on this podcast, honestly, we're not great at all of them.

4:20No, 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. Because sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95 % more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So besties spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes, less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

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5:16For our first story, the one Super Bowl ad everyone is going to be talking about is Instacart. Because Instacart realized that one product, the humble banana, is the key to winning its entire industry. Now, Yadis, earlier this week, we did a whole story on the anatomy of a Super Bowl ad, and we actually got tagged in like a bunch of LinkedIn posts about that one, Jack. A lot of people loved it. Because NBC charges$10 million for those 30 seconds, but the real cost to the brand is more like$30 million. And Besties, the most hyped Super Bowl commercial before this year's big game, well, it involves Benson Boone, Ben Stiller, and a banana.

5:51You see, brands like to post their Super Bowl commercial a week early these days to drive hype and make sure nothing's wrong with it that they didn't expect. They're checking the comments section during the week, making sure they're not getting canceled by the time the Super Bowl runs around. They're like, oh shoot, we should probably pull it from the Super Bowl because we didn't realize we offended those people. So these early Super Bowl ads have been preheating before the game, and this one from Instacart already racked up 3 million views on YouTube. Ben Stiller and Benson Boone are an 80s Europe dancing brotherly duo.

6:19And Ben Stiller is jealous of his younger Benson Boone's moves and vocals. They argue, they fight, they fall, and the whole thing basically goes bananas. Ben Stiller attempts multiple backflips. But pause the pod, Jack. I'm sorry, is that not the key? Because you want to share the trivia? You want to share the trivia with the Eddies? Well, guess what's the most ordered thing on Instacart? It's bananas. In fact, Instacart delivered 1.8 billion bananas last year, by far their most popular product. But bananas are also their most controversial product. Because when we dove in T-boy style to the numbers, turns out Instacart customers have left 32 million notes on what kind of bananas they prefer.

6:55When it comes to a banana order, we're all micromanagers apparently. Like, uh, I'm having oatmeal tomorrow, so please only get us yellow bananas. I need to eat them now. Or you'll type into the Instacart, I'm traveling this weekend. Please grab me the greenest bananas on the shelf. All right, Jack, you know my famous banana bread. You know, if I'm making banana bread, I got to have those brown, mushy, disgusting, sugary, sweet bananas. So the banana is the hero product of Instacart. You didn't realize it. But ripeness for customers, that's a ritual. Because here's what we find fascinating. It's not just Instacart and it's not just bananas.

7:26Turns out food preferences are the biggest friction point in grocery delivery. If you check out Reddit right now, you'll find a number of conspiracy theories actually, that grocery stores are intentionally kind of screwing delivery customers with the ripeness situation. Actually, the strategy kind of makes sense if you're a grocery store, that, you know, stores would use delivery orders to offload unpopular items that are not selling because you can't return them. And you've probably had this frustration when you've gotten groceries delivered before. Yeah, you got a grocery delivery with nearly expired milk or a bad cut of salmon or my personal pet peeve not a big fan of, the avocados as hard and as dark as a grenade.

8:02That's the grocery store foisting the product that in-person shoppers won't buy. And you should know this, besties, but Jack has had a drama with a bad chicken breast delivery that you still haven't recovered from. I ordered a whole chicken, which was 10 pounds, for like$30. You see what I'm talking about? Anyway, besties, that is why Instacart has built an entire feature around this banana snobbery pain point. It's called the produce picker. You can now choose your banana preferences with one tap of the button as you're ordering. Yellow, green, or brown, and that is what the Super Bowl ad is really getting at.

8:34That's why they hired Ben Stiller and told him to do backflips. Because interestingly, it turns out bananas, like diapers, are an anchor product. Whoever wins your banana order is going to win your whole shopping cart. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Instacart? The best way to grow is to retain. Yetis, here's the real surprise about this Super Bowl ad involving banana ripeness preferences. They're not speaking to potential Instacart customers in the commercial, as much as they're speaking to existing customers. This begs the question, like, why drop 10 million bucks on an ad for customers you already have the business of?

9:09Here's why, Nick. You can't scale a leaky boat. Exactly. The cheapest customer to win is the one you already have. You see, acquiring customers, that gets the headlines. But retaining them, that pays the bills. That's why Instacart is perfecting the humble 30-cent banana order, because the best way to grow is to retain. For our second story, Kindred is a home-swapping concept. It's the movie The Holiday, but scaled Silicon Valley style. And they just raised$125 million to build what's basically the hinge dating app, but for home-swapping. Oh, but yeah, if we're going to tell the story, let's start with our favorite musical icon, the one, the only, Hans Zimmer, Jack.

9:50Boom! Yeah, it's known for his heavy-hitting sound effects that basically shake your living room and your entire neighborhood. Your subwoofer has never been the same. Well, the legendary musician Hans Zimmer also did the original score for The Holiday, a lovely Christmas rom-com. And what Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet do in The Holiday, that's the business model of the subject of this story, Kindred. Exactly, because Kindred has signed up 300 ,000 humans for home swapping. Oh, that's a fraction of Airbnb, but wait till you hear the details. Every guest on Kindred must also be a host. It's a swap situation.

10:26And that's why this business is like this movie. Cameron Diaz let Kate Winslet stay at her Los Angeles house, but then Cameron Diaz got to stay in Kate Winslet's Cotswolds Cottage. So no cash is exchanged, just keys are exchanged. and you book a stay with credits, but you only get the credits once you start hosting your own house. The only money that does get exchanged is the cleaning fee and the service fee, which both go to Kindred. Which leads to the news. Kindred just raised$125 million to scale their business into social networks. What Nick and I found fascinating about the business model is that Kindred handles risk totally different than Airbnb and Vrbo do.

11:02And that tells us everything. You know, because home swapping, it's different than short-term rentals like Airbnb and Vrbo, right, Jack? Same business, but different business model. But in each case, Nick, as a host myself, I can tell you, you want to have some security in case the guest causes some damage. For Airbnb and Vrbo, those platforms offer the host a million dollars of insurance in case anything goes wrong because so much could go wrong. It lets the host rest easy. Kindred, on the other hand, offers just $100 ,000 of insurance. So pause the pod, Jack. How are you getting way less insurance using Kindred?

11:35What does that signal to us about the product? It signals that there's trust on the Kindred platform because accountability is actually built into the business model. Yeah, Yetis, think about this. Like, since the guests are also hosts, they're more likely to follow the golden rule. Like, thou shalt not party the way you don't want partying done unto you. Yeah, I think that's what's in the 10 Commandments, Jack, actually. Thou shalt not throw a rager if rager shall not be thrown onto your apartment. Plus, the guests must meet the host over a video call before confirming the booking. So like, you can't be anonymous.

12:11But the ultimate way to instill trust in a home renting, home swapping situation? Well, Jack, that would be if you actually know the person who is staying at your place. And that's what Kindred is building next with all this VC money. That's right. They're building a hinge dating app, but for home swapping. They're building a feature to let you create a group of friends for a private home swapping network. Maybe it's for your friends. Maybe it's alums of your college. or maybe it's Taylor Swift fans only. That could be the network. Kindred thinks that if you have a key thing in common with the other people in the house swapping network, you'll be more comfortable swapping houses with them.

12:45Jack, although full disclosure, I don't think I can do a home swapping situation. I need my stuff where my stuff is. I know that about you. One sec, one sec. I think someone just moved the remote and my coffee table booked. I'm sorry. All right, so Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Kindred? Loose ties are like economic lubricant. That is, there's nothing like a referral. Like someone who vouches for someone else helps you bridge the trust gap. Referrals. They're how you find a contractor, a babysitter, a lawyer, or a new analyst that you just hired on your team. Entire businesses are being built to facilitate referrals and foster connections based on them.

13:19Country clubs have long required a referral to become a member. Jack, I see you know Bill Lumberg at Intercheck on LinkedIn. Can you introduce? There you go. That's a referral request that happens all the time. All right, Jack, what about Hinge years ago? Remember how Hinge, the dating app, started? It launched with a friends of friends model. You could only swipe people who you have common Facebook friends with. Well, now Kindred's launching a social network, but for house swapping. Now, there is a risk to that. There is. Facebook could launch this feature. In fact, somehow I got added to a house swapping Facebook group.

13:48I'm still in it and still get notifications all the time. But still, Kindred reveals a reality. A lack of trust can be an economic killer because transactions that could happen don't happen. Referrals can bridge that trust gap. That's why loose ties are like economic lubricant. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Monarch. When I had student debt, I tracked my progress on an Excel spreadsheet I manually updated each month. Oh, I was Jack a spreadsheet jockey because when he was paying off his student debt, Monarch didn't exist yet. Well, one year ago, I proudly killed that spreadsheet I'd been building for 12 years.

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15:27If your AI tool doesn't know anything about your biz, then it's not going to be the best one yet. That's why we're pumped to promote NetSuite by Oracle. It's helping over 43 ,000 businesses figure out how AI can work for them. NetSuite is actually the number one cloud ERP connected to your entire enterprise. It has your data on financials, HR, inventory, commerce, and CRM. To be honest, it's probably going to have to sprinkle on context about your business to you. It's that intelligent. That connected data is what makes your AI smarter, so it doesn't just guess, it knows. This isn't another bolted-on tool.

15:57It's AI built into the system that runs your business. So whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get your free business guide, Demystifying AI, at netsuite.com slash tboy. The guide is free to use at netsuite.com slash tboy. Netsuite.com slash tboy. For our third and final story, the three giant potholes in your portfolio. Bitcoin is down 42%. Software stocks are down 32%. Silver is down 27%. We know why software and silver have plummeted. We think we know why Bitcoin has. Yetis, the S &P 500, the index tracking the 500 biggest stocks in America.

16:40It is the workhorse index, baby. And it's just 1.5 % off its all-time highs. That's right. The S &P 500, it basically measures the stock market overall, and it's living its best life right now. Thanks to AI, the S &P 500 has nearly doubled since 2023. But here's the awkward contrast. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has been falling since October. And with it, crypto stocks have been falling too. Coinbase and Robinhood, they're down big. And we'll explain all that in the takeaway in just like two minutes. But in the meantime, First, can we talk about the SaaSpocalypse? Software as a service, or SaaS stocks, have had their worst week since Y2K.

17:17Now, let's sprinkle on some context here, Yetis. Back in 2011, Mark Andreessen, the legendary venture capitalist, wrote a blog post entitled Software is Eating the World. It references a dozen stocks that have more than 10x'd since he published that blog post, mostly SaaS companies. But in 2026, Wall Street thinks that AI is eating software. And it all started with Claude Code. Claude Code, the new vibe coding software from Anthropic, showed that software can be created quickly by AI with just a few prompts. Yeah. And that undercuts the value proposition of these software-as-a-service companies.

17:53Basically, while we were telling the story, I sent a few texts and built an app. That's what we're talking about. So Salesforce, Oracle, PayPal, each of those was mentioned in Mark Andreessen's blog post 15 years ago. But now they're down 25 % each so far this year. All right, so Nick, that explains software stocks, the softpocalypse that's happening in the market. What about silver and its cousin gold? Why are they down? Because the prices of precious metals doubled in the last year on the belief that President Trump would select a Fed chairman who would suck up to him. The reason? If the central bank cuts interest rates like Trump has demanded, that would potentially hurt the value of our currency.

18:29So investors bought up gold and silver as alternative stores of wealth compared to the weaker dollar. That was the thesis. That was the play. Well, the Fed chair nominee has been selected now. It's Kevin Warsh, and he's no sycophant. No, he ain't, Jack. So the same day he was nominated, gold and silver plummeted. Basically, the investment thesis was wrong. As we mentioned yesterday, besties, if you're looking to lock in a necklace for your lover on Valentine's Day, pause the pod, hit up Tiffany's now. Because silver is down 27 % in just about a week. Okay, so Jack, we got Sasspocalypse, we've got silver, but that leaves us with Bitcoin.

19:04Why is Ben the Bitcoin dropping like it busted its blockchain? Well, the answer is our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies looking at this mini crypto ice age? Leverage is like playing with house money. It amplifies gains, but amplifies losses even more. Yetis, Bitcoin prices, they rose and Bitcoin criminals got pardoned in President Trump's first year. That's why Bitcoin hit a price all-time high of$124 ,000. But that huge Trump bump of crypto has been erased. Bitcoin is at$73 ,000 right now. That's lower than the day before the election when Trump got elected. Yeti's Bitcoin prices rose and Bitcoin criminals got pardoned in President Trump's first year.

19:45Bitcoin was all-time high to$124 ,000. But that huge Trump bump of Bitcoin has been completely erased. At$73 ,000 right now, Bitcoin is lower than the day before Trump got elected. And since Bitcoin is decentralized, there's no data to explain movements like we got for stocks. So they're just theories out there. And here's our theory. The reason Bitcoin is down so much is leverage. Leverage. AKA investing with someone else's money. Get this. There are platforms that let you buy$100 worth of Bitcoin with just$1 of your own money. That is huge leverage. 100x leverage, it's something that only got created for the crypto market.

20:23Driven by animal instincts, people were borrowing money to buy Bitcoin last year, driving prices up even more. And they enjoyed huge returns. But it created a bubble that inflated so big because of these leveraged loans, it was bound to pop. And when your leveraged loans bet goes negative and your losses explode, that forces panic selling. And panic selling begets more panic selling from other leveraged Bitcoin investors. And after five months of cascading sale orders, Bitcoin is down to 73K. We hope this is the bottom, but nobody knows. It's leverage. Betting with house money amplifies gains, but amplifies losses even more.

21:01Jack, could you all whip up the takeaways for us for the new Friday? Instacart hired Ben Stiller to do a Super Bowl commercial to promote their produce picking feature. That's for banana snobs. Really, it's for existing Instacart shoppers, because the best way to grow is to retain. Our second story was Kindred. They just raised$125 million to evolve their home swapping network to allow private groups. Because if you know them, you're more likely to house swap with them. And our third and final story is SaaS stocks and silver and so many crypto. They're all down big, while the stock market remains close to an all-time high.

21:34The reason betting the Bitcoin's down, leverage. Betting with house money makes a risky game riskier. But yetis, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, Anthropic, long seen as the number two AI company, is ripping on its number one rival with a Super Bowl commercial, basically a diss track. You might have heard that OpenAI is adding ads to their ChatGPT experience. So here's the Super Bowl ad. Anthropic parodied what it would be like if ChatGPT starts serving you up ads with a nice big old smile when you're asking ChatGPT something and it's really exciting to tell you, but it's really an ad.

22:10Yeah, the takeaway, being interrupted by ads is annoying, and Anthropic is burning open AI during the Super Bowl. Exactly. And second, remember Bachons, the Japanese barbecue sauce startup we covered last year with the Octopus logo? My son Max, he actually loves that Octopus logo. They just got acquired for$400 million, a nice big exit for some super nice founders. In fact, this Japanese barbecue sauce is the biggest barbecue sauce brand in America by sales. That's crazy, but it's part of a bigger sauce trend. More of us are eating protein, so more of us need more sauce. And finally, Google dropping the big numbers.

22:44Revenue crossed$400 billion in their earnings for the first time ever last year. They made$35 billion in profits in just three months, which is also a record for Google. And they're pumping all that fresh cash into building AI data centers. They plan to spend$180 billion this year on AI. You could buy 27 Lyfts with that much money. And put them all in a Waymo. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by LJE from lovely San Diego, a 46-year-old dad with three kids in a Kia Carnival van. I think a Kia Carnival is borderline a minivan. It kind of looks like an SUV too. Might be perfect for Alex, to be honest.

23:22Well, yeah, here's the context. Yesterday, we did a whole story on minivan sales surging driven by millennial dads. We also got dozens of comments encouraging me to get a minivan, even though our family's on the fence. Nobody who buys one regrets one, apparently. But Jack, where did the lovely minivan actually come from? The legendary car executive, Lee Iacocca. Yeah, he worked at Ford and he had this minivan idea in his head, but the Ford team didn't like it. So he left and went to Chrysler. And in 1983, he launched the world's first ever minivan. Ah, the Dodge Caravan. But there were three keys in his head that had to be in the minivan.

23:58The minivan had to be low enough for a mom to be able to climb into easily, small enough to still fit inside a garage, And bigger and cooler than a station wagon. And have 17 ,000 cup holders. Yetis, you look fantastic today. Jack, you are glowing over there. And by the way, the polls that we got on Spotify right now are neck and neck from the last two days. You ready for this? Mm-hmm. We asked the Yetis, martinis, shaken or stirred? Shaken is just beating stirred. Dude, the bartenders commented that stirred is actually the preferred way and that James Bond does it all wrong. Oh, and we also asked what should be the ticker symbol for SpaceX when IPOs.

24:37What were the choices again? Triple X is beating quadruple X, although M-A-R-S is making a comeback. So we've got another poll going for today's show. Drop your votes on Spotify, and Jack and I will see you tomorrow.

24:55And before we go, a happy 35th birthday to legendary Yeti Kenta Tanaka over in Tokyo, Japan, who loves learning the most interesting business news stories every day, and Jack enjoys picking up our unique American English phrases, such as Sasspocalypse. And Lily Benito over in Seattle is crushing it in real estate with the best birthday yet. Happy birthday to La Ronda in Sherman Oaks, California. This four-year Yeti is driving Scar and Blaine to school right now. And Yvonne Laura is turning 41 years old down in beautiful DC. Hope to see you at the live show. And happy birthday to future veterinarian Nina Beltran, turning 15 years old in The Hague.

25:34B-U-P-P-Y. And Elijah Jerome, congrats on the first year anniversary of last year's bar mitzvah. And a shout out to Zach Levy, whose legendary mom worked at Zebra, the company we covered yesterday about the Super Bowl. And happy second anniversary to Sam and Kim, who are at their friend's wedding in Puerto Rico. Their big day will be coming soon. And Brittany Barbosa loved our story on the anatomy of a Super Bowl ad. She's been sharing it across LinkedIn. Thank you, Brittany. And Jack, one final shout out to legendary Yeti, Luke Welch from Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, who's in town in San Francisco for the Super Bowl.

26:06I got out of a Waymo. He walked by me and we ended up shaking hands, saying hi, and he's having a blast right now. So enjoy your time after all the snow. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Lyft and Nick and I both own stock of Airbnb and Robinhood and ETFs of the S &P 500, as well as some Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Amen.

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