Ask Us Anything: The Next Aussie Unicorn, Mac vs. PC + The GREATEST Movie Soundtracks EVER

0:00I'm Adam Schwab. I'm Adir Shifflin. And this is The Contrarians with Adam and Adir.

0:09We are back. Episode 131, Ask Us Anything. Chief Question Asker, over to you. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for your questions as always. Okay, first question this week comes in from Tim on LinkedIn and he asks, if you had to bet on one Australian startup to become a global unicorn in the next five years who would you back and why so there's two ways to answer this question the cheating way or the honest way they're both terrible answers in my view the cheating way is to take something that's got a 500 million dollar valuation and on the way up and is growing quickly and say, yeah, that's going to have a billion dollar valuation.

0:52But that's not fair. Also, my broader issue with this whole concept is, what does it mean, a unicorn? Does it mean a$1 billion valuation in private markets with preference shares and nobody's taking any money off the table? Or do you mean like a business that's going to be sold for a billion dollars? All we can do with the honest way, which is to pick a business that's very small today. And then my answer to that would be, I've got no idea. And so, what do you think about how to answer this question? I think, to me, in my mind, a real unicorn is a business with a valuation of US$1 billion that sells secondary at that valuation.

1:28And so, do you have a view on which Aussie business is going to be doing that soon? As you know, I haven't been investing much in the last sort of four or five years. So, my sort of deep knowledge of the Australian startup scene certainly isn't what it used to be. It's something that's sort of a Ray Nong or - Les Zekely. He's probably invested in eight of them. Yeah. So, yeah, Raynon or Les Zedley or some of the sort of really deep guys and girls who are looking at startups every day is probably the best ones. But it feels like startups, maybe it could be a bit of cognitive bias and could be because I'm not looking at it as much.

2:03But it feels like we heard a lot more about startups three or four or five years ago. And now all we ever hear about is the Canvas and the Atlassians and the big companies that are sort of five or ten years old. Where's the last two, three, four years of startups? Well, I think so. This will be my answer to this question. It's also answering what you just said. So we spoke not that long ago about an article regarding Blackbird and their 2015 fund. We did. And we spoke about the fact that a lot of the upside that they have is tied up in a few space tech businesses. So I think that's where, like, all of this exciting new valuation is AI related and space tech related, in my view, of the last two years.

2:46But even those, well, those two businesses are 10 years old. I'm not talking about businesses of 2015. Are they unicorns? Wow. Not by our definition, not by the Adam and I dear contrarians definition. Yeah. So what I think is that businesses like that, like, I think about this in a different way. I'd rather talk about how I think about answering this question as opposed to giving an answer. So, the way I think about it is, which businesses have some kind of driver sitting behind them, encouraging a secondary sell-down for a start, and which ones could be at north of 1.6, 1.7 bill AUD? That's comfortably in the$1 billion USD.

3:28And I think businesses that have got long-dated, like old VC money sitting inside them, that have grown dramatically. They are prime candidates for a secondary selldown under some pressure from the VCs that have to return capital to their investors. And so, those are the ones, I think, that are going to be the next wave of secondary selldown over the one-bill USD threshold. And maybe that secondary selldown goes to parties like Second Quarter Ventures, which is Lee Jasper's secondary fund. Maybe they go offshore. But I think that the reason we find it hard to answer this question as well is our general cynicism about billion AUD valuations using preference shares where the money goes into the business and whether that's really like, you know, how much of a unicorn and sustainable is that actually.

4:19But I'd be looking at older businesses with very old VC money where the VCs need to get that money out. I think they will start popping up with these USD$1 billion plus valuations and secondary transactions. So if you look at just, and that's great, if you look at Canva's very first fund in 2012, it had Canva, Culture Amp, Safety Culture, I think Zoox as well, which obviously struggled but was worth a lot at one point. These are businesses that were within three or four, certainly within five years, were very well-known, basically unicorns. And you look at the Blackbird 2022 vintage, there's obviously Leonardo, which they had an incredible exit to Canva.

5:01But there's Redactive, Aquila, Margo, Checkmate, Someday, More Good Days, OptoBuy. I haven't heard of any of these businesses. And these businesses are now 3, 4, 5 years old. It feels like it's just for some reason we don't hear about the last five, six years of startups. I don't know if they're not as good or they're just not as interesting. I tell you a few that I think will raise money at north of a billion dollars soon. I'm not telling you that I think they're going to stay above a billion dollars as a valuation, but they might. I don't know, but they will raise. So, Laura Keat, you know that business?

5:38Laura Keat famously helping luxury escapes with our voice. Yeah, that's right. You certainly do know that business. so um i think they will raise money at a billion dollar valuation at some point in the not too distant future and you can well they're already at 200 they're already at 200 so it hasn't taken long to get there yeah so they'll they'll get there i don't know if they'll stay there like i don't know if these are long-term like businesses that are going to win the battle but i think they'll get there and then one of these ai health ones will do it as well like heidi or something like that yeah and so they'll do it basically all this ai stuff will do it and then is um i think Harrison AI has already passed a billion dollars.

6:14I know Sonic owns a chunk of that. Yeah. I think Harrison has been around a little bit longer, haven't they? They have. I don't know what Eucalyptus' current valuation is, but I think they passed a bill already as well, haven't they? They've got to be close. Your boy's Eucalyptus. I didn't – I thought they were trying to get a – I wish they were mine. I wish they were mine.

6:32Harrison raised – recently raised 112 – I think in February, 112 million US in Series C. So, that'd be – they'd have to be a unicorn, I would have thought. Australian unicorn. That's pretty close, right? We don't know the term. Yeah. And if eucalyptus hasn't passed it, they will pass it, and they might have already passed it. I'm not sure they're at a million. They've got to be close. They were like 500 mil two years ago. They were 560 in 2023, but it was at 450 in 2021. It didn't really change much there. So they might do it. We talked about it a few months ago. They're targeting$150 million in new funding.

7:11So, yeah, so it hasn't changed since then. But obviously, if they get this new$150 million funding round away, then they may be. But we obviously haven't heard from them as yet and haven't publicly announced. So, yeah, they could be. They very well could be. I mean, Linktree, Linktree's passed it. So, they're not going to. Oh, Linktree was almost$2 billion. Yeah, yeah. So, they're through. So, they're not going to do it. But again, that's another business. Linktree, the Linktree guys, that's probably an eight, nine-year-old business now, I reckon. I think it's taking longer unless you've got AI.

7:41After your name, maybe? And so I think if you want to know who the next unicorns are going to be in terms of raising money at a$1 billion plus, I don't know, AUD, USD valuation, the place to look at that is look at who VCs are backing, especially look at AI businesses, look at who's raised at a valuation of$200 or$300 million recently. and I think the AI boom will continue for long enough that there won't be a day of reckoning before a few of those get to a billion dollar valuation and they might as I said to you I'm not saying that then will be a day of reckoning for them there might not be for a couple of them but I probably probably won't be for any of them before some of them get to that billion dollar valuation and I think that's predominantly where they're going to be coming from would be my guess yeah so there was obviously there was there was the business called Qsic that Matt Matt Allen friend of the pod funded in the very early days i think he may be on the board he also also backed the link tree guys well i don't i mean i don't think qs could get there although i should reveal my conflict which is there's a company called store play run by a guy called dean journey i know listens to the pod that is doing something that i think is more interesting but like they can be both great businesses like yeah and so i'm not i'm not trying to be disparaging of qs because it's had incredible growth and like i haven't seen its revenue numbers but i hear that they're fantastic.

9:06Well, I think it raised 50 million. Cusick raised 50 million bucks in January, and I think it's doing really well. They do, but there's a long road. Let's say 50 mil was a 200 mil pre-money valuation. It might be higher, but you're probably not going to give away more than 20 % post money, right? So, let's just say it's 250 post. It might've been USD as well, I think. I think it was IDD, but it was in that 200 range. And so, I think the problem that these kind of businesses have got is that they have to be businesses. And so that makes it harder to have valuation increases because you have to keep increasing your viability as a business.

9:40And the advantage that these AI businesses have is they don't have to be businesses to increase their valuation. They just have to have this explosive revenue growth and the promise of this AI future. So I think that's why I'm picking these AI businesses as being the batch of next unicorns. Yeah, no, 100%. AI, clearly we're in the middle of a massive AI boom and that's where so much funding is going in the US. So yeah, great question. We'll go into question two, Mike. As chief question asker, I get to decide when I get to throw in one of Mike's wildcard segment, wildcard questions. And today happens to be one of those days because you guys have actually both talked a lot over the time we've worked together about how you hate Mac computers and you are both PC guys.

10:28I am completely in the Apple ecosystem and I'm so curious because both of you have iPhones. What is it that you don't like about Mac and why do you prefer PC? Someone asked me very recently, is this AMA, ask me anything. Is it really anything like, can someone ask a question, do you prefer burgers or hot dogs or some question like that? And so, like, I guess so. And Mike's got them pretty, I mean, you've gotten pretty close to do you like burgers or hot dogs. And now, unlike you, Mike, if I buy one product that has an Apple logo on it, I don't then go and sacrifice my children at the altar of Apple and promise to buy every other product that has that logo on it as well.

11:08I don't like Macs for two simple reasons, and I love them for 100 reasons. I love them for battery. I love them for weight. There's lots of things I love about them. Maybe there's three things I hate about them. So this is what I don't like about them. One, I found the edge of the MacBook Pro where your wrist kind of is when you type, slightly sharp. That's my smallest criticism. By the way, I had a MacBook Pro. I returned it, okay? So that's my first criticism. My second criticism is Excel is far less functional on Mac OS than it is on Windows, and I'm not going and running Windows on a Mac. Like, it's actually hopeless and much worse than running Windows natively on a PC.

11:50for reasons I won't go into, but I do need proper Excel. And reason number three, and you probably guessed this reason, is that I don't do touchscreens, which is not going to be one of Adam's reasons, but I love touchscreens. They won't do touchscreens. I won't buy a laptop without a touchscreen. I don't get your obsession with touchscreen. That's the most bizarre thing. I know. Well, you know, you kind of defeated me the last time we spoke about this because I couldn't explain to you why I liked it. but I think it's kind of like saying if you're in love with someone what is it that you're in love with about that person and you can't verbalize it but it's not an indication that the emotion isn't real and isn't strong and that's how I feel about touchscreens the only thing I reason I can think of the way you love touchscreens is so you can get your arm up higher in view everybody else everybody can see the bicep that could be one reason maybe oh god you cause me a lot of hate mail people see me in there your biceps aren't that big I'm like yet another aspect of my life where adam has oversold me i just continue to under deliver and disappoint people in person and so i think so max i would love to buy a macbook i think they are the best laptop overall on the market so because apple created their own chips the performance is excellent the battery life is unbeatable the weight is very good a lower lenovo what's it called like x1 carbon is actually lighter but that's super good performance super good battery life and very light and people find them they do interface with other apple devices extremely well like a phone there's no doubt about that but those three things especially the two of excel issues and um and a lack of touchscreen are the biggest for me but my maybe overarching issue is you know i've always used a pc i'm just used to windows as an operating system windows 11 is junk but like i I still am used to it as an operating system.

13:46And I just found it also quite hard to get used to Mac OS. And I'm sure if I stuck with it for four weeks, it would start feeling unnatural to me. But like I didn't because I had the other issues. So I got rid of it. What's your answer, Adam, if it's not touchscreen? I've got sort of two answers. There's nothing to do with touchscreens. There's two answers. One, if it ain't broken, why fix it? I've been using IBM compatible since, what, 1991. What was that? A 386? The 286, I reckon it was. 286, my gosh, that is back in the day. And I reckon, so the 286, 286 is one of the great branding. If you listen to the Acquired Intel episode, like 286, 286 is with the original branding and then Intel inside, they got computer companies to pay for it.

14:29It was just amazing branding. But I'm just used to the way, I'm used to the shortcuts. I'm used to the way it loads. I'm used to the way everything sits. Like I don't want to change for what is relatively, sounds like relatively minimal upside, given I don't have very hardcore computing. My computing needs are, I need to check email, I need to check Excel, I need to check our backend. Like I don't use, and Word obviously, I don't have a huge depth of need. I'm not using huge gaming things like you are. I have minimal need for huge power in my PC. So there's the, if it ain't broke, don't fix it argument.

15:00The secondly is whenever I've used a Mac, I just found it super annoying. Like if I want to change tabs, it never works. Every time somebody's got a Mac, they can never change tabs. it's just like overrated I reckon that's the windows bias talking I've also got it I didn't mention gaming Adam because like I mean it is junk for gaming but like I don't like that's not the mission I'm going to play games on and it would be a bit annoying if I couldn't play any games on my laptop like I'm happy I can play some and on Mac you can play virtually none but I think it's they're like a work laptop is not going to be my gaming computer it regardless.

15:36So, that's why that's not such a big point to me. Mike, does that answer satiate your visceral hatred of IBM compatibles? Yeah. I think like I accept that I won't be able to get you guys over the line for Mac and that's okay. Why are you advocating for Mac? I don't understand. This is the amazing thing about Apple. Honestly, Adam, I say this very sincerely, yeah? Like their brand turns otherwise sane human beings into huge advocates for the Apple brand, despite a long, or not even say long-term, medium-term lack of innovation on the product front. Although designing and developing their own chips for Mac was a huge leap of innovation in fairness to them.

16:19But like, why do you care so much, Mike? That's my question to you. Why do you care if we use Macs? I just find that you're quite vocal about not using Macs. And it made me curious as to like, what am I doing so wrong by having a Mac? And I was just curious what the actual reasoning was behind it, to be honest, because most people that I know use Mac. I don't know many people who use PC. 99 % of Adam's answer and 90 % of my answer could be summarized as maybe what you'd call an incumbency advantage, which is people don't like to change from what they know and what they're used to unless there is something very, very compelling.

16:59It is one of the reasons that companies that counter position still find it very hard to flip customers from what they've been using for a long time, even if it's more expensive and even if it's worse. And so like - You call that switching cost? Yeah, that's the, like definitely there is a switching cost to swapping operating system. And like, I'm just used to Windows and like the Excel and the touchscreen is a real thing. but I think that like the fact that I'm just not as used to it is probably the primary driver of it. Yeah. And I use iPhone, Apple Music, like iPad. Like I've got a lot of Apple stuff.

17:39As long as if I don't use Apple stuff, I just don't like Apple computers and I'll never change. So the same reason I use Outlook desktop, not Gmail. A lot of people love Gmail. I would rather gnaw off my own leg before I use Gmail. Like, I just hate it. Oh, yeah, I use Gmail. My position is not to say I'm in 1999 and I refuse to advance into the 21st century, which is apparently what you're doing by not using Gmail. No, I think you're wrong. Anyway, we'll go to a quick break. I do, we'll go back to Gmail. Any more? Is Mike going to have more tabloid questions for us after the break? We've got more questions to go after the break, so don't tune out.

18:20And we're back. Question three from CQA. What have you got for us? Okay. And I feel like this question needs just a little bit of context for the listeners as well. So this comes in from Ben Arira. And Ben Arira asks, and you can ask the guys anything, so don't hold back. This is the question. I would like the contrarians to discuss the best ever movie soundtracks. That's a good question for me. I like it. Now, this came up because we recently talked about the Canva and Microsoft stuff and Adam Schwab compared Microsoft to Darth Vader. So, I believe it is linked to that. Oh, right. I see. I see.

19:04Adam, you're going to be talking about the 1980s in this question, aren't you? That was the last time I watched a movie, so that might work well. You know what's incredible is you think of pretty much every great movie soundtrack and the ones that jumped, obviously, Star Wars we talked about last week, Superman, Indiana Diana Jones, Home Alone, there's Jurassic Park. These are the great soundtracks. All have one thing in common. Do you know what that is? They're all from the 1980s. That's going to be your answer, isn't it? That is. Actually, adding Jaws as well. So pretty much every single great soundtrack.

19:33Jaws is from the 1970s. Yeah, I know. So Jaws is 77 or 76 or whatever, but Star Wars is 77, I think. So 70s and 80s. What's the commonality between those? And Jurassic Park was 93. So this is over three decades. They're all American. They are. That's not what I'm talking about. They're all movies. There's a pretty obvious commonality here. Mike, do you know it? They are all John Williams scores. John Williams, the greatest composer of all time, the greatest movie composer, I should say, who is remarkably still alive. He must be. How old is John? John is 93. He's 93 years old, still going strong.

20:08I don't know what happens when he finally sort of retires, passes away because there really isn't anyone else who's been in his league. Probably the closest is Hans Zimmer. John Williams also did Harry. John Williams is actually ridiculous how good he is. He's done pretty much everything. It's hard to think of a movie he hasn't done. So which is your favorite soundtrack? I think for iconic, probably Star Wars. There's actually quite a lot of great – he also did E.T. He is just remarkable how good he is. He did Fiddler on the Roof as well. Is that your number one, Fiddler on the Roof? No, it wouldn't be number one, but obviously a great soundtrack.

20:44Do you listen to soundtracks? Like, did you buy soundtracks? If it's a musical, I'll listen. Like, when you – like Apple Music, you can just chuck it in the car and the kids will listen to it. We saw Annie a couple of weeks ago and listened to the Annie soundtrack on the way in. So, you do have that ability to quite easily listen to them. Yeah, so Harry Potter, Home Alone, Indiana Jones, Jurassic – yeah. He also did Sunday Night Football, Summer Olympics for NBC. It is obviously Jaws. But, yeah, for me, it's Star Wars. What's yours? Well, I have no strong view about this. It's more of a conversation for you and Mike, to be honest.

21:17You'll do like the 80s. Mike will do what, the 2000s. I watched movies in the 80s. I don't know. I don't really know what a soundtrack means. Like, I know what the word means, but like, do you mean a theme song? Like, of the time in my life that I spent thinking about things, in the last 20 years, I would have spent no time thinking about anything to do with this question. And so I'm very ill-prepared to answer it. I certainly have not listened to a soundtrack. Like, I listen to a lot of music and, like, I listen to almost any music and like almost any music, but I don't think I've ever listened to a soundtrack end-to-end necessarily.

21:53And if you said to me, maybe we can change the question and say, what do you think is a great song where as soon as you come on, it comes on, then you've got this deep, instant association with that movie. My answer would be, but I'm not sure if this counts as a soundtrack, but, like, you know, I have the tiger from Rocky. I think that's got that association, right? And so, it probably doesn't count as a set. So, Rocky 3 and Rocky 4 are both fantastic soundtracks. Well, there you go. So, I got a score on the board at least, I suppose, with you, which is good. I didn't think I'd get a score on the board.

22:24I often confuse the Superman theme song with the Star Wars theme song. All right. They're very similar. Very easy to confuse them. They're similar, right? Oh, God. I thought I was going to get really cool for that comment. Okay, good. Good. I'm none for two. That's excellent. I'm like just quick singles. I'm making good progress. How's this for a rap list? So John Williams, he's won 26 Grammys, five Oscars, three Emmys, and he's the second most nominated person for the Oscars. He's been nominated 54 times. Do you know who is number one? No. Walt Disney. And John Williams is the oldest Academy Award nominee at 91 years old.

23:01So actually just ridiculous how good this guy is. Mike, what's your favorite soundtrack? Oh, I mean, I think Star Wars is just so iconic in cinema history. And then being a millennial, I always loved the Harry Potter soundtracks as well, both of which are John Williams. So, yeah. I'll give you a soundtrack that is great, but this is from the 70s. I watched this when I was an older kid, not when it was contemporaneous. But what about the Blues Brothers soundtrack? That's a pretty great soundtrack. I always found Blues Brothers hugely overrated. Yeah. Well. I'm just looking at the EGOT stuff. So, there's 27 people who have won all four.

23:41This is pretty interesting, actually. A couple you wouldn't have heard of. A couple you would have heard of. I reckon I wouldn't have heard of – I would have heard of almost none of them, I reckon. You would have heard of at least half. So, you've heard of – probably heard of John Gielgud. Audrey Hepburn, you've definitely heard of. Marvin Hamlisch, you've probably heard of. Mel Brooks, you've certainly heard of. He's the only one that I know that won it. That's how I know what it is because I listened to him talking about how great he was after winning it. Mike Nichols, who's a graduate and a few other things.

24:07Whoopi Goldberg. Scott Rudin, producer who's been cancelled. Andrew Lloyd Webber. Tim Rice. John Legend. I reckon my job in this would be to say whether someone deserves or doesn't deserve the EGOT. Whoopi, nah. The one you said next, though, yes. I forgot already who you said. Andrew Lloyd Webber, yes, he deserves. Andrew Lloyd Webber, obviously. Tim Rice, very good. Isn't he the sidekick of Andrew Lloyd Webber? I probably undersold him with that. No, he's the sidekick of Elton John, who also has got - Oh, yeah, Elton John. I can't say if he deserves it. I don't know him. Next. Jennifer Hudson, who's excellent.

24:38Got it at 40. Viola Davis, who's excellent. I didn't realize Viola Davis had a Grammy. And Justin Paul, who was only 39. So, actually, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, James Earl Jones is in there. They all deserve it. Quincy Jones, Frank Marshall, Harry Belafonte. So, yeah, they're non-competitive egots. Harry Belafonte deserves it because I heard that name many times. I don't really know who he is, but it seems like people thought he was great, so we'll give it to him. That includes people who got honorary awards, so they got three in an honorary as well. Oh, that's a joke. Oh, my God. That's a joke.

25:15Bradab's got a special Tony Award is why she qualified. She obviously got the other three. What'd she get a Tony Award for? Because people were terrified of not giving her one. I think it still should go, because like James Earl Jones, because the honorary award actually is almost more important. But it's honorary awards where they say, shit, we should have given you an Oscar 25 years ago. We better give you one now, which is what James L. Jones got in 2011. It's like an honorary degree at a university. Give someone an honorary degree in medicine and then someone has a heart attack and quick help them.

25:42I don't know what to do. I didn't do a medical degree, but you got an honorary degree. Yeah, well, you know. Barbara Shryzen got it back in 1970. She won the Emmy in 65, Grammy in 64, Oscar in 69 and Tony in 1970. Can we modify this question thing from Ask Me Anything to Ask Me Anything that might somehow be relevant to life and business? This is relevant. I think this is a great question. Do you know we're still recording, Adam, or are you mostly just talking to yourself at this point? No, I'm interested. Oh, you are not. Yeah, I actually am. What about your last question? You're interested in whether we're going to use a Mac or not.