'Bloomberg Technology' Full Show (02/15/2020)

From the heart of where innovation money and power collide. In Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Emily Chang. I'm Emily Chang in San Francisco and this is Bloomberg Technology coming up in the next hour. Airbnb is beating its own pre pandemic records despite Micron dragging on. We'll explore the travel rebound in their fourth quarter results. Plus GrubHub

gets more. Could it be teaming up with 7-Eleven. How the collaboration fits into a broader strategy to fend off door dash and Uber. An actor turned creative ad genius Ryan Reynolds gives us his take on the Super Bowl's crypto ad takeover. How his agency is promising to bring its Super Bowl level ads to clients all year long. All that in a moment. But first it's going to look at the market. Stocks climbing bonds falling with the dollar as speculation continued about inflation and tension eased on the Ukrainian border are at Ludlow. Here to break it all down. Yeah it's really a risk on kind of day. There's a lot going on the world the market being sanguine. And you see US equities in

particular seeing some strength outperformance in the technology sector. You see that in the Nasdaq 100 gaining two and a half percent biggest jump in two weeks outperforming the S&P 500. And you're right we're paying close attention to yields because it's interest to us. 10 year yield is above 2 percent for the first time since July of 2019. But that didn't really deter investors on higher multiple tech stocks. The outperformance really was in semiconductors. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up five and a half percent. A big part of that call of course the Intel Tower acquisition we're going to talk about later in the show.

Companies might bring back Tom. And I want to focus on this idea of yield. It's interesting. White Line is the relative performance of the NASDAQ 100 to the S&P 500. The blue line U.S. 10 year yield. It's on the up but who cares. We're bullish today. We're going in for it in the tech sector. And you see those gains partly of course fueled by positivity around earnings season. Speaking of earnings season back here in the studio. We're looking at A B and B of course and roadblocks. Roadblocks. Oh that's ugly. And after hours you know they were kind of soft on activity. Use uses activity in the fourth quarter. The number of hours that folks are spending on the platform is down. But the CEO has a basically a page. Stick with

us. The metaverse is distant but we are a long time play ebb and be very different story higher around 4 percent in after hours. This Tuesday they're basically performing with the stay at home crowd. Those people that are still working from home perhaps in the city outside of that thing. This is the I want to bring up your next guest though. This is a stock. This underperformed its peers because remember there's still a question around high multiple stocks and the outlook for rates and A B and B frankly high multiple stock right. Absolutely. All right. And we're going to dig into air B and B results a bit further now. Thank you Brent. Phil of Jefferies. With us Brent Air being B is beating its own pre pandemic

records even as the pandemic is dragging on. What's your headline takeaway here. Everyone's tired of doing zooms in sitting at home so like everyone is eager to get out. And I think what Airbnb is enabling is new way of work which is you know no one really cares. We're right. We're just doing our work. So when you look at the the average daily office you know the state length you know they're pushing seven plus days and on on half of their business. I mean these are not you know weekends days. Families are committing and taking their kids out of school or

going other places than just at their home and taking advantage of this environment that we're in. And so I think ultimately you've got a beat and a raise. You've got on great growth on average Jihye Lee night rates that have potential to go higher. You continue to have a lengthening stay. And I think they're making it easier for us to adjust into live at Shery Ahn rather than just visit. And that's key right. Yes. That fast wireless you have to have the right infrastructure. And I think ultimately this hybrid environment is benefiting and it will only get better. And the one thing that's key is they've talked about the actual return to cities. So urban was a huge negative drag on their business during during Covid No. 1 1 be

in New York City or San Francisco. That's now coming back. The other thing is cross-border right. I don't know about you but every one of my friends wants to go to Europe this summer. Right. So when you think about the borders are open. I went across the Canadian border recently and it was great to go back into Canada. We could do it for two years. So this cross-border return to cities that's another big driver. We still like the stock from here and think you know many of the travel names are are set to go higher as we as we clear through this. This this current round of the pandemic. So here's my question. What does

our baby look like when the pandemic is really in the rearview mirror. I mean long term stays we're going up going into the pandemic. The pandemic accelerated. Long term stays. But then does that plateau when you know life kind of stabilizes one way or another. And what does that mean for our baby. You know it could. It could into 2023. I think we're still in a not normal time. Right. So the real question is do employers require all their employees to be back in the office. Ah ah. You know I think we're gonna have a lot of pent up demand and travel for a while. Right. So you know right now it's hard to find. You know for example if you want to go to Europe this summer it's pretty hard to find a spot like for example in Greece where my wife wants to go hard to find a place right now already for the summer. So there's a there's a long tail. And I think listen to

what Google said on the earnings call. They saw massive search results for travel. You're seeing this in all of our due diligence from the Jefferies Tech team across what's happening travel ecosystem and what's happening with airlines and everything else. This is this is pent up and this is going to last I think through two thousand twenty two into early twenty three. But to your point I think you know whether B B is trying to shift this towards is I think we are going to be a hybrid environment and this enables us to go work our lives you know before. Right. We have to come to the studio and sit down now where we're joined via zoom like this is a different world in that world is not going to go back to the same world we were in. And so I think that just benefits. They are being B story for for quite some time.

Well what about the Expedia story. I interviewed Peter Kern last week. He said they're looking at their best summer ever coming up ahead. Take a quick listen to what he had to say. But I expect big cities and international travel is probably the next big win including hopefully international air. Because you can't get there without a plane and that's been a tough part of the air business. I think corporate probably lags somewhat behind that. But we do expect that those places will start to fill up as more and more people get on the road.

Brandt do you see these companies rising together orders one have an edge given the inventory is such a huge part of succeeding in the short or long term rental business. We think bookings going to have a a big year cause most of the revenues outside North America. So you know booking is a is a big recovery play for us. We think obviously the growth in Europe and Asia will help them disproportionately. Expedia the dance question like they're all going to do well this year but

Expedia does well because they have a lot of cost hangover and they're there's a lot of issues going on there. The US is recovering faster six feeding works in the US booking works for the international exposure. And then you know air being B works for the alternative segment of the market. So it's it's a terrible answer that everything is going to work. But I think it is in this environment because there's such pent up demand. Anyone that has had Covid is like I'm ready let's go. I got my bags packed. Right. Most of us that we know of hardcoded so they're ready to roll. And so there's enormous pent up energy. There's little limitation to price. I think you know we're gonna see a lot more ad hoc travel and even the long range travel is

getting planned out further now from what I can tell on our and our research. So I think it's I think it's a really good year. And to your question I think the biggest risk is like we're gonna have a hangover in you know in twenty three from from all the travel that we took this year. All right Brent Bill Jefferies analyst thank you as always for joining us. I'm actually gonna be speaking with Air B and B CEO Brian Chesky in the next hour. So stay tuned to Bloomberg Television. Meantime you and Musk has reported that he gave about five point seven billion dollars worth of Tesla shares to

charity back in November. The donation was one of the biggest ever thrusting him to the top or near the top of the list of the most generous philanthropists. The name of the charities not in the filing a large charitable donation would help reduce what must claim would be the biggest tax bill in U.S. history. Coming up it is all about the metaverse companies betting big on

it but can they deliver a top metaverse investor. With us next. This is Bloomberg. Verse is just like what does that mean really. Regardless of where you want to call it whatever it may be. This is a very exciting opportunity for me. I think it's a great opportunity for us. I think it's the next great horizon for Disney. The

metaverse. And if these and other digital opportunities digital experiences will give us an opportunity to engage with consumers we believe that there's a world where we can add a third dimension of storytelling. I think virtual reality is inevitable that there are going to be a lot of different ways that people experience events. If you mean the metaverse like are we all

going to be wearing VIX headsets and staying in our houses all the time. I think that's you know if we're lucky enough to emerge from our caves after this pandemic I think at least for the next three to five years people are going to be more excited to engage in real lives than ever before. While the metaverse may be a term that seems far out in the future for some but investors are hopping on the bandwagon and placing their bets now. According to Bloomberg Intelligence

Metaverse ETF could balloon to 80 billion dollars in assets under management by 2020 for ISE finished to capture a slice of this massive market for 3D virtual social worlds. Joining us now one of the first to spot this trend. He launched an ETF in the earlier days. Matthew Ball a pillion co CEO with us now. Matthew great to have you here. I want to start our roadblocks results because we're seeing shares take a tumble there. And I'm curious just how powerful U.S. roadblocks will ultimately be in this

metaverse of the future. I think the interesting thing is how potent is their flywheel already today in this last quarter we saw the company invest more in R and D than they had in revenue only 7 quarters ago. They're spending more on the next 12 months in their own platform than three times the most expensive game in history. Grand Theft Auto 5. Red Dead Redemption to cost two hundred and fifty million over five years to make market and produce. That's the potency of having two hundred and fifty million monthly active users one quarter of which use a platform per day and 2 billion plus in revenue. The question is will that investment pay off. Sounds like you

think it will. It seems to be I think investors do look a little bit disappointed with the user and usage growth in this last quarter. And yet we're already seeing in January figures that they disclosed the largest month over month leap in either of those two metrics four point two billion hours of usage and prior peak was three point eight fifty five million daily active users. The prior peak in December was forty nine point four where dozens and dozens and dozens of quarters into ongoing growth in all core metrics. I don't anticipate those slowing anytime soon. Disney just appointed a metaverse executive. We heard Bob Pack. They are talking about their metaverse strategy and now they've got a person in charge of this strategy. Which companies do you

think are going to win here. Whether it's roadblocks or Disney or Metta or Microsoft or companies we're not talking about yet. We launched the ETF in June of last year because we believe that this was a multitrillion dollar opportunity that was going to spend hundreds if not thousands of successful companies. We talk about the big five tech companies today Google Apple Facebook Amazon Microsoft. And yet even with one point four trillion in revenues last year they were less than 15 percent of digital economy revenues. I think there are going to be a number of different so-called winners in video. An obvious candidate Amazon looks likely Microsoft as well. But we're going to see many. Unity is an epic games who in a span of months go from a

single digit billion valuation to tens if not more. Well speaking of how far ahead of the curve or the ball you were Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook actually bought the metal ticker from you. Can you tell us the story of how they reached down and how much they paid out. I can't actually because they didn't purchase anything from from me. I produce the index my company Ball Metaverse Research Partners produces the index which is license to Round Hill which then uses it for the construction of the Round Hill Ball Metaverse ETF. And then on top of that I believe the ticker is

actually the property of the exchanges. All right. Do you think that a strategy will succeed. As Mark Zuckerberg going to get this right. I think the way to think about it is does IBM mainframe strategy matter today. Does having a P.C. focused strategy actually lead to success. These can be fine businesses. The social network is

not going away anytime soon. But the future these social and virtual 3-D worlds were on the cusp of that future. Already Facebook is losing users not just a tick tock but to roadblocks. We know where young people are. 75 percent of those 9 to 12 use roadblocks alone on a frequent basis. And so whether or not their strategy is right or wrong they need to focus on the

metaphors. Their 10 billion dollar hit from AT&T Apples policy changes actually reiterates the importance of having your own hardware and operating system as well. So that's companies. What about the regions. Deal with a region that you think could win a metaverse. For example Korea recently launched eight Metaverse ETF. And I wonder what you think.

Over the past 15 years we've seen an increasing regionalization of the Internet. That's a mixture of regulatory approaches most notably the EU and China but also increases in the local markets startup community. South Korea has been strong for quite some time. Southeast Asia the African continent as well. And so my expectation will be that as more of society moves to virtual worlds we'll see more dominant local companies. China is already closing its walls more than ever. The South Korean government has assigned the South Korean Metaverse Alliance which spends 450 companies from Hyundai down to their largest local banks.

And so it does seem likely that we're going to see increased clustering in this virtual world much like we saw in Silicon Valley physically. Now physically and in Silicon Valley we've already seen the regular old Internet having trouble dealing with challenges and hard problems misinformation harassment. How do you see these companies dealing with these challenges in virtual worlds and can they really manage this. I think that's the big challenge. Look if we go back 15 years ago many of the challenges we face today were not foreseeable. Election engineering tampering the degree to which misinformation harassment and the uploading of illicit materials and frankly horrific acts of terrorism. We underestimated most of them but we're still struggling with how we can actually solve that problem. Facebook has fifty thousand content moderators. I would assume that if hiring another ten thousand

solve the problem they would have done that long ago. And so I'm optimistic that at least the provenance of these companies game companies who focus on happiness on fun we may get addicted to a social network even though we don't love using it. But we don't play games unless we feel good. And so I'm hopeful that this new crop of companies will bring a different philosophy. That's an interesting state. Take. All right. Matthew Ball always great to have you with us. Thanks for stopping by. Another story we're following. Meantime Intel has stepped up its push into outsource chip making. The company has agreed to buy Tower Semiconductor for about five point four billion dollars. Tower based in Israel it makes power management chips image

sensors and a variety of other semiconductors. Coming up GrubHub expanding with 7-Eleven this as the company is trying to make up ground it's losing to rival delivery services. More on the move next. This is Bloomberg. More than one hundred twelve million people watched the L.A. Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Super Bowl. Most of the viewers more than ninety nine million of them tuned into the game on NBC. More than eleven million watched on PEACOCK the

company's streaming platform. Sunday's game was the most watched since 2015 when more than 114 million people watched the Patriots hold on to beat the Seahawks. That game was also on NBC. And speaking of the Super Bowl we're used its coveted spot to remind everyone that it delivers more than just food. Now GrubHub has announced it's collaborating with 7-Eleven to compete with Uber as well as door dash to expand into convenience items beyond restaurant takeout. For more on the delivery wars I want to bring in Bloomberg's Jackie DeAngelo. Jackie what is their strategy to compete with Jordache and Uber

on this issue. This this category which seems to be the next battleground. Absolutely. And you have to remember that GrubHub is actually had convenience items on its platform almost since its inception. But what it's really trying to do here is expand that footprint even further across the U.S. through this partnership. And it's doing this in a unique strategy that I think is very important to understand because of GrubHub as a business model. That does differ quite a bit from a door dash for an Uber. So what it's doing here is kind of taking this you know suburban area where it's traditionally lagged where you find a lot of these 7-Eleven ads. And then looking to also couple that with

the strategy with dark stores which you know they really thrive in these dense urban environments where GrubHub actually got its start in Chicago and has another really great foothold in New York. And so what it's trying to do here is really chip away at a really sticky category door. Dash has gotten into it with dash smarts uber ties. That partnership with Go Puff Go Puff really dominates this first party convenience category. And I think GrubHub is looking to chip away at that market share through this partnership. How does this help their core food delivery business which is clearly being challenged by companies that are bigger and potentially have deeper pockets. Absolutely. You know this is one of the biggest challenges that has really come to the surface for four GrubHub. They've completely lagged especially door dash who's gobbled up

a lot of that market share again because of their foothold in suburban markets. So really what this convenience category can do is get more users onto the platform more frequently. Convenience has shown to be this kind of category that increases not just the frequency but the spend. And so overall they're really hoping to

get those volumes up and prove to investors that they're still a player to be reckoned with. And GrubHub the parent company just a takeaway. There's been pressure to sell them off. Right or spin them off. What's the status of that. You know the CEO of GrubHub Adam DeWitt dismissed a lot of that chatter he reaffirmed. You know the Jets just eat takeaways commitment to growing the GrubHub business. But there is a mount mounting pressure from investors that are saying look Dor does just keeps getting bigger goobers catching up. Where does this leave GrubHub.

They really need to look for new areas of growth in order to make that a convincing argument that they do have a future in the food delivery space. So what's going to be the sticking point the flashpoint that defines the delivery wars over the next year between Uber and Door Dash and GrubHub. You know who. Who's going to win. This is an interesting question which I think is beyond my pay grade Emily. But what I can't say is that what investors tell me is that this cross platform strategy is really what's going to be a lasting driver of growth after the pandemic surge really wanes and starts to ease. We start seeing more people really go back to their normal behaviors. We're still going to see delivery have a place. But it's all about what times of the day can you get people how can you increase those basket sizes and make this almost you know in a you know part of your life that you just can not take away. And

it's pretty addictive especially when you can get it in 10 minutes. So there's a lot of room there. Jackie Douglas thank you for that report. Coming up get your sweat on. We're going to talk about the future of Connected Fitness with Kyle CAC DAX founder and executive chair of Class Pass. That's next. This is Boomer.

Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology AM Emily Chang in San Francisco. Let's get an update now on how the markets are doing and what's on the move as you see it. Yeah the really interesting one was Intel and Tower Semiconductor Israeli business right. This is emanate. We've got a deal. Intel's by tower for five point four billion dollars. You can see what the market for to fall today. Tower surging 42 percent.

What's interesting is tower on that job trading at forty seven dollars a share. Intel has agreed to buy tower at fifty three dollars a share. So even with a 42 percent jump it's a hell of a premium that Intel is paying. But this is about getting into that contract manufacturing space. Right. And Intel wants to build semiconductors for others. And that is what Tower does. It's a contract manufacturer. And what Intel will get with some of that is some of Tower's clients. But it's a tiny business.

It's like a one point three billion dollar business entity compared to say a Taiwanese semiconductor which is tens of billions of bases. That was a I was looking but I'm also looking at peloton. Interesting. A nice day for patents on an up day for peloton. But frankly that is off to three savage days of declines. And Bloomberg's Mark Gurman out with a scoop. Late on Monday night that some really senior folks on the supply chain team in particular departing the company we know that's a big part of the strategy to scale down and rethink the business format. But the market cheering it after what was essentially a three day bloodbath on Tuesday the stock higher May. Maybe the sense

here that the market thinks a leaner meaner that's on this focused on content less on hardware might be the way to go. All right Ed thank you. Well as we make our way through and out of the pandemic some companies hit harder than others like Palatine. Its sweeping overhaul which brought new management layoffs to the fitness company last week included the departures of executives running its operations its supply chain and other functions according to folks with knowledge of the situation.

Where is the future of fitness and connected fitness headed. Let's bring in our next guest to talk about that and more. Pile CAC is the author of the book Life Path and the founder and executive chair of Class Pass Pile. Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to have you. I'm curious what your take is on what's going on with Palatine now given that a key part of what you talk about in your book is how you had to change gears with class pass in the earlier days. But a lot of tech startups sometimes make the wrong choices there. They push a product on the market rather than trying to fill a need. You know I think the founders in general always need to keep their Y in place. And I think Peloton very similar to even

the journey of class passed. You have to just stay resilient through all these moments. I think you know class fest started a long time ago. It was it wasn't even just focused on fitness. It was focused on bringing experiences and passions to people. Pelton came in and completely transformed the entire fitness landscape and they did it in an innovative way. And I think the

key is is to keep that innovation alive through these changes through customer behavior changes that we're going to see on the other side of the pandemic. What is your take on the future of fitness. Is it at home. Is it in the gym. Is it running around the park. And you know how does any one company have that vision of the future right. Yeah. I mean you have to listen to your customers. Your customers are the ones we're going to tell you. No founder CEO can tell you what the future of fitness is exactly going to be. We can say is here's what we're seeing in terms of customer behavior. And we have learned through the pandemic people have ripped that Band-Aid off of working out at home which is great for the industry. It's great for people's lives. And we do see that a hybrid model will probably co-exist in the future of at home working out as well

as going out and keep going to studios. So what do you think is the mistake that Palatine made. Because clearly there was demand. People wanted it but did they just overshoot. You know it's hard to always predict these things as a pandemic happens. Right. And these these world changes happen. It's hard to know how long they are going to happen. But look I mean at the end of the day I think we all hope we wouldn't stay in it forever. So it really is probably just overshooting and over prescribing how many subscribers they would get and how many people were going to buy these bikes. As you know we started turning on the pandemic and we knew that there was going to be a rush. I think you know there are companies like Mirror which sold early on an

event. AMICK And those were great times for those companies to sell because you really don't get hockey stick growth just automatically. And this was obviously circumstantial for these companies. That's happened in class passes for you as the studio boutique fitness market was growing as well. And I think it's really about thinking about what's going on in time. And you know luckily we are getting to the other side of this but that doesn't always mean the great things for all businesses the same way the pandemic meant really terrible times for a lot of companies as well. Do you think the market is at all oversaturated with the big hardware whether it is a Palatine bike or tonal or mere.

You know it's hard for me to say I I've always focused on in first and working out that's really been the heart and soul of class past. We have dabbled in video but our heart and soul has been getting people to class. I think there's a lot of ways for people to work out. Well we've always been focused on is making fitness accessible. Right. Because that to me is the hardest thing. It is getting that person who doesn't know how to work out to try it for the first time. And that is really what it's all about. And sometimes equipment can be scary. So I think sometimes the easier you can make it the better. And actually bigger market share you're going to have. Well some offices I'm learning are even offering a class pass subscription to get their workers to come back to the office. What do you think about that. And and what what trends do you think we're going to

see as the world reopens. But customers have been introduced to this you know opportunity to work from home and work out from home. I mean working out is an essential part of all of our lives. None of us should be sitting at our desk all day long working without getting out of the office. It's always been a part of my life and it's always been a culture of our company as

well. And I think that's really what has been so amazing to see is how many companies are investing in their employees. And you know people in their teams health and that really is the key is we need to know that our employees being healthy means that they're going to be more productive and happier doing their jobs. Women entrepreneurs got just 2 percent of venture capital last year which is stunningly low despite the me too movement. The meeting movement in Silicon Valley in particular what needs to change in your view. Still bigger bigger ideas from female founders. Think big and get those bigger checks right. I think

obviously we're seeing progress on the seed rounds and series rounds but we need progress later on and we need more women. Also handing out those those checks at the later stages you know as as a founder who was able to build a company that raised her series. And also we got acquired at the end of last year as well. I think going through those changes I realize that later on in the process I encountered less and less women and that was really tough for me. And I would have loved to been able to have shared this with more of more women and have more people more women on my board more people championing me. And I think that's really what needs to change is more capital coming from women and more women thinking of these big billion dollar ideas. All right men pile CAC founder and executive chair of Class Pass and author of Life Pass a new book out now. Thank you. Coming up remember how quick that Palatine ad

featuring Mr. Big was up and running. We'll talk to the team behind it and many other ads of which Ryan Reynolds is the chief creative officer. Reynolds joining us next to talk about the Super Bowl ads and more. Bitcoin is back on a three day winning streak. Very close to that forty five thousand dollar mark. Here now to discuss the price move. Bloomberg Sonali Basak. What are we seeing. Gambler You really see Bitcoin the last couple of days since the Super Bowl really start to rise back up again. But those first few days the rise was small in the last 24 to 48

hours a little bit bigger almost four point four four percent rise in Bitcoin prices alone. An even bigger jump when you look at prices of a theory um for example which is close to a 7 percent rise. Bitcoin volumes however were higher. And for those who thought that Bitcoin was a diversified you're actually seeing Bitcoin really mimic the stock market in a bigger way here. Risk appetite really rising as geopolitical tensions start to ease Emily. All right. Sonali Basak thanks so much for that. I want to go back to the crypto bowl for just a moment I talked about all that and more with Mountain CEO and founder Mark Douglas and actor and Mountains Chief Creative Officer Ryan Reynolds. I asked them what worked and didn't work in their

opinion when it came to Super Bowl advertising. Take a listen. But I think what worked is having and they had that was unlike any other ad and making it. I mean it was the ads direct responses you could get. You know when people watching TV on their home they have their phone and tablet. And this ad basically was like grab your phone and become a part of this ad.

And I don't I also don't think it's recreational in the sense it's like if you do it again it's just a poor imitation of the original. So they combine that with like this kind of really truly direct response ad probably for the real truly. Yeah but this direct one of the first times history is just that it doesn't tell a story. The story is learn about crypto. I think it was pretty amazing. I don't think we'll see it again. And I think they took a lot of courage for them to do it and it apparently is paid off. So that's great for that brand. Brian how about you. What worked. What didn't work. I mean I certainly

clicked on the Coinbase QR code but then the site went down. And I'm not sure is that success or what. I don't see the site going down. It's probably indicative of some serious success. I would guess. I mean those are you know that's that's what's called an uptown problem. You know I always feel like marketing should move as fast as you do. You know so I think that you know big that Coinbase ad was great. I mean in terms of just you know I think that the two biggest obstacles to creativity are too much time and too much money. You know in character always wins out of a spectacle. And that ad has character. It's engaging it pulls people in. So I thought that was I thought that was fantastic. I love seeing. All right. Incest in their piece for

ladies. That was great as well. So the clip that I take over did this hit the zakk guys. I mean it wasn't just Coinbase it was RTX. It was E Toro. There were so many different companies trying to get a slice of our attention. Yeah. And by the you know. But they like like we just talking about they cut through. And so and they told us simply I think what they figured out is everyone is curious about this topic. So let's make an ad that is as direct to learning about it as you can. And it was very clever. And when I watch it it's almost funny how simple it is. You kind

of laughing like this is it but it works. And so it was their own way of cutting cutting through the clutter and almost capturing the moment in the most direct way possible I think. I think it was brilliant. And it's one of a kind. There was one thing missing from that Coinbase ad while a lot of things including a celebrity we've seen so many celebrities jumping on this crypto train. Ryan what's your take on that. Is this just the next bandwagon or is there something more here. You know I just see that as a great enterprise companies looking to create and carve out space in their Zeit Geist you know and sometimes I great way to do that is to use celebrities. Sometimes a terrible way to do that is to use celebrities. So I think there's they seem to be for you know I think a large part doing some things pretty well. You know I enjoyed the LeBron

piece but. But yeah it's it's definitely something new and it's definitely something that's probably here to stay. Do you own any crypto now. I don't really want to comment on that. But you know I. I do. I do. I do see the value in in in you know the conversation that we're having right now. You know I mean it's it's that companies are doing a good job of bringing it into sort of a safer more mainstream light. I mean 90 percent of the word cryptos crypt.

So you know I see why certain you know certain folks who might be put off at it or intimidated by it or. But you know I think it's emerging as a huge huge player. I mean it's been emerging for a long time. Each player. I'm not super surprised. The proposition of Mountain is that the Super Bowl should happen all year long. Right. Your pitch is that your giving clients Super Bowl level attention whenever they want whether it's a big football day or not. Correct. Yeah absolutely. You know I mean it's it's it's one of the great things about maximum effort. And what we can do within mountain is that we can you know we have

the ability to leverage agile high impact creative advertising for TV you know and ads are fine. Arts are meant to be fun. We sort of forget that. And you know like I said earlier I think at ads that the only time that really suffers is when there's too much time and too much too much money. When you're moving at the speed of culture there isn't really an opportunity to overthink

everything. One of the great things about mountain and the cast model to create is a subscription model that we use is that it cuts through a ton of the red tape. It's self-service. You know brands are able to to create huge impact in a short amount of time. And I and I love that about what we get to do. I think one of the biggest tenets of the company is that we've coined it as fast four times. And that's to say that we do a lot. More with a

lot less. And you know we're obviously moving it at a speed that is pretty blinding you know by comparatively speaking to our marketing and ad spaces work traditionally. So you know and I think that if you can for us the ultimate goal always is. And I think that I think maximum effort and mountain do so well together is that if you drop into an existing cultural conversation your brand becomes that conversation. And that's that that's that's really is for at least me and the creative side of things. You know Mark is more the software side of things obviously. But for me that is that's everything. Ryan you've brought rapid response really to the ad world. And I'm curious that Palatine ad with Chris North that you turned so

quickly right after the premiere of the Sex and the City reboot. How did that happen. Well you know that's a great example of the power of cast of creative as a subscription and you know they were already hooked ultimately hooked into that system. So it was it gave us an opportunity to cut through all of the red tape that you would normally find with especially the company as big as that. You know it's there are companies that have these long drawn out ad campaigns that are created in advance. But we were able to do that. And there's no exaggerating when I say this. We were rolling cameras 24 hours after Palatine had called Mountain and said do you guys

have anything for us. We're in the middle of a very odd cultural moment because a television show has killed one of our one of their main stars on on our product. Unbeknownst to us. And and we were able to respond in a way that was super agile and and and fun. But you know none of this you know this is all that this is the main reason that I was so excited about maximum effort merging with with Mountain. I know it's a bold thing to say but really I feel like mountain is inevitable in this space.

You know much in the same way that you know Facebook was the social and and you know it. And so on. And I think the rise of streaming services and the advancements in production and technology we see it firsthand how it plays out in Hollywood it's transformed Hollywood. And I think the rise of a VOD and the power of social you can see this massive opportunity to transform TV advertising and you know merging with the leading performance TV platform that was going to help us on our journey in huge ways. So leveraging mountains platform and position in the CTV ecosystem you know that's that's facilitating that

relationship and it's the impact that we want to make in that space and vice versa. It's just been such a mutually beneficial experience for us. So talk about the creative process in that moment you know. Is it just coming out of your head. Are you in a writers room throwing ideas back and forth. Are you throwing it up on a whiteboard. Like how did that happen. You know it happens kind of all of the above. You know I mean we we at maximum effort we have a team of I would call them like 25

snipers. We have more ideas than places to put them. And that's that that that problem and that issue has been helped a tremendous amount by it by merging with that mountain. We also have quick frame which is you know in a massive creative company we think with what I would characterize this as an army of creatives. So you know allowing us to sort of deploy in so many different vast different vastly different perspectives to in our creative wheelhouse. It's been it's been really really amazing. All right. Actor and Mountain's chief creative officer Ryan Reynolds along with founder and CEO Mark Douglas there you can catch that full interview at Bloomberg dot com. We talk about some of their other ads as well. Coming up Silicon Valley not

immune to the great resignation. What big tech companies are doing to not just recruit but retain top talent. This is Bloomberg. Amazon Meta Alphabet Uber. They're not as coveted places to work as they used to be highly sought after employees are now leaving

in Mass to work for startups focused on crypto and web. Three others just burnt out by high expectations. For more I'm joined by our Bloomberg senior executive editor for Global Tech Brad Stone. Brad we're seeing also tech stocks coming down whether it's Amazon or matter. And that was a huge way that these companies have recruited and retained top talent. Is it getting

harder. It is. I mean particularly retaining good employees. You know the best engineers they have choices now. They have geographic choices. They have choice for which company they want to work for. When you talk about Metta or Amazon where the stock prices have been either stagnant or down over the past year it's very

it's impacts retention. Absolutely. On the recruitment side. Maybe there is upside then for an employee who wants to join and sees the stock price is low. But then you've got the PR problems particularly around Metro which it's going to be a turnoff for a lot of employees. Amazon just raised the price of prime which did something good for the stock. Would they ever do a stock split like we saw with Alpha back. Could it come to that. I would say never say never. In the 1990s they split the stock a couple of times it's now pretty expensive. Over three thousand dollars per share you split the stock to make it more accessible to retail investors but also for employees. Right now if you're a warehouse worker and you opt into the stock plan you probably

get fractional ownership of shares. So I do think that that is something Andy Jesse would look at. Mark Zuckerberg held an all hands meeting to talk about the company's value as we've also seen Andy Jassi add a couple of new car values to the company. How does that play into this. You want your employees to feel good about where they work. And often these these values these leadership principles they're not just it's not just H.R. speak. These employees kind of marinate in these principles. That's how they make made major decisions. It's how they hire it's how they promote. And the new principles

that met. And at Amazon are all about acknowledging critics and saying we are conscientious companies. So I do think it's important they're trying to restore the aura of good feeling that these companies make a positive contribution. And Microsoft is calling back its employees to the office on February 28. They can still work in a hybrid mode but that's the first big company we've seen. Put a date on it. And I wonder are the other companies going to follow suit. And is the remote work policy

going to decide that next war for tech talent. That's a good question. Of course here we are Emily Chang in the Bloomberg office talking about this question. Look I mean if the pandemic really is ending let's keep our fingers crossed. I think all these companies want to claw their workers back at least for a couple of days a week. I think there's a conviction that they move quicker that innovation happens when people are in the office. So I do think Microsoft is probably a little bit of a bellwether here. Again going back to the first part of the conversation employees have choices and probably for the tenured

employees the high valued engineers maybe they can leverage some more flexibility. All right. Something we will be sure to watch Bloomberg's Brad Stone. Thank you very much. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. We're gonna hear from Brian Chesky CEO of Air B and B just about an hour and 15 minutes from now. Stay tuned to Bloomberg Television. Harley Finkelstein with us tomorrow. And a

great roundup of guests. This is Bloomberg.

2022-02-18 05:20

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