'Bloomberg Technology' Full Show (09/09/2022)
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 Robin Hood is launching an index of the top stocks traded on its platform. Will that drive more retail investors to it. We're going to ask a top Robin Hood
exec. Plus NBA champion Andre Iguodala talks to us about what he's taking from the court to venture capital. My conversation with the basketball star about everything from diversity in tech to NF tease and sports betting. And we all know about board apes. But what about moon birds that were new to you. We are talking to Proof Collective's Kevin Rose about the future of NAFTA.
All of that in a moment. But first I want to get a look at the markets and tech driving a strong end to the week in equity stocks. Also a big pop for Bitcoin. Bloomberg's at Ludlow. Here to break it all down Ed happy Friday.
Happy Friday to you and real risk on sentiment and the way you look at the Nasdaq 100 very tech heavy index of course having its best day in a month up 2 percent in some of those riskier corners of the market. I'm looking at mean stocks I'm looking at non-profits. Bill Tech also making gains throughout Friday session. Bitcoin buying into that as well. As you said a big jump from around
nineteen thousand U.S. dollars per token three to twenty one thousand dollars for us token in a single session. That's the what the why is harder to understand. You come in means my Bloomberg terminal. We knocked off first weekly gain on the Nasdaq 100 in for after three straight weeks of declines.
It is its best weekly gain since July. At the same time we do see the dollar pulling back a little bit. It's the first weekly decline for the dollar in four and you see that gain in equities correlating pretty closely with that. That's potentially the why of course the
market very focused on the Fed and the outlook for higher rates only really two stock specific stories that I'm looking at this Friday the first being doctors saying having its best day since May following strong earnings and strong performance in the most recent quarter. And the other one I'm really looking at is Robin Hood. Big gain on Friday. News that they're going to create this index of top picks a top picks index of customers favorite stocks at. Ah I Ed I want to talk a little bit more
about that right now. Robinhood as Ed mentioned announcing a new index. This will offer a snapshot a monthly snapshot of the top 100 stocks its users are holding with the most quote unquote conviction. The company says customer conviction in a stock will be measured by how highly concentrated it is across portfolios.
Robin Hood head of investment strategy Stephanie Guild joins us now. So talk to us about the methodology behind this Stephanie and the end goal. Yeah I think you know we brought in a whole new generation of investors or we helped do that right. Over 20 million investors. And with it came a narrative that wasn't fair. You know we're not just our investors are not just mean stockholders. And so when we looked through the data we saw that there was actually a lot of really interesting themes. And they are holding on to investing in
things that are things that you and I might invest in for the long term. And so we wanted to bring that narrative and be able to show it to not only the world but also give information to our customers about it. So some of the top stocks are some of the things that we think of as quote unquote mean stocks. What do you think has been unfair about the discussion about what's traded on Robinhood platform. Well I think when you also look at the other ones right you've got Amazon Apple. Google's been at the top. There's a lot of companies that are in our daily lives.
And that's no different than generations of investors have been investing in. Right. Like the things that you know and use every day. I think the other thing is that you you when you look through a lot of the data below the top 10 what you do see is for example a theme of investing in electric vehicles.
And if this year has not shown you anything about the importance of adopting electric vehicles over time I don't know what what could. How do you expect investors to use the data from this index. I think for them it's just a way to say like what are investors or customers or people like me investing in. What are you know how are they positioned relative to me. And right now it's just going to be a snapshot on a monthly basis. But there may be other ways that we can offer it to our customers to help inform them in the future.
Right. That was my next question. I mean could we see a weekly daily hourly list of the top 10 or top 100. I don't know if it's going to be updated that often but I think we could in the future potentially bring it in an app for example and share it with our customers. If you own that particular stock you'll see maybe perhaps with the weighting of that stock is in our own index and maybe even compare your performance to it.
You mentioned electric cars. Talk to us about some of the other early data that you're seeing. What are you learning about investors from this data. I think other things I've seen over time especially when we look back at the history of the index it goes back to about January 20 20 is that our customers have been relatively good at timing. Some of the more tactical things that have been out in the market. For example in Covid they were investing
in the pellet tons for example and the zooms that has dissipated quite a bit. They were investing in mortgage companies you know when when interest rates were super low and the housing boom was happening they were investing in the likes of Rock Rocket and Wells Fargo. A lot of that stuff has dissipated in the index. And what they are investing in is I'd
say stuff that sort of longer term for the future. A lot of the for example financial services companies are not necessarily you know all but the banks that have been around forever. It's a lot. Some of the new you know new ways that we might see finance evolve. And that's because our our customers are you know 32 years old on average. And so they have time.
And why not invest in things that longer term can help build wealth. So why introduce this now at a time of a lot of uncertainty in the market going into an economic downturn. And you know obviously a lot of questions about how the platform is used.
I think what we wanted to do it because one as I said before like the narrative has been unfair. Our investors aren't just making you know crazy YOLO decisions. A lot of them have learned from this recent recent downturn and are turning their eye toward how how can I build long term wealth for myself and our platform. It really helps you get started with that. And we want to grow with our customers and having this information available to us and being able to track it can also help us understand our customers better and give them what they need over time. All right.
Stephanie Gild Robin Hoods head of Investment Strategy we'll continue to track those now that they're out. Thank you for joining us to explain. Come out. POW. Venture capitalists are changing their strategy amid a market downturn that's next. This is Bloomberg. The economic downturn is slashing startup valuations leading to smaller IPO shows or no our IPO. In some cases and less venture capital
activity. How long does it last. Amber But cha cha cha cha of Maverick Ventures managing director. Joining us now. Amber how long do you think it lasts. I've heard two to three years for this downturn. Well great to have Ray's going to show them. Thanks for having me. Yeah I wish I had that crystal ball in
terms of how long it will last but we're certainly in the middle of it now. I think the catalysts have been raising the interest rates. I think part of the bubble being popped that we were in last year. But I think it's also presents an opportunity for a lot of startups prickly ones that have had good balance sheets.
Ones that actually have great unit economics. And I think that's where a lot of folks are focusing now is you know are there real fundamentals that are driving business progress. And that's where I think the attention has shifted away from high growth high burn and other things that were really being funded last year. So I've heard of massive layoffs coming valuation write downs.
What we've seen so far isn't the least of it. Would you agree. I think it started I think at the beginning of the year there was a big wait and see attitude you know would this be a temporary blip with the with the market snap back really fast. I think in the second half of the year particularly post summer I think reality is setting in. I think we have seen many startups take down their burn rate both in terms of layoffs contractors real estate costs things of that sort. I think secondly we've seen a lot of
companies shore up their balance sheets. And while they do that they're they're saying hey you know this is the path towards profitability is now much more important than the path towards higher growth. And the third thing and you mentioned valuations I think I think there's a reality setting in that oftentimes for maybe not the top companies but for the average startup you know there is a reality check on the market. And I think what we're seeing there is for a lot of a lot of companies that are good companies with good unit economics and good fundamentals they're saying hey we want to raise a more modest amount of money at a more modest valuation than last year. And that that that's a great path.
But for companies that need money need capital I think that's where you're starting to see valuation declines structure for deals and things of that sort. Is there a lot of dry powder just sitting on the sidelines because of all these funds that raised so much money and now don't have as many places to deploy it and are vs waiting for valuations to fall further before yet again. There is a lot of dry powder. I think that's what when when he talks a lot of investors in the private equity space and in the venture capital space a lot of folks were very fortunate and raised in the last few years the pace of capital deployment has slowed down. I think there's two things that are
happening right now and I'll bifurcate the early stage market and the growth equity markets in their early stage market. I think business there has continued know as as expected. There's great innovation happening out of a lot of scientific labs out of a lot of engineers were leaving you know leaving other startups leaving the big corporations who have their ideas. And that just continues at the normal pace. And there's lots of research saying that these moments of economic downturn are the time that more resilient companies are being built. And so that that's why one thing we've seen I think on the other hand on 4 4 more of the kind of the growth equity growth the growth stage companies you know I think you are seeing you know you are seeing the pace slowdown there. I think people want to see better
fundamentals and unit economics then than they saw before. The hedge fund Tiger Global was such a big player in Silicon Valley over the last few years. It's also been blamed for inflating a lot of these valuations because they had a lot of money to deploy.
What do you make of that criticism. Well I think you know more and more broadly speaking I think there was a lot of money in the ecosystem last year whether it is from folks like Tiger or Softbank or others and what they what they did was they played a very important role in financing these companies. Now what remains to be seen as you know the role that they will that they will play another growth equity players will play in terms of now getting these companies on a path towards profitability on a path towards an IPO maybe not and maybe not in 2022 but in future years. And how they adjust their their mindset how they adjust to the support that they're giving their portfolio company how things can be very telling. Shery Ahn in the coming years. And so we look forward to working with them and other investors in that realm to see you know how do you build long term sustainable businesses. That that's the main goal. Gary Tan formerly of Initialized who's
been a guest on this show many times is has been tapped to run Y Combinator. And you know of course there've been many Y Combinator startups born in a downturn like air being bee like stripe. What do you think the future is of a accelerator like Y Combinator in a down market when there are other accelerators out there now. Many other accelerators trying to do the same thing. It's in the last two days have been the Y Combinator demo day and so we've been knee deep in looking at all the companies in there. We've had a very strong relationship
with Y Combinator before. We think it's one of the crown jewels of global innovation. Every every six months there's you know hundreds of companies that present. And you just have this feeling that there's within that you know within that realm there's a couple of those that are going to be these enduring industry defining companies. One of the things that we've noticed in this Y Combinator batch from from from the last couple days you can notice certain macro trends. And I think this kind of this this gets
to your question. One thing that we've gotten very excited about is the increased use of artificial intelligence in companies that are that are in Y Combinator. And I think that's one of the forefront of trends in the coming decade. And if you just we ran the math earlier today about what percentage of companies are using artificial intelligence to build in this Y Combinator batch and between A.I.
and machine learning. So almost a quarter of companies are doing this. And if you compare this to even to two bachelors a two years ago that's a 300 percent growth of companies doing that. And the only time we've seen that before is you know eight to 10 years ago when you started seeing cloud companies and startups being built on the cloud and you saw the growth of cloud computing in the U.S.
and Google and Microsoft. And so when you come to think of Y Combinator you started seeing these macro trends as well. And I think that's that's really what we're seeing there.
All right. Interesting stuff Amber about a China Maverick Ventures managing director. Ambar thank you for joining us. All right. Coming up an NBA champion turned tech investor. My conversation with San Francisco Warriors star Andre Iguodala is next. This is Bloomberg. As we're entering a potentially lengthy economic downturn I caught up with NBA Champion and Mastery Ventures general partner Andre Iguodala about where he's placing his bets and how the macro environment is impacting his strategy.
Take a listen. For me personally you know earlier stage which is why I'm investing about 80 percent of my time and resources. They have been affected as much. So if you look at PCC series A they haven't been affected as much whereas the growth stage has been some uncertainty. Seeing a lot of down rounds coming out as of late. And I think those have been affected
more than any other sector. So format deals are still pretty hot. Everyone's trying to get in. You know you place your bets earlier. There's bigger returns but there's also more risk. So for me still for Bravo and still
chasing earlier deals. Now at Mastery I know you say you want to ensure diversity when it comes to investing to governance to talent. What does that look like to you and how do you think you can personally influence it given your success as an athlete. But this of holding companies like the aggregators. You know making sure that they're doing their duty into helping build the pipeline error or just looking for the right tone. So what we've been able to do is identify a black founded talent search firm and using that firm to make sure that we're able to build the right pipelines from HBC use higher education institutions with a you know with a talented in making sure that these companies are building the right culture is one thing to you know hire minorities but it's another thing to make sure those minorities are having success within their culture. So you know you've got to build the
right culture so they can at success once they work there. We found that that's been an issue as well. So holding these companies accountable is one thing and you know building out know projections or building out you know pillars to make sure that you know this is what it should look like. You know this is a percentage of minorities that you should have within your companies throughout building your companies as we're investing earlier. You see them doing it through.
I recently spoke to Serena Williams about her foray into venture capital investing. And she she said a lot of people look at her and think you know I'm just doing this as a hobby. But really it's a passion. And when it comes to you know what she
can bring to the table from the car she said I like winning and I know how to win. What do you think you bring from the court to investing that's unique that traditional Silicon Valley venture capitalists don't have. Well winning in in their similarities in terms of winning as the percentage of humans with within the sport or with business and competing and I think athletes and venture capital investors you know this is really hard to win and it's only a small percent that win at a high clip. And Serena fits right into that. I feel like I've been fortunate enough to be around Steph Curry so I fit into it as well. And for me just identifying for me is identifying talent identifying how to make best use of that talent.
You know I've been in situations where I've been you know the focal point of the organization. Both have been in a situation where I've been a six man in the past success. And so understand how the ego works. What I've learned throughout my journey in tech is you know the ego is big and take it the same way as big in sports. And you know you got some of the brightest founders and you've got some of the brightest beasties. And there's battles in you know stakeholders with the founders in terms of the direction of the company and just being able to make sure that you know all the eagles are thrown out the window and we're all on the same page. And how do we build a company
efficiently responsibly. You know with the consumer in mind as well. You're also the co-host of a podcast called Point Forward where you're interviewing top athletes musicians entrepreneurs. You've been making some waves I believe.
Joe Jacobs had gotten a lot of trouble with something he said on your podcast. I'm curious what trends you're seeing in the media landscape given this new ability for people like yourself to just go straight to their audiences directly. Well I think sports as you can see with some of these you know some of the TV deals and the rights to you know where this NFL NBA and you just look at the deal the Big Ten did was just astronomical. You know a great deal done by Kevin Warner Kevin Warren over it runs the Big Ten. And you start seeing these sports become
actual media companies with you know live sports being you can you know you can pretty much gauge what your viewership is going to be and how many eyeballs advertisers come across. And I feel like athletes are starting to understand their influence and being able to leverage their brands as well and understanding that there there's not just a financial side but also the branding side of you going straight to the consumer which is where streaming is. And you've been able to talk to your fan base and whether it's you're trying to monetize it or just build that base of fans. And that's what we talk about with Web Three as we talked about in our tease. And you know did the director consumer part of the business coming into media and sports as well. Are you bullish on NAFTA and the future of sports. It's interesting.
You know I think we still have some work to do. I know security being a big a big part of that. You're seeing some of the cyber security investment investing going way up. You're seeing a lot of people the money there the bill the block chain where three and a tease. You learn a lot when when when your
account gets hacked. But at the same time you know everyone's saying similar to you know the bubble of the dot.com bubble around 99 early 2000s. And you know how are you able to weave out some of that nonsense. And hopefully we're at that stage right now. But mainly grand scheme. And you look at the DS the block chain and in a tease the house will work.
It definitely gives the athlete opportunity to go directly to this fan base being able to you know. Make it so it's very unique is differentiated you know it gives the fan you know insights. That's a lot different. And it's essentially cutting out the middleman. You can go straight to the fan base and we talked about this a lot. On point for a podcast where we've had you know owners of NBA teams athletes who had us sandbag Fried who was a great conversation and a brilliant mind. Over at RTX.
And I think that's what we're trying to do in a podcast. We're trying to bridge sports and business with culture right in the middle. Amazon's prime video will have exclusive streaming rights starting September 15th first Thursday night football kicking off an 11 year 13 billion dollar deal that could forever alter the television landscape. This is the first time a streaming service has had exclusive rights to NFL games in the United States and a big challenge to major networks that have dominated sports for generations. Here to discuss is Bloomberg's Luke Shaw
who wrote about this for Bloomberg's big take. So Lucas this is a huge deal if you want to watch Thursday Night Football. You're going to have to go onto Amazon Prime video.
How many viewers is this going to drive for Prime. And is the bet going to be worth it. While Amazon is is estimating that in the first year it'll probably attract about 12 million viewers a week.
That's below what the typical Thursday night broadcast is has attracted but much higher than I think the number of people using Amazon on your on your average Thursday. I mean the thing to remember for them is this is a very long term debt. It's useful. It's you know that they see football both as a benefit for their prime members. It's the big reason they're spending billions of dollars on entertainment. And it becomes very hard for us to see if that number really pencils out. But it also could provide a huge boost.
Their advertising business which has been one of the fastest growing sectors of the company. And you know football is the hottest property on television. 13 billion dollar deal for 11 games a season. Is it is it worth it. Well Amazon is paying less than other broadcasters pay for football. I mean that's the thing to remember here is that the price of sports rights has gotten absolutely ludicrous over the past several years. You know it's I find it really hard to answer that.
Is it worth it. Question with Amazon just because it feels like they're playing a different game than most of these other companies. You know I think when a CBS Paramount buys football rights the bet is that they're that show itself will probably lose money for them. But it brings so many people in to CBS that it makes money for them overall. And without football they would be far less valuable to the cable operators that need to carry the channel. It's not a perfect comparison but it's a little bit similar to Amazon where they're spending a lot of money to bring people into their ecosystem. The problem is that if you want to watch
any of these games on a streaming platform it is kind of confusing. For example I like baseball. On Friday nights I have to go to Apple but only on Friday nights not on any other night.
How does that confusion smooth out over the longer term when you have all of these different networks and then all of these different streaming platforms getting just smaller pieces of a much larger pie. Well first of all I can't believe this is the first time I'm hearing that you're a baseball fan. I mean I don't think there's good information to have. But baseball is a lot more complicated than the others have. Always it against me. I wouldn't. Other than the fact that you're probably
a Giants fan and that is bad for me. But as fan Lucas and Oakland A's fan I like the Giants when the A's aren't playing them. Right. Football. That's true. Football is a little bit easier than baseball.
Baseball is on regional sports networks. It's on a bunch different networks. You know Thursday night football is only going to be on Amazon. There is a little bit of confusion in that if you're in a bar. You'll be watching Direct TV but nobody's paying attention to how they're getting it. If you're in the market between playing you may be able to watch it on local TV. But you're right that this requires a
lot of marketing on Amazon's part. You know they're not used to spending a ton of money to market their entertainment shows. They figure that people who are sort of coming to Amazon anyways will watch the things that they have to offer because of how much money they've spent both on football and on their new Lord of the Rings show. They're starting to market in a way that they really haven't before. And the nice thing about it is this will be one of the first times where we get weekly viewership numbers. I think the first time actually where we get weekly viewership numbers from Amazon.
So we'll be able to see real time each week how the viewership is and whether it's able to attract an audience that's comparable to TV. And that's what the NFL is going to want to know. Right. They're making a big bet here. The NFL has only been available on linear networks for the most part for its history. And they've now given one of their flagship programs to a streaming service.
It's the first time they've done that. It's really the first time a major sports league in the U.S. has done it. And it is a big test of where we see the future of media going. All right Bloomberg slick ashore. You can check out Lucas's big take in Bloomberg Businessweek. Obviously a lot of evolving and moving
parts here. I do want to get to some breaking news that is crossing the terminal now. Advisers for Elon Musk have apparently written to Twitter about a separate basis to end that deal.
That of course 44 billion dollar buyout deal that Musk is trying to walk away from. Musk saying and his advisers saying they became aware of facts that they believe serve as a basis for terminating that deal. This coming in an amended 13 deal filing and we're going to continue to follow these headlines are just crossing the terminal now. But either way an additional attempt for Elon Musk to get out of buying Twitter. Continuing our conversation on streaming now I want to bring in George Pine founder and CEO of Bruin Capital. Bruin has the rights to run NFL game pass worldwide for the league.
So if you want to watch the Super Bowl in Hong Kong London or Brazil it's through game pass. So George I know you were listening to our conversation with Lucas earlier. Some people are calling this you know move towards more streaming platforms having more sports rights an inflection point like an inflection point in broadcast history.
Do you think it's fair to say that at this point or too soon. Emily thanks for having me. I think it's a little too soon to say that. I'd say they're around for say but I don't think it's an inflection point. I think you're seeing more activity. I mean Apple with the NFL. Plus Amazon with the Thursday Night Football Apple with Major League Soccer but still kind of not the major moves.
No one's seen it unseating Ford to CBS the NBA the NFL sites. They were around the loop and we haven't been before. But I wouldn't quite say it's an inflection point.
OK. So how long do you think then that this land grab is going to take to play out. And what does it look like on the other side. Do streaming platforms have more power have more power over the sports that you see so many millions of people want to watch. Or do the traditional networks hold on
to a lot of that power. Well I think it's twofold. One the money's in the old media right. It's the sports of the most valuable thing for old media. I mean ninety five percent ninety five of the top hundred shows on television are sports enormously valuable content.
And I break the streamers into two groups. I mean Paramount plus PEACOCK and ESPN plus those are tied to linear television. And so that's just an attempt we're able to use both streaming and linear in a package. And it's quite different than Amazon and Apple. We're really using it as Lucas said almost as a sponsorship a way that augment their other business. And so Amazon and Apple are quite
different than Paramount plus ESPN Plus and others in PEACOCK. So there are two strategies. And you know it's more seamless on the media side because that content so valuable. And then on the what I call the retail product side it's still valuable but it's valuable because it's really driving awareness to another core product. And you could choose Thursday night
football or another form of entertainment. But if you're a media company sports is easier replaceable and invaluable. And the value proposition to a media company is far greater than it would be to a retail product. Now Berlin has the rights to an NFL game pass. The league is also pursuing NFL plus. What's your take on the league pursuing its own streaming platform.
I think it's quite bright you know because they're trying to reach the youth there. Also you have Max here. The young consumers are where the streams are. So if I'm the NFL I'm trying to reach out the audience. Whether it's through NFL players will be my Sunday the Sunday ticket package Amazon. Those are critical consumers to grow the
game. So I think it's smart to try and have as many touch points with the consumer particularly the young consumers. It's really good. And then internationally it's tough to watch NFL all around the world. And so of course NFL game that really serves our purpose to feed people NFL content for us in our case in 181 countries. So what does the league making these
changes working towards this evolution what does that mean for game pass and for your business. Well for us we're outside the US so I think there's a different approach. Getting past international is really a growth engine for it. For international insight your marketing to consumers one person at a time. So I think international and domestic
are quite quite different and different strategies different objectives. In Pass International is a very important part of the marketing outside the United States for the NFL as is NFL. Plus in the US. But you have more resources inside the U.S. and less outside the U.S.. All right. Well thank you for joining us. Ahead of a big football weekend here in
the United States brewing capital founder and CEO George Pyne appreciate you stopping by. We're going to continue our coverage of sports streaming Monday. Marie Donahue Amazon vice president of global sports video just four days out from Thursday Night Football taking center stage. She's going to join us to talk about crime video and this big bet that Amazon is making.
Plus tonight Bloomberg premiering Bloomberg's lineup. Lines and Damian Sass. Our going to give you the latest on betting trends and talk about the biggest players across the industry. 7:00 p.m. Eastern right ISE.
Coming up all things and FTSE and Tech with Fruit Collective. Co-founder and cereal tech entrepreneur Kevin Rose. This is Bloomberg. It's time now for our cryptic report and I want to take a look now at NF with Proof Collective which recently announced a big raise.
Fifty million dollars led by Andreessen Horowitz. Participation also from 7 7 6. That's Alexis Ohanian. Venture capital firm. I want to talk about what it all means for collectives expansion plans with its co-founder and CEO Kevin Rose who of course also founded the social news site Digg back in the day. He was a general partner at Google Ventures a longtime angel investor.
He backed Twitter Facebook Square and is the host of the Proof and Modern Fine Finance podcast. He joins us now along with our crypto contributor Sonali Basak in New York. Kevin welcome. Sonali take it away. Kevin I'm really happy.
Yeah absolutely. And you know we're really curious here because obviously there has been this crypto winter yet you are able to raise the series a year in a world where NFTE collections at large haven't very volatile this year. What is it that makes an NFTE collection valuable and how much of it has to do with the community rather than the assets themselves. Yeah I mean a lot of it is certainly the community and the strength of that community. And you know how active and engaged they are in what you're building because you know as a company we're just a handful of people. And really it's how we deputize our community to go out and build on our behalf that makes us so powerful. So I think what you're seeing with what
we're doing is proof with moon birds is really the birth of Covid decentralized brand in which the community has the keys to the castle. They get to be the ones to go out and decide how to use the IP and how to monetize it. It's a complete flip of say something like a Disney where they're the ones that hold the IP close to their own.
They hold internally and they never really release it. So they are the ones that get them onto ISE the entire thing. And this is a chance to completely flip that model flipping the model. But what about what it means relative to other NFTE collections.
What sets apart. Moon birds for example from the board apes. Yeah. I mean I think you really have to find your community like every community inside of the world of P.F.. These profile photo pictures. They have different vibes and different kind of core tenants of what they stand for. We are always this idea of this love of an appreciation of art. This curation with a point of view that's kind of what we've always done at proof.
We're not about getting into this crazy market of muddy waters of flipping enough tees or how to make a quick five X. And we're long term builders. I mean we've been doing this for 20 plus years in terms of who we are as entrepreneurs having built many businesses over that period of time. And you know many of the members on our team are ex Google. And so it's really a level of maturity
that's coming to the table here to build this business. And I think people have a lot of confidence in who we are as that team. You know this is largely an anonymous space where there's a lot of products and some great projects actually that launch with anonymous founders. But in a world where there's this uncertainty and there can certainly be sometimes what they call rug pulls where you never know if a project just disappears. You know six months later we've kind of
put everything out there and said we're serious about this. We're gonna go raise venture capital and we're gonna be a team that's going to stick around for many years to come. You know critics also say here that if you look at what NFTE czar to what extent is there a utility behind them. How do they go beyond just being digital art and into something that has a broader purpose. What do you say to critics like that.
Yeah I mean I think this is a new very new idea and concept for people to wrap their head around where for the very first time it you actually have and collect something that is a core piece of ownership of a project. So oftentimes as these projects become more and more popular value accrues back to these entities as a collectible pieces of art. And that is different in that if you're dealing with a traditional media company you're just a consumer. Like if you go out and you watch a Star
Wars movie or you go in and you somehow participate in that experience. Yes the great media experience is. But there's nothing really to walk away with there that it is a part of that project.
And here you have these different members of the community coming together and taking this artwork that they actually own and going off and doing very creative things with it. So they can they can figure out women and how they want to monetize it. They can remix it in your deputizing a community of brand builders to go out there and blow this up and get it more more exposure and new and creative ways that you never thought possible as a centralized organization. So the bet here really is to say we think there's a different way to build a media business here. And it's not one where it's a handful of people in a boardroom.
They get to make the decisions. But it's really empowering the community to go out and do big and bold things on our behalf. And we're just kind of the ones that are making sure that the business is running and that we have are delivering solid products in conjunction with our community members. Kevin given you're so steeped in the earlier social iterations of the Internet for our viewers who are less crypto native. Can you explain why you think block chain technology and Web Three really is the future.
And what happens to these social platforms like Facebook and Twitter that we all know now in this future. Do they continue to exist. Yeah it's it's a good question because there is a lot of certainly the Web 3 environmental and community behind it are a lot more privacy focused. And there is is certainly this idea that we can come in and reinvent a lot of the tech technology that's underpinning a lot of these businesses in a way that doesn't put the consumer as the product that doesn't sell their eyeballs. It doesn't sell that personal
information. So that's a really exciting new direction to move the Web and it's early days. So what we're building here is kind of the infrastructure and underpinnings of all of that. And you'll see that be spread across a whole series of different categories. So are art and digital collectibles
being the obvious one here within FTSE and rewriting the way that artists get paid with royalties enforceable by the block chain. And just a lot of really exciting things that are happening there which I certainly believe that it's pretty clear now that the future all of a lot of art is going to go in the form of an FTSE. But certainly there's going to be the same re imagination in reinvention of classic web two properties in a way that puts the consumer in more control and gives them a piece of that upside.
So they're not just a product of a big car a massive like Fortune 500 company but really they are actually part of that ownership via tokens or via enough. So it's a pretty exciting new new change. You know there's a lot about to happen in the next couple of weeks with this theory emerge. I guess my question is do you think the gatekeepers of the Internet today met a Twitter Google. Do they survive in this new world. Or is all of this new technology a major threat to them. Certainly there are going to be
companies like any major shift like we saw with Web 1.0 going to the Web 2.0 or whatever it may be. There are companies that that get it that understand it at a core level. I would put you know Jack Dorsey in that camp. Right. Because all the things that they've done at Square and everything they're building a block. I think that's they're an amazing group of innovators. They understand blocking technology to a
very very core level. There are others that are playing in this realm. Meaning that if you take a look at Instagram how they embraced and enabled NFTE is now to be displayed. But it's more like a bolt on and not really a retooling and rethinking of the product at its core. I don't think long term the kind of bolt on we're just going to do this because it's the hot thing of the week. I don't think that's going to play well. And it's really not the dramatic change
that consumers at least in the Web three space are looking for. And so for me it's going to be a lot of new native companies built from the ground up that tackle these problems. So it's going to be brand new businesses that are being built right now that will probably in the next two to three years really emerge as some of the early winners.
And so you know I would say the reason we went not raise this round of financing with Andreasen is that we believe there's a better way to do a media business. And that really puts the consumers in control of of this of these assets and really gives them a way to experience and collect digital collectibles that have never been done before. That's what's exciting for us. But that's just one vertical probably 15
that the block chain is going to address and reimagine over the next few years. Fascinating. Well it's great to hear about what you're doing now. Kevin Rose CEO and co-founder of Proof
Collective along with our very own Sonali Basak. Thank you for stopping by. We're gonna be right back. This is Bloomberg. Few other stories we are watching. Tesla is considering building a battery grade lithium refinery on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Company has filed a newly public application for tax breaks with the Texas comptroller's office calling the proposed facility the first of its kind in North America. The electric car maker is also
evaluating a site in Louisiana. And Amazon sellers are bracing for a bleak holiday shopping season. This has inflation bitten. Consumers are curbing their spending. Many merchants who sell more than half
of the goods on the Amazon Web site are concerned they're going to be forced to cut prices to move a mountain of unsold inventory. This is an abrupt change from the previous two years when sellers were scrambling to get enough products into Amazon warehouses to meet all of that pandemic fueled demand despite chronic shortages that left them jack up prices. That's a trend we're going to continue to follow and that does it for this Friday edition of Bloomberg Technology Monday.
Really excited to have Marie Donahue Amazon's vice president of global sports video to talk about their 13 billion dollar foray into the NFL. And tonight Bloomberg premiering the lineup Kailey Leinz and Damian Sass. Our we're going to give you the latest data on betting trends and talk to the biggest players in the industry. 7:00 p.m. Eastern. This is Bloomberg. Have a wonderful weekend.
2022-09-11 04:18
