Prof G Markets: Disney’s Proxy War, Goldman’s Guidance Miss, and the Dating App Market

This week on Prof G Markets, Scott shares his thoughts on Nelson Peltz’s activist investment in Disney. He then explains why Goldman reported its largest earnings miss in a decade. Finally, Scott discusses the business of dating apps like Hinge, and sources some personal experiences from his Gen Z team members. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  This week's number, $548,000. That's how much footballer Cristiano Ronaldo could make per day with incentives at his new Saudi club, Al-Nassr. It's a three-year contract, 75 million per year guaranteed, which could reach 200 million per year with incentives.

• 1:49Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to Prof G Markets. Today, we're discussing Nelson Peltz's proxy war at Disney, big bank earnings, and the dating app market. Here with the news is Prof G Media Analyst Ed Elson. Ed, what is going on?

• 2:03Ed Elson?

  I'm great, Scott. I'm jet lagged after our London trip.

• 2:06Scott Galloway?

  You don't catch a lag at your age. Just wake up, have a quarter pounder and a couple Advil. That's what I did. It fixed everything when I was your age.

• 2:11Ed Elson?

  I just want to provide some context on what it's like to work for Scott. So we were in Munich for this DLD conference. We were supposed to fly back on Sunday. We were supposed to get back in time for work on Monday. And then with less than 24 hours notice, Scott texts us, change of plans. I'm flying you out to London and then when we get there Scott's like, here are some Chelsea tickets. Also, here's my credit card. Go have fun.

• 2:36Scott Galloway?

  I love this story because it makes me seem nice and generous.

• 2:39Ed Elson?

  You are.

• 2:40Scott Galloway?

  And you had a good time, right?

• 2:41Ed Elson?

  I had an amazing time.

• 2:42Scott Galloway?

  What was the highlight? Chelsea, the Chelsea game or?

• 2:45Ed Elson?

  Um, well, Chelsea won, but we still played like crap, but that's okay.

• 2:50Scott Galloway?

  They played Crystal Palace, who did that play?

• 2:52Ed Elson?

  Yeah, Crystal Palace.

• 2:53Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:54Ed Elson?

  I was hoping that Claire and Caroline and Mia would be down to support Chelsea, but

• 2:59Scott Galloway?

  No.

• 2:59Ed Elson?

  I sort of told them how we kind of paid our way to success and I don't think they like Chelsea anymore.

• 3:03Scott Galloway?

  Oh, well, there's always Arsenal or Tottenham. All right. What's going on with the news?

• 3:07Ed Elson?

  Let's start with our weekly review of market vitals.

• 3:16Ed Elson?

  The S and P 500 had its worst day in more than a month and the dollar hit a seven month low. Meanwhile, Bitcoin breached 20,000 for the first time since early November. And finally, the yield on 10-year treasuries fell on more signs of weakening inflation. Shifting to the headlines. Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees or about 5% of its headcount. For context, the company added 40,000 jobs in the last fiscal year. The federal government is running up against its $31 trillion debt limit. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the US will start taking, quote, extraordinary measures to avoid debt default. And she'll also give Congress about five months to raise or suspend the ceiling.

• 4:00Ed Elson?

  Data continues to show that US inflation is cooling, as you predicted on this podcast, Scott. The producer Price Index, which measures inflation on the supply side of the economy, grew at its slowest pace since March 2021. And overseas, China's population shrank in 2022 by 850,000. That's its first population decline in 61 years. And at the same time, China's GDP expanded at a historically low rate, 3% GDP growth. Scott?

• 4:33Scott Galloway?

  What do you think? In terms of the population, I think this is a big story. And that is Peter Drucker, who's sort of a role model of mine, an economist. He wrote, "The developed world is in the process of committing collective suicide. Its citizens are not having enough babies to reproduce themselves, and the cause is quite clear. Its younger people are no longer able to bear the increasing burden of supporting a growing population of older, non-working people." Evidence of this, China's population dropped 850,000 in 2022, as you referenced. That's its first drop in decades. And GDP also came in lower than expected, plus 3% for 2022 versus 5.5%, which is expected, second worst growth rate since 1976. Birth rates have fallen almost 70% in just a generation.

• 5:18Scott Galloway?

  Think about that. Birth rates have been cut by 2/3. And a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences predicted the main pension fund will run out in 2035, in part due to the shrinking workforce. China has also one of the youngest retirement ages in the world, at 60. China's gender ratio in 2022, 104.7 males to 100 females. And among young people, age 15 to 19, it's as high as 116 males to 100 females. That may not sound like a lot, but basically what you have is, even if everyone pairs off, there are 16 dudes who don't get a partner. It's just so interesting, because when I was growing up, everyone was talking about a population bomb, that there were too many people, that natural resources, and people

• 6:01Scott Galloway?

  talk about pollution and our overfishing of the seas. And the reality is, if you have 10 babies, there's one or two that come up with extraordinary ideas that make the world more productive and make it a better place. And when you stop having kids, you not only lose that creativity, but also, we have a political system that is skewed towards old people. And that is, in the US, we've cut the wealth of people under the age of 40, as registered by the percentage of GDP, from 19 to 9%. We've cut their wealth in half. But there's more and more seniors, and we have the greatest transfer of wealth in history, known as social security, where young people transfer a trillion and a half dollars to old people, oftentimes who do not need it, who are the wealthiest generation in history.

• 6:44Scott Galloway?

  So who is going to pay for this increasingly aging populace when we don't have young people who are working? And then within the decreasing cohort of young people, there's an increasing number of young men who don't want to work at all. So I think this population implosion is a really, really serious issue. And I think it comes back to the, some general trends. One, as women become more educated, they stop having kids. They realize it's a shitty deal for them. And as we continue to transfer wealth from young people to old people, they just don't have the money. You know, old people don't get to decide to have grandkids. It's their kids that get to decide to have children. And while Papa Banana are on Crystal Cruises, their kids can't afford to have kids.

• 7:34Ed Elson?

  Disney is gearing up for a proxy war with activist investor Nelson Peltz and his asset management firm, Triane Partners. Peltz believes Disney has been mismanaged and is particularly disapproving of the company's $71 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox. So Peltz wants to steer the company in a new direction and he's asked to join the board of directors. And that isn't out of the question, considering Triane Partners owns roughly $900 million worth of Disney shares. However, the Disney board rejected his request and now Peltz is out for blood. Peltz went on CNBC and he criticized the company's management, including the CEO, Bob Iger. And soon after, Triane Partners released a scathing presentation

• 8:17Ed Elson?

  on Disney's financial situation. And in response, Disney published its own criticisms of Peltz and they also urged shareholders not to vote Peltz into the board of directors. Scott, you're something of an activist investor yourself. What do you make of all this?

• 8:32Scott Galloway?

  Oh, Disney's just, just fucked up here. Disney's all wet. First off, just from a strategic standpoint, if you want to silence an activist, the easiest way to silence them is to put them on your board. And of the 10 or 12 board members at Disney, no one deserves to be on that board more, other than Bob Iger, who's the CEO and gets a board position. No one deserves to be on that board more than Nelson Peltz. Why? He has 900 million reasons. And a fiduciary is supposed to be someone who empathizes with different stakeholders. Who can better empathize with shareholders than someone who's committed almost a billion dollars of their firms or their own personal wealth? In addition, You know, I followed Nelson Peltz for a long time. He's, I think you could argue, a constructive activist. He's not a burn the village to save it kind of guy.

• 9:17Scott Galloway?

  And all of his criticisms, specifically that they overpaid for Fox, that they've overspent on operations specifically around the streaming network Disney Plus, that they did not do what a board is supposed to do, and that has put in place a succession plan. He's right. He's right on all three counts. So Disney's board, in a defensive ego-driven move, which is often in these, you find a lot in these cases that said, well, what? You're, you dare to insult us? And I'm sure Bob has said, I don't need this shit. I'm 73, I'm a master of the universe. You know, I'm not going to put up with a guy who doesn't like me in the room talking about my compensation. Well, guess what, boss? He's bought a billion dollars worth of your stock. Put him on the goddamn board. And they're creating a distraction. They're going to waste time, they're going to waste money,

• 10:01Scott Galloway?

  and this is what's going to go down, Ed. In the next couple of weeks, shareholders are going to go, okay, guess what? Bob, your stock's at a five-year low. Actually, it's at an eight-year low. It's down 35% from a year ago. It has underperformed the S and P and every other, almost every other peer company or its peer group. And this is despite the fact that Disney has just an unrivaled trove of assets, that their parks are killing it. So it's just, he's right. So this is what they should be saying. We welcome Nelson Peltz to the board. Any shareholder, we welcome. We don't have a monopoly on the truth. It's a difficult environment, and we welcome the views and insight of any shareholder, and we welcome Nelson to the board and look forward to a productive relationship moving forward.

• 10:45Scott Galloway?

  And they come out with this bullshit that Nelson isn't qualified. Nelson is more qualified to be on that board than almost anyone on that board. So I find this pretty, in my opinion, this is sort of a slam dunk and represents the worst about ego-driven boards. And I think in the next couple of weeks, shareholders are going to call Bob and the chairman, I don't know who the chairman of the company is, and say, look, you know, you kind of, he's kind of making a whole lot of sense here. And when it becomes increasingly obvious that they will either lose at this board meeting or the next one, and he'll go for blood, he'll nominate three or four. He won't just say, just put me on the board. If he's going to be forced to go to the annual meeting, he'll nominate three or four people. But this is straight out of the bad decision playbook,

• 11:27Scott Galloway?

  and that is the majority of bad decisions in corporate America are ego-driven. There is no reason to keep this guy off your board. Disney, get your head out of your ass. How was that? How was that, Ed?

• 11:39Ed Elson?

  Yeah, so some stats, a few things I want to address. So first off, Nelson Peltz owns, uh, Scott mentioned his billion dollar stake. Nelson Peltz owns nine, over nine million shares in Disney. The entire Disney board owns four hundred and twenty six thousand. So his stake is literally like twenty times larger than the entire board. But let's just go through a few of the things that he's criticized, and then I'm going to play devil's advocate. But the first thing is he's, he's criticizing the balance sheet. That's a big part of this. So Disney's net debt before they acquired Fox was seventeen billion. After the acquisition, forty two billion. Do you agree that, one, do you think that the balance sheet is screwed up now? And two, um, do you agree that they massively overpaid for Fox?

• 12:24Scott Galloway?

  Oh, they did overpay for Fox. And the two smartest people in media in the last fifty years are probably Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bukas. And they both sold at the exact same time. Rupert, the Fox assets, or some of the Fox assets, and Jeff sold Time Warner. And when Jeff and Rupert both sell assets at the same time, you do not want to be on the other side of that trade. Basically, they looked at the world of ad-supported media, and they said, or streaming, they said, we don't have the artillery, we don't have access to cheap capital like our competitors, and they were able to get an amazing price. AT&T will tell you, AT&T will admit they overpaid for Time Warner, and there's no doubt about it, Disney vastly overpaid, uh, for these Fox assets.

• 13:09Ed Elson?

  Yeah. And the other big thing that Peltz brought up is the dividend, or specifically the elimination of the dividend, which Disney had been paying out to shareholders for fifty seven years. Um, the dividend went from one dollar seventy six per share in twenty nineteen to zero in twenty twenty one. Where do you stand on this dividend issue?

• 13:26Scott Galloway?

  Well, it's just a symptom of the underlying disease, and that is financial mismanagement. They overpaid for Fox, they probably overinvested in the streaming network, and they haven't managed operations as tightly as they, at least Nelson would like to see. And as a result, they just don't have the money to distribute back to shareholders in the form of a dividend. So one is just a symptom of the underlying disease of kind of financial, you would call. Financial mismanagement or a big mistake here. And to be clear, Disney's made a lot of amazing acquisitions. You got to give Iger credit for buying Lucasfilm and Pixar and Marvel. These things are the gifts that just keep giving. But fixing the balance sheet isn't easy. You got debt, you got to deal with it. And the question is, should they exercise their option to buy the remainder of Hulu?

• 14:08Scott Galloway?

  But they're in a tough spot and they have to compete with Disney Plus. You can have some empathy for the amount of money they've had to spend because they have to go toe to toe against these giants that have infinitely cheap capital, specifically Apple, Amazon and Netflix. So they're in a tough spot, but their performance has been so underwhelming. Since 2014, Disney stock is up 28% and that's versus the S and P at 111%, Live Nation at 268%. And get this, Netflix at 513% and that's even after Netflix has come down about 50% off its high. So Disney by almost any reasonable metric has vastly underperformed.

• 14:48Scott Galloway?

  So somebody wanting to come in here and put a billion dollars to work and that wants input, that seems extraordinarily reasonable to me.

• 14:56Ed Elson?

  Okay, and final question here. He's pointed out all of these things that Disney is doing wrong and I find that compelling and reasonable. Barely anything about what they could actually do to improve the business, or if he has made any suggestions, it's extremely vague, like cut costs, reinstate the dividend. The only thing that's pretty tangible and clear is that he wants Bob Iger out, at least within the next two years, and he's going to find a new successor. Is this how activist plays always go down? You sort of criticize until they let you in and then you start making decisions? Or is this kind of a premature proxy fight?

• 15:31Scott Galloway?

  I think Bob Iger is 73. They need a succession strategy. He should probably plan to leave the building in two or three years. So I don't think that's anything. You know, getting down in the weeds around what they should do with the parks, or specifically where they should cut costs, I don't think that's what board members should do. It's obvious that this company needs to tighten, needs to cut costs, needs to probably make some big bets in certain areas, whether it's doubling down on Hulu, what have you. But keep in mind, once he's in the boardroom, he's one of 12 voices. He can't just unilaterally stand up and say, okay, cut 10% of costs. The CEO still gets to make those decisions, and the board gets to approve whether or not they're gonna give the CEO another year or not.

• 16:11Scott Galloway?

  And he's one voice. I know this firsthand. I got on the board of the New York Times, and the first thing I said was, we should replace the CEO. She knows nothing about digital. And that's where our future is. And two, we need to cancel the dividend and double down on digital. And three, we need to turn off Google. None of those things happened. None of them. Because there were 11 other board members that saw me as this like obnoxious 30 something year old jerk who assumed I was smarter than I was.

• 16:40Ed Elson?

  30 something? How old were you?

• 16:42Scott Galloway?

  When I went on the board of the New York Times, I was...

• 16:44Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Scott Galloway?

  I guess I was older than that. I was 41, 42.

• 16:47Ed Elson?

  That's crazy.

• 16:48Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, enough about me. But so, look, this is, everything he's asked for is reasonable. Board members aren't there to be prescriptive. They're there to make, you know, provide guidance around big decisions. Put him on your board, Bob. Put him on the board. Bobby. Bobby.

• 17:16Ed Elson?

  Last week, we saw earnings from the big US banks, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and others. Despite the macro headwinds that they all cited, every bank beat Wall Street's expectations, except for one. Goldman Sachs. Goldman's earnings per share came in at $3.32. That's compared to analyst estimates of $5.48. It's a big miss. Actually, it was Goldman's largest earnings miss in a decade. Scott, what went wrong here?

• 17:47Scott Galloway?

  So what it sounds like is they over invested in Marcus and their consumer banking programs or efforts. And that is they kind of went all in on these things, looking to leverage the Goldman brand, looking to kind of position themselves for the brave new world of being a, you know, a neo-bank, getting into transactions and payments. And I would argue those sort of experiments are what you should be doing. Should they have gone as all in as they did, you know, it's easy to heckle from the cheap seats, but I would argue that the Goldman brand is so incredibly strong that this is cyclical. I think they'll bounce back. And I'm biased, I know David and I like him. And I think Goldman's just kind of the best brand in financial services. I would argue that Goldman Sachs is arguably the best brand in B to B globally.

• 18:31Scott Galloway?

  I don't know if that you would argue if it's McKinsey or Accenture, I don't know. Anything that has the prestige value of Goldman Sachs in terms of self-expressive benefits, saying, I work at Goldman Sachs or Goldman Sachs is taking my company public. I like saying that Goldman Sachs is my, you know, manages my money. That makes me feel important and successful. What's interesting is there's some crossover between what ails, or there's some then overlap between what ails Disney and what ails Goldman Sachs. And that is Disney wanted to do the cool thing. Disney wanted to go into kind of the brave new world of streaming. And unfortunately, the new players in there have access to really cheap capital because Disney and Goldman are mature companies that their shareholder base wants profits.

• 19:15Scott Galloway?

  And then when Goldman says, we're going to go into this brave new world of online banking and payments, then all of a sudden, boom, they are competing against players with infinitely deep pockets, meaning they have to spend crazy amounts of money that they're not used to those low returns on invested capital. So essentially, both Disney and Goldman suffer from the same desire to be young again and pump their face full of Botox in the form of going after the cool new stuff and spending a lot of money on it. It's probably easier to say Goldman shouldn't have done it. I don't see how Disney could stay out of the streaming wars. Maybe they could have just licensed their content and made a shit ton of money. But their shareholder base wants a lower growth company that's hugely profitable and can spin out a dividend. But it's kind of same dog, different fleas.

• 20:00Ed Elson?

  So if you look at these earnings compared to analysts' estimates, it was obviously way off. But if you look at Goldman's annual revenue and even its annual net income, this was actually its second best year in a decade. I mean, it was way down from 2021. In 2021, they made 59 billion. This year, they made 47 billion in revenue. And net income was 22 billion in 2021 versus 11 billion this year. But 2021 was a blowout year for everyone. So it sort of feels like the learning here isn't that Goldman's entire business is falling short. It's just that it's falling short on its guidance. Do you think that's a fair assessment?

• 20:38Scott Galloway?

  You're learning, Ed. The student is becoming the teacher. What are you doing? You're putting this in context, right? It's a much more interesting story to say they threw up and they missed earnings. But the reality is, historically speaking, Goldman and the management team there are doing really well. They just aren't doing as well as they were last year when all the moons lined up and there were people doing SPACs and people buying things at crazy numbers. I mean, everything was firing on all 12,000 cylinders there. And now it's just normalizing.

• 21:06Ed Elson?

  Okay, we'll be right back after a quick break with a look at the dating app market.

• 21:24Scott Galloway?

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• 23:45Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. The mobile dating app, Hinge, is releasing a new subscription tier that's expected to cost $60 per month. Hinge's parent company, Match Group, says the premium version will target, quote, "highly motivated daters," and it will offer enhanced features that give users more exposure as well as better recommendations. Match Group is also testing a premium version for one of its other dating apps, Tinder, and this one is reportedly going to cost, get this, $500 a month.

• 24:18Ed Elson?

  Scott, pay to play dating, is this a good idea?

• 24:22Scott Galloway?

  Well, it's probably a good business idea. I would bet we end up in a situation where we have dating apps where they price discriminate and say it's five X per month for men and one X or even free for women. Um, but I think this makes a lot of sense.

• 24:39Ed Elson?

  But don't you think that the phrase highly motivated data is sort of Latin for like highly desperate data like that's not the kind of identity that I would want to be associating with?

• 24:51Scott Galloway?

  I think that's a fair point. I think that, um, and I haven't thought about it that way, but I think that slowly but surely don't a lot of the dating apps offer you opportunities to increase the visibility of your profile? Don't they go sort of go that way anyways?

• 25:04Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Scott Galloway?

  You get to sit up front on a plane if you pay more. I don't, you get, you get better placement on a website or in search rankings if you bid more. Why wouldn't your own personal profile have the opportunity with additional payments to be pushed to the front of the plane or at the top of your search results?

• 25:23Ed Elson?

  Yeah, it's, it's such a weird and sort of controversial business to be in because you're basically telling consumers that you're going to help them find a partner. But if they do find a partner, then you've just churned that subscriber. So the best strategy economically is just to keep them from finding their partners. They keep on going on dates and they keep on using the app. Um, and I think that Hinge's slogan is really clever, which is designed to be deleted. Um, which is, I think is a great idea. It's a great concept, but it's also quite manipulative because the reality is, no, it's not, it's not designed to be deleted. It's designed to be downloaded. It's designed to stay on your phone and, and keep dating, eventually charge you 60 a month. Do you think I'm being too cynical about their market strategy?

• 26:08Scott Galloway?

  I don't know. I think over time, what's also a great signal is they want to be able to say that people, I think, I would think it's a great advertisement when you go to a wedding and they met on, you know, Tinder or whatever. Although, true story, I was on a dating app this morning and I swear to you, I found my soulmate. And then about a moment later, I thought, wait, if I swipe left, maybe I can find a soulmate who's even hotter. Oh, that's good dating humor. Good on you. I've never been on a dating app, by the way. I'm too old for that shit.

• 26:32Ed Elson?

  Well, speaking of successful Hinge matches, Claire met her girlfriend on Hinge, and it's going super strong. So I don't know, Claire, if you have any insights

• 26:42Scott Galloway?

  Claire.

• 26:42Ed Elson?

  onto whether this is a good idea.

• 26:44Scott Galloway?

  How'd it happen?

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Well, I was on Hinge for ten months. I didn't pay for it for the first eight, and I hated it. Um, it felt like a chore to just wade through all these people that I didn't want to talk to. But, um, then Scott, you said something, actually, that made me kind of change my perspective on it. I started thinking about it more like an algorithm, rather than just kind of a random app, and tried to figure out how I could kind of game the algorithm.

• 27:16Scott Galloway?

  Right.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  And once I started playing with it, having more fun, then I was motivated to pay for it, because I guess I paid for two months at thirty bucks a month. And, um, it allowed me to see everyone who had sent me a like or a message all at once, rather than having to sort through everyone without knowing what was coming next.

• 27:39Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  And, yeah, I started having fun with it. It made it kind of a game. I guess it was sort of gamified at that point. And, uh, yeah, I went on three dates. The first one was okay. The second one was pretty good. We had a few follow-ups, but wasn't super into it. And then the third one was Carmen, and we've been seeing each other for nine months now.

• 28:03Scott Galloway?

  So that, to me, sounds, I can't imagine a better ad for dating. It doesn't sound like you had any terrible experiences, and it sounds like your experiences kind of range from good to great.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. It was like, right as it was getting to be super enjoyable, it was game over, because I met the person that I just wanted to continue seeing.

• 28:24Scott Galloway?

  So wait, hold on, but let's look at the nine. What was your total expenditure on Hinge?

• 28:28Speaker 03

  It was sixty bucks. So sixty bucks for three people.

• 28:31Scott Galloway?

  Total expenditure was sixty bucks?

• 28:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then I canceled it. So obviously, that's not like sustainable, reoccurring revenue, really.

• 28:38Scott Galloway?

  So Claire, I, I mean, literally, I spent, I would spend sixty thousand dollars and have terrible relationships.

• 28:47Ed Elson?

  Three thousand on drinks.

• 28:50Scott Galloway?

  I I won't even talk about the amount of money I've spent to have bad relationships. Um, Ed, talk about uh online dating for you.

• 28:56Ed Elson?

  Um, it's good. I don't do it that much, but I recently got on Raya. Have you heard of Raya?

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Ed, what?

• 29:03Scott Galloway?

  Isn't that supposed to be the more selective one?

• 29:05Ed Elson?

  Yeah, it's it's it's like for people who wanna be a big deal but aren't. So it's like perfect for me.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Did somebody refer you?

• 29:12Ed Elson?

  Yeah, a friend referred me. But interestingly, that's only ten dollars a month.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 29:17Ed Elson?

  But, yeah, I don't know. I I see it the same as Claire. I see it as a chore. I don't have fun swiping through. And then the dates, you know, some of them work out, but I would say that, you know, one of every five matches actually materializes into a date, maybe even more.

• 29:34Scott Galloway?

  Sounds like you need Claire to be your ghostwriter.

• 29:36Ed Elson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  I've tried to advise. I've tried.

• 29:39Ed Elson?

  Yeah, no, no, you've you've given me great advice, but what I want is like an AI-generated chat GPT to just automate all of my dating functions.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  No.

• 29:49Scott Galloway?

  Can you break down the biggest dating apps and sort of brand them for us? If they were cars, just give us the positioning of all of them.

• 29:57Ed Elson?

  Yeah, well, the thing that's interesting is that this parent company we've been talking about, Match Group, owns forty-five percent of the entire US market. So they have Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid. And Tinder makes up thirty-two percent, Hinge is ten percent, and OkCupid is four percent. I mean, I don't know about how you'd rank them. Uh, I've never really heard of anyone my age using OkCupid. I don't really know anyone who uses Tinder. To me, it's all Hinge. But the thing that's interesting is that they they seem to be developing pretty much a monopoly over this space. I mean, do you think that forty-five percent market share is enough to say this is a monopoly?

• 30:37Scott Galloway?

  Well, let's talk about the business. In Q three twenty twenty-two, revenue grew one percent. And Match Group, Tinder's up six percent, Hinge is up forty percent. And the established brands, Match, Meetic, I guess it's called, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish declined fifteen percent. So it seems like the market's consolidating. Net income is down thirty-eight percent in the past nine quarters, so one hundred and twenty-nine billion versus the same period last year. It's a huge business. It's dominated by one player. The question I have is more, I guess, socioeconomic or more societal, and that is.

• 31:11Scott Galloway?

  If you meet somebody and you like them, you kind of sort of get invested in that relationship. But when the apps are always there, isn't there just a temptation to like, oh, I didn't have a great date, or I'm not sure if this is the one to go back on the apps? Doesn't this just create a massive amount of churn?

• 31:28Ed Elson?

  I, I think so. It feels like whenever there's just a bunch of people, there's a bunch of options everywhere. You know that that's never gonna ra- run out. It just creates a tendency to take things less seriously. But I don't know, Claire, what do you think?

• 31:42Speaker 03

  I haven't had that desire. I mean,

• 31:44Scott Galloway?

  Claire's in love. Claire's in love.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're right. You're right, Scott.

• 31:49Scott Galloway?

  Oh, my God. Look at her. Oh, my God. Oh, wait, I just pulled up an app. Carmen's back on the apps, Claire.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  Get off of there, Carmen.

• 31:58Scott Galloway?

  Carmen's back. Well, this is, the dynamic that we talk a lot about on this show is that when technology enters any category, it consolidates it. So Amazon comes into e-commerce or online retail, and then over time, 50% of all e-commerce is going to one player. And it looks like the same thing is happening in online dating. One, from a company's standpoint, one company seems to be controlling, you know, I mean, Match Group's control of this industry is as dominant as Amazon's control of e-commerce. And two, there's also a crowding effect or consolidation among actual mating. And what do we mean by that? The studies I've seen have shown, especially among men, that the majority of interest from women, assuming

• 32:42Scott Galloway?

  it's a heteronormative matching system, the majority of interest is expressed or allocated across a small number of men, meaning that the small group of men who are in that category get a ridiculous amount of interest and all the other men are shut out. Although it's women I hear complaining about the dating apps. I don't know if men just suffer in their own,

• 33:03Ed Elson?

  Suffer in silence.

• 33:04Scott Galloway?

  Their own misery.

• 33:05Ed Elson?

  I have a friend who says, why are you on a date? Just get, just go to a bar and meet someone, which, you know, I agree with.

• 33:10Scott Galloway?

  You still think the old fashioned way is easier going to a bar?

• 33:13Ed Elson?

  I I think it's just better and more natural. Um, I think that's it's a lot about what you say about, you know, you need to learn the skills to feel awkward and feel nervous and go up to someone and talk to someone and what these dating apps are doing are just removing all of the friction and all of the anxiety associated with meeting people um by just swiping and clicking and sending the message. I mean, I rarely even send a message. I'll just tap the like and done. It's over. We'll see what happens. The the learning should be, I think, go meet someone that, you know, at a bar or go talk to them or ask your friends to set you up with someone. I think that's the best way to do it. It's at least the most natural way.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  I mean, it's certainly the most romantic way and like I think everybody wishes they could have that. But I think it's also different when you're a queer person on and out versus a straight person because a straight person can walk into any bar and kind of reasonably

• 34:10Scott Galloway?

  Assume.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  Assume that whoever they're approaching is also straight. Uh, queer people don't really enjoy that same privilege in most spaces. Like we have to be in an explicitly queer space. But the thing is, in New York, even in New York, you know, there's a handful of lesbian bars, more gay bars, but you know, like, there's only a few choices where you can go and you know, confidently approach somebody and know that they're not going to be just like have a boyfriend or be straight, you know, so it's a different experience. And then being on Hinge, if you see a woman on there, you know that she's indicated that she's interested in women, so you can confidently approach her.

• 34:53Ed Elson?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 34:54Scott Galloway?

  I think that's the best argument I've heard for the value of online dating. And add just a little bit of advice. You need to find a dating app where you record a voice recording. Because your voice and that accent, money.

• 35:08Ed Elson?

  Hinge lets you do it. I desperately don't want to do that.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Ed, are you kidding? You would have it in the bag.

• 35:14Scott Galloway?

  That's it. No picture.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the one thing you have.

• 35:17Ed Elson?

  That's my one asset.

• 35:19Scott Galloway?

  Well, this has been illuminating.

• 35:20Ed Elson?

  I think we've chimed in enough. We want to turn it over to some other New Yorkers and see how they feel about dating apps. Here's Mia on the street.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  Have you used dating apps and what has been your general experience?

• 35:34Speaker 05

  It's been successful. I met my partner there. So like, a lot of people like, are like, this is... I thought Hinge was a wasteland before I met him. I was like, bottom of the barrel with Hinge when I met him.

• 35:47Speaker 06

  I downloaded Hinge like the night I moved to New York. I got, I got like really addicted to it. I was like, yeah, I think the first week, I like, on my screen time, it was like, like 11 hours or something.

• 36:01Speaker 07

  I feel like I found pieces of New York through meeting people on the apps.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 36:07Speaker 07

  Um, so that's been fun.

• 36:08Speaker 04

  That's so lovely.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  At this point, if I were to go into dating apps, I would be most interested in something like Field. Field is like mainly for like, non-traditional, like poly kinky people. Which is just a lot more interesting to me.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  So like a little bit more niche, so you're kind of already filtering out, filtering some people.

• 36:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, I, um, what immediately came to mind is, uh, there's a dating app for people who are gluten-free, and I'm gluten-free.

• 36:43Speaker 08

  So I've been on OkCupid for quite some time. I haven't been super active on it, but I've had an account with them on and off, I want to say for like 10 years.

• 36:53Ed Elson?

  Um, I'm on Raya personally. I'm not trying to, not trying to brag or anything.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  Ooh, you got somebody on?

• 36:59Ed Elson?

  No, no, no, but it's because it's more for research purposes, you know?

• 37:04Speaker 09

  Honk for Raya.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  With men, it's really easy because they message, they would message me. Like, I wouldn't really message men. But like, I'm bisexual, so with women, it's like, I feel like if you turn men off, the options become so limited because women just don't answer.

• 37:22Speaker 09

  One thing that gets a lot of play on the dating apps is I went to magic camp as a kid and it's, it's on there and I have this photo of me in kind of like an oversized bow tie.

• 37:31Speaker 05

  I'm also on the asexual spectrum, so for me, like swiping through people on apps isn't super appealing because I like to get to know someone a little bit beforehand.

• 37:41Speaker 09

  Uh, you know, Hinge, because it's like, you know, a little more like, hey, we're all just trying to do our best and find love, you find better people, I've found.

• 37:51Ed Elson?

  Okay, let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see fourth quarter GDP data for the US as well as December's PCE price index. That stands for personal consumption expenditure. It's also the Fed's preferred measure of inflation. We've also got another big week of earnings. Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, and Tesla are all reporting. Scott, any predictions for us?

• 38:15Scott Galloway?

  Well, two predictions. One comes back to an earlier story. Disney is going to let Nelson Peltz on their board. It just makes too much sense. They're going to start getting calls from their shareholders saying, hey, you know, come on, put him on your board, enough already. And also, China does things in very big and bold ways, and I think they're going to see this existential threat around population decline, and they're going to start creating economic incentives to actually have more kids reversing their one-child-only policy. That's all for this episode. Our producers are Claire Miller and Jason Stavert. Special thanks to Catherine Dillon, Ed Elson, Mia Silberio, and the Prop G Media team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to Prop G Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week.

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