Salesforce Tumult, The ChatGPT API, Tinder Robberies

The Wall Street Journal’s Tom Dotan joins Ranjan Roy and Alex Kantrowitz for our weekly news recap show. We cover: 1) Salesforce’s recent struggles 2) Salesforce’s ‘monster quarter’ 3) Amazon hitting pause on HQ2 4) State of the market 5) OpenAI’s ChatGPT API 6) OpenAI vs. Microsoft? 7) Tinder robberies. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Rajan and Alex at SXSW: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2023/events/PP122865 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for free consultation.

• 1:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We're going to break down the news like we do every Friday here on the podcast. We're not broadcasting live this week on LinkedIn. I'm in a place with terrible service, but we're going to do the news nonetheless. Joining us as always is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, welcome to the show.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 1:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great to have you back. Ranjan, your piece on Alexa really went bananas over the weekend, last weekend. I feel like we kind of undersold it on the show last week.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  I will admit, it inspired me to buy two HomePod minis and start trying to home-kit-ify my apartment. So we'll see how that goes.

• 1:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we also have Tom Dotan here with us. He is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who just wrote a terrific story about Salesforce. And Salesforce has been all over the news this week, largely thanks to Tom. So I'm super stoked that he's here with us. Tom, welcome to the show.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me, Alex.

• 2:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great to have you. You like joined the Wall Street Journal and just came out swinging. I've enjoyed listening to you on the Eric Newcomers Dead Cat Podcast. And this is your first time here. So I'm thrilled that you're here. And I'm thrilled that you're here on a week where you've really broken some very interesting news.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, thank you. I am. I am a lapsed podcaster. I guess one day, at one point, we were rival podcasters for the tech space. But here I am betraying my former co-host, Eric Newcomer, who I believe is relaunching his show. Dead Cat itself is no more. So I'm fully committed to being just a reporter, just a guy who, I don't know, curries facts.

• 2:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, sounds great. So why don't we talk about those facts that you've curried, especially with the Salesforce story this past week. So Salesforce was like this company that was sort of flying high and has hit some harder times, at least until its earnings call this week. So talk a little bit about what made you interested in looking into the story and what you found when you started digging into the company.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Salesforce, as anyone who lives in San Francisco knows, is this iconic tech company. They have their name on the tallest building in San Francisco, looming over the rest of the city. And they're a massive software company. They sell this customer relations management software, which is basically tools that businesses use to keep track of what their customers are doing, aggregate their data. They've been a major acquirer of companies, too. They bought Slack famously in 2021 and a bunch of other companies. And they have this, you know, celebrity, very outspoken, charismatic, really, CEO in Marc Benioff, who's kind of a big swinger around town. I mean, like a big swinging guy. I don't know if he swings, but you know what I mean. He's a, he's a guy

• 3:48Speaker 02

  who matters a lot in San Francisco and city politics and, you know, everything to do with. City and political life here. And so generally just a fun company to look into. But you know, as a business, they've been so interesting because they have been this growth oriented company. They've been this iconic example of what tech has really been over the last decade or two, which is we focus on growth above everything else. And so they have had this torrid growth rate over the last couple of years, you know, 20% or so more year over year growth, revenue growth. And as the pandemic kind of got into, you know, that post pandemic slump that a lot of tech companies saw, you know, things were really great for a while.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Online commerce and everything related to it really took off. And then as things began to turn at the end of 21, Salesforce really took a turn and their stock is was down, you know, prior to this most recent earnings, which I guess we can talk about was down like 47% from its peak. And there was a lot of changes afoot inside the company in terms of how they were going to run operations going forward. Because for the longest time, Salesforce was able to justify lower profitability by, by saying, well, we invest all of our money in growth. And this growth funded a lot of things, both like their strategy, their business strategy in terms of acquiring companies and hiring lots of employees.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  But also this interesting company culture that they have, which I could talk about a little bit. So I guess my interest in the story was both like-

• 5:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Talk us about the Ohana.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  The Ohana. Sure. So Ohana is a Hawaiian word, which means family or familial bonds. And Mark Benioff is, he's not from Hawaii, he's from San Francisco, but he's really taken to the Hawaiian spirit. He owns a big compound in Hawaii and a lot of the company culture is suffused with Hawaiian lingo. And Ohana is one of them. And Ohana as best as-

• 5:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, his mentor Larry Ellison owns like the whole island of Lanai. So I guess he's just, he's always been this person in the shadow. And maybe this is just another awkward, like, I don't know, issue that he has being behind Larry that now he's trying to adopt his own version of-

• 6:08Speaker 01

  I don't know, appropriating.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, with Hawaiian stuff. Yeah, I, yeah, I don't know. I don't really know what to say about that. I have no real judgment on the usage of Hawaiian terms. That's not my battle. But yeah, certainly billionaires do seem to love Hawaii. What can I say? But, but yeah, you know, Ohana, as he defines it, is a connective line between Salesforce's employees and also their customers and the community that they live in. And God knows, anyone else that touches the, you know, the same. I think I'm part of Ohana as well. After writing this story, it's all, it's all very connected. And, you know, within Salesforce itself, it kind of manifests in a lot of different ways. They're very into wellness over there. During the pandemic, they instituted

• 6:54Speaker 02

  well-being days, which was like a day off a month where you could reconstitute your mental self. And then they also have meditation rooms on every floor of Salesforce towers around the world. So it's a big part of what they do around there. And again, with this story, what I was interested in is like, okay, when times are good, you can fund things like meditation rooms and Ohana and everything that comes along with it. But as the, you know, as the fuck, what am I trying to say? As things turn, it gets a little bit more complicated.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Well, one question, I mean, I definitely want to get into the culture, but having studied the company closely, where in the pantheon of big technology companies do you think Salesforce lives? Because, you know, market cap, I think it got around to 300 billion, around, what is it, 160 billion now? It's not as big as the Googles and the Metas of the world. Its product is, Mark Benioff, more people probably know him than know what a CRM is. But it's obviously, as you said, it's kind of been perfectly representative of the entire software category, especially anyone in any kind of SaaS, anything enterprise, more than anyone else. Like, why do we all care about Salesforce so much?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  It's true that Salesforce is not really a household name as a tech company in the way that Meta or Facebook is, or Google, or Amazon, or Apple. If you work in business, their software is incredibly popular. If you are in, you know, a part of the industry that requires you to have relationships with customers and manage data and all those things, then yeah, you're very well aware of them. And then them buying this company Slack a couple of years back, that's probably a better known, you know, general audience knowledge company. But, you know, they were pioneers in cloud software, which, you know, the idea is that this is software that lives in the internet. And rather than having to buy, you know, new physical hardware every couple of years

• 8:52Speaker 02

  and have IT and servers and all these things that companies would need to operate sophisticated marketing software, you know, Benioff really pioneered this idea of it existing in the cloud and you could have the subscription model. And it's a really good model, frankly. I mean, it's one that almost every software company has adopted over the past couple of years. So even if they themselves are not an iconic name in broadly, although again, in San Francisco, I think they're one of the largest employers in the city. So they're a big deal here for sure. Um, you know, their model and what Benioff really pioneered in launching the company in 99 is something that has been, you know, you could argue the predominant model across software throughout all of tech.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  All right, no, that, okay, that makes complete sense then, that if they were synonymous with the cloud transition that everyone had to undertake afterwards and that, you know, gave them that influence. Did you get a sense of where is Benioff trying to take the company? Because one thing, and Alex and I had talked about this the other week, you know, they bought Slack, the entire world was just ripe to disrupt enterprise software, the way companies and business software works. Google came in, strong with Google Meet, Zoom came in, but then didn't quite realize its potential. I mean, it felt like Salesforce and Slack combined was going to be the start of something bigger where they moved into. All parts of the way you do business?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I mean, is that, is that where Benioff's trying to go with this? Or is it even clear what the actual bit larger vision is?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  It's a good, it's a good question, Rajan. I mean, Salesforce has historically been an acquirer. That's how they've gotten growth over the years. And it's something that, you know, we can maybe talk about in a little bit, but it's something that really raised the ire of a lot of activist investors who would look at some of these acquisitions and say, what is the synergy? What is the holistic vision that you're pursuing here, Mark? Because, okay, their core product offering is enterprise marketing software. Right? It's stuff that businesses need to, again, increase their sales by having a very smart, data-driven look at what their customer relationships are like. And then you layer in other things that they acquired over the years, like Tableau, which is an analytics, you know, analytic software. Okay, I kind of get that.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  And then you look at something like Slack, which they bought in 21, and that's workplace communication. I mean, you know, it's, it's really hard to see exactly what the direct line is between like, marketing software and, you know, that annoying ttt sound that you hear at work when people are messaging you. And then I think, you know, that and the price that they paid for it really raised a lot of questions as to, okay, you definitely are buying growth here, but are you putting together a cohesive company? And if you're coming out to market as Salesforce and saying, hey, why don't you sign up for a Salesforce marketing software? And while you're at it, why don't you switch your company over to Slack? It's like, why are we talking about these things at the same time? It doesn't seem related. And so, yeah, I do think there are a lot of people that have argued

• 11:53Speaker 02

  that there isn't really a cohesive. It looks a little bit more like conglomerate at times, rather than like a, you know, a growing singular vision.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Well, can you talk a little bit about? So what I understand, the activists, there's three major ones involved?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Five.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Or, five, okay.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  At least five.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Has this ever happened in this concert? Or like, how, how is this playing out?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  So I'm probably not the right person to ask if this has ever happened before. I'm not really an activist reporter, but I know that this is to the people, you know, the reporters that I worked with on this story and talked to during the process. It is certainly surprising to see that many going in there and they're pretty heavy hitters in the activist universe. Like Elliott Management was the kind of big deal one and they're famous for a lot of kind of very disruptive activist stakes, including of course Twitter, which you know, Alex would probably know better than I do, but played a part, at least a small part in Jack Dorsey stepping down.

• 12:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think they're the reason ultimately that Twitter ended up in Elon Musk's hands, but they definitely, you know, led to Jack's out leaving for sure.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  So where does that leave Salesforce next?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Elliott doesn't mess around. And then there's other ones like Starboard Value, Value Act and Third Point. I mean, pretty big names within the activist community and you know, it's not really clear specifically what every one of them wanted to do within Salesforce, other than, you know, make the stock price go up so they could get a good ROI. But you know, Value Act, no, let me take that again. Starboard put out a presentation at the end of last year in which they basically pointed out the thing that a lot of analysts have been pointing out, which is that Salesforce is not as profitable. Their margins are lower than their peers. And at a time in which growth seems to be slowing, they should be focusing a lot more on profitability rather than just growth.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  And so I think that plus the kind of executive instability that had been going on at Salesforce, which we can talk about if you want, really made them sort of a ripe target for activists and saying, look, this is a business that has a lot of potential, but they need to cut a lot of costs and we don't see them doing it yet. So let's go in there and start kind of saber rattling as a way to force management to do what we want.

• 14:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can I, can I just make the, the counter argument here, which is kind of unnatural for me because

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Please.

• 14:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  I do think that Salesforce has always tried to be a little bit more than it was and might have just been better served saying we're a CRM company and as opposed to the sort of heal the world vibes that Benioff gives off. But what is the, I mean, the company is, is super, it's making a ton of money. It is profitable. It's a very successful business. It's grown fast. So what is the problem of it having smaller margins? I mean, I know Wall Street might be upset about it, but ultimately is this like a thing that we should really be upset about? The fact that they're spending on worker wellness? They have these wellness, these, these retreats that they take people to, they pay for Matthew McConaughey, which I guess to be their creative advisor and pitch man, which goes for 10, 10 million a year or something like that. Like,

• 14:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  of course, yes, it's larger than life and it's not boring, old software company. But why, why does, I guess, our, our society or our market or Wall Street and, and the narrative try to force them back into this, like be this boring software company that you were born to be?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yes, Tom. Do you hate wellness and Matthew McConaughey?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I don't hate anything. I'm, I'm a huge McConaughey fan. Um, I, I was fully supportive of the McConaughey renaissance from a couple of years back when he won his Oscar.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Dallas Buyers Club.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, and, and True Detective and everything that kind of made us re-appreciate him as a serious dramatic actor and not just kind of a, a pothead from Dazed and Confused. So I, I want to be firmly on the record as being pro McConaughey.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Also has a great book out, The Green Light Book.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  I haven't read it, but I'm sure it's as good as everything else he does. Um, look, I, I think as far as margins go, everything is fine if you're growing. I think it's just a matter of like the tech industry overall is having to reckon with. It's like, if you can show the street that you're able to grow at this, you know, 40% or 20% year over year level, then they're happy to let you do almost anything that you want in terms of. Worker wellness and progressive social values and all this other stuff. But it's when the music starts, well, it doesn't really stop, but but at least takes on a different tune that is less growth focused. You're just past a point where you can grow at this specific level. Then I think there's going to be a lot more attention paid.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  I mean, like, do I think this is one of the great social questions of our time, you know, focusing on profitability versus growth? Not really. But I can hear the argument on the part of activists saying like, look, things are just different now and you're not adjusting quickly enough to the times. And we think there's a huge amount of upside to the stock if we can get you to do this one way or the other.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Wait, on the question of going back to the culture, I think, yeah, Benioff had given an interview with Business Insider, I believe, where he said, every CEO in Silicon Valley has looked at what Elon Musk has done and asked themselves, do they need to unleash their own Elon within them? Is he? I mean, I guess, given all the Ohana talk, how are they trying to position this? Obviously layoffs are a natural part of this cycle, but I mean, is he the leader that is going to be able to guide them to a place where they're trying to find a completely new path of growth that's able to kind of navigate a cost cutting environment when

• 17:36Speaker 01

  his entire career has been growing and, you know, spending lots of money?

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Is Benioff that guy, as you're asking?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Not Elon.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Sorry, maybe it will be Elon.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know, by the way, what unleash your inner Elon means. It evokes a lot of images.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Hopefully people keep track of their children. Look, I mean, Benioff is a survivor in that there aren't that many CEOs. He's been around since 99. There aren't that many CEOs of tech companies. That I can think of, maybe you guys can, that have been at the top of a multi-billion dollar tech enterprise for as long as he has. So even though there's a lot of pressure on him that I wrote about in the story, you got to give credit to the fact that he's someone who's navigated the dot com bust in 2000, 2001, the financial collapse in 2008, and whatever you wanted to find this period now. So I do think it's fair to give him

• 18:38Speaker 02

  at least some credit that he's been through pretty rough times in the past and has adjusted the company to a degree post these kind of financial crises. So as far as that goes, sure, why not? It seems reasonable enough to me.

• 18:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  There's this lesson here, right? In terms of the ohana, right? Saying that your company is a family. And it's so obvious that it almost doesn't need to be said, but it is something we should really talk about, which is that like, when folks, I understand that there's a tendency to want to call your workplace a family, but it's just not. And you don't lay off your family. And I do think that it's sort of destructive to do that because ultimately what it ends up doing is getting workers to just work more for the same amount of money because of this intangible thing that they're working for. And clearly in this case, with the layoffs that the company did, Salesforce was not exactly a family.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't remember the last time that I tried to trim 5% of my family to meet investor targets.

• 19:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Families do do that.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Quarterly targets are tough.

• 19:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Pretty frequently, but not for margins.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. You don't talk too often about unwanted attrition in your family.

• 19:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Tom, can you talk a little bit about the earnings quarter, the earnings report that the company brought in? Because you had this big story in the Journal talking about all these issues. And then, I mean, I think that Salesforce turns in this quarter, Yahoo Finance says they shocked the heck out of Wall Street, and they promised better margins, they're disbanding their M&A committee. I think you mentioned that one of the investors or one of the analysts on the earnings call said that Benioff's performance was Oscar worthy. So how much should we read into this, this big earnings report that they have? And does that sort of change the narrative for them just in one quarter?

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, Oscar worthy. I was dying to know like what category that Salesforce or Special effects. Yeah, exactly. Or even just best actor. I mean, he was having a good time on that call. I'd encourage listeners to go back. If you're, if you're one of those people that like listening to earnings calls, and you know, we always as journalists kind of make fun of the analysts that go on there and say, congratulations for a great quarter before, you know, launching another question. This was like another level of that. People just like showering praise on Benioff for, I mean, yeah, I guess let's talk about what they did. They, they beat on revenue, right? So there were expectations of them getting to, I think, like the high seven billions in, in quarterly revenue and, and they were above eight. Their margins were, I think their adjusted operating margins were at 29%, which

• 21:19Speaker 02

  was substantially above where they were like 12 months trailing, which was, which was like 19%, which again, has been the knock on the company for a while because their margins are significantly lower than competitors like ServiceNow and Adobe. And then I think the thing that really got analysts and investors super hyped was the fact that they laid out guidance for the year that saw them getting to operating, adjusted operating margins or non-GAAP margins that were close to like 29%, which was above the projections that they had shown in the fall, last fall, when they had an analyst day, when already there was pressure on them to kind of do better on their margins. And they were like, we think we can get to 25%. And that was like, you know, I guess not enough for, for activist

• 22:02Speaker 02

  investors. So they really kind of turned up the heat to get there and, you know, did layoffs and, and, you know, all the stuff that we talked about. So I think the combination of, you know, there being fairly low, a fairly low bar for expectations that they surpassed, you know, pretty handily, and then laid out this guidance that showed them entering this new era where they were going to be so much more margin focused, profitability, efficiency focused. And like you mentioned, Alex, like they, they disbanded their M and A committee, which is like

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, right? So all the criticisms of the acquisitions, he was kind of addressing that head on by saying, you know, we've disbanded our committee. And I think they've also created a new like business efficiency committee or something like that, which I don't really know what that means, to be honest, but it certainly

• 22:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  It is the year of efficiency right now.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's basically that, right?

• 22:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  And so, by the way, I can't imagine that's like the most fun committee to be on. Just generally doesn't seem as exciting. It's like looking around for like hunting.

• 23:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Unless you're an ex-management consultant, perhaps.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Sure, sure. Oh, and they've brought in Bain, speaking of management.

• 23:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, okay.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  They've brought in Bain to kind of reorganize the structure of the company and figure out how the sales teams are going to look and try to run leaner and, you know, less kind of sales-heavy. So all of that was exactly what, excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm coughing so much.

• 23:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  When I think of Ohana, I do think of Bain Consulting.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, yeah, Bain is also part of the Ohana.

• 23:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, they are now. You're right.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think they are officially part of that. So you can imagine all the Bain consultants and their dockers, but also, you know, wearing Lays and chilling at the luau.

• 23:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Tom, can you just wrap it up for us in terms of like, what have you learned about about this company? Because you had this story that was like, you know, pointing out a lot of different flaws earlier in the week, and then they turn in an earnings report, and you write the story about their bombs-away earnings report. So where do you sort of Yeah. Salesforce is heading? And then secondarily, what is, what does the Salesforce, the broader Salesforce story tell us about our economy right now?

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Well, I guess like the Salesforce story that we tried to put together was like, what does it mean for a company to have to adjust to the realities of the economic moment, which is, you know, less growth, focus on profitability, what happens when you lay off your Ohana? And so, you know, I think what we revealed was that, you know, it's quite shocking to a lot of employees. It's frustrating for Mark himself, who's very celebrity-oriented. You know, we brought up a lot of the ways that he had done business, which is, you know, things like signing Matthew McConaughey to this yearly 10 million, 10 million, $10 million a year deal.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  You know, in terms of what their quarter showed, it was that when you make these sort of changes, it affects the company's culture, but it also will improve your business as far as efficiency goes. And so I kind of saw it as like an explanation of what was to come, which was a company that's just in a very new era. And the question going forward is like, how do you hold on to that culture if, you know, the business that kind of was the engine behind it isn't the same. And then look across tech generally, I think we're seeing, you know, Google had layoffs, Meta had layoffs, Amazon had layoffs. It's just a very different time. The wind seems to be out of the sails for a lot of these major tech companies. And we'll see, like, I don't want to make any predictions, but I think the the culture that has been so identified with Silicon Valley isn't what

• 25:27Speaker 02

  it going forward is not the way it it. Let me rephrase that. It's just going to be different going forward. And I think, you know, as a reporter, and then people that just cover the industry, it'll be very interesting to watch, you know, how these companies adjust to the new realities of of you're not being, you know, a sky's the limit growth and you can do anything you want.

• 25:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. And I think that when we look at this type of stuff, you know, obviously Salesforce is a fascinating company because of the outsized personality that Benioff has. But why I found this story so interesting is it really is the story of so many companies inside Silicon Valley that we're doing these wild things back in the zero interest rate days and now have decided, okay, we're going to play ball with Wall Street and are all following this year of efficiency path. So speaking of year of efficiency, right before we started recording, we just got some breaking news that Amazon is going to pause construction or building on its HQ two in Virginia. And this is going to be a delay of the larger

• 26:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  phase of the project, according to Bloomberg, which has three 22 story office towers and a 350 foot tall helix, a corporate conference center and an indoor garden that's designed to echo the spheres, which are these like giant plant filled balls in Amazon's Seattle headquarters in South Lake Union. So.

• 26:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wow, it was it's gonna be 2.8 million square feet, but maybe it will never happen. Because I feel like when you start pausing something like this, especially when you're under a new CEO that really has to cut costs, you're you're just like the chances that you resume at the scale that you you planned in a better economy just is just really the probability shoots way down. So Ranjan, let's let's just get your perspective on the HQ2 pause. What do you think this means for Amazon? And do you think there's a chance that this thing ever starts back up again?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  My favorite part of this whole story is remembering back to all the things that every mayor in every city did to try to get HQ2 to come to them. If you if people go back to 2017, you know, Amazon announced that they would have this massive HQ2 project that they would give to one city that essentially, you know, whoever gave it the best package and pitch and showered it with the best tax breaks and went through the entire country. And I mean, there's some I had actually forgotten the Empire State Building, New York had actually changed the colors orange for one night to show support for the HQ2 bid.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  And remember the controversy that Amazon was reportedly very close to giving New York HQ2, but then there was actually a in retrospect, a pretty well reasoned backlash to it. And it was a huge

• 28:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was AOC, right?

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, AOC was one of the leaders in it. And I think like it captures such a perfect moment, thinking back to 2017, where they not only thought they could get away with that, they did. And it was this big celebration almost. And in the end, you know, there was like inklings again of resistance in New York in, you know, like the way they approached labor and the idea that should local governments be giving, doling out all these different breaks to Amazon. And it's amazing that now, what is it, six years later, almost five and a half years later, it just kind of trickles into this really mundane construction pause of, and you know, a few less helixes or the helixes will take a little longer.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  I think it's a good it's a good representation of the last six years and this entire cycle.

• 29:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Even more breaking news is as we're talking, Amazon is now going to close Amazon Go stores in New York City, San Francisco and Seattle. This is also part of its cost cutting effort. And okay, so a spokesperson told Bloomberg, we remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Go stores.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I mean, Amazon.

• 29:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And features resonate most with customers. That's pretty interesting. This was a flagship product, but maybe the move for them now is to platformatize this and make that technology available to other retailers. What do you guys think?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  I mean, it makes sense to me, the idea. I mean, I had heard some arguments from people close to Amazon that they had viewed these stores as basically showrooms for the technology at a certain point, that the idea that they were going to be making a ton of money from, you know, just sales in these convenience stores didn't really materialize. And you saw that, excuse me, with a lot of their other commerce, you know, brick and mortar commerce projects just didn't really work out. And they closed their bookstores already, right? Didn't they shut those, what do they call them, the five star?

• 30:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Five star, four star?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Four star.

• 30:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Or five star, some number of stars that was high.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, they just, those didn't work out. And so it's kind of like this, what is it called? Check out and go or grab and go technology? I can't remember the name now.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  It's called just, yeah, just walk out.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Just walk out. Exactly. Yeah. The just walk out technology became sort of a showroom for that. And anyone who wanted to license it could kind of, they could point to the stores. So not, not all that surprising to me, I guess. It does sort of affect me personally because that was a pretty convenient lunch option near the office. And so I'll have to figure that one out. But when they say closing in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, that's basically the game, right? It's not like this thing is going to be flourishing in Columbus, Ohio or something, right?

• 31:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  I used to love them in San Francisco. Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  One interesting thing to think about, though, is how does this affect competition? Because even in this kind of moment of inflection that we're talking about Salesforce and everyone's figuring out profitability over growth, someone like Amazon, you know, in the past could essentially do whatever they wanted and competitors would just have to go along with it. But if you are a physical retailer that has kind of dealt with Amazon, you know, attacking your business from a million different angles over the last few years, do you buy their software? Is this something that, you know, they develop? And do you have a friendly relationship with them? And do they just become another SaaS provider to you while you're, you know, they're undercutting you or copying your products to sell online?

• 32:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Most likely not. Although, I don't know, the technology is so cool that I could see people being interested in it. Let's end the segment. We've covered Salesforce, we've covered Amazon's breaking news as we're recording. I'm just curious, Ranjan, if we could get, and Tom, if you want to weigh in also. I'd like to get both of your perspective on like what the deal is with the market right now. And I know that's a broad question, but I, I really do feel like my head is spinning in terms of everything that's happening right now. We have inflation that seems like it's done or it seems like it's just getting started and then rate raises seem like they're done or like, oh, maybe the, the Fed is going to go even higher. And I just think we're still in this period of uncertainty that has just thrown everything for a loop. Every time we're on, in this period of uncertainty, companies are like less interested in expanding

• 32:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  like we're seeing with Amazon or can't really plan for what the future looks like. And I don't know. I mean, Ranjan, can you explain why we're seesawing back and forth as much as we are? And what the state of the economy is at the moment, given everything that we've been seeing?

• 33:07Speaker 01

  I do think I have an idea. And again, like as Alex and I were talking about this earlier, you know, last month's jobs report surged to 517,000 jobs and which almost doubled the job growth from December. Inflation had been easing and everyone was getting more optimistic. It was up at 9.1% in July, was down to 6.4%, but month-on-month inflation was up 0.5%, which was a lot higher than 0.1% in December. So basically, you know, the jobs, the labor market is still not just strong, but incredibly strong. It's historically strong. Inflation, everyone had started to get a little bit comfortable, but it's still incredibly elevated.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  My favorite thing is now the sell-side investor community is trying to introduce the idea of a no landing. Basically, inflation keeps going up, but economic growth continues, jobs stay hot. Basically, stocks continue to go up and we've outlined this new scenario where instead of a soft landing or a hard landing, there's just no landing and we just stick with the status quo. I think what's really interesting is, of course, we should not have an idea because all the data even from a year ago makes no sense. The 2019 to 2021, the data, the patterns that emerged, you know, were so not typical of any normal

• 34:37Speaker 01

  growth cycle or even, you know, 10, 20, 30-year period, that we're still at a point that trying to take year-on-year data relative to the February 2021, when things were, sorry, 2022, which we're also comparing those to 2021, nothing makes sense. So I think this is where everyone trying to, you know, use the last two to three years of completely, you know, not randomized, but completely chaotic data and trying to use that to extrapolate and forecast into the future. I think that's why everyone's getting confused. And then the only answer at the moment is, this really is a situation where no one knows. And it almost seems like yesterday, things were bad.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Today, as we're recording, you know, the VIX is down 4%, NASDAQ's up 2%, things are good again. Probably Monday, they might be bad again. And I think it reflects like, this is where every company is trying to kind of find itself, whether it's Amazon, whether it's Salesforce.

• 35:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and we're at the tail end of these, hopefully at the tail end of these rate raises. And I wonder like, okay, well, if this is all as bad as it's going to get, it's not that bad. It could be worse. But there's always, in my mind, the possibility that it just does end up getting much worse. Do you think that's still on the table, given where we are?

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's absolutely, there's, you know, there's an equal chance that things get significantly worse as significantly better. When the prevailing kind of investment bank narrative is no landing, that we're just going to kind of go along with the status quo of higher inflation, elevated inflation, but alongside elevated job growth. Clearly, people are trying to ignore having to take a bet on either side. So, so I do think like, things are comfortable again, which is good. And I mean, I think the cynicism that there was no way Jerome Powell and the Fed might, you know, orchestrate away or through this has subsided a little bit.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  But I don't know, I think it's, it's, it's not time to get comfortable just yet.

• 36:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Tom Dotan is here with us. He is a Wall Street general reporter, who wrote the story at Marc Benioff Salesforce. It's one big family until trouble hits. We've covered that here in the first half, along with some Amazon, some market stuff. We're also joined by Ron John Roy, who you just heard. Ron John is a co-author of Margins, which is a great Substack newsletter here with us every week. Ron John and I are actually going to be at South by Southwest. We're going to be talking about the direct to consumer industry. If you're there, catch us on the 13th of March. You can find the venue on the South by Southwest website. And I think I can link it in the show notes here as well. Okay, we're going to go to a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about OpenAI's API, TikTok's screen limits,

• 37:41Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 38:24Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 39:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Tom Dotan, who's a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and Ranjan Roy of Margins. Tom, have you been following the ChatGPT situation? And I'm curious if you've seen the fact that OpenAI has started to release these APIs. And when you think of like, what that could mean from a business perspective of companies being able to build on top of this API, is that something that merits some hype? Or do you think that it's largely going to fall flat?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I follow it super closely because when I'm not writing about Marc Benioff and Salesforce, most of my job is writing about Microsoft. And so their investment in OpenAI and integration of that tech into Bing and everything that goes along with it is a super, super major part of what I spend my time talking to people about. So I followed it pretty closely. Look, not to like echo the cliche that a lot of people like to use around here, but I think it really is early days with a lot of this tech. And it's probably one of the most hyped hype cycles I've seen in a while. And I'm including crypto within that. I know that there was a lot of, you know, froth over the excitement of completely redoing our international finance system

• 41:02Speaker 02

  and, you know, fiat currencies and stuff that came with crypto. But when you talk to people around here about the possibilities of generative AI, they describe it as a, literally as a new life form. And they don't really know, you know, what it's going to evolve into. So that's, that's pretty hypey. When it comes to like this current release of the OpenAI API, it's very inexpensive. I think that was, you know, there have been releases of their API in the past. You could have licensed it in, you know, GPT-3, its earlier model, a number of startups used it.

• 41:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, this is 10 times less than the prior models.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's disruptively cheap. And that's going to get a lot of companies that didn't have a huge amount of capital to be able to try it out. And

• 41:47Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think I have not yet seen a use of this technology in a integrated, larger software context that is going to completely upend everything that I knew about the way the industry works. I've seen some cool integrations like, you know, like a legal startup that uses GPT three to rewrite contracts, you know, that can generate clauses that a lawyer would then review in order to make sure it's accurate, things like that. You know, there's going to be a lot of talk next week. Sorry to bring Salesforce up again, but you know, they're going to talk about their integration of GPT like generative tech into, you know, their marketing software and Microsoft is going to do the same thing. And there's no question that this is just going to be the topic

• 42:32Speaker 02

  that every software company wants to market themselves on top of for the next couple of months. But I think the skepticism that I have around it is like, show me, show me the substantial increase in productivity or abilities that users would have that's going to make this as disruptive as people want it to be. It's fine for it to be a cool tool and powerful in many specific ways, but when you talk about the level of disruption that I think a lot of VCs and tech executives want and expect, we just aren't there yet. I'm not saying it can't happen, but we should at least be cautious and like point to specific success stories rather than just see the potential there and assume it's like fait accompli.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  I am so happy with that answer, Tom, because I completely agree. I think, I mean, when was the last time everyone got so excited about a Google Cloud feature release? I mean, I cannot remember that or Azure or anything else. And now they're literally, this is a change in the available API and everyone's freaking out rather than simply, you know, here is actually the end use case and, you know, here's what we can do with it. For me, I've been trying to think through this one, and this is part of what I had written about last week where, you know, voice computing as a platform might have been hyped out of existence. Do you think the hype

• 43:59Speaker 01

  could have a negative bearing on the, you know, whatever innovation trajectory generative AI could have? Or do you think, you know, whatever is going to happen is going to happen anyways? And it will realize its potential and we are actually in early days.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  I almost would just prefer to ignore the hype altogether, you know, positive or negatively. It's, it's, it's marketing, right? It's just people's desire to see something new and want it to be big. Or, you know, from like a, you know, counterfactual point of view, think that it's not, you know, it's all a scam, which I don't think it is. So hype just kind of distorts the perception of any, any piece of technology. So I guess, I guess the thing that I'm most interested in is like, show me, show me the things that you're building on top of it. Like, let's see how you integrate this tech into software and, and do something that is radically more powerful than, than what was capable in the past. And if you can do that, then sure, why not?

• 44:57Speaker 02

  I, I, there's no question that there's reason for optimism and excitement behind all of this, but I, I, I don't know. Like the, the technology will advance to as far as its architecture will allow it to advance. And I know, Alex, you've probably had Gary Marcus on here, who's pretty skeptical about

• 45:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, he was on last week.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  large language models and, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, he, he can speak to that much better than I can on, you know, what are the specific flaws within it? But there's so much money that's going into it from, you know, Google and, and Microsoft, and then also startups that are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to further these foundational models that I think the technology will continue to advance, whether or not it's hyped. But advancing towards what, right? Advancing towards what use case and what business case? That's not something that the companies that are advancing the technology can actually figure out. That's, it's going to take startups, it's going to take, you know, users to sort of play around with and figure out. And we'll probably find out, I think, within the year. That's a bold prediction, but, but I'll stick by it. Like, I think we'll find out within the year whether or not this is as disruptive as

• 46:00Speaker 02

  people were expecting. And it becomes like a one-year, two-year kind of disruption cycle, or it starts looking like autonomous vehicles where we're really talking decades.

• 46:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, our good friends and members of the Ohana Bain are already working with Coca-Cola on ways that they can implement this stuff in their marketing practice. So I think that.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  But for marketing, obviously, it's right. It's not generating new formulas for code.

• 46:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  And actually, I would, I think that fits very well into what Tom was saying is that, how often do you hear about a Bain? Partnership with any corporation, usually they try to hide those relationships until the actual end product is created and they can create, you know, like a results-driven case study around it. But of course, this is one where they came up before they've actually done any work or, you know, before there's actually any, uh, any captions written or advertisements generated. So, so yeah, I think that definitely captures part of this. But, but did Salesforce try to push any messaging around what it could look like in their systems? Because honestly, for me, having been on the sales side of the world,

• 47:08Speaker 01

  I know Alex has as well, there is a lot there that can be, uh, should be automated that was always kind of not human to start in terms of cold emails and email flows and trying to, you know, lead sourcing and all these kinds of things. Were they trying to sell that they're very close?

• 47:27Speaker 02

  You know, it came up a couple of times during earnings as Mike, we're very excited to talk about Einstein GPT. That's their AI, uh, label. Um, and sorry for the coughing.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Uh, I, you know, I'm not sure when this episode's going to come out, but, uh, next week they have, uh, a mini Dreamforce-like event where they will be talking, I think, quite a bit about their generative AI. And, and, you know, there's a lot of people in this game, but, but I, I agree with you, Ron John. I, I think one of the already existing capabilities of generative AI is, uh, content creation and like fairly decent content creation. When it comes to marketing emails, that makes sense to me. You, you could just enter a few parameters and it's going to generate copy and that's probably good enough to, you know, email out to hundreds of thousands of people. And it's a question of like, does that eliminate jobs? Does it make the current employees more efficient? Uh, you know, we'll

• 48:23Speaker 02

  see, but I, I have no, no major skepticisms that this technology would be very useful for, at the very least, marketing.

• 48:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let, let me bring it home with this one. Uh, first of all, Tom, I'm curious to get your perspective, since you cover Microsoft. OpenAI is making this available through its API. Microsoft is making OpenAI's API available through Azure. Do these two partners compete in any way? Or who goes to OpenAI and who goes to Azure? And then lastly, for both of you, uh, is this API business going to be a bigger business than let's say ChatGPT itself, or even Bing Search?

• 49:00Speaker 02

  It's a very good question, Alex. It's one that, not to tip your listeners off too much too, it's one that I'm spending a lot of my time talking to people about because the whole relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft is fascinating. It's one that I think we have a lot more to learn about. And as it evolves, I think will get more and more interesting because, you know, Microsoft has a stake in them, but they're also, like you said, competitors on the API front. When I was in Redmond a couple of weeks back when they rolled out their big new, you know, Bing, GPT-integrated Bing, their answer to me on that specific question, and this was before, you know, the recent OpenAI API release, was that Azure OpenAI, which is the Microsoft, you know, version of it, that's more oriented

• 49:44Speaker 02

  towards enterprise and they have other features within that, like, uh, security and other kind of things that they layer on to just a typical API plugin that they think is more appropriate for big enterprises, whereas, you know, the chat G P, sorry, the OpenAI API is, uh, kind of more oriented for startups. That's their argument. I still see it as fairly competitive. I just do. I just don't see why a company doesn't look at one, the other, and just compare prices. So, uh, I don't know. I think that one's going to be a really interesting thing to watch. And then as far as like, you know, this being a business on just API plugins or the actual business of building software on top of it, you know,

• 50:27Speaker 02

  it's like a picks and shovels kind of thing. I would say, look, if you're looking at Microsoft, what actually moves their business these days? It's growth in their cloud business. It's growth in Azure. If they can show quarterly growth in Azure, the street is happy. If they don't, they suffer. And so I think you're going to see a lot of companies that are cloud-oriented during this period of hype around AI, using this AI, uh, moment to market cloud and market their abilities to serve AI needs within the cloud. Because that's really what drives the business. And, um, you know, that's smart, that's smart business on their part, but it isn't really the potential, right? That's just kind of like foundational

• 51:10Speaker 02

  tech, uh, that moves along the industry, but isn't like the most exciting part of it.

• 51:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. I totally agree. I think that's spot on. Okay, I want to end with one story that Ranjan and I have been talking about. I know Ranjan has a pretty interesting experience to share, although the way I'm going to set it up is going to make it seem completely different than what actually happened. But I found this story in Rest of World this week, which was so interesting, which is that people who are using Tinder and other dating apps in Brazil are getting robbed a lot. And in fact, nine out of every 10 kidnappings in Sao Paulo in the past year have occurred after a date was arranged through Tinder or a similar app, according to Rest of World. I mean, that is, that's pretty unbelievable. And the thing that really makes these

• 51:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  these robberies or kidnappings possible is the fact that we have quick payments available with digital apps like Venmo or its analogues in other countries. And you know, I guess it seemed like online dating always seemed a little bit iffy, I guess, in terms of like, I'm really going to meet this person and I know that this little about them and maybe I haven't even spoken with them. But but it almost seems like this was the inevitable end of where this was going. And Ranjan, now I turn it over to you to tell your story and give your perspective here.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  And this is not Tinder related, but similarly, so in 2013, and I'd written about this in one of my first margins posts ever before we had an audience. And I was standing outside New York City. It was like 12 after midnight, maybe 1 a.m. I had my phone out. I was texting. Two guys came up. One knocked me from the side. The other grabbed my phone and they ran off. Now, like initially, you're thinking, okay, you know, this sucks. I was mugged. My iPhone is stolen. I have insurance on it. I'm like, all right, do I even go to the police? Whatever. Then on Monday morning, I checked my bank account and $2,400 is gone in three payments of $800 to Venmo.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  And then I, so this is also again, 2013, it's before Venmo had two factor authentication or is even standardized. And so, and it makes sense that, you know, if you see people out and their phone is unlocked, especially I was in the West Village of New York, Venmo was getting kind of popular around there. You know, you can just grab their phone and take a chance and either you get the phone, but then the bonus of actually having unlimited access to their Venmo account. For me, this was kind of this like inflection point of my relationship with tech because up to that point, Undying optimist, I just launched my own startup. Tech can do no wrong. Startups are the future. And I tried to contact Venmo. I get an automated response. You'll be, you

• 53:52Speaker 01

  know, like, we get a response in forty-eight to seventy-two hours, you know, which after you've had twenty-four hundred dollars stolen from your account, obviously is not the most satisfying thing. And in the end, it was actually JP Morgan Chase that answered the phone and helped me take care of this. And it really was this moment. I think that was the first time that I ever started to at least think about, you know, lack of friction, rapid growth, how these things actually affect your kind of day to day. And the crazy part is, these things still go on. I hadn't thought about this in a while. You know, I just Googled Venmo robbery. And still, there's a lot of Reddit stories nowadays, unfortunately, it's instead of just taking your phone, people hold you up at gun or knife point,

• 54:37Speaker 01

  and then force you to send them money via Venmo. So I think this whole space is just a reminder that, you know, like, frictionless payments are good in theory, but some friction is not the worst thing.

• 54:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I'll add to that, dating apps are good in theory, but some friction is not the worst thing. My goodness.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  The lesson, the lesson to take away. I think one thing from today's conversation, this might have to turn into a post. It is kind of interesting for me, because that was, you know, like, thinking about the different eras, like, right now, everything we've been talking about, you know, Salesforce is at this inflection point, Amazon's at this inflection point, Marc Benioff is going to have to be a CEO like he's never CEO'd before. The last kind of moment like that, I mean, this was for me, it really was twenty thirteen, fourteen, maybe twenty fifteen, where I started at least being a little bit more skeptical about tech. I don't know, for you guys, I know Alex, you were very, you know, a glassy eyed optimist

• 55:43Speaker 01

  around technology for a while. Was there a moment that it shifted for you?

• 55:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let me push back on that.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Now you're nuanced.

• 55:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  I feel like I'm more optimistic now than when I started, but I started when I was working for tech. I was working in ad tech and seeing the underbelly of ad tech made me extremely pessimistic about technology at a moment when everybody was optimistic about technology. So I sort of came in to the beat when I made my move from sales to journalism, a little bit jaded and a little bit aware of like the bad, the things that could get, can go wrong. And then I think the pendulum swung just a little bit too far towards the negative to make me like, be like, wait a second, you guys understand that these companies actually help people's lives in some cases, like, you know, it shouldn't be taboo to say that. And that's kind of where I am today.

• 56:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  But yeah, Tom, do you want to take us home? Curious what you're, what you make of this.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  I guess I am. Yeah, I think if you looked at the coverage of tech companies over the last, let's just even say, you know, Trump until a year or two ago, the biggest fear was that they'd grown too powerful. Right. They had swung the election to Trump. They were unaccountable in every way. There were all these pointless, I shouldn't say pointless. I shouldn't editorialize there. There were very interesting and not interesting hearings in DC over how to regulate these companies. No one really has resolved that question at all. And then we sort of saw larger market forces do at least some of the work of decreasing the power of these companies just purely financially, but by making them less valuable.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  So I think just being, you know, I'm probably the only person here that's still in San Francisco, which I would still argue is, is still kind of the center of tech. There is a general grasping around for the next thing, which I think is why there's been so much excitement over things like crypto, of course, and then now generative AI, because the platforms that have taken us to this point of great power seem like they've maxed out in a lot of ways.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  They just don't know what the next thing is. And until we figure that out, there's going to be this sort of period of searching and almost lassitude on the part of these companies. And so I think no one really, you know, going back to even just the markets question, no one really knows what to do. The rules that have existed to this point just don't really apply anymore. And they're still good companies. I mean, just financially, right? The big ones are, even if you're like super down on something like Meta, it's still a really profitable company that controls a huge amount of the digital advertising world. So, you know, you can be critical of them and skeptical of their long-term future, but still recognize that they're very good businesses. Going forward, I don't know,

• 58:33Speaker 02

  it'd be stupid for me to predict at all. But I guess on my old podcast, I used to talk a lot about the way the media writes about these things. And I think the biggest thing that we as reporters are trying to reckon with right now is how do you cover tech in a downturn? Because we've never really experienced one in like the modern, you know, 2012 and beyond era. And I just, I don't think reporters in the media in general knows how to write about them. And that affects the public's attitudes on them. And it all just leaves us very confused from the tech companies to the reporters to probably the employees at these companies. So I don't know. If anyone knows the answer, please let me know. Because I'm just sort of trying to figure it out day by day.

• 59:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Tom, so great to have you on, man. This was great. Great to catch up and terrific reporting, dude.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Thanks, man. I hope I was cool headed enough for your audience.

• 59:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, well, exactly. Perfectly cool headed. And Rajan, great to talk with you as always. Thanks again for being here.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Thanks, Alex.

• 59:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I'll see you in Austin in about a week.

• 59:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  That'll be fun.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  2:30 PM on that Monday, March 13. Alex and I are talking.

• 59:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, great. Well, I feel like this is our best Friday show so far. So thanks again, Tom, for joining. Thanks again, Ronjohn, for joining. Thanks to all of you for listening. It's great to have you coming back week after week. And we'll keep doing these. They're super fun. So stay tuned. Next Wednesday, I'll be on our flagship edition of the podcast with an interview with Benedict Evans, talking about how media and retail are converging. We also go much deeper into the question of like, what these AI APIs are going to look like. So stay tuned for that. And then Ronjohn and I will be back again, either Friday or Saturday next week, depending on our flight schedules to Austin. And we may even do this live somewhere in Austin. So watch my Twitter account and LinkedIn account

• 1:00:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  for that. Okay, that will do it for us today on the show. Thanks again for listening, and we will see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

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• 1:01:31Speaker 04

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• 1:01:33Speaker 05

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• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  No!

• 1:01:35Speaker 05

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• 1:01:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

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• 1:01:51Speaker 04

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• 1:01:57Speaker 05

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.