Pod Insights The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway Prof G Markets: Disney’s Proxy War, Goldman’s Guidance Miss, and the Dating App Market About this episode 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
Transcript 7,330 words · 13 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Scott Galloway? Support for the show comes from Northwest Registered Agent. Your business identity is everything that makes your business legitimate and professional. With Northwest Registered Agent, you don't just form a business, you start a complete foundation built for privacy, credibility, and growth. That includes registered agent service, a business address, operating agreement, domain, website, professional email, phone number, and built-in privacy. In other words, your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/profgfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/profgfree.
0:48 Speaker 01 Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com/aplewatchseries12.
1:18 Scott 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.
1:49 Scott 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?
2:03 Ed Elson? I'm great, Scott. I'm jet lagged after our London trip.
2:06 Scott 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.
2:11 Ed 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.
2:36 Scott Galloway? I love this story because it makes me seem nice and generous.
2:39 Ed Elson? You are.
2:40 Scott Galloway? And you had a good time, right?
2:41 Ed Elson? I had an amazing time.
2:42 Scott Galloway? What was the highlight? Chelsea, the Chelsea game or?
2:45 Ed Elson? Um, well, Chelsea won, but we still played like crap, but that's okay.
2:50 Scott Galloway? They played Crystal Palace, who did that play?
2:52 Ed Elson? Yeah, Crystal Palace.
2:53 Scott Galloway? Yeah, there you go.
2:54 Ed Elson? I was hoping that Claire and Caroline and Mia would be down to support Chelsea, but
2:59 Scott Galloway? No.
2:59 Ed Elson? I sort of told them how we kind of paid our way to success and I don't think they like Chelsea anymore.
3:03 Scott Galloway? Oh, well, there's always Arsenal or Tottenham. All right. What's going on with the news?
3:07 Ed Elson? Let's start with our weekly review of market vitals.
3:16 Ed 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.
4:00 Ed 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?
4:33 Scott 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.
5:18 Scott 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
6:01 Scott 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.
6:44 Scott 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.
7:34 Ed 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
8:17 Ed 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?
8:32 Scott 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.
9:17 Scott 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,
10:01 Scott 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.
10:45 Scott 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,
11:27 Scott 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?
11:39 Ed 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?
12:24 Scott 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.
13:09 Ed 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?
13:26 Scott 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?
14:08 Scott 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.
14:48 Scott 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.
14:56 Ed 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?
15:31 Scott 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.
16:11 Scott 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.
16:40 Ed Elson? 30 something? How old were you?
16:42 Scott Galloway? When I went on the board of the New York Times, I was...
16:44 Ed Elson? Yeah.
16:44 Scott Galloway? I guess I was older than that. I was 41, 42.
16:47 Ed Elson? That's crazy.
16:48 Scott 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.
17:16 Ed 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?
17:47 Scott 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.
18:31 Scott 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.
19:15 Scott 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.
20:00 Ed 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?
20:38 Scott 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.
21:06 Ed Elson? Okay, we'll be right back after a quick break with a look at the dating app market.
21:24 Scott Galloway? Support for the show comes from Nutriful, the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand used by over one and a half million people. With age comes knowledge, patience, and for some, hair loss. Didn't say it was all good things. And for those who want to do something about it, there's Nutriful. Nutriful has formulas built for men at different life stages. They have Nutriful Men for Guys Age 18 to 49, plus the new Nutriful Men 50 and Older. That's the first product of its kind specifically for men over 50. You can now address the key root causes of thinning wherever you are in life. Grow visibly thicker, fuller hair in just three to six months. Start Nutriful today and make the hat optional. Visit nutriful.com and enter promo code PROPCHI for $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping.
22:10 Scott Galloway? Find out why Nutraful is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code PROP G. That's nutraful.com promo code PROP G.
22:28 Scott Galloway? Support for the show comes from Upwork. Trying to scale your business? At some point, you're probably going to hit a point where you need some help. Sometimes the best way to break through that is bringing in the right talent at the right time. Upwork can help. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across more than 125 categories. Whether you need specialized skills for a single project or extra support to keep up with demand, it's easy to connect with experienced professionals, review their work, and find the right fit. You can move faster without taking on the commitment of full-time hires. And for businesses that need the very best talent, Upwork Business Plus provides access to the top 1% of freelancers on the platform. AI-powered matching connects you with qualified candidates in under six hours, cutting down the time spent searching. Upwork also takes care
23:12 Scott Galloway? of contracts, payments, and other administrative tasks, so you can spend less time managing logistics and more time focused on what's next. Visit upwork.com/profg right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com/profg to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com slash PROP G. Upwork.com slash PROP G.
23:45 Ed 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.
24:18 Ed Elson? Scott, pay to play dating, is this a good idea?
24:22 Scott 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.
24:39 Ed 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?
24:51 Scott 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?
25:04 Ed Elson? Yeah.
25:05 Scott 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?
25:23 Ed 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?
26:08 Scott 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.
26:32 Ed 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
26:42 Scott Galloway? Claire.
26:42 Ed Elson? onto whether this is a good idea.
26:44 Scott Galloway? How'd it happen?
26:45 Speaker 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.
27:16 Scott Galloway? Right.
27:17 Speaker 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.
27:39 Scott Galloway? Yeah.
27:39 Speaker 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.
28:03 Scott 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.
28:12 Speaker 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.
28:24 Scott Galloway? So wait, hold on, but let's look at the nine. What was your total expenditure on Hinge?
28:28 Speaker 03 It was sixty bucks. So sixty bucks for three people.
28:31 Scott Galloway? Total expenditure was sixty bucks?
28:32 Speaker 03 Yeah. And then I canceled it. So obviously, that's not like sustainable, reoccurring revenue, really.
28:38 Scott Galloway? So Claire, I, I mean, literally, I spent, I would spend sixty thousand dollars and have terrible relationships.
28:47 Ed Elson? Three thousand on drinks.
28:50 Scott 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.
28:56 Ed Elson? Um, it's good. I don't do it that much, but I recently got on Raya. Have you heard of Raya?
29:01 Speaker 03 Ed, what?
29:03 Scott Galloway? Isn't that supposed to be the more selective one?
29:05 Ed 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.
29:11 Speaker 03 Did somebody refer you?
29:12 Ed Elson? Yeah, a friend referred me. But interestingly, that's only ten dollars a month.
29:16 Speaker 03 Huh.
29:17 Ed 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.
29:34 Scott Galloway? Sounds like you need Claire to be your ghostwriter.
29:36 Ed Elson? Yeah, exactly.
29:37 Speaker 03 I've tried to advise. I've tried.
29:39 Ed 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.
29:47 Speaker 03 No.
29:49 Scott 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.
29:57 Ed 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?
30:37 Scott 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.
31:11 Scott 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?
31:28 Ed 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?
31:42 Speaker 03 I haven't had that desire. I mean,
31:44 Scott Galloway? Claire's in love. Claire's in love.
31:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're right. You're right, Scott.
31:49 Scott 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.
31:57 Speaker 03 Get off of there, Carmen.
31:58 Scott 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
32:42 Scott 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,
33:03 Ed Elson? Suffer in silence.
33:04 Scott Galloway? Their own misery.
33:05 Ed 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.
33:10 Scott Galloway? You still think the old fashioned way is easier going to a bar?
33:13 Ed 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.
33:53 Speaker 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
34:10 Scott Galloway? Assume.
34:10 Speaker 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.
34:53 Ed Elson? Yeah, that's a good point.
34:54 Scott 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.
35:08 Ed Elson? Hinge lets you do it. I desperately don't want to do that.
35:11 Speaker 03 Ed, are you kidding? You would have it in the bag.
35:14 Scott Galloway? That's it. No picture.
35:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's the one thing you have.
35:17 Ed Elson? That's my one asset.
35:19 Scott Galloway? Well, this has been illuminating.
35:20 Ed 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.
35:29 Speaker 04 Have you used dating apps and what has been your general experience?
35:34 Speaker 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.
35:47 Speaker 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.
36:01 Speaker 07 I feel like I found pieces of New York through meeting people on the apps.
36:06 Speaker 04 Wow.
36:07 Speaker 07 Um, so that's been fun.
36:08 Speaker 04 That's so lovely.
36:09 Speaker 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.
36:27 Speaker 04 So like a little bit more niche, so you're kind of already filtering out, filtering some people.
36:32 Speaker 06 Yeah.
36:33 Speaker 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.
36:43 Speaker 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.
36:53 Ed Elson? Um, I'm on Raya personally. I'm not trying to, not trying to brag or anything.
36:56 Speaker 04 Ooh, you got somebody on?
36:59 Ed Elson? No, no, no, but it's because it's more for research purposes, you know?
37:04 Speaker 09 Honk for Raya.
37:05 Speaker 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.
37:22 Speaker 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.
37:31 Speaker 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.
37:41 Speaker 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.
37:51 Ed 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?
38:15 Scott 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.
39:18 Speaker 10 Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at Odoo.com/vox. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash vox.
39:55 Speaker 11 Afternoon glare totally ruined my watch party for the big game. That's when my buddy recommended Blinds.com.
40:02 Speaker 12 With custom window treatments made to fit your style, space, and budget, customers who shop at Blinds.com experienced overwhelming satisfaction. Side effects may include a fuller, deeper night's sleep and a sudden urge to host the watch party again. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Visit Blinds.com to order your free samples today.
Previous No Mercy / No Malice: Porn and Tanks Next Office Hours: Revenue Per Employee, Should I Move Production to Mexico? And Advice to an Early Career 23-year-old Page updated September 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
