Helping Ukrainian Refugees and Apple Looking for New Chip Suppliers

back to work. Plus submits the ongoing chip crisis, Apple looking for new chip suppliers even in China. We'll talk about why the iPhone maker is expanding its roster. Next, and a fledgely Union takes an early lead in an election to unionize an Amazon warehouse in New York, while the Union trails in a separate election in Alabama. Will have the latest. Let's get an update now on the

war in Ukraine. As sanctions on Russian mount President Biden now plans to release a million barrels of oil a day from US reserves for six months to reduce US dependents on foreign supplies. Bloomber Examily Wilkins on the hill joining us now with more details on this, and Emily talked to us a little bit more about the President's plan and how much of an impact it will actually

have on everyday Americans. So we've already seen President Biden go to these oil reserves and tried to release barrels before, trying to ease some of the pressure that we're seen with oil and gas prices. But this is going to be bigger than anything we've seen. I mean, those last releases were about I think thirty million, sixty million barrels. This is going to be a hundred eighty million when all is said and done, released roughly a million barrels

of oil per day. And this comes as both the US is struggling right now with high gas prices trying to figure out a way to bring those back down with inflation, plus the war in Ukraine. But there's also struggles right now going on in Europe. Of Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that if they want to pay for Russian gas, it's going to have to be in rubles.

That could potentially be a huge problem for a lot of the European allies that President Biden has tried to make sure that he's moving with as he goes forward. So I think a lot of questions about what's going to happen next for a number of European countries, particularly Germany that really do rely on a lot of Russian oil Emily. President Biden also taking some steps to help alleviate pressure on US companies with regard to the chip crisis and a potential crisis in electric car batteries by

invoking the Defense Production Act. Tell us about that. Yeah, so this is an act. It's been used before by Biden as well as by other presidents, and really to sort of help industry ease that need a little bit of a boost. And right now, the electric vehicle battery industry is something that you've seen concerns about from lawmakers

on both sides of the aisle. They've written Biden, they've asked him to go ahead and invoke this act to really make sure that they're bolstering electric vehicles continuing their

push there. I mean, this is something again, it ties into the energy, It ties into the high prices of oil and gas that we're currently seen, and it's also something that Biden was initially kind of reluctant to do because of concerns from environmental groups, and it shows just how much pressure the White House is now under to address some of these concerns. All right, Emily Wilkins for

US at the Capital. Emily, thank you for that update. Meantime, Ukrainian refugees continue to fleep and estimated four million so far, and tech companies have not only been cutting off operations in Russia but also stepping in to help these refugees. Smart Recruiters, for instance, which has an office in crack Out, Poland, has been sheltering refugees while its employees have been faring them to and from the Ukrainian border, even bringing them

into their own homes. The company is also working to help refugees re enter the workforce and start rebuilding their lives. Smart Recruiters founder and CEO Jerome turn It joins us now. Jerome, thank you so much for joining us. Talk to me about the situation your office and crack Out right now and how your employees are stepping into help. Yeah, thank

you for having me. Emilie. I think what's what really happened here has happened organic key really from the second day of the invasion, everybody in our Crack office film about a d and fifty employees in Crack, and everyone started to think, how can I help? And they started to drive their car back and forced to the border to pick up refugees. They then brought supplies as necessary, and as you pointed out, it quickly evolved to actually

welcoming refugees in their homes. And at this moment, many of our employees, I would say, almost everybody who actually has a big enough living room or or a guest guest room has a family at home. Um, you know, one of our employer, I think, mind Matteo, actually welcomed the mom with your baby and an infant. They've been driving for six days throughout Ukraine before they reached a border, and he was able to bring them home and to provide shelter and food and baby food and strollers and

a baby bed, like really the basics of welcoming. And it's been humbling, frankly to see how much people have stepped up in Poland, which, as Emily pointed as received the majority of the influx of refugees. I understand your office is trying to a sort of operation center of sorts. You're you're giving a stipend, a five stipend to employees to help. They are donating supplies of all kinds. Talk to us about how the refugees are doing once they get to you. Yeah, I mean, this is a dire

situation for everyone. Many of them have actually arrived as a mother with children, older people, many men have stayed behind to fight um. So it is a dire situation. And I think one one light of hope here is the is the connection that has been built between the people of Poland and Europe in general and the Ukrainian refugees. Like the you know, our slack channel as an example, would match the age of a kid with who can

help them? So you would have, oh, I have a mom here, she has an eight year old and a four year old, and somebody would say, oh, actually I have a year old and a four year old, bring them over. And so there's like a family feeling to it that that field try and at least provides the basics. But as these refugees set on, of course, it opens up the question of what is next them and and where do they go from there? Right, many of these refugees don't know where they're gonna be sleeping tomorrow, let

alone what they're gonna do next. You are actually a recruiting company. You help match talent with employers. How are you helping these refugees re enter the workforce? Yeah? We we actually we are a recruiting platform and so we help large enterprises manage their recruiting, with several thousand enterprises using our software and collectively actually our customers higher almost a million people a year just in Europe. And so we felt really our responsibility, frankly, our our duty as

as a as a business to actually help. And so what we've done here is we've actually created a fast track application for Ukrainian refugees so that anybody who applies can self identify as a refugee and then be put into a fast track throughout the employment process at companies like Red Bullo Bush or Visa or Kia who are

using our software. And I think it is it is actually at the moment in time where businesses who have been incredibly supportive of the war and posing sanctions on Russia making donations, and I would say now it's time to hire Ukrainians. That's the next time, because four million people are going to be looking for a job well, that is certainly unequivocal. Jerome turn Nex Smart Recruiters founder and CEO, thank you for bringing that story to us. Coming up, the I p A window could be closing

or closed. We'll talk about the options for late stage private companies in an ongoing down market with Phil Haslett of Equities and Mrs Bloomberg. As stocks continue to whip saw, some of the big name startups that were expected to go public earlier this year have slowed their rush to market. Read It, for instance, had discussed listing shares as soon as the first quarter, according to Bloomberg sources, Yet even after filing the paperwork for an I p O, they

haven't taken the next step. Let's talk about all this and more with Phil Haslett, founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Equity. Then, Phil, I was speaking to a venture capitalist this week who said, the I p O window is frozen shut. Would you agree? It's frozen shut, it's closed, it's double locked, it's it's nothing's happening for a while. So what next? So I think we're this in this period of uncertainty about inflation and its impact on companies.

You've got tech stocks that are down to almost pre pandemic levels of pricing right, kind of like good yardsticks of the market like Zoom Docu signed peloton Um, and you've got political risk out there, and until those things are kind of have a bit more resolution, I think you're going to see a lot of companies thinking about raising a new round of funding or something that we're starting to see now which is starting to kind of control their cash through layoffs, are kind of reprojecting some

of their growth. So Go Puff, for example, is reportedly cutting a lot of jobs, and also Bloomberg is reporting they're raising a billion dollars in new funding with no I p O in sight. They had originally raised at a fifteen billion dollar valuation. Not sure if that valuation will hold up. But what do you imagine is going on behind the scenes at a company like go Puff right now? Some very stressful board meetings, for sure. I

think you're gonna see some valuations come down. Um. One of the scary things is that a lot of companies raised a lot of private capital in two thousand one at really high valuations and now they're probably effectively underwater and are little behind on growth strategies and growth projections, and so I think the real big next wave is going to be kind of this day of reckoning where companies admit it start layoffs, have to raise money, but

probably it terms not really excited about um. And you're gonna have to hear the D word in in Silicon Valley, which is the down round UM. And we're gonna start to see more of those kind of come out UM. And we're just you know, it's really if you want to be the first to kind of tear the band aid off, or if you kind of want to wait and hope that that things are gonna get better. But you know, I like to say hope is not a strategy. We saw insta cart sort of tear off the band aid,

lowering their own valuation from billion dollars voluntarily. They're not in the process of raising money, at least not right now. You're saying mass layoffs, a mass number of down rounds. Are we going to see companies go under get acquired? I think a combination of all three. I thought what Instacart did was a really gutsy move really to kind of come out first and say, look, there's a benefit to actually repricing ourselves at billion. We can now issue

stock to our employees and a more fair value. Our competitors like Door Dash er down a lot um. I think other companies gonna do. So You're probably gonna see some consolidation, and I think you're gonna start to see a paradigm shift where instead of it being a very founder friendly market to raise capital, it's going to shift to of vcas and to the growth equity investors. They're gonna get better terms, they're going to get better valuations,

and we're going to start to see that happen. One of the interesting things that equities and is because of kind of where we sit, we can actually see secondary transactions that are happening in between the last funding around, right, because we usually don't see prices happen for a year or two at a time, and we're definitely seeing kind

of pricing compression versus just a quarter ago. What does it mean for employees in the middle of the Great Resignation, when a lot of people have been thinking about, you know, do I really want to keep doing what I'm doing? Yeah? Absolutely, Well, the first thing is a lot of these employees were really excited and anticipating some type of liquidity for their shares by way of some type of IPO or maybe aspect and maybe if they've started thinking about life events.

So when you compound the fact that the markets are down, you're not getting liquidity. UM goods are costing more. A lot of companies are starting to proactively kind of reach out to places like ourselves and start to think about liquidity for their employees and the private markets, right and so fortunately that's kind of a part of the capital market structure. That's that's grown a lot in the last seven or eight years. So we expect and you know,

to keep seeing that happen. Now, your rival Forge, I believe just it a back is Equities and kind of I p O eventually, though maybe not in the near down. Yeah, well windows very closed right now. But you know, we started equities and to bring private markets to the public grade and that's our mission. And we've been fortunately being able to grow and as a private company haven't been inhibited by you know, how we can deliver that to

our customers. UM. But you know, as my co founder and I, one of our responsibilities is to kind of evaluate all options and if there's an opportunity to significantly grow the business and and kind of further that mission. Uh, you know, we uh, we'll keep our door open through that, all right, Phil Haslett, founder and strategy officer at Equities, and thank you. Coming up put some new supplies start

chipping into Apple. Why Apple is looking to diversify its supply chain for iPhone parts and to unionize or not Amazon workers in the midst of a critical vote in New York and Alabama. Will have the latest. Next, this is Bloomberg. Apple is exploring news sources for the memory chips that go into iPhones after a disruption at a key Japanese partner, including its first Chinese producer joining us now Bloomberg Mark German, who covers Apple. So Mark, who's

Apple talking to for new parts? And why? Yeah, Apple for one of the first times is looking to a China based memory supplier no memory, nan memory, nan flash memory. That's actually the storage right that they have in MacBooks and iPhones and ips this point. So they're talking to this China base company called yang z Memory. And this is notable because Apple traditionally builds its devices in China, but it doesn't use China based suppliers for components of

this magnitude right, that's potentially going to change. They are testing some of their MARY chips, they're having discussions with them. There's no guarantee that these chips will actually be implemented into an iPhone or another device this year, but they're working toward it. With Apple has always tried to do

is diversify its component sourcing as much as possible. So if you have like we had with one memory supply February, an issue where a factory became contaminated, or you have a you know, a weather disruption or a COVID disruption, right there are backup suppliers because Apple can't afford with everything on the line to delay products because a component issues or to have less supplied than expected. So that's

why they try to have backup sources. What's the significance of Apple looking at a Chinese supplier in the midst of this big push to bring chip production back to the United States. Yeah. I mean to some people it may not be a great look, right, but business is business, and consumers at the end of the day want to

get their phones. Investors at the end of the day want Apple to be able to ship the phones, and so if they need to go to a supplier that may, you know, not look so hot right now, right, it's a bad look, but at least they're gonna be able to get the phone shipped. Now, I think the more possi possibly the more detrimental thing is that these suppliers traditionally have not done as good a job at creating those components as some of the other suppliers in Asia

and elsewhere in the world. Right, So that would be my main concern if I were Apple, getting the best product, because what you don't want or some iPhones to perform better than others in the ISAAC consumers. All right, Mark German, thank you for that update. Something will continue to follow meantime. A fledgling union taking an early lead in an election to unionize at an Amazon facility in New York, while in a completely separate election in Alabama and Alabama union

efforts trailing this want to do over election. I want to get an update on this with our Josh Idolston in San Francisco. Josh, we actually have some breaking news that fledgling union in New York looks like it's on track to win with the majority of the votes a bit over half counted and more counting tomorrow, the Union is in the league, which means there's the potential for really a stunning upset here if in fact, when all the votes are counted, including any challenge balance that end

up getting counted, the Union has a majority. The bigger picture here is that in recent decades, unions have almost never succeeded in big labor board elections at the very top non union brand name prominent companies in the United States, So that the Union is currently in the lead more than halfway through is stunning. And this is happening in a campaign where the Union is pretty d i y effort led by an employee that Amazon fired a couple

of years ago. Meantime, we're seeing the trend shifting in the other direction in this election in Alabama, which, as you know the history of this very well. They're doing this election over again because of a lot of controversy, but looks like the Union not winning yet so far there,

what do you make of that? So there, the Union is behind by around a hundred votes, and there are around four hundred challenge ballots we've heard, which means ballots where there's a dispute between the two sides about whether that envelope should be opened and that votes should be counted. So we don't know what the result will be, but Amazon, in its effort to defeat the union, is ahead in Alabama,

though not by as much as last time. Last time there were challenged ballots, but there weren't enough of them to make the difference, and so the union would have been defeated if not for the labor board concluding that there have been too much misconduct and so the election should be run again. In each of these cases, Amazon has, according to workers, been aggressively campaigning against organizing, and it is not easy to win a big labor board election

against a company that's determined to dissuade workers unionizing. How are Amazon workers everywhere else watching this? We've seen already a Starbucks. How a win just one place can be a lightning rod in a lightning ball in terms of inspiring other people to organize. We saw with the first all Right Bloomberg, Josh Idolson. There looks like we lost, Josh,

but certainly, as he was discussing, this could be very significant. Obviously, this is something that Amazon employees everywhere are watching closely. We'll see if these union votes or how these union volks impact potential unionization efforts at other Amazon warehouses across the country and around the world. Coming up the one trillion dollar tech route from Netflix to Meta, from Zoom to Airbnb. For the winners and losers of the post

pandemic age, we will discuss. This is Bloomberg he teach whip which pet A whip, A whip, pip A whip people or whip pip pip peach, whip A whip, A whip a whip, hip a whip pip or whip which whip, whip a whip A which tip a bit pip a whip hip hip which pet? Welcome back to Bloomber Technology. I'm which hang in San Francisco. Let's get back tech stocks.

Volatile start of the year shows investors are shifting away from pandemic darlings like et SE, Netflix, PayPal, Peloton, all among the worst performers in the SMP so far this year. What does it mean? What's next? Let's bring in Mark Levin. J ANDP Security is a citizens company. CEO, Mark, thank you so much for joining us. So what actually looks good in tech to you right now? Well, you're looking

at a screen not much. I mean, the first quarter obviously was one of the worst performers in the entire market, and we came from such lofty levels that I think it's kind of the bigger they are the heart of they fall. But I think throwing out tech a of the first quarter is a bad idea because you just mentioned it. It's part of all of our lives, and the more increasing part of our lives, and that's not going to change. In fact, it's accelerating. I think it's

just what our investors want to pay for it. We've been focusing on some of those broken names here at JMP that have still garnered a lot of wallet. It's just the growth rate is decelerated. They've had some digestion issues, and we're still interested in some of those names. You mentioned something Paypals, the name we like a lot the payment space, which is obviously overtaking a lot of our wallet. It's a big part of citizens. In fact, the citizens

pay pay is changing. Cash is trash. It's people are paying with their phone, and that's not going to decelerate. We mentioned docu sign is a name that had a very tough first quarter insider buying, but a part of our lives. That's going to continue. We're not going to go down to the corner to get things notarized and and have stacks of paper. So that's what we're looking

for at JMP. And I think some of these big darlings have had a hard time in the first quarter, but we're still there and I think you're going to see some of the performance in the back half of the year. He's certainly better than the first quarter, and that's what we're focused on. So do you think these names are going to continue to fall and for how

much longer before it gets better? Well, I again, I think the investors will look at their first quarter reports and see the digestion of of the poor reports that they had from the fourth quarter. Is it's still getting worse. And I think even a slight diminution in that getting worse will be enough for investors to take note. Um. Again, this is kind of the bigger They are the heart of the fall trade. Um, you put up the faint stocks. My good friend Jeff Lagger Capital Group, we called mount

Fang because we put Microsoft in Tesla in those names. Um, you look at the divergence and performance within the fangs, which used to trade lockstuff. They don't anymore. Microsoft had to blow up first quarter. Apple almost had a new high today. And then you look at some of the romans of net like a Facebook, they're far worse and divergent from those names. So again, we had a market where everything worked. We had a market for a little

while where nothing worked. Now we're going to a stock pickers market, and I think that's what we're focused on. I think this whole same thing needs to be redefined a bit. I agree in any way, I guess it would be mag since it's not Facebook anymore, it is meta. Do you think Netflix should still be in that group? Well, it's a great question, Emily. I mean, it's a leader in the category. A lot of people are playing catch up, a lot of people are sniping at them and trying

to take their share of wallet. Um, it's the leader of that group. We're gonna learn a lot. I think through two about what name shouldn't shouldn't be in there. Wall Street loves acronyms, they love things. We had a nifty fifty, you know, we had all these different names. Over time, they've usually ended poorly. I think for some

of these names, it already has. I think for other of those those names like Microsoft and Apple, it continues to climb that wall of worry, and I think, well, what we should be looking at is is there ground ahead of them to gain market share. Um, what we haven't talked about in a long time. You certainly have and I certainly haven't is a spector regulation. We don't talk about that anymore. That's a great backdrop for some of these names that had that overhang which could have

been multiple compression, and we're not seeing that. So again, you've got to go bottoms up. You gotta pick up where the market is leading them. Apple is a great example what they're doing in Apple pay and what they're doing our share of walt and share of time, and that's what you want to pay attention to. Well, they're certainly talking about regulation in Washington on both sides of the aisle, but obviously the war has taken mind and attention share. Do away with the acronyms. Mark, is that

what you're saying, Fang not fang meang. I mean I added I added the mountains to it, so I had a microseft to test. I've been doing that for a while. UM, I think it's an easy thing to put your moniker around what. We've got to find some new leadership as well, because UM, as long as these five or six companies take up such a large share of of our investing mindset and is to share them of the indexes, I think people are gonna look for UM potentially regulating Again.

We've talked a lot about regulation. I haven't seen a lot. I've seen some self regulation markets regulating themselves, which is really really interesting to me. It's not Congress. I said to somebody not too long ago. I don't think the average congressman knows what how to twitter, how to tweet, excuse me, how to use their Twitter, etcetera. They have a lot of people who helped them. If they can't

figure it out themselves, how they gonna regulate it? And that was the backtrop that I always thought would happen, which we have less regulation no more. Well, they've talked a lot about regulation, they have to act on it. We have seen tougher regulation happening in Europe, and of course much remains to be seen. Mark Leman JMP Securities a Citizens Company CEO. Thank you Mark, as always coming up Dows that is decentralized autonomous organizations. What are they

and what is their role in the crypto ecosystem. We're going to speak with the co founders of the decentralized investment platform Syndicate. Next, this is Bloomberg. It is time now for our crypto report. We're going to focus on Dows today, decentralized autonomous organizations. Who to explain what those are? Our crypto contributor Nale Bossi Sinale. It's complicated, but I know you can boil it down. Yeah, let's try to boil it down for you, partially through the use cases.

These are decentralized autonomous organizations. They have different voting structures that tend to decentralize and get together groups of people who want to invest in certain projects or give to certain charities. And some examples of this that we've seen are, for example, Constitution DOWT, which raised about forty seven million dollars to try to buy an original copy of a constitution. Of course, we know they were outbid by billionaire Ken Griffin.

Please or Dow which has invested in a series of n f T s and has given millions of dollars to charities. And you craned out, which has also raised millions of dollars for Ukraine in the wake of the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. So we have a bunch of ways that these have been used, from venture funding to charities. It's going to be interesting how they continue to take shape Emily in the process of investing more and investing more through digital ecosystems. All right, Shanali,

thank you. I want to bring in our next guest for a deeper dive. Here Will Pepper and e Lee, the co founders of Syndicate joining us now, which is shaping its own role in the DOW space. Even want to start with you. There are plenty of definitions for dows out there. In the simplest terms, what is a DOW to you? Yeah, The way that we think about dows is that it's the web free technology that enables

communities to coordinate capital natively on the Internet. And if we think about the applications of that, and it's pretty profound in terms of how you know, communities, people in capital work together. And so one of the biggest application in areas of DOWS in our view is the area of investing. And when we think of investing. It's not just about the allocation of financial capital, but also the

allocation of human capital as well. And so um, what we're building a syndicate is lead free infrastructure to power investing on the Internet through our infrastructure. So will on that note talk to us a little bit more about your view for how syndicate fits into the future of TAWS and decentralized investing in general. Absolutely. Um, yeah, I've been involved in the DAWA space since investing on the very first so in I'm called the Doubt and because

there were no other days at the time. And the way we see investing moving is becoming dramatically more community owned, and dramatically more transparent and dramatically more accessible. And the interesting thing is that DOWS themselves, the structures they enable are not new. For example, under the Hood Syndicate uses investment clubs which have existed forever a century. But the thing that is new is how easily and quickly and

cheaply incorporated. Whether that's Constitution down which I was on the core team of raising forty plus million dollars in under a week, whether that's Ukraine now raising large amounts of money to go to Ukraine at the time when they need it in a very cute time of crisis. That speed and that efficiency is incredibly new, even if the structures themselves are the things that have existed before.

You know, since the start of Ukraine dow. I'm wondering you were part of the early members of a constitution dow as well. From what I remember. Are there ways that dows have changed? Will that surprised you? Yeah? I think that the interesting thing is that previously people felt that dows would be very long running. So the idea of the dow in was this kind of ecosystem fund to fund projects on the ethereum network for a very long time. And some dows are being referred to now

as financial flash moods. Essentially dows that form very quickly for a specific purpose, execute on that purpose, and then and then in some cases keep going in the lighter weight way or dissolved completely. So I think that that's one thing that's really fascinating is that if you want to set up, say a fund for these things, it would take um many many months of work. But because dows can be spun up so much more quickly, it can also be spun down so much more quickly once

their purpose is done. Are there structural issues in are their governance issues that really still need to be worked out among doubts when people are thinking about entering into them. Yeah, one of the biggest things that we see is one of the potential limitters for the impacts and dows is how legally these things are going to be um uh

you know, viewed and and and and handle right. And so a lot of the members and a generators of these doos they want to do the right thing right as well as mentioned, most of these organizations that come together using dallas on the internet are trying to accomplish a really specific and important purpose, whether that's you know, um funding um you know projects or people that deserve it, whether that is funding some kind of filming propic or

nonprofit related or charitable purpose, or in the case of Ukraine DOW, trying to provide you know, aid to the people that needed the most right. And most of these organizations and these people, I mean, they're not trying to do bad things. They're not trying to go around the laws. They don't want to you know, be investigated, they don't

want to go to jail or anything like that. And so what dows need are actually legal pathways where they can accomplish their mission and also protect the purpose the mission of the tao as well as the members of those taos. And so that is a big part of what Syndicate UM and we are doing is providing these very tried and true legal pathways for people to use this technology for the purposes that are really really important.

So as we'll mention, you know, investment clubs as a legal construct have been around for more than a hundred years, and some of the things that we're working on, or what are some other legal designs where people can utilize this technology and not need to worry about whether or not they're you know, maintaining compliance with various regulations, whether it be the SEC or otherwise. So there's definitely concerns that this and all this can all get a little messy.

Well I'm curious, what have been the learnings from the Constitution Dow situation and where is that project today? Yeah, yeah, so constitutions to after we lost the bid, we we sputted down and we we we we effectively developed out refunded the money and people could uh people could could get the full contributions back. UM. One thing that's very interesting about constitution doubt I helped a lot with their compliance, just personally helping guide them through it. And one thing

is that we could not give ownership of the constitution. UM. We could give people the ability to vote on where it was displayed and uh, for example, how it should be presented, but we couldn't give them ownership of the document itself. And I think there's this regulatory gap we see right now where people really want ownership, but the current laws as they're structured, don't allow for that to happen.

So in reality, UM, the current investor protection laws are leading to people getting even less ownership and even less protection um uh in the current state. So we're definitely on a path where there's a conflict between UM, the way the regulations are written and the desires that people have and UM. And I hope that that conflict is resolved where people can have excel ownership of these dolls UM in the future. All right, Well, Paper and Lee

Syndicate co founders. Fascinating discussion, Shinnali bask as well, thank you all for joining us. Coming up women helping women to get to the top and stay there, we will speak to the CEO of Chief, Caroline Childers, a newly anointed unicorn. This is Bloomberg Chiefs, a private network of senior executive women designed to drive more women into positions of power, as announcing a hundred million dollars in new funding, bringing their total valuation to one point one billion dollars.

I want to talk about that and more with CHF CEO and co founder Caroline Childers. Caroline, thank you so much for joining us. Talk to us a little bit about how Chief started and what you believe sets it apart from other networking opportunities out there. Uh. Well, I'm

super excited to be able to join you today. Um. And the idea of Chief it came from a very personal place for myself and my co founder Lindsay, where we were getting more senior in our careers and spending all of our time mentoring others and managing our teams and no longer had a real network a community resources to be able to tap into as we were navigating

the new challenges of senior leadership. Um and Uh, it's the old adage of it gets lonely at the top, but it gets lonely at the top a lot earlier for women. So we were really inspired to build a community specifically focused on senior executive women and that was the inspiration for us launching Chief. How is Chief different than from example, the Wing, which I know struggled to stay in business, and it's it's different value proposition. But

I'm curious what you think differentiates this from alternatives? Yeah, So Chief is first and foremost, as I mentioned, focused on a more senior executive women. UM. We think there are just amazing communities that exist out there for women at large. We saw a real white space of being

able to focus in on senior executive women. And for us, it was really about how do we drive more women into positions of leadership and keep them there and really focus on that leadership development that is so critical at every stage of your career. UM. And So while uh, we often are compared UM, I think what we often say is we're a community that has a space that our that our community can come together in. UM. But we're a community first. What trends are you seeing right

now with women leadership in business? Are we seeing more women get to the C suite? Are we seeing more women stay there? Certainly it's still not enough. Yeah. I mean, I think the pandemic just threw everything on its head. Um. And I think that is why Chief has had such success over the last few years. We went into the pandemic where women leaders, in particular, we're not only having to manage their teams through an unprecedented time, but also their families. Um. And I think that is why you

saw so much of the women workforce actually drum out. Um. And it's why something like Chief resonated in such a big way in that moment because there were no playbooks, There was no place to turn to of how do you navigate this new normal? Uh. And it was a really amazing opportunity for us to solidify what we can

provide for this community. And I think when you fast forward to where we are today, even as things are starting to return back to normal, we're still in this just cottributed workforce where connection is just such a critical thing that we are all craving, and Chief really helps to provide so much of that. We're in the middle of a down market, we are seeing the I P O window. A guest earlier said, it is double locked shut for now. How is that shaping your strategy about

how to use this new cash that you've raised. Yeah, I mean, first and foremost we UH all capital that we have ever raised, is focus on how do we build the best member experience for the twelve thousand women that are a part of our network today and the many more that we hope join over the next few years. And for us, that is really starting to invest in a much deeper investment in our technology and our data

so that we can really start to build personalization. Everybody's career journey is different, and we want to make sure that we are connecting people with the right individual, the right resources, the right information for them to navigate that

this specific challenge that they are that they are pursuing. UM. The other thing for us to UM you know, of our members are actually sponsored by companies UM so six percent of the Fortune one hundred companies have CHIEF members and we're really excited to use this capital to start to build deeper relationships directly with those companies, so that

sponsorship of something like Chief is a no brainer. Carol and Shoulders, CEO and co founder of Chief, Thank you Caroline for sharing that vision with us, and that does it for the edition of Bloomberg Technology. Join us tomorrow for discussion with the CEO of bright Line, Naomi Allen and Justin con co founder of Twitch. And don't forget to check out our new podcast find it anywhere you get your podcasts, and get our daily round up. I'm

Emily Changing in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg WI pick pipit a PI wid a whip with a hip, hip a whip he would have