From Marhart where Innovation, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed loved Love.
I'm Caroline Hyde, Bloomberg's WORLDEAD quarters in New York.
Ed Ludlow here in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Coming up Meta, It's taken on Twitter. Threads officially hits the app store and one of thirty million people as signed up already.
We'll bring you the details of the launch classes.
Elon musk rapples with competitors to Twitter. He's agreeing to a truce with China's top auto makers.
Will have more on the pledge.
Tesla and others have agreed to maintain fair competition in the world's biggest ev market.
And we'll have an exclusive conversation with the CEO of Japanese robotics firm. It's Ali driven tell Existence SoftBank maxa company and just raising one hundred and seventy million dollars for its Series B funning round. Well, that is so much coming up. Let's focus on these markets because the exuberance on Threads is not being reflected by the lack of exuberance in the markets today. We're currently off by
one point threew percent on the Nasdaq, a pullback. We're worried about basically good news being bad news ed. We're looking at jobs growth, really strong numbers from the private
sector when you're looking at ADP, the jobless claim. Still looking at the strength here of a labor mark in the US, A federal reserve still going to want him to be tackling that MSCI Country World Index on the downside as well, and in fact, we seeing Europe's sell off hard so too has China, so really a global risk off field to trade today, and it means that money is actually though interestingly, coming out of the bomb market, sending yields up some ten basis points on the two
year we sawt of course that eclipse more than five percentage points and an overall yield for two year dead at the moment, as we think that the Fed is going to have to tackle this really strong market and over all economy here in the United States. Let's move on what's happening in terms of the world a bitcoin, because that risk asset have been higher. In fact, we've top the thirty one thousand level high at least eight months, but now we come back down to earth a little bit.
We're off by two tens of percent. We're still above that thirty thousand level overall ed.
Yeah, when we.
Look at the public markets, there's not, excuse me, a lot of green to talk about.
That's how excited I am.
But Tesla is a downside mover two point two percent. We will go to our reporter later in the program here on Bloomberg Technology, it's all about agreeing with domestic Chinese ev makers to normalize pricing. A very interesting move, but that stock down in line with the broader market. One big name we're watching is Meta Meta formerly known as Facebook, and all about threads. It's been really interesting, right the open Meta was up more than one point
three percent. It's kind of chop traded. We're now down two tens to one percent. Analysts kind of somewhat bullish on this move with Threads the headline. As you said, Caroline, thirty million users signed up. Let's get more details on Threads day one with the Bloomberg Technology editor who literally wrote the book on Instagram, Sarah Fryar. Sarah, what do we know about Threads day one?
Well, it's just been an incredible amount of enthusiasm. I think this is the first time Meta has done a covey cut product that people are actually hankering for. Everyone was looking for an alternative to Twitter. Given all the turbulence from Elon Musk, including over the weekend with rate limiting people who are posting on Twitter trying to limit
the number of tweets they could see. There was a lot of searching for an alternative, and Threads is seeming to build that critical mass that people need if they want to post something that could have impact. And we're seeing very high engagement, you know, thirty million users, as you said, just blew up overnight. And this is this is a really exciting moment in the rivalry between Twitter
and Meta. I just think, you know, we're a couple decades into that now and it's been really incredible to see. This is the moment of all the times that Meta could have copied Twitter. I don't know that it would have worked until now.
Mistiming seems to be really painful, probably on Twitter's pot as you say, amid the swirling chaos of limitations to certain numbers of tweets that you can see, Sarah. To that point, Twitter's response Linda and Gakarina. We're going to dig into that later in the show has been responding to all of this, But ultimately, what does thirty million look like in comparison to historical levels of growth.
Well, it's a big start for a new social media app, and I think the reason that it is getting so much enthusiasm is because it has that existing connection to the Instagram network. Now, that's also been a point of frustration for Threads users. People who don't use Instagram, or who don't like their Instagram handle, or have an invested in that platform, or have a different community there than they have on Twitter. They're not exactly excited to copy that over to a new app where they want to
build a new identity. However, it has made it a lot easier for those key users, the celebrities, the public figures, the brands, those that use Instagram already for professional reasons wanting to pour it over all of that influence to an app without having to start from scratch. And that's really a big motivator. So if everyone else wants to follow those people in Threads becomes the place to do it.
I think we're going to see those issues work out of her time, but of course Instagram is going to try to deal.
With some of the pain points as they can.
J Lo Paris Hilton many a funny post coming from them already. I'm sure joyous for those that have been overseeing the launch. Blomberg, Sarah Fry, thanks for that update. Meanwhile, let's just dive into the conversation also, perhaps some of the financial drivers that obviously follow success. Just when Enburg and Police to say is right here in New York.
She of course leads coverage of influencer marketing and social commerce and inside Intelligence you focus on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Let's focus on threads first, because well, it looks like it's going well, what do you think is the monetization angle ultimately here for the investors that are listening to us, because I've seen already Zuck post about monetization not coming immediately.
Absolutely well, just to put this into perspective, I mean, thirty million users is an incredibly strong start. At Insider Intelligence, We're expecting Twitter to have about fifty six million users in the US by the end of twenty twenty three, so that just gives you some context for how many people Threads was able to have signed up just overnight. In terms of the monetation, monetization ads are metas bread and butter, and I would assume that any monetization strategy
for Threads would include advertising. That said, I'm expecting that Meta will wait until Threads really reach his scale before they bring on any sort of monetization opportunities.
Zak and self saying, look, we want to get to a billion here. How quickly do you think they can scale to a billion?
And is it really.
The area, the focus, the number you want to see?
Well, I mean Meta obviously has a scale, it has the resources, and it has the execution strategy to scale Threads. I do think, you know, the challenge will be in keeping up the momentum that we saw yesterday and that continued into this morning. You know, it is a new app, and there are very few new new apps that are able to keep up that growth rate that Threads has seen already. And I also think that you know, Meta will have to continue innovating, will have to keep Threads interesting.
Right now, it's simplicity and it's bare bones. Ux are some things that really are attractive to users, especially those that are tired of the chaos and the ad hoc changes at Twitter. But eventually it is going to have to innovate to keep people engaged and on the app.
And as many would say, innovation is elon strong point. And Lyndia Karino ed brings well the monetization strategy for Twitter as well. But you've been tracking ultimately how the growth of Threads compares.
Right, Yeah, and I'm interested, Jasmine in the mechanics of how they got Threads off the ground. You have to have an Instagram account, and what I did was I went through Twitter's S one back in twenty thirteen, and they hit thirty million users at the start of twenty ten, sort of four years into the.
Life of the platform.
This link with Instagram seems to have given them a fast start.
What's your assessment of that.
I think it was incredibly smart. It was really easy to sign up for Threads. You could port your Instagram account, you could port your Instagram followers directly onto Threads. I think there are some people who don't necessarily want to transport their Instagram followers their audiences over to this new app and want to keep these two separate, but overall in order to sort of supercharge the growth. I think this was a spot on move from Meta, Jasmin.
What's your experience been using the platform?
What do you like about it?
I mean, it's been really easy to use. The user interface has been fantastic. It's been fun so far. I don't know how long that will last, but for now, it feels like in early Twitter one point zero with an Instagram twist, some more photos and visuals on the platform. I haven't left Twitter yet though, I'm still on both, which just means that there are more apps now than ever to post.
On and we are kind of exhausted by it, Jasmine. To a certain extent. One group of people who aren't going to be exhausted by Threads is Europe, because it's not there yet. We understand the regulatory overhang. What do you make of that, well, delay, is it opportune for Meta to push backing as regulators in Europe?
Well, it's certainly going to be a challenge for Meta. I mean, Meta needs to convert one in four Instagram users in order to make Threads as big as Twitter is worldwide at the end of this year. Europe is a really big market for them, and it's going to be a challenge. It's going to be an issue if it's not able to launch there Now, some of the reasons that you know it has delayed the launch of Threads, potentially being the DMA, are issues.
That will affect all of the social apps.
It's not just Threads, and it's not just Meta, but it does point to this larger picture of how difficult it is really to bring new apps and products to market.
Let's go back to the technology.
There is an algorithmic and machine learning powered part of each feed. What is your assessment of which is better Twitter or Threads at this point?
Well, I think it certainly depends. You know, Threads is very new and I haven't had a lot of time to tinker around with it. I think what's really interesting, and what I've been thinking a lot about is how people are going to be using threads. Are they actually going to be using it for the same use cases as we were using Twitter or continue to use Twitter,
meaning keeping up with news and world events. Now, News has been somewhat of a source spot for meta on its other platforms, Facebook in particular, and I'm not sure that you know the Instagram usage translates naturally into news and world events the same way that it does on Twitter. I don't necessarily think that Meta needs to be as strong a player in those arenas though, to make Threads a real threat to Twitter as it is.
Insider intelligence principle analyst Jasmine Enburg. Day one of Threads done. Let's see what happens next. Let's get out to Japan. Tokyo based robotics startup tell Existence has just raised one hundred and seventy million dollars for its Series B funding round, backed by SoftBank and other big names. Joining us now for more is the co founder and CEO of Teleexistence,
Jim Tomioka. In an exclusive interview, Good evening. I suppose to you, mister Tomyoka, thank you for joining us big Series B. What do you need this money for in your robotics?
Brush of all, thank you for having me today.
So, yeah, we raise one hundred seventy million from a source group and the fox on the other.
Investors, and they mainly we're going to use.
This kepto to extend to the US, the United.
States folks on an investor. But I'm really interested in that relationship. Are they going to help you scale and manufacture your robotics correct.
So right now in Japan, we are in the process of defoying the three hundred robots to the convenience clods and we see the strong demand in Japan because you.
Know, we are facing the aging issue, labor shortage, so we we aim to increase our manufacturing capacity to result next to you, and in order for us to do that, we think you.
Know best to work with the Fox from the manufacturer Globbo outside Japan Jin.
What's interesting is demographics an issue in Japan. Here in the US, the labor data show there's a real tightness here too. Are you looking at coming to the United States to alleviate the labor issues here too?
Yes, so we don't we're not We're not intend to take a job from people. But as you said, even with the different context, you know, we see there's a big gap between the labors necessary and labors.
Who intends to go back to the market.
So we want to feel that get to solve the labor shortages, especially in retail and logistic using our robots.
Already your partnership with Family March. For example, in Japan, across thousands of convenience stores, there are hundreds of thousands of convenience stores in the US. I'm sure you can deploy it. How has the art offgital intelligence mania affected the appetite to invest in you? Because these robots are powered by AI?
Yes, so you see a fever is a learning control the Globo. So the current recent a trim obviously you know.
Supported us to raise the firm and do think know that AI is pushing.
The boundaries of the Lobo food work only the human.
Months or every the people's life, so we want to do that industry.
Jin, where did this round value your company?
What was the valuation?
It's a bit hard to disclose, but I think while or two step before Unicorn.
A unicorn status around. Well, congratulations to you on that. What is your point of differentiation? What is it technologically that you do differently from the other robotics makers. Caroline was talking about AI. Do you have a deep foundation in machine learning?
Yes, so you know we use the AI machine learning to detect every different shape of.
The products sold in the inconvenience so that we can find the optimal grasping point of every different product and the taking post on.
Top of that, because the current AI is pretty linked.
So our company's goal is to bring bring the robo outside practice and try to control.
Them in people's everyday life.
For me, in the we try to control able in more dynamic environment and the current AI cannot really adapt to the environment. So one feature we have really combine the air machine learning will be more control mean before using the internet to control the level and fix the issue if we face. So that that's the combination of air and remote controls one feature we have.
Jen, it's great talking to you. Thank you for bringing us the story exclusively. Fascinating to see the robotics in the background as well, Tamioko of course tell existence CEO Meanwhile, Ed, well, you had some big interviews as well exclusively yesterday.
Yeah, it's been a busy week so far.
Coming up, Rivian ready to take on more commercial partners beyond Amazon. That's after, of course a recent bout of production success. We'll get to my exclusive interview. There we are with the CEO. Next, this is Bloomberg Technology electric vehicle maker. Rivian's had a bit of a rebound of late. The technology fix on its EV pickup and suv helped Rivian beat on production in the second quarter, and the companies started shipping delivery vans to Europe for its biggest investor, Amazon.
I traveled to the company's HQ in southern California sit down for an exclusive conversation with the founder and CEO, RJ.
Scarrange.
We have a quad motor set up in our R one vehicles. It's two motors per axil, so four motors per vehicle, and we've just launched a dual motor setup which leverages a new motor family, which we call the Enduro motor family. And that Enduro is completely built in house, the rotor, the stator. Of course, just like on the launch configuration, we build the inverter in house, the yearboxing house.
But when we sourced the power semis for the inverter in Enduro, we sourced in a really thoughtful way that gave us enough capacity and much more confidence around that supply chain than some of the challenges we've had on the launch configuration.
And so that not only.
Provides a high confidence production capacity on the Enduro, but it also provides risk mitigation on any shortcomings in terms of supply on the quad motor.
Yeah.
The big news of the last five days is that you have you're out of the United States. Yeah, a small number of Amazon EDVS electric delivery vans are being shipped to Europe Germany in the instance, Why was that a significant milestone?
Well, you know, it's important to get those vehicles are Amazon has a lot of business in Europe. But it also represents not just turning on production of vehicles that get shipped overseas, but all the supporting infrastructure. So we have parts distribution capabilities, we have service capabilities, and the EDED program is really a wonderful way for us to open those markets with highly predictable and planned service intervals
and deliver intervals. So it's the beginnings of us opening up the European market for our products.
As you know, I always ask Twitter, what would you ask in this case RJ Scaringe. Lots of people want to know about the Amazon relationship. You don't break down production by product type are one to and S or eDV, but a lot of people want a sense of how many bans you're building proportionately to your consumer products.
What is the main part of the business over if you think.
About over the full year we've guided to roughly twenty percent of our production is the commercial vans. You know, as we think about the business going forward, the consumer side of the business will grow disproportionately relative to the commercial side, especially as we bring in our next generation products, with the R two and the R two platform representing a significant stuff up and volume and a much lower price point, much larger adjustble market with that with that product.
What is the status of the relationship with Amazon? They have exclusivity, but you would like to sell vans others in the future.
I mean, the relationship with Amazon is outstanding. The van is loved by the drivers. There's lots of content all over the web on just the creature comforts who built in the ease of use. The operators of the vehicles are feeling it, you know, with with the increased efficiency. So we've we've we've done i think a really nice job of capturing that feedback as we went through the
development process to make sure the van delivered. We're now in the final hopeful stages of negotiating allowing us to sell the vehicle outside of the Amazon relationship to other so that the exclusivity provisions that originally built into the contract are accelerating. When we opened that up to Bill will sell to not on Amazon.
My interview Caroline with the Rivian CORJ Scaringe and the company, the stock, the factory has a bit of a momentum behind it right now.
Yeah, I'm sure if it's a smile on his face. Does the one question you were going to ask him when we talked about it yesterday is whether he's enjoying himself? And I mean is he amid some of the turbulence he's experienced.
Yeah, and I did ask him. I mean, it's been a really long road for him. He founded the company in two thousand and nine. But what was astonishing is they kept in stealth mode till twenty nineteen without any leaks. Huge IPO twenty twenty one, the biggest since Facebook, and then everything kind of went downhill. And he said, with a right smile, Yeah, I'm having fun, but it's tough. Expectedly tough was the phrase.
That he used.
Yeah, And as you pointed out, of course founder CEOs, there are few and far between that managed to ride out the IPO successfully in that way.
The future, the.
Guidance the area in which now analysts can continue to think that there's opportunities in the stock.
What did you think they didn't restate guidance I asked him why they didn't upgrade it, but he said, our aim is to outperform our own goals, and you look at the numbers, it seems like they'll do that. He's got more help experience execs with him. You know.
The big question for him is what he's focused on.
And without teasing too much, I'll have a little piece coming next week where we'll dig into RJ. Scarringe the person and how he deals with things day to day.
That should be fun.
Wow, it was a great interview. Fascinating backdrop there as well. Welcome back to Bluemot Technology. I'm Caroline Hide in New York and.
I'med Ludlow here in San Francisco. Let's get a quit check on the markets, Caroline, a lot of red. I'm focusing in on the Nasdaq one hundred. We're down about a percentage point zero point ninety seven percent. All about that private hiring data you were talking about earlier in Bloomberg Technology g the idea being the Fed might have to be more aggressive on hikes to fight inflation. Higher rates discount the present value of future cash flows.
And that's why we.
Care about it here on Bloomberg Technology We're down two days straight on the Nasdaq one hundred. Not a lot of individual movers to the upside. One big drag from a points perspective to the downside is Tesla. The news coming out of China that Tesla, along with a number of producers in China's electric vehicle space, committing to maintain fair and balanced practices within the market, basically to normalize price. Total of sixteen automakers, including Tesla, BYD and Neo Signer
pact to rein in quote abnormal pricing in the competitive space. Tesla, though, was the only foreign brand in that deal, joining us with the latest Bloomberg's David Wells, what do we know about this kind of compromised David, between all these auto makers in China.
Yeah, it was really interesting to read the highlights of this thing. Among them reining in marketing actions, one of them was preserving socialist principles or some such. You know, these are all very vague things that don't set certain prices or say control pricing, or it's almost as if it was written by a bunch of American attorneys who wanted to avoid saying price fixing. But it is telling everybody, okay,
stop dropping prices. And look, the government does have a great interest in stability here, in selling more vehicles but also keeping preserving the health of the companies, and you can't do that if everybody's on this big price bench, another price cutting bench, i should say. And another part of it is consumers really hated this. There were people who were essentially rioting at dealerships because they bought a car and then they saw the price drop a couple of weeks later.
So you had some.
Unrest with consumers about this. You have the government wanting everyone to stabilize things, and I think everybody felt a lot of pressure to just kind of cool it and find a floor for prices, and then the price war.
I mean, it's interesting the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology directed apparently the Automobile Association to basically get these sixteen players together and to sign along to a non binding agreement. But ultimately, how is it for tas they're doing business in China.
I think they've struggled to a degree with everybody in the sense that you had this malaise kind of post COVID hangover that had depressed vehicle sales, had pressed depressed economic activity it's sort of starting to recover, but everybody's having a tough time there, and I think that's why you saw some of the price cuts to begin with, to basically generate some vehicle sales and get people back
to dealerships and looking at cars. I think the market will recover, but in talking to other automakers who do a lot of business there, General Motors, Volkswagen, you know, they all kind of say the same thing that it may not get back to the hugely profitable levels they had a few years ago because of increased domestic competition, Tesla having to face off with the a really strong
player like Bid and some others. So I think the price levels that we have now, which are down from where they were a couple of years ago, I think that's here to stay. And I think everybody's really going to have to fight it out with a lot of serious competition from the Chinese automakers.
And look, that's something you can spread globally. Elon Musk has been cutting prices here in the US and worldwide because he's basically said, look, profit is my sacrificial lamb. If I'm going to be able to go over market share at the moment, Does it feel like that has won or can he now in China, for example, depend more on new models helping drive forward sales.
Well, he's going to have to.
And keep in mind he has cut prices significantly over there and in every market. I kind of go back to my first economics class in college. Tesla basically had a monopoly on evs for most of the past decade, and now that's changing. It's changing in Europe too, because the European automakers are bringing vehicles out and the European market tends to be pretty nationalistic in terms of brand loyalty.
The Chinese market is starting to look more that way, and there is more competition in the US with Ford Handaikia General Motors selling more electric vehicles. The German automakers are coming on here too. None of their volumes are really big, but if they take ten percent of the electric vehicle market this year, they're eating away at Tula's market share. And if Elon Musk wants to protect that, he's going to have to drop prices, and he has, and he's got the margin to do it. Keep in mind,
he sold very expensive vehicles for a long time. You're talking about mid sized sedans and mid sized crossover suv selling for sixty seventy thousand dollars. That's all had to come down because he doesn't have the only vehicle for sale now.
David Welch, another Bloomberg Technology editor, Caroline who literally wrote the book on GM, The Reinvention of American Icon. We've just got sales data from GM. David, how's that ultim battery platform in the vehicles that it's attached to going slowly?
They only saw about fourteen hundred of them. I'm sorry. They sold about fourteen hundred evs in the quarter. And it's really it's been a lot of promise and a lot of slow ramp up with the Ultium vehicles. They're getting their batteries from this plant in Ohio, the ultimam plant there, and that's really not going to be ramping up a lot until the second half of the year.
I think they're kind of doing final install of their last line this month in July, and GM has been promising, promising that you'll see much more of the catalog lyric, maybe the Hummer, the Chevy Silverado electric truck, and the Chevy Blazer mid size suv you'll see that really coming on in the second quarter, and it's because of that plant. What it all means that is they won't have any
excuses anymore. In the second half of the year. They're really going to have to show that Ultimum is cranking, that they've got the bugs out, that this is the right strategy that's spending all this time working on a dedicated electric vehicle, battery and platform, retrofitting existing internal combustion vehicles. I Ford did with the Machi and the Lightning that what GM did is the smart way for the long
term and that we're starting to show results. And they've had a lot of different fits and starts, and now they really have to get it moving and this is you know, I'd say third quarter and fourth quarter are the ones to watch and see if they're really finally executing because they've had serious execution issues with electric vehicles at General Motors.
And then Robber hits a row. David Welch, thank you. Let's look at the world of seed investing right now, in particular fintech and SaaS. We've got obviously spotlight moment and I'm pleased to welcome Cowboy Ventures partner Gillian Williams, who's been investing in fintech. She says, before it was cool. I'm pleased to say fintech is cool. Always been cooling my heart, jill In. But tell us a little bit about the environment with which you are currently writing checks.
Is it active for you? Seed seems to be an area that's been really resilient.
Absolutely so, thank you so much for having these. And the seed stage market is definitely more resilient, especially compared to the later stage market. But all of it really trickles down, and so while I think this is a great time for new founders and new ideas to be built, we still do have to look at what's happening at the IPO market, the later stage market, and even get like the series being Series A markets to understand what's
happening at the seed market. It's getting harder for a lot of founders that raised in twenty twenty twenty twenty one to raise their follow on rounds, and so because of that, vcs are being to spend more time with their portfolio companies and really just kind of re understand what's really happening with the market right now and understand what valuations that we need to be focused on what metrics that companies need to hit, because all of that's
gone through recalibration at this point, and so that's really important, and so that really has had a trickle down effect in terms of what's happening at the seed stage. So overall it's definitely more resilient to what's been happening, but it's still or seeing down across the entire market.
Well, the one area of resilience, of course, has been anything that's had artificial intelligence in its name. What portfolio companies are leveraging that innately, and what companies are able to pivot to start to make the most of this sea change in technology.
Absolutely, I think that it's become definitely a buzzword and something that helps you raise a ton of capital at this point, and it's something that we are really excited about just we think that it's a technology that across all sectors is something that whether it's existing portfolio companies or new companies that we're looking at, should be thinking about because it can really just expedite the use of data and technology in ways that we really haven't thought
about before. And so we're really excited about it and we have Two of our portfolio companies are really innovating in the space. So one actually that's been around for it's a serious c company called AI. They are an accounting company that applies and integrates AI into the accounting
process for enterprise software companies. And so what we are most excited about this is especially using private data, and this is something in fintech why areas that are more regulated, like fintech and healthcare will be a little bit slower in our minds to adopt AI because you're using a lot of private data and the ability to trade some of these language learning models will just take a little
bit longer. And so with vic dot Ai, they've been able to do this over the past few years, and so they're able to continue innovating a lot faster and being able to apply new use cases and new AI models on top of the data that they've already had to continue to improve and make their AI software and their platform even more efficient for their customers.
So we're really excited about them.
And then another one that's actually not in the fintech space is called co Rise then the learning development space, and they provide expert led courses to learners to help them develop their skills and level up. And the founder King from Coursera, and what they're doing is really using applying AI to their existing platform to help them scale learner and like learners even more so and apply personalization and support in real time.
And so that's a great use case of something that wasn't.
Necessarily applying AI and making it even investor in better.
So we're really excited about that.
Jillian here on Bloomberg Technology and in particular Venture Spotlight. Over recent weeks, we've been talking a lot about the ideas Cerebral Valley, that the kind of energy and AI is here in San Francisco.
You're joining us from New York.
Where do you see the talent and the opportunity geographically in terms of the portfolio companies you have in those you're looking to invest in.
Absolutely so, Cowboy Ventures we are split between.
Palo Alto and New York, so we do have coverage across the US, and for the most part we focus on the US.
Invest In terms of where our portfolio they was split, I want to.
Say it's it's around sixty seventy percent West Coast and thirty forty percent East Coast. But that has definitely continued
to evolve. I mean, I think obviously COVID was a huge driver of that, but we continue to see our founders kind of first of all, move around even after we invest the sort of they decide where they want to live, but also in terms of the talent that they are hiring, and this drive for obviously wanting to cultivate and build an incredible culture of their team, but also wanting to make sure that they're able to get
the best talent that they can. And so we see a lot of them maybe the early days, wanting to all be together, but at the same time making sure that they can hire the best people no matter where they are. So oftentimes it's split between New York and the Bay Area, and so we'll do a lot of off sites together and making sure they're getting together at
a pretty regular cadence. And so, especially for me within the fintech space, a significant portion of the companies that I've invested into are on the East Coast.
However, we're extremely flexible.
We're kind of flying back and forth, and we really take a team approach in terms of our coverage on both coasts.
Valuations how they look to your.
Mind, absolutely I think there's As I mentioned earlier on, there's definitely been every calibration and I think we'll see unfortunately, a lot of companies that raise over the past three years have to level sundations are.
For that next round.
We've had We've seen it with some new companies and even had to have some conversations with some portfolio companies that you can hit the metrics that you were told you needed to hit for that next round, and the problem is that the bar has raised, and so your expectation of getting that dream valuation might not be real anymore.
Especially for the fat trick seer point. How are they incentivizing their talent? How are they making the most more talent coming to the market and have been laid off by some of the big tech companies.
Absolutely, and so I think there's sort of two different ways, and that's something that is kind of continuing to be talked about in terms of how you can incentivize the incredible talent that is now out there, because actually it's gotten so much easier to bring in talent now.
A year and a half ago, trying to find great.
Talent with like it was taking months and you actually have to make decisions so much faster that was problematic
because people were making the wrong decisions. I think that's honestly part of the part of the reason why you're seeing these layoffs grow, and especially with some of the companies, Obviously there's sort of runway issues, but also they hired too quickly, and so you can't hire the best telling all the time if you're hiring that quickly, and so being able to kind of take your time in terms
of hiring is actually a huge benefit. But then also I've seen some companies where they're actually having conversations, especially with their senior execut team or with the talent that is that is there key talent that they want to keep, especially if say they are to take a down round and talk about how they can help make them whole or help and really incentivize them or reissue some options at the new valuation because of the fact that they're
stoff may be underwater at this point and so definitely is more of an art to it, but people are really thinking about how to protect their employees.
Art and science always in this game. Cowboy Ventures partner Jilly Williams, great.
To have you on the show. Come back.
We hope, thank you so much.
Meanwhile, Ed, we've got some more talking tech.
Yeah, let's get some talking tech. First up.
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The development suggests official backing for Ali Barber's efforts against the bank drop in recent years of regulatory moves against the firm. Plus, Daniel Friedberg, ftx's former chief regulatory officer, is now being pulled deeper into the intrigue surrounding his
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Going viral. Mark Zuckerberg posted his first tweek more than a decade on the day, of course of Meta's Threads launch, The founder of Meta, appears to be making a pretty obvious jabb at elon Musk, posting a popular Spider Man meme, wile Mask responded shortly after with his own retort about Instagram. This comes just two weeks so after Musks zuckerbern cage fight was first discussed. Yeah, to become a real one for now ed a figurative one and taking place on the various stage.
Social media platforms.
It's like the most accurate use of that meme ever seen. It's episode nineteen B of the nineteen sixty seven animated Spider Man. The title of that episode is double Identity. And Zuck's point is they're the same thing. I mean, Threads and Twitter, to all intents and purposes, Carro, they're the same.
Yeah, and are you enjoying it?
I am enjoying it, And I think we better get into like the momentum behind this, bringing Aasha counts from Bloomberg Technology. You wrote in the Tech Daily Instagram's Twitter copycat meets pent up demand.
What's the evidence for that?
Well, thirty million people being on threads in less than twenty four hours is pretty crazy, I don't. I mean, we've seen other Twitter alternatives pop up. I don't think that they had that sort of growth within twenty four hours, so it's pretty impressive phenomenal growth.
How about the in which we're starting to see things that are popular on Twitter, like polls, like hashtags and all that sort of good stuff.
Will that eventually creep in to threads? Do you think?
You know?
I would imagine it's still early. So both Adam Asri, who is head of Instagram, and then Mark Zuckerberg himself have been posting on thread and saying, you know, it's still early. We're still planning to add features. I imagine maybe they wanted to roll it out now take advantage of kind of like where Twitter has been over the past several months that aret elon Musk, it's been struggling a bit. There's been things like great limits and people were not able to get into their Twitter count, and
it was all sorts of things happening. And so it's a good time, I think for Threads to come out, and I think that's evidenced by the amount of people that have signed up in such a short time.
Caroline makes a really good point on the functionality. There are clearly ux differences I was number one hundred and thirty two thousand and nine to sign up on threads. What are your takes on the platform? What of the feedback that users have been giving you.
Yeah, it's a mix.
I think some people are really excited I did just to have another place to go because maybe they were unhappy with some of the changes on Twitter. Some people are like, well, my Instagram friends are very different than my Twitter friends, and I don't know if it's gonna be the same vibe. But I think generally people seem
to be optimistic. And yes, it's still early and the features are not there yet, but it does have a lot of the same field of Twitter, and people are posting and I'm seeing some of the similar conversations that I might see on Twitter.
So we'll see what happens next.
I've seen some fun memes that I could respond to that brag by ed about which number he was on the partaking on the threads, but Asia Ultimately, at the moment, all we've heard from Nindi Akarino, we've heard her speak out about that you know Twitter is you cannot duplicate it. Ultimately, what do you think the comeback has to be from Twitter right now.
I mean they say that you can't duplicate it. We do see thirty million people on threads time will tell. She didn't name threads by name, but she was kind of hinting at some competition there. And I think Twitter has road ahead to try to give back advertisers, clean up content on the platform, maybe removing those rate limits. I know that they were temporary, but making some of those changes that benefit users. I think that's going to be the key.
I wonder how Malsden and Blue Sky are doing today as well. I have a feeling a few more invitations and suddenly being sent out. I finally got my one for Blue Sky. Anyway, Asha counts, thanks so much. And that does it for this edition of Bloembag Technology yet.
Yeah, real mega show, so much to recap. Check out the podcast where you get your podcasts. In just a few minutes time, Karen and I taking to Twitter spaces to talk threads.
This is Bloomberg Technology