Microsoft Backs ChatGPT, Elliott Invests in Salesforce

we talk about valuations here in Silicon Valley. Microsoft's ten billion bet on open Ai is just the start of the artificial intelligence revolution, is what Microsoft's chief product officer is pitching as quote the defining technology of our time and more local to us. Elliott's multibillion dollars stake in sales Force comes as a way of the activist investors pushed companies to act more on behalf of their shareholders.

And we now know what Apple's mixed reality headset is capable of as a company explores a new approach to eye and hand tracking controls. But first let's do it. Let's get to how the focus on any investment management has had us all eyes on the tower that is here in San Francisco. Of course, what is Mark Benioff, Where is his focus now? And what does the activist

Steake really mean for his business? Swooping in of course after layoffs, after deep stop plunge at the enterprise software giant mean Wes Leana Veka is more every New York Leanna, As I sit here in San Francisco, and I think of initially the worry Mimmi many had for Mark Benioff. Perhaps as we've seen some of the other executives shed away, many thought maybe that meant he was going to be doing more dealmaking, spending more. But does an investor like

Elliott mean that's off the cards? At this point, we don't know exactly what Elliott is pushing for, but we have seen their public statement that was pretty complimentary of Mark Bennioff, so it doesn't look like it'll be a nasty fight. That said, Elliott Management has taken on so many big tech companies over time that have made so many changes, so there could really be a range of

things that they would like. I think ultimately they want the stock to go up and that they believe there's probably ways for shareholder value to be improved, you know, Leona, this time around Salesforce, Elliot's name crosses the Bloomberg terminal monthly. It seems to me, you know, the cadence of their investments, what is their track record on working with companies? Because you said you read the statement from the company deep respect for Mark Bennioff was the word they used. It

doesn't seem hostile. It seems they want to work with Mr Benioff over at Salesforce Tower. And one of the reasons they might be wanting to work in a friendly manner with the company is that I've been joking with sources that Salesforce is now a hedge fund hotel. There's, uh, you know, first there was Starboard, Now there's Elliott, Inclusive Capital, Jeff Odden's firm. He used to be a value actors in there. And then there's a mystery Activists that we're

trying to figure out. CNBC, you know, has report it on that. So there might be a sense that maybe Elliott's the White Knight activists to work with. In twenty nineteen, eBay fell in the crosshairs of Elliott and also Starboard, and they gave them both board seats. So That's another example that we're kind of looking back in history to

see what could happen here. At this point, we don't know if Salesforce is willing to offer those board seats, but Jesse Cohen, who is the one leading the investment for Ellie Management, he sat on some pretty big boards and Leanna just put into perspective twenty twenty two, the last quota, we saw so many more activist steaks really being built globally worldwide. How many offenses are there? I can already think of what Disney's outlet, Intel, how what

other companies? So you nailed it with Disney. That's kind of the big one that the whole activist community is watching because that looks like it's headed to an actual shareholder vote at some point. Um Elliott doesn't usually get to that shareholder vote, so I'd be surprised if that's where Salesforce is headed. But right now we're entering this what we call proxy season. These nomination windows are starting to open at various companies, so we're seeing investors come

in and say, hey, we want to nominate shareholders. Salesforce's window is coming up in February. We'll be watching that really closely. All right, Bloomberg's the Aanna Baker who leads our deals coverage investor coverage. Thank you so much, Caroline. Welcome to San Francisco. If you jump in a cab acuet, you go downtown whatever, no preference, but you'll see the Salesforce tower. And this is what jumped out at me on the Bloomberg terminal earlier, this single chart about salesforces

marketing spend as a percentage of its sales. You start to realize what it is that investors, activists, investors might be getting at. They're almost at fifty right of their their sales spend being on marketing, which is kind of mind blowing a little bit, right, But then they have potential. You know, this is a software company margins it also though that spend as largs you were on dream Force. I think the last time we was. Lenny Kravitz is

performing there. These big parties. Basically it's a massive music festival. It does a lot for the San Francisco ecosystem as well. Those sorts of events they bring people to gatherings, which are a city that they're really taking on the road to the marketing spenders about being in people and in person and sharing ideas. But they're probably going to want

him to pull back on that. And this is a company that has had to pull off on the on the layoffs front, you know, in pausing her in other areas, and where M and A has been just absolutely right. The other big story we're watching here out on the West Coast is, of course, Microsoft and open Ai are reported ten billion dollar investments set over a number of years, which open Aron Microsoft have now confirmed sort of in a blog, the company saying Microsoft will involve invest multiple

billions of dollars. Remember, this is a company that mass more than a million users just within days of launch back in November, and we've already started the debate where does this all fit in with Microsoft strategy? Where does it fit in our lives? The use of chat, GPT and other AI tours a fascinating one, and also how does this help soft gain market share from the likes of aws. Now we know that Amazon is the power

player when it comes to the cloud provision. Overall the fact that Microsoft wants to intertwine open Ai into every really every part of Azure the business it wants to set itself apart as a cloud offering, and open Eye is such a clever way to do it. What's so interesting, of course, is the open Eye once upon a time was an off profit, now as a capped profit right company. So this deal, there's ten million that's being invested. It's kind of awkwardly done, isn't it, because you're kind of

being it's offering in kind. Basically open ai is able to use the firepower of Microsoft's own cloud provisions, so so it's a really significant investment from Microsoft seven days

after they have laid off ten thousand staff. But the closed profit model is where basically any money that open Ai mates, which is by licensing the tools to software developers, they put back straight into the development because they still feel like it's in the nascent stage, after they've paid investors, after they've paid their dus, and after they pay their own employees. Right, yeah, I mean, we've been trying to identify what is the next big company for the next decade,

the next twenty years. You know, there's a lot of debate whether actually open ai is it, and the emphasis of them in the news cycles amazing, And you're right, Microsoft are already implementing this and as you're cloud for customers. You can use chat GPT or even dally on the imaging side, So it's out there in the real world. You and I have played with it to a lesser extent, you know here on the show. But interesting a lot of cash math on chat GPT. That was my learning,

my podcast learning over the course of the weekend. And I can't tell you how nice it's about in San Francisco known fat that chat GPT wouldn't tell you about my family. My son's middle name is Francisco. That's how much the city. Because of your time here, well, let's make the most of it while you're here. We've might have been positive. I'm big deck for I don't know a year, a year and a half. We do believe that there is still some deflation to come out of

this market after the exube. I actually think that the tech sector is one of the few sectors that is really discounting a recession in its outlook. And the longer the macro volatilely persists, we do expect early stage and seed to start to see that crunch that the late stages you see right now, there is going to be some amount of normalization of the demand. Uh well, frankly, we in the tech industry will also have to get efficient, right. It's not about everyone else doing more with less. We

will have to do more with less. There was just some of our recent guests discussing the state of the tech sector. And another week, another day, more headlines all to do with layoffs. This Monday, Spotify six percent of staff six dred and then just as we were getting ready for the show, Gemini a second round of ten

percent and just keeps going un relenting. Really feels like the numbers that are coming out ten percent smaller amount for Gemini, of course, a sixth cent number layoff over Spotify I means six thousand people are going to be going this vote again. It's about a CEO trying to own the mistakes made, basically saying his words were I

was too ambitious. They put out a note from Daniel talking about the fact that they once again hired too many but also invested too far perhaps and the fact that the executive changes going on at Spotify they want to have more efficiency. That is the watchword. There's a debate of how much embassis you put on layoffs announced versus laos and acted you know, we have the Challenger Christmas data and people say, well, those are just announcements,

they're not fulfilled. And there are others out there in the market who say there's bright spots here. And that's why I'm delighted to say we can discuss with Spencer Green, managing partner at t s VC, which actually is invested in C state companies over the last twelve years. A good example, you invested in Zoom eleven before they were even had a product, really, you know, and that was

coming out of a financial crisis or downturn. When you see these headlines crossing the Bloombog terminal time and time again, Spotify six the latest as somebody who invests in companies that actually may still be trying to hire. What's your reaction, Well, I mean, nobody roots for a recession, but it's definitely good for the seed stage economy. Um, the seed I mean you heard, you know, one of your your prior guests talking about a crunch and seed we see the opposite.

We see that brand new company formations are booming and it's become much easier to hire staff, to hire staff, to hire talent. Um. We had a year ago, what I would call it double whammy that it was hard to hire people, and also these big companies were investing in some of these innovative projects. As they cut their investments, they leave room for competitors and they put more talent on the street spent. So we delight to have you in the studio, Caroline and I while we're together in

San Francisco. It feels like the story is not just playing out here. But the reason you hear is, I tweeted over the weekend, hold on, is there anyone that's kind of actively trying to go out there and hire all these people? Because we do hear that, but we're looking for some concrete evidence that it's true. I mean, are you saying to your portfolio companies, Hey, now's a great chance to get top to absolutely. And we have

portfolio companies. We have one here in San Francisco called Zoom Transportation that runs electric school bus services for San Francisco and for Oakland and for Los Angeles and so forth. They're hiring. We have a recent company we funded called Ebots that does assembly robots for electronics. They're hiring. Angle Health is hiring. You know, lots of our portfolio companies are hiring and a year ago it was much more

difficult for them. It's interesting, and I suppose in many ways this is why the relentless headlines that we talk about the hundred tens of thousands being let go at Metro and they're like on't showing up in the federal data because many would say anninkdotally, they're snapped up very quickly.

They get great severance and then they move on either to be become a talent at Zoom one of your new ventures and the transport company, or are they becoming entrepreneurs themselves and yet to see any sort of charts on new business formation. Are you starting to hear from these people getting great severance packages. I know they probably want to remain at a company and employed, but if they are let go, are they willing to take on

a can build something? You know, It's it's a huge point and I think it's definitely fueling a lot of the entrepreneurial activity because what you have is, you know, as you said, folks who maybe have a little bit of money, they've gotten a severance, they've been doing very well over the last few years working for these larger companies and in some cases, you know, the Silicon Valley spree and what's happening in San Francisco has always I mean,

so many people that you meet here they have another startup going on on the side, right, So there are people who are and so if you think about, like who's going to get laid off some of these people, maybe you were not rated as the best employees by their big company employers because they were giving half of their time to the company and half of the time to their startup. So now you say, well, I've got a little extra cash, I've got all my day free to work on my startup. Not a bad situation. Is

there an element that you're seeing this worldwide? This is very much where are the talent that you're currently hiring and seeing hiring from? Do people want to remain remote? Are you seeing some of your startups that are SF based hiring talent for being let go in Austin Miami? Where is this all going on at the moment? It is much more remote than what it used to be. You know, we we've been in you know, I've been in Silicon Valley since the nineties and it was definitely

you know, you'd set up a facility, everybody would come there. Um, you even had, of course, you know, companies like Facebook where they were relocated by their investors to Silicon Valley because the story was, oh, yeah, we love you, but you can't do it from where you are. It's not so much a destination for companies. I think a lot of companies are formed here still, and the companies that are formed here have done so much more with remote talent, and some of it's offshore. More of it now is

actually on shore, but outside of the area. The conversation that Caroline keep having is that across the startup curve, the opportunity of three is going to be seed stage, earlier stage investments, and actually it's the growth stage funds keeping their power to dry even though they raised all that capital over the last two years. Is that a fair interpretation of where the industry sits. Certainly? I think

something it ts. You see, we do seed stage primarily, and we feel like the markets coming to us because they need. Um. Well, the market is coming to us in the sense that it's just hard to make money at late stage right now. Um, if you have a company that was overfunded at too high of evaluation a year or two ago. Yes, you can do a down round, you can get a better price, but then the employees are not happy, so you lose momentum in the business.

So even though you might normalize or rationalize the pricing of the company, that doesn't mean that it's going to take off and be successful. So I would hate to be writing Hunter million dollar checks right now. I think it's it's a difficult time. We write a million dollar checks into early companies and you think about something like Zoom. There's a photograph which I wish I had with us, but photograph of the of the assume founder er qu N two engineers in our offices in two thousand eleven.

That was the company. It was himself and two engineers a power point deck. Right, fantastic ambitions. Um, those are the kinds of folks that we're funding right now. Tweet ask off to the show you when you've done Absolutely yeah, and Ginko Bio Works and and Cata they I haven't been a one trick plony TSPC managing partner. He's a coal spencer green. What joy having him right here in

the studio with us. Nice tweeting from you had to get him on as well, meanwhile, coming up Apple's headset, it's going to be controlled by your hands, by your eyes. More details on the mixed reality device next, and it's price point. Li's a Blien Bug New Day, New Week News scoop for one Mark Gum and let's talk about new details that are out about the highly anticipated three

thousand dollar mixed reality headset by Apple. Of course, it's according to sources, which boast an eye and a hand tracking system that could set the technology pretty much apart from rivals. Right, Mark, you've got this new story and just tell us about how this one's going to be different from the other ones in the market. Yeah, that's exactly right. So this is Apple's next big thing. They've been working on it for north of seven years. At

this point. They have well over engineers on the project. They're getting ready to unveil it in the next couple of months and put on sale later this year. The factories are going to start churning them out starting at the end of next month in China. But the eye in hand control, right, some devices on the market area now already can read your eyes and have hand control, but with Apple's device, it's the way they work together.

That makes it so special. If you remember the touch screen on the first iPhone, that was a big differentiator, the crown on the watch. For this, it's eye in hand control. So let me give you an example. The way you control the device is you can just look at something, whether you want to launch an app, whether you want to swipe through a list or toggle a setting. Right, you look at it and then you pinch your thumb and your index finger together when you're looking at it

to launch it. Just like on a touch screen you tap what you want or on a mouse, you point the cursor toward it and then you click. This is you look and tap your fingers together. So pretty nifty. I guess. The question is how do we get to a three thousands of the price point? Right? How does

this headset differentiates itself from metas quest? The other real question I have to you is like, as an iPhone user and thinking about emoji or emojis and and emojis right where you use the camera to kind of map your face and interact with that technology. Is this the kind of extension of that. Yes. So in terms of the price point, well, it has fourteen cameras, right, you

have a bunch of cameras outside. You need cameras that can look forward, you need cameras that can look up, and need cameras that could look down, right down to see what your legs look like and what your body looks like in order to recreate what you look like in virtual reality. For that feature you alluded to in FaceTime, there's also cameras and sensors inside the device to be able to read where your eyes are looking at. In addition, there's two four K displays, right you know the four

KTV you have maybe in your living room. Well, there's two of them, many ones inside of the headset to perform virtual reality. The cameras also, in addition to being sensors to see what everything looks like, it's a way to create augmented reality. Right. Are usually uses clear lenses, but in this case it's going to use cameras to create sort of a fake of a r VR mixed reality reality effect. It's a pretty cool and practice, I'm told.

The other interesting thing to your point is you're going to be able to replicate a lot of the features of an iPad on here, right, So you'll get Safari mail maps, calendar, health tracking, even there's also a feature where you can hook it up to your Mac and you sort of can control your Mac and then you can see what your Mac stream looks like in virtual

reality while using your keyboard, mouse, and track pad. Mark very briefly, how much is this moving the needle for Apple valuation perspective from an analyst perspective to people ultimately think this is gonna be a game change for them. So in year one they want to sell about a million units at three thousand dollars, right, and I believe

that's about three billion dollars. So in terms of overall revenue for Apple, it's not going to move the needle, uh in the short term, But long term this could be a multi hundred billion dollar market and Apple, given the layoffs at Meta and the hardware changes that Google and Amazon as well, they seem to have a clear runway not only VR but other hardware products in the future.

Right Bloomberg s Mark German another day, another big scoop, As Carrow said, welcome back to Bloomberg Technology right here from San Francisco and Caroline High and I med lovel and it is a pleasure to have you back out West, back in the Bay Area. We've got to talk about social media, and we've got to talk about regulation. Has been a big theme in the show. For a number

of days now. The federal government and several states have raised cybersecurity concerns as you know carry around Chinese own TikTok, and as we reported last week, dozens of U S schools and US universities had moved to ban the app from campuses, hoping to prevent it from spying on students, asserting the Chinese government could access the private information of

its users. Let's bring in Mickey Bowland to talk about the potential risks associated with the Actually is global cybersecurity architect and security evangelist over at Checkpoint Software Technologies, which is a cybersecurity solutions provider. I mean you heard the backstory. Caroline and I have been trying to make sense of this for a number of days now. Campuses moved to remove the ability to access TikTok while on campus through

the WiFi network. What we're hearing from the users is they don't understand the risk that is being warned about here. Is there a risk? Yes? Yes. Um. First, I want to say thank you so much for having me in checkpoint.

We believe that everyone deserves the best cybersecurity. So I will say this for for end users that are unsuspecting or really don't understand the risk, Yes there is risk, and this is why we're seeing organizations come together, so agencies, enterprise UM like nonprofits for actually doing a joint responsibility for risk. Right, So we need to approach risk. Is that we have privacy and we have security. We have privacy for data, for protected data, for privacy and end

user data endpoints, also for corporate assets. We also have to protect our network. So people are writing the networks to get to these applications, and our networks are vulnerable to attack by militia's actors and malicious spread of malware. Uh so, and then we have corporate assets and university assets in this case to protect. So it is a joint responsibility, and we do need to help students understand

the risk and and really educate everyone. Mickey, going back to basics, the argument is that ultimately uh personnel in mainland China might be able to access the personal data of TikTok users in the United States. The proposed solution from TikTok is to house the data of US users on Oracle servers based here in the United States. Is that an acceptable mitigation of risk for industry professionals like yourself?

I think I I hate to speculate about that, but I will tell you that our Checkpoint research we actually did extensive testing. We're super curious back in about was TikTok Um. Were they delivering consistent policy and security privacy and security rather And we did find several vulnerabilities. Our research team found cross site scripting for their ads um. We actually found a way to kind of circumvent um registration using a mobile device and use SMS, you know,

spoofing or registration. Uh, there was API vulnerability. So I guess ultimately what I'm saying is we need to demand of organizations that are offering the social media applications and other applications, primarily for mobile devices, that they actually have a consistent security and privacy policy that we can actually address. Can compare TikTok to other viraly growing social media companies of old? How many vulnerabilities does it have visaving competitors?

I really, I mean across the board. I'd refer to our research team for that. I think that they TikTok to their um to justice to TikTok, they actually did fix the vulnerabilities that Checkpoint Research team presented to them, and indeed we work together in one to help them fantast these vulnerabilities. I think that from uh, I guess just ultimately what we understand is from an attack surface, these applications are going viral. I think, TikTok, Now I

just install it again to test this. Over a billion installs or downloads, there's a u S I read there's now currently over a hundred million active users and globally it's billions of people. Right, So I think that we have to uh think that these these um social media platforms are going to be like a huge tasty attack surface for malicious actors. Uh. We also have to take responsibility for our own personal data. When Mickey told to us about that, because you say you're a self proclaimed

global cybersecurity warrior, be a warrior for us. If I can't leave it up to TikTok, what do I do to prospect myself? Thank you so much. I am a warrior and I wish everyone would be. And we were asking more people to join the way your vandreg and souff please do. But what you need to do. First of all, when you download anyone, I mean from anyone. If you go to the app store and you download social media applications, go read the details. What is their

security policy and their privacy policy? What kind of data are they collecting on you? And then are you actively you know, looking at the permissions that you're granting to this application when you install it. If it's like click click, test you know, touch, touch, and I just gave access to my phone, my camera which you know you're doing videos on TikTok and other applications. Um, your camera, you're microphone, your you know location, all your contexts, I think your calendar.

This is probably too much information to share. Then you also have the need to redefined bying print. What are they saying they're doing with analytics that are that are being collected from you? And then who do you trust? Right? Ultimately you have to have a trust in the application, any software key and be exploited. They're never going to be perfect. Mickey Boland, keep worrying and being a work

checkpoint global cubersecurity architect. Great tous in time with you. Meanwhile, well let's head down to DC now because we're going to talk much more about regulation of social media the US Supreme Court in this instance, because actually ask the Biden administration for input on Florida on Texas laws that could sharply restrict the editorial discretion of social media platforms. Greenberg's Greg Store has the latest for us on basically

censorship concerns on either side of the aisle. Greg, just talk us through what in fact the Intreeen Court wants to hear from the administration. Well, the Supreme Court wants to hear advice on should we take up these appeals. There are appeals from both sides. There are two cases, one involving Texas, one involving Florida, And basically these are laws where the conservative governors and the conservative lawmakers of those states are saying, we're worried that social media companies

are discriminating against conservatives, silence and conservative voices. So we're gonna get in there and we're gonna oversee their content, their content management, uh, and uh say, you know, impose a lot of new requirements on them. And the social media companies are saying that's a violation of our First Amendment rights. Greg look at your reporting on the Bloomberg terminal. You know, you have this Texas set of laws and

the Florida set of laws. The Texas set seemed to be the most sort of sweeping in terms of the actions they take against social media platforms. Tell us what they're based on. What do they quiet social media platforms to do? Sure, the biggest provision in the Texas law would say that you that social media companies can't discriminate

on the basis of viewpoint. Now, there are a few exceptions to that, but basically the idea is, you can't take something down if it's coming from a conservative voice, if you wouldn't take something uh down coming from a liberal voice, And the social media companies say, hey, that that might make it impossible for us to stop bullying,

to stop spam things like that. Uh. There are a number of other provisions involving disclosure and operational requirements as well, and the Florida law has a whole series of particular requirements that are in some cases the same, in some cases different. One of the ones that a federal appeals court struck down or at least blocked, said that social media companies have to provide a thorough rationale every time

they make some sort of content management decision. And to that end, thus far these laws have been to put on ice. Shall we say, Greg, what's the next step? When do we hear ultimately from the Supreme Court? Yeah, they are on ice. Although a federal appeals court upheld the Texas laws, of the Supreme Court turns away that case,

that law will go into effect. So right now we wait for the Biden administration and will probably take several months to say, you know what it thinks the Supreme Court should do, and then probably possibly at the end of the Court's term in June, but more likely I would say when they come back in October for the next term, the Court will tell us whether it's going

to take up these cases. Because of the widespread impact because of the lower court divide over these issues, there's a pretty good chance the Court will take it up, and then then those will be huge cases for next term. Greg, still a lot of work cut out, it would seem. We thank you for your time, and we'll continue this really important conversation later this week. We're gonna be having none of them. The SEC Commissioner Brendon car all about of course, I focus on TikTok, I focus on social

media hire in the United States. That's Thursday, well and coming up, how one startup managed to raise funds and secure a multi billion dollar valuation, spice and down rounds to spite a tough market for startups over the last year. This is Bloomberg. Welcome back to blom Meg Technology and we do so much in terms of public market coverage. But ed, you're so smart giving us up to speed in the world of VC venture capital startups. Get us

up with what's happening this weekend? Yeah, I think talking tech, we need to focus on what's happening in that part of the world because there are so many headlines. Starting with Sequoias Regional arm in South and Southeast Asia. It's weighing up special audits of several of its investments in the region following allegations of financial irregularity some portfolio companies,

including ze Lingo and go Mechanic. Over In Europe, Highland has raised a new one billion euro fund that aims to invest in private software and consumer internet companies in Europe. The firm going to focus on growth stage companies. Interesting that they've raised and closed that in this environment, and

finally fintech to HR outfit. Deal says it's reached two million dollars in annual recurring revenue by the end of two but that was a jump of more than four from the end of the company also confirming its valuation has reached twelve billion US dollars. Carr. Fascinating that we're getting more focused on valuations where they're being held out after the funding from last year. Let's talk about it

with the co founder, the CEO, Alex Boss. Alex is great to have you on from Deal and I was on the website everything you need to scale a global team. Just talk to us about the need for your services in an environment where unfortunately talking more about layoffs than scaling. How is your HR offering being well scaled in and of itself by other companies right now? Of course? Well, first of all, Caroline, thank you so much for having

you today. Are very excited to be here. Um. You know, Deal started as a company that enables you to hire globinly, so let's say too more. Bloomberg wants to hire someone in South Korea and they don't have the structure to do that just yet. There we'll enable you to hire someone as an employee there and give them the best benefits in a day. As the company kind of grew, we realized that we could do so much more right.

Expanding globally as a company is so key and right now with the latest readings, we basically become the full sta HR solution for you to really go global. I'm looking at the global companies cabin Klein, Nike, they're all US space, but we've also got private twenty one Shopify Canadian business. Where for you do you look to increase your own footprint and and econ economy the worldwide is

slowing down right now? Yeah, I mean, you know, we've always been genuine agnostic when it comes to regions, right we want to have the best companies obviously, I think over fifty of our business comes from the United States, and then you know, we really have a global footprint and heads of countries in every country actually and really has a global business, you know, being European, myself and my co founder being Chinese, right, we really wanted to

be able to cover most of the companies from the get go, and that's what we've been able to do so far. So to do you have us companies, but you have companies from all over the world and across all segments using them. Alex, I want to go back some of the numbers and the timeline of this. There are reports last May they were raising funds. You close that deal, I believe over the summer you've announced today

evaluation of twelve billion dollars. That is completely at odds with what Caroline and I are hearing every day on this show, founders finding it hard to raise money down rounds being more common, the evaluations growing. Was it a difficult environment for you? I mean, you know for us we closed that around in June. Really they do was not to raise money for the capital, but you know, we get to to work with the team at Emerson, which is very impact driven, right, and that's what we

wanted to do a deal. The mission of the companies to have hundreds of millions of people get to work for the best companies in the world. So it was less about the money, but more about the people. And that's why the valuation was a bit easier to get to.

And we've been really focused on the business itself. You know, we announced that from September we actually started being being a bit depositive, so we have a lot of money in the bank, and really it was about getting to the right number for us and bringing the right people. That's interesting, So you're saying essentially that you know, from

very recently you started to be profitable. The other financial that you disclosed is that your and your average revenue growth essentially jump from at the end of twenty one to the end of last year. Are you worried now that when you see layoffs freezing of expenditures in this environment, that you might see a delayed response from your customer base as well. Well, not exactly, because the way we think about it is there's kind of two trends that

are happening. The first one is more and more companies are cutting custs on software and they want to consolidate their HR infrastructure, and we've this new product that we are on today will help them by being the HR infrastructure and the Falce life solution, not just global hiring,

but really everything for them. The second part is, as a lot of businesses starting to grow global, they realize that a lot of their custom San Francisco right hiring in there's that five hundred K didn't make a lot of sense for their business and for their unit economics. So thinking about expending their footprint and hiring people in location where it's a bit more affordable is definitely your trend.

We're seeing from most companies, and some of the largest one are coming to us to understand what is the best way to do So what is a globally focused business right now? Alex because many would say the economies are splitting in two and particularly as we see a more geopolitical tension, whether it's your versus Russia, whether it's China versus the US. You said your co founder is from China. How do you see companies wanting to scale their footprint at the moment. Are we being limited to

certain spares? Not really. I think you know, she's American but originally was born in China. And you know, the way we look at the world, whether it's her or myself, is that it's it's less about the geos, It's more about the talent. Right. You just want as a company to be able to hire the best people wherever they

are and bring them to your company. Right. So, I've not seen people think about regions apart when it comes from to time zone, right, And how you want to build a culture of the company, and how do you want to be very sus in office and not in office. But when it comes to those deos, we've seen maybe Rush I get less less less hires at the moment, but in general, most people have been very geoagnostic when it comes to town. Alex, what about your own company

and its health? You know, Caroline and I are talking about tens of thousands of talented people in technology being laid off. Are you one of those companies that's currently hiring? Yeah, I mean for sure, we are two thousand people across a hundred plus locations. You know, we've always been as efficient as we could, and being a bit depositive now enabled us to really be able to scale further. So you know, we have over I think five D plus

million dollars in the bank. We're generating money now, so we'll keep hiring to really bring the message transflution to market and really help companies go global. So if you know great people, send them send them away. Alright. Deal co founder and CEO Alex Bozis, thank you so much for sharing Evaluation news but also getting insight into what it's like to run a company right now. For me,

that's the take. It's all well and good having the vcs on the public market, investors, the activists talking about what they want from a company. When you're at the helm trying to raise money, trying to make decisions. It's interesting to see somebody so confident and there's a lot of negativecy out there. Well, I mean a bootstrap business to begin with, a why combinator, well known Silicon Valley

focused startup culture. I'm interested that he was talking already all the Lexican that investors, public investors and private investors want to hear. Ebitdre positive efficiencies, hiring across the world to ensure that they're basically making sure that they're efficient right now, that they're not over scaling, over hiring, over indulging, which is what so many of the big companies have been doing basically and having to rewind them to be fair.

The other big theme that we've heard is that investors look for quality in times like these where okay, actually being profitable for many companies as a distant dream right now could be an attractive investment. But if you're scaling a revenue at four with the many years time so they're doing now with us both stood right here in San Francisco. Let's do something very local for going viral, because the Tesla fraud trial is underway right here in

this city. And look Elon Musk continuing his testimony right on Monday, and he said, what the saludo ABIs sovereign well fund quote unequivocally wanted to give him the money, But there was no email about it. He just said it was their word was as good as that. But of course it's all in defenses and tweets here sent back.

That's part one of the defense. The other thing, and it extends from Friday, is that Elon Musk kind of rejected the idea that his tweets influenced Tesla's share price, and actually he questioned how seriously anyone took his tweets. But having since bought Twitter, he talked about Twitter being a very trustworthy, reliable sort of news in journalism. Yeah, well,

we did what we always do on this show. We asked our audience to react to the quote that he put about whether or not his tweets should be trust did He said, just because I tweet about something doesn't mean people believe it will act accordingly, do you agree negative say that's insane? Of course, they felt that he puts out tweets that people believe that act on. I mean, there has been criticism time and time again of the way in which he's perhaps talked up certain companies, certain

crypto assets. Goodness knows what. But people move and they make asset allocation decisions of what he tweets. Yeah, and why he doesn't use a regulatory filing instead of the tweet? Tweet is his method of choice? Yeah, many politicians would agree. Was it a tweet that almost broke the internet today as well? Is then an m using not Eminem the rapper, Eminem's when you eat, look at this, we'll bring it up on the screen and just a moment, Eminem's is

reconsidering It's spokes candies. You see the former spokes candies along the bottom there. They have a new spokesperson. Yeah, and apparently everyone can rally behind her. Is kind of what they say, Maya Rudolph, They say, we're confident Mss Rudolph will champion the power of fun to create a world where everyone feels they belong. Of course, many think this might be about the Super Bowl rather went out from the Super Bowl. Let's wait and see if this

is real life. Eminem's are determined to break the Internet. We didn't break the Internet. We talked all about it. That that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology Tuesday. We've got so much more in terms of interactive advertising. Ber O c O David Cohen's going to be joining. Don't forget, you've got to recap everything on the podcast Spotify. This is Bloomberg