Snap's Layoffs and Zuckerberg's New Branding

to ads as the answer. Plus Smark Zuckerberg's conversation with Joe Rogan offered a glimpse into his vision or meta, but the tough reality is that vision hasn't changed much since Facebook oculus back in and people just don't see that in to it. And we continue our ed tech series after new poll shows less than half of American support President Biden student at relief plan. We will also chat with the CEO of the text Bookmaker, person who thinks n f T S could be a new revenue stream.

All of that in a moment, but first let's get a look at Snap slashing staff, scaling back on investments to rain in costs after a broader pullback on ad spending, snapping its sales growth this year, Snapchat's parent company, the latest in a wave of tech layoffs that has plunged the NASDAC into choppy waters. Let's get the latest now

with Bloomberg's Alex Baringa. So, Alex, this is a pretty deep cut we're talking about, and they're cutting a lot of businesses that we're generating a lot of buzz What's happening here? That's right, It's a deep cut and it doesn't just stop at headcount numbers. So snap has its core Snapchat platform. They've also kind of rolled out a number of buzzy projects like the Pixie drone with which flies around and takes pictures, or like a mini games within the app. A lot of these projects are falling

by the wayside. They're either being killed or scaled back in the case of something like snaps Spectacles. Now all of this has basically come to a head, as the company said. The CEO said in an internal memo that revenue growth for this quarter is basically going to hit single digits for the first time ever since they're a

public company. Um, So they are looking at the company really refocusing on anything that is monetize able on their ad business and on any future potential UM places to make revenue and culling basically everything als simily, they're also losing their chief business officer, Jeremy Gorman going over to Netflix. We actually recently had Jeremy right here on the show. What do you make of this? Yeah, so this is part of this kind of restructure slash re org that

Snap has. All of Jeremy Gorman's businesses are shifting over to a new chief operating officer UM that they have promoted from their engineering team him. Look, I think that an analyst over at j MP Security summed it up best. They said, we don't really know who's in charge of the AD business right now. Um. I think it will be another bit of this kind of proved me process to be sure that leadership there at Snap really can show that they can kind of lean into the role

that Jeremy is exiting. She is a kind of seasoned ad executive. She is really strong on the AD sales side and has experienced at other big tech companies. So they definitely have a bit of a gap there to fill. UM and look, that whole business, which is the money making arm of Snap will now be reporting into a

brand new executive new seat. So for investors, they're happy to see the cost cuts from the news today, but I would guarantee that that's going to be a place that they're watching because that is, you know, the bread and butter of snaps top line. Now, now there's been a lot of tumult in social media, but you know, for somewhat different reasons. Obviously meta we reported yesterday they're laying off a bunch of contractors, also doing this big

pivot to the metaverse. Twitter is embroiled in this lawsuit with Elon Musk. You've got TikTok, you know, fighting these content moderation wars, but kind of winning on the engagement side. Can you compare snaps fortunes with these other competitive platforms. Yeah, I think it's really interesting, Emily. Snap has really kind

of benefited from its reputation and its prowess with younger generations. Um, that is really when advotagers go there to spend money like that is one of the things that's top of mind. Snap owns the younger generations. Well, now you have TikTok on the scene, who has also really done well to win over the downloads and the business of those younger audiences. So you have TikTok kind of leaning in and pushing in on Snap um and and kind of threatening their

core user base. And then you have places, as you mentioned, like Meta, and I would also throw Google its search and YouTube businesses in the mix there too, which are a bit more I would say to handable for advertisers. So if you're looking at a where is the money going basis, we've seen to the last a few earning cycles, it's not really going to Snap. TikTok's a private company, so we will see Meta and YouTube. Google seem to

be continuing to kind of break in the cash. So it's definitely a fight out and I would toss Instagram there in the mix too as well. Um probably somewhere in the middle. It's definitely a battle that is raging that will we pay a lot of attention to. But when it comes to Snap again, like this kind of podium they've been on, of owning gen Z, of owning the teens and twentysomethings, I think that's really coming under threat in a way that perhaps they haven't seen before.

From the likes of fakesbook Instagram or YouTube. All right, Alex Barenka, thank you cover social media for us. Appreciate it well. As we mentioned those two Snap executives going from snaps ad business to help Netflix launch their ad supported platform, Jeremy Gorman, as we mentioned, along with the president of ad Sales Peter Naylor, joining Netflix in September. Here to tell us more about this, Bloomberg's Lucashaw So Lucas,

how big a coup is this for Netflix? I mean, look, they took two of the top executives in the digital ad business right now, Peter Naylor in particular, the Jeremy Gorman I believe more senior at Snap. Peter Naylor helped build the ad business at Hulu, which, other than YouTube, is really the biggest digital video ad business in the US.

Netflix have spent the past couple of months, if not longer, looking for some executives to to lead the charge for them as they move into advertising, and now they have, you know, two really solid people. So at this point, what do we know about Netflix's ad supported to here, how it will compare it to Disney's add supported tier, etcetera. Uh, we know that it's going to debut either in the final three months of this year likely and in November,

December or at the very beginning of next year. Uh. My reporting has suggested that it will be cost about half as much as the basic Netflix here, so think like eight bucks nine bucks. There will be advertising in some programming, but not all, not advertising and kids programming, at least not first not advertising in new movies. Uh And they'll be ads before and during some programs, but not after. And they're aiming for about four minutes of

advertising per hour. You brought up Disney the four minute Netflix or like Disney and like HBO, Max is aiming for a low advertising load and they can charge a lot for those advertisements. They don't want to have much more than four minutes per hour. They don't want to make it uncomfortable for the viewers. That's much easier said than done. And we'll have a better sense of what this looks and feels like when these services come out

at the end of the year. A couple interesting headlines out from Dow Jones, One that Disney is exploring an Amazon Prime like membership program to offer various discounts and perks. Another that Netflix is looking to charge brands premium pricing for this ad supported tier, which is not necessarily a surprise. What do you make of these? Yeah, I mean the

Disney News I think makes a lot of sense. They already have a bundle for their three streaming services, and they also will charge fans of their parts for what's called an annual pass, where you can pay one set price and get to go again and again, with the exception of certain days. Like Disney is the one media company that has a truly loyal fan base. They love

the brand, they love the characters. Uh, and so them trying to create one bundle for their super fan that people can pay and reduce churn or the number of cancelations for for some of their services makes all the sense in the world, you know. As for Netflix, I don't. I honestly don't think that's really news. Both the Journal and we have reported before that they're looking to charge medium prices. All right, that would make sense Bloomberg's look

a shaw, thank you very much. Meantime, Twitter has subpoena at Stanford University as part of its legal battle with Elon Musk. Yes, the university. I'll tell you why. Next, this is Bloomberg. Let's get the latest now on the Musk Twitter trial. The billionaire asking for more time again, this time to dissect the claims of a whistle blower. And also Elon Musk wants to talk with his alma mater, and that is Stanford University here to explain Bloomberg's Jeff Feely. So, Jeff,

let me get this straight. We thought it was Twitter subpoena NG Stanford, but actually it's Musk subpoena NG Stanford. Why would Musk? Why would Musk want information from Stanford University about the Twitter deal? Okay, so we don't know for sure, but one of the Twitter board members, a Dr Lee, works at Stanford and the is one of the AI experts at Stanford. So it could be that. Uh, it also could be wants to check and see who she had conversations with among her colleagues about, you know,

problems with the deal. Uh, you know where exactly could this lead? Well, I mean, what's going on here is both sides are trying to put together their cases for the October seventeenth trial, and Mr Musk wants to know what, you know, what conversations the Twitter board members have had with people about this. Obviously, looking for material that would you help him justify walking away? Interesting? Okay, Well, you know,

obviously this case is changing by the minute. Yesterday we learned Elon Musk wanted to try to get the trial pushed to November. Now he's potentially trying to get it pushed even further out to December. What exactly do we

know about what Musk is asking for at this point. Well, they're asking to push the trial to late November early December to give themselves and the Twitter folks more time to dig into the allegations of the whistleblower that have emerged, and you know, people need to find out whether his allegations are substantial or sour grapes. This gentleman was fired from Twitter ashead of its computer security, uh for what

the company says, we're performance issues. So it's gonna take some time to really dig into this, and they're running out of time in terms of discovery. Late November to state at the obvious is Thanksgiving in the United States,

So that you know, leads me to potentially December. What's the likelihood in your view that this case, this child gets moved um and when when will it judge make a decision on this, Well, we don't know when Judge McCormick will rule, but most people believe she's going to grant more time because the emergence of this gentleman was a surprise, and there's some inkling there could be other so blowers coming down the plate, so there could be a need for, you know, to push it back in

the interests of justice. So here's the question. Elon Musk, you know, said he was gonna buy Twitter with no diligence. That's on Elon Musk. Why is it all of the Why are these additional claims actually relevant? Well, the whistle blower raised issues about lacks computer security and privacy concerns. If Twitter did not disclose those things to Mr Musk as part of the deal, and even though he didn't do due diligence, they still have legal duties to disclose

things like that. It's called representations and warranties. And if the judge finds that they should have disclosed those things that didn't, it can sink the deal. All right, Uh, lots going on here at Jeff, really appreciate you continuing to give us the play by play and help us make sound to all these moves, bloombergs Jeff Feely in Delaware,

very busy guy for us. Thank you. You will be able to have this experience in the future where like you're sitting in a meeting, um, and you know your wife text too, and it pops up in the corner of your glasses and you want to respond, but you don't want to pull out your phone because that's kind of rude, right, UM, So you just kind of like don't twitch your wrist a little bit, maybe like this like some super discreet motion, um that no one even

knows you're doing it, and you just like send a message. And that seems like a massive distraction. I mean people are already distracted by their phones, Like when people get a text messages and they're like, hang on a second, I just can't answer this real quick. And you're like okay, and you're sitting there having lunch with someone and they're not talking to you anymore because they looking at their phone. But now they're going to be looking at these a

R glasses and just thinking out text messages. Just some of Mark Zuckerberg's very lengthy conversation on Joe Rogan's popular podcast last week, Three Hours The interview was an opportunity for Zuckerberg to defend Meta's pivot to virtual and augmented reality. But as you just heard with Rogan's rebuttal, Zuckerberg's vision is facing a tough reality here to discuss Max Chafkin. So there's a lot here, Max, But overall, what do you make of how Mark Zuckerberg portrayed his vision and

how Joe Rogan reacted to it? Well, So, the thing that was just striking to me, as somebody's followed this for a long time, is how little Mark Zuckerberg's v R, a R metaverse, whatever you want to call it, how little that vision has changed. Um, you know, we've kind of over the last six months or so been talking

about it as if it's this, you know, brand new thing. Yeah, they they're spending billions of dollars um and kind of forgetting that Facebook purchased Oculus, you know, the company that seeded the VR effort in it has spent you know, even before spending ten billion dollars one, it had spent

billions and billions of dollars marketing several successive devices. Um, you know, they had a Super Bowl at in February and really has gotten not a whole lot of traction, all things considered, And I think part of the reason is what we just heard that this pitch, which is that you're gonna kind of want to put Facebook um inside of virtual reality, uh and and strap it to your face, is just not that compelling, and they and they really still haven't figured out a way to to

sell it. And and for three hours with Joe Rogan, we saw Zuckerberg kind of working, you know, basically trying to his every trick he could think of to to sell it, and and you know, coming up short, I would say, now I've actually heard that texting example from Zuckerberg before about his wife setting in a text and how VR could be cool, uh to help him check that text without other people noticing. This one was new

to me. Take a listen. There's something that's just so primal um about it that's I don't I don't know, it's it's and I've since then, I've just introduced a bunch of my friends to it, and that's been really fun because now it's like we're trained together and we just like wrestled together and just I don't know, there's like a certain intensity to it that I um that I I like h Now I understand maybe Zacherberg's trying

to show a little bit more of his human side. Um, but there's a a sort of naivete there or or a falling flat I might say, Yeah, you know, one of the most successful tech people in the world bringing the cringe to Joe Rogan. Um. He maybe it wasn't clear if if people were just coming to it cold, but he's talking about jiu jitsu. Mark Zuckerberg has gotten

into I guess, uh, combat sports. Um. And he was trying to bond with Joe Rogan and again I think, um, you know kind of jokes aside with this just chows like this company is trying everything they can to connect with people. So you know they they again, they tried Super Bowl ads, they tried you know, demos, and now Zuckerberg's you know, sort of trying on this like alpha male, you know, I'm into fighting sports thing to to convince

Joe Rogan's audience, which is substantial. I mean, Joe Rogan has you know, the most successful podcast in the world to you know, give give the you know, Oculus or or or the Facebook b our Devices shop. Meantime, let's talk about what he had to say about sort of screens and television and how he imagines um, all of these different screens and interfaces working together. Take a listen

to what he had to say. I just want the time that people spend with screens to be better, because I mean, today, so much of it just like you're just sitting around and in this like beta state consuming stuff. And I think that that's like, oh h so, I wonder what he means by beta state there, and if

his vision of screens is actually what people want. Yeah, it's it's hard to understand if you're trying to kind of connect with the masses and convince them that this new product you have is great, um that you want to start out by sort of um, you know, dissing uh, what's basically the most popular entertainment medium in the world.

I think what he was trying to say is that television is passive, and he was sort of using this kind of Joe Rogan verse alpha meaning active, strong manly, passive meaning uh, some beta meaning passive or almost effeminine

to refer to television. But it really is kind of a head scratcher, and I just think it it just goes to show how kind of all over the place the marketing has been here and and it's it's worked in certain ways, right like the the these hardware devices have sold reasonably well as as kind of video game consoles. But in terms of trying to broaden this out, making this something that you know, regular people are going to use for meetings or or or for travel or something,

I mean, really, we're not anywhere. All right, Well, if you have three hours, uh, that's just Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan. If you want to hear more of Bloomberg's Max Chafkin, who also wrote about it Bloomberg Business Week. Appreciate your thoughts. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Emily Check in San Francisco. We are continuing our education tech coverage as we enter the school season. President Biden's unprecedented

student loan cancelations getting some mixed reactions. A new warning consult Political surveys shows only forty eight percent of American support Biden's level of forgiveness. Who to discussed Sarah Leaving, CEO of the investing in financial planning platform Betterment, So not necessarily a popular plan um not everyone supporting this and a lot of debate. Sarah, where do you stand?

So I think there are economists on both sides of this issue, and I think we can agree that student loans are a major problem for this country, and that there's one point seven trillion dollars in student loan debt outstanding, and also that this generation is more saddle the student loan debt than any of the generations that have come before. I think where the conversation gets trickier is what to

do about it? And so I'm a believer personally that what to do about it lies in advice and technology, and that the federal government can play a part, but the business also needs to play a part. How so, well, you know, I think the first the first thing that is very true is that, you know, folks are are not good at saving and are not necessarily good at understanding if I have another disposable dollar, where should I

put it? Right? And so I think there's sort of a regulatory and technology conversion here that's pretty exciting, where we now can develop tools, and we had betterment, are developing tools to really say to a student loan a student loan holder, look, what should you do with your

next dollar instead of going to Starbucks this week. You know, what would five dollars a day do in terms of visually we can show you visually what would it do in terms of your debt pay down, both your timeline, your costs and how can we set you up for a better future. And so I think that's one thing

we can do is offer technological solutions. And the other thing we can do is partner with employers, right because as with many other great issues of the day, like retirement savings, employers have a role to play in supporting their employees. How do you see businesses and employers playing a bigger role here and how could that also impact the choices that students are prospective students make about how to access education. Yeah, so I think it's a great question.

I mean, I think this is you know, for those who aren't that excited about the current approach, I think the government is take ging. You know, one of the concerns is this moral hazard issue of our people going to make choices about their education that they're then going to expect to be forgiven by the government, and therefore, will they make choices that maybe aren't the best choices

for them? And then similarly, will the costs go up because the schools know that they can access this incremental funding. So I think this is a real challenge that I think we're poised to help with in a couple of ways. I mean, number one, there's more legislation if you can imagine coming down the pike um in the Secure Act two point oh, you know, sort of on the table later this year. That's talking about tax incentives for businesses to help potentially even with a match where you link

a four own K and student loan management. So imagine if I'm an employee and I can't access my company match for retirement because I'm paying down debt from my student loan and I just don't have an incremental dollar to save, Well, here's an opportunity for the government to step in and say, Okay, whether you save by paying down your debt or whether you save by putting a dollar in your four own k, either way your employer

can met match that contribution. And that's a really powerful way for employers to be able to channel dollars where they're going to best serve their employees. What would be your message to you know, rising freshmen right now who are considering a college education, who have you know, you know, innumerable online learning options now available to them, and companies that are reducing degree requirements. So you know, you've got some people out there saying I don't need a four

year degree. I think it's true that there's no one size fits all. I mean, I think on averaging over time, education has helped to lead to better outcomes, you know, for society. So but I think we could talk about whether that education is about starting young and preschool and getting out of the gate stronger, or whether it's about a four year college. I think the idea that you know, there are vocational programs and other ways to go about

it are true. But all of these things have costs and each has a different r O. I So I think, you know, regardless of the path and into visual chooses because there are many paths, and I agree they're kind of more varied than they were perhaps you know a generation ago. Um, there still is going to be this problem of people need to borrow to fund any of these whether it's vocational school or whether it's a four

year college. They're borrowing. Sometimes they're not finishing their degree, they're borrowing for that and these are costs that then they need to understand how to tackle right. And that's really the problem we're seeking to solve is how do we help employees who have taken on this debt? How do we help them tackle this debt in the most responsible way to give them the best personal long term outcome? All right? Uh, Sarah Leav CEO of Betterment, Thanks for

waging in what has been a raucous debate. Appreciate it. Okay, Coming up, could the future of textbooks be n f T s. We're gonna ask Pearson CEO Andy Bird about that and more. Next, this is Bloomberg. This week we're focusing on education technology and how innovation in this field is fueling a new way of teaching and learning. And in today's Crypto report, we're talking about how n f t s could change the game when it comes to textbooks.

Like to take a deeper dive into all of that with Andy Bird's CEO of Pearson, one of the world's largest textbook publishers. So, Andy, I remember buying a lot of very heavy, very expensive textbooks. Can you explain to me how n f t s could change this industry? Oh? Hi, am Luke and thanks very much for having me on your show. I remember those days as well, of the

heavy textbook and a pisson. We're very much leaning into digital technology as as a way forward, and in fact, now if you subscribe to Pier some plus, you'll be able to get those textbooks for just a month and it's it's one example of how we as a company are really looking at technology to move the whole industry, in the whole sector forward. I think the pandemic acted as an accelerator in terms of really transforming the world

of education and the world of learning. Per your earlier discussion with Sarah, and in that regard, I've been really interested in how technology and how Pierson can utilize technology, both in terms of n f t s, nonpuntual tokens and blockchain, but the notion of having a transparent ledger and the impact that would have on authors and royalties,

for example. I think it's very very interesting. It also allows us to deconstruct the textbook, and you know, once the textbook is in digital form, you can look at ways as offering not just text by the chat to say,

but also video. You see some of the examples on screen now is some plus you know, a lot of video, a lot of animation, a lot of graphics, a lot of audio suddenly starts to come into play as you look at the way that learning and textbooks are evolving, and so as a company, I think it's very important that we're sort of trying to lead research and development

in that space, and that's what we're doing. So give an example of how a textbook could be an n f T and how that could survive, you know, past be passed on to multiple students, and how Pearson could still potentially profit from it even if we're talking you know, three or four students down the line. Like I used textbook, Yeah, I think think of a textbook a modern digital textbook

curve comprising of various learning modules. So where in the past in the analog world you had chapters and illustrations and pictures, in the future, those chapters are broken down, as I said, into different learning modules. The creator of those learning modules could in theory, meant that learning module as an n f T and therefore not only get paid by Pearson if that's an author. There's a really interesting angle in terms of users generated content and all

of this. By the way, but the the the the the author or the creator of that content. It could be a video, it could be in a take a form of audio. Would then be able to participate as that learning module is utilize down the blockchain as it were in the blockchain acts as that transparent ledger and make sure that everyone gets paid an appropriate amount of money. It actually I think could lead to greater accessibility and affordability for education as you look more globally now Carmel's fashion.

But um, as much as I didn't like carrying those textbooks around, I still like a paper textbook. I like reading a physical uh you know, a physical newspaper, physical book. I like underlining it, folding down the pages. Is there a place for that in the future. Absolutely absolutely, And we we still give you the option to get that that printed textbook and will continue to invest behind those.

You know. As an analogy, I like the music industry, recorded music industry, and if you think of the textbook has been the vinyl record, and then the e text as being the CD, and then in music of course you had MP three players and now you have the likes of Spotify and Title and others where you pay a subscription for access to forty million songs in the

Board of Education. Up until recently, we've kind of been stuck in the c D. And I think the great opportunity is, Yeah, you can still buy the vinyl record, you can still buy your textbook. But the great opportunity is how we utilize technology. You know, we mentioned blockchain. I think augmented reality virtually reality is going to play very important and significant part in parts of education going forward.

And so what really excites need the leading person at this moment in time is all of these great opportunities to really harness you know, the great technological innovations that have happened in other sense, sectors like music, like entertainment, the introduction of five G, having the ability to store everything on the cloud, the way that devices are developing, both in terms of mobile phones and the like, and bringing all of those together to make learning more accessible

and more affordable to more people. Because through learning and learning throughout your lifetime, of course, we all we all improve ourselves and our economic outlook of society. How are you thinking about the metaverse and how that could potentially impact the textbook industry? Obviously it's early days. Well, a couple of examples I'm in Los Angeles, you're in San Francisco, and we could both be in the same classroom together

in the metaverse, and we can participate in experiments. We could go up to the white board and and uh

annotate each other's notes. We could both at the sort of click of a button, be transported back to ancient Greece and be in a Greek theater watching a Greek play, or immediately then transported into the deep you know, Amazon jungle, or inside a cell structure, or if you're a medical student, look at procedures and be able to practice surgical procedures without having to use you know, real bodies as it

were so many many applications. Again, I think, you know, for an urban you know, in K through twelve, the ability to open the eyes and open the world to those students who previously have never had the opportunity to go and visit some of these places in the world and to to have some of those experiences. I think the meta versus a really really interesting use of technology to enable that. Fascinating how much has changed since I went to school and how much could continue to change.

Andy Bird's EO of Pearson appreciate you sharing that vision with us pleasure. Now as some analysts are raising the alarm about the downturn worsening, one company says that despite all the talk of layoffs and fears of a recession, they have found evidence to the contrary. While Seem Daher is the founder and CEO of Pilot, and accounting firm for startups and small businesses that specializes in CFO services, bookkeeping, tax prep, he joins me, nowt here in the studio

with more on their data. So there's a lot of women do out there. You know, we've had guests on the show who said there's going to be millions of layoffs in tech. We just saw a snap and now it's a cut across the board. What are you seeing that tells you it's not so gloomy. That's a great question. And you know, we we sort of saw the same stuff in the market, all the VC memo as all the headlines. We said, let's take a look at the data. And so for us, we're the largest startup accountant in

the United States. We have thousands of customers. We've processed a hundred billion dollars of accounting transactions last year. We said, what is the data show, and what we did is we took a look at about a thousand of our customers and two kind of key data points emerged. The verse was that in June we found that of them

actually maintained or even increased head count. And then from a revenue growth perspective, Q one definitely was a bit soft for folks, but we saw to choose revenue growth to be actually very comparable to late so indicators are actually looking pretty good for this kind of early mid stage startup segments. Okay, so what's the discrepancy in the numbers. That's a great question. And I think here's what's going on, which is especially in the early and mid stage. I

think two things are happening. Of first is that there's definitely pain from the downturn, but I think it's more specifically and more pronacade felt by companies that really have nice to have offerings as supposed to really need to have offerings. And the second is, I think the dynamics and kind of late stage in public markets are very different than what you see in the earlier kind of mid stage ecosystem for startups. Okay, well, let's take Snap

as an example. Cuts we also reported that Metas cutting off hundreds of contractors alphabets in the middle of a hiring freeze Apple. I talked to Tim Cook. You know, they're going to pull back on some hiring and spending plans going into next year. He said, they're being very deliberate about their spending. Wouldn't it be a more difficult world for startups that are relying on, you know, whatever they have in the bank to survive, and many of

which aren't profitable. Yeah, so, I mean, you definitely think so. But I think the thing that's interesting is, let's say you're a startup. You're targeting in a sixty billion dollar market and because of the downturn, maybe it's now only a forty billion dollar market. But you're concerned about getting from point oh five percent adoption to point one percent adoption. You're not running into the ceiling, whereas you know, these

public companies absolutely are. When there is a twenty or thirty percent reduction, they're going to feel that in the financials. Your business is interesting, and I wonder what sort of trends you're seeing in your own business in the downturn. Are more companies turning to outsourcing with services like yours rather than having these systems internally because they're trying to limit their own internal headcount. Absolutely. I think there are

kind of two phenomenons were observing. One is, folks that might have built the function in house are more interested in the flexibility of relying on an external provider. And the second is I think the tone has changed among startups where in one you know it's really the era of growth at all costs. Now it's look, you need to know your metrics, you need to know the KPIs. You have to be really sharp on the numbers, and lots of folks come to us to just to better

handle on those steps. How are you handling the downturn internally? I mean, how are you making decisions? Do we maintain headcount, do we continue to hire, do we make cuts? So one of the things we feel really strongly about is the amount of money you spend cannot be a function of how much you have in your bank account. You sort of have to earn the right to spend it. There's this concept called the burn multiple, which is the amount of new recurring revenue you add any given period

and its relation to your burn rate. That those need to stay in lockstep. So for us, we think about how those ratios look, and then we also try to pre compute a little bit. Look, if revenue trends in way X, this is what we'll do. If revenue trends in way why, this is what we'll do, so that we don't have to be surprised if as the situation changes. Some of your investors Sequoia Bezos expeditions. What are they telling you you got any advice from Jeff Bezos. Jeff

Bezos has not given me a call. I'm still waiting for the call its X from Jeff. It's been It's been interesting because I think the dynamics are highly variable depending on what the company is up to. One of the things that we like at Pilot is you have to do your accounting. I mean, even in tough economic times, you're not gonna just not do your tax return. So we were hoping, or we feel that our business is

more recession proof or downturnmproof than the average. Does a more hawk ish fed uh change things for you and your own business. You know, it's interesting because I think the public market dynamics, you know, we're many many years away from being a public company and I think for the companies we serve, we're really in the private markets. There are down rounds, there are layoffs, there is belt tightening,

there are companies making hard decisions about their priorities. I think it's absolutely true, and I think you sort of need to kind of keep that hawkish eye on what's happening in your bank account, your current runway now more than ever, because, as you said, access to capital is

definitely comparatively limited. So as you look ahead over the next year, what are some of the questions you're gonna be asking the companies that you're working with to give you clues about how the market is changing, Like, maybe this is what the data says now, but maybe it's there's a delay. Sure, Yeah, I think we look at a couple of things. One is our CFO services team works very closely with a bunch of our customers who helped them build out their own financial models, their own forecasts,

they're on budget. I think we'll also see really good data about what happens in fundraising markets. There's a lot of kind of pent up dry powder at BC firms. It is not currently being deployed. I think depending on sort of when that starts to get released into the market. I think we will see potentially very different results. Seager, CEO and founder of Pilot. Thank you for joining us and good to see her in person. Thank you for having me. All Right, that does it for this edition

of Bloomberg Technology. Coming up Thursday, We've got Crowdstrikes CEO George Kurtz. He'll join us to talk about the state of cybersecurity, whether that is recession proof. And don't forget to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily checking in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg