Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business finance and tech news as it happened. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone, Welcome to the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Carol Masser is off this
Speaker 1: holiday short and trading week, during which we heard President
Speaker 1: Joe Biden call on Congress to cut taxes on gasoline.
Speaker 1: This with the busy summer travel season already upon us
Speaker 1: and speaking of driving ahead, on this broadcast, we'll hear
Speaker 1: from the global vice president of Cadillac on the brands
Speaker 1: move away from gas powered vehicles, and the CEO of
Speaker 1: Contour Brands tells us how his company has largely skirted
Speaker 1: the supply chain troubles touching nearly every sector. Plus twenty
Speaker 1: three and me CEO and Wajitski stops by to discuss
Speaker 1: her company's key research on long COVID and a rough
Speaker 1: stretch for its share price. All of that to come,
Speaker 1: We begin with this week's cover story and another struggling
Speaker 1: area of the market. Cryptocurrency, specifically the regulatory crackdown facing
Speaker 1: the industry's richest man, Cheng Peng Zhoo business we call
Speaker 1: him this. Max Chaffkin and Bloomberg News markets reporter Justina
Speaker 1: Lee co wrote the piece. They joined me in Bloomberg
Speaker 1: News senior markets reporter Katie Greifeld with more. Cz is
Speaker 1: the billionaire co founder of the world's biggest crypto exchange.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people who haven't been
Speaker 1: paying attention to crypto might not really understand exactly how
Speaker 1: big finances. But you know, in twenty four hours, I
Speaker 1: think they usually say they processed sempty six billion dollars
Speaker 1: of transactions. And if you think about coin base as
Speaker 1: the exchange the most Americans are most familiar with, I mean,
Speaker 1: finance is like I think the last time I looked
Speaker 1: about forty times bigger than that. And that's because they
Speaker 1: have a lot of volumes in crypto derivatives. And that's
Speaker 1: because you know, they're everywhere, and they're really the retail
Speaker 1: trader's favorite crypto exchange. And Max, you wanted to buy
Speaker 1: you met the man? What was he like in person?
Speaker 1: Because he is sort of this mysterious but very prolific figure. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: as Justina is saying, I mean it Binance itself is
Speaker 1: popular and cz has this kind of like cult following.
Speaker 1: The crypto heads really like the company, They really like him.
Speaker 1: I mean in person, he's very unassuming, right, He doesn't
Speaker 1: come off as a h kind of what you would
Speaker 1: think of as a normal crypto billionaire. He drives a normal,
Speaker 1: uh seaming car or is driven I probably should say
Speaker 1: h in a normal seeming car, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: he's a slender, soft spoken and so on. But of
Speaker 1: course you know that this is all part of a
Speaker 1: pitch and what Justustina and I wrote about in the
Speaker 1: stories that Finance basically after years of really kind of behaving,
Speaker 1: you know, very aggressively in terms of regulation, in terms
Speaker 1: of its approach to the law, is very much trying
Speaker 1: to strike a new note, which is a note of
Speaker 1: we are as CZI told me in new By, where
Speaker 1: the stable guys, where where the adults in the room
Speaker 1: and two people who follow this industry. I mean that
Speaker 1: is a bold claim to say the lead staple is
Speaker 1: a bit of a dirty word in crypto right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as Justina could speak to, I mean this this
Speaker 1: is not a company known for a lot of stability. Okay, Justina,
Speaker 1: come on back in here. I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: the word because it's not allowed on radio, but I'll
Speaker 1: just say S coins. Okay, S coins. People who know
Speaker 1: crypto know what I'm talking about here. What is finances
Speaker 1: relationship with these so called S coins and explain what
Speaker 1: they are? Yeah, I mean these S coins where we
Speaker 1: can call them all the coins are basically these smaller
Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies that got really big in the I O boom
Speaker 1: up two thousands seventeen. And the relationship with finances that
Speaker 1: one thing they realized in two thousand seventeen was that
Speaker 1: people didn't just want to trade the coin at a ethereum.
Speaker 1: They wanted to trade you know, like hundreds of token
Speaker 1: you know that different people are pumping on the internet.
Speaker 1: And that's really how they were god baked back then.
Speaker 1: And so finance is interesting because it's kind of jurisdiction free.
Speaker 1: Max cz is kind of jurisdiction free as well. How
Speaker 1: is that? So? How is he able to do that? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the company was founded in China, but but pretty
Speaker 1: quickly after they're founded, they basically went on the move.
Speaker 1: And what you have is this website finance dot com
Speaker 1: where most of the trading volume is that doesn't really
Speaker 1: have a home, and there isn't a clear country, there
Speaker 1: isn't a clear jurisdiction. And that is basically both a
Speaker 1: feature and a bug. It's a bug because it's it's
Speaker 1: a regulatory vulnerability. You now have um, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of regulators all over the world and especially in the
Speaker 1: United States scrutinizing this company very closely. But it's a
Speaker 1: feature in that it basically allowed them to offer all
Speaker 1: of these unlicensed financial products in enormous volumes, you know,
Speaker 1: with very few repercussions. And so you know, and and that,
Speaker 1: and that's why this company and all lot of ways
Speaker 1: embodies the crypto industry itself, because of course crypto is
Speaker 1: this you know, borderless uh you know, nationless idea, right,
Speaker 1: and then we have this borderless nationalist company. And what
Speaker 1: we're seeing now is is the potential for those ideas
Speaker 1: to maybe run into, you know, some of those old
Speaker 1: institutions that they were trying to displace. Justin as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff you and Max uncovered new in
Speaker 1: this and and one part of that that I want
Speaker 1: to get to is the ownership structure of different finance
Speaker 1: arms throughout the world. What is finance US, How is
Speaker 1: it related to finance? And what did you learn about
Speaker 1: this intricate web of different firms throughout the world? Right, So,
Speaker 1: binance US started in two thousand nineteen because US regulators
Speaker 1: wouldn't really have finance in the country, and so finance
Speaker 1: was light. You know, we'll start this brand new entity
Speaker 1: that's going to be independent and it's going to be
Speaker 1: more compliant. And that's sort of the way they've been operating,
Speaker 1: which is that they have this ambiguous entity Finance Stock Call.
Speaker 1: But you know, in some local jurisdiction they might open
Speaker 1: a local company that might engage with regulators. And the
Speaker 1: question kind of behind all this is, you know, like
Speaker 1: who actually owns this cash cow. We don't know the
Speaker 1: parent company behind finance dot Com, but if you look
Speaker 1: at the local entities and a very important company called
Speaker 1: Finance Capital Management in British Virgin Islands, I think they're
Speaker 1: basically entirely owned by CZ which kind of suggests that
Speaker 1: the company doesn't have any external shareholders. And it's quite
Speaker 1: interesting given that crypto has always been about the centralization,
Speaker 1: because at least in the financial sense finances, not the
Speaker 1: centralize at all. That was Bloomberg News Markets reporter Justina
Speaker 1: Lee and Business Week call him this Max Chafkin on
Speaker 1: this week's cover story, Bloomberg's Katie Greifeld with us there
Speaker 1: as well, coming up. Demand for Cadillac's new electric suv
Speaker 1: is through the roof. So what's the problem, the GM
Speaker 1: brand's global vice president explains. Next, you're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stenovan from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Earlier this year, Cadillac announced it would have
Speaker 1: an all electric portfolio by that starts with Lyric. It's
Speaker 1: the brand's first all electric vehicle. Orders for the model
Speaker 1: opened up last month and quickly sold out. This past week,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg New Senior Markets reporter Katie Greifeld and I spoke
Speaker 1: with Cadillac's global vice president Rory Harvey about why some
Speaker 1: customers will have to wait an extra year for their
Speaker 1: new rides. I guess at the moment, there's just significant
Speaker 1: demand for the product. If you look at it, you know,
Speaker 1: we had the expectations that we set. We pulled the
Speaker 1: vehicle forward nine months, and you know, at the moment,
Speaker 1: demand is exceeding our expectations. So we're looking at expanding
Speaker 1: our capacity. We're looking at gaining incremental manufacturing capacity, we're
Speaker 1: looking at gaining incremental components, and we've actually expanded our
Speaker 1: production through till the end of February significantly over the
Speaker 1: original plans. So at the moment, it's more a case
Speaker 1: of being able to keep up with the demand. There's
Speaker 1: not specific challenges necessarily reated to SEVI conductors, etcetera. It's
Speaker 1: it's just a significant demand. Give us some numbers here
Speaker 1: about demand, yea, So we had about two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thou hand raisers. We've not disclosed our production numbers
Speaker 1: for model year twenty three, but suffice to say that
Speaker 1: it's sold out within four hours. The limited edition, the
Speaker 1: debut edition that we put on sale initially again sold
Speaker 1: out in just over ten minutes. So you know, there's
Speaker 1: just so many people that are excited about Cadillac coming
Speaker 1: forward in terms of the all electric lyric. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: It puts a smile on our face. You were talking
Speaker 1: about the demand. You saw two fifty hand raisers. Does
Speaker 1: that mean that doesn't mean deposits, right, that means expressions
Speaker 1: of interest. Yeah, exactly. So these are people that have said,
Speaker 1: you know, as details become more available, we'd like to
Speaker 1: be kept in contact with you, we'd like to get
Speaker 1: the extra details, etcetera. And then we open the order
Speaker 1: bank up on made the nineteenth and that was when
Speaker 1: we sold out the first model. Yeah, okay, I don't
Speaker 1: work for a global car manufacturer. I don't work for
Speaker 1: a global car brand, so I could be wrong here,
Speaker 1: but it does seem like you guys are leaving money
Speaker 1: on the table here with this type of interest that
Speaker 1: it's sold out within four hours, one version selling out
Speaker 1: within ten minutes. You can't get it until I mean,
Speaker 1: what went wrong in the planning of of figuring out
Speaker 1: how much people would want this thing? So a couple
Speaker 1: of comments really. Firstly, just it'll be twenty three model
Speaker 1: year that is sold out at the moment, so the
Speaker 1: twenty four model year will actually start during quarter one
Speaker 1: of next year. That's a great that's a great clarification,
Speaker 1: thank you. So you will be able to get a
Speaker 1: vehicle probably sometime in quarter two of next year. So
Speaker 1: it's about a year, you know, yeah, exactly, So you
Speaker 1: know that sort of puts in balance a little bit
Speaker 1: in terms of the pricing. Obviously, we do look at
Speaker 1: price in good terms of the debut edition, we wanted
Speaker 1: to go out there with our best foot forward. We
Speaker 1: put a very attractive special price out there, just under
Speaker 1: sixty thou and in terms of the vehicles that are
Speaker 1: on sale now, it's just under sixty three thousand for
Speaker 1: the real world drive and sixty for the Oil Drive.
Speaker 1: So as always we will look at the competitive set
Speaker 1: that we wanted to really get a grip in the market.
Speaker 1: We think that we've got a superb product and we
Speaker 1: want to get as many customers enjoying that products as possible.
Speaker 1: Do you anticipate having to delay that delivery target at
Speaker 1: this point? Not really. Um, you know, it's one of
Speaker 1: those ones. I hesitate a little bit because there is
Speaker 1: still uncertainty out there in terms of supply chain. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I just heard some of the show talking
Speaker 1: about COVID. You know, there are still challenges in terms
Speaker 1: of semi conductors. I would say that the industry is
Speaker 1: stabilizing overall from some of the speed bumps that have
Speaker 1: come up in the last couple of years. But at
Speaker 1: the moment, we've got a high degree of confidence. The
Speaker 1: next big test for us is August, where we really
Speaker 1: ramp up the production capacity of the lyric. But at
Speaker 1: the moment, I would say that we're confident in our
Speaker 1: ability to be able to deliver in line with the
Speaker 1: estimates that we've given to customers. How do you ramp
Speaker 1: up production when supply chains are just snarled around the world.
Speaker 1: It's not just components that are going into these things,
Speaker 1: it's the raw materials that are going into batteries. Give
Speaker 1: me an idea rory our GM is handling that, and
Speaker 1: how Cadillac is handling that. Yes, so you know, we
Speaker 1: have a task force that's in place that meets multiple
Speaker 1: times and not just every week, but every day. You know,
Speaker 1: we go to different suppliers, We look at second tier suppliers,
Speaker 1: we go direct to some of the second tier suppliers.
Speaker 1: We look at securing materials, securing components on a long
Speaker 1: term basis. You know, there's a whole stream of work
Speaker 1: that goes on in terms of doing that, And at
Speaker 1: the moment, I would say that we're in a much
Speaker 1: better position as a company that we were during the
Speaker 1: course of last year. Indeed, as most o EM's were
Speaker 1: during the course of last year. And I would say
Speaker 1: the first couple of months of this year have really
Speaker 1: started to stabilize. But there is still pent up demand
Speaker 1: from COVID, from semi conductors, et cetera. So at the moment,
Speaker 1: there's still more demand that there is supplier product, which
Speaker 1: means that there's strong prices in the marketplace and relatively
Speaker 1: low incentives from manufacturers. What rory is the biggest bottleneck here?
Speaker 1: If you were to say there's there's one component or
Speaker 1: one raw material that's just giving you the most trouble,
Speaker 1: what is it? Yeah, I'm not sure that there is.
Speaker 1: I think you know. The thing that that we've got
Speaker 1: is we've got your demand that is just absolutely massive,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're really positive and really pleased in
Speaker 1: terms of that. So you know, we're just looking now
Speaker 1: continuously as to how we can pull the leavers to
Speaker 1: be able to execute increased manufacturing capabilities and supply chain
Speaker 1: capabilities to be able to meet that demork. Well, let
Speaker 1: me let me ask the question a different way. If
Speaker 1: there's one lever you could magically with a magic wand
Speaker 1: to Paul right now, which one would it be? It
Speaker 1: would probably be supply chain in terms of it. But
Speaker 1: it's a difficult one to say because you know, we've
Speaker 1: certainly got the ability to be able to deliver versus
Speaker 1: our business plan, and indeed we're increasing our supply over
Speaker 1: and above our business plans. So from that point of view,
Speaker 1: I would say it's still positive. But you know, there
Speaker 1: are there are you know, we could always build more
Speaker 1: and we could always sell more. Rory, I would love
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts on the competition because when you
Speaker 1: think ev most people in the US would think Tesla,
Speaker 1: And if you think about the target there, how do
Speaker 1: you surpass Tesla? Yeah, it's a it's a great question,
Speaker 1: you know, and lots of people ask the question in
Speaker 1: terms of Tesla. I guess from my perspective, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just really focused in terms of what we can
Speaker 1: do as Cadillac. You know, we've got some distinct advice
Speaker 1: intages I believe. You know, we've got a dealer network
Speaker 1: out there that can provide after sales coverage, that can
Speaker 1: provide support in the aftermarket. We've got a great coverage
Speaker 1: of dealers. Indeed, if you look at GM overall, I
Speaker 1: think that customers can get to a dealer within ten minutes.
Speaker 1: So we think that with our product knowledge, with our history,
Speaker 1: with our pedigree, with our customer care ethos, with our
Speaker 1: footprint of distribution, that we can have a competitive advantage there. Rory,
Speaker 1: does it concern you at all if a customers on
Speaker 1: a waiting list for any v that they're going to say,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not I'm not willing to wait a
Speaker 1: year for this. I want something sooner. I need something sooner,
Speaker 1: and they go to a competitor. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a good question. You know, we haven't seen that in
Speaker 1: terms of the debut edition as an example, in terms
Speaker 1: of people saying that you know that the time is
Speaker 1: too long to wait. Indeed, if you looked at many
Speaker 1: O E ms at the moment as an example, if
Speaker 1: a customer orders a high demand vehicle, there's going to
Speaker 1: be an extended lead time for customers to be able
Speaker 1: to get that vehicle. So, yes, it does concern me,
Speaker 1: but at the moment, I don't see it fundamentally as
Speaker 1: a big issue. Rory, give us an idea of what
Speaker 1: you're doing, what Cadillac is doing, what GM is doing
Speaker 1: behind the scenes right now in order to have that
Speaker 1: portfolio of Cadillac vehicles be all electric by yeah, So
Speaker 1: you know, if you looked at it, we've now launched
Speaker 1: our last ice vehicle. Literally, if you go back a
Speaker 1: few weeks now, we announced the Cadillac Escalade V. I
Speaker 1: guess it was a derivative within the Escalade family. But
Speaker 1: from this point forward, every vehicle that we will launch
Speaker 1: will be an ev We literally teased Celestic, which will
Speaker 1: be an ultra luxury vehicle as an example. So we
Speaker 1: put a few schematics of that vehicle out there in
Speaker 1: the marketplace that we're looking forward to break in some
Speaker 1: news on that in the sort of July September time scale.
Speaker 1: So everything really is focused on EVS from a Cadillac
Speaker 1: perspective now and into the future. Our thanks to Rory Harvey,
Speaker 1: he's global vice president of Cadillac. Bloomberg Skinny Gradveld once
Speaker 1: again taking part in that interview. Still ahead on Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week, Why Genetics Company twenty three and me looked
Speaker 1: into long COVID and what women in particular need to
Speaker 1: know about its effect. CEO and Wijetski is up next.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg broadcasting from the financial capital of the world,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Eleve in Frio in New York to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one to San Francisco,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg nine to the country, Sirius XM Chamber one nine
Speaker 1: and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio
Speaker 1: dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinnovan on Bloomberg Radio, our
Speaker 1: next guest in her company were featured in a Business
Speaker 1: Week cover story back in November. It was all about
Speaker 1: how twenty three and Me wants to use customers genetic
Speaker 1: data to help fight cancer. Now, the firm best known
Speaker 1: for at home DNA test is taking on long COVID
Speaker 1: as well. Carol and I caught up with co founder
Speaker 1: and CEO and Wajitski, and we began by asking the
Speaker 1: one time hedge fund analyst about the company's share price
Speaker 1: down roughly year to date. Coming from the Wall Street
Speaker 1: world and now being the CEO of a public re
Speaker 1: traded company, it is, you know, it's it's interesting that
Speaker 1: you know twenty three continues to execute um I'm incredibly
Speaker 1: proud of the team. We continue to move programs through
Speaker 1: the pipeline UM, you know, make drug discovery, UM, continue
Speaker 1: to engage our customers on you know, genomic medicine and
Speaker 1: where we can go with that. We recently acquired a
Speaker 1: company called Lemonade, so it gives us the ability to
Speaker 1: offer care to our customers both through pharmacy as well
Speaker 1: as to access to care providers. So the company has
Speaker 1: just continued to execute. But obviously market conditions are are challenging.
Speaker 1: So we're very mindful of the fact that market conditions
Speaker 1: have changed and the future is more uncertain. So we
Speaker 1: take all that into consideration now and we want to
Speaker 1: talk too more about what you're doing because I feel
Speaker 1: like we just came back from a conference. It was
Speaker 1: all about the financial world. I was involved in a
Speaker 1: panel that specifically about what the future of money is,
Speaker 1: reimagining it, and I think when it comes to things
Speaker 1: like financial services and certainly health care, it does feel
Speaker 1: like we're on the cusp of doing things so different,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to treatment modalities. Having said that,
Speaker 1: I just want to go back to the market environment
Speaker 1: because we're asking all of our leaders this. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you do have a stock that is down more
Speaker 1: than six I mean, what kind of pressure does that
Speaker 1: put on you and your team who are working on
Speaker 1: things that are going to take some time. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I was investing back in sort of when the market
Speaker 1: crash back in two thousand um, you know, two thousand
Speaker 1: one UM, and it took a long time to recover.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's the way we approach this
Speaker 1: is really about making sure that we're doing things that
Speaker 1: are going to you know, see value within near term
Speaker 1: and probably have to you know, minimize some of the
Speaker 1: projects that are going to focus on some of the
Speaker 1: longer term initiatives, but really focus on priorities, and you know,
Speaker 1: also making sure that you're using cash and the wisest way,
Speaker 1: so all kinds of things that we start to you know, reevaluate.
Speaker 1: But it's really about making sure that you we you know,
Speaker 1: we have a very strong cash balancie right now and
Speaker 1: making sure that we you know, extend that runway as
Speaker 1: long as possible, and making sure that all the programs
Speaker 1: that we're focused on are really essential. And I want
Speaker 1: to get to the research that you've recently found it
Speaker 1: twenty three and me some really interesting stuff when it
Speaker 1: comes to long COVID, and I think, you know, we're
Speaker 1: at the point in their pandemic where Caroline I travel
Speaker 1: At some points, I felt like I was the only
Speaker 1: one wearing a mask on some of those flights in
Speaker 1: the airport and even at this conference that we were at.
Speaker 1: But long COVID did have my mask gone back, you did,
Speaker 1: Carol did too, Yeah, but but but we were it
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that was it. But I do want
Speaker 1: to know and what you found when it comes to
Speaker 1: long COVID, because that's something that I think about a
Speaker 1: lot and one of the reasons why I don't want
Speaker 1: to get COVID. Yeah. So there's a couple of things
Speaker 1: that are really interesting thing for me about this. So
Speaker 1: first and foremost, you know, the way part of what
Speaker 1: we conceptualized when we started twenty three and me, and
Speaker 1: it goes back to some of your earlier questions, was
Speaker 1: really a whole new way of doing research, Like how
Speaker 1: is it that you can have millions and millions of
Speaker 1: people engaged on a single platform with phenotypic data, with
Speaker 1: the genetic and formation and be able to go back
Speaker 1: to them very quickly, easily ask more questions and make
Speaker 1: insights and so this long COVID research that we've done
Speaker 1: is really a good example of how the twenty three
Speaker 1: model works, that we could put out a survey to
Speaker 1: our customers, collect a lot of information and make really
Speaker 1: interesting and meaningful findings. So one of the things a
Speaker 1: couple of things here that are are interesting, and again
Speaker 1: being female, it's obviously top of my mind. Over seventy
Speaker 1: eight percent of those diagnosed with long COVID were women,
Speaker 1: clearly disproportionately impacting women. People with depression diagnosed depression and
Speaker 1: anxiety are more than twice as likely to have it,
Speaker 1: so twice increasing their risk um. Half of those people are,
Speaker 1: you know, having persistent symptoms for over six months, and
Speaker 1: about ten percent or having it for over a year,
Speaker 1: so it's you know, all this data comes from about
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand customers who reported that they had COVID,
Speaker 1: over twenty six thousand that said that they had long COVID,
Speaker 1: So we have a lot of data here and it's
Speaker 1: definitely concerning that it's again impact so many women. Anxiety
Speaker 1: being a risk factor is obviously quite interesting to to
Speaker 1: follow up further on, and the fact that it's supersistent,
Speaker 1: so similar to you and what you just said. I
Speaker 1: was recently at Lego Land and nobody was wearing a
Speaker 1: mask but me, and I am I'm sticking to my mask. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd wear this duck mask ground and and all our listeners.
Speaker 1: And this guy at the airport was like, what is
Speaker 1: that mask? And I had to explain, this thing is
Speaker 1: actually pretty comfortable. It's five. I love it. I love it. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's just it's just clear that there's you know,
Speaker 1: I there's clear like long term impacts here and so
Speaker 1: understanding it. There's a lot more to be followed up
Speaker 1: on with respect to long COVID. That was in Wijetski,
Speaker 1: the co founder and CEO of twenty three in me.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up next, financial
Speaker 1: services are set to enter a new era. We'll head
Speaker 1: to the Lone Star State to discuss the next big
Speaker 1: fintech breakthrough at the b n Y Melon Pershing Insight Conference.
Speaker 1: B n Y Melon Chief Information Officer Rob Nagapon joins us.
Speaker 1: On the other side, This is Bloomberg. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes.
Speaker 1: Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Earlier this month, Carol and
Speaker 1: I traveled to Grapevine, Texas to attend the b n
Speaker 1: Y Melon Pershing Insight Conference. Those in attendance were of
Speaker 1: course talking markets and the outlook on the heels of
Speaker 1: the federal reserves first seventy five basis point rate hike
Speaker 1: since also on the agenda technology and to help us
Speaker 1: understand the massive impact it's having on the financial services business.
Speaker 1: We spoke with Rob Nagapon. He's chief information officer at
Speaker 1: b n Y Melon Pershing, and here he explains why
Speaker 1: the advisory industry is going Digital technology drives everyone up
Speaker 1: our business. It used to be thought like the business
Speaker 1: is actually using the technology, but I wanted to say
Speaker 1: being at that the technology actually drives the business. As
Speaker 1: you could say, and you said, all these folks here,
Speaker 1: they're all showcasing technology even though there's a business behind it.
Speaker 1: That's the one that drives them. And we're excited and
Speaker 1: being be and my Melon Pershing, we are also showcasing
Speaker 1: a lot of advancements in what we're doing with technology. So, well,
Speaker 1: what's the continued digital disruption impact on the advisory world. Well,
Speaker 1: the pandemic actually accelerated the adoption of digital, but I
Speaker 1: think there's more room for that. There's more digital adoption
Speaker 1: needs to happen in the advisory space because there is
Speaker 1: an expectation from the investor that it's a seven by
Speaker 1: twenty four any time any place. I want to be
Speaker 1: in touch with the advisor and get the service. That
Speaker 1: was not the case maybe three years ago, but now
Speaker 1: the expectation is like that because every other businesses has changed.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a contact less everything. I mean, you
Speaker 1: walk through this island, this thing is like scan the
Speaker 1: QR code. Ye, same thing. I'm going to embarrass that
Speaker 1: I paper here because it feels so Yesterday Sweeney hosted
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Markets had no paper. The paper people. It's a
Speaker 1: digital transformation for Bloomberg Radio. It is. Well, I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how this trickles down to the client experience. Experience is
Speaker 1: the king right now, It's the play. You know, everything
Speaker 1: we do, it's all about experiences. People love that experiences
Speaker 1: that they get and they want to do business with you.
Speaker 1: So even though the term experience is very broad, it's
Speaker 1: all about applying technology to give that experience the right
Speaker 1: experience that they really want to use and come back
Speaker 1: again and again. One thing I think about, and I
Speaker 1: asked this of my crypto panel, that it wasn't a
Speaker 1: crypto panel, was about how do you reimagine money? The
Speaker 1: crypto was a big part of it, but we talked
Speaker 1: so much about crypto and understandably sad and I felt
Speaker 1: like I get it now a little bit more. But
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you think about in your world
Speaker 1: that you know you need to be saying to people,
Speaker 1: Okay in five years, ten years. I mean, this may
Speaker 1: not be a thing now, but it will be down
Speaker 1: the road. I always think about the uberization of the world.
Speaker 1: I think it applies to so much, meaning digital currency,
Speaker 1: using payments real time. So the cash and the checks
Speaker 1: is not going to be used. If you really look
Speaker 1: at the payment, that US payment is a little bit backward.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say that, but I'm saying it
Speaker 1: compared to the rest of the world, they have gone
Speaker 1: into instant payments and everything. So what I think is
Speaker 1: in that space that you've mentioned about the cash and
Speaker 1: the digital currency in the crypto, I'm saying everything is
Speaker 1: going to be digital in the future. How do I
Speaker 1: pay you? It's going to be digital? It's just cannot
Speaker 1: be that the peer to peer is cannot be done.
Speaker 1: You know, I know there are when moos and zels
Speaker 1: and other things are there, but it's going to be
Speaker 1: even more prominent in terms of the payment that's going
Speaker 1: to happen. I'd like to ask people like you when
Speaker 1: I have the chance, because they're thinking about technology day in,
Speaker 1: day out, probably when you're sleeper thinking about it too,
Speaker 1: what things look like five years I think that was
Speaker 1: a no. Well, when I sleep, I got to sleep.
Speaker 1: I mean hopefully hopefully you're not having nightmares. Okay, but
Speaker 1: I wonder you you know, let's say we're sitting here
Speaker 1: five years from now at Insight, what's the technology that's
Speaker 1: going to be showcased. Well, certainly there's a there's a
Speaker 1: things that's going on with metavers. We're going to be
Speaker 1: in the metaverse. Yes, it's possible that could happen, but
Speaker 1: I think people are trying to figure this out. What
Speaker 1: is the exact use case, and especially in the world
Speaker 1: and finance, how it's going to play. We're actually showing
Speaker 1: something as well, um in one of our boots on
Speaker 1: the metaverse Web three oh is going to be implemented.
Speaker 1: Is like you own the data. You want to own
Speaker 1: and control who you give it to and how that
Speaker 1: has been used. What does that mean wrong? Owning your
Speaker 1: own data in the financial space, I get what it means.
Speaker 1: Maybe in the retail space it needs to maybe a
Speaker 1: social media identity. That makes sense? Yeah, so what right? Exactly?
Speaker 1: So let me let me give you an example. Let's
Speaker 1: say you go to a doctor's and you've got about
Speaker 1: fifty seconds. Yeah, you go to a doctor's office. What
Speaker 1: they give They give you a form and a pale
Speaker 1: and ask you to sit there and fill up a phone.
Speaker 1: Why you want to do that? That's your data. You
Speaker 1: wanted to have that data in your wallet. You wanted
Speaker 1: to go to the doctor's office and it's click a
Speaker 1: button and the data goes there. I don't want to
Speaker 1: fill up the phone. That is your data, and you
Speaker 1: don't want the doctor office to use it for some
Speaker 1: of the purposes besides just serving you. Similarly, in the
Speaker 1: finance data is yours. You control the data and why
Speaker 1: they use it, where they use it, and you want
Speaker 1: to track how they're using it. Okay, how soon do
Speaker 1: we get there? It's it's it's happening, it's working. People
Speaker 1: are working it in in parts probably you know, I
Speaker 1: would say a couple of years before everything else good moves,
Speaker 1: maybe even more. It's a complicated topic, um, but people
Speaker 1: are actively working on it. That was Rob Nagapon, the
Speaker 1: chief information officer at b and Y Melon Pershing. Now.
Speaker 1: During our broadcast from Insight, we also spoke with Ainsley Simmons.
Speaker 1: She's the president of Pershing Acts. It's the unit that's
Speaker 1: dedicated to fintech development within BNY Melon, and here she
Speaker 1: breaks down what her team is doing to provide clients
Speaker 1: with wealth solutions. May for the digital age. We're building
Speaker 1: what's called an advisory platform, which is all the tools
Speaker 1: and advisor needs to provide a client advice about you know,
Speaker 1: their financial plan, their portfolio, taxes, you know, anything that
Speaker 1: really will help and an investor make good decisions. What
Speaker 1: specifically were you hearing from investors from your customers that
Speaker 1: made you say we need to develop this thing internally,
Speaker 1: we need to build it. And what feedback did they
Speaker 1: give you about how to design it? Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: really interesting statistic in the market is advisors spend their
Speaker 1: time with clients and behind the computer pushing buttons. It
Speaker 1: sounds like doctors. No, and that's insane, right, and it
Speaker 1: is today's day and age. Why do financial advisors have
Speaker 1: to be spending so much time tethered to their desk?
Speaker 1: And so our clients were like, do you have a
Speaker 1: way to help make us more efficient? And the truth
Speaker 1: of the matter is there is no way today. So
Speaker 1: we decided to set up this division and build this
Speaker 1: product with our clients guiding us by the way and
Speaker 1: helping us prioritize what should come first in their core
Speaker 1: five with the sole purpose of saving them time so
Speaker 1: they can help more people. You know what that means,
Speaker 1: they'll grow their business. So let's top of mind in
Speaker 1: terms of how you prioritize what you need to have
Speaker 1: on this platform resolutely. So the platform itself is going
Speaker 1: to be innovation, right. Never before have you been able
Speaker 1: to connect this application to that application to that application,
Speaker 1: kind of think like g suite, you know Google Suite, right,
Speaker 1: where each product could be itself. But like good things
Speaker 1: happen if you start to use more than one product.
Speaker 1: So the platform itself is our first priority. It's really complicated,
Speaker 1: it's really hard, but that's where we're starting. And then
Speaker 1: we'll put applications on it that advisors need. They're not
Speaker 1: all going to be there to start, and we've been
Speaker 1: really clear about that. How are you thinking about this
Speaker 1: from a hardware perspective? It's cloud based, so does that
Speaker 1: mean that equally people are able to access it equally?
Speaker 1: And you know, to the fullest extent, whether they're on
Speaker 1: a PC, whether they're on a mache. Most advisors are
Speaker 1: a pcn tablet, right, they don't go they're not usually
Speaker 1: working with clients on a phone. Right. So as long
Speaker 1: as we're doing what's called responsive design, and it will
Speaker 1: be able to fit to any device type, we should
Speaker 1: be fine. I think really importantly, it has to be secure.
Speaker 1: It has to be safe. So that's where the Bank
Speaker 1: New York Melon comes in. What about working from home? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can tell that. Because this is going to be
Speaker 1: web based, you can do it from anywhere. It's it's
Speaker 1: that I said before you sat down. I we loved
Speaker 1: reading about your background. You worked in beer, you worked
Speaker 1: its soup soup, and then fintech right right, and you
Speaker 1: have your own startup. So how do you think about though,
Speaker 1: like the end consumer right what they need? And I
Speaker 1: can't tell you. The people I talked to like love technology,
Speaker 1: but mana drives me crazy. It complicates things about it.
Speaker 1: And if you think about your money, you're probably logging
Speaker 1: into your bank somewhere advisors what site? You know, maybe
Speaker 1: you're are here for a one case somewhere else. And
Speaker 1: one thing we're really trying to do with this effort
Speaker 1: is create one end investor site that our clients could offer.
Speaker 1: And you know, that was really interesting. In our second
Speaker 1: advisory board meeting, they said, this thing's got to have
Speaker 1: an end investor site because what we have today sucks.
Speaker 1: So and they were they literally said that. So I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, if that's what you want, that's
Speaker 1: what you get. So we're going to build that. Well
Speaker 1: how quickly? Yeah, so fast is the way of the world,
Speaker 1: right So, but this is a very hard built So
Speaker 1: we're going to put a private beta out towards the
Speaker 1: end of year early next year, get some people on
Speaker 1: it giving us feedback. Then we'll start adding apps and
Speaker 1: and releasing after that. So that's what we're like laser
Speaker 1: focused on. I've been dying to ask you because you're
Speaker 1: in the fintech space, and the fintech is so hot
Speaker 1: right now, especially getting so much investment from venture capitalists.
Speaker 1: When you look out across the landscape right now, what
Speaker 1: what is promising fintech that you see? Because I always
Speaker 1: think back to what somebody said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: the most innovative fintech we've seen is the A T M. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably true. You know. I think what's really happening
Speaker 1: in payments right now is going to sort of speed money,
Speaker 1: and that's cool. And you know, we heard this morning
Speaker 1: a ton about crypto and digital assets and and that's
Speaker 1: also cool. Um. You know, I personally think that there
Speaker 1: will be a lot of consolidation. They can't keep going
Speaker 1: making these microw fintech apps. We're gonna have to start
Speaker 1: building building bigger experiences. And I actually think pershing X
Speaker 1: is sort of at the cutting edge of that, right
Speaker 1: because we can't just keep making things smaller and smaller
Speaker 1: and expecting consumers to log into all these places, right
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense. It's like, okay, maybe not apples
Speaker 1: to apples, but I think about streaming now, like it's
Speaker 1: all become just multiple apps and it's just too much
Speaker 1: stuff all over. There's too much stuff, and you're starting
Speaker 1: to see the innovation. I turned my TV on the
Speaker 1: other day, and i'd start, You're they're starting to aggregate
Speaker 1: all of that into these more enterprise like collective views,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what we're trying to do here. That
Speaker 1: was Ainsley Simmons. She's the president of Pershing X Well.
Speaker 1: That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Tim Stanninbeck.
Speaker 1: Carol Master is out this week ahead. In our next hour,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Contour Brands breaks down his strategy for
Speaker 1: avoiding supply chain snarls and why the NBA is eyeing
Speaker 1: Africa as its next major market for both fans and
Speaker 1: on court talent. End Up next, more from b n
Speaker 1: Y mel Inshing Insight two. We're going to hear from
Speaker 1: the CEO and CEO in just a moment. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news as it happened. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Cairol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovik on Bloomberg Radio. Lots to come in our second
Speaker 1: hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including
Speaker 1: a conversation with Contour Brand CEO Scott Baxter on avoiding
Speaker 1: supply chain trouble and the health of the American consumer,
Speaker 1: Plus why the NBA is looking to Africa for growth
Speaker 1: in its fan base and its talent pipeline, and entrepreneurial
Speaker 1: insights for the underrepresented from the CEO of Genius Guild.
Speaker 1: First up this hour, two executives who are excited to
Speaker 1: get back into the office B and Y Melon Perishing
Speaker 1: CEO Jim Crowley and Chief operating Officer Emily Losser. They
Speaker 1: joined our broadcast from b n YML and Pershing Insight.
Speaker 1: You have certainly focused on future of work and how
Speaker 1: we can have a bit of a hybrid, but I
Speaker 1: think also just the focus on digital and so we're
Speaker 1: really focused on our interfaces, our experiences, bringing consumer grade
Speaker 1: technology to our investors, our advisors. So that's a lot
Speaker 1: of what we're featuring here at the conference. I know
Speaker 1: that being back comes with a host of challenges as well,
Speaker 1: as the world does open up and people start to
Speaker 1: travel more. We're in an inflationary environment right now, and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering from your perspective, how you're dealing with those
Speaker 1: challenges when you look across the macroeconomic landscape. What's top
Speaker 1: of mind for you? Yeah, what's up my mind? Tim,
Speaker 1: Thanks for the question of a couple of things. One UM,
Speaker 1: I've been on the road, like I think many other
Speaker 1: executives for the less several months, visiting offices um to
Speaker 1: encourage people to come back into the office. First of all,
Speaker 1: I think we're in this new environment. Are they coming
Speaker 1: back and they are coming back slowly okay. And the
Speaker 1: way that I think about it, Timm and Carroll is
Speaker 1: I think the value proposition for an employee to want
Speaker 1: to come back to the office has to be greater
Speaker 1: than the value that they feel and believe from working
Speaker 1: from home. And that is the magic that we have
Speaker 1: to create. We have to be able to demonstrate that
Speaker 1: there's real value to have a fractional interaction and to
Speaker 1: feel the culture and to no one understand what it's
Speaker 1: like to to learn and understand what we all can
Speaker 1: do as as a company together. So I do think
Speaker 1: we're better together than being a far apart. One thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you, and I was from a
Speaker 1: far watching you interview the former CEO of PepsiCo Indra
Speaker 1: Nui who I've talked to it. She's pretty incredible and
Speaker 1: she's now helping other companies. Right when it comes to leadership,
Speaker 1: leadership has been tested in a big way in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. It's going to continue to be
Speaker 1: tested as we moved to a new normal. Um, tell
Speaker 1: us a bit about the conversation and which up to
Speaker 1: out in terms of her advice. Maybe, yeah, um, so
Speaker 1: many great nuggets. One of the things that she talks
Speaker 1: about is the future of work and the importance of flexibilities.
Speaker 1: So while I agree with Jim being back together feel
Speaker 1: so good and it's a really important part of developing
Speaker 1: the fabric of our organizations, there is also a critical
Speaker 1: notion of allowing for flexibility, allowing for the families of
Speaker 1: our employees to really be more front and center in
Speaker 1: terms of how we think about the future of work,
Speaker 1: so that people can kind of lean into their careers
Speaker 1: while not pushing having to push their families aside, and
Speaker 1: not having to make so many of those hard choices.
Speaker 1: You know what I love about that? Yeah? I want
Speaker 1: to I just want to jump in because I Emily,
Speaker 1: I love I love that I've actually used some, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially especially this week. And you know what's great is
Speaker 1: I'm gonna you know, a lot of my friends have
Speaker 1: young kids, and it's the end of the year. They're
Speaker 1: going and catching end of the year school plays and
Speaker 1: end of the year graduations right now, and there seems
Speaker 1: to be this new acceptance in the professional world that
Speaker 1: these types of things are are okay to do as
Speaker 1: long as you do you get your work done. And Emily,
Speaker 1: I wasn't seeing this, you know, before the pandemic. Does
Speaker 1: this shift permanent? I hope it is. I hope it is,
Speaker 1: and I think it will be. I think it has
Speaker 1: to be. Um. Certainly, as we've seen the labor market titan,
Speaker 1: it is incumbent on employers to make sure that we
Speaker 1: are really providing the experiences for the people who work
Speaker 1: for us that want they make them want to stay
Speaker 1: in the workforce. Um, So I think it has to be.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that Indra has observed
Speaker 1: in her time having been retired post pandemic is she's
Speaker 1: you know, driving around and seeing at three o'clock all
Speaker 1: these parents meeting their kids off the bus and they're
Speaker 1: just taking ten minutes out of their day working from
Speaker 1: home to go greet their kids as they come home
Speaker 1: from school. And what a special moment that previously no
Speaker 1: one in the professional world really had. It almost wasn't acceptable.
Speaker 1: It wasn't It wasn't acceptable, especially for women, especially for women. Sorry,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Now it's an uraged yeah, and not what
Speaker 1: is encouraged. And now everyone is understanding of what that means,
Speaker 1: what this new hybrid work environment means. Well, this is important.
Speaker 1: Is I think about all of the folks here who
Speaker 1: are thinking about their staffing for the future, right and
Speaker 1: what they need to be thinking about. And I'm assuming
Speaker 1: that this is why they're trying to figure out. Do
Speaker 1: I need to continue to have to offer this flexibility
Speaker 1: going forward to attract that new breed, younger generation of
Speaker 1: finance professionals. Absolutely, yeah, you absolutely have to. In fact,
Speaker 1: I talked about it on the main stage earlier today,
Speaker 1: the idea of what we need to do to keep
Speaker 1: great talent, what we need to do to coach great talent,
Speaker 1: what we need to do attract great talent. And at
Speaker 1: that point, exactly, we're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: attract great talent to our organization or to any work
Speaker 1: team unless we have that flexibility built in. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, we spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: listening to our employees and really listening to what's important
Speaker 1: to them. And these are the things that really make
Speaker 1: a huge moment. I mean it's ten minutes and it
Speaker 1: really changes the day. You know, they always say about
Speaker 1: a conversations, those moments where you don't constantly think about
Speaker 1: what you're gonna ask next, but just let it breathe
Speaker 1: and listen, and listening is just so powerful. I do
Speaker 1: have to ask you, though, an extreme volatility that we've seen,
Speaker 1: are we being reminded in this environment? I'm here, I'm
Speaker 1: curious what you're hearing from everybody that you know rethinking
Speaker 1: that you know, volatility, A bit of it, a fair
Speaker 1: amount of it is normal, like in our environment. It
Speaker 1: is normal, but not what many of the people in
Speaker 1: our workforce today have ever experienced. All Right, So this
Speaker 1: hasn't been the case for the less tensh years, and
Speaker 1: now we haven't and it's I think really important that
Speaker 1: we have. Again, It's one of the reasons why being
Speaker 1: in the office sometimes you have the opportunity to bring
Speaker 1: young talent and experienced talent together to start of work
Speaker 1: through the challenges of volatility. It's a good reminder. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the third year in a row where we've
Speaker 1: had really outstanding moments where we've said, Wow, you know this,
Speaker 1: this volatility feels incredible, but then at that point it
Speaker 1: no longer is our Thanks to being why Melon Perishing,
Speaker 1: CEO Jim Crowley and CEO Emily Schloss joining us from
Speaker 1: INSIGHTO coming up. A US apparel maker is ready for
Speaker 1: more inflation, and it knows how to avoid supply chain pain.
Speaker 1: Contour Brands is the company behind Wrangler and Lee Jeans.
Speaker 1: The CEO Scott Baxter, stops by next, This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick takes Tim Stinovy from Bloomberg Radio. As Retailer's Way
Speaker 1: had a deal with soaring prices and inventory uncertainty, one
Speaker 1: US apparel maker looks to have a sound strategy in place.
Speaker 1: I recently sat down with Scott Baxter. He's the president
Speaker 1: and CEO of Contour Brands. They're the owner of Wrangler
Speaker 1: and Lee Jeans. It's the roughly one point billion dollar
Speaker 1: company that back in twenty nineteen was spun off from
Speaker 1: VF Corporation. We touched on supply chain concerns, inflation, the
Speaker 1: possibility of recession, and more. I started though, by getting
Speaker 1: his thoughts on the macro economic environment. You know, it's
Speaker 1: been a big pendulum swing, right, So the pandemic has
Speaker 1: been really interesting. We're seeing the echoes of that. All
Speaker 1: of the pent up demand that we had all came
Speaker 1: at one time. I think the thing that we're trying
Speaker 1: to think about is take a long term view. So
Speaker 1: we're thinking about the stability of the consumer over time
Speaker 1: as they go from you know, a really slow purchasing
Speaker 1: period the beginning of the pandemic, and then that big
Speaker 1: ramp up here this last year, and then all of
Speaker 1: the stuff that's happened to drive up prices, right, So
Speaker 1: all the folks that needed additional trucking, you know, all
Speaker 1: the transitory, all the shipping, the delays that the ports,
Speaker 1: all that kind of happened at one time. So now
Speaker 1: we're thinking that we're going to start moving into what
Speaker 1: we would call traditional buying patterns going forward. How much
Speaker 1: have your prices had to go up as a result
Speaker 1: of all of those things that you just mentioned. So
Speaker 1: we've had to do some select price increases, but we've
Speaker 1: been very strategic about it, you know, keeping the consumer
Speaker 1: in mind and doing everything that we can to run
Speaker 1: a really good business and make sure we keep our
Speaker 1: costs down too. So we've been very conscientious and very
Speaker 1: select and how we've done it. But give me an
Speaker 1: idea of percentagealize how much you have to raise prices
Speaker 1: or margins have been hit. Yeah, we haven't shared that externally,
Speaker 1: you know. So so we just finished our first quarter
Speaker 1: call and so we haven't We didn't talk about that
Speaker 1: on the call. So how should investors think about it?
Speaker 1: I think they should think about the fact that, you know,
Speaker 1: we run a really good business. We have a really
Speaker 1: sophisticated supply chain. One of the most important things that
Speaker 1: Contour brands for us as we own almost of our
Speaker 1: supply chain as an apparel company. We're one of the
Speaker 1: very few, if one of the only, that has a
Speaker 1: significant piece of their supply chain in North America. We
Speaker 1: have plants in Mexico and Hondoras. It allows us to control,
Speaker 1: you know, our supply chain. And if you think about
Speaker 1: that product, that product doesn't have to hit the ocean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to go on a freighter. And it
Speaker 1: also doesn't have to go to the ports. It just
Speaker 1: gets made in South South America and ship right across
Speaker 1: the border to US. To what extent has that put
Speaker 1: you at a competitive advantage against competitors who who do
Speaker 1: actually make these this stuff overseas? Yeah, we think significant
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons, not maybe just what everybody
Speaker 1: else thinks, but we think it's strategic in the fact that,
Speaker 1: you know, as consumer tastes change, we have a much
Speaker 1: shorter lead time, so we can make things much quicker.
Speaker 1: You know, when you go overseas and you source, there's
Speaker 1: a much longer tail. So as taste change, we can
Speaker 1: move quicker, we can get product in quicker, and we
Speaker 1: control our own destiny, so we control and we're the
Speaker 1: only one in our own factories, right, So as you
Speaker 1: go overseas, you know, and you work with different factory partners,
Speaker 1: they might have multiple other vendors in their factories. Well,
Speaker 1: in our factories, as you can imagine, rankleringly are the
Speaker 1: only customers, so they get all of the attention. Okay,
Speaker 1: speaking of consumer tastes, our consumers doing, you know, we
Speaker 1: think the consumer is doing pretty well. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a real shift to casual product as people come
Speaker 1: back to work. You know, we just came back to
Speaker 1: work about a month ago at our company, and people
Speaker 1: have either had to buy new clothes because they don't
Speaker 1: think their current clothes are fashionable enough, out of date.
Speaker 1: The last couple of years, they've exercised a ton and
Speaker 1: lost some weight, maybe they've actually gotten a little bit bigger.
Speaker 1: So there's multiple reasons that people have had to buy.
Speaker 1: But also it's become a casual trend. Right people are
Speaker 1: now coming back to the office and there were in denim,
Speaker 1: there were in casual pants. Uh, just a much different
Speaker 1: dress code and that plays well for us. What about
Speaker 1: the health of the consumer? You know, we think from
Speaker 1: the categories that we play, and so remember we're at
Speaker 1: a very nice price point, so you can buy a
Speaker 1: pair of our genes for and you can buy a
Speaker 1: pair of our genes for a We run up and
Speaker 1: down the value chain, so we think that you know,
Speaker 1: the higher end consumer is doing really well and we
Speaker 1: offer a really compelling value at that mid tier mass channel.
Speaker 1: Are you seeing any changes or any softness as you
Speaker 1: look at that spectrum from you, Yeah, we haven't. We
Speaker 1: haven't commented on that, you know here recently since the
Speaker 1: end of our call, but you know, right now, we
Speaker 1: think the consumer is still in pretty good shape. And
Speaker 1: do you expect the consumer to remain in good shape?
Speaker 1: We think as we come through this, we think the
Speaker 1: consumer is going to be in really good shape. We
Speaker 1: think there's an opportunity for people to go back to work.
Speaker 1: We think that there's plenty of opportunity for people to
Speaker 1: get back out there as stimulus ends. There's been a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about stimulus, right We think there's plenty
Speaker 1: of opportunity for employment as people come back off stimless
Speaker 1: and when they do, they'll be working. They're gonna need
Speaker 1: a peril, They're gonna need work clothes for that when
Speaker 1: they come out, So we think that could be a
Speaker 1: positive impact. We've heard a lot of executives and a
Speaker 1: lot of analysts to being concerned about a recession in
Speaker 1: this year. Some analysts are even saying we're in one
Speaker 1: right now, but some predicting we'll see where do you
Speaker 1: fall on this. I actually have probably a little bit
Speaker 1: more optimistic of a view. I think that if we do,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be short lived. I think
Speaker 1: there's real strengthen the consumer. I think there's um a
Speaker 1: resiliency about the American consumer and about the American spirit
Speaker 1: that we're going to see. I think we're going to
Speaker 1: come through this. I think it's a difficult time right now,
Speaker 1: but I can feel something happening, you know, with the
Speaker 1: American consumer and with America that we're going to get
Speaker 1: this back on track in a pretty positive way. Scott,
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in the conversations that you're having with
Speaker 1: your big customers. What are these large retailers saying to
Speaker 1: you right now? You know, we're a real big staple
Speaker 1: part of their business, so as you can imagine, apparel
Speaker 1: is extremely important to those folks. We've been partners with
Speaker 1: some of the names that you've mentioned for thirty to
Speaker 1: forty years, so we're an integral part of their apparel pad.
Speaker 1: So right now we're a really well thought of supplier.
Speaker 1: We have production for some of those folks in North America,
Speaker 1: which is really great from a just in time standpoint,
Speaker 1: so we can be very turn key for them. We're
Speaker 1: bringing new innovations to the product. We've introduced lead to
Speaker 1: the mass channel in a pretty significant way, which has
Speaker 1: been a really big win for all of us. So
Speaker 1: we think our relationships are in a really good place
Speaker 1: as we continue to innovate and introduce new categories. We've
Speaker 1: heard about a rising inventory, specifically from Target, and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you're starting to see that at your partners. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: they didn't talk about apparel, you know, in the in
Speaker 1: the rising inventory, and and you know we we haven't
Speaker 1: spoken about that either. But as we mentioned on our
Speaker 1: first quarter call, our inventories that we talked about in
Speaker 1: our first quarter call, we're in good shape and looking
Speaker 1: like they're going to continue beat to be in good shape. Well,
Speaker 1: we haven't commented on that, but we will here in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. Okay, I gotta try. Yeah, no problem,
Speaker 1: I want to. And by just thinking about where you
Speaker 1: see the company going in terms of innovation in the
Speaker 1: next couple of years, what are you thinking about in
Speaker 1: terms of innovation when it comes not just to style,
Speaker 1: to brand, to marketing, but also to supply chain and
Speaker 1: figuring out a way to make sure that you are
Speaker 1: immune to future challenges here. Well, I think that UM
Speaker 1: product is always going to be the thing that you
Speaker 1: have to drive everything with when I've seen companies go
Speaker 1: off track. It's because they've gotten interested in a big
Speaker 1: acquisition that's not core, or they've done something where they've
Speaker 1: just kind of moved away from their product. If we
Speaker 1: stay focused on our products, stay focused on innovating, stay
Speaker 1: focused on our core, we have a big core business.
Speaker 1: We're going to be just fine. And that's where we
Speaker 1: spend an incredible amount of our time. Product storytelling channel,
Speaker 1: in geography extensions, we introduced an outdoor line called Altering Gear,
Speaker 1: our work line. We just introduced a big T shirt
Speaker 1: program for both of our brands, and we just brought
Speaker 1: Wrangler to China. So as you think about those things
Speaker 1: that are core to our strategy, if we continue to
Speaker 1: do those things, we're going to be in a really
Speaker 1: enviable place going forward. That was Scott Baxter, the president
Speaker 1: and CEO of Contour Brands, which owns Wrangler and Lee Jeans.
Speaker 1: Still to come on Bloomberg Business Week. The NBA has
Speaker 1: a plan for expanding its fan base and finding its
Speaker 1: next generation of star players in a fast growing overseas market.
Speaker 1: The details straight ahead. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the
Speaker 1: financial capital of the world. Bloomberg eleven Trio in New
Speaker 1: York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one
Speaker 1: oh six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine to the
Speaker 1: Country Sirius XM Chamber, and around the globe the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovan
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. The NBA is spending big bucks to
Speaker 1: expand its reach overseas, and the league is now turning
Speaker 1: to a as its next major market, one that will
Speaker 1: both watch the sport and provide a pipeline of future
Speaker 1: star players into the US. Bloomberg News reporter Kim Bassen
Speaker 1: writes about the new Basketball Africa League in this week's issue.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News West Coast correspondent Ed Ludlow and I spoke
Speaker 1: with Kim and Business Week editor Joel Webber about the initiative.
Speaker 1: A while ago, the NBA put a huge, uh sort
Speaker 1: of priority on China and developing cultivating talent there. That
Speaker 1: culminated with with Yao and sort of created this moment
Speaker 1: where basketball got big there. But that's gotten a little rocky,
Speaker 1: which we can talk about but right now, the NBA
Speaker 1: sees Africa as its future. There's a new league that
Speaker 1: the NBA has helped set up there. This is a
Speaker 1: talent pipeline that we're going to see. There's already kind
Speaker 1: of the storied history there, but the relationship in the
Speaker 1: sort of the pipeline wasn't quite as developed as I
Speaker 1: think it's about to become. And what Kim found here
Speaker 1: was that the NBA is all in on this. They
Speaker 1: like what it looks like. It's already has a version
Speaker 1: of success and it's only gonna get so Kim um
Speaker 1: walk us through this because there's some noteworthy investors that
Speaker 1: are also involved. This isn't just the NBA doing this
Speaker 1: on its own. Yeah, it's called the Basketball Africa Leagues.
Speaker 1: It's twelve teams from twelve countries. This year they played
Speaker 1: games in three different places, one in Dakar, Senegal, one
Speaker 1: set in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Kegali, Rwanda. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now there's a there's a bunch of backing here. We
Speaker 1: have the Kembe Matombo, all these former players, Lull Deng,
Speaker 1: Grant Hill, Junior Bridgeman, Jokim Noah and the biggest one
Speaker 1: is former United States President Barack Obama there it is.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that he was an investor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a minority owner in the NBA Africa, which is
Speaker 1: the NBA's overall operations on the continent. Can let me
Speaker 1: jump in here and say this is surprising, Like I
Speaker 1: read your story and I thought, wow, this is a
Speaker 1: recent initiative. Why is this not happened in the past.
Speaker 1: There have been African idols in the game, right, think
Speaker 1: about Hakim or the Juee in the eighties. Why is
Speaker 1: this just now gaining momentum, this initiative. Yeah, the NBA
Speaker 1: opened its first office in Africa in Johannesburg back in
Speaker 1: twenty ten, and that was that was a long time coming.
Speaker 1: When you go back historically, this really started. It had
Speaker 1: its roots in the in the seventies when the U.
Speaker 1: S Department of States sent over a couple of Bucks players,
Speaker 1: Koreem Abdul Jabbar and Oscar Robertson to be like American
Speaker 1: cultural diplomats in Africa. And then in the eighties, two
Speaker 1: huge stars came out of Africa. It was Hakim La
Speaker 1: Juan and the Kemba Matumbo, And it was fascinating to me,
Speaker 1: how not seriously, these these people were taken. Like when
Speaker 1: Hakim came over on an invite from the University of Houston,
Speaker 1: they didn't send a car to pick him up at
Speaker 1: the airport. They were just like, yeah, just get just
Speaker 1: get over here, we'll see like someone recommended you. Like
Speaker 1: and then he got out of the car. He's seven
Speaker 1: ft one and they said, oh man, uh yeah, please
Speaker 1: please come in here and shoot around with us and
Speaker 1: see how you do. Uh. So who are the sort
Speaker 1: of the architects of this We talked about the money,
Speaker 1: but but who are the big proponents of how the
Speaker 1: b AL is shaping them? Uh? This guy named Amado
Speaker 1: Gallo Fall is the president of the b a L.
Speaker 1: He was born in Senegal and then when he was
Speaker 1: a kid, he was recommended by someone while playing in
Speaker 1: Tunisia and ended up playing Division two basketball in in
Speaker 1: d C. So he was never a pro prospect, but
Speaker 1: he stayed in the sport. He became a scout for
Speaker 1: the Mavericks and eventually ended up working for the NBA
Speaker 1: when they opened in Africa in Johannesburg. And since then
Speaker 1: he's been doing all kinds of deal making with all
Speaker 1: these African governments to build courts and start schools and
Speaker 1: training programs. Hey Kim, what's at stake here for the NBA.
Speaker 1: If we think about the recent history of the NBA
Speaker 1: and its efforts in China, they were looked at is
Speaker 1: really huge until just a couple of years ago when
Speaker 1: we saw that Darryl morey Uh from the Houston Rockets
Speaker 1: he voiced support for those pro Democrats protesters in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: and that really set the league back there. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: set them back at least three years. Right, So that
Speaker 1: happened three years ago and things that are just coming
Speaker 1: back around. They didn't air the finals in in on
Speaker 1: Chinese state TV last year, but it looks like we're
Speaker 1: we're starting to settle back into it in China. What's
Speaker 1: at stake in Africa is a billion viewers. There's a
Speaker 1: billion potential viewers in Africa for the NBA. They want
Speaker 1: to open stores there, They're going to start in South Africa.
Speaker 1: But you can't get people to buy stuff unless they
Speaker 1: care about basketball, and that's where that's where this league
Speaker 1: comes in. It needs to be both of something that
Speaker 1: people want to watch on television, but also a place
Speaker 1: to develop new talent that can then be ushered into
Speaker 1: other leagues like the NBA. You watched a lot of
Speaker 1: B A L basketball for this story. How how good?
Speaker 1: How good? Is it? Is it? Or? Is it? G League?
Speaker 1: Is it NT? Double A Finals? Is it NBA? What? What?
Speaker 1: How good? It's it's not it's not the NBA, but
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's quite good. It's it's it's G
Speaker 1: League or better. That was Bloomberg News reporter Kimbassin and
Speaker 1: a Business Week editor Joel Weber Ed Ludlow joining us
Speaker 1: as well. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week coming up.
Speaker 1: If you're looking to start a business, you'll want to
Speaker 1: stick around. Genius Guild founder and CEO Katherine Finney has
Speaker 1: got some tips, particularly for women and people of color.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with
Speaker 1: Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Starting a company is tough. Luckily, Katherine Finney, the founder
Speaker 1: and CEO of Genius Gill, has some tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: You can find those in her new book. It's just
Speaker 1: out this month. It's called Build the Damn Thing. How
Speaker 1: to start a successful business if you're not a rich
Speaker 1: white guy. Carol and I asked Katherine for some of
Speaker 1: the key highlights this weekend how she came up with
Speaker 1: the title of that book being out in you know,
Speaker 1: the talking conference circuit. I would often get entrepreneurs coming
Speaker 1: to me pitching, and they would give these really well
Speaker 1: thought out ideas and I would ask, okay, well let
Speaker 1: me see a demo. Do you have something on your
Speaker 1: phone I could see and they would say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I haven't quite built it yet, and they would go
Speaker 1: into all these reasons why they did, and I would say, well,
Speaker 1: just build a damn thing, Like what are you waiting for?
Speaker 1: But that's that's like what venture capitalists or that's what
Speaker 1: I should say founders always say needs to happen, Right,
Speaker 1: You need to have this minimal viable product in order
Speaker 1: to build on it and iterate right, yes, you have
Speaker 1: to start off with something in order to get feedback.
Speaker 1: And actually in building your minimal viable product, which is
Speaker 1: really the simplest version of your product that you can
Speaker 1: build to be able to put out into market or
Speaker 1: to show the people to get feedback, it allows you
Speaker 1: to get information, get thoughts, get feedback before spending too
Speaker 1: much money in building your product, and that's very very important.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes founders, particularly about news you come from communities that
Speaker 1: are outside of you know, traditional communities in the startups
Speaker 1: will spend tons and tons of money tap into their
Speaker 1: four one K to build these world bust prototypes without
Speaker 1: knowing whether or not there's a market for it. And
Speaker 1: it really goes back to this concept of product market fit.
Speaker 1: Does your product have a market? Does your product have
Speaker 1: people who want to pay for it? And so your
Speaker 1: goal with your minimal viable products is to find out
Speaker 1: this product market fit without spending a ton of money.
Speaker 1: You know, It's interesting what I love also about this
Speaker 1: book and I feel like this mirror some of the conversations.
Speaker 1: Tim and I were just back from Dallas, Texas at
Speaker 1: the Inside conference talking with financial professionals, but diversity and
Speaker 1: inclusion came up big time, and one of our chats
Speaker 1: specifically was about how you have to have diverse investment
Speaker 1: advisors to reach out to the diverse investment public that
Speaker 1: is out there who are increasingly being left behind. Talk
Speaker 1: to us about that when you know in terms of
Speaker 1: businesses that are being left behind, and Mark gets that
Speaker 1: are being left behind because we're not tapping into a
Speaker 1: more diverse consumer marketplace and not supporting diverse entrepreneurs who
Speaker 1: see the need for that. Yeah, I mean you're leaving
Speaker 1: money on the table, right um one, and for new
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs or Latino UM. Black women are one of the
Speaker 1: fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs. You are leaving money on
Speaker 1: the table when you're not reaching out to these markets.
Speaker 1: This is the new future, and so it's really important
Speaker 1: to be able to understand how to reach these markets
Speaker 1: in the world of startups, how to work with these
Speaker 1: startups coming from these markets, mostly because these start ups
Speaker 1: are tapping into new areas and new opportunities for growth
Speaker 1: that you may not be able to access or even
Speaker 1: understand if you're not part of those communities. So by
Speaker 1: investing in them and by getting to know these amazing founders,
Speaker 1: you're actually giving yourself more diversification within your own portfolio.
Speaker 1: All Right. I want to be provocative because I love
Speaker 1: that you lay it out there and thanks to kind
Speaker 1: of sharing some materials with us. You talk about army
Speaker 1: leaders with responses to investors who have told her, quote,
Speaker 1: great pitch, but I just don't do black women. I
Speaker 1: mean that happens. That's a reality, right, it happened to me.
Speaker 1: We'll tell us, all right, so tell us about that. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you know, and it's been well documented Inventor
Speaker 1: Capital about the pattern matching right of this idea of
Speaker 1: because every successful founder I've invested in was, you know,
Speaker 1: a twenty five year old white guy from Stanford. That
Speaker 1: means that every successful founder is going to be a
Speaker 1: twenty five year o white guy from Stanford. Um, what
Speaker 1: is interesting about that is the inherent fallacy, which is
Speaker 1: it also means that all you're failed investments also came
Speaker 1: from twenty five year o white guys from Stanford. And
Speaker 1: so what happens is when someone like myself for woman,
Speaker 1: or a diverse entrepreneurs shows up, it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, this anomaly, like, oh my gosh, you're here.
Speaker 1: And so we often find, you know, in the our meeting,
Speaker 1: we get with a potential investor that minutes of that
Speaker 1: it's just explaining how we got into the door. They're
Speaker 1: so fascinated by us in our history that we only
Speaker 1: get about fifteen minutes to actually talk about our business,
Speaker 1: which is what we're there to talk about. And so
Speaker 1: it becomes really hard to be able to pitch when
Speaker 1: people don't see you as a business or they completely
Speaker 1: don't understand the business opportunity. And no matter what you say,
Speaker 1: no matter what type of data you have, your metrics,
Speaker 1: the total addressable market, you know, all those great things
Speaker 1: that you know investors say they love to hear, they
Speaker 1: don't hear it because they're so sort of distracted by
Speaker 1: you and your presence and so, and that definitely happens.
Speaker 1: I think as a diverse entrepreneur, though, the goal is
Speaker 1: always to redirect right, Right, Catherine, I want to get
Speaker 1: to Chicago here and talk a little bit about venture
Speaker 1: capital in Chicago, because when we think about VC, it's
Speaker 1: so often in the context of California, and you mentioned that,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty five year old white guy Stanford grad
Speaker 1: as being sort of the archetypal tech founder, or we
Speaker 1: talked about in the context of New York. What are
Speaker 1: would you say that venture capitalists who are isolated to
Speaker 1: those areas of the country miss out by not being
Speaker 1: in Chicago. You miss out a new opportunities in new markets, right,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of VC firms now they're starting
Speaker 1: to pay attention not just genius gild and what we're
Speaker 1: doing here, but also you know, Steve Case and Revolution
Speaker 1: and Rise of the Rest has been for several years
Speaker 1: going around sort of middle America outside of the coast
Speaker 1: and investing heavily in amazing startups in these sort of places,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of opportunities. A lot of
Speaker 1: great companies are coming out. There's a lot of cybertech
Speaker 1: companies here who are particularly in Chicago, who are salving CyberSolutions.
Speaker 1: There's a number of companies around food in the future
Speaker 1: of food that are also in sort of the Midwest region,
Speaker 1: which is also very interesting, and it kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense because we're the bread basket of America. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of emerging opportunities here that I think people
Speaker 1: tend to overlook because again we're in the middle of
Speaker 1: America and and sort of people are not coming here
Speaker 1: to see. But I welcome everyone that comes to Chicago
Speaker 1: and see what we have here. We are the founders
Speaker 1: that you invested in, or at least that are pitching
Speaker 1: to you, because you're not, of course investing in every
Speaker 1: founder that's pitching to you. What are their backgrounds typically
Speaker 1: and are they coming out of school, university. Are they
Speaker 1: coming from established firms? What's a typical startup founder who's
Speaker 1: looking for funding from you? Yeah, and so our founders
Speaker 1: have really strong domain knowledge and experience and what they're abuilding. Um. So,
Speaker 1: one of our companies, health in her Hugh's kind of
Speaker 1: WebMD for black women in's experienced enormous growth over the
Speaker 1: past couple of years. Was founded by a black woman
Speaker 1: with a public health degree who also happens to be
Speaker 1: what I have to which is a public health degree
Speaker 1: as an epidemiologist. We have founders who have working in
Speaker 1: the creator economy who also were creators themselves or worked
Speaker 1: in the agency side, so they have experience working with
Speaker 1: creators and understanding the opportunities there. We have companies that
Speaker 1: are working in supplier diversity chains and the supply chain
Speaker 1: diversifying that who have tons of experience working in the
Speaker 1: supply chain. And we also have invested in a couple
Speaker 1: of other funds as well. There also are led by
Speaker 1: general partners who have experienced either in the sectors that
Speaker 1: they're investing in and or coming from really top nodge
Speaker 1: venture funds. I have to first ask you what is
Speaker 1: it about Voldemort? Because Tim O'Brien of our team, our
Speaker 1: opinion team has quoted tweeted out a picture of him
Speaker 1: in connection with pardoning and then I love in your
Speaker 1: book that says you've gone from standing up to the
Speaker 1: Voldemort's venture capital to leading around multimillion dollar fund. I mean,
Speaker 1: was it that bad? I mean, that's very hardy Potter
Speaker 1: and been terrified by the evil villain Voldemort. Like that's terrible.
Speaker 1: It was that bad. And I talked about in the
Speaker 1: book you know what it was like in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's, and I think some of us kind of
Speaker 1: forget because it's so long ago, but there really was
Speaker 1: not very many women, and definitely not very many women
Speaker 1: of color, and so it was this atmosphere where people
Speaker 1: didn't have just low expectations, they had no expectations of me.
Speaker 1: And being a lifelong overachievermer, that was incredibly difficult for
Speaker 1: me to be in a situation where people didn't think
Speaker 1: I just couldn't do it. And so I had to
Speaker 1: develop tools and they had to develop ways in want
Speaker 1: you to get around that and a lot of those
Speaker 1: ways I share in the book I love it you do.
Speaker 1: It's really great how to and really working people walking
Speaker 1: people through all of the processes to our procedures to
Speaker 1: build their own successful business. It's interesting to you know,
Speaker 1: Ventu Capital and you know, like you said, it's this
Speaker 1: isn't a new story. We've written about it a lot
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg, but even like women venture capitalists not investing
Speaker 1: in women led companies. And I find it funny because
Speaker 1: we just talked with Tory Birch Embrace Ambition. She also
Speaker 1: has been about specifically providing money for female entrepreneur What
Speaker 1: is it about, though, that women in Silicon Valley weren't
Speaker 1: backing other women? Was it just the pressure of the firm. Well,
Speaker 1: there's almost a tax that you pay. So if you're
Speaker 1: a woman investor and you invest in women, there's almost
Speaker 1: like a tax that you pay that perhaps you're not
Speaker 1: able to spot great investments, right, but the understanding thing
Speaker 1: that women are not great investments, right, And so it's
Speaker 1: almost a tax that is for any VC who falls
Speaker 1: outside of the norm that if you tend to over
Speaker 1: index your investments in whatever group that you identify with,
Speaker 1: that somehow you're creating favoritism, somehow you're not investing in
Speaker 1: them because you see opportunities that you're somehow not as
Speaker 1: great of an investor, and that's actually documented, and so
Speaker 1: that penalty is true, and that causes marginalized investors so
Speaker 1: sometimes not invest as much as they would and the
Speaker 1: groups that they understand in the markets that they understand.
Speaker 1: That was Katherine Finney. She's founder and CEO of Genius
Speaker 1: Guild and her book is out now. It's called Build
Speaker 1: the Damn Thing, How to Start a successful Business if
Speaker 1: You're not a rich white guy. That wraps up the
Speaker 1: weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. I'm Tim Stanabek. Carol Masser
Speaker 1: will be back next week. Be sure to tune into
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday, starting at two pm
Speaker 1: Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch
Speaker 1: our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News
Speaker 1: and check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can
Speaker 1: find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Bloomberg Business Week is available on news
Speaker 1: stands now, at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg Terminal.
Speaker 1: You can also see me on Bloomberg. Quick Take available
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg dot com, slash qut and streaming platforms like Roku,
Speaker 1: Apple TV, Samsung TV and more. Have a great weekend. Everyone,
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg.