Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly and I'm Carol Masser. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Extra. It's our weekly podcast bringing you an in
Speaker 1: depth interview you will not hear anywhere else this week Bombus.
Speaker 1: You probably know the company from their ads. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: wearing their socks right now. The Director consumer company. It
Speaker 1: was started back in as a way to help the homeless.
Speaker 1: For every pair of socks they sell, they donate a
Speaker 1: pair to those in needs. It's a great mission. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting company, and Jason, they've done it all out
Speaker 1: of profit and with impressive growth. Here's founder David Heath.
Speaker 1: All right, so go back to the beginning. I love
Speaker 1: the origin story of this. You heard a stat, you
Speaker 1: read a stat and that sort of got you thinking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was scrolling through Facebook one day back in
Speaker 1: early two thousand eleven and I came across a quote
Speaker 1: on a post that the Salvation Army had made um
Speaker 1: and it said that socks were the number one most
Speaker 1: requested clothing item a homeless shelters, and I kind of
Speaker 1: just sat there for a second. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty sad. Here's an item of clothing that I've
Speaker 1: never spent more than a few seconds a day thinking about.
Speaker 1: And this item of clothing is perceived as a luxury
Speaker 1: item for a large group of people, almost six thousand
Speaker 1: people experiencing homelessness in the US on any given year. UM.
Speaker 1: And so I remember just kind of sharing the idea
Speaker 1: with friends and one of my co workers who ended
Speaker 1: up becoming one of my co founders, Randy Um. We
Speaker 1: worked together, so it's quite easy in proximity, and you know,
Speaker 1: we were like, what can we do about this? And
Speaker 1: at first we just started carrying socks around in our bags,
Speaker 1: you know, to and from work and handing them out,
Speaker 1: and we started experiencing the kind of mission firsthand and
Speaker 1: seeing the elated faces of people who are like, how
Speaker 1: did you know that I needed a pair of socks?
Speaker 1: And thank you so much? This is the one thing
Speaker 1: I really need today, UM, And that I've got us thinking, obviously,
Speaker 1: like how can we help scale and solve this problem?
Speaker 1: And you know, around the same time, you know, Tom's
Speaker 1: was in their fifth year of business and obviously the
Speaker 1: pioneer of one for one and Warbie had just launched
Speaker 1: UM and gotten a ton of fanfare and there to
Speaker 1: release articles and you know, we're like, wow, if this
Speaker 1: company is doing it for shoes and this company is
Speaker 1: doing it for eyewear, and maybe we could solve this
Speaker 1: sock problem by um, you know, imploying the same type
Speaker 1: of mission. So we launched the company. I want to
Speaker 1: talk more about to launching the company and what you
Speaker 1: what you're doing today, But I want to go back
Speaker 1: to this whole idea of Bumble, because there's a there's
Speaker 1: a mission or mantra if you will, that you have
Speaker 1: about be better. This whole concept of bees and hives
Speaker 1: and working together. I mean, that's where it all comes from.
Speaker 1: That's a really big part of the culture of your
Speaker 1: company totally. It's it's it's ingrained in kind of everything
Speaker 1: that we do and UM the name Bombas and the
Speaker 1: tagline and kind of the design for bees and utilization
Speaker 1: of bees and the hive kind of mentality and the
Speaker 1: hexagon pattern that's on our arch support was really kind
Speaker 1: of the UM the idea of our other co founder,
Speaker 1: Aaron walk was our chief creative officer UM and as
Speaker 1: soon as we heard it, as soon as we saw
Speaker 1: kind of the initial idea he presented to us. We
Speaker 1: were like, yes, this is it. We're going to go
Speaker 1: all in on this. But David, you could have just
Speaker 1: made socks and handed it out or created a nonprofit
Speaker 1: and just got money in to do that. You did
Speaker 1: it a different way totally. Um. Why, Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I went
Speaker 1: to school for entrepreneurship. My dad's an entrepreneur. Um. I
Speaker 1: think I was an entrepreneur before I even knew what
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur was. I was the weird kid in the
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood that was like knocking on your door
Speaker 1: and I wash your car or walk your dogs or
Speaker 1: do whatever. Um. And so I think, you know, I've
Speaker 1: always tried to solve problems through business, right, I've always
Speaker 1: tried to make the connection. Um. And Randy, who's my
Speaker 1: co founder, we worked Eigelberg. We worked together at a
Speaker 1: startup and so we were experiencing fast growth startup life
Speaker 1: together and we became really fast friends. And he had
Speaker 1: a passion for entrepreneurship. His dad was an entrepreneur as well,
Speaker 1: and so we kind of just came together and we're like, let's,
Speaker 1: you know, utilize this idea as our company well, and
Speaker 1: one of the things I think, keep me honest here,
Speaker 1: that you guys also learned was that you wanted to
Speaker 1: run a company in the different way than the company
Speaker 1: where you were working. Yeah. I mean, look, there were
Speaker 1: some good things at the place we were working, Um,
Speaker 1: there were some bad things. And I think, like any
Speaker 1: good entrepreneur, you you take the lessons that you've learned
Speaker 1: throughout your life and apply them into the world of business.
Speaker 1: And I think the one thing, I mean, the gratitude
Speaker 1: we have for what we experienced at a company that
Speaker 1: didn't have a ton of transparency, was heavily micro managed,
Speaker 1: not a lot of you know, personal empowerment, but had
Speaker 1: a great culture in terms of you know, friends being
Speaker 1: friends with the people you work with. And so we
Speaker 1: kind of took that, but then also you know, took
Speaker 1: all the things that we didn't like experiencing as employees, um,
Speaker 1: and kind of flip that all around. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we're a hundred and thirty employees today. We've only had
Speaker 1: four people leave the company in six years. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we were just named by Fortune is the number one
Speaker 1: best place to work in retail, uh in the US.
Speaker 1: And so you know, company culture is is a huge
Speaker 1: part of what we do, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of our mission actually plays back into that as well.
Speaker 1: And donate time together. We volunteered together, um, and when
Speaker 1: our employees can go out and experience the work that
Speaker 1: they're doing, you know, and see the end benefit to
Speaker 1: a person who's truly in need firsthand, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they come back to the office and have a ton
Speaker 1: more humility. Right, They're not complaining when the cold brew
Speaker 1: coffee goes out of tap, right, if they have an
Speaker 1: argument with a friend, you know, Yeah, it provides a
Speaker 1: ton of perspective. So what I think is interesting too
Speaker 1: is that we're at a time coming off of the
Speaker 1: Business Roundtable this year, getting a lot of attention about
Speaker 1: it's not just about your shareholder, you know if you're
Speaker 1: a publicly health company, but there's a lot of stakeholders.
Speaker 1: You guys from the get go have thought about the environment,
Speaker 1: your employees, you know, your workers, so many different stakeholders.
Speaker 1: How easy is that to do? And run a business
Speaker 1: and you've got to make money at the same time,
Speaker 1: and you're giving back. It's it's actually really easy to
Speaker 1: do when all of those things are built into the
Speaker 1: DNA from day one, right, I mean if you kind
Speaker 1: of put stakes in the around and say we're not
Speaker 1: going to compromise on all these different things. Um, you
Speaker 1: kind of build the model around it, right. You set
Speaker 1: margin targets that you know, afford a donation, you you know,
Speaker 1: building op x that affords a great company culture. You know.
Speaker 1: Now we're in kind of the next life ctycle where
Speaker 1: we're big enough that we're going to start tackling sustainability
Speaker 1: in a real way. Um. And that's the thing that
Speaker 1: you know is a much bigger you know, not to
Speaker 1: crack and it will happen slowly over time. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're committed to constantly doing the right thing and
Speaker 1: we feel like our customers are rewarding us for that.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about the nuts and bolts of
Speaker 1: the business. Because you weren't other than being a sockwarer.
Speaker 1: You weren't like a suck guy. You know, like you
Speaker 1: didn't have a manufacturing background. You didn't have an apparel
Speaker 1: background of any uh note, So how did you go
Speaker 1: about sort of learning how to make this product? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think you know the reason that company is like
Speaker 1: ours and Harry's and Warby all have seen so much success.
Speaker 1: Is because we're not in the industry. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we come at it from a consumers standpoint. So we
Speaker 1: are disrupting these products because we ourselves were consumers of
Speaker 1: this product, right, and we saw that these were nascent categories, right,
Speaker 1: not much time and attention or energy. We're being put
Speaker 1: into raizors or you know, eye wear, our socks, you know,
Speaker 1: some of these more commodity type products. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think that gave us a huge competitive advantage. Um. Luckily.
Speaker 1: I mean this is where like luck plays a huge part.
Speaker 1: My godfather was actually in the hosiery business for forty years. Um,
Speaker 1: and so when it came to actually figuring out who
Speaker 1: are the best manufacturers, you know, what are the best
Speaker 1: places to produce Um. He is a guy. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: actually was the presidency of gold Toe for a bunch
Speaker 1: of years in the early nineties. So um, he knew
Speaker 1: had every factory relationship and kind of walked us in,
Speaker 1: you know, through the front door, and you know, vouched
Speaker 1: for us. We'll talk to us about that because I
Speaker 1: do think we all know about the horror stories and
Speaker 1: retail manufacturing. So as part of your mission, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: you're trying to make sure that you know, wages are
Speaker 1: fair and so to go forth. I mean, how easy
Speaker 1: is that to do this this in this day and age.
Speaker 1: It's pretty easy. Um. You know, there's a ton of
Speaker 1: third party compliance um auditors that you know, independently certify
Speaker 1: these organizations and factories and you know you kind of
Speaker 1: just look at you know, what's your AP certification and
Speaker 1: you know, we we also work with an organization called
Speaker 1: Made in a Free World, which our factories have to
Speaker 1: sign a piece of paper, let's say, is that they'll
Speaker 1: open up their supply chains because I think one of
Speaker 1: the difficulties is often your factory might be good, but
Speaker 1: the place where they get it, or the place where
Speaker 1: they get you know, their stuff gets the other stuff
Speaker 1: might not be. And that's actually one of the hard
Speaker 1: parts of consumer technology. Conversation with someone about retail supply chains,
Speaker 1: and they just talked about so many different people and
Speaker 1: layers in the middle, and unnecessary layers at some point
Speaker 1: that really contribute to that sort of opaque nature of
Speaker 1: the chain. Yeah. And one of the things I'm learning,
Speaker 1: you know, as as we kind of dive into this
Speaker 1: and become more you know, focused on all of these
Speaker 1: efforts is you know, it's actually like hardware components, So
Speaker 1: you could have some trace element of some metal that's
Speaker 1: being mined somewhere, and you know, it goes through three
Speaker 1: people before it ends up in your laptop or your iPhone,
Speaker 1: and you know, it is really challenging. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think with technology and I think with the age
Speaker 1: of information sharing that we're in, all of these things
Speaker 1: are starting to become more prevalent and start to rise
Speaker 1: to the top. So when you think about sort of
Speaker 1: getting going and getting the product to customers and getting
Speaker 1: that getting it in front of them, not even just physically,
Speaker 1: but just the idea of it, you guys, I mean
Speaker 1: it's become almost like a meme, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of like the amount that you're advertising on podcasts and
Speaker 1: and things like that. Was that always the strategy, just
Speaker 1: like we got to get to the people, We gotta
Speaker 1: flood the zone. What what are the mechanisms to do that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we knew that we wanted to be a
Speaker 1: digitally first brand, right Serrany and I worked at a
Speaker 1: digital media company and so somewhat in our kind of
Speaker 1: you know, blood um and this was kind of the
Speaker 1: world that we grew up in the world that we
Speaker 1: knew UM Randy is an incredible storyteller, and so you know,
Speaker 1: we really wanted to leverage the power of storytelling. Which
Speaker 1: actually the unlock with D two C is it allows
Speaker 1: commodity type products like a sock for instance, director consumer um.
Speaker 1: You know, you can spend three minutes on a video
Speaker 1: on your website and someone will watch it. Where you know,
Speaker 1: if you're walking through nord Strums, you're not going to
Speaker 1: stop and watch a three minute video on a sock company,
Speaker 1: right um. And so that was kind of a huge
Speaker 1: unlock for us. But you know, from from day one,
Speaker 1: we were always just focused on UM positive r o
Speaker 1: I in terms of customer acquisition. You know, I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that really separates us from a
Speaker 1: lot of our peers is that, you know, in total
Speaker 1: to date, we've only raised four million of capital UM,
Speaker 1: while a lot of our peers have raised fifty fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars with these crazy evaluations. But you peek behind
Speaker 1: the curtain and none of them are generating any money
Speaker 1: because they're chasing this lifetime value per cost pro acquisition ratio.
Speaker 1: We kind of went back to the fundamentals were like,
Speaker 1: consumer businesses have been around for you know, a most
Speaker 1: a hundred years now, and the way that consumer businesses
Speaker 1: work is buy a product for Y, you selive or x,
Speaker 1: and you run the company off of the margin. And
Speaker 1: so we're like, why does director consumer have to be
Speaker 1: any different? So we really bucked a lot of the
Speaker 1: trend there, and we've been profitable every single year that
Speaker 1: we've been in business except for a year two, which
Speaker 1: is a big kind of growth capital year for us.
Speaker 1: But your growth rate been a hundred percent year over
Speaker 1: year some years, you know, close to two UM and
Speaker 1: you're like at a hundred or two hundred million sales, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just about Yeah. And so talk to us about the customer.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a customer and and it's interesting because
Speaker 1: I've both bought socks and then you know they've been
Speaker 1: giveaways and or whatever. It is a great gift. Who
Speaker 1: is the typical customer? If you can generalize there, there
Speaker 1: isn't really just one. I mean, we are actually you know,
Speaker 1: what we've been super surprised about is that we have
Speaker 1: super broad demographics. And I think that's to the point, right,
Speaker 1: socks are an item that every single person wears. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, whether you're two years old or ninety two
Speaker 1: years old, you're probably wearing socks at some point, you know,
Speaker 1: in your year, even if you live in warm weather climates. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think the idea that you know, we've produced
Speaker 1: something that stands out in the marketplace, it's super comfortable.
Speaker 1: Comfort is not unique to uh, you know, millennials or
Speaker 1: Gen xers or boomers. Right, everybody wants to feel comfort. Um.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we've got just as many customers who
Speaker 1: are you thirty five as we do customers who are
Speaker 1: sixty five to seventy five and older. Um. Same thing
Speaker 1: with demographics in terms of you know, spends we have
Speaker 1: of our customers are an under fifty dollars a year
Speaker 1: and over a d fifty dollars a year, and so
Speaker 1: we see it as somewhat of an affordable luxury. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the benchmarks that we've always used was Starbucks. Right.
Speaker 1: We took a commodity type product, improved upon it, provided
Speaker 1: a really good customer experience in a great brand, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you can see how a customer
Speaker 1: who used to spend twenty dollars a year on socks
Speaker 1: could spend sixty dollars a year on socks. It's not
Speaker 1: the forty delta is not the difference between them, you know,
Speaker 1: paying their mortgage or not, where you can't do that
Speaker 1: with something like a car, right. And so I think
Speaker 1: because it's an affordable luxury, and because we have the mission,
Speaker 1: and because our product stands out so much in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: it attracts a large group of customers. Well. And I
Speaker 1: also do think about something we've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: that people are thinking about, let me let me do something,
Speaker 1: let me pay some you know, I'll pay up for quality, right,
Speaker 1: and something that's going to last. But that also is
Speaker 1: giving back and doing good and not maybe impacting the
Speaker 1: environment as much. And we are slowly maybe seeing a
Speaker 1: lot more of that happening in retail. I think about Fashionopolis, right,
Speaker 1: and you know kind of the waste in the retail industry,
Speaker 1: so that people are starting to kind of filter through
Speaker 1: and you're seeing that play out totally. Yeah. I mean again,
Speaker 1: we're living in a social media age, right where information
Speaker 1: is king and no longer can you hide bad company values,
Speaker 1: you know, behind a closed door. Right, all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's glass door with your employees are you know,
Speaker 1: social media where the customer is going to post whether
Speaker 1: they had a good experience or a bad experience on
Speaker 1: any one of your social posts or one of your ads. Like,
Speaker 1: so you've got it. The benchmark and the standards by
Speaker 1: which you have to live are so high. But it's
Speaker 1: great because it makes everybody responsible, right because the lens
Speaker 1: and the and the voice has moved, you know, the
Speaker 1: power has shifted back to the consumer where yeah, it
Speaker 1: used to be, but there was always kind of a
Speaker 1: delay and you could kind of cover it up for
Speaker 1: you know, a while. But this day and age, like
Speaker 1: information is like flowing rampantly, so you can't hide behind
Speaker 1: these things. I mean you look at some of these
Speaker 1: companies and look at the wee Works or even Away
Speaker 1: which just happened. Like, you can't prop up a company
Speaker 1: on you know, bad actions. It will eventually sus out.
Speaker 1: So you've got to play by the rules. And so
Speaker 1: have you had any of those sort of I mean,
Speaker 1: this has been a really nice straight line up, it
Speaker 1: feels like, generally speaking, but surely you've had some sort
Speaker 1: of gut check moments either early on or maybe midway
Speaker 1: on where you thought okay, either this was a bad decision,
Speaker 1: or this wasn't working, or this isn't matching on the
Speaker 1: way we thought. Tell us about one of those times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we have been incredibly lucky. Our
Speaker 1: growth has been pretty sustainable. Um, we have had very
Speaker 1: little turnover. You know, I think we've done a lot
Speaker 1: of things right. Um. I think some of those strategic
Speaker 1: decisions happen more internally around you know, what's the pathway
Speaker 1: for the company, right, you know, do we how long
Speaker 1: do we stay in just socks? Right? And then what's
Speaker 1: the category we moved to after that? Is that category
Speaker 1: determined by what our customers want from us? Or is
Speaker 1: it determined by what the second most requested clothing idemen
Speaker 1: homeless alters? Is lucky for us, they happen to coincide um,
Speaker 1: which is underwear, and we're you know, working on that
Speaker 1: and we'll have that out shortly. Um. But you also
Speaker 1: have shirts and sweats like you have expanded, right, But
Speaker 1: even now we're starting to think, okay, do we just
Speaker 1: become a socks teason underwear brand and you know, is
Speaker 1: sweats and some of the other products we're working on.
Speaker 1: Is that dilutive at this point? So These are these
Speaker 1: hard conversations that you invest a lot of time and
Speaker 1: energy into. But I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: a great leaders and the things that I'm learning about
Speaker 1: being a CEO is sometimes you have to stop and
Speaker 1: really got to check yourself and say, just because we've
Speaker 1: started to invest time and energy and resources into this thing,
Speaker 1: we still until it's out in the public, and even
Speaker 1: after it's out in the public, you still always maintain
Speaker 1: control about what to do, and you can pivot. And
Speaker 1: I think the best company has decide to pivot when
Speaker 1: it's even when the decision is really hard. Do you
Speaker 1: stay directed consumer? So we're predominantly director consumer, mostly because
Speaker 1: that's where we're seeing all of our growth. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: so nent of our sales happen through bombas dot com
Speaker 1: um two percent of our sales happen in retail, mostly
Speaker 1: because we've seen a lot of demand there. But also
Speaker 1: we know that if our goal is to build a
Speaker 1: billion dollar plus global, you know, apparel company, we have
Speaker 1: to be homni channel, and so we're kind of dipping
Speaker 1: our toe into retail and learning, you know, how do
Speaker 1: we show up to the customer, How does does the
Speaker 1: customer understand our mission when they just see a pair
Speaker 1: of socks on the shelf, right, And I think what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is that because we've got an incredibly large
Speaker 1: marketing budget, you know, and we're telling our stories so
Speaker 1: much online and on podcasts and on radio and TV,
Speaker 1: that actually some of that's bleeding through. So we are
Speaker 1: actually the number one selling soccer brand in every store
Speaker 1: that we're in, and you know, we're like, ooh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: We must have done something well and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: you your marketing budget is about a hundred times more
Speaker 1: than the next people who we are. Um, so we
Speaker 1: feel really excited about that, and you know, we're once
Speaker 1: we kind of continue to build out product categories as well.
Speaker 1: We're excited about what a Bombas retail location could look like,
Speaker 1: and you know, really framing it around potentially making a
Speaker 1: community center where part of the time we open up
Speaker 1: the doors to the homeless community where they can come
Speaker 1: in and shop. Um, everything will be free, but they
Speaker 1: can shop the most needed items that we have available
Speaker 1: for donations. And like Lululemon and Nike where they utilize
Speaker 1: their stores for run clubs or yoga, we could use
Speaker 1: them for volunteer events. Where we gathered groups of our
Speaker 1: customers then go out and serve. It's really exciting about
Speaker 1: what's to come. But again, I think the hard part
Speaker 1: about being a leader is, you know, is narrowing in
Speaker 1: on your lane and saying, look, that stuff will come right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be tomorrow, it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be in two years or three years. Like we want
Speaker 1: to build a company for longevity. And I think again,
Speaker 1: I think this this notion of taking on a lot
Speaker 1: of fundraising early on. You have this immediate expectation that
Speaker 1: you've got to go from zero to five million in
Speaker 1: revenue in three years or else you're not a success.
Speaker 1: But the big manufacturer came to your big brand conglomerate
Speaker 1: because we're seeing a lot of like yeah, like, how
Speaker 1: do you say, Because there's certainly a lot of benefits
Speaker 1: to staying on your own and staying private and staying
Speaker 1: you know, or being part of a big company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're again, we're profitable, so we have a
Speaker 1: lot of optionality. Um And I think that's been one
Speaker 1: of the best disciplines about us focusing on profitability is
Speaker 1: that we're not forced to make these types of decisions
Speaker 1: because we're running out of cash, which again I think
Speaker 1: a lot of our peers do. Some of the acquisitions
Speaker 1: are either raise more money or get acquired. Um. And
Speaker 1: in our experience when we've watched those played out, they
Speaker 1: haven't played out very well. Um. So again I think
Speaker 1: we you know, we look at the brands that really
Speaker 1: inspire us, the Nikes, the Patagon News of the World. Right,
Speaker 1: they're independent, right, Lulu Lemon's right. Yeah, I mean they're public,
Speaker 1: but you know, they still get to drive the error
Speaker 1: and core values. And I think when they run by
Speaker 1: their values, you see a long term success. Because those
Speaker 1: companies all established to be you know, hundred year old
Speaker 1: companies when they started, right, they didn't want to be
Speaker 1: a flash in the pan. They didn't the founders weren't like,
Speaker 1: let's just make as much money as possible and get
Speaker 1: the hell out and go to our next thing. And
Speaker 1: I think when we start to get inspiration about other
Speaker 1: leaders in our space, um, those are the people we
Speaker 1: look to. It's not the people who are kind of
Speaker 1: adjacent to us. You know, we're not worried about, you know,
Speaker 1: whether we're on the front cover of ink or all
Speaker 1: these other things. We kind of just like put our
Speaker 1: head down, worry about us, focus on just delivering a
Speaker 1: really good product, a really good experience, really great you know,
Speaker 1: company culture, and the rest will play out over time.
Speaker 1: That was Bombas founder David Heath, and I think what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that we've seen a slew of companies Jason
Speaker 1: with this all idea, if you buy something, then something
Speaker 1: gets donated. I think it's what consumers really like. And
Speaker 1: what I also like about David is that in this
Speaker 1: world where there's so much money chasing opportunities in the
Speaker 1: startup world, sounds like that they were very responsible in
Speaker 1: terms of expansion and how they spent their capital. I
Speaker 1: totally agree. It was very methodical and interesting to hear,
Speaker 1: you know, in this year where there's been so much
Speaker 1: governance drama and fundraising drama, and in a week where
Speaker 1: we have the soft Bank story sort of coming to
Speaker 1: the four on the cover of the magazine, right, here's
Speaker 1: a company that has sort of like gone along, built,
Speaker 1: as you say, sort of responsibly all across the board.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra, be sure
Speaker 1: to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live Monday through
Speaker 1: Friday at two pm Wall Street Time, I'm Carol Masser
Speaker 1: and I'm Jason Kelly. This is Bloomberg