Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. This
Speaker 1: past week saw the biggest two day rally in U
Speaker 1: s Dock since as investors continued a debate over a
Speaker 1: more or less hawkish fed and then while Elon and
Speaker 1: Twitter were the big tech topic of the week, it
Speaker 1: is really Elon's other business of self driving cars that
Speaker 1: makes the cover this week. We'll get to that in
Speaker 1: just a moment. Speaking of innovation and change, we're going
Speaker 1: to explore the new world order many are facing when
Speaker 1: it comes to alternative energy, e commerce, and e learning.
Speaker 1: We're gonna speak with the CEO of Pearson, as well
Speaker 1: as the founder of All of It's an e commerce
Speaker 1: business with a mission to reduce waste, getting rid of
Speaker 1: those cardboard boxes. Yeah, exactly. Let's stick around for a
Speaker 1: second hour. That's when we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: power of quitting. We'll do that with former pro poker
Speaker 1: player Annie Duke. All of that to come, but first
Speaker 1: we'll be in with this week's cover story. In the
Speaker 1: magazine's features section, it's all about the driverless debate are
Speaker 1: humans better drivers than machines? For more, we turned to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg business Week columnist Max Chaffkin, along with the editor
Speaker 1: of Business Week Joel Weber. If you go back maybe
Speaker 1: a decade ago to ted in these conferences, you had
Speaker 1: everyone basically going around, in particular Google, uh, kind of
Speaker 1: leading the charge, but also lots of automakers, lots of technologists.
Speaker 1: Basically everybody's saying, hey, you know, my kids ten and
Speaker 1: you know they're never gonna need a driver's license. And
Speaker 1: that really became baked almost like conventional wisdom, uh, not
Speaker 1: just among technologists, but among policymakers, consultants everywhere. And you
Speaker 1: saw basically about five years ago this amazing explosion of
Speaker 1: investment um, not just Google and Cruise, but smaller companies,
Speaker 1: basically everyone throwing billions into this field, and a lot
Speaker 1: of those a lot of that money's gone nowhere. We've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of stocks either crash in the case
Speaker 1: of Aurora, which is one of these kind of bubbly
Speaker 1: self driving companies, or you know, in the case of
Speaker 1: coming like Zooks, which was super hyped, and then it
Speaker 1: kind of got swallowed up by Amazon. So so it's
Speaker 1: just been a lot of kind of um, you know,
Speaker 1: difficulty in the industry. Okay, So one of the sources
Speaker 1: in the story who has become something of a detractor,
Speaker 1: uh is the name that we haven't really heard from
Speaker 1: for a while, and that's Anthony Lewandowski. Who is Anthony Lewandowski?
Speaker 1: And what did he have to tell you? So he is,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the most interesting people in self
Speaker 1: driving cars. He was for a really long time, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, leading the charge, the charge that I was
Speaker 1: just talking about talking about how great driverless cars are
Speaker 1: going to be. He is really the person who created
Speaker 1: the in to the extent that one person created the
Speaker 1: Google self driving car or even the industry, it was him.
Speaker 1: And he went through this weird, very controversial journey. He
Speaker 1: went to uber um and then got caught up in
Speaker 1: this um massive, you know, multi billion dollar litigation over
Speaker 1: alleged trade secrets theft, wound up with criminal charges, he
Speaker 1: pled guilty, and then he is pardoned on the last
Speaker 1: day of the Trump presidency. And he's kind of come
Speaker 1: out the other end, obviously with tons of baggage. Very controversial,
Speaker 1: but sort of saying some things out loud that I
Speaker 1: think people in the industry were saying quietly for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and that is this is not going
Speaker 1: as well as we wanted it to go. What's incredible
Speaker 1: about this guy is he's the one who sort of
Speaker 1: created the first version of autonomous vehicle, right. He described
Speaker 1: this situation years ago where he took a Toyota Prius
Speaker 1: and got it to move across was it the Bay Bridge? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was for It's funny, it was for a
Speaker 1: reality show. So I mean in this kind of driverless
Speaker 1: car world, he was sort of the scrappy entrepreneur, the
Speaker 1: one who was kind of trying to push it to commercialize.
Speaker 1: He took, as he said, he created a sort of
Speaker 1: hack together a Prius, drove it across the Brave Bay Bridge,
Speaker 1: and then that basically got swallowed up into Google became
Speaker 1: the Google Driver. But now he's doing something that is
Speaker 1: you could argue, is is sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: less complicated than that when it comes to the application
Speaker 1: of evs, essentially using them on an industrial and that's
Speaker 1: what one and this actually I think the part of
Speaker 1: the article that's kind of interesting is like maybe self
Speaker 1: driving cars do have a practical purpose, but again, it
Speaker 1: doesn't look like what we've been told about, you know,
Speaker 1: having a robo taxi pull up outside of your home
Speaker 1: or driving into the office, or you doing all that
Speaker 1: and then sending your vehicle off somewhere like run around
Speaker 1: and make money for you all day. It actually looks
Speaker 1: like we maybe a mining application mix. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: Lewandowski's company is doing what they call autonomous haulage, basically
Speaker 1: driverless dump trucks. It sounds maybe harder than driverless cars,
Speaker 1: but but you gotta remember these are closed sites. Uh,
Speaker 1: these trucks are basically just going back and forth, back
Speaker 1: and forth. I mean, they very much are like it's
Speaker 1: more like conventional robotics. And I think the one thing
Speaker 1: that kind of opened my eyes is readiness. Thing is
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of hype on driverless cars and
Speaker 1: and the sort of robo taxi narrative that we all
Speaker 1: thought was gonna be worth trillions of dollars caused Kathy
Speaker 1: would to you know, value Tesla. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know in the in the many trillions of dollars um
Speaker 1: that I think. There's a lot of questions, but there
Speaker 1: have been A. There's been huge advances on kind of
Speaker 1: more day to day autonomy. So we're talking about Advanced
Speaker 1: driver Assistance a DOS, which is now like in every
Speaker 1: new car. It's you know, dramatically changed the driving experience.
Speaker 1: It's a big part of Elon musk strategy with Tesla.
Speaker 1: And then we have these autonomous industrial applications what Anthony
Speaker 1: Levandowski is doing with mining, but of course it's also
Speaker 1: happening in agriculture. It's happening in lots of industries that
Speaker 1: really no one's paying attention to. Can we talk about
Speaker 1: the Derek Zulanda problem. My favorite point I've been talking
Speaker 1: about the news room, so so self driving cars and
Speaker 1: lots of problem. I mean, one of the challenges for
Speaker 1: self driving cars is there all these parts of driving
Speaker 1: that they struggle with, one of which is what the
Speaker 1: industry calls unprotected left turn. This is a left turn
Speaker 1: that's not um, you know, not one lane to one
Speaker 1: lane or not with a left turn signal. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny because be an anti turner any yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like any normal driver just calls out a left and
Speaker 1: it's just like Derek Zuland or kind of rebranding not
Speaker 1: being able to turn left is like, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not an ambi turner. Um, but I think that's
Speaker 1: one of those jokes you have to be a certain
Speaker 1: age to uh. I think three of the four of
Speaker 1: us it's important, right, Like, no, no, absolutely. And it's
Speaker 1: one of these things where you know, if you listen
Speaker 1: to the industry, they're saying, hey, they're these edge cases,
Speaker 1: these things nobody thinks about. And one of these things
Speaker 1: that they are talking about is an edge case is
Speaker 1: basically left turns so so like really like, there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of problems that the industry has and they're
Speaker 1: just so far away from from mastery that that I
Speaker 1: think this this discussion we've had where people have been saying, oh,
Speaker 1: they're the way there, they just need to get that
Speaker 1: one more percent, it's it's I think it's very hard
Speaker 1: to say with any kind of certainty that that's the
Speaker 1: that's the ratio, that's the number. That was Bloomberg business
Speaker 1: Week call him this, Max Chafkin, along with the editor
Speaker 1: of the magazine Joel Weber, coming up how renewables could
Speaker 1: move us closer to a clean energy future. That's next.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes.
Speaker 1: Tim Spinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Well, there was a story
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg this past week. It was about how
Speaker 1: climate change made Hurricane Ian's most extreme rainfall about ten
Speaker 1: worse than it would have been without two centuries of
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas pollution. This is according to a first take
Speaker 1: analysis of the storm by two US climate researchers. And
Speaker 1: while climate change might not be on the mind of
Speaker 1: the average energy consumer, we spoke with someone who thinks
Speaker 1: about this stuff quite a bit. Jason Few is the
Speaker 1: CEO of fuel Cell Energy. It's publicly traded at one
Speaker 1: point for billion dollar market cap company. It produces units
Speaker 1: that make electricity from hydrogen. He gave us an update
Speaker 1: on the business as well as the concerns he sees
Speaker 1: as we move towards a renewable future. We do two
Speaker 1: things as a company. We decarbonized power and we produce hydrogen.
Speaker 1: When you think about some of those concerns or areas
Speaker 1: that you raised, you know we've had commercial available products
Speaker 1: since two thousand and three, and in fact, our first
Speaker 1: commercial fuel cell was sold actually in Japan to the
Speaker 1: Cairn and Beer Company using biofuels. So, you know, it
Speaker 1: just shows the fuel flexibility of the platform when it
Speaker 1: comes to hydrogen and some of the concerns that you know,
Speaker 1: get raised around hydrogen. You know, hydrogen is used widely,
Speaker 1: you know, around the world. You know, ninety million metric
Speaker 1: tons of year of hydrogen are used. There's some forecast
Speaker 1: that suggests that you know, of the world's energy will
Speaker 1: ultimately come from hydrogen, if not greater than that. We
Speaker 1: tend to think that hydrogen is going to be an
Speaker 1: important part of the solution, the same way we think
Speaker 1: carbon capture will be an important part of the solution
Speaker 1: to achieving the one and a half degree scenario in
Speaker 1: terms of climate change itself. And and from a safety standpoint,
Speaker 1: like I said, you know, hydrogen widely used today. It's
Speaker 1: very safe and unlike a battery, which contains everything that
Speaker 1: you need inside the battery to actually start a fire,
Speaker 1: that's not the case with hydrogen. So it's actually quite today.
Speaker 1: So why isn't adopted more widespread? Why will it maybe
Speaker 1: only energy um production in the years to come. Why
Speaker 1: not more Well, I think part of it is, uh
Speaker 1: there's a cost question right in terms of this this
Speaker 1: desire to have green hydrogen. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about is the move not only in
Speaker 1: the United States, but I'm I'm seeing in countries around
Speaker 1: the world and the conversations we're having and in the
Speaker 1: conversation I actually just got to participate in in Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: with Secretary Grant Home and energy ministers from around the
Speaker 1: world at a CEO Hydrogen roundtable, the conversation has shifted
Speaker 1: from using colors to really talk about carbon intensity, and
Speaker 1: I think that's one big change that's going to help
Speaker 1: drive accelerated adoption. Another change or thing that's happening that's
Speaker 1: going to help drive adoption is the work that you're
Speaker 1: scene that's going to get done as a result of
Speaker 1: the i ra A in the United States. You have
Speaker 1: similar legislation in markets like Korea and Japan and across
Speaker 1: the EU. And we've seen this movie play out before.
Speaker 1: We saw how incentives, whether it's I t C, production
Speaker 1: tax credits, those kind of things really helped drive the
Speaker 1: cost curve down. We're gonna see that same thing happen
Speaker 1: with fuel cells and with hydrogen as an effective way
Speaker 1: to get us to the cost that everyone's targeting, you know,
Speaker 1: which is you know, as low as a dollar a
Speaker 1: kilogram for hydrogen, and that's going to make it highly competitive.
Speaker 1: And I think as you look around the world today
Speaker 1: and you're seeing increased energy prices, those sparks spreads are narrowing,
Speaker 1: uh and and so I think you're gonna see adoption
Speaker 1: start to accelerate with hydrogen as one of the answers
Speaker 1: to solving this climate crisis we have today. From an
Speaker 1: infrastructure perspective, when it comes to generating power, explain to
Speaker 1: us how you take a hility and allow it to
Speaker 1: create power using hydrogen using fuel cells versus using fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: So when you think about an input fuel and you
Speaker 1: think about hydrogen, hydrogen just becomes the input fuel that
Speaker 1: we would be using with our solid oxide platform for instance,
Speaker 1: in which we would take that hydrogen and we use
Speaker 1: that hydrogen as the feedstock to create electricity. That hydrogen
Speaker 1: interacts with the fuel cell, right, and and the chemistry
Speaker 1: that we use in this case of solid oxide technology
Speaker 1: to produce that power. And if that hydrogen was produced
Speaker 1: by you know, a zero carbon source of electricity, let's
Speaker 1: say you're using electrolysis, so you're taking electricity and water
Speaker 1: and you're converting into hydrogen. Then you're using that hydrogen
Speaker 1: to produce power. That hydrogen has zero carbon intensity, then
Speaker 1: the power being produced from our platform is zero carbon.
Speaker 1: But we also have the ability to use blended hydrogen
Speaker 1: and natural gas, for example, which even lowers you know,
Speaker 1: the carbon intensity of the fuel in that case. But
Speaker 1: in all cases, whether it's hydrogen, renewmal natural gas, or
Speaker 1: bio fuels, that serves as the input fuel that the
Speaker 1: fuel cell needs to then convert that to power, whether
Speaker 1: it's for the grid or for a commercial industrial customer,
Speaker 1: UH and delivering that power as a as a product.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, Jason about the business and the business outlook
Speaker 1: and the growth. And I know earlier this month you
Speaker 1: came out with your latest update quarterly update. I think
Speaker 1: there was a wider than expected loss for the quarter,
Speaker 1: strongest quarterly revenue in five years. UM and you guys
Speaker 1: talked about an increase in marketing and consulting costs because
Speaker 1: you had raised headcount for rebranding, accelerated and accelerating your
Speaker 1: sales and commercialization efforts. Give us some more color if
Speaker 1: you will in terms of the business who's buying you
Speaker 1: guys have custom are certainly in the energy space and
Speaker 1: the corporate space, but give us an idea of where
Speaker 1: the growth is coming from from your business. So are
Speaker 1: the customers that we target largely cut across the utility
Speaker 1: sector where we're providing grid based power, and we might
Speaker 1: be providing that power purely is just a power resource
Speaker 1: on the grid, or we might be providing that power
Speaker 1: and using the thermal energy where we might be connected
Speaker 1: to a district heating system and we're providing that thermal
Speaker 1: energy in addition to the power. Or we might be
Speaker 1: in an in a microgrid configuration where we're providing power
Speaker 1: to the grid and in the power outage, we go
Speaker 1: into what we refer to as island mode and we
Speaker 1: provide power to a dedicated set of resources, keeping those
Speaker 1: critical resources powered while the grid is down. We also
Speaker 1: serve commercial and industrial customers, and in many of those cases,
Speaker 1: we're providing power to those customers, and again we might
Speaker 1: be providing the thermal energy such that the using steam
Speaker 1: from our platform in their manufacturing process. And we also
Speaker 1: have the ability to do things like provide carbon to
Speaker 1: those customers. So when you think about carbonated beverage companies,
Speaker 1: are you think about food processing where carbon is really
Speaker 1: important to not only processing proteins, but then extending shelf
Speaker 1: like by keeping those proteins shield. Those are always in
Speaker 1: which we leverage our platform to deliver value to our
Speaker 1: customers in addition to hydrogen, and we're building projects for Toyota.
Speaker 1: Today we will deliver hydrogen to Toyota power and water
Speaker 1: all from the same platform at the Port of Wana
Speaker 1: Beach in California. That was fuel Cell CEO Jason Few
Speaker 1: Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week. Another company looking to
Speaker 1: help combat climate change by partnering with retailers to keep
Speaker 1: excess packaging out of landfills. That's coming up next. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the World
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Love Rio in New York to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one to San Francisco,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg nine six to the country Sirius XM Channer one
Speaker 1: nineteen and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol
Speaker 1: Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stenovin on Bloomberg Radio. Well,
Speaker 1: in vision a world where every time a consumer buys
Speaker 1: an item, they put another item back into the economy,
Speaker 1: not a landfill, and the transaction produces little to no waste,
Speaker 1: seem impossible. While we spoke with the founder of a
Speaker 1: company that is doing just that. We're talking about Nate Faust.
Speaker 1: He's the founder of Olive. It's an e commerce business
Speaker 1: with a mission to reduce waste from online shopping. He
Speaker 1: might be a familiar name to you if you follow
Speaker 1: the industry well for the last decade. He who was
Speaker 1: the co founder of jet. It was sold to Walmart
Speaker 1: back in sixteen for a cool three point three billion dollars.
Speaker 1: It was the largest U. S. E commer acquisition at
Speaker 1: the time. Before that, he actually founded Quidsy dot com.
Speaker 1: That was diapers dot com. He did that also along
Speaker 1: with Mark Laurie. So already a few success He knows
Speaker 1: the thing are too this is maybe this is like
Speaker 1: retirement project exactly. Well, anyway, he explained the story behind
Speaker 1: the company and how he expects the e commerce delivery
Speaker 1: experience to evolve. That's really what started this whole journey
Speaker 1: was just the frustration of of dealing with breaking down
Speaker 1: boxes and all the trips up and down my driveway
Speaker 1: and the epiphany that this this isn't how it has
Speaker 1: to be. It's you know, incredibly inconvenient both for customers
Speaker 1: and for the environment. And so what we've built at
Speaker 1: olive to address that is really a closed loop system
Speaker 1: where we partner with brands and retailers to deliver their
Speaker 1: customer orders in reuse packaging that we pick up from
Speaker 1: their doorsteps, along with any returns. And to really further
Speaker 1: that circularity model, not only do we eliminate all that
Speaker 1: packaging waste, but when we pick that up, consumers also
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to drop in us clothes that we
Speaker 1: then sell on their behalf, so that we keep them
Speaker 1: out of landfills and increase the circularity of goods and
Speaker 1: multiple uses along with the circularity of packaging. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's been more than a year year or
Speaker 1: so since we last checked in with you, So tell
Speaker 1: us about what's the update in terms of your business,
Speaker 1: the volume that pick up, the usage and love some
Speaker 1: insight on that. Since last time we spoke, we did
Speaker 1: make a pretty significant shift in our business from a
Speaker 1: business to consumer model through a business to business model.
Speaker 1: You know, previously we had an offering where you could
Speaker 1: basically order from a bunch of places that stuff would
Speaker 1: come to us, we'd combine it for you into a
Speaker 1: single weekly packaging and reusable packaging. But we actually had
Speaker 1: a lot of our early brand partners saying, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: our customers love this. Could you just provide this experience
Speaker 1: directly for us? And so we pivoted to a A
Speaker 1: B two B model where now we work directly with
Speaker 1: brands and Olive waste free delivery is a ship method
Speaker 1: that shows up at checkout and you know, we're still
Speaker 1: early on, but you know, we're doing several thousand deliveries
Speaker 1: and pickups a week just in the New York metro area,
Speaker 1: and you know, smattering of of other pickups across the
Speaker 1: rest of the country, but with a big focus on
Speaker 1: the New York market at the moment. How do you
Speaker 1: scale this? How do you get it beyond fashion and
Speaker 1: and get it beyond clothing. It really just comes down
Speaker 1: to volume, and the greater scale of the supply chain,
Speaker 1: the greater the ability to move through products that might
Speaker 1: have you know, slightly lower rees values, but It really
Speaker 1: just comes down to synchronizing that delivery and pick up
Speaker 1: such that there's no incremental cost getting those used goods
Speaker 1: out of people's homes and up for sale in secondhand markets.
Speaker 1: So have you had a conversation with Amazon um there,
Speaker 1: that's obviously the biggest e commerce player there is. I
Speaker 1: love to one day be able to address all um
Speaker 1: you know, e commerce categories, but right now we're more
Speaker 1: focused on mid sized apparel. I was being a little silly,
Speaker 1: but I do think about, you know, and as consumers,
Speaker 1: I increasingly am thinking about, you know, I don't need
Speaker 1: to get everything tomorrow. I don't need to get everything
Speaker 1: in five million boxes. And I do wonder, as you
Speaker 1: guys move along, how are you measuring that you are
Speaker 1: indeed lowering carbon emissions by what you are doing. We're
Speaker 1: actually in this new model putting there the data so
Speaker 1: that we can perform a study similar to the one
Speaker 1: that we had started in the prior B two S model,
Speaker 1: where that was more about the consolidation and the reduction
Speaker 1: of the sort of last mile stops. And in that
Speaker 1: first version, we weren't actually eliminating a lot of the
Speaker 1: packaging because we were intercepting it and consolidating it. In
Speaker 1: this new model, we're elimiting the packaging and we're also
Speaker 1: with the driving the circularity of the goods having a
Speaker 1: significant sustainability impact. And so we're getting close to kicking
Speaker 1: off that study to really measure our our end end impact.
Speaker 1: I think thanks to Olive founder net Fast, you're listening
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg business Week for e commerce to e learning
Speaker 1: as an iconic on seventy eight year old publishing company
Speaker 1: continues to delve deeper into digital. This is Bloomberg. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. According to a
Speaker 1: report out late last year by Research Dive, the global
Speaker 1: digital educational publishing market is predicted to garner a revenue
Speaker 1: of nearly twenty eight billion dollars by seven. That's growing
Speaker 1: rapidly at a compound annual growth rate of se to
Speaker 1: him from during the forecast period. So that's seven, so
Speaker 1: pretty rapid. Yeah, it's happening really really quickly. For some
Speaker 1: thoughts on the industry and strategies for growth, we spoke
Speaker 1: to Andy Bird. He's the CEO of Pearson, and prior
Speaker 1: to that he was president and chairman of Walt Disney International.
Speaker 1: He spent fourteen years at the company. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: a fun conversation. We began by asking him though about
Speaker 1: the macro economic landscape and what he sees going forward.
Speaker 1: It's very chaotic out there. I think there is a
Speaker 1: flight quality certainly were seeing that. You know, we're listed
Speaker 1: on the foot Sea and in London and we were
Speaker 1: actually the best performing company for the first half of
Speaker 1: this year. And I think that's down to the resilience
Speaker 1: of what we do, not just the necessarily the sector
Speaker 1: we're in, but but the range of businesses were in.
Speaker 1: In the resilience of our business. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the days of free money being over, um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's starting to have an impact. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: those days over are just paused. I'm not sure they're
Speaker 1: going to come back to the you know, to the
Speaker 1: recent past very quickly. I'm not I'm not so certain.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, in many ways, the last decade
Speaker 1: or so, which we've all got used to, was somewhat abnormal.
Speaker 1: If you look on a much longer time horizon, you know,
Speaker 1: we all used to pay interest rates sort of around
Speaker 1: mortgage rates. You know, I can remember paying mortgage rates
Speaker 1: were very similar to what they were today, but certainly
Speaker 1: we got used to free money and and and I
Speaker 1: also see that about you know, and we see this
Speaker 1: in terms of investor interest in in in person is like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: you're a real company with real sales and real cash
Speaker 1: flow and real profits. Wow, well, Andy, talk about your
Speaker 1: business right educational or like how resilient is it to recessions?
Speaker 1: We're actually counter cyclical historically, whether it's inflation, unemployment. You know,
Speaker 1: people turn. You see college admissions go up, for example.
Speaker 1: You know. The other the other thing about Pierson is
Speaker 1: that we're a lot more than educational textbook. You know.
Speaker 1: I think what's unique about the business is we and
Speaker 1: what attracted me to the business and your referenced you know,
Speaker 1: Disney in many ways. When I came, I joined the
Speaker 1: board of Pierson before I became CEO. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's this continuum from the creation of intellectual property, which
Speaker 1: we do. Used to be the form of a textbook,
Speaker 1: it's now digital. That's I find a very interesting area
Speaker 1: all the way through assessments and ultimately to certification, verification,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing you know, the world move to you know,
Speaker 1: skills based learning. You know this this notion of how
Speaker 1: you redefine higher education. Well, let's go there, because Tim
Speaker 1: and I have a lot of conversations and even with
Speaker 1: heads of colleges universities who are also thinking, like I
Speaker 1: don't know if the four year program makes anymore our
Speaker 1: former heads and I do wonder are you seeing signs
Speaker 1: increasingly where that model is kind of coming and done,
Speaker 1: or people are going and getting maybe an associates or
Speaker 1: a couple of years going to work, coming back, going
Speaker 1: for other certifications. What insight can you tell us about that?
Speaker 1: I mean it, we're currently in the back to school period,
Speaker 1: and we'll have enrollment data for for this season in
Speaker 1: four or five weeks time, and so we'll have a
Speaker 1: better picture then. Certainly, the last couple of years has
Speaker 1: seen declines in US higher ed college enrollments. How much
Speaker 1: of that was cyclical or driven through by the pandemic,
Speaker 1: how much of it is is a permanent you know,
Speaker 1: I I tend to think of it in the following
Speaker 1: ways that you know, when I graduated from high school,
Speaker 1: if I wanted to further my higher education, I only
Speaker 1: had one door to go through that was university or college.
Speaker 1: Now there's two. You know, there's enterprise learning and there's
Speaker 1: institutional learning. And I've I've said in the pat I
Speaker 1: think some of the biggest universities in the world arguably
Speaker 1: now our institutions. You look what Amazon is doing, for example,
Speaker 1: you know where if you're working, if you're one of
Speaker 1: their one million workers in a fulfillment warehouse, you know,
Speaker 1: Amazon will pay for your college education. And that I
Speaker 1: think also plays into this hybrid mix of two year
Speaker 1: versus four year, the role of community colleges in the mix,
Speaker 1: saying if you're a barrista at Starbucks, you know, this
Speaker 1: notion of an individual understanding the importance of learning and
Speaker 1: the way that now technology allows us to deliver learning.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to have a profound impact. I
Speaker 1: think we're just at the start of a quite frankly
Speaker 1: a revolution. We want to talk more about what you're
Speaker 1: doing here a Pierson, but we were just talking about
Speaker 1: Disney a little bit. How do you think about that
Speaker 1: company the impact has had on you as how you
Speaker 1: think about what you want to do at Pierson talked
Speaker 1: to us a little bit about at that time it
Speaker 1: had a profound impact on my life and my family's life.
Speaker 1: I moved from the UK to Los Angeles. I had
Speaker 1: the you know, the immense good fortune to work for
Speaker 1: Bob Iger for those fourteen years and really, you know,
Speaker 1: be part of a transformation which is very similar to
Speaker 1: what we're doing it Piers, and from you know, back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and to two thousand three when I
Speaker 1: joined Disney, and you know, Disney start was twelve bucks
Speaker 1: something and change. People sometimes forget that, and you know,
Speaker 1: the journey from the acquisition of Pixar and Marvel to
Speaker 1: Lucas and beyond. When I joined the Border Pierson, I went, wow,
Speaker 1: there's so many similarities with this company and Disney. But
Speaker 1: whereas Disney as the world's leading entertainment company, you know,
Speaker 1: Pierson can become the world leading learning company. So let's
Speaker 1: keep the comparison going. If you look at the way
Speaker 1: that Disney transformed itself into a company that has really
Speaker 1: been a powerhouse over well the last decade more so
Speaker 1: than at any other time, with theme parks and the
Speaker 1: acquisition of Lucasfilm and other companies that have done really
Speaker 1: well for it um in transition to streaming as well.
Speaker 1: How do you take what you learned at Disney and
Speaker 1: apply that at Pearson for its own transformation. So that
Speaker 1: at the heart of both companies is intellectual property. I
Speaker 1: think that is so powerful and we content content is
Speaker 1: so so important, and so that and the heart of
Speaker 1: Pierson is intellectual property. You know, it's it used to
Speaker 1: take the form of textbooks. It's now far more interactive.
Speaker 1: You it's vis video, graphics, audio, who are talking about
Speaker 1: the ways that you can ultimately it will go into
Speaker 1: virtual reality, in the metaverse and beyond the way that
Speaker 1: technology is allowing the delivery of learning experiences is radically changing.
Speaker 1: And at the heart of our company is you know,
Speaker 1: we have over five thousand authors. You create a content creators,
Speaker 1: we have that learning ecosystem, and then you start to
Speaker 1: put that out with distribution, the ability for us now
Speaker 1: to go direct to a consumer, you know, with the
Speaker 1: you know, we launched person plus for US college students
Speaker 1: twelve months ago and in twelve months got four and
Speaker 1: a half million registered users. Yeah, that's not many start
Speaker 1: ups do that, right, So, how does you mentioned metaverse?
Speaker 1: It's going to be difficult as they transition to metaverse.
Speaker 1: It's not an easy transition, not everybody's buying in. Investors
Speaker 1: certainly are How do you think about things like the metaverse?
Speaker 1: How do you plan for it today when there's still
Speaker 1: so many questions? How do you think about things like
Speaker 1: n f T s and that probably plays to content
Speaker 1: right in proprietary Yes, yes, you know in a way
Speaker 1: if you break down, deconstruct the textbook, which are able
Speaker 1: to do now, and think about learning modules rather than
Speaker 1: chapters of text. They can be pieces of audio, pieces
Speaker 1: of video, and if you meant each of those to
Speaker 1: ensure that the author of that, the creator of that content,
Speaker 1: and by placing on blockchain, gets paid appropriately throughout its life.
Speaker 1: Do you need the blockchain to do that? No, but
Speaker 1: the blockchain makes it a lot easier. So it's really
Speaker 1: realties are really complex. So this this actually simplifies the right. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's because I have yet to I'll be honest with you,
Speaker 1: I've yet to hear a very compelling case for the
Speaker 1: blockchain loyalty. Can I get blockchain more than I get
Speaker 1: some other Yeah? Yeah, But I mean, you know, this
Speaker 1: technology has been around for more than a dozen years.
Speaker 1: I mean, how has it actually made our lives? Well?
Speaker 1: I think it gets crowded or clouded rather by the
Speaker 1: whole crypto noise. But under the crypto okay, I mean
Speaker 1: I would say skeptic too. I'm very interested in that.
Speaker 1: But but then you know, if you think and you
Speaker 1: move forward and you think of learning and technology, virtual
Speaker 1: reality and everything like that, that plays right into learning.
Speaker 1: But you can't make bet today. I like the metaverse.
Speaker 1: But you can be curious, okay, but you run a
Speaker 1: publicly held company. How curious, kid? We can be very curious.
Speaker 1: And we have a whole team and all they're doing.
Speaker 1: I participated in a in an innovation in house innovation.
Speaker 1: We had eight entries from across the company around applications
Speaker 1: for the metaverse, and we're going to take some of
Speaker 1: those forward. All right. I cannot believe that we've run
Speaker 1: through our time. I'm like blown away. We've got thirty
Speaker 1: seconds left here. I'm going to yell that if I
Speaker 1: don't ask you this question. And I know you were
Speaker 1: with our editorial board team and talking about things Apolloglobal
Speaker 1: third three offers, you guys said, turn and turn them down?
Speaker 1: Are you going to stay independent? What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Real quickly, very quickly? I mean, yes, we did. It
Speaker 1: was all very public. They offered eight pound seventy. I
Speaker 1: think our stock is trading at around eight pound seventy
Speaker 1: if you look in pounds sterling, given everything else that's
Speaker 1: going on, and I think, if anything, you know, their
Speaker 1: approach validated our strategy and validated the great prospects that
Speaker 1: this company has. But the right right, maybe I'm very
Speaker 1: happy doing what we're doing. I focus on delivering results.
Speaker 1: The next seating Expectations. That was Pierson's CEO, Andy birrd Well.
Speaker 1: That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser
Speaker 1: and I'm Tim Stanovic. Ahead in our next hour, how
Speaker 1: the success of the world's most visible drug maker has
Speaker 1: left investors impatient for an encore. This is really more
Speaker 1: than blockbuster status. This is literally half their business this
Speaker 1: given year, and it's a major success. But the question
Speaker 1: is are they a victim of their own success? And
Speaker 1: what happens after you ride the roller coaster all the
Speaker 1: way up? Plus former pro poker player and author Anie
Speaker 1: Duke a knowing when to quit, not just in poker
Speaker 1: but in life. The thing is obviously that the more
Speaker 1: uncertainty there is, the harder it is to figure out
Speaker 1: that you're supposed to quit, and more importantly, the easier
Speaker 1: it is to rationalize that you should keep going. So
Speaker 1: when there's lots of uncertainty, like you know in the
Speaker 1: startup world, it's easy to say it's just around the corner,
Speaker 1: like next quarters when I'm going to start acquiring customers,
Speaker 1: I'm going to start accruing net new a r R
Speaker 1: that's going to show me that I'm successful. You've got
Speaker 1: to get people to help you with the decision. That's
Speaker 1: all coming up. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you
Speaker 1: America's most trusted business magazine plus global business, finance and
Speaker 1: tech news. As it happened. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol
Speaker 1: Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Business Week, including something Old, Something New, Something Poker,
Speaker 1: and something huge in the Nevada Desert that's later in
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Pursuits. As for the Something Old, Fiser, the more
Speaker 1: than fifty year old company it provided a lifeline and
Speaker 1: make some big profits thanks to its COVID vaccines. As
Speaker 1: for something new, we're going to talk cryptocurrencies and the
Speaker 1: millions that got away under the glare of those in
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Well, speaking of Glaire, we'll paint the picture
Speaker 1: of the massive, nu mental and epic artwork in the
Speaker 1: middle of the harsh Nevada desert. That's are something huge.
Speaker 1: Didn't you like what I did? I did something? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is that like something you know, Anniversary's wedding things? Yes,
Speaker 1: it is. Well. First up this hour, though, we have
Speaker 1: to talk about Fiser. It's the lead story in the
Speaker 1: business section of the magazine. It was also Bloomberg Big
Speaker 1: Take this past week. It's about the next chapter for
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical giant after the success of its COVID vaccine
Speaker 1: has left investors wanting more. Back with us as the
Speaker 1: editor of Bloomberg Business Week, Joel Weber, along with the
Speaker 1: reporter on the story, Bloomberg News US Healthcare reporter Riley Griffin.
Speaker 1: This is poised to be the best year on record
Speaker 1: for Fiser. It's expecting over a hundred billion in revenue,
Speaker 1: and more than half of that is coming from the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen vaccine and its pill. So this is really
Speaker 1: more than blockbuster status. This is literally half their business
Speaker 1: this given year, and it's a major success. But the
Speaker 1: question is are they a victim of their own success?
Speaker 1: And what happens after you ride the roller coaster all
Speaker 1: the way up? So, Riley, if you've got this blockbuster success, um,
Speaker 1: it starts to actually sound like Hollywood a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, you just become a blockbuster factory, but you've
Speaker 1: got to be kind of like seen around the corner,
Speaker 1: like what kind of what kind of bets don't we
Speaker 1: know about yet? Yeah, Fiser is hoping that they can
Speaker 1: take the messenger RNA technology behind its COVID nineteen vaccine
Speaker 1: and apply that to other disease areas to um continue
Speaker 1: to turn out blockbusters. Next year, we should expect to
Speaker 1: see data from its m r and A flu vaccine,
Speaker 1: and after that they're working on shingles. They're trying to
Speaker 1: tackle cancer and rare diseases through messenger are and A.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of questions as to whether
Speaker 1: or not any of those products can reap the same
Speaker 1: kind of success we've seen from the COVID nineteen vaccine
Speaker 1: and couple that with some major generic competition that Fiser
Speaker 1: is facing before the end of the decade, they've got
Speaker 1: a lot of questions to answer to Wall Street. You know,
Speaker 1: we spent the last two years talking about m RNA,
Speaker 1: But what does an m r and a flu shot
Speaker 1: do that's better than a traditional flu shot, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, it's flu shot season everyone, It is flu
Speaker 1: shot season. So the hope that Fiser and its competitor
Speaker 1: Maderna have here is that they can really compress the
Speaker 1: production timeline for a shot. Part of the issue that
Speaker 1: flu shots aren't as good as we'd really like them
Speaker 1: to be is that ultimately scientists around the world they
Speaker 1: can bene twice a year, once for the northern hemisphere,
Speaker 1: once for the southern hemisphere, they have to give quite
Speaker 1: a bit of lead time to be able to produce
Speaker 1: those products, and as we now know with covid, virus
Speaker 1: is mutate to survive. Influenza is pretty good at doing
Speaker 1: that too, and so ultimately, over that long period, the
Speaker 1: virus tends to change and the vaccine is often less
Speaker 1: effective than we would hope. So Fiser is hoping it
Speaker 1: can take that same model that we saw with covid
Speaker 1: and apply that to flu and ultimately get a more
Speaker 1: effective flu shot. Okay, so even if they do that, though,
Speaker 1: I mean COVID, these numbers were insane, Like what, there's
Speaker 1: a reality here, you know, maybe a bullish projection and
Speaker 1: then something something a little smaller than that, Like what
Speaker 1: do the what do analysts have to say about what
Speaker 1: what the bottom line will look like at fights are
Speaker 1: going forward? Wall Street doesn't feel too bullish about Fighter
Speaker 1: right now. The stock is down to date this year,
Speaker 1: and I think that you know, if you follow the
Speaker 1: projections for the COVID vaccine next year and through, it
Speaker 1: goes from you know, about thirty seven billion last year
Speaker 1: to what analysts think is about ten billion in So
Speaker 1: this is a big question. They're gonna have to fill
Speaker 1: that gap, and their internal Messenger RNA pipeline is simply
Speaker 1: not going to be enough. Fiser is saying that they
Speaker 1: actually want to add twenty five billion in revenue just
Speaker 1: via M and A throe. So we should expect a
Speaker 1: great number of deals. And they're not doing this in
Speaker 1: a vacuum. I mean, everybody else has got the you know,
Speaker 1: Messenger rn A memos. At this point, they're all going
Speaker 1: to be competing for top you know, talent, you know,
Speaker 1: for startups that might have something innovative in this space.
Speaker 1: So they've got to do this against this backdrop and
Speaker 1: also against a backdrop of a company that was known
Speaker 1: for like building the top and bottom line by acquisition.
Speaker 1: No doubt, you've got Maderna, You've got bion Tech. It's
Speaker 1: very own partner that is a real expert in this space.
Speaker 1: But you also have other players like Eli Lily right,
Speaker 1: um that just spent seven hundred million dollars to try
Speaker 1: to create a genetic medicines facility in Boston. So even
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard of certain m R and A players, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of these bigger companies, say Fiser isn't the
Speaker 1: only one. I actually spoke with the chief scientific officer
Speaker 1: of Eli Lilly and they said, you know, with something
Speaker 1: like Messenger and A, it's a technology, it's a platform.
Speaker 1: You should expect every pharmaceutical company to use that same
Speaker 1: technology as one of the fundamental pillars of building out
Speaker 1: a drug business moving forward. Okay, so what you know,
Speaker 1: boosters still going to be a part of the business
Speaker 1: going forward. We would think, right, and like, there is
Speaker 1: that version of this where your booster and your flu shot,
Speaker 1: like all magically become one and we use Marne. That
Speaker 1: sounds great, got it, Joe? Yeah, you know, gonna wait,
Speaker 1: won't be happening this year. I have to wait two
Speaker 1: weeks from getting my covid booster to get my flu booster.
Speaker 1: So just arms flendar. But you know, say these things
Speaker 1: stay separate even like what what does that? What does
Speaker 1: that business look like? Are they Is there a conversation
Speaker 1: about keeping these things separate, and maybe that's more lucrative
Speaker 1: than if they're one. So ultimately, Fiser has said that
Speaker 1: it wants to do a flu and covid combo, but
Speaker 1: I think we're still a couple of years away from that.
Speaker 1: We need that that flu shot, that messenger on a
Speaker 1: flu shot to come to market first, and and the
Speaker 1: earliest state is next or earliest timeframe is next year
Speaker 1: for them to be able to do that. But look
Speaker 1: at uptake of boosters now, I mean, Bloomberg Intelligence put
Speaker 1: out a memo today um showing that only two point
Speaker 1: seven percent of the US population has gotten a visor
Speaker 1: or maderna by valent COVID booster, So uptake is increasingly waning.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Webber in US
Speaker 1: healthcare reporter Riley Griffin. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: Coming up, the FED locked up a storage device full
Speaker 1: of illegitimate crypto tokens, and then someone actually stole the loot.
Speaker 1: We'll get more on that right after this. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business This Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovik from Bloomberg Radio. A really
Speaker 1: good read in the finance section of the magazine this
Speaker 1: week details how millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency just
Speaker 1: vanished as federal agents watched helplessly. The story was written
Speaker 1: by David Vorriakos of Bloomberg News and edited by Pat mcneer. Pats,
Speaker 1: the markets and finance editor for the magazine, Patten Business.
Speaker 1: We get her, Joel Webber. They are here to help
Speaker 1: break down the scheme and talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: it's blowback. Remotely swiping bitcoin that's been seized by the
Speaker 1: government that doesn't like totally make sense. You would think
Speaker 1: that couldn't do such a thing, but it turns out
Speaker 1: maybe you could. Pat, So what happened? Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: first thing I asked David when I read an early
Speaker 1: draft of the story, was so the FEDS had basically
Speaker 1: sees these things that kind of look like a small
Speaker 1: hard driver, actually they kind of look like an MP
Speaker 1: three player and put it in a storage locker. And
Speaker 1: I asked the dumb questions, So why didn't they just
Speaker 1: unplug it? Um? Uh, it's not that simple, and the
Speaker 1: FEDS knew it isn't that simple. Uh, you know what's
Speaker 1: actually on one of these storage devices is really just
Speaker 1: uh series of cryptographic private keys Bitcoin of course crypto
Speaker 1: with on the blockchain, and um, if you have the
Speaker 1: right set of passwords, you can reconstruct all those keys
Speaker 1: somewhere else. So when the FEDS basically seized this cash
Speaker 1: of bitcoin as evidence in a money laundering case, um,
Speaker 1: they knew from the get go that, uh, this money
Speaker 1: was very vulnerable to being taken. So they were kind
Speaker 1: of like watching on the blockchain what was happening with
Speaker 1: these wallets, and um they very quickly uh saw those
Speaker 1: coins going away. So what what's what's also interesting here?
Speaker 1: So this arrest, Let's talk about Larry because there are uh,
Speaker 1: there are people uh in the story and in crypto
Speaker 1: or memorable Larry might be one of them. Um uh,
Speaker 1: something of a milestone, just kidding, except for your dad,
Speaker 1: but you've referred to it. But in David's where there's
Speaker 1: something of a milestone in crypto enforcement. What the first
Speaker 1: character in the story, Warry ran what's called a tumbler
Speaker 1: or a mixer. So basically, this is a thing that
Speaker 1: you can use to if you want to sort of
Speaker 1: make your cryptocurrency transaction truly private, right, because you can
Speaker 1: always see addresses on the blockchain, and if you can
Speaker 1: kind of stitch together and that information, you can kind
Speaker 1: of figure out where a bit of bitcoin came from.
Speaker 1: There are these services called mixers and tone where is
Speaker 1: where you sort of like it's what it sounds like, right,
Speaker 1: you just would have mixed together a lot of cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: and and then spit them out in different ways so
Speaker 1: that you can't find it. I'm visualizing pat like a
Speaker 1: rock tumbler that you had when you're a kid, and
Speaker 1: I think that's I don't know, is perhaps that's where
Speaker 1: the name comes from. Right, You put a bunch of
Speaker 1: rocks in, you let it set for a month, and
Speaker 1: the rocks that come out look completely different. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that I think that's basically right, or you're
Speaker 1: just sort of you're you're stirring everything together so that
Speaker 1: you can't figure out sort of where where they came from.
Speaker 1: And that's not per se illegal, but as with a
Speaker 1: lot of things in money wondering, you know, running a
Speaker 1: secret car watch isn't necessarily illegal either, but if you're
Speaker 1: doing it to hide where the money is coming from,
Speaker 1: then that's what's happening. So the Feds win after our
Speaker 1: first character, Larry, for for basically money wandering, um. And
Speaker 1: then suddenly the money began to disappear, and they started asking, okay,
Speaker 1: so who's actually taking the money out of it? And um.
Speaker 1: Ultimately they decided they've actually accused not Larry but his
Speaker 1: brother Gary of doing that. And so I can't make
Speaker 1: this up, right Hilary and Gary. So Gary is still
Speaker 1: awaiting trial, we should say, so this is not this
Speaker 1: is an allegation, but they're looking at uh sort of
Speaker 1: they've they've been following the money. Well, speaking of following
Speaker 1: the money, I cannot do an interview with you, Pat
Speaker 1: without talking about this picture of Gary Harmon that's featured
Speaker 1: in a tub full of money. Uh. This is a
Speaker 1: picture that the U. S. District Court for the District
Speaker 1: of Columbia has. What's going on here? Well, so that's
Speaker 1: a picture that prosecutors found on his phone, um, And
Speaker 1: basically they were collecting evidence that he had come into money.
Speaker 1: So they're sort of looking at that and saying, it's like,
Speaker 1: it looks like this guy, Um, suddenly, you know, had
Speaker 1: had a fair had a fair amount of money. So
Speaker 1: that's nothing only he's bathing in cash. To be fair,
Speaker 1: it does look if you look closely, mostly one dollar bills,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of two dollar bills in there, Like Grandma,
Speaker 1: you're saying, like like six hundred bucks at the most.
Speaker 1: Here Joel, it looks a little bit less than that.
Speaker 1: But is this what you to do for your birthday?
Speaker 1: I mean, it certainly seems like a good idea. Don't
Speaker 1: take a photo of it? Right, So how do this
Speaker 1: all kind of unfold? I mean? And how it all
Speaker 1: came to be? So, you know, our reporter David vyakas mean,
Speaker 1: he's always sort of like watching court cases, and so
Speaker 1: he's been, you know, sort of looking at how these
Speaker 1: cases have been moving through court. But what this is,
Speaker 1: this is really a case of like in the early.
Speaker 1: You know, there are people who want to use bitcoin
Speaker 1: to make transactions that maybe you shouldn't be making. UM
Speaker 1: and uh, there's a place called the darknet where people
Speaker 1: do that, sort of a part of the Internet that's
Speaker 1: not easily accessible on Google. And so first of all,
Speaker 1: you're connecting in buyers and sellers. But then the question is,
Speaker 1: so how do the buyers since sellers pay for the
Speaker 1: things that you're not supposed to be paying for. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: is one way, but as we've just discussed, it's not
Speaker 1: perfectly anonymous. There are services that are actually very good
Speaker 1: at following the bread crumbs. So, uh, Larry Herman's innovation
Speaker 1: was finding a way to obscure those transactions, and it
Speaker 1: was very successful and it got the government's attention. And
Speaker 1: as as you know, it's not this is not the
Speaker 1: only service that's gotten the government's attention since then, right,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's another one called Tornado Cash,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people who are in
Speaker 1: this um are asking like, how how long will these
Speaker 1: mixers be around? So we've got some interesting people and
Speaker 1: there's a hard drive full of bitcoin, Bitcoin now worse
Speaker 1: more than it was. Then, What what did law enforcement observe.
Speaker 1: They've got the devices in a locker, but what they
Speaker 1: what you really want to watch where the action is
Speaker 1: on the blockchain, and so you're looking at wallets. So
Speaker 1: they had a list of like sixteen wallets. What does
Speaker 1: the wallet look like? I mean, you're just looking at
Speaker 1: an address for a bunch of numbers and then there's
Speaker 1: just a certain number of bitcoin assigned to it, and
Speaker 1: then they could begin to see like those bitcoin, we're
Speaker 1: just going away or they were getting transactual way and
Speaker 1: like you know, and um, so you should have unplugged
Speaker 1: the hard drive. You should have unplugged hard drive. As
Speaker 1: we said, it doesn't really matter whether you un wondering
Speaker 1: that's what I was wondering. If if if you if
Speaker 1: you do have one of these USB like our old
Speaker 1: school you know, MP three player type things, and that's
Speaker 1: what you store your bitcoin on, does that mean it's
Speaker 1: not safe? Like it can still be accessed because it's well,
Speaker 1: what everyone in crypto will tell you the most important
Speaker 1: thing is to never give away your seed phrase. So
Speaker 1: seed phrase is a thing that can be used to
Speaker 1: basically reconstruct raven lands at midnight. So that's not mine.
Speaker 1: So is that what you mean, do you it's it's
Speaker 1: it's something literally like, um, a bunch of random numbers,
Speaker 1: you know, or I'm sorry, not a bunch of randrooms.
Speaker 1: A string of random words. There's usually twelve, sometimes twenty four.
Speaker 1: And um, I am not an expert on how the
Speaker 1: cryptography works, but it's cryptographically related to I believe the
Speaker 1: private keys that you're using. And so if you enter
Speaker 1: that seed phrase and this this, this is not just
Speaker 1: with the hardware, while this is with a software whallet,
Speaker 1: that seed phrase is the thing that's it's it's the
Speaker 1: key to everything. That was Bloomberg business Week Markets and
Speaker 1: Finance editor Pat Regnier alongside Bloomberg business Week editor Joel Webber.
Speaker 1: All right, still to come on Bloomberg business Week. We
Speaker 1: might think that quitters never win and winners never quit,
Speaker 1: but the truth is winners quit a lot. Carol You
Speaker 1: and Ed Ludlow spoke with former pro poker player and
Speaker 1: author Any Duke and how the art of quitting is
Speaker 1: something that extends far beyond the poker table. That's coming
Speaker 1: up next. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital
Speaker 1: of the world, Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one, O six one
Speaker 1: to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country, Sirius
Speaker 1: XM General one nine 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. I'm not sure about you, but I
Speaker 1: grew up with parents that stress. Not giving up easily
Speaker 1: or at all, to be quite honest, not walking away
Speaker 1: from things and yet learning to do just that may
Speaker 1: be a very very important life lesson. And our next
Speaker 1: guest writes about that. Yeah, we're talking about the former
Speaker 1: professional poker player Annie Duke. She's also the best selling
Speaker 1: author of Thinking in Bets and the co founder of
Speaker 1: the Alliance for Decision Education. It's a nonprofit that has
Speaker 1: the mission of empowering students through decision skills. The latest book, Quit,
Speaker 1: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, has a
Speaker 1: lot of advice when it comes to making tough choices,
Speaker 1: and not just at the poker table. She spoke with
Speaker 1: Blueberg News West Coast correspondent Ed Ludlow and myself. I
Speaker 1: think there's just a really interesting conversation to be had
Speaker 1: between poker, which is this very high stakes decision making
Speaker 1: under uncertainty exercise, and cognitive science, which is thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we make decisions? And I think
Speaker 1: that the two disciplines can really inform each other. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the way I started thinking about quitting was
Speaker 1: that realizing that the option to quit, that option is
Speaker 1: so incredibly valuable in poker, because if you couldn't fold
Speaker 1: your hand, it wouldn't really be that skillful game, right,
Speaker 1: and poker players have to really think about how to
Speaker 1: get good at cut and their losses. And actually, when
Speaker 1: you look at the difference between elite players and merely okay,
Speaker 1: one one of the biggest differences between amateurs and experts
Speaker 1: and poker is how often they fold. When you just
Speaker 1: look at they get their first two card combination in
Speaker 1: a game of Texas hold them, amateurs will play over
Speaker 1: fifty of their hands, so they're folding less than half
Speaker 1: the time, whereas experts are playing about fifteen. You were
Speaker 1: one of the top poker players for twenty years, right,
Speaker 1: and you've written this book, and it's hard to get
Speaker 1: one's head around the strength of being able to walk away.
Speaker 1: Talk me through the psychology of that. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Whenever we make a decision, we don't have all the facts,
Speaker 1: and luck is going to influence the outcome. So I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've had that feeling d of Oh, I wish
Speaker 1: I knew then what I know now. I might have
Speaker 1: made a daily basis of course, right. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at what's happening with the market right like you're You're
Speaker 1: finding out information very rapidly every single day. So this
Speaker 1: is where the option to equip become so valuable because
Speaker 1: it'll allows us to start things even though we don't
Speaker 1: have all the facts. That we know very little, because
Speaker 1: we know theoretically that when we find out new information,
Speaker 1: we can actually change our minds and we can change course.
Speaker 1: The problem for us as decision makers, though, is that
Speaker 1: that decision is itself made under uncertainty. I got to
Speaker 1: cool you out on that though, because you are also
Speaker 1: a venture capitalists, and this is what fascinates me. You're
Speaker 1: a seed stage venture capitalist, right, you invest in many companies,
Speaker 1: not all of them are going to be successful. How
Speaker 1: do you say, right? I have to say no, I
Speaker 1: have to walk away from this potential opportunity, So you
Speaker 1: have to be thinking in a structured way about the decision.
Speaker 1: So essentially you're taking all of your experience and you
Speaker 1: are thinking about what are the signals that I see
Speaker 1: that tell me that an investment is worthwhile? And then
Speaker 1: you have to systematize that. So, as an example, let's
Speaker 1: say that you know at Seed what you care about.
Speaker 1: What's the quality of the market, what's the quality of
Speaker 1: the product, what's quality of the founder, what's quality of
Speaker 1: the team. You have to be systematic and making very
Speaker 1: clear and precise ratings of those things every time a
Speaker 1: founder comes into pitch, and then you also have to
Speaker 1: be thinking ahead. And by doing that, what it allows
Speaker 1: you to do, first of all, is to overcome some bias,
Speaker 1: and you're creating a record that then allows you, as
Speaker 1: you see how those companies do, to go back and
Speaker 1: check on them and say, what was I thinking at
Speaker 1: the time, and like, how were my forecasts? You know,
Speaker 1: I was looking at your book and you're right, you know.
Speaker 1: We need to redefine what failed and wasted means. You know,
Speaker 1: when we worry so much about quitting, and that quitting
Speaker 1: means that we failed. What exactly are we failing at
Speaker 1: If you quit something that's no longer worth pursuing, that's
Speaker 1: not a failure of that's a success. Talk about Anie
Speaker 1: turning it upside down. So the problem, Carol, is that
Speaker 1: we tend to think about waste as a backward looking problem. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're worried if we are in a job and
Speaker 1: it doesn't work out and we have to quit and
Speaker 1: walk away, that we'll have wasted our time in it.
Speaker 1: So these have to do with like resources that we've
Speaker 1: already sunk into this, And this is part of the
Speaker 1: sunk cost fallacy prevents us from walking away because that's
Speaker 1: the moment that you go from failing to having failed.
Speaker 1: That's the moment you go from having a ten dollar
Speaker 1: loss on the books to having a realized ten dollar
Speaker 1: loss or a sure loss of ten dollars. And the
Speaker 1: problem with that backward looking perspective is that it causes
Speaker 1: you to put more time, effort, and money into something
Speaker 1: that isn't worthwhile. Was there a real life lesson that
Speaker 1: you learned where you didn't quit when you should have?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, absolutely so. I think I, like most people,
Speaker 1: have stuck to things too long. I should have quit
Speaker 1: poker earlier. I wasn't happy. And the other thing was
Speaker 1: that the game was changing in a way where players
Speaker 1: were getting way better than me, and I, honestly, at
Speaker 1: that point in my career didn't want to put in
Speaker 1: the time to keep up. And so I think I
Speaker 1: took too long to get to that decision. And I
Speaker 1: think part of the reason why, and this is a
Speaker 1: really important lesson, is that when your identity is wrapped
Speaker 1: up in it, but I was a poker player, I
Speaker 1: think it becomes very, very hard to walk away. And
Speaker 1: we need to be thinking about that in these types
Speaker 1: of decisions. Is is it because you know, am I happy?
Speaker 1: Or is it because I feel like it's kind of
Speaker 1: who I am. That's former professional poker player and author
Speaker 1: Annie Duke. Be sure to check out her latest book, Quit,
Speaker 1: The Power of Knowing When to walk Away gets out. Now,
Speaker 1: Do you know when to quit? Don't? It's hard? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really hard. All right. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we talk desert art and New York City
Speaker 1: co ops as we take on the pursuit section of
Speaker 1: the magazine. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg business
Speaker 1: Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Radio. Every new walk is like a new
Speaker 1: piece of box. It does in different stories to tell
Speaker 1: the time. Wines as a whole really speak to that
Speaker 1: quintessential Need is the most powerful car made in the
Speaker 1: US period. You get the beautiful interior, the iconic design.
Speaker 1: It's very chee and pos even if you be for it.
Speaker 1: It's something that when I can get Tom Neper a
Speaker 1: weekly dive into the Pursuit section of Bloomberg Business Week magazine.
Speaker 1: So happy to have with us Bloomberg Business Week Arts
Speaker 1: columnist James Tarmy. I believe he's arts extraordinary, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He can be whatever he wants. And this is a
Speaker 1: space where we can come up with our own titles.
Speaker 1: So James welcome. You've got the lead story in this
Speaker 1: week's Pursuits section in which you ventured out in the
Speaker 1: vast Nevada desert to explore artists Michael Heiser's two ninety
Speaker 1: nine acre work of art. It's called City. Yes, James
Speaker 1: is here. We also have the editor of the Pursuits
Speaker 1: section World Chris Rouser. He is with us um alright.
Speaker 1: So first of all, all right, who found out about
Speaker 1: this first? So James has been working on this, uh
Speaker 1: for a very long time. The artist Michael Heiser is reclusive.
Speaker 1: He's been working on this for decades. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: very hard. It was very hard to get access to it.
Speaker 1: But James has been working on it for a really
Speaker 1: long time. And one is one of the first humans
Speaker 1: to actually have ventured inside. Why is it so hard
Speaker 1: to get access to you can't you just drive up
Speaker 1: and like sneak in. This thing is huge. I just
Speaker 1: want to know, you said first humans? Are you telling
Speaker 1: me like a terrestrial people? I mean, if you've been there,
Speaker 1: that's what it looks like. Well. And also it's very
Speaker 1: close to Area fifty one. Actually, the conspiracy theories, it
Speaker 1: is around three hours north of Las Vegas. You've got
Speaker 1: to drive for an hour and a half to a
Speaker 1: small town called Alamo, and then there's a driver who
Speaker 1: picks you up, puts you in a big suv, drives
Speaker 1: you through the desert for another hour and a half
Speaker 1: into something that resembles the middle of nowhere. It's this
Speaker 1: vast Nevada plane with mountain ranges and it's actually on
Speaker 1: a private ranch, so you definitely cannot just sort of
Speaker 1: drive up and see it. And lots of people have
Speaker 1: actually tried, and lots of people have actually failed. But
Speaker 1: the artist Michael Heiser, who's been working on this for
Speaker 1: fifty years, has finally decided that it's open to the public,
Speaker 1: if not complete fifty years, that's incredible. What I what
Speaker 1: I love about that is that he was thinking about
Speaker 1: this before. And I hate to say this, but anyone
Speaker 1: who's traveled anywhere over the last five years, it's like
Speaker 1: just people with their phones taking photos for Instagram. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm like very concerned that's been like this could easily
Speaker 1: turn into that. You don't need to worry because I
Speaker 1: had to sign several legal forms saying that I wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed to take photographs and hey, their photos in here,
Speaker 1: they're great. Yes, well I didn't take them, unfortunately, But
Speaker 1: you know what I what I will say is that
Speaker 1: it is not a place that photographs will because it's
Speaker 1: so vast that it doesn't look cute in shots. But
Speaker 1: when you're there, the actual experience of being there is overwhelming.
Speaker 1: So describe it for us. What is it, what does
Speaker 1: it look like, and what does it feel like, so
Speaker 1: you drive up to this ranch and it doesn't actually
Speaker 1: look like very much when you get there, because the
Speaker 1: majority of this structure, which is over a mile and
Speaker 1: a half long, half a mile wide, right, I mean
Speaker 1: this is more than half of Central Park. So you
Speaker 1: get there and the majority of it has been excavated,
Speaker 1: so you actually walk down into it and it's these
Speaker 1: undulating rolling valleys and crescents and stadia um covered in
Speaker 1: two different kinds of ground ale with these concrete curbs
Speaker 1: that are sort of decorative but also sort of delineate
Speaker 1: large pebbles from small pebbles. It's very weird. And then
Speaker 1: there are two colossal and when I say colossal, actually
Speaker 1: mean colossal, but the word is thrown around quite casually
Speaker 1: these days. But these things are seventy feet high, I
Speaker 1: mean humongous. These sculptures at either end, and the entire
Speaker 1: work can be conceived of as a sculpture too, So
Speaker 1: you just sort of wander through for hours. I mean,
Speaker 1: it takes a really long time to get from one
Speaker 1: end to the other, and it's this kind of all
Speaker 1: encompassing experience. It's also ever changing, right, because of the materials,
Speaker 1: It's been changed a lot because Michael Heiser keeps changing it.
Speaker 1: But the idea is actually that it's going to stay
Speaker 1: basically the same. A lot of it is concrete. It
Speaker 1: has around a million dollar operating budget every year to
Speaker 1: just maintain the place. It's supposed to stay the way
Speaker 1: that it is. That being said, Nevada and the Nevada
Speaker 1: Desert is a pretty harsh place, and so invariably things
Speaker 1: are going to happen to it that sort of change
Speaker 1: the way that it looks and feels. So Heiser is
Speaker 1: part of of the land art movement, right, and some
Speaker 1: land ar is meant to decay and fade away like
Speaker 1: spiral jetty. People might be familiar with. Tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about the movements. Um and then also what
Speaker 1: these sculptures look like. It's very interesting because in pictures
Speaker 1: they look like something really specific. They look like kind
Speaker 1: of giant sort of abstract chess pieces or sun dials.
Speaker 1: They're like triangles, exactly triangle squares modern day stonehegees, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then there's another sculpture that sort of looks like
Speaker 1: this really long bunker, and then there's this other part
Speaker 1: that sort of looks like a pyramid. But then you
Speaker 1: get there, and it's reminiscent of all of these things.
Speaker 1: So there's but it actually doesn't look like anything that
Speaker 1: you've seen before, which is obviously a bit of a
Speaker 1: trial to explain it to people with without the photographs.
Speaker 1: But in reality it looks otherworldly but also like this
Speaker 1: incredible monumental relic. What's pretty amazing about this, James, is
Speaker 1: that you said he's been working on it since nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: It's still not done in his mind. It's not, but
Speaker 1: it feels pretty complete when you got there. What's not
Speaker 1: done about it in his mind? Um? I think that
Speaker 1: so he didn't have a master plan, so he as
Speaker 1: you got more money, or as you got any money, um,
Speaker 1: he would periodically updated and expand it, and it would grow.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a sort of overarching strategy for it, and
Speaker 1: I think in his mind it can keep growing in
Speaker 1: a sort of organic way and he can keep modifying
Speaker 1: the existing parts of it once it actually continues to expand.
Speaker 1: That being said, um, a lot of people seem to
Speaker 1: feel that it's done, and being there myself, it definitely
Speaker 1: felt like a cogent, sort of clear work of art.
Speaker 1: And sorry, if you want to go see it what
Speaker 1: this year because she can't. Well, so a couple of
Speaker 1: thousand people applied in the first week that it was
Speaker 1: said to be open. Six people can visit it at
Speaker 1: a time, no more per his instructions, um and something
Speaker 1: for the masses everybody. Well, you know, and it feels
Speaker 1: like it should be. But I understand. Yeah, the thing
Speaker 1: is that you want to be there by yourself. Like
Speaker 1: the minute that becomes an amusement park is the minute
Speaker 1: it doesn't have this kind of other worldly sense of contemplation.
Speaker 1: What is it costs that negotiate around a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for general tickets in theory, but currently they're
Speaker 1: not really charging anyone anything to show up, and anyone
Speaker 1: in the surrounding counties can go for free. All right.
Speaker 1: I would love to actually just keep talking about this,
Speaker 1: but I do feel like we have to go from
Speaker 1: those massive monuments to the elite buildings known as co ops,
Speaker 1: a different kind of monument in some people's minds. Tell
Speaker 1: us about this story, Well, how come co ops, Chris,
Speaker 1: This is a bit of a city and country especial.
Speaker 1: We've we've reviewed two hotels where and Michael Heiser's artwork
Speaker 1: is called city. It's and uh so we thought, really,
Speaker 1: let's get into um commentary on the city, and then like,
Speaker 1: let's do our own commentary on the city. And these
Speaker 1: are perceived to be relics from a different time. So
Speaker 1: just generally speaking, the kind of best co ops in
Speaker 1: New York City or on the Upper East Side and
Speaker 1: on Central Park West on the West Side, and they
Speaker 1: are places that are owned by their shareholders, which means
Speaker 1: that everyone who lives in these buildings has a financial
Speaker 1: responsibility to maintain them. And what that has ultimately led
Speaker 1: to for decades is super super super restrictive entry requirements
Speaker 1: to actually get in, and the co upboard can just
Speaker 1: say no, they can't be a part of ours. But
Speaker 1: this is a thing that people outside of New York
Speaker 1: City have no idea how how they work. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking about buildings where you have to pay in
Speaker 1: all cash in order to actually buy a place there,
Speaker 1: and you're not even actually buying the place, you're buying
Speaker 1: shares in the building. And to be clear, all cash
Speaker 1: to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, and
Speaker 1: oftentimes there's a requirement that you have tens of million
Speaker 1: dollars left in your bank account. What's great about that
Speaker 1: is what's great about that is um it comes with
Speaker 1: all these amenities, usually like a brand new pool, a
Speaker 1: state of the art gym, was right right right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Terrorist none of that? Wait what no central air all
Speaker 1: the time? That would be that would be this is insane,
Speaker 1: This is completely crazy. Didn't a co op turn down
Speaker 1: Madonna way? That's the Bearsford famously famously fun. That being said,
Speaker 1: this is not a piece about how awful co ops are.
Speaker 1: This is a piece about how co ops, very very
Speaker 1: slowly have sort of woken up and realized that they
Speaker 1: are being left in the dust by super high end
Speaker 1: condominiums where you just simply own your apartment out right,
Speaker 1: very different less restrictions, and co ops have basically decided
Speaker 1: that they are going to lower the entry requirements ever
Speaker 1: so slightly in an effort to not only raise their
Speaker 1: property values but also get a different generation of people inside.
Speaker 1: Hence the co op flip flip flap. Even co op
Speaker 1: flip flaps say that five times fast. But hey, we
Speaker 1: only have about a minute or so, Chris, what else
Speaker 1: is in h I know there's a place Tim is
Speaker 1: dying to go to that I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: able to go okay, So there's We have two hotel reviews.
Speaker 1: The first is Wildflower Farm, which is a new Oh
Speaker 1: Bears resort upstate, which is uh a, it's a sort
Speaker 1: of a working farm. You can go feed chickens, you
Speaker 1: can go feed pigs. Are Jim Gaddy went and reviewed
Speaker 1: it said it's very luxurious. You can spend a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a night to feed those those chickens. And then
Speaker 1: Hannah Elliott, who is, as you know, the coolest person
Speaker 1: in the world, who's also nice. Um, we had her
Speaker 1: fly into from l A to review the Chelsea Hotel,
Speaker 1: which is which has been resurrected. It's still full of ghosts.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the famous hotel where Arthur Miller stay,
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith and Robert and Robert Mayblethorpe were
Speaker 1: roommates there. It's been closed for many years and being
Speaker 1: been been renovated. It's been a hundred million dollars renovating
Speaker 1: it and now it's it's this kind of combo of
Speaker 1: glamorous and also kind of crappy, like it really feels
Speaker 1: like it should be uh and handled loved it and
Speaker 1: rooms there started at about a night, so it's a
Speaker 1: little cheaper than the wild Flower. Oh my god, what
Speaker 1: a great section. You guys really loved it and loved
Speaker 1: reading through and it. Thank you so much. Yeah, big
Speaker 1: thank you to Bloomberg Business Week Arts columns James Tarmy
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser. Thanks so much, guys,
Speaker 1: And that wraps up the weekend edition to Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Master, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us, and I'm Tim Snanovik. Be sure to
Speaker 1: tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday, starting at
Speaker 1: two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can
Speaker 1: also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Global News and check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast.
Speaker 1: You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast. Bloomberg Business Week is available
Speaker 1: on newstands now, at Bloomberg dot com and on the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Terminal. You can also see me on Bloomberg Quick Take,
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Speaker 1: great weekend, everyone day, say this, this Bloomberg