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- [00:01]
Scott Galloway
Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast and here you are. But home projects are a little different. If the podcast isn't your thing, you
- [00:11]
Ed Elson
might lose a few minutes from your day.
- [00:12]
Scott Galloway
But if you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your tv, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. I know a guy isn't a good
- [00:21]
Ed Elson
strategy for your home.
- [00:22]
Scott Galloway
That's why Thumbtack works so well. It matches you with top rated local pros with photos, reviews and credentials all in one convenient place. For your next home project, try Thumbtack.
- [00:36]
Ed Elson
Hire the right pro today.
- [00:41]
Scott Galloway
Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com that's o d o-o.com.
- [01:23]
Ed Elson
Support for the show comes from Amazon.
- [01:26]
Scott Galloway
There are the things you can plan for a first birthday party, a movie marathon, a renter friendly bathroom reno. And then there are the things you
- [01:35]
Ed Elson
can never plan for.
- [01:37]
Scott Galloway
A surprise rainstorm, a Blu ray player calling it quits. Stick on tiles that looked way better on the package for all things planned and unplanned, Amazon has you covered. You'll find low prices on everyday essentials and last minute lifesavers. Shop Amazon and save on essentials.
- [01:56]
Ed Elson
Save the everyday.
- [02:00]
Scott Galloway
Today's number $109 billion. That's how much Americans spent on lottery tickets last year. More than they spent on movies, books, concerts and sports tickets combined. Ed trustor my ex wife asked if I'd still love her if I won the lottery and I'd say yes, of course sweetheart. I'd miss you, but I'd still love you.
- [02:31]
Ed Elson
I've never bought a lottery ticket. Have you?
- [02:33]
Scott Galloway
Whenever my kids have friends over, I go out and I buy a bunch of lottery tickets and I come back and we play scratch. We love it. It's totally fun. Kids love lotto. They love lotto. They like. It is just amazing watching them celebrate me spending $20 so they can win
- [02:50]
Ed Elson
three so they get the money because I'm imagining this like it's your opportunity to win the lottery and they are allowed to be witness to that.
- [02:57]
Scott Galloway
They're just child labor, scratching stuff off.
- [03:03]
Ed Elson
But they. So they get the money if. If they win. Is that the deal?
- [03:06]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, of course. Unless it's big. Unless it's big. Then papa needs to come in and by. By a second. Ferrari, let me give you a little. Let me give a little tip, all right. When you go on a vacation or something and there's kids around, like eight. Not, not eight, like 10. Teenagers, anyone like 10 to 16. You want to be the cool uncle. Like, at some point your friends will start procreating. And I was looking for a good joke there. I couldn't think of it. Anyways, and you'll show up and what you do is you bring lottery tickets for the teenage. For the. For the kids. It's fun. It's a ton of fun.
- [03:42]
Ed Elson
Sort of buy your way into the halts.
- [03:44]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, that's called being a man, Ed.
- [03:47]
Ed Elson
But you don't.
- [03:48]
Scott Galloway
You think that's.
- [03:49]
Ed Elson
I agree.
- [03:49]
Scott Galloway
Oh, okay. I agree, Mr. Purist. Buying your way into their hearts.
- [03:54]
Ed Elson
I'm just putting words to it. I'm. I'm with you. I'm with you. What do you think?
- [03:59]
Scott Galloway
You get it on your charm and eq. Yeah. That's what we do, Ed. That's what we do.
- [04:05]
Ed Elson
I love it. I think it's good advice. Bribe them with lottery tickets, maybe candy. That's what my granddad used to do. He would just give us a bunch of candy and then my mom would get all upset with him because we weren't allowed to be having that. But we loved him for it. It was a hit. That's the way to do it. I think I'll probably employ that strategy as well.
- [04:22]
Scott Galloway
I just give up straight up cash. And I like to put it. I like to put it in a rubber band so I feel like a mobster now. I slip it in their pocket. I'm like, don't tell your dad. Don't tell your dad. Don't tell your dad.
- [04:32]
Ed Elson
I love that. I genuinely love that.
- [04:35]
Scott Galloway
We only have nine days until the Prof. G Market store kicks off with a sold out show in San Francisco on May 27th. We're then headed to LA on the 28th. Ted Sarandos, the CEO of Netflix, will be our special guest. And then we head to Miami for the 30th and then Chicago on June 1st, where we'll be interviewing Governor JB Pritzker and who will be joining us on stage. And on June 2nd, we're finishing things off with the one and only Anthony Scaramucci in New York City. Tickets are still available, but we are going to sell out. So if you're interested in la, Miami, Chicago, and I think we still have a few left in New York City, visit propertymarketstour.com to secure your tickets now. Are you excited about this, Ed?
- [05:20]
Ed Elson
Very excited. Finally hitting the road. We've got our guests, CEO of Netflix. We're going to ask him. Ted Sarandos, what's happening to Hollywood? Does Hollywood have a future? It'll be very spicy, I'm sure. I'm sure you will have some hot takes and kind of put him in the hot seat. I'm excited to speak with Governor Pritzker about the future of America. What we should do about AI policy, what we should do about policy related to wealth inequality and income inequality, which has obviously been a huge theme on our show. And then there's nothing better than finishing things off with the mooch who's just the man. I'm very excited. Scott is going to be. It's going to be big. It's going to be a lot of fun.
- [05:58]
Scott Galloway
It's going to be a good time.
- [05:59]
Ed Elson
Shall we get into our stories?
- [06:00]
Scott Galloway
Let's do it. Now is the time to buy. I hope you have plenty of the wherewithal.
- [06:10]
Ed Elson
Two new inflation reports last week painted a very discouraging picture. Consumer prices rose 3.8% in April from a year ago, marking the highest inflation reading in three years. But perhaps even more notably, for the first time in three years, wage growth failed to keep pace with inflation. So real wages are going down. The pressure wasn't just on the consumer side. Producer prices, which measure wholesale inflation, they also climbed 6% year over year. That was not only hotter than expected, but it was the biggest increase since 2022. So, Scott, the inflation picture is not looking good. First, we had the tariffs. We had Liberation Day, which we said on this show would increase inflation. It was somehow a debate back then. I remember saying, I think prices are going to rise significantly by the end of the year, which is exactly what happened. And I remembered a lot of people saying, oh, really? You think so? Because the treasury secretary is saying the opposite. The president is saying the opposite. And now, of course, that's exactly what happened. We went from 2.3%, which rose to 3% in just a matter of months. And then you add on top of it, this war in Iran, which is massively increasing the price of fuel, massively increasing oil prices and therefore gas prices, is probably going to have some more effects on food prices. Down the line, we're up to 3.8%. And they say about the producer price index, the wholesale inflation, that that is really our best indicator of what is to come because that's sort of the top of the supply chain. That's what businesses are paying for products, and then those businesses are going to pass those on to consumers. So it's probably going to keep going up. And I think there's so much to get into here on what prices could do to not only our economy, but also to markets. I have some thoughts on what the chain reaction might look like, but let's just start with your reactions to these inflation numbers that we just got last week.
- [08:08]
Scott Galloway
Trump won reelection in large part because of his promise to reduce prices. But now his approval on inflation is worse than President Biden's ever was striking. Obviously, the Iran war is driving a very visible price, and that is energy. And specifically that was responsible for 40% of last month's inflation increase. Gas is over $4.50 nationwide. In California, it's over $6. What's interesting, or what I find is interesting is that this type people, I think people are too focused on from a societal standpoint. Unemployment. Unemployment is 4.5%. At some point, at some point, we got to start. Someone has to acknowledge that this whole AI job apocalypse has been a bunch of fucking bullshit. But that doesn't mean we're off the hook. Because if you look at societal unrest, it's not when people aren't working that they revolt. It's when people are working and yet they're hungry. And that's exactly what's happening now. We don't basically, inflation is outpacing wages, which means your quality of life goes down. So someone who's out of work is depressed, but someone who's working two fucking jobs and can't pay for their health insurance, they're angry. And so I do think this is really going to haunt the president. And when the Republicans in the midterms, this is when people get very, very angry as they think, okay, I can't take a vacation this year, despite the fact I just took on another evening shift on the weekends.
- [09:39]
Ed Elson
No, I think the political impacts are plain to see. We're already seeing a consumer sentiment, which is in a lot of ways a political poll, hitting record lows, his approval ratings just tanking. We're definitely going to see this show up at the midterms and maybe even the next election, too. I mean, the political implications are just enormous. I think what is interesting is the markets so Far as we've discussed are then investors aren't so worried about this. There's the political implications, then there's the market implications. And one of the things that we've been talking about is yes, these higher prices impact the real economy, it impacts consumers. But increasingly that doesn't matter when you look at stock prices because the stock market is largely a reflection of big tech and also the spending habits of the top 10%. And those people and those companies aren't really affected by inflation. They're not really affected by gas prices going up. This stuff doesn't really matter. Something I'm beginning to think though, and bear with me on this because I'm going to go through kind of like a chain reaction of events that could occur here that I think that investors should really be considering and perhaps even pricing in. I think we are underestimating the possibility that we're going to see an impact on consumer spending as a result of inflation, which will be semi material to these big tech companies, but will be very material to the stock market. So the reason I think this is because it feels very much like what happened in 2022. And what happened in 2022 was you had this unbelievable inflation which had an impact on consumer spending, but it wasn't gigantic. Essentially what you had was you had very, very strong consumer spending growth in 2021. And then as inflation started to show up and people started to really feel the that consumer spending still grew, but the growth was a lot smaller. It was 3% versus 9% the year before. So consumer spending growth fell 70%, around 6 percentage points. So you saw a deceleration in consumer spending. Now that sounds like not a big deal. That probably doesn't matter. But what it led to was something really interesting, which I think we could be in for in 2026, which was a deceleration in, in marketing budgets and advertising budgets. And people kind of forget this. But this was the thing that really killed the tech sector in 2022, which by the way fell around 30% that year. It was a lot, it was a lot bigger drop than the S and P, which fell around 20%, which is its worst year since 2008. But all the tech stocks just got crushed. Meta got crushed, Google got crushed. And a big reason why that happened was because suddenly consumers didn't have as much money to spend. They weren't spending as much or they weren't. The trajectory of their spending wasn't as fast and accelerating as it used to be. And as a result, advertisers decided to stop spending. And this was an SEC filing from Meta back in 2022, which I think has a lot of similarities to what we're seeing today. They said, quote, as macroeconomic pressures reduce the likelihood of consumer purchases of discretionary goods and services, advertisers are more likely to their spending as they anticipate a lower return on investment. The company also believes that marketers have reduced spend as a result of pressures on their advertising budgets by factors such as inflation, rising interest rates, and related market uncertainty. So that was their diagnosis, that you had inflation, which was affecting the marketing budgets, which was affecting their revenues. And indeed, that is exactly what we saw. Meta's revenues declined. They declined by about 4% by the end of the year. We saw the same thing with Google's ad business. Search revenue declined 2%. YouTube ad revenue fell 8%. The Google Ad network, their revenue fell 9% by the end of the year. And so essentially what you had was this small little moment of inflation, not reducing consumer spending overall, but just having an impact on the growth. It had a material impact on the advertising ecosystem, which then had a material impact on the businesses of big tech. And then of course, we saw Meta comes out and they say, hey, we're struggling right now and so we're going to be a lot more efficient. We're going to pull back on our spending. We, we issued these very large capex guidance numbers and we're going to reduce them now because now we need to get serious because we're seeing that our growth isn't as exciting as we used to see. This feels very much like what could happen this year. The entire market is dependent on the capex guidance of a few companies. We're now seeing inflation, which I believe is here to stay, because I don't think we're getting out of Iran anytime soon. And as soon as that impacts consumer spending such that it impacts advertising budgets and digital ad dollars, I do believe that could have a serious impact on the tech companies and as a result, how much money they're willing to spend on AI, and therefore sentiment and excitement and momentum as it relates to the AI trade, which, as we have discussed, is essentially propping up this entire market. I'm not saying that is going to happen, but I think that is a series of events that could happen. I apologize for the long explanation, but I do think it's important that that is at least on my mind right now.
- [15:10]
Scott Galloway
Your narrative is a logical one. The two things that I think will probably, again, along the lines of what could go right I think that you likely will see a reduction in consumer advertising because of a decrease in consumer spend because of inflationary pressures and sort of this no hire, no fire environment and a lowering in consumer confidence. The only thing that I think will buttress the ad market, and I'm seeing this firsthand, the AI companies are going to spend tens of billions of dollars on marketing. And that's money that didn't exist even two, three years ago. Because between OpenAI and Anthropic, they're in a celebrity death match. And then Gemini, all of these guys, there's literally trillions of dollars up for grabs. At least their view is that whoever establishes leadership or the number two spot, whoever is the leader, gets a trillion more in market cap. Whoever's the number two gets 500 billion more than the number three. They just trade at higher multiples and then down and down and down. So they're gonna, as I think they hit technical parity. I think they're gonna massively increase their traditional marketing or budgets. And those line items didn't even exist before. We're starting to get advertisers from AI that I just had never heard before because the race is so fast. It's like in 98, 99, when I raised money for Red Envelope, we just spent so much. We were drunk sailors. It was like, okay, gotta get brand awareness because we're going public in 99 or 2000, so we're buying pages in Conde Nast. By the way, I just went to see the Devil Rose. Prada too. You can save your money. They all look, they all look very hot. I will give them that. But it took me back to the aughts when I was just spending a shit ton of money trying to build e commerce companies and E commerce companies were spending money like drunken sailors. And I think you're going to see that for the next 12 or 24 months. I just think the hyperscalers are going to spend. I don't think Anthropic even has a CMO right now. They're going to spend so much money on marketing over the next 24 months. Once they actually get a CMO who comes to them, who will be someone who wears black and looks cooler than they and gets invited to cooler parties and starts talking about brand and intangibles and associations and feelings and brings up the Sophie ad, Google search ad that made everyone cry, and they will talk Dario Mode into spending $20 billion on branding that did not exist before. In addition, the thing your analysis doesn't incorporate is that Andreessen Horowitz two or three years ago spent zero dollars on elections. This year they're going to spend 115 million. The midterms are coming up. We're about to see the most obnoxious, unhealthy, anti democratic tsunami of money going to these elections. And it's all going to flow through podcasts, print ads, direct mail, local tv, local news stations. And I think that will be another crazy sugar high. So I'm actually. I think I'm less bearish on the ad market than you are. It'll be very interesting. I'm going to Cannes next month to get their read. Although no one ever really talks about anything. We just drink rose and then we go see, like the killers at the Spotify beach party. But I'll try and track down someone who knows what they're talking about to ask them about the ad market. But my sense is the hyperscalers are about to become entirely new spenders in this space.
- [18:50]
Ed Elson
So I think that's a really interesting point, and I just want to be clear on where I stand on this. I'm not necessarily bearish on the ad market as a whole, but I think that there is a philosophy in the markets right now that if inflation rises, all of these tech companies are just completely protected from it. And I think that we're being a little bit too, I don't know, lenient, resting on our laurels, whatever the phrase may be, to describe just this idea that it's not going to affect the tech companies. And my point is we have seen inflation and consumer spending affect the tech companies before. Now, your point, which is an interesting one, is that AI marketing budgets will essentially save the advertising ecosystem. If we were to see a pullback in spending on advertising in 2026 or in 2027, I think that's plausible. And that's a really interesting point. I would point out, though, we're continuing to put all of our eggs in this one basket of AI, where we're not only depending on the hyperscalers to increase our GDP growth, which, as we know, AI was responsible for a third of GDP growth last year. We're then saying we need AI companies to prop up the advertising market, too. And at a certain point, you start to run out of AI companies to do that. I mean, you've got anthropic, you've got OpenAI. But if we're waiting on Alphabet to be the primary advertiser, well, we're waiting on Alphabet to advertise on its own platform. Being Googled. So we're becoming like dangerously concentrated and dependent if that is the dynamic that we think is going to play out. Again, very dependent on these AI companies to be sort of the rising tide that lifts all boats. And we should just recognize, I mean these companies are still very dependent on advertising as a business, Meta, it makes up 97% of their overall revenue still. For Google it's about 75%. I mean these companies still need people, regular people to spend money such that advertisers go out there and buy ad slots. So I think your point is interesting. I think it's. Point taken. I would just clarify, I'm not necessarily bearish. I just think this is a dynamic that is worth acknowledging. And I don't think we can say that big tech and the top 10 stocks are completely protected from what might happen in the real economy, what might happen in inflation. If we do see a consumer spending pullback, that could be a problem. Some people would say, well the difference between 2026 and 2022 is that now we have these gigantic companies like Nvidia and Broadcom and they don't need the advertising dollars. But what I would also point out is that half of their revenue is coming from those five same customers. Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle. I mean those companies are still dependent, those are still the big tech companies and they're propping up the entire business. So we're kind of going back to this circular issue that we've discussed before. And my only warning, I don't think you can assume that inflation won't hurt these, these players. I think it can and we'll start to see it if it does in the form of lower growth in their biggest businesses, which is digital advertising.
- [22:16]
Scott Galloway
So to your point, if you look at From November of 21 to I think it was September of 22, there was a slowdown in Meta. It wasn't a collapse. I think it slowed down. I think you said their decline was 5% but when the market is pricing that you'll continue to grow 23% a year and you don't, your stock collapses. And in that 12 month period, Meta shed 77% of its market value. It lost 3/4 of its value. So there's the actual gross dollar volume slowdown and then there's the impact a small gross dollar decrease. I mean Meta has been, these stocks are sort of priced to perfection and they are huge companies growing at 20% a year and their stocks reflect that. So say the ad market doesn't collapse, but people kind of pull in the reins A little bit. If Meta doesn't continue to grow at 20% and say if Meta announced we only grew 4% or 8%, I think the stock gets cut in half. So price discovery and stocks that are trading at this kind of multiple,
- [23:32]
Ed Elson
you
- [23:32]
Scott Galloway
don't need to have a decline in the business. You just have to register a deceleration in the growth and the stock will, the stock will throw up. So I think you could see I wouldn't be surprised if some of the bigger players. I still think Google is incredibly well positioned. I'd be a little scared to hold Meta right now because of what you're saying. Although Instagram just feels like such a fricking juggernaut, right?
- [23:55]
Ed Elson
It does. And we should also recognize that Met is priced pretty well right now. So I mean it looks reasonable, doesn't it?
- [24:01]
Scott Galloway
For the first time in a while.
- [24:02]
Ed Elson
Yeah.
- [24:03]
Scott Galloway
I'm on Instagram and on reels all the time. I'm either watching an Economist or some other stuff which we won't get into. Don't ask to see my Explorer page ad.
- [24:13]
Ed Elson
We're gonna do it one day. We should do it at the live show. We should airplay your phone onto the screen. That'll get a lot of views.
- [24:20]
Scott Galloway
Well, that's one way to end your livelihood. When you go back to the Princeton, you'll be famous at your Princeton reunions, you'll just be much less wealthy. They're like oh yeah, what hap that guy?
- [24:30]
Ed Elson
Wow.
- [24:31]
Scott Galloway
So it's Propagandarkets with Ed Elson and Anthony Scaramucci.
- [24:37]
Ed Elson
That's a good show. I'm bullish on that.
- [24:40]
Scott Galloway
That would be a good show. That would be a good show. Don't get any ideas. I know what you're up to. It's like when my kids are. Dad, can I see your phone? No. Anyways, where were we? Meta. Yeah. These companies are juggernauts. So just a slowdown would significantly impact their stock prices.
- [24:59]
Ed Elson
Yeah, absolutely. The slowdown is a really important point. Some, some of these businesses like they. I mean Google's revenue did grow that year, but it was a single digit growth in Q3 and that was enough to freak everyone. Completely freaked them out, completely shake investors confidence. And if we saw that, that is certainly what would happen again. And then the other thing that we should just recognize in terms of this inflation point rate hikes, I mean that was the other big force in 2022 is that we entered this extremely aggressive rate hiking cycle. And I will just point out what we saw on Kalshi at the beginning of the year, the odds of having any rate hikes in 2026 were less than 10%. Today, after we've gotten these inflation numbers, the odds have risen to 32% on CalSHI. So the odds of a rate hike in 2026 have tripled. And that is also striking because you'll remember one of the big themes coming into the year for 2026, we pointed out some of the concerns going into the year, some of the issues about maybe there's an AI bubble that was maybe a problem, there was some uncertainty around AI's impact on the job market, et cetera. But what we all knew is that we were entering a rate cutting cycle. And you don't want to bet against the markets when, when you're experiencing rate cuts. Suddenly that has changed because of these inflation numbers. And I would also add, it basically all goes back to Iran. It's like, how long are we going to stay there? Is this going to be another month or is it going to be another year? If it's the latter, then suddenly you're dealing with a completely different inflationary picture which will have a completely different interest rate environment, which will have a completely different impact on the stock market. So I do believe we're getting to a point now where inflation could be a real problem from the investment perspective. And I don't have any decisions to make yet, but I think if you're an investor, this is something to start taking seriously.
- [27:03]
Scott Galloway
Agreed.
- [27:05]
Ed Elson
We'll be right back after the break and if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend and please follow us on YouTube or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Quints. Finding the right clothes isn't always easy. Either you pay out the nose for some designer wear or you cheap out on clothing that falls apart before the end of summer. But Quint's is different. They offer premium everyday essentials that are dependable and feel effortless to wear. Quint has all the wardrobe staples for spring. Think 100% European linen shorts and shirts from $34. Lightweight, breathable and comfortable but still look put together and clean. 100% Pima cotton tees with a softness that has to be felt. I have been wearing my quince sweaters a lot lately. I love my Quint sweaters. The best part is honestly, they're extremely affordable and they look great. They look really nice and they feel really nice too. So I'm a big fan. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Go to quint.com markets for free shipping and 365 day returns. It's now available in Canada too. Go to quince.com markets for free shipping and 360 five day returns. Quints.com markets support for this show comes from Vanta if you run a business, you don't need us to tell you that risk and regulation are rising. More and more customers expect clear proof of security before they'll commit. Building that trust is essential to closing deals, but it can also be costly, confusing and time consuming. Vanta says they can help. Vanta automates your compliance process to bring compliance, risk and customer Trust together on one AI powered platform. So whether you're prepping for a SoC2 or running an enterprise GRC program, Vanta keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving. And with continuous monitoring, Vanta helps with real time reporting and security reviews you can share instantly. Instead of searching through audits and spreadsheets, you get a system working quietly in the background, keeping you compliant, reducing risk and helping your business grow faster. With confidence, you can get started at vanta.com markets. That's V A N-T-A.com markets vanta.com markets
- [29:38]
Scott Galloway
Support for the show comes from Upwork. The kind of people who feel drawn to starting their own business are the same kind of people who had to stop themselves from taking over the group projects in high school. When you're Type A, it's tempting to feel like you can do it all better than anyone else. Well, you're grown up now and you're not fooling anyone. Real growth comes from when you learn how to delegate. And if you need to find the right talent fast, there's upwork. Upwork is a one stop platform to find, hire and pay expert freelancers who can help you with web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations and more. Upwork can help grow your team and your business by connecting you with specialized talent across more than 125 categories so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster and scale support up or down without committing to full time headcount. Visit Upwork.com Markets right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com Markets to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's Upwork.com markets Upwork.com markets.
- [30:45]
Ed Elson
We're back with Profit Markets. The IPO market is heating up in a meaningful way. AI chip maker Cerebris pulled off the biggest public offering of the year so far, pricing above its expected range at $185 a share the stock opened at $350 a share and then later rose to $385 per share. It raised roughly $5.5 billion in the IPO markets. And investors are already looking ahead to what could be an even bigger wave of offerings, with SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all reportedly preparing for IPOs in the coming months. So, Scott, we have got our first really big AI IPO Cerebras. Cerebras is this chip company just a little bit about what their actual offering is. They're known for having these chips that are essentially really big. They're about the size of a dinner plate. You can actually fit 57h100 chips, that's the Nvidia chip, onto a Cerebras chip. And as a result of that, they are reportedly very fast. They are reportedly 15 times faster than other GPUs when carrying out standard tasks, reportedly over a thousand times faster for highly specialized tasks. Not to get too technical, but essentially the reason that they are faster, reportedly. Again, I'm not an AI expert, but the reason that they are reportedly faster is because they take the compute and the memory and they put it all on one piece of silicon, all in one place. And compared to a standard gpu, an Nvidia GPU where you have compute and memory in different places in separate chips, which are stacked next to a processor, essentially means that you have to move the data across these chip boundaries. For the Cerebras chips, you don't have to do it because it's all in one place and because it's this giant chip where it all sits together. So that's why investors at a very, very broad level are excited about this company. Also just an incredible time to be a chip company because as we've discussed, intel is skyrocketing. Amd, Micron, sandisk, all of these chip companies are just on a tear right now. So you couldn't really imagine a better time to IPO as a company. Having said that, there are some red flags here which we should get into. But first, just your reactions to this flagship AI IPO and perhaps what this might mean for the IPO market going forward.
- [33:07]
Scott Galloway
I fucking hate this company.
- [33:11]
Ed Elson
Why?
- [33:12]
Scott Galloway
We have never seen in the history of the markets a sector accelerate as fast as this quickly is the chip sector. I think the chip sector is literally up 60% in the last 45 days. An entire sector is up 60%. This company, as far as I understand it, it's increased less than 2x, but its valuation has increased sixfold I think it went public at a $40 billion valuation. Now it's trading at I think 60 or 70. It's trading at 100 times revenues and it's doubled its revenues. Nvidia trades at 26 times revenues and still controls 85% of the chip market. They were going to go public in 2024, but at the last minute, over intense scrutiny of its heavy reliance on a single customer, it withdrew. It still has that reliance. Emirati AI firm G42, what the fuck is that? Which accounted for over 85% of its revenue in 1H24. So they canceled the IPO. Their revenue is still concentrated in the same foreign state actor. Group 42 accounted for 24% of revenue last year and state owned UAE University accounted for 62% of its revenue. This feels like one of those Chinese companies that the moment it had anything resembling an audit, you found out there was nothing there.
- [34:37]
Ed Elson
Well, Veda, the investors disagree and I just want to point out exactly what you're saying here with this G42 point because it's so important, because last year you and I discussed this company and we pointed out that they were getting 85% of their revenue from G42, which is this UAE state backed AI firm that sort of burst under the scene kind of randomly, basically because the UAE has a bunch of sovereign wealth money to just put this AI company together. Investors agreed and there was a lot of scrutiny. They were like, hey, 85% from one company this year. They say, don't worry, we've reduced our G42 revenue exposure to 24%, went from 85 to 24, so don't worry about it. But to your point, 62% of revenue now comes from a new customer, which is Mohammed Bin Zayed University of AI, which is the UAE state backed research university based in Abu Dhabi, which, which means 86% of their revenue is still coming from one customer, which is the sovereign wealth fund of the UAE. So that that's. They didn't fix the problem. To your point like that, that is striking.
- [35:48]
Scott Galloway
It's not only revenue mix, but the incentives of the customer base. So when both your customers are in the uae, and I imagine the UAE wants at some point transition out of fossil fuels and start having to like, you know, kiss the ass of Iran and move into an information and technology economy and a tourism economy, they want some of that AI pixie dust. And someone there said, I know if this company succeeds, this bodes well for us. So it's not only revenue mix but it's quality of customers. When I sold L2 and when I sold profit, the reason we got another couple turns on revenue and we sold was the quality. We had Nike, P and G, Toyota as clients. And when you look at the customer mix here, I mean, this is, this is crazy town. This literally is crazy town. And so I look at this thing, it's trading at 322 right now. This is pets.com out of the UAE. I just don't. This thing makes they. They doubled their revenues and they reduced their revenues from one UAE entity to another government owned UAE entity and then
- [37:09]
Ed Elson
bragged that they had diversified their revenues. That's the part that really bugs me, is that they're lying about what's changed since last year. Nothing's changed. In fact, they're more reliant. It was 85% lossy, now it's 86%.
- [37:22]
Scott Galloway
All I know is somewh somewhere in this thing we're going to find out that either Steven Witkoff or Jared Kushner is a shareholder. That's the only thing I'm fairly certain of here.
- [37:32]
Ed Elson
I think that's probably a good point just to expand on the issue of customers. So one thing just to sort of steel man's Cerebras. From what I understand, and granted, I'm not, again, I'm not an AI expert, so I can't tell you how great their chips really are. But from what I understand, hearing it from AI leaders, their technology is pretty good. That's my understanding of the situation. Whether I should believe these people, I'm not sure. That's a different story. But supposedly the technology is pretty exciting and impressive. But the trouble you have to, you do have to look at the customer base and you do have to look at the financials. The financials are not great. I mean, they doubled their revenue. Okay, great. But in the AI world that's actually not that impressive. And it's about half a billion dollars, which is certainly not that impressive in the AI world specifically. And it doesn't warrant the valuation that we're seeing right now. You talk about their other customer. The other potential customer that is in the pipeline that everyone is excited about is OpenAI. They have this deal with OpenAI where OpenAI is going to deploy 750 megawatts of cerebras chips. And this is very exciting because if they ramp it up to full capacity, it essentially means that Cerebras is going to generate around $7 billion in annual revenue from OpenAI. Everyone's very excited about that, because that is of course, more than 13 times that 20, 25 total. So, like, they're going to make a ton of money in the future with OpenAI. But this gets back to the classic AI question. It's like, how confident are you really that OpenAI is actually going to make good on that contract? They've promised to spend one and a half trillion dollars. The. The number goes up and down and this entire company is basically a bet on they will on OpenAI making good on that contract. And the contract's very important because they also have an EXCL agreement in there which says that you can't sell your chips to these other competitors. They don't name them, but we could assume it's probably Google XAI anthropic. So they're so dependent on OpenAI. And again, in the backdrop of that Ronan Farrow article, which says that board members at OpenAI say that Sam Altman is unconstrained by the truth, the fact that he is a serial liar. That's what they say. It's not a fact, it's a rumor. They say that he's a serial liar. That's important when it comes to these financial contracts. And there's another strange detail here, which is that OpenAI just gave a $1 billion loan to Cerebras at 6% interest. And my question is, why? If. I mean, why aren't you just paying for their services? Why is the customer giving out a loan to the provider and then monetizing that loan? Like, that's a very strange relationship. In addition, by the way, OpenAI is going to receive stock warrants in Cerebras. So that's the other weird part of the deal. Like, we'll have this contractual relationship and then also we'll get equity in your company. This goes back to the problem with the circular revenue in AI. It's like OpenAI is now a customer, a lender, a shareholder in the company, which just adds more fuel to the fire, which is like these deals. And these contracts are very confusing and a little shady. And there certainly is not something that you want to rely on or could project any sort of meaningful, consistent cash flows in the future. You just can't really trust these contracts. It's kind of like the press release thing with Trump. He just says that we have a deal, but is it really a deal? I'm not so sure.
- [40:59]
Scott Galloway
They want to jump the line to buy those chips in case, on the odd chance they actually have an application or a use case, loan them a billion Dollars. They just raised a certain amount of money. I'm debt, so I'm top of the capital stack, so I'll get my money back. And should these chips actually have an application, I have another potential supplier. So is this an overvalued company? May it go away? Yeah, but is it worth at least a billion dollars, which I get back because I'm on the capital stack with debt. I understand that. Absolutely. This thing, it just smells to high heaven. It feels really sketchy. And I can't wait till this thing has options. This is, I won't be able to resist going, buying way out of the
- [41:46]
Ed Elson
money you're going to short it.
- [41:47]
Scott Galloway
Oh yeah, this feels ridiculous to me. And by the way, do not try this at home. I won't short it because your losses are technically, this company could go to 2000. Right. What I'll do is I'll buy puts way out of the money puts because then I know my losses are limited to the, to the money I purchase. I usually like to write.
- [42:07]
Ed Elson
Yeah, explain that.
- [42:09]
Scott Galloway
Well, if you buy. Okay, so there's different ways to short a stock. If you, if you short it, you're technically loaning it to someone else and you agree to buy it back at the current price, meaning if it triples, you have to go into the market and buy a stock at triple the price and then deliver it to it at the price you agree to short it at. So technically your losses are unlimited. You can also write calls and that is you can say, okay, in this stock, the calls are going to be very expensive because a lot of volatility. So you could be on the side where you write calls to people who are buying calls. And you could get, you get some premium that way. You also have unlimited losses if the Stock goes to 1000, 2000, $3000 if it becomes a meme stock, if you want to limit your losses and it doesn't have the same sort of asymmetric premium you would buy puts. So you might buy puts struck at say, I don't know, September trading with a strike price of 250, meaning that if it goes below 250, you're in the money and you have to pay to buy those things. But then you know your downside is limited to what you spent on those, on those puts. Options are a really great way to lose money because it's your. So much has to go right in terms of timing and there's huge transaction costs. And even when you win, it's short term capital gains. So it's not. It's not something to be done at home. I do it because I have an addiction to gambling and I try to limit it to playing options, which makes me feel like I'm not gambling, but investing, which is a total lie
- [43:38]
Ed Elson
done right.
- [43:39]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, I sequester it to a small portion of my portfolio so it's more like fun. It's more consumption for me and the way I look at it. But this thing is just, this thing is just. This is insane. This is crazy town.
- [43:53]
Ed Elson
We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, Sign up for our newsletter@profgmarkets.com.
- [44:07]
Scott Galloway
Support for the show comes from Laradin. Executives are being asked to justify AI spend, manage risk and show ROI, often without the right visibility. CFOs and CIOs are basically being told make AI pay off off and do so safely. The real challenge right now isn't adopting AI, it's understanding how it's being used and how to maximize the value from AI. That's exactly what Laradin is focused on. So look, I use AI all the time. I have a second screen, it's always up. It just has my LLMs on it. And if I get health information, if I get a PowerPoint deck, a board deck, I upload it and I start asking questions and I, I believe that, that everybody needs to be somewhat facile with AI. Laradin is an AI impact intelligence platform designed to help organizations understand how AI tools are actually being used, whether there are opportunities to get more out of AI and the value AI initiatives deliver. Instead of just counting logins or installations, it tracks real utilization, proficiency, governance and impact, the metrics that matter when enterprises scale AI. As you integrate new AI, Laradin gives you visibility where it counts the most. If AI is already part of your organization, now's the moment to get control of it. Head to laradin.com today and book a demo to start maximizing impact from AI.
- [45:25]
Ed Elson
Support for the show comes from Amazon.
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Scott Galloway
There are the things you can plan for A first birthday party, a movie marathon, a Roger friendly bathroom reno. And then there are the things you
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Ed Elson
can never plan for.
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Scott Galloway
A surprise rainstorm, A Blu Ray player calling it quits. Stick on tiles that looked way better on the package. For all things planned and unplanned, Amazon has you covered. You'll find low prices on everyday essentials and last minute lifesavers. Shop Amazon and save on essentials.
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Ed Elson
Save the everyday when you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job Post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed. Sponsored Jobs. We're back with profgumarkets. The romantic recession doesn't seem to be letting up. Recent earnings from Match Group and Bumble showed continued weakness in dating apps, with paying users declining across the board. Match Group's total paying users fell 5%. Bumble's dropped 21%. At the same time, dating itself is getting more expensive. According to a survey from BMO's Real Financial Progress Index, the average cost of a date in the US has climbed nearly 13% year over year to $189. Americans are now going on fewer dates overall, roughly 12 a year now, down from 14 a year in 2025. So Scott, I mean the earnings here are interesting. In Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, their paying users fell. However, I would also note that their revenue per user also rose and as a result their overall revenue did rise. Not great, but they rose 4% year over year. So that is interesting. Probably relates to the K shape, but Bumble, I mean just a flat out loss. Total paying users fell 21%, revenue fell 14%. There are a lot of questions around are these businesses sustainable in a market where young people seem to be kind of opting out of dating? They seem to be just getting tired of swiping. What do you make of these earnings and the fact that dating itself might
- [48:08]
Scott Galloway
potentially be dying There is definitely what they're calling a sex recession. And I think it's a lot of different things. These guys have been beaten down so badly. If you just look at them from a market perspective, I actually think they're a good buy. They're the cheapest they've been and they're actually expanding internationally. But there's just something more upsetting here, and that is 3/4 of young single women and nearly two thirds of young single men have not dated or dated only a few times in the last year. And nearly 40% of single women aged 22 to 35 never go on dates. Supposedly 62% of men in the UK under the age of 30 aren't, aren't even trying to date. I think the entity or the elephant in the room here that people aren't seeing is AI and that is especially young men. I think a lot of men are slowly but surely being sequestered from traditional relationships and entering into frictionless relationships with character AI. And then you layer and porn on top of that. And that is, I think, men who, for whatever reason I've said this, I think we need to embrace young men's horniness. And I think young men need to do a better job of trying to modulate frictionless relationships with character AIs and porn. Because I think wanting to have your own romantic relationships is a tremendous motivator for trying to be a better man. Because oftentimes the hard thing and the right thing are the same thing. And the most rewarding things in life are relationships. And they're really hard. It is really hard to establish contact, endure rejection, persevere, figure out what a woman wants, quite frankly, and have physical intimacy, maintain the relationship. It's just very hard. And that's why it's so wonderful. That's what real victory feels like. And I think a lot of men, I worry, are now opting for control over connection. And that is when they're with an AI or speaking to an AI or absorbing porn, they never feel rejected. They never feel insecure. Not. I mean, we've all had those feelings. We've all texted people and not heard back and wondered, what did I do wrong? Or we've had our sort of heart trampled on, or we feel insufficient or insecure, or like, we can't compete in a mating market, or we just. Or we don't have the money to go out, or we enter into a relationship and we're totally a basket case about it because we're insecure about the dynamic of the relationship, and then props up AI and says, okay, you can have a reasonable facsimile of life without any friction. And it's a. It is such a hollow, empty promise. So I wonder if the air being sucked out of the room here is that a lot of young people are deciding, I'd rather have a frictionless relationship with an algorithm and a screen, much less go on a dating app, which don't have incentives to pair people up. But for people to constantly be being back on the apps, maybe spending a little bit more and finding out, oh, there's a bigger, better deal. So I find all of this data really alarming. I think it requires some sort of government response around subsidizing third spaces where people can meet. The good news is, I do see, or that you do see evidence of a trend of young people recognizing there's a problem and doing meetups and run clubs and stuff like that that they are in fact getting out and touching grass more. But this whole I think there's something much bigger than a mid cap company struggling here. I think this is a veneer or an indication of a much deeper problem in our society.
- [51:57]
Ed Elson
I 100% agree with that. Just to go back to these struggling mid cap companies and to your point, the story isn't that Bumble and Match Group are struggling. The story is that dating appears to have been gamified and then people are now just opting out of dating entirely. That has far larger implications just on a human level, but also even on a societal and economic level. But I would like to just discuss this AI in dating dynamic. What we are seeing is that these CEOs of these dating companies are looking to embrace AI as much as possible. So the Match Group CEO Spencer Rascal, he said that he is looking into AI curated dating. The Bumble CEO Whitney Wolf heard she said they're going to try to scrap the swipe dynamic entirely and try to just lean on AI and have this personal AI dating assistant. But then she also is saying something which seems a little absurd. She's floating this idea of having AI bots dating each other's AI bots. She talked about this. I just want to play this clip and get your reaction.
- [53:10]
Scott Galloway
You could in the near future be talking to your AI dating concierge and you could share your insecurities. I just came out of a breakup. I have commitment issues. And it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself. And then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people. If you want to get really out
- [53:31]
Ed Elson
there, there is a world where your
- [53:33]
Scott Galloway
dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge. No, no, truly. And then you don't have to talk to 600 people. I will scan all of San Francisco for you. Say these are the three people you
- [53:45]
Ed Elson
really ought to no, no, truly. While the interviewer laughs in her face. What do you make of that? Scott?
- [53:52]
Scott Galloway
Well, nothing says romance like outsourced flirting performed by stochastic parrots trained on Reddit therapy language. It just. And I think she's with Bumble.
- [54:03]
Ed Elson
That's right.
- [54:04]
Scott Galloway
I think Bumble should be for people who want to get laid and don't have friends. Like you're supposed to go to your friends for this type. I don't. This is also nihilistic. I don't. You know. And I'm virtue signaling Right now. But remember the prop G avatar that was up for about six hours. Anything that takes you away from the motivation to ask your friends for advice, ask your mom, your dad for advice, convince you that maybe you should go to a bar, get a little bit fucked up, develop some courage. And when you see someone go up and say, I like your dress. Where are you guys from? This whole attitude? And then. And you know where this is going to go. We have a special avatar that finds hot women for 49.95amonth. I mean, they're immediately going to start pricing in dumb versus smart versus better AI. I mean, this whole thing. I like marketplaces. One out of three relationships begin on dating apps, so there's a role for them. But I am now and again, I see the glasses half empty. Now. There are some good things about AI in terms of partnership for seniors. I use AI all the time. I'm fascinated by it. One of the benefits of AI is it is creating political moderation, whereas social media creates political extremism. Because AI is so vanilla and so worried about offending or upsetting you, it tends to take extremist views and move them and moderate them, which is, I think, a good thing. But the idea that you're gonna begin outsourcing advice and your representative, I mean, I'm convinced when you're on your first date, it's not you. It is an avatar of you. You're sitting there. Especially in your 20s, people don't go on dates, they don't show up, their representative shows up. And at some point, at some point, sooner than rather than later, the other person's gonna find the real you. Right?
- [55:59]
Ed Elson
So.
- [56:00]
Scott Galloway
And I couldn't figure that out whenever I was dating when I was your age. I think you're a lot more secure, mostly because you're better looking, more successful and have. And have better parents than me then. Other than that. Also you're better educated. Other than that. There was no reason for me to be less, less secure. But when I was in my 20s, dating, I was trying, constantly trying to figure out how do I get them to like me as trying to figure out how I like me and show up and decide if someone likes me.
- [56:29]
Ed Elson
Right?
- [56:29]
Scott Galloway
You just don't.
- [56:30]
Ed Elson
Which is a real. I mean, that's a. That's the real problem in the dating world. And continually to this day, it's a really important point.
- [56:37]
Scott Galloway
I mean, I'm now believing we should begin to subsidize third places I want to reverse. I'm writing a book called Renewal about Public policies. I think we should have a reverse footloose. And that is any venue that has dancing gets tax subsidies because dancing involves alcohol, typically men and women and hooking up. And I would love to see a return. I'm an atheist. I think we need way more religious institutions. That is one of the cheapest forms of bumble in the world. Because it doesn't matter what church, temple or mosque you're at. All the older people start going, okay, who are the single people here? Who are the single men? Who are the single women? They're approximately in each other's weight class. You know, Moishe, come over here and meet Sarah. Right. It just. They're good at pairing people up and then they don't see on a screen every other temple in the Upper east side and who's hotter and who has the best filters to show off their abs or pretend they're richer than they are. And you start are constantly thinking that you can do better anyway. I worry that when you see the destruction and rites of passage, whether it's going to prom and some of it's been politically correct bullshit, they've canceled a lot of the rites of passage. The Father Daughter dance, prom at some schools was canceled because they saw it as shaming people who weren't so. Well, that's the whole point. You're supposed to have pressure to ask a girl out. Otherwise you never do it. You know, the only reason I went to my ninth grade junior prom with Lynn Sugimora was my friend was going and I was like freaked out that I wasn't gonna go. I mean, you just had, you did these things. I don't know where I'm going with this at. I just don't like it.
- [58:27]
Ed Elson
No, I think it's really important. I think there's another question, like you're talking about subsidizing these third places, which I love that idea. I do wonder if the market's going to just reward third places itself because this is something we were talking about last week when it comes to drinking, where we're seeing a lot more interest, a lot more investment going into these in person physical community based events like we talked about, these run clubs and these sauna raves. I mean all of these products and services that are all about getting people together in a room and rubbing elbows and meeting each other. I do wonder if people are so fed up with the online experience that the market's just going to sort of correct itself and the money's going to flow into those experiences in person. Physical experiences. But if not, I agree we should do something about it on a policy level because it is getting insane. The loneliness epidemic is such a problem at this point, where we've gone through the data before, but 17% of Americans say they have zero close friends whatsoever today. That is a real problem that clearly you need to do something about it. Shifting over for a moment to this expense problem, I mentioned the fact that the cost of a date has gone up nearly 13% year over year. I will also mention that Gen Z is spending more on average on dates than any other generation, spending roughly $205 per date today. That is according to the source that I read above this Real Financial Progress Index from bmo. And this sort of reminds me of something that Derek Thompson told us on the podcast on the Daily last week, which is that Gen Z is the most materialistic generation, that young people are obsessed with money more so than other generations. I'm not sure if it's necessarily true, but this data makes me think that maybe it is.
- [60:22]
Scott Galloway
Oh, I think it is.
- [60:23]
Ed Elson
And then I saw this clip recently go viral, which I'd like to get a reaction to. This is this guy isn't Gen Z, but this is Logan, Paul's co host on, on his podcast, very popular podcast. This guy, Mike Maylak, he's this YouTuber and he was on someone else's podcast and they were asking him how much he spends on his dates and here's what he said. He's not representative of everyone, but it seems to be indicative of where we're headed.
- [60:46]
Scott Galloway
How much on average do you spend on a first date? Thousands.
- [60:49]
Ed Elson
This Ibiza trip, there's like 10 girls
- [60:52]
Scott Galloway
coming on it and probably 150,000 spent on just that.
- [60:56]
Ed Elson
Oh wow.
- [60:57]
Scott Galloway
I got a hotel yesterday so that
- [60:59]
Ed Elson
she could change before Nobu and we
- [61:01]
Scott Galloway
didn't stay at it.
- [61:02]
Ed Elson
She couldn't change in the restroom.
- [61:05]
Scott Galloway
I don't know why I did that. I think we should pair him with the CEO of Bumble and they should be the first people to go to Mars. I think we'd solve a lot of problems if Those are the two first people on SpaceX's initial mission to Mars.
- [61:21]
Ed Elson
Like the hotel room before Nobu to get changed in.
- [61:24]
Scott Galloway
Now I know guys like that, they're called douchebags, they're called 50 year old dudes or 40 year old dudes that hit it big who never had any game and so they want to surround themselves. It's their money, they can do what they want. That's a totally different ecosystem. It Happens in ibiza, Mykonos and Saint Barts, where a guy gets a jet, he invites three of his good friends, and then 12 ridiculously or six ridiculously hot young women. They pay for everything, and that's their only currency. When I was in college, the only currency for losers was cocaine. Now it's just straight up money where they can just, hey, do you want to go to Ibiza and see black coffee? Sure. You know, who wouldn't? And also, there's a lot of. Instagram has fucked up everything everybody thinks. When I got out of college, I was working my ass off Morgan Stanley. I was living with my mom. I got out of business school, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Started a consulting company, living in Oakland, living in a $280 a month apartment. My life was not that fabulous. And that was okay. I was happy. I had a girlfriend, we were totally into each other. I was trying to make money. I was enjoying what I was doing. Running a strategy firm at the age of 27, I was happy. And then I started getting some clients in New York and I came back to New York and I went to places like Pangea and Lotus, and I got invited by some rich guys I met to St. Bart's I'm like, Jesus Christ. I didn't even know this shit was out there. This life, like I had never been exposed to it. So being the mature person I was, I went home and said, I want a divorce. And I moved to New York to live the full douchebag lifestyle. And this is a little bit reductive. And it's extraordinary, my ability to bring everything back to me.
- [63:06]
Ed Elson
Well, no, this is useful, this is informative.
- [63:08]
Scott Galloway
But being exposed, everyone, every day is exposed to a 0.1% life. Everyone is exposed to Saint Tropez or to staying at the Almond in Utah, or going and getting artist passes at Coachella. And they think I need to be part of that. And the currency for that is either being ridiculously hot and young as a woman or being ridiculously rich as a guy who is willing to spend that kind of stupid money to have what I call fake. I don't want to call them fake friends. And by the way, I want to be clear. It's an empty and meaningless experience. But as far as empty and meaningless experiences go, it's pretty fucking good. I don't want to lie. I see the attraction. I've participated in it. I'm not going to lecture at anyone not to do it, but there's not a Lot of what I'd call real lasting connection in it. And there's a real downside to it, and that is 99% of people are not, or 90% are not going to have access to that ecosystem. And it makes them feel worse about themselves. They're just at home wondering why I didn't get invited to the Hamptons or I don't have the money. The woman. I want some women. And by the way, we always. I call men douchebags. Women have become increasingly materialistic and a lot of men, younger men, feel insecure about their ability to attract a quality mate if they aren't making a shit ton of money. So I'm not one of these people that, as always, it's all men's fault. It's not the problem. You know, there is a certain amount of materialism, unreasonable expectations, and generally like low character behavior from both genders around this shit. And what we're missing is, you know, I don't know the answer here, but I believe that in person, work, in person, school, more religious institutions, tax subsidies for places where people can get together, mandatory national service where young people meet each other in the agency of doing something more productive other than seeing Diplo and Mykonos. That gives people a chance to kind of to find people who love them for who they are. Because I think the pressure being placed on young women to be ridiculously hot and in the right environment all the time, in the right clothes and also to kind to be fucking superwomen. Women are expected to have it all. Oh, wait, but she doesn't have a job. She's just a party girl. Well, okay, how's she supposed to look like that and take off From Mykonos on 3 days Notice if she actually has a fucking job? That is the job.
- [65:43]
Ed Elson
Yeah.
- [65:43]
Scott Galloway
And dudes at 28 are expected to be making a million bucks a year so they can drop $120,000 on a summer rental in Amagansett.
- [65:51]
Ed Elson
I think this is you're hitting on something important, which is. That's the problem with clips like that going viral. That clip did go viral. We're arguably making it more viral by discussing it on this podcast. But the thing that isn't being is that isn't normal and it also isn't cool. But the trouble is when you see more and more of these clips which go viral because they're so absurd, I think it's starting to make people think that it is normal to spend thousands of dollars on a date, that it is normal to go to Mykonos and fly out 10 different women and spend $150,000 on this experience. The more that we start seeing people saying that, the more we think that that is happening, the more we think that that is standard, normal and cool. And so that seems to be a big reason why people seem to be spending so much money on these dates, because they think that that is something that you have to do. I want to be like these famous influences. I want to be like these rich YouTubers. I want to spend lots of money on these dates. And then I'm sure that it affects both men and women in the same way. Women start to expect it. Oh, he didn't spend enough money on this date. I saw this clip of this guy spending thousands of dollars. Clearly, this guy isn't a baller. Clearly he doesn't care enough about me. He doesn't respect me enough. And then the same thing goes for men. It's like, oh, I need to spend thousands of dollars on this date. Because real men, that's what real men do. That's what Mike Malak does. So I'm a loser if I don't. And it's sort of like just this vicious cycle where we're going to spend more and more money. And I feel like we need people to speak out and say, hey, one, this isn't normal, and two, it isn't actually cool. Like you're actually admitting to being. I love what you said. Cocaine was the currency for losers in college, and now for people today, it's just pure money. You're outing yourself potentially as a loser by saying that you need to spend tens of thousands of dollars for your date to go right. I just wish that we could sort of like, I don't know, we shouldn't glorify that behavior.
- [67:45]
Scott Galloway
So I've said this before. I think men should pay for everything. I think the fertility window of women is much shorter. The downside of sex is much greater for them. The downside of pregnancy is much greater for them. In sum, when a woman, a young woman who is of childbearing age is spending time with you, quite frankly, her time is more valuable than yours. In addition, for her to show up in most relationships, she spent 2, 3, 400 bucks before she's walked through the door at Sephora, getting waxed, getting an outfit to compete with increasing expectations, she spent more money on the date before she's even showed up.
- [68:19]
Ed Elson
Well, I've spent all the money on peptides.
- [68:22]
Scott Galloway
My entire beauty routine when I was your age was I occasionally splash water on my Face anyways, fair enough. So men pay for everything. But in addition, it's not just paying for everything. It's demonstrating excellence and it's demonstrating effort. And every mammal, there is a courtship where the male tries to throw out its feathers or sing a song or fly around or bring the owl a rat or something that he wants to have sex with. There's a courtship ritual across all mammals where the male tries to impress the female. And to believe that isn't here is not true. Unfortunately, impressing a woman in a capitalist age with Instagram has just become all about fucking money. And what I would offer to men is that you can replace money with effort. If you try to think of something cool to do, you're cultured, you know what's going on, you know, a cool little bar, you know, I'm not that guy. Cause I'm lame. But I hear about dates. I hear about young men. And my son, my oldest son was saying that he was gonna take a date to see that cheap student tickets to that 3D thing of ABBA. And I'm like, he gets it. He gets it. He's making an effort. He's showing up and saying, I put some thought into this and we're gonna do something really cool. And he got student tickets in the middle of the week, so it wasn't a lot of money. And I thought to myself, he gets it. He's gonna be just fine. My other son wants to borrow my black card to take his girlfriend to,
- [69:50]
Ed Elson
like, he also gets Taylor Swift.
- [69:53]
Scott Galloway
So they get it just on different ends of the barbell. But do you realize the amount of dating amongst high schoolers has been cut in half? I mean, I was 6 to 140 pounds with bad skin. And I dated. Everyone dated. I mean, not a lot, but I did date. And now it just appears that no one's dating. Anyways, I find the whole thing. I find the whole thing. I'd like to find a company that is. I don't know. I wonder if we should. Actually, this is probably the good time to announce that Prof. G Media is ipoing as the world's first semiconductor company, powered entirely by podcasts, charisma, and Ebitda adjusted vibes. Ed. Anyways, I attempted to segue out of my how discouraged I am about young people not getting drunk and having sex.
- [70:45]
Ed Elson
I thought it was encouraging. I really like your point about effort, and I think it's true. I think it goes a long way.
- [70:51]
Scott Galloway
I hope so. Get out there. Get used to rejection.
- [70:54]
Ed Elson
That's right.
- [70:55]
Scott Galloway
Get out there. Drink more, drink more, get used to. No. Take peptide. You really take peptides?
- [71:01]
Ed Elson
No.
- [71:01]
Scott Galloway
Okay, that makes me feel better. Take the Wolverine peptide and I want to see if you grow a third arm.
- [71:07]
Ed Elson
Let's take a look at the week ahead. We will see earnings from Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, Walmart and Nvidia. We will also see the minutes from the Federal Reserve's last meeting and consumer sentiment for May. Scott, do you have any predictions?
- [71:23]
Scott Galloway
Cerebrus below 50 bucks in 12 months makes no fucking sense. At some point sanity will creep in. I'm not. Don't play the markets on this. This thing's crazy. It could become a meme stock, it could go to a thousand. I think there's a much greater probability it's below 50 bucks. This is a state run the UAE trying to prop up a company in a hot area. It's got no legitimate customer base. It's trading at a greater multiple than Nvidia. This feels like late stage chip capitalism.
- [71:55]
Ed Elson
My prediction is inflation is only going to get worse. We're at 3.8% today. Don't think we're going to get out of Iran anytime soon. I think oil prices are going to continue to rise. I think that we could see close to 4 and a half percent inflation by the end of the year. I guess. My prediction is Covid level inflation by the end of the year.
- [72:13]
Scott Galloway
Your prediction should be a rate hike then. If you think that's going to happen.
- [72:16]
Ed Elson
Well depends on this new guy, Kevin Walsh. Is he going to bow to the king or is he going to have a spine again?
- [72:23]
Scott Galloway
The media is missing the mechanics of how the FOMC works and how rates are increased or decreased. And that is they think it's all about one guy. He's one, it's the board. That's right. He's one of 11 votes. He sets the agenda, he's the spokesperson. There's no fucking way the governors of the Fed right now would vote for a rate increase. No way. No. A rate decrease. I'm sorry, did I say rate increase?
- [72:45]
Ed Elson
You said rate increase. They wouldn't vote for a rate cut today. No, no shot. I agree with that.
- [72:50]
Scott Galloway
If your prediction is true, then you're much more likely to see rate increases than decreases.
- [72:55]
Ed Elson
Yes, 100%. So maybe I'll tack that on.
- [72:58]
Scott Galloway
And this speaks to the power and the beauty of what's called an intransigent government and the sand in the gears of authoritarianism. And that is checks and balances. We want, we want what is it 11 or 12 governors deciding this. We don't want one person deciding this.
- [73:20]
Ed Elson
This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Jorge Carty. Our research team is Dan Shalon, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen O' Donoghue and Mia Silverio. Jake McPherson is our social producer, Drew Burrows as our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Property Markets from Property Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets.
- [74:00]
Scott Galloway
In kind Reunion as the world touch.