CEO wealth surge, Apple/Facebook tensions heat up, and Friend of Pivot DoorDash COO Christopher Payne

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway: And who is the hostess with the mostest? The Scott Gal. Let's be honest. Over and over.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. With your family who came and visited mine. Over and over. Let's be honest.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. You're constantly asking yourself. Yeah. How can someone so masculine be so lovely? How can he be so lovely?

Kara Swisher: No, I was thinking your wife is amazing. And now I understand the whole equation of how it works out for Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway: That's what I thought. Oh, my God. Okay. So some key moments, key highlights from the weekend.

Kara Swisher: Key moments.

Scott Galloway: Got to give the fans what they want.

Kara Swisher: Okay, good. Got to feed the ducks here. Yeah. From moment one. I wear a lot of makeup.

Scott Galloway: Yep, but go ahead.

Kara Swisher: The Swisher family comes in and in walks the golden child, like little 18 pounds of magic. That is the most beautiful little girl. I know. Happy, happy. No idea how you had anything to do with that.

Scott Galloway: No. Don't understand the mechanics. Don't need to understand the mechanics. I created her from sand of the beach, but go ahead.

Kara Swisher: And then in contrast, in walks this Clydesdale white LeBron, who is also your son. I mean, he's the most enormous human I have ever.

Scott Galloway: He is. We had to wax his arms to get him through the door. He's a big house.

Kara Swisher: I'm like, we're going to need a bigger house. Yeah, yeah. This kid is enormous. Enormous. And my favorite moment.

Scott Galloway: My favorite moment. Him falling asleep on the entire couch.

Kara Swisher: My favorite moment. We all decide after a lovely day on Friday.

Scott Galloway: A lovely day.

Kara Swisher: By the way, who takes you to the Boca Bash for a Trump rally? The dog. I know. Thank you so much. The Confederate flags were something to see. I have to say. It was so Florida. It was so Florida. All you kept saying was, I'm not going in on the water. Is that a QAnon flag? Anyways. I'm not going in the water. Anyway. Anyways, we decide after a lovely night, a lovely day, we decide to watch something on Netflix.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: In Palm Beach where you guys wouldn't take off your masks. That was very comforting.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, okay.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, we're back at Chateau Dog.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: And we decide, and I'm like, all right, I trust you and I like you guys enough. I'll let you pick the Netflix program.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: We're all sitting down watching Netflix, right? And then all of a sudden, your son comes and sits down, and we all pop into the air about a foot. I mean, Jesus Christ, that's a big fucking human.

Scott Galloway: He is.

Kara Swisher: And we can't see over his size 45 sneakers. And I'm like, dude, can you get your sneakers out of the way? And what are the Swishers pick? Jordans, by the way, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: What do the Swishers pick? What?

Kara Swisher: The great Boston art heist. And then I realized I'm drinking tea, and suddenly I came to this really weird realization. You're a lesbian. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm a lesbian.

Scott Galloway: You're a lesbian. I'm the second most famous male lesbian right behind Lindsey Graham. I'm going for number one. And I started thinking I couldn't focus on this woke shit we were watching. I'm like, am I Meritor Baxter Burney or am I Kelly McGillis? Who am I? Let me take you my side of the picture. Scott's wife is superb. His kids are lovely. It's kind of shocking. A lot of us kept saying of the family as we had meetings when you were not there. We were like, how does he get such a nice group of people to hang out with him, first of all?

Kara Swisher: Money.

Scott Galloway: Mostly money. It's a beautiful home. They're very, like, the refrigerator is full of healthy foods. It's crazy. There was not a junk food nary in sight. None of his counters. Is that you or your wife? The counters have nothing on them. They're beautiful. What was going on there with that?

Kara Swisher: The counters? Who cleans the counters? No appliances anywhere. Everything's hidden. I like that Northern European kind of OCD look. It was aesthetic. He has a beautiful house, very healthy. It feels, it doesn't, it's not, you'd imagine it to be a party zone, but it's not.

Scott Galloway: I'm very uncomfortable with this. I'd rather be known as a faculty member living in faculty housing.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Scott Galloway: With newspapers piling up everywhere.

Kara Swisher: No, you have a very lovely woke life. You are more woke. It was a very San Francisco experience, actually.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that hurts. I'm just saying.

Kara Swisher: That hurts. It is also beautiful. And it is also, it was a very, you were an excellent host. You were the hostess with the mostest, I have to say.

Scott Galloway: I wanted to impress Amanda. You not so much.

Kara Swisher: No, I don't. And Giant Boy. Jesus Christ. They worked out together, too. Seriously? Venmo me about $11 million for the crap that that guy ate. Oh, my God. He didn't stop eating. He didn't stop eating. It's really crazy, isn't it? It's crazy. That kid. He ate all your food. Like, he kept getting thirds. But your wife is also a beautiful cook. Let me just also add, we had a lovely time in Miami visiting venues, right? We looked at a lot of stuff. And we're looking at Miami for a pivot event. We can't decide where to go. We know we want it to be loose. We know we want to, unfortunate things to happen there. But I think Miami's perfect. It's a perfect venue for us, don't you think? We didn't get to meet the mayor, although I interviewed him this morning, the mayor for Sway.

Scott Galloway: How was he?

Kara Swisher: He was very Suarez.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, very Suarez.

Kara Swisher: He was very Francis Suarez. Very Suave Suarez. I gotta tell you, I first thought he was a lightweight, but he's not a lightweight.

Scott Galloway: He's not a lightweight. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. He's got some things going on.

Kara Swisher: I really enjoy talking to him. I thought he was very smart. I thought he was a super smart guy. I think he's a comer.

Scott Galloway: I do too. If he can get through to the Trumpers, he's very anti-Trump, I would say. He's surprisingly anti-Trump and much less interesting. Florida, is it? Scott, I now understand why you live in Florida, I have to say.

Kara Swisher: Oh, look, it's easy to make fun of, but the reality is the quality of life is really powerful. I mean, it loses all its charm once you get about 10 meters from the water and if you actually meet anyone from Florida. But other than that, it's a wonderful place to live. It's really young.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but there was a hopefulness to it. There was a lot of like, we went to dinner at Palm Beach Place, and it was kind of ridiculous. The sort of faux partying, the performative this and that. It's very Los Angeles that way. But that's sort of Trumpville. But I have to say there's an energy to it that is definitely interesting. And it's not quite as conservative. Like we saw a lot of masking. It's a very complex place. It's a complex place. It's purple. And it's really, there's a lot of, it feels very Latin. It feels very next generation. It feels very young. And it was very Scott Galloway. Scott, you were right.

Kara Swisher: Well, you know, I'm almost none of those things. But anyways, you know, especially DeSantis.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. He's running president. This is Ron DeSantis, governor. And you know what his tagline is, literally?

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: His new tagline is, make America Florida. Florida is, I mean, you have to acknowledge, and I immediately have a gag reflex around this, but Florida over the last year has probably been the best or the least bad or one of the least bad places to be through this crisis. This because the reality or the data reflects that people paid or people feel as if they paid a lower price in terms of altering their lifestyle and the numbers the economy mortalities infection rates are not terrible and so people look to Florida and think I mean just in general you look at people moving down there it's like a better quality of life Florida you know Florida look Florida's a comer if you could go long if states were stocks you'd want to along Florida right now. It was interesting. I moved there 10 years ago and it's been wonderful for us. I feel very grateful to Florida.

Kara Swisher: You know, something that Mayor Suarez said is, I asked him because he was against the mask, he was for the mask mandates and a lot of the mayors fought with Governor DeSantis. And I said, what do you think of how it came out for him? He goes, he took a really big chance and it came out for him, but it could have not. You know what I mean? And he goes, and I was also on the side of public health people who thought one death, if you can prevent one death of this, and he decided the opposite way. And he said it might not have happened that way. So he was sort of right in the middle of the idea of that, that he thought it was irresponsible. And that just because it worked out for him, it went his way. It was not necessarily, it may have been the seniors staying home. It may have been a lot of things. It's an interesting place, I have to say. But one thing I want to ask you is how do you think our relationship is now? It's hard to imagine we could have become closer, but I think that happened.

Scott Galloway: I think that happened. We got along rather well. There was no fighting. You were just marching around the house screaming into your phone the whole time. We didn't really get a chance to.

Kara Swisher: I was not.

Scott Galloway: Do they know who I am? And you're staring into a phone.

Kara Swisher: No, I was not. I was not.

Scott Galloway: You'd be like, he's a fucking psychopath. She's a lesbian. He's a fucking psychopath. That's what I kept hearing over and over as you were yelling into your phone.

Kara Swisher: I left your house neat. I liked the Airbnb aspect of it. It was lovely. I'm just saying. I feel closer to you. The golden child. Leave that little girl behind.

Scott Galloway: No, you may not have. You should have some more children. That's my feeling on that.

Kara Swisher: No, some of us when we're 80 decide to close shop. Okay. Nonetheless, it was a great time. Tony Randall. Sultan of Calorama. We had a good time. I feel we are closer in some weird way. I do.

Scott Galloway: Weird way. We got along rather well. It was surprising. I was expecting much more of fireworks, but it didn't happen. Other thing, did you watch the Oscars last night after I left while you were sad?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I got to be honest. I thought they did a really wonderful job of capturing what it's like to be trapped.

Scott Galloway: You hated the Golden Globes. You hated all the other award shows.

Kara Swisher: I thought they did a wonderful job of really capturing the vibe of what it's like to be trapped in a train station for three hours.

Scott Galloway: I see. You're going to insult them. I mean, come on. The moment was like, all right, Chad Bozeman is going to get the Academy Award for a lot of reasons. And they give it to the old white guy and everyone's like, this is awkward. And he's not even there. He's off like doing TikToks where he's singing to his songs. It was Cat or something. And that to me is just like, oh, my God. Boom. Signature. Close it up now. It was a little too close in with the Hollywood people. It wasn't glamorous. It was like, wait, I don't like to see this. No one cares about what they think or say. We want to see Brad Pitt. We want to see gorgeous Brad Pitt. And we want to see Christina Aguilera do the Disney song that's up for whatever best song. Minus glamour, Hollywood is not great, I have to tell you. It was problematic.

Kara Swisher: It's, I mean, first of all, I didn't watch it. Did you watch it? I just can't wait until the ratings come in because it's going to be hilarious. Amanda tried, and I wanted to watch The Nevers.

Scott Galloway: No, I was not interested. I was not interested. I wasn't even slightly interested. Because most of the movies, people hadn't seen, too. That's the other thing. The other big takeaway is Frances McDormand should be supreme allied commander. No one would ever fuck with the U.S. if she was in charge. I am so scared of her. My God.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. She is like confidence with a swirl or a floaty of confidence.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I'm like, just put her in charge.

Kara Swisher: Yes, it's true. Jesus, she speaks with such authority. She should be put in charge.

Scott Galloway: She should be put in charge.

Kara Swisher: So what's interesting is that it was so lacking glamour. That's all I have to say. Anyway, by the way, on Thursday—

Scott Galloway: What, a train station? Yes, exactly.

Kara Swisher: Tesla's expected to post record earnings this week, just now we're going to talk about it on Thursday. Elon Musk will also be co-hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8th. Anyway, we're going to be live.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I've never so badly looked forward to seeing a really talented person, i.e. Miley Cyrus. I mean, we have had, come on, this is such bullshit. You got mad about that. Oh, God. You were tweeting away. That's not, now he's invaded SNL?

Kara Swisher: Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway: Make him stop, Kara. You know him. Make him stop.

Kara Swisher: No, I'm not going to. Tell him to have some self-awareness.

Scott Galloway: I like it. I like it. I think it's going to be funny.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God.

Scott Galloway: I think he's the only one they could have had on. There was no other tech CEO.

Kara Swisher: Why, but why would they have any?

Scott Galloway: Because he's Elon. He's transcended everything else. It makes sense. It makes sense. Let's get the CEO of Dow Corning on next week.

Kara Swisher: No, not the same. I'm going to tune in for that. You're wrong. You're wrong. This is going to be either really bad or really good. That's the way it's going to be.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I'm taking the over-under on really bad. You couldn't have Zuckerberg up there. Zuckerberg was on there once just to appear at the beginning of a guy who played him in Social Network.

Kara Swisher: But no, it's going to be good. I'm going to go for yes on it. Sorry.

Scott Galloway: You watch, so you know what is going to happen when he's on?

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: You know what is going to happen?

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: Dogecoin is going to go up 10% within 24 hours of him. They'll say Doge. They'll do an SNL skit on crypto, on Dogecoin, and the awareness, and everyone will be like, oh, I'll buy a little. And on a company with a 35 billion, whatever it is, it'll send Dogecoin. It'll make Dogecoin even more volatile in the 48 hours.

Kara Swisher: Anyway. Yeah, there we go. All right, Scott, on to big stories. Let's check in on the CEOs of the world. Despite the economic downturns of the pandemic, many of the hardest hit companies' CEOs saw huge increases in wealth and payment, according to New York Times. Despite Boeing's record bad year, Chief Executive David Calhoun made $21.1 million in compensation. The cruise industry all but halted in the past year, but Norwegian Cruise Line CEO Frank Del Rio doubled his pay to $36.4 million. Blumen reports that eight of the 10 wealthiest people in the United States are men who founded or run tech companies in the United States. They've all grown billions of dollars richer, as we've talked about this year, including Elon Musk, especially Elon Musk. Chief executives of big companies now make, on average, 320 times as much as their typical worker. We had a lot of deep talks this week. One of them was about income inequality. What do you think of this? This is your big thematic situation here.

Scott Galloway: This is awful. And it's kind of the mother of all moral hazard because I saw this at the New York Times when our stock went down to $3 bucks. I saw this when Mickey Drexler was saying how bad business was to try and drive down the value as he was partnering with banks to try and take his own company private such that he could get at a lower price. But the gangster move, if you're a CEO, is to have an exogenous event, literally stuff every piece of bad news into the earnings, take the stock way down at the expense of your retail shareholders, and then go back to the board and say, this isn't my fault. I'm obviously the one I know where the bodies are buried, I can save us here. Make sure the government is there to write you a check financed by future generations to make sure that the company doesn't go bankrupt, which it should. These companies should have absolutely, these cruise lines, these airlines should have been allowed to go bankrupt and wipe out the equity. But instead, they get propped up under the auspices of saving jobs and they don't touch zero. And then what is the CEO and the comp committee that likes the CEO and likes to get paid a quarter of a million to have dinner and hang out with them every 12 weeks. They issue them a shit ton of options, and then they make a shit ton of money when the stock recovers from near zero. So what do we have here? We have an environment where we are incentivizing CEOs to take these companies almost out of business such that the stock goes down, they get a shit ton. I remember when I was on the board of the New York Times and the stock hit three bucks in the recession, and all of a sudden the management team became very fond of the idea of more equity compensation to give them a vested interest. And they all made tens of millions of dollars in the recovery. And at least that was taking risks because we could have gone out of business. The government wasn't going to step in. They were just going to step in and save the banks. They weren't saving media companies. But now the government has decided to step in and save every company such that we can inflate the wealth of the 1%. And this is ground zero for it. And what do we have? I was just listening to Joe Lonsdale on CNBC talking about the surge in Bitcoin. He said it's a reaction to the crazy government bailing everybody out. He was interesting. He was like, if the government's going to be crazy, why are you calling us crazy? Why are we calling Bitcoin and everything else? It's a reaction to that.

Kara Swisher: What do you think about that?

Scott Galloway: I think it's young people wanting volatility. And one interesting stat is more black people have purchased Bitcoin than white people despite being dramatically fewer numbers. Because I think when populations feel like the game is just rigged against us, we want volatility. We want to find different asset classes and we want volatility because clearly the game is rigged against us. But anyways, this is really – and people immediately go, well, what's the solution? I'm not sure there is a solution because this is what happens on board is the comp committee basically says, all right, let's pay them a little bit more than average. And that ends up in this exponential effect where their compensation just skyrockets and their multiple of the average worker has gone from 60 to 350 of CEOs. I think you've just got to increase tax rates because I'm not sure you're ever going to be able to get rid of this dynamic. To stop this from happening.

Kara Swisher: So what about the average U.S. citizen? And one of the things, we had a very interesting discussion about colleges and this idea of creating these false scarcity and this and that. But how does the average citizen who doesn't get to play this game that these people get, the net 320 times as much as the typical worker? That is an astonishing number. It used to be like, what, 10 or 12?

Scott Galloway: I think it was about 50. It's gone exponential.

Kara Swisher: Look, what hurts even more is the tax rates they're going to pay on this equity if they exercise their options and they held the equity for longer. And Norwegian Cruise Lines, which is headquartered, I think, in the great state of Florida, the CEO will pay 22.8% versus the people that got laid off were paying probably 30 or 40% tax rates. So not only do we have, I mean, it's just, again, everything we do in our society right now has one aim. Let's take money from the young. Let's take money from a younger generation who tends to be more gender balanced, who tends to have more people of color, and let's transfer wealth from them to older people. It's just everything we do. And the CEO compensation is so out of control at this point. And I don't know, the market dynamics make it very difficult to cap it. And there's some wonderful things about capitalism.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, what to be done, taxing. Take their taxes up. Why on earth are they paying? I mean, it's one thing if they make tons of money. Well, they're discussing that, getting rid of capital gains. I mean, raising capital gains.

Scott Galloway: That's right.

Kara Swisher: Who loves that idea? Who loves that idea? Scott Galloway, I'm guessing.

Scott Galloway: That's right. That's right. Who has an informal role in the cabinet? They just don't know it yet.

Kara Swisher: They just don't know it yet.

Scott Galloway: Really? No, you don't.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, it's a very interesting time. It really, you're right. It's a capital gains thing will be an interesting debate. I think the Biden people will bring it up and then eliminate some of those other things. The amount estate taxes sort of advantaging rich people. But still, I think it's a trend that will continue and we have to deal with this. You know who's really angry about the whole CEO comp thing?

Scott Galloway: Who?

Kara Swisher: Stephanie Ruhle called and, like, rang my ear. Like, I was one of these. Like, I was the CEO of a cruise line. She's like, you know what this fucking bullshit does? And I'm like, yeah. I kind of like it when she calls me and is angry at me. I can't lie. I kind of like it. But I'm like, I'm not. I don't. Do you see me running a cruise line? Stephanie Ruhle, woman of the people. That's how I think of her. Anyway, we're going to go to a quick break.

Scott Galloway: She's smart. She's smart and angry. Not a woman of the people.

Kara Swisher: We'll be back to talk more. She's a Jersey girl. What are you talking about? I get that. Okay, whatever. You don't buy it. You guys are way away from your original. You don't buy it. I'm the one that started off rich. My counters are clean. I started off rich and they are clean. They're incredible. They're very clean. It's beautiful. They're beautiful. I love them. I went back to my house and I was like, I hate my counters. All right, let's go on a quick break. My tiny house. We'll be back to talk more escalating tensions between Apple and Facebook and Friend of Pivot on the online food delivery service. I brought you someone you wanted to talk to, Scott.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, we are back. Apple is planning to unveil new privacy feature that would require iPhone users to explicitly choose whether to let apps like Facebook or track their information. This is long time coming. It's the long time brewing war between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. They've been at odds over privacy issues in recent years, especially since forever, for now. The story in the New York Times actually was quite good. It began with Tim Cook telling Mark Zuckerberg not to be such an information thief, essentially. They met because he was getting his advice and Mark was trying to be nice and Tim was like, wasn't having any of it, didn't want to be his friend. Facebook's $70 billion digital advertising business is built in the ability to follow people online habits as they click through other apps, such as Spotify or Amazon, and then market directly to users. This pits the two men's visions of the future of the Internet at odds. Tim Cook wants safer, more private, but more likely expensive Internet. Well, Mark Zuckerberg believes more free and open content. They're trying to say Tim is trying to kill small businesses. Tim and Apple said, no, we're not. So and they're both facing antitrust scrutiny at the federal level. So what do you think about this? You know, I want you to run with this. You know them better than I do. And I think, you know, the situation. I think they don't like each other personally. I don't think, you know, say it's not personal. I think it's personal. I think that Tim and Apple, back to Steve Jobs, really disdains the way Mark conducts his business and he wants him to stop doing it. And so they're putting in place because Mark did not, neglected to get a phone. And we talked about this, them buying LG or stuff like that. Mark neglected to get a phone. And so this is their way to control them. And so it is a great way to control them. And they're not having any of it. And I think the idea of putting it out there pretty simply, consumers should decide if they want to be tracked or not, is a real problem for Facebook. I think they'll probably be okay because people have inertia, but it's a real, I think there is a lot of anger between, not anger on Apple part, Apple is like, ugh, disdain. And the people at Facebook are mad and think he's a scold and this and that, but he's going right at their business plan. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, like anything that hurts Facebook is kind of all right in my eyes, but it's very interesting. You summarize it. Apple wants a world where you pay. You basically can get it. I mean, Android and Facebook are sort of the advertising industrial complex meets sociopathy, meets data tracking, meets Google, meets Facebook, is a really compelling value proposition, and that is you get the processing power of the space shuttle and just staggering utility for free. The argument that people make around whenever they talk about, there's some wonderful things about the 20th century, morality, we care about animals, racial justice, some things we never would have talked about 100 years ago. And then in the same breath, people will say that the poorest citizen lives better than the wealthiest citizen 100 years ago, which I think is a bit of an exaggeration. But I think you can make a legitimate argument that a person who's solidly middle class has a better life than very, very wealthy people just 100 years ago. And a lot of it has to come down to the liberation of the incredible utility of technology. And the technology you get for free, or you can get for free with a combination of Google, Android, Facebook, and these apps is staggering. But there's just no getting around it. It comes at other non-economic costs. But there's still going to be a big population of people that want that. I mean, it's very easy for us to fall in love with a paid app economy, right? Because these payments, $11 a month or whatever it is, or $20, or now people are, I think, spending about $80 a month on subscriptions or on apps and then $150 on subscriptions. Easy for us to say, right? We can pretend that we care about our privacy. Except why not come up with an innovative business thing?

Scott Galloway: I think Apple's just saying to them, it doesn't have to be paid necessarily. It's just the CEO of Nextdoor was like, great, we'll do it. We'll do it. Come to us for advertising. We're local. We can get you people. And we don't have to invade your privacy. We don't have to do it in these sneaky ways. I think Tim Cook was like, if you want to track people on your platform, that's fine. But not all over the frigging internet, which is what Facebook does. I think that's really what's going on.

From a business perspective, in my opinion, this illuminates the power of controlling the end consumer interface. If you're not vertical, if you don't control the end hardware that delivers the content, you're vulnerable. I think Netflix is vulnerable. Disney is vulnerable. And to a certain extent, Facebook is vulnerable. It really is content versus distribution. And Apple is flexing their distribution muscles. We control the end access, the piece of hardware and the software for the billion wealthiest people on the planet.

And also it's easy for Nextdoor to say because they haven't made the staggering multi-billion dollar investment in tracking. And I can't believe I'm defending Facebook. People say they get creeped out by ads. I don't mind Facebook creeping me out. I think more relevant ads, I kind of like it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, well, that's one argument that they can make that.

Scott Galloway: I like the ads I get on Instagram. I like the fact if I'm at a Beyonce concert and they serve me an ad for the Beyonce, I like that. What I don't like is the fact that these individuals continually lie and delay and obfuscate and do things that damage our country and depress our teens. But the investment they've made in innovation around advertising, delivering the right ad at the right time... Nextdoor can't even do that. They're not in the same neighborhood, they're not next door to that technology.

Kara Swisher: Of course not. But here's the deal. One of the things that I think Facebook is trying to do is get all these small business owners to complain, like "I now can't afford it." If people opt out, Facebook was quoting that 60% of revenues will decline for these small businesses. And then Harvard is like, that is a big lie. Of course, Facebook immediately puts out a wrong statistic to make it seem incredibly dire. And then they roll out these people. What I think it just shows is, wow, they only have two choices, Google and Facebook, and mostly Facebook. So that sucks. So it just points out to me how big and strong Facebook is. And why do they control the entire online ecosystem in advertising? I'm like, that's the problem with small businesses. They have no choices but you.

Scott Galloway: Well, not that, but Apple gets to make the decisions around the technology, around their end users.

Kara Swisher: Yes, but I think Facebook has more of a stranglehold on online advertising. And maybe they shouldn't. Maybe there should be more choices. Maybe other people should innovate. Because the problem these small businesses have isn't that Apple's suddenly opting to let people make a choice. I don't really care what happens at Facebook. If the consumers can just choose, let the consumers choose. And that's where we'll end up.

Scott Galloway: But to your point, let's talk a little bit about choice. Choice connotes that you would have a more healthy ecosystem and there'd be a number of players. Facebook and Google's duopoly dominance of the digital ad dollar has gone from about 63 cents on the dollar pre-pandemic to now it's around 80 cents. And then there's a third player that controls another 10 cents. Do you know who that is?

Kara Swisher: What, Amazon?

Scott Galloway: Amazon. So we have three players, Amazon, Google, and Facebook, that control 90% of the final frontier of branding, marketing, targeting, programmatic media. That's just not a healthy ecosystem.

Kara Swisher: No, it's not. So let people choose. They don't get a choice.

Scott Galloway: That's right. Facebook is underscoring by trotting out all these small business people, like, well, because they don't have a choice to buy anywhere else. They don't have any other choices.

Kara Swisher: No, look. I'm sorry, Scott. I could interrupt you. I'm caffeinated. I'm coming off this great weekend with great friends. Here's the deal. We don't have choices. I think this is perfectly fine for Apple to do. Facebook can squeal like a stuck pig. People either decide or not. And frankly, they'll probably win through inertia.

Scott Galloway: That's an insult to the other white meat.

Kara Swisher: Okay, listen. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Either people will decide or not, and probably Facebook will be fine because inertia is a very strong energy source on this planet. And they'll just go click yes. Sure. Track me. Whatever. But at least let them pick their poison. That's all I say.

Kara Swisher: What I'd be surprised... if they get to pick, I think we're going to be shocked at how few people opt out.

Scott Galloway: Opt out, right. I'm sorry, at how few people opt out. I think people talk a big game about their privacy, and they don't clear their cookies. They don't. Young people decide every day to make the tradeoff between a lack of privacy and utility.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but why doesn't Facebook want the question even asked? Even if they will.

Scott Galloway: I think they have no choice. Apple has made an enormous investment in hardware and access to the consumer and they get to control that stuff. And I don't understand what Facebook's argument is. And the notion of a tax is something that... okay, a tax is negative, but it's supposed to help society. When every small business in America can't establish competitive advantage by using Google or Facebook, but everybody pays it, it's no longer a business investment. It's a tax.

Kara Swisher: Look, I think the biggest tax cut in history will be breaking up Google and Facebook and reducing their ability to impose rents on small business.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Agree.

Kara Swisher: All right. We'll see what happens in the Mark versus Tim contest. Let's bring on our friend of Pivot, Scott. Christopher Payne is the chief operating officer at DoorDash. You had requested an online food delivery person, and I am delivering him to you for lots of questions. This week, DoorDash... [he laughs] He laughs, just wait. This week, DoorDash announcing new pricing changes. Beginning this week, all U.S. local restaurants will have a choice of three different delivery partnership plans, starting with a 15% commission option. Let's start with that. Let's start with... and you also settled the $2.5 million lawsuit that alleged the company misled consumers to believe tipping would increase workers' pay. So why don't you start with that, Chris? Talk about the two things that happened.

Christopher Payne: All right. So, Scott, it's nice to meet you.

Scott Galloway: Nice to meet you, Christopher.

Christopher Payne: Thanks for doing us.

Kara Swisher: Thank you both for hosting me.

Christopher Payne: So today's announcement is a very important one because we're offering small businesses more choice. One of the things that's happened during the pandemic is we've had to spring into action and make lots of changes. I think that's one of the constant themes. We've had an initiative called Main Street Strong throughout the last 13 months where we did commission relief at the beginning, Kara, where we did $120 million commission relief for restaurants. We then, in the fall, began to shift into trying to promote pickup to get more in-store. We were learning as we were going. We also built a product called Storefront. 40% of restaurants going into the pandemic didn't have their own digital ordering platform. This is a version of DoorDash that's white labeled that they can use.

Today's announcement essentially gives restaurants more choice over the prices that they pay. There are three components to the announcement. Instead of one package with everything bundled in...

Kara Swisher: Which is what people complained about, right? People were saying that you were just taking all their money, essentially.

Christopher Payne: Well, the thing to remember is that delivery is a cost-intensive service. Dashers need to be compensated. So what we did is we bundled that for the small business. They basically had everything: the marketing programs, DashPass, our subscription program. We've now broken that apart. There's a 15% version. We call it the basic package, which essentially allows the restaurant to be on the platform to offer the service. But more of the fees for the order go to the consumer. So it'll be lower volume than the max marketing program, but a great choice for merchants that may want to drive more profitability or frankly right now might not have enough staff or capacity. There are definitely trends happening in the market right now.

The second is Plus, which is 25%. You get inclusion in the DashPass, our subscription product. The way to think about that is you're lowering consumer fees in exchange for more growth and promotion. And then the final package, the 30% tier, is the Premier package, which includes DashPass, but it also includes an expanded radius so you can increase your service area. It also comes with a growth guarantee. If you don't do 20 transactions on DoorDash in a month, all your sales that do occur below 20 are commission-free. So that's one part of the announcement. You never have to pay 30% again, Kara, if you don't want to.

And then the second part of the announcement is Storefront. Storefront has just exploded, and this is a way for restaurants to have their own channel, to own the customer relationship.

Kara Swisher: So that you don't insert yourself, this gatekeeper role.

Scott Galloway: Scott, go ahead. First off, nice to meet you, Christopher. Thanks for being here. I look at your business and I think, wow, this is a great story from a market capitalization standpoint. Huge market capitalization right out of the gates. And obviously, COVID is sort of wind in the sails of folks who want to eat more at home. Your stock is down though since the IPO, I think it's up about 19% since the IPO. And when I look at your competitors, I see SG&A at 53% for DoorDash, I see it about 53% at Uber. And then I see Domino's at 10%. My big rap is that you're just an advantage when you're vertical. In other words, you produce food and deliver it. How do you, at the end of the day, get your SG&A and your cost down to a point where this company can generate the profits that your market capitalization sort of indicates now? It just feels like you and the other delivery guys are slowly putting each other out of business. How do the economics here, how do you maintain or get to any sort of margin power against the other big guys in delivery?

Christopher Payne: This is definitely a scale play, Scott. You all know my background. I was at Amazon for a period of time. DoorDash is similar in some respects and different in others. The way to think about it is that the more volume you get in an area, the more dashers you can have, the more engaged they are, the more efficient they are, the better the economics flow. This is one of the core reasons I joined the company. We have markets that we started eight years ago. You can see that vintage of market and you can compare it to one we launched last week, with all of the points in between. We cover 85% of Americans now. Our older markets, like Palo Alto, San Jose, Houston, Atlanta, have reached profitability. And yet we've expanded into lots and lots of suburbs. One day, a couple of years ago, I got a note saying we're now dashing in Owensboro, Kentucky, where I was born and raised. And it kind of hit me that we were going to be everywhere. Now we are launching cities with 15,000 populations doing hundreds of deliveries a night.

Scott Galloway: So you've got a core business with a long tail. You've got three really well capitalized players in this business, and it looks like you guys are just beating the out of each other, to be blunt. How do you again get margin power? Is it going after smaller cities? Is it additional services?

Christopher Payne: If you look at our financials and you see the trend lines over time, you'll see that we're demonstrating economies of scale over time. We reached GAAP profitability in Q2 of last year. And you'll continue to see, I believe, improvements in profitability. But it is what I said: more scale, better economics. That's one component. And then if you look at other lines of business that we're having, things like Storefront and others, you see us now that we have 450,000 small business and large business relationships across the United States, increasingly offering more merchant services. For example, DoorDash Drive. Back in 2016, we opened up our logistics platform to power other people's demand. So when you order on Chipotle.com or you order grocery from Walmart or general merchandise from Walmart, behind the scenes, we're fueling that with our logistics capability. That is another vector of growth and profitability.

Kara Swisher: But not food. Because then you'd be competing with your partners. One of the reasons I assume behind this new partnership plan is because of the complaints, is that people felt like they just had a one-size-fits-all and they were getting jammed when they didn't want it or buying things they didn't want or paying for things they didn't want. If you got into food, you'd be competing with the very people you were trying to attract with this new announcement. Presumably running ghost kitchens, et cetera.

Christopher Payne: Our whole origin of the company, what we focus on, is building services for merchants. You all have talked to Tony in the past. His mom was a small restaurateur. One of the things I'm most proud of is that restaurants that were partnered with DoorDash during the pandemic are eight times more likely to still be in business than ones that were not. That's not to say that everything's rosy and that restaurants don't want changes. One of the hallmarks of the last year has been listening to restaurants and adapting based on what we're learning. This announcement today, you're right. Restaurants do want more choice. Some restaurants want more profitability. Storefront and the basic package allow you to do that.

I also didn't mention earlier that we've taken our pickup rate from 15% and we've lowered it to 6%. I think this is a huge win for merchants because one of the things they're concerned with is one of the most profitable channels they have is people that walk up to the counter, the to-go business. Now, essentially, payment processing is included in that 6%. So for 3% additional, you're getting access to the 20-plus million monthly actives on DoorDash.

Kara Swisher: To get more people in the door. That's the other component.

Christopher Payne: To get people in the door.

Kara Swisher: So let's talk about the lawsuit settlement. This is another sort of stain on not just you, but a lot of these delivery services: using these workers, Amazon, everyone, how they use workers. In your case, the tipping controversy sort of blew up. So talk about how your tipping model has changed.

Christopher Payne: Yeah, you and I talked about this about two years ago. We had an old Dasher pricing model, that pay model, that essentially what we did is... the way Dashers think about compensation is they take the DoorDash and the tip part and they think about that as their earnings. What we did is we basically topped up, we added on top of orders that didn't have a tip or had a low tip. Dashers loved that. It made more deliveries worth doing for them. And then they would do more deliveries per hour. But the piece that we missed, Kara, is that consumers didn't feel like their tip mattered in that model. So in the summer to fall of 2019, I altered that. I completely made the DoorDash component blind to the tip component. We adjusted the system and made it work for dashers and work for consumers. In all candor, we made a mistake there in terms of not balancing the needs of the marketplace. I feel very good about the model we have today.

Scott Galloway: So, look, you're a for-profit company, and I'm sure you think about stakeholders, not just shareholders, but obviously shareholders are still at the top or around the top. If I'm in your shoes, Chris, I immediately think, okay, autonomous driving. The moment I can get to scale or show some sort of scale around autonomous driver delivery or autonomous delivery, the marketplace senses the double click on the scale you're talking about. But my cynical self says you're just biding time until you can show the marketplace you're going to be able to replace drivers. I'm not suggesting that that's not coming for every organization. But what role does autonomous play for DoorDash? And what's the timeline? Because as you remember, Chris, you may have been there when Travis Kalanick said that famous thing: "As soon as I can get rid of the drivers, I'm going to have a great business." Which he sort of said out loud, the quiet part.

Christopher Payne: You all know I've been in tech my whole career, Microsoft and elsewhere. I've been in a weird position related to this autonomous discussion, Scott, because I am bullish on it being impactful in the long term. I'm skeptical that it will be impactful in the sense of replacing the totality of humans biking and driving. It's a really hard problem. The thing I don't like about the way it works today is people kind of have to solve a level five type problem in order to make it work. I'm very much from the school of crawl, walk, run. I like to make some progress and then iterate on that.

DoorDash has an initiative where we are working on autonomy. I think what you'll see from us is that we'll begin to use autonomy in components of the delivery. I'll give you two examples. There are lots of places where there's food in one area, and it's difficult to get the food to where the people are. If you've ever been to San Diego and you know Coronado Island and the divide between the city and the island, it's great food, people over here. Drones could be fantastic in that area. Line of sight, you can bring the food. But the last 10 feet, that's going to be done by humans for a long, long time to come. Additionally, you might see routes with sidewalk robots and those types of things where you've got restaurant hubs. You might see the main route be done by autonomous vehicles. But again, I think they'll be complementary to the system versus replacing the system for a long time to come. In my mind, I'm thinking five to ten years.

Kara Swisher: So then how do you think about AB5 and delivery drivers? That was pushed a lot by Uber, Lyft, yourselves and others. How do you look at that, where that's coming out? Because there's still... Amazon just won its union thing. There's a lot of heat around employees and drivers, whether they're workers in Britain. It goes back and forth. How do you look at the bigger landscape of that?

Christopher Payne: This will come as no surprise to you all that I think Prop 22 was a big win for drivers. I think that often people talk about employment and independent contract work as synonymous, and they're not. The Prop 22 results showed that. Remember, dashers dash on average less than four hours a week. 75% of our dashers have another job. What dashers say repeatedly that they love about this work is they get to have flexibility of working, not working, when they want, where they want, and earn additional supplement. To me, it's a complement. Prop 22 was a major step forward. The fact that it won by nearly two-thirds of California voters, it protects that flexibility. It guarantees 120% of minimum wage per active hour. It gives a path to health care insurance. It is not employment, though. I've listened to your podcast, and you talk about some of the benefits that are missing. I think we can work together as an industry on that over time. But I also think it's very important to talk about these things as a third way. It's not pure independent contracting. It's not pure employment. It's a third way.

Kara Swisher: But let me push back. When you talk about Facebook right now saying they're there for small businesses, really they're there because they're furious that Apple is forcing them to opt in or opt out. They're using small businesses as their shield. How do you... the idea that drivers are such a fulcrum between workers and this subclass of people who are doing this kind of thing, who are doing delivery, and some are just doing a few hours, but others are trying to make a living. Do you imagine there will be a settlement where you're not sort of the villains? Tip stealing, surging, having delivery people villains? I'm just saying you are. I just think it's super complex. What has to shift in our thinking about delivery and delivery people?

Christopher Payne: I think restaurants and drivers are successful on DoorDash. The average dasher on DoorDash makes $22 per active hour. This is when they're working.

Kara Swisher: Can you define what you mean by active?

Christopher Payne: That means that they're on a delivery.

Kara Swisher: Okay, but that's not $22 per hour that you're away from your family or actually working.

Christopher Payne: Well, it could be even more than that. Realize that that's on DoorDash. I mean, how many Uber and Lyfts have you guys gotten in and you got the Lyft on the one thing and you got Uber on the other? All I have visibility into is the DoorDash component of the delivery. But do I think that some of our drivers are doing Instacart grocery deliveries? You bet they are.

What I mean is, I want you to think further. If you could wave your wand and say, this is the one thing... Healthcare, what is it? A new kind of worker designation where people get to... because the pandemic has shown a lot of people are vulnerable, a lot more vulnerable than they need to be. Is there something you think that needs to be happening away from you, away from your workers, away from the acrimony that could be created, that would be great for these businesses to work in a way that's better for every person in that step?

Christopher Payne: I do, Kara. I think Prop 22 is an enormous step in the right direction. In cities in California, the average dasher is bringing in $30 to $36 per active hour. And Scott, to your question about what does that mean, they're not lying idle. There are lots of deliveries happening in California. What I would like to see as an industry, I'd love to see federal legislation. We're working very hard to figure out what that future state looks like with legislators across the country, with policymakers. It'd be great if it were federal. What we're looking for is something that codifies this, that preserves the flexibility, but gives a path to benefits that are across the entirety of the system. I think we'll be better for it.

Kara Swisher: Okay. I have a last question, Scott. You go. As people start to go back in the world and rely less on delivery, a lot of people feel some of it like Zoom, like all... the pandemic's been very, very good to you and others. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but it's really boomed in certain areas where people have to be home. And you were saying now they're having delivery in your area where you grew up. That probably wasn't the case before at all. People just went out and got stuff. So how do you iterate in that situation? How do you look at that world where people have had this great experiment with delivery? A lot of people are going to stay in it, but what's the downside for you? What is the problem you are most worried about?

Christopher Payne: Well, Kara, I've been working on e-commerce for a long time now. If you think about when I started at Amazon in '98... One of the things that I fundamentally believe is that consumer expectations around convenience will only increase with time. I read your article in the New York Times last week that the pandemic essentially accelerated the trend that was already happening. DoorDash's vision is to connect every local business to every local consumer and bring them things in minutes, not days. That's our fundamental strategy. The pandemic accelerated that, but it was a trend that existed before that. In my experience, it doesn't go back. At the end of the day, the expectations around convenience will only increase with time.

Yes, people are going to be euphoric and go back to in-restaurant dining. It's fun to see that. I got to dine indoors for the first time this past weekend and see the smiles on people's faces. I don't think this is a zero-sum game. I'll close on this, Kara, by saying that restaurants now have a tremendous opportunity in partnership with DoorDash. They used to be beholden only to the four walls, the people that come into their restaurant or pick up food from their restaurant. Now they can service a much larger area. A lot of these restaurants, same-store sales were decreasing prior to the pandemic.

Kara Swisher: So you're singing. So I'm going to do DoorDash slash Uber slash blank slash Domino's because it's not just DoorDash because it's a really competitive environment. Good try on that one. Scott, last question.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, as I read through, I looked at your earnings call transcripts. The thing that would get my greed lines going as a shareholder is your monthly subscription program. I've been a big fan of recurring revenue.

Kara Swisher: He loves a rundle.

Scott Galloway: Well, I just want to give you... I'm going to give you an ad here because I do want you to come back on. 5 million subscribers paying $10 a month. That's $600 million a year in recurring revenue. That's about a third of your users are now in the subscription program. Have you thought about layering in other components into that to make it more of a bundle? It seems to me that if it's not autonomous, and I think you're in a very weird spot around autonomous, I think it would be very hard for you to be a proponent of autonomous publicly. I just think you're in almost an impossible spot there. Unless you're like a jerk like Travis. But go ahead. Around subscription, you can be, I think, kind of loud and proud. Have you thought about bundling other things into some sort of recurring revenue monthly program?

Christopher Payne: Definitely. Normally, we like to test things out. We sort of crawl, walk, run. Subscription was one of those things where we began this journey three years ago. The fact that there's 5 million now and growing... The basic model is one where you lower the fees for customers in exchange for that recurring revenue, and you get increased engagement, order frequency, and retention.

One of the things that we did, Scott, at the beginning of the pandemic was we accelerated convenience. If you think back to when I was at Amazon, they were just a bookseller and we went into music video. I was the video guy. DoorDash is now in its moment where it's going to go beyond just restaurant delivery. Convenience was our first, and we brought that forward because we thought it would be an important service during the pandemic. To your point, we folded that into the DashPass subscription. So you can get Walgreens and CVS and Wawa and Circle K and 7-Eleven delivered as a part of your DashPass membership.

Scott Galloway: Did you say Wawa?

Christopher Payne: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: I'm in. Go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Sorry. No, I love Wawa. I just don't like going there.

Christopher Payne: They sell a lot. And then grocery is something that we are now progressing against. Partnerships with Meijer, Hy-Vee in the Midwest. That's also included in DashPass. The idea is that ultimately it will be your local subscription to get things in minutes, not days.

Kara Swisher: All right. Who's your biggest competitor? Last question. Then we got to go.

Christopher Payne: You know I'm going to answer that question with... it's our ability...

Kara Swisher: No, look, at the end of the day, it's a very competitive landscape.

Christopher Payne: Or is it Amazon?

Christopher Payne: Uber is one of our competitors. We very much respect them, and they've done great work. Grubhub as well. But that's typically the competitive set. We very much focus on the customer first. That's propelled us to a lead. We have about 54% market share in the United States in this very competitive landscape. But we don't think we've won anything.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'd say Amazon.

Christopher Payne: Yeah, I'd say Amazon. But this is day one for local commerce.

Kara Swisher: Chris, I gotta look back where you started. I'm telling you, I ordered a sippy cup last night at 11. It was at my house at five in the morning. It was shocking. It was by Amazon. Awesome. Just saying. It was fascinating. Anyway, thank you so much. This is a really interesting area. Thank you, Chris. I think it'll be interesting to see what happens as we go forward. I really appreciate it.

Christopher Payne: Thanks a lot, Chris. Take care.

Kara Swisher: Thank you for having me.

Scott Galloway: Nice meeting you.

[Christopher Payne exits]

Kara Swisher: He's interesting, isn't he? He's an interesting guy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I think he's in a tough spot, though. I think that's a place with a bunch of deep pockets going after each other with very little differentiation. We'll see. I think that's a tough one.

Kara Swisher: Really tough one. You've got to add the rundle. You're right. They've got to be more. They've got to be your delivery guy. If you're going to compete against, if you're going to go into a market and said, what two organizations do I not want to compete against? Do you want to compete against Uber and Amazon?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, that's just tough, right?

Kara Swisher: But they're still ahead. They're still ahead of them.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they're number one, right?

Kara Swisher: And Instacart. There's not just that. We didn't leave out that. There's a lot. But someone's going to be your delivery guy, and that's going to be interesting. All right, Scott, we're going to take one more quick break, and we'll be back for wins and fails.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Airbnb thing. Really? Is that how I read it?

Scott Galloway: Yes. Yes.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. You don't read up on things. I check at every Airbnb. Giant man is here. That was seriously... that kid. I know. When you walked in together, it looked like he was dropping you off at kindergarten. People have no idea how enormous you are.

Scott Galloway: And you know what? Golden Child loves Giant Man. Doesn't Golden Child love Giant Man?

Kara Swisher: Oh, there's... that was nice. That was actually the nicest part of it. That was the... you know, Golden Child, their mom so-so, but the kids were alright.

Scott Galloway: Alright, my win is our Miami relationship. I think PivotCon in Miami, we're gonna have some fun there. We're gonna rock the house.

Kara Swisher: We're gonna rock the house, or else it'll be a disaster where we'll be arrested by police. That's my goal.

Scott Galloway: That's my goal pretty much. Second time for you.

Kara Swisher: Second time for you, you criminal, you gangster. I've been arrested. My fail, I don't have a fail this week. I don't have a fail. I don't feel like there's that many fails this week. Feels okay. We're getting there. A variance, I guess, but we'll see. We're doing okay, I think. Nice. Scott?

Scott Galloway: My win is Biden's proposal to eliminate the capital gains tax deduction. I thought it made sense several decades ago. We needed more capital drawn into the marketplace. I think the incentives... I think there's no dearth of capital. And all this has become is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. There's just no reason. Rich people are squealing, squealing all day today on CNBC. It would be hard to imagine any cohort in the history of mankind that has done better in the last 12 months than wealthy people in the U.S.

Kara Swisher: Well, you know, Biden hates innovation according to them. He hates innovation, just so you know.

Scott Galloway: Well, anyway, it's time. There's no excuse. We don't need to draw... there's no shortage of capital, investment capital. And it just doesn't make any sense that people... we've got to stop prioritizing money over sweat. There's nothing more noble. The American brand is about generosity, liberty, empathy, but we work, and there's got to be a dignity in work. And when you tax people more for the money their sweat makes than the money their money makes, it's just led to some very weird places. So I salute the Biden administration for going after what has been, in my view, a corrupt tax. And to go back to the Reagan years when all income was just income.

And then my fail is I think there's a lot of moral hazard beginning to creep up. One, we talked about the out-of-control CEO compensation of bailouts that encourage CEOs to take their companies to the brink of zero such that they can be awarded options. And then when the company rips back to kind of just where it was two years ago, they trot off with $30, $40, $50 million. It's no surprise that hotel CEOs, MGM, Carnival are just raking it in. And that is a terrible moral hazard that encourages reckless behavior and risk taking.

And also, and we don't want to talk about this because it's more uncomfortable, but the moral hazard behind the stimulus and extending unemployment benefits is going to create a labor shortage where the bottom line is it's just more economically advantageous to stay at home for many workers right now than to go into work. And you're seeing huge labor shortages. And I hope that takes wages up. But when you... I think it's a problem when in America we've decided, and we need to revisit minimum wage laws, but when we've decided that people should stay at home versus work. And I think that's what we've done with this, some of the stimulus around unemployment.

Kara Swisher: Yep, yep. So look, my win. We got that complaint a lot in Miami. They didn't have enough employees. They can't find people. Job fairs, no one's showing up. No one's showing up because between stimulus and unemployment and the fact that you can call in and say, "I may have been exposed to COVID, so I'm taking the next 15, 30 days off." That means we've got to raise... we've got to create incentives to work. And it's not... incentives to stay at home, incentives to take your company to the brink of bankruptcy are not what capitalism is all about.

Scott Galloway: I like this. This is a very smart little knitting together of two different ideas. It's very smart.

Kara Swisher: There you go.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, much like your wife's delicious pancakes. I'm complex with King Counter's complexity. Tell her I love her multigrain pancakes. They're amazing.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she loves the Swishers. She loves the Swishers. It was fun. I think she was glad to see us all go, including you. You saw she kicked me out, right?

Scott Galloway: I saw that. I'm like, "I'll stay home." She's like, "No, you're going to New York." She's like, "You're out of here. Get going, Scott. Let's go out of the house." She's like, "You're out of here. You're going with them."

Kara Swisher: She's glad to see us all. She runs. I love seeing you being run the show by another person. It was good. Because I try and I fail. Did you see when I was negotiating with my kids? I'm like trying to get them to go to bed. And they're like, "No." And I said, "Come on, I'm going to get in trouble with mom." They're like, "We feel you. We get it. We get it."

Scott Galloway: That's my go-to. I'm scared of mom. It's so nice. I got away some lessons from her. She's giving me lessons on how to control you.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Scott, that's the show. It's a sad situation for you now that we are united together, your wife and I.

Scott Galloway: That's what I mean.

Kara Swisher: We'll be back on Friday for more. Who's your Kelly McGillis? Who's your Kelly McGillis? Oh, God. Go to N1. We literally bounced a foot into the air when Giant Boy sat down. I almost hit my head on the ceiling.

Scott Galloway: I'm bringing my other son next time. I have other children. There's so many Swisher children. What is he, Manute Bol? I mean, these are freaks.

Kara Swisher: He's a strong one. He's a strong one. They're lovely children.

Scott Galloway: Give me those two kids, I'm taking over Australia.

Kara Swisher: All right. I am taking over Australia with those two. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your questions for the Pivot podcast. The link is also in our show notes. You can have more Giant Kids anytime. Don't let the lesbians beat you out, but we do. Let me just say, read us out, Scott. My sperm can do no good.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Kara Swisher: Today's episode was engineered by Ernie Intertott.

Scott Galloway: Special thanks to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows.

Kara Swisher: Make sure you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like the show, please recommend it to a friend.

Scott Galloway: Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Kara Swisher: We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Scott Galloway: Florida and the Swishers. That's right. How can anyone be this masculine and this lovely?

Kara Swisher: Can I give you one piece of feedback? There were no mints, okay? No mints? No mints on the pillows.

Scott Galloway: Oh, there we go.

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