This Week in Startups
00:12:52 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis
[00:12:52] S1: I [00:12:52] S0: was. The number one reason is you don't have the Fred Krugers and Sailors of the world, Ponzi scheming, pumping and dumping, shaming people, laze... Remember laser eyes, orange this Diamond hats. Orange ties, diamond hats. You don't have that... Those bot armies coming after you anymore. So, usually, when I would post something like this, you would have a thousand credible people with laser eyes. Like, credible people who are venture capitalists, founders, etcetera, media personalities who had laser eyed, put orange nonsense, which is my favorite color, which kind of pisses me off a little bit. You'd have all those people say, have fun staying poor, have fun staying poor, and whatever dumb, you know, one liners that they would crib from each other as they sycophantically, you know, followed each other off this Bitcoin cliff to a wasted decade or a wasted five years at least of trading this thing when they could have been doing productive stuff in the world. All that wasted time, whatever, they're all gone. It's embarrassing to put laser... I mean, can you imagine how embarrassing it is to be a 40, 50, or in Fred's case, 70 year old guy you put laser eyes on? [00:14:06] S1: It was very millennial cringe now. It would play very millennial cringe. [00:14:10] S0: Cringey. Yeah. Mean, I the only people I really respect is Michael Saylor, who has not changed his tune. He's like, it's Manhattan. I'm like, bro, if this is Manhattan, this is this is Manhattan from Escape from New York. This is not like... This is Manhattan from planet of the apes.
00:14:10 · Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris
[00:14:10] S0: Cringey. Yeah. Mean, I the only people I really respect is Michael Saylor, who has not changed his tune. He's like, it's Manhattan. I'm like, bro, if this is Manhattan, this is this is Manhattan from Escape from New York. This is not like... This is Manhattan from planet of the apes. [00:14:24] S1: Yeah. This is not like the Manhattan you're thinking. Manhattan. Yeah. [00:14:27] S0: I am a legend Manhattan. But Michael Saylor might come on the all in interview program. [00:14:32] S1: Really? That would be a great one. That would... I was looking [00:14:34] S0: for you do like, I don't know, a year and a half ago when I was like, this mister thing is crazy. Like, what what is going on here? Why do you need to make something so complicated? Then he was like, I wanna come on. I was like, okay. Come on. And then he ghosted us. And then my people have been reaching out to me. Mike, come on now. So I don't know. [00:14:50] S1: That'd be [00:14:50] S0: I I would have a thoughtful discussion with him. Let's keep going. Be great.
00:14:50 · Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris
[00:14:50] S0: I I would have a thoughtful discussion with him. Let's keep going. Be great. [00:14:53] S1: Alright. We'll do we'll we'll do one more story here before we, move on. We gotta talk about this DoorDash thing. So DoorDash, they're buying Instacart in a cash and stock deal worth around $17,000,000,000. This was announced yesterday. DoorDash will pay $65 a share. It's about a 25% premium over Instacart's October 22 closing price. Instacart, of course, went public in 2023 following a big pandemic boom when people were ordering groceries instead of leaving the house, but they've struggled to keep pace with Uber, Amazon, and Walmart in the category. Here's the pitch. Grocers will get DoorDash's delivery network plus Instacart's grocery and fulfillment tech while customers get to stop paying for two memberships, DashPass and Instacart plus. The company's claim that's gonna save about a $100,000,000 per year. An anti monopoly group, of course, already asking regulators to block this. They're saying that the combined company would control nearly 60% of third party grocery delivery in The US. So I guess first question to you, does this go through and is this a monopoly risk to put DoorDash and Instacart together?
00:16:00 · Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris
[00:16:00] S0: Okay. So third party grocery delivery service is like not grocery delivery. So already the people who are shaking the antitrust sword there and waving it around have narrowed it. So you need to always be intellectually honest when you look at something like a merger or acquisition. So if you're looking at the Warner Brothers or CNN or Discovery, and you're like, oh my god, like, is this consolidating everything? You know, sometimes people will leave out TikTok and YouTube. So they're like, oh, it's gonna make a 60% contributor. And then you include YouTube, it's like, going to make a 30% consolidation. Maybe that consolidation is actually necessary to go up against it. So this is... If we were to look at all groceries delivered, you're going to have to take into account Amazon and Whole Foods. You're to have to take some of these people like Walmart have their own delivery services. H E B launched their own delivery service here in the great state of Texas, and we love our H E B here. For those of you who don't know, it's incredible. [00:17:07] S1: Yeah. Yeah. And Central Market too. Are you hip to Central Market? That's their
00:17:07 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis
[00:17:07] S1: Yeah. Yeah. And Central Market too. Are you hip to Central Market? That's their [00:17:11] S0: their Central Market is their upscale brand. It's kinda like their, Whole Foods. Incredible company and incredible brand. So what really matters... Under Lina Khan, she would be losing her mind right now over this. Under president Donald Trump, this is an easy, like, wave it through. Like, yeah, just keep keep going. You know the you know the Bought up a piece of your last week. Play the security guard here who's waving people in. Remember that one where he's frisking people by going like this? You ever seen that? [00:17:43] S1: Yes. Yes. He's going like a round in, the laziest way. [00:17:46] S0: He doesn't even touch him. He's just like, yeah. Whatever. That's that's [00:17:49] S1: the Yeah. [00:17:50] S0: That's Make me a make me a FTC meme with an FTC jacket of, like, whoever's running it. And, like, Lina Khan would be tackling the person. This person's, like, waving them through. [00:18:03] S1: Just that Cool.
00:18:05 · Jason Calacanis
[00:18:05] S0: For M and A. So yum yum. It's gonna go through. That's why it's happening now, I'll be totally honest. Yeah. Here's your... So this is gonna go through real fast, and that's why things are being done. Anything you see done in the next twelve months is because business people saying Yeah. We got eighteen months to to lock this up. And supposedly, this is gonna take a year to do. Sure. I I am a I'm a shareholder in DoorDash and Instacart and Uber. I have all three of those in my portfolio. So whatever happens here, I'm arguably gonna win on some level. I do think this is a complete overpay and that it's a bad idea for Uber to buy it. Why? DoorDash. I know that. Saying Uber was in the running here. It was a bad idea for Uber to even be in the running here because their stock is... It's better to buy your own stock when you would have to overpay. DoorDash and Instacart, if you look at their multiples right now... If the... If you look at the PE data, DoorDash, 88 times trailing price earnings is their valuation, and I guess Instacart was 25 times their past earnings. In other words, DoorDash's stock is overvalued, Instacart's undervalued, so it makes this a more efficient purchase for them. Now, Uber stock is undervalued as well, so it would be more neutral. What you have to ask yourself, and I was talking to somebody who was at the top of these companies previously, this cohort of companies, like literally top five player in this thing, he's like for $17,000,000,000 you could do a lot more, either buying back your own stock, investing in automation. So it feels like this is something Uber walked away from and that these guys embraced because they have a high stock price. When you have a high stock price, let's say, remember SpaceX bought Cursor? They had a high stock price, so it makes total sense to do that. That's when you do it. When you have a high stock price, high multiple, you put your equity work. When it's lower, you don't. Instacart, I believe, is a slow growth company. What are the... Anytime we do these, we're going to always talk about Instacart's growth and how they're doing as a business. Do you have that teed up in your notes? How Instacart is doing as a business? This is the bad news for, like, this business. Instacart quarterly revenue from 2023 to now. We're sitting here three years ago.