548: Starting to Count Chickens
17 Aug 2023Callsheet’s first week, why Apple might (or might not) want to buy Disney, and the state of the podcast-ad market.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: LG stand woes & Casey pronunciation woes
- Follow-up:
- Casey’s fire hazard has been returned
- Text editors
- Neat Safari-in-Sonoma trick
- LLCs may not be the panacea we thought
- Single-member LLCs can still be “real businesses”, says Ryan Roy
- Single-member LLCs don’t necessarily protect the member, says Patrick Yan
- Callsheet week one & subscription dynamics
- Apple-buys-Disney Rumors
- The Hollywood Reporter
- Jason
- Upgrade #472: Step Aside, Bob!
- King’s Dominion Backlot Stunt Coaster
(The poster in the hero image is not the one Casey was talking about) - Cabel Sasser: Fantasy Meets Reality
- WWDC 2013 Intro Video
- If everyone is busy making everything, how can anyone perfect anything?
- There are a thousand no’s for every yes.
- Aaron Thomas’
#askatp
- Post-show: Let’s have a fireside chat about the state of ATP. (Nobody’s in trouble.)
Sponsored by: Members like you! If you’re not a member, you can become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- UltraWobble
- Inflated battery follow-up
- Text editors: Nova, Zed, mg
- Become a member
- Emoji favicons in Safari
- LLC follow-up
- Please become a member
- Callsheet, week one
- Really, become a member
- What if Apple + Disney? 🖼️
- Ending theme
- Our ad market 🖼️
UltraWobble
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s go live if I can figure I gotta find that window on this tiny tiny screen
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t you had the 5k there? Yeah, I do I
⏹️ ▶️ John When I use my studio display, I’m like, oh, yeah, so cramped
⏹️ ▶️ John here gonna be on the small computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know I’m on my dumb ultra fine and it’s so tiny. All my windows are all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, my life is so hard. I’m used to 6ks and now I only have 5
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of LG though My little tiny nephews were here after Long Island vacation They
⏹️ ▶️ John came back here and we’re around here for a little bit. What is their age range like
⏹️ ▶️ John I Got him so bad. You would think like I once you have kids, you know kids ages. Nope I had kids they grew up all through these
⏹️ ▶️ John years and I Can look at it a little kid and I have no idea how old they are Anyway, some of them are really little I think
⏹️ ▶️ John before kindergarten and some of them up like pushing against the teens So the whole range there and
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was maybe the littlest one from the mouth of babes because they asked to see They said show me that video game that we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t say wanted to see me play destiny again Cuz they’re not have games like that at their house So I played destiny for a little bit and show
⏹️ ▶️ John it to him and like within two minutes of playing I’m playing on my LG gaming monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John The littlest nephew says this monitor is really wobbly
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot make a stand that holds the monitors still it’s insane I recently watched a gaming YouTube channel
⏹️ ▶️ John where they were talking about the monitors and the guy’s like, yeah, LG’s not very good at making stands, but it’s not that big
⏹️ ▶️ John a deal. You can just use a VESA mount. I’m like, if I was doing a review channel for monitors, I would constantly
⏹️ ▶️ John ding them for making stands that can’t hold the monitors still. The solution is not, oh, just buy another stand,
⏹️ ▶️ John use a VESA mount. No, the solution is make a stand that can hold your monitors still. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John to bump the desk, Margo.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is it works like a bobblehead like it’s got a spring in it so as soon as it starts going goes wobble wobble wobble wobble wobble wobble wobble.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m telling you you know so I had an awful time with my LG 5k
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and and I had to send it away for like two months and that was a bummer but once I’ve gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it back it’s actually been just fine as I knock on wood. Ultra
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco been ultra fine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the reason it’s been ultra fine and not just regular fine is twofold one I never ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever even look at the USB-C connection to my computer, you know, on the monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John But still gravity is slowly pulling down on them, slowly prying them off the motherboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You are 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey correct. And then secondly, and we talked about this in the past, but my Fully, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think they were a sponsor forever and a day ago, but my Fully monitor stand, I love this
⏹️ ▶️ John If you keep talking about that name brand, Casey, we’re gonna have to talk about how you pronounce that word, I’m sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ John I held off for like three shows, but now it’s back. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like a sound artist a Foley artist?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How am I supposed to pronounce a bully?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, that’s it Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m trying to let me just I’m trying to think of how how Casey says it It’s not like Foley artists
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s not what he’s saying fo le why like the people who make the noise of footsteps or movies and stuff it’s more
⏹️ ▶️ John like Let me see. No, that’s that would be different.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m trying to think of a word I don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John it sound that doesn’t exist in the English language It is closer to Foley than it should
⏹️ ▶️ John be like that’s where Marco’s getting that from but it’s not exactly like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s almost fully but it’s not quite full
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not fully maybe it’s like a baby horse with an e sound at the end
⏹️ ▶️ John you know you know baby horse
⏹️ ▶️ John work in case of the word is pronounced fully mm-hmm
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s like a pulley
⏹️ ▶️ John like a pulley with ropes can you say pulley yep pulley
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco pulley either
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is the problem that was
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey no it was wrong this is
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly the same way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John a show to do. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for goodness sakes, Marco, do you have any queries about Mario that you’d like to
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco knows about query. He’s talked about it many times. It’s a settled topic.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey This is new. This is brand new. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you said it in a couple of shows and I let it slide, but you keep bringing it back. And so now we have to, we have to talk about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John We can’t move forward
⏹️ ▶️ John it. It just needs to be, it needs to be named and mentioned in case you should know that it’s a thing. Just like Marco knows
⏹️ ▶️ John that query is a thing, whatever, like we all have our
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, that’s just, yeah, that’s a regional thing. You’re right. Uh, and Marco’s thing, I think, I think his thing is an Ohio thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? The query thing is that? I think so. Probably. Yeah. So I don’t know where fully is coming from, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, I genuinely cannot hear the difference between the two things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna pull a Merlin on me. I am. I really am. I have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can hear the difference between Mario and Mario. I can definitely hear it. Oh yeah, obviously. Oh, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is like, it’s totally like hover
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I was just gonna say, I was gonna say it’s Hoover. With Hover, all three
⏹️ ▶️ John of us had no idea what they were talking about. You’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what? I still don’t understand why the Brits are so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John angry. I do, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I understand it now, but that’s like, that’s a UK thing. This just must be, I don’t know, Connecticut? I don’t know where it’s coming from.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you think they were frowning while we were pronouncing it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John improperly? Oh goodness,
⏹️ ▶️ John that was a sad discovery as well. But at least that’s not pronunciation related.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh golly, can we move on for the love of all that is good and holy?
⏹️ ▶️ John tell us about your baby horse.
Inflated battery follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, my fire hazard has been returned.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, wait, was this… it was an inflated battery on something, but I forgot what.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s right. In an old iPhone that we were using for…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That we were using for a white noise machine for Michaela, or actually, I think this was Declan’s, it doesn’t matter, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the kids. And it had exploded more and more and more over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the last couple of weeks. I finally had the chance to go to the Apple I showed them the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone and said, I would like to recycle this please. And the guy said, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can I have your name and email? Sure, I guess. What? He rang through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a purchase of $0 for Apple Renew hyphen free recycle hyphen gen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not sure what that means. On the receipt, it says recycle information. Apple NPO recycle, serial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey number, whatever. Is this an Apple device? Yes. Is it a serialized product? Yes. Does it turn on? No, $0. Zero
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dollars. But they took it, didn’t blink an eye. So. But they needed personal information
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to take it? Apparently, they needed my, well, I guess it was just to send me the receipt? Question mark?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they wanted my name and email address to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish I could remember what they asked me, because I gave them like an old iPad. It wasn’t swollen or anything. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John just like basically non-functional and super old and worth zero dollars. So I said, well, it was an Apple store. I said, here, you can recycle
⏹️ ▶️ John this. And I don’t think they asked me anything. I think they said, hey, does it turn on? I said, no, it doesn’t turn on. It’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s dead. And I think they just said, okay, bye. And I walked away, but maybe they did ask for my email. Who knows?
Text editors: Nova, Zed, mg
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, moving on, we had some text editor feedback in, did you know, the entire internet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrote us to tell us that Nova is a thing that exists in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got a little pushback on that, on the, the, uh, the flood of feedback. So here’s the thing, the context of this discussion was someone
⏹️ ▶️ John asked us like, Hey, what text editors are using? And it was one of those things, questions that we answer every few years. So we’re sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of revisiting, Hey, have we changed? Are we still using the same text editors? That was the context. And in that context,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re not going to name every text editor in the world because we’re just telling you what we’re using now. the discussion
⏹️ ▶️ John did branch off a little bit when Marco was like, I remember I tried some new text editors back in the day, and he couldn’t remember what they
⏹️ ▶️ John were, and he looked them up, but still very focused on what we were using or trying. It wasn’t a survey
⏹️ ▶️ John of here are all the text editors on the Mac. It wasn’t even a discussion of here are all the good text editors
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac. So I’m going to give us mostly a pass for not mentioning every text editor under the sun. Second thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if it had been a discussion of let’s talk about all the text editors under the sun, I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have brought up Nova, which yes, of course, we all know about Nova. I own it. I’m not sure what it brought it
⏹️ ▶️ John up because I think of Nova like an IDE. Now, I also think
⏹️ ▶️ John of VS Code like an IDE, so maybe that’s not fair, but here’s the thing. I revisited Nova because I paid
⏹️ ▶️ John for it ages ago and they have this weird thing where like you pay for it and you get like a year of free updates. And then after that, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can still use the program, it just never updates itself anymore. So I relaunched it and I realized my like yearly
⏹️ ▶️ John thing had actually expired a little while ago. So I re-upped it by paying for another year of Nova updates.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Nova, the text editor part of it, has gotten so much
⏹️ ▶️ John better and so good. I was amazed. It was already good. Like my subscription wasn’t that old. I knew Nova
⏹️ ▶️ John was good. In fact, I’d sent some feedback and asked for a feature addition to the program and they added it like in two
⏹️ ▶️ John months. It was amazing. But now if you go into Nova, it’s not like VS Code
⏹️ ▶️ John level of like support from the entire internet. Like VS Code has tons of people behind it. It’s very popular or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, but it’s close for a tiny company like Panic to be even within shouting distance of VS Code. And of
⏹️ ▶️ John course, everything they do is nicer than it is in VS Code. Because it’s Mac native and it’s, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s so much as a third party extension system. Every feature you can imagine is in there somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s still not really like a text editor in the style of like, I just edit text. It’s an IDE. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John full blown. Like it does file transfers, because they’re the company that makes transmit. Like it is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John full feature. But if you’re thinking, oh, this is an IDE. I don’t want an IDE. I just want a good text editor. Nova is
⏹️ ▶️ John also an amazing text editor. So I would have been wrong not to mention it because
⏹️ ▶️ John A, we talked about VS Code, but B, it’s like, if you just ignore all the
⏹️ ▶️ John IDE parts and just use it as a text editor, as long as you’re okay with having sidebars and stuff, which most Mac users
⏹️ ▶️ John are, they’re not like me with my bare BB Edit windows with no sidebars on them, it has so many
⏹️ ▶️ John features and they’re all incredibly well implemented. I was blown away by my newly
⏹️ ▶️ John updated version. I forget what version they’re on. they increment the end version number pretty quickly. They might be up to like 15
⏹️ ▶️ John or something or whatever, but if you haven’t looked at Nova in a while, take a look, it’s pretty amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cool, yeah, I actually, you know, I had known about it, you know, I had known originally about, you know, the Coda product,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then of course, Nova kind of came out of that, I think. But, you know, I had always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also thought about it as an IDE, and I wasn’t really thinking I was in the market for that kind of IDE,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially because, you know, it’s primarily focused on, at least Coda was primarily focused on like web developments in particular, like front-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web development, which I really don’t do a lot of, as you can tell by looking at any website that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run. So yeah, so this was good to hear.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Panic makes really good stuff, so I think I will check that out next time I’m in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the market for a text editor, which at this rate is going to be sometime between, you know, three months from now and thirty years from
⏹️ ▶️ John But you’re also like a sidebar-less textmate user, though, aren’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I use the sidebar, but it’s just like a file browser. Yeah, okay. All right,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, again, we talked about VS Code because it’s so popular, right? And it’s so well supported
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything, whatever. But Nova is like that, but the really nice Mac version of it. And without
⏹️ ▶️ John as much third-party support and as much industry-wide support for everything under the sun, but still way
⏹️ ▶️ John more than I thought it had. Just launch it and go into their extension manager and see how many extensions there are. I can always
⏹️ ▶️ John test these editors and say, is there anything for Perl? And there were multiple things for Perl. And so that warms my heart. But
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s tons of stuff for Swift. There’s language server support for all that. I mean, it’s got a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of features. And, you know, obviously you have to find where they are in this editor versus yours, but if you’re gonna talk about VS
⏹️ ▶️ John Code in the discussion, you should also talk about Nova.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I was impressed to see they have like, there’s like PHP debugging in it, which I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco widespread this is now, but, you know, last time I changed text editors, that didn’t exist.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I have written PHP code in some kind of professional capacity now for my entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco career, and I have never had a debugger. So that sounds pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. Well, that’s what writing PHP was for the entire time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was doing most of that. Now I’m more in PHP maintenance mode,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the rest of the world. So I really am not like, I haven’t explored modern PHP tooling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a long time. So that would be quite a luxury. So yeah, next time I will check out Nova.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, what else is there? Because I didn’t put this in the show notes, and I’m guessing John did. heard a lot about Zed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I take a little bit of umbrage with this name. It should be called Zee, shouldn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Zed’s dead, baby. Like it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John reference to the movie, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I thought it was the ridiculous British pronunciation of the letter Z.
⏹️ ▶️ John Pulp Fiction. Yeah, Mark, have you never seen Pulp Fiction?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, of course not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s the last.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Okay. I have, I have. I don’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this reference, but I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Anyway, it’s a beta and it’s one of these text editors. There’s a bunch of them hanging around,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s one of these text editors that really, really focuses on like interface I think at one point they say
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like programmed like a game engine. Maybe I’m thinking of a different
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco one No, it’s it’s a bit
⏹️ ▶️ John built like a video game. I downloaded I tried it Like I’m not sure like the read your all performance
⏹️ ▶️ John and interactive speed of the cursor and text is a big limiting factor in most Text editors, but then I’m gonna use
⏹️ ▶️ John BB at it, which is already insanely fast at everything But maybe people who use VI all day Which we’ll get to in a second
⏹️ ▶️ John might be frustrated by the slow speed of using something like VS code and might want something faster It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a beta. There’s still not a lot of support for a lot of stuff like it’s still not done yet. But you can look at the website
⏹️ ▶️ John and look at all the little performance charts they try to show you to see how much faster it is than a bunch of competitors.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I thought it was interesting. So we’ll link that in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I saw I saw that as well. And that’s that would also be like, I think my, my list
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what text editors I would try in what order would probably be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nova, VS code, and then Zed. And then, you know, make a decision from there. But those three, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really stand out in terms in terms of what’s available right now and what’s promising.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that the one with the multi-user thing too? I think it is, yeah. It uses the, I gotta look at the thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John CRDT. What does that stand for, chatroom? Can you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco beat me to it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Conflict resolution free data type, something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, the point is it’s multi-user from day one. So if that’s a feature that’s important to you, like if you remember a sub-eva
⏹️ ▶️ John editor or Google Docs or whatever, built on that kind of stuff, that’s another thing in favor of Zed.
⏹️ ▶️ John On the downside, it does not have nearly as many features as VS Code or Nova or BBEdit for that matter. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s young, it’s beta, but check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I do the show notes for the most part. You know, obviously the other guys contribute here and there, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the most part, I do the show notes for the show. And I try to include, when one of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us has some sort of command line snippet, I try to include that snippet in the show notes. And I’m a big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey believer in putting, you know, stuff that you’re typing into the computer, you know, like a command line command
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a monospace font. And to do that in Markdown, you use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the backtick. And so I was looking at the next thing in the show notes and our internal show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes. And it’s LS hyphen L backtick, which VI backtick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking blue screen. How do I escape a backtick and Markdown? So you’re not going to see this. Sure. There’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John way, but this is yet another reason I dislike Markdown.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John bite your tongue. That is a hot take. That is a very hot take. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not it’s not for me. And if exactly for reasons like this, because guess what? I know how to do it in HTML. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could do it in HTML. That’s the beauty of Markdown.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, then you should just do it in HTML.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And once you’re doing that, why
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey all? Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why are you the way you are anyway? Tell me about the eye.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so we were asking every music in the last show does not come with the eye. And it’s not because we’re wondering like
⏹️ ▶️ John about the command line stuff, you know, it’s like that comes with the Mac. It’s because Mac OS over the past
⏹️ ▶️ John several major versions, Apple has been doing a thing where they ditch a bunch of stuff that used
⏹️ ▶️ John to come with it. So Mac OS X, as it was then known, used to come with tons of command line stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ John slowly that stuff departed. One of the theories slash reasons is it has to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John the licensing for the GPL stuff and that being less compatible with what Apple wanted to do
⏹️ ▶️ John or the new versions of the GPL being less compatible with other. Another is that Apple just didn’t want to maintain
⏹️ ▶️ John this stuff anymore. They said, look, if you want this on your Mac, it’s really easy to install it from, you know, a package manager,
⏹️ ▶️ John Although Apple doesn’t really have its own package manager, which is kind of crappy or you can compile from source And so anyway, the point
⏹️ ▶️ John is things have been leaving the Mac So that’s why we were asking his VI on the Mac We should have said is VI still on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John because of course it’s been on the Mac for ages But I was wondering if it had departed and I asked that because emacs recently departed
⏹️ ▶️ John and I was annoyed when it departed I have to go find and download and install it myself But just
⏹️ ▶️ John double-checking a couple people wrote in to tell us that if you run that command that Casey read out before which is what I
⏹️ ▶️ John did I just copy and pasted it from my own command line You say, where is VI
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac and what is it? It is a symlink to vim. So user bin VI is a symlink to user bin
⏹️ ▶️ John vim. And so vim comes on the Mac and VI is just alias to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And isn’t that the case for almost every modern Unix kind of thing? Like, aren’t they all? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably, except for like IBM AIX from ages ago or if there are any proprietary
⏹️ ▶️ John Unix is still around. Yeah, I think you’re right. That basically VI is vim on most systems, but back in the day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then tell me about Mig.
⏹️ ▶️ John This I didn’t know. Something that does come with Mac OS. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know how long this has been shipping with Mac OS, but when they ditched Emacs, I should have like aliased
⏹️ ▶️ John Emacs to this MG. MG, originally called MicroGNU Emacs,
⏹️ ▶️ John and later changed at the request of Richard Stallman. I’m reading from the Wikipedia page, I guess of course Richard Stallman wouldn’t want Emacs to be in
⏹️ ▶️ John the name of anything else. Is a public domain text editor that runs on Unix-like operating systems. It’s based
⏹️ ▶️ John on MicroEmacs, but intended to more closely resemble GNU Emacs while still maintaining a small memory
⏹️ ▶️ John footprint and fast speed. It’s in user bin MG on your Mac right now, if you have a modern version
⏹️ ▶️ John of Mac OS, and it looks and behaves kind of like Emacs, except it launches a little bit faster.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still probably gonna install real Emacs, but it’s nice to know that if I’m stranded on a Mac, I don’t have to be at the mercy of
⏹️ ▶️ John VI, I can just type MG. Or I don’t know if Nano is there or Pico, or like a million, there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John million of these editors, I don’t know which ones come with the Mac, we’ll just check now, let’s see. Nano is
⏹️ ▶️ John in user bin nano. Pico is in user bin pico. Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got a lot of stuff. I guess if it’s in user bin, then you didn’t put it there, huh?
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, fair enough. There’s a bunch of options. I do end up writing, nano is a symlink to pico, which is nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a lot of weird Unix text editors, but MG, I honestly had never heard of, and I was surprised
⏹️ ▶️ John to find that it’s on my Mac, But yeah, I’ll probably still keep using Emacs.
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Emoji favicons in Safari
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Somebody noticed I, and Nilan, I, I, I do not understand French.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did Google how to pronounce this, but Googling how to pronounce people’s names is totally polluted by SEO
⏹️ ▶️ John crap of like computers reading out names phonetically, which is not useful. Such a shame. If anyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John looking for a call sheet, like thing or a stack overflow, like thing, knowing how to pronounce
⏹️ ▶️ John people’s names is a, it’s just an, I don’t know, a poop show. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to find a nice way to say it is ripe for disruption. If someone made a
⏹️ ▶️ John nice site that wasn’t garbage or a nice app that wasn’t garbage that did what these apps claim
⏹️ ▶️ John to do, which is like let people like let someone from Italy like record themselves and say, here’s how you say this name, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can pick from five different recordings and people rate them like they kind of a stack overflow type thing for name pronunciation. That
⏹️ ▶️ John would be super useful. But that doesn’t exist. So I don’t know how to pronounce this person’s name. I’m sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. That’s right. So anyway, they posted on Mastodon. I just noticed something neat in Mac OS Sonoma. As you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Safari now shows favicons, favicons, I can’t pronounce anything apparently. So whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these are. Favicons. Favicons in your bookmarks bar. But if you rename
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bookmark and add an emoji, that emoji acts as a custom icon,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is super cool. And there’s a little video, I think it’s a GIF actually, a screen capture of this happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Very slick. I dig this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Ever since they added the color favicon, that’s how I say it. But you were stuck with with whichever one the website
⏹️ ▶️ John used, but now you don’t have to be stuck with it. If the website uses an ugly one or it uses something that you can’t remember, they changed it and
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t like how they changed it, just put an emoji in there and that will become the icon. And it was really neat to see that.
LLC follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Ryan Roy, oh, I should back up a little bit. Sorry. We got a lot of feedback about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LLCs legal stuff and accounting stuff. Imagine that. Again, we are not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accountants, we are not lawyers. We don’t really know what we’re talking about. Consult someone who does, if you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey questions. But just to show how muddy the waters are, we got a little bit of feedback.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ryan Roy writes, I’m a CPA who does state and local taxes for large corporations. I just wanted to clarify that if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have an LLC that you’re the sole owner of, tax people use the terms disregarded entity or single-member
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LLC, you can still operate as a quote-unquote real business and have employees that you pay a salary to. There can also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be LLCs with multiple owners called members. If you have a multi-member LLC, the LLC would file its own federal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and state tax returns and then the individual owners would then report their share of the LLC’s income or loss on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their tax return. So yeah, LLCs can get complicated. Continuing on, Patrick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yan writes, single-member LLCs do not provide protections from torts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey committed by the the sole member of the LLC. If you commit an act of negligence, the LLC does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not protect you because you personally have committed the act. For example, if you made an artisanal baby
⏹️ ▶️ Casey toy and accidentally left a razor blade in the box, you would still be personally liable for injuries due to negligence.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Having an LLC does not protect you since you personally committed said negligence. If instead
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you had an employee who accidentally did the same thing without your knowledge, then your personal assets would indeed be protected. The best protection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for solo entrepreneurs is to get a hefty umbrella insurance policy of at least a few million dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. That’s worth mentioning because, uh, I also got the same advice from the, uh, I don’t know what you call
⏹️ ▶️ John them, financial helper person, uh, that we consulted with when I was doing like a state planning
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff recently. And they also recommended you should get an umbrella insurance policy, probably for this reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I did. And so I have one, so I’m still talking about razor blades in my baby toys.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got an umbrella insurance policy a year or two back. I had heard a story, this is a second or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey third hand story. Consider the source. we don’t need follow-up about it. I’m just telling you the story that scared me into compliance. A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friend of mine said that a friend of his had an issue where his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey daughter, I think it was, like, got in a really bad car wreck and then somehow the daughter was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey liable and I forget, like, they didn’t have some appropriate amount of insurance or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something like that. Fast forward to, oh my gosh, these people owe like hundreds of thousands of dollars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the person, to the other person that the daughter hit, or something along those lines. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so if they had had an umbrella insurance policy, then hypothetically, that would have covered it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all that to say, look into an umbrella insurance policy. Even if you don’t have an LLC, it’s something you might want to consider.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’re surprisingly affordable, because they only cover stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re only there just in case your other insurance doesn’t deal with it. And presumably, you have to have the other insurance. You have to have auto insurance
⏹️ ▶️ John in the United States if you own a
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s why they’re reasonable, because most of the time, you just pay the money and never get anything for it. But that’s the nature of
⏹️ ▶️ John insurance. I’m glad I have mine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly, same here. And then somebody, I presume John, puts some links in here. I’m happy to read them, but John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you want to tell me the genesis behind all this?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is me Googling around to see, because Patrick Yan gave one thing, Ryan
⏹️ ▶️ John Rear talked about some more stuff. So here’s the thing, we mentioned this on the show last time, this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John varies by state. So lots of people will tell you something authoritatively that is absolutely true
⏹️ ▶️ John in their state or in the states where they work or in the states where they’re a lawyer or in the states where they practice accounting, but
⏹️ ▶️ John may not be true in your state. And we got a lot of reports from readers, listeners, sorry,
⏹️ ▶️ John who say, someone from Missouri was like, I got an LLC once like 10
⏹️ ▶️ John years ago and I think I paid $50 and I haven’t had to pay anything since. And here I am in Massachusetts playing $500 a year. So it varies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, that’s criminal. Like I can’t, I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John believe. California is 800 a year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John ridiculous. We’re second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, goodness gracious.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So you were googling around. So here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John me googling around. These are people who have good SEO in Google. I didn’t go past the first
⏹️ ▶️ John page of results. This is from Denahan Associates PLCC,
⏹️ ▶️ John their subhead says, attorneys and counselors at law. So here is this is getting to the point, because I wanted to know,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, is Patrick Ann right? That you don’t get any liability protection if you’re a sole member because you’re the person who
⏹️ ▶️ John commits all the acts, blah, blah, blah. So this is what this website says, and we’ll link it in the show notes. Single
⏹️ ▶️ John member LLC may, and the may is in scare quotes, I didn’t add them,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they’re in the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John document. A single member LLC may act as a shield to protect your personal assets from
⏹️ ▶️ John the liabilities associated with the business conducted by the LLC. For example, if your LLC owns
⏹️ ▶️ John a rental property and someone slips and falls on that property and wants to sue the property owner, that plaintiff will be required
⏹️ ▶️ John to sue the LLC, not you personally. If the plaintiff ultimately wins the lawsuit, he or she will only
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to come after the assets owned by the LLC, not the owner. The same protection applies to
⏹️ ▶️ John protect the owner from any debts of the LLC. So this example of the person slipping and falling again, another hypothetical
⏹️ ▶️ John are what if you were personally negligent, you didn’t put down a wet floor sign or whatever, not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John clear, because they’re saying, here’s a situation where you wouldn’t be protected and maybe it’s only if your own
⏹️ ▶️ John personal negligence didn’t cause the fall, but then how would they win the lawsuit? I don’t know. It’s confusing. So here’s one more.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is from Walter’s cluer, a global, this is what they say on their website, a global provider of professional
⏹️ ▶️ John information, software solutions, and services for clinicians, accountants, lawyers, tax, finance, audit, risk compliance,
⏹️ ▶️ John and regulatory sectors. This company does a lot. So this is talking about what Casey was, Marco was alluding to
⏹️ ▶️ John last show about like, keeping your stuff separate, keep your personal crap separate from your
⏹️ ▶️ John LLC stuff. Because if you intermix them too much, when you, in some, in various
⏹️ ▶️ John legal proceedings, they can do a thing that’s called piercing the veil, which sounds so weird and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey fantasy-ish, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But piercing the veil is saying that they sort of go through the LLC
⏹️ ▶️ John and see that you are there on the inside of it because you’ve mixed it together too much. All right, so this is what this website says about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John When the veil is pierced, the owners of the LLC lose the limited liability that their business entity has provided.
⏹️ ▶️ John That means their personal assets can be seized by creditors to pay off business debts and liabilities. A lot of the stuff you read online talks
⏹️ ▶️ John about debts and liabilities. Like if your business has liabilities, if your business takes out loans and you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t pay back, that’s a common thing that they think you’re going to be worried about if you have a business.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s something the LLC can protect from unless they pierce the veil. So continuing,
⏹️ ▶️ John the criteria by which a creditor can pierce the corporate veil varies by state. Of course it does, why would it not?
⏹️ ▶️ John To protect the entity, a single member LLC must demonstrate that the business exists separately
⏹️ ▶️ John from itself. This involves ensuring timely compliance with annual filing requirements. That’s why you gotta pay all those fees
⏹️ ▶️ John to your state. and filing fees in the state in which the LLC is incorporated, and creating and maintaining an operating agreement.
⏹️ ▶️ John Single-member LLC owners must also keep their business assets separate from personal. The best way to do this is
⏹️ ▶️ John to maintain a separate business bank account and credit card and only use these for business expenses. Single-member
⏹️ ▶️ John LLC asset protection can also be jeopardized if a charging order, you can read, or is now a changing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey charging order, a
⏹️ ▶️ John changing order, you’ll see it on the website. If a changing order, that’s what I have here,
⏹️ ▶️ John protection is imposed by a creditor on distributions from the business entity. See, now it says charging
⏹️ ▶️ John order. I must have just typoed it.
⏹️ ▶️ John is a court-authorized lien that protects non-debtor members of an LLC from being forced into partnership
⏹️ ▶️ John with the owner’s creditor. However, because a single-member LLC just has one owner that are no non-debtor members
⏹️ ▶️ John to protect, subsequently the business can be liquidated of the proceeds used to satisfy a judgment claim by the creditor.
⏹️ ▶️ John Certain states, including Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming, have amended
⏹️ ▶️ John their LLC laws to ensure that single-member LLCs have the same protection from creditors as multi-member
⏹️ ▶️ John LLCs. Meanwhile, in Florida and New Hampshire, LLC laws have been changed to limit the liability protections
⏹️ ▶️ John of single-member LLCs compared to multi-member LLCs. This is why you have to talk to someone in your state.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are so many asterisks and exceptions and hypotheticals, it’s so hard
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out, am I protected and what I’m protected from under what situations? But
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why stuff like we talked about last episode, like sort of best practices of like, oh, you should keep yourself separate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone’s gonna say, well, in my state, I don’t have to keep my stuff separate because we have some law that blah, blah, blah. But like
⏹️ ▶️ John just sort of trying to follow best practices for running your business, filing your annual fees,
⏹️ ▶️ John making sure you’re in compliance, keeping your assets separate gives you the best fighting chance about
⏹️ ▶️ John getting the most protections available to you in your particular state. America.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yay. And in conclusion, Florida is dangerous for yet one more reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you needed another. Here we are.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t live in Florida if you can at all help it. And New Hampshire, live free or die.
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Callsheet, week one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to quickly recap a call sheet week one and I just wanted to say thank you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to basically everybody. You know, I was probably, I think I came across way more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey morose last episode on analog than I meant to, but you know, I really didn’t want to like do a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey jig or happy dance or whatever in prematurely only to find out that maybe things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weren’t so great. Um, you know, I didn’t want to count those chickens as they say. And now I’m starting to count chickens,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things are pretty great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I appreciate everyone who has talked about the app, who has written me to say thanks about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the app, who have told their friends about the app. I also think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I happened to stumble somewhat deliberately and somewhat accidentally onto some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extremely fortuitous timing. It just so happened that The Verge started
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new newsletter. And so briefly, I was the number
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one story on The Verge, kind of, sort of, because their newsletter,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, I forget what it’s called. I should have put this in the show notes. I’m so sorry. I will definitely put a link in the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes, but whatever it’s called, Installer, I believe. I think that’s right. Their new newsletter, Installer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty sure that’s correct, featured CallSheet as one of the first things it spoke about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once they got through the, hey, this is your new newsletter, blah, blah, blah. Because of that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the headline on The Verge for their own new newsletter was something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new movie app, or the new app that all movie lovers should download, or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because the newsletter lists multiple apps. It’s basically like, here are the cool new apps we’ve seen, but yours got
⏹️ ▶️ John the headline. Right, which,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, incredibly, incredibly fortuitous timing on my part. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe they really just love it that much. Unstaller is the newsletter. It’s by David Pierce.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so sorry I didn’t have that in front of me. And the headline as it sits right now, the new app every movie lover
⏹️ ▶️ Casey needs. Couldn’t have planned it better. Now, honestly, if I’m really honest with myself, I think a lot of this was just very good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey timing, like I said, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it just so happened that I caught the- Hey, take the win. Oh, I’m taking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cares why it’s there? Oh yeah, I’m taking the win big time. But you know, I think it just so happened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I caught the very first, almost an episode, the very first instance of this newsletter. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couldn’t have planned it better. I’m so incredibly grateful. There’s been a lot, a lot of press coverage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It has pretty much been universally complimentary. And it’s been incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I am so unbelievably thankful. I have been looking at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey numbers for the optional expensive plans, the $20 and $50 a year plans. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s surprising how many of you opted into that. And we’re going to talk, I think, in the after show about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why that means even more to you than you may have realized. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just wanted to say thank you to everyone and apologize for being a little bit, maybe morose isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the best word, but a little bit tepid last episode because I really just did not want to count my chickens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and get ahead of myself. But like I said, the numbers are starting to roll in from the first few days and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking pretty, pretty good. And the best part about this is from my perspective and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking of own your own pricing, hypothetically these numbers will be about the same every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year. Assuming I don’t screw stuff up, assuming the movie database doesn’t fold, you know, Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what have you. This should be for the foreseeable future, and that’s really awesome. It’s also been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awesome to get this app out the door, and not only realize that I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more to do, which has been true of every app I’ve shipped, but be really jazzed and excited about doing more,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I feel like I’ve got some momentum, and I feel like I’ve got users that really care about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the app. As I sit here now, I have a beta among the small beta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey group. Again, the members, I very much appreciate the time you spent with the beta, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s now just a select few. Well, anyway, that beta has a ton of small but important changes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve already shipped, and there’s more coming before I send it to the App Store. So I’m really, really thankful,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very, very thankful to anyone who’s even kicked the tires on the app, much less ponied up some of their own
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cash to subscribe to it, who have told their friends about it. I am super, super appreciative,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and thank you so very much to every single one of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, first of all, congrats, that’s amazing. And I’m so happy for you. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve worked hard on this. And hard work does not guarantee success. People can work hard on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the wrong problem and not have much success at all. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I work really hard on
⏹️ ▶️ John them. I do, I do work really hard. And every time I’m working hard on them, I’m like, why
⏹️ ▶️ John are you working hard on this? No one wants these apps. But I use them all day, every day. So I guess it still works out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It works out the great thing about you know a lot of you know as we’ve discussed a lot of customers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do not like subscription based pricing for their own various reasons, some of which we agree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with some of which we don’t. But what you just said, you know how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how this has motivated you and encourage you to keep working on the app that’s key
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to subscription based pricing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That’s one of the greatest upsides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the developer and and therefore indirectly does benefit the users because you know the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most apps have worked before this you know most income from software is what you described
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has happened with your previous apps which is you get some you know if you’re lucky you make a splash however
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can when it launches you get you know whatever bump of sales whatever burst of sales is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna happen you know up front and then it’s very quickly actually drops down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to some like baseline level of sales which is probably pretty close to zero and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you’re when you’re on that one you know the day one high of that kind of launch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you see that big spike and you’re like oh my god this is great I wonder when it’s gonna you know how far is it gonna go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and that’s that’s a wonderful feeling but then you know three days later a week later
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it’s no longer going up and it starts to crash back down at that point it’s very difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for for your motivation at at that point to be like, yeah, let’s now that I’m now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’ve made almost all the money I’m ever going to make from this app, let’s start tackling all these difficult feature requests. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you phrasing his motivation makes it sound like, oh, it’s hard for me to like get my button gear and do a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s practical. Like you have to choose how to spend your time. And if you’re going to say, I’m going to work,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, 40 hours a week for the next three years to make the equivalent of 0.01
⏹️ ▶️ John cents per hour, you do the math and you could say, look, I’m putting all, should I put
⏹️ ▶️ John all my work and time and energy into something that basically has zero sales? I mean, that’s why it makes no sense what I do with my
⏹️ ▶️ John apps. But like, that, it’s not like, oh, I can’t be motivated. I’m so tired, like good sales. No, good
⏹️ ▶️ John sales makes it worth your while because if you have a subscription and you have people using the app,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should invest the time because you need them to keep subscribing so the app needs to be good,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Whereas if people are buying it and those people think, well, I paid $5 once 10 years ago, you should keep
⏹️ ▶️ John updating this app for me forever. That’s great to think that, but economically it doesn’t work out. You can’t, you know, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John make all your money the first year, you can’t make $0 income for the next three years as you work day and night on the
⏹️ ▶️ John app to satisfy the people who paid $5 three years ago, right? So don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s a matter of laziness or not being able to get your juices flowing or whatever. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just plain math. You need to do things with your time that will make money for your family.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if no one is buying your app, if essentially no one is buying your app anymore, don’t spend the next three years
⏹️ ▶️ John heads down working on it. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And like, that’s what’s great about secretion based pricing is you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you kind of have like a constant demand level established that, you know, as,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as you, you know, as long as the app continues to work, you can be reasonably sure that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not all, but most of the current subscribers will probably stick around at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the next interval, whatever that’s revision is. And again, it’s not all like, you know, you can’t, you You mentioned earlier,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey, you mentioned like, oh, I’m guaranteed basically, and you know, but you’re not, and I know you know that. But just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to clarify, you will lose some people, but you’ll also be bringing new people in, hopefully,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco continuously as time goes on. And so, hopefully, the goal with any kind of subscription-based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plan is whatever you’re losing to churn, hopefully you’re making at least that many new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subscriptions happen, and that way you stay ahead of the number.
⏹️ ▶️ John And every improvement you make can be like a ratchet, because now suddenly your app is more attractive to new customers.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s more valuable. It has better features. It’s better at doing what it does. And after several years of you working
⏹️ ▶️ John on that, your app is defended better against competitors because they can’t get all the features that
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve got in the amount of time that you’ve spent on it. So now you have a competitive advantage. And it’s just, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ John ratcheting mechanism of like, yeah, there’s a lot of churn, but I want to get just a little bit more, just a little bit more, just
⏹️ ▶️ John a few more customers. And you do that by improving the app. And that also reduces your churn because the app
⏹️ ▶️ John gets better and better. People like, they come to love it more, they come to rely on it more, they’re delighted by the new features
⏹️ ▶️ John that you add. There are minor annoyances in the app that you fix and they appreciate that, and that motivates
⏹️ ▶️ John them not to churn out, I don’t know what the terminology is in the world of streaming services
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever subscription thing, so we talk about churn, this churn out a thing. But anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the verb is also just churn, like it causes
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like that. Yeah, I think that’s probably right as well, but I just don’t like it. I’m the Merlin now.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But anyway. Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. description, it makes you can see the value of investing your time. You see
⏹️ ▶️ John it right there. And it’s a virtuous cycle. As you make your app better, you reduce churn
⏹️ ▶️ John and you increase the satisfaction of your existing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco users. Exactly. And in fact, one thing I thought of, I probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably better I didn’t bring it up last show because you were already in like a hesitating kind of mood.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But with all this press attention, you’re probably gonna get copycats probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought has crossed my mind as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just wait until you search for call sheet and see that they’ve put call sheet in their keywords then you know you’ve arrived.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah exactly it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be you know free call shoot or whatever and it’ll be it’ll be like a crappy clone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of your app but free and filled with ads. And so I think it’s interesting to you know at kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a as a thought experiment you should be mentally prepared for that to happen and to kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of have some kind of game plan even if the game plan is change nothing, you should have some kind of plan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what do you think you want to do when not if when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a competitor comes out to the app store that is similar enough to your app to cause problems for you and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is free with ads and will therefore undercut you because that will happen. It’s the app store. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might have already happened and if not certainly it’ll be there by next week, you know, because the amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of press attention that you got it’s it’s great, but it’s a double-edged sword. You You know, it shines a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big light on you and on this app category that, oh, there’s a market for that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I guarantee you there’s people right now working their butts off trying to clone your app as quickly as possible. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they aren’t already shipped, they will be
⏹️ ▶️ John probably soon. I had clones within a week. So Casey, you will have clones. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Foolish clones thinking that I was, there’s some lucrative market they’re tapping into. It’s like suckers and there’s no sales here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but yeah, right. But anyway, you are leaving room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them because you don’t really have a free plan in the sense of a free unlimited with ads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you probably, I mean, you expressed in the past when we talked about this on the show why you didn’t really wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go that direction. And that’s probably the right move for you if that’s still how you feel. You probably still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shouldn’t make an ad plan or whatever. But be prepared for that to happen. And that preparation could be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as simple as you’re just gonna keep working, making your app always be better than theirs. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna necessarily.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sharpen your marketing message to emphasize the fact that yours is the one without the ads. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John be like the Amazon title, call sheet, no ads, no garbage, no sign in. Yeah, call sheet,
⏹️ ▶️ John movies, TV, no ads, no garbage, no sign in. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like to revise my prior statement. I have made no money. In fact, I’ve made negative money on this app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s been a disaster. Nobody should pay attention to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, as of right now, you haven’t made any money. Apple takes a long time to pay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Well, that’s true. You actually are probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco negative You probably like you know paid some money to get it. You know have the account up there get it listed Maybe you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought some ads here, and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John already you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey But yeah Like be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prepared for when when the clones come if they haven’t already Have a game plan in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mind of like how you’re gonna deal with that because it will happen and it’s better not to be too Surprised when it happens, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know it’s interesting like a huge part of the appeal of your app Is that you’re replacing something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is ad filled with something that is better and not ad filled world. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that actually gives you a little bit of defense because something else that comes in and is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco filled with ads will not have the same appeal that you have. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah you know but that will happen and and if that you know if some other even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco decent not even good but if some decent app comes in and is full of ads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will probably get way more installs than you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Probably yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know it’s gonna be like you know three versus 2048 all over again. You can have nice one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if an ad one comes in and it proves to be a popular enough category, like they can explode and they can they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can, you know, possibly even make more money than you if they if they, you know, play their game right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you got to kind of decide, like, you know, do you want to try to capture that market yourself because that market exists?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or are you willing to give that up in exchange for having your app be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco premium option, but that will necessarily mean you are leaving a lot of market behind for someone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t like that you’re giving everyone a game plan here, Marco. Maybe we should move on. I totally hear what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re saying. I have thought about this a smidge. I haven’t spent any meaningful time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking about it because I’ve been like the Tasmanian devil for the last two weeks. But yeah, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought has definitely crossed my mind. And honestly, I’m not really sure what I’m going to do. Not yet anyway. My inclination is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want to be the premium product in this space. And I don’t, I have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey premium price when compared to free, but it’s not that expensive. And so-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s not free. That’s it. The App Store has two prices, free and not free.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Free and expensive. Yeah, exactly. But I will say that, you know, the chat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey room has had some interesting ideas. Mike C. Wells said, what if someone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey creates a clone called FlickUp? Ah, perfect. Or Wedge says,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hear me out. The clone is named Flaw Sheet. F-L-A-W-S-H-E-E-T.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I mean, IMDB is
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of already the free junked up clone, so you’ve got that going for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know what I would like to see? I would love if everybody who reviews, maybe I shouldn’t give people ideas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was gonna say everybody who reviews Call Sheet in the App Store should somehow work in a list
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John review. Please, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey encourage this. Oh, come on!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a flawless procedure. It gets my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco endorsement.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, no, thank you so much to everyone. I really do appreciate it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, if you find an app that’s a clone, I don’t want to know because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey riding high right now. I don’t want to know about it.
Really, become a member
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored, still, by ATP membership. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes, this is kind of weird that we have all three spots this week taken up by ATP membership.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not a common thing, but it’s becoming, you know, a not uncommon thing because the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad market is really cyclical and it’s in a down market right now. You know, we’re gonna talk about a little bit later
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the show, but just if it is, you know, we’re leaning into membership a lot more heavily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these days and it’s wonderful. We are so, so thankful to have so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of you as members and if we can get a few more it would really help us out a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in terms of the current ad market. So, atb.fm.com. Again, you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ad free feed, you get the bootleg, you also get occasional access to other bonus things. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we will occasionally do member exclusive specials. That will be things like we watch a movie and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comment on it together or we try a new food, or most recently we did a tier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco list ranking all of the iPhones. And we’re going to do more kind of Apple hardware stuff like that in the near future.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So occasional exclusive content as well. You get occasional discounts on our membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on our merchandise. So if you want to buy a t-shirt or something during the sales that we say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, hey, here’s a new shirt, buy it before this date, you get a discount on that in your member panel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Other fun little things you get thrown in sometimes, like Casey had his entire beta test for call sheet all to members
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only. So it’s a cool program. Join it if you can. It’s eight bucks a month at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP.fm slash join. Once again, eight bucks a month, ATP.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. It is the best way to support the show and we really appreciate you giving it some Thank you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much for considering becoming a member and talk to you soon.
What if Apple + Disney?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Everyone in the little Apple ecosystem, ecosphere, I almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, this little section of the world has been talking about a very interesting rumor that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been perennial but has sprung back up. It has sprouted, if you will.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the rumor is that Apple is thinking about considering, or at the very least could,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buy by Disney, like the Disney, like Walt Disney World Disney. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this all started, I believe, by a article in The Hollywood Reporter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A quote, a veteran Hollywood executive quote, told The Hollywood Reporter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This executive said, I don’t think Apple would buy the company that is Disney as it presently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exists. But if you see Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, start to divest things, that feels like he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prepping for a sale. And there’s clearly no buyer like Apple. Not long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after that, writes the Hollywood Reporter, Iger went on television, hung a possibly for sale sign
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Disney’s TV businesses. And just like that, it was a little more possible to see the outlines of a slimmed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey down Disney that could be a tempting acquisition target. We’re going to talk about this a little more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a minute, but I wanted to point out when I was doing my research for tonight’s recording this morning, at the very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bottom of the Hollywood Reporter article, and maybe, Marco, you can make this the chapter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for this chapter if you don’t have a better answer. At the very bottom of the article, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a chart, if you will, or an image, Big Hollywood, Small Fish for M&A, Mergers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Acquisitions. And it shows a bunch of red circles. And that represents the approximate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worth or value of all these different brands. And so Paramount is a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pin, if you will, of 11 billion. Fox Corp, the circle’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little bit bigger than Paramount. It’s 16 billion. Warner Brothers Discovery, $35 billion. And Disney is looking pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big. It’s on the bottom left corner. And that’s $158 billion. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then you look immediately above Disney in this chart, and there’s Apple at $2.8 trillion,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is like five times bigger. Just visually five times bigger. I don’t want to do that math
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my head. I’m sure I’m wrong. But visually,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the same. Well, you can do the math. I put the numbers down in the show notes here. So I did them in billions. Disney, $160 billion. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I tried to put Apple in billions, too, just so people don’t have to do it. So it was 160 billion. Apple is 2,780 billion.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s an order of magnitude. 160 versus 2,700 is an order of magnitude larger.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the other dots here, they put Amazon up or whatever, but Google, 1,650 billion. Amazon, 1,420 billion.
⏹️ ▶️ John These are tech companies that are in the thousands of billions, aka trillions.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Disney is in the hundreds of billions. Even though you think of Disney, they own everything. They have all this IP. They’re Disney,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re so big, 160 billion. It’s peanuts compared to these tech companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s absolutely bananas. And we’re gonna talk more about that here in a second. But Jason Snell had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a write-up at Six Colors and then there was a really, really good and long but great segment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this on Upgrade with Mike Hurley speaking or reading from Jason at Six Colors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Apple buys Disney concept has been floating around for years but it was never seemed more likely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than it does right now. That is not to say that it seems especially likely But given current business
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issues and the return of former Apple board member Bob Iger to the CEO job there, it doesn’t seem as outlandish
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an idea as it once did. Apple buying Disney would certainly be unexpected, but after many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years of shaking my head at the idea, I’m hesitant to do so now. While Apple’s slowly been creeping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey toward being a company that’s as much about digital services as hardware and software, a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey move like this would be instantly transformational. it may simply be the fact that the tech industry is about to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eat the entertainment industry whole. If that’s the case, Apple may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not find a much better match than its old friends at Disney. And again, there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a long conversation about this on Upgrade, and we’re going to, I think, kind of crib some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the approach that they took there. And then Jason, again, this time over at Macworld.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if it’s inevitable that in an era of streaming media, The tech industry will eat the entertainment industry whole. Why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would Apple buy Disney? It could be as simple as this. It’s potentially an avenue of further growth for Apple. If Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey believes integrating Disney’s intellectual property, customer experiences, theme parks, cruises, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the rest into its ecosystem will form a virtuous circle that will send Apple’s revenues and profits ever higher.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s probably reason enough. When you’re as big as Apple, you need to get creative in order to seek growth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a lot to unpack here. There’s, there’s a lot, a lot. And when I was doing this research
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this morning, my initial reaction was, well, I agree that it is more likely than ever before, but no freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way. And then I saw that chart on the bottom of the Hollywood Reporter article. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then I thought to myself, this really isn’t that big a deal
⏹️ ▶️ John Part of the reason Apple has all that money though, is that they don’t spend a lot of it. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John they buy little companies all the time. They can buy like a hundred companies a year, but they buy them for pocket change, like stuff they find on the
⏹️ ▶️ John sofa. Disney is a little bit bigger than stuff they find on the sofa, but still well within their reach.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if they bought $100, $200 billion companies routinely, they wouldn’t have $2.8 trillion.
⏹️ ▶️ John A couple hundred billion here, a couple hundred billion there, assuming you’re talking about real money. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is not kind of like, they’re not gung-ho. Their money isn’t burning
⏹️ ▶️ John a hole in their pocket. They’re not like, we’ve got to spend this. It’s not Brewster’s millions. That’s why they have all that money. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why I think the discussion about this with Jason and the surrounding discussion and Hollywood
⏹️ ▶️ John report and everything has not, has basically said that like Apple’s got to have a reason. And part of
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason it’s kind of like the manifest destiny of the current economic conditions
⏹️ ▶️ John in the U S the idea is that the tech companies have all the money and it’s inevitable
⏹️ ▶️ John that they will eventually eat the smaller fish that are trying to do the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in this particular context, the smaller fish are all those media companies that own things and they all started their own streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John services, right? So there was Netflix. And then these companies like, why are we selling our things to Netflix? We should have
⏹️ ▶️ John our own streaming service. And everybody thought that. So now there’s a paramount streaming service and there’s the Disney streaming service
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s the Peacock streaming service. Like everybody wanted to have their own streaming service. And then they pulled their stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John back and said, now if you want to see our stuff, it’s on our streaming service. And here’s the thing, these companies core
⏹️ ▶️ John competencies is not running a streaming service. Like the tech companies are better suited to that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John most of the tech companies don’t have content except for Netflix, which has got its own original content and Amazon’s paying for its own and
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s as well. So here I have all these companies that have streaming services. And a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of these companies like, you know, Paramount Plus or whatever, they need to make their streaming service make money.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Amazon and Apple, they have other ways to make money, like AWS
⏹️ ▶️ John and iPhones. And so they don’t necessarily need to make sure
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately that their streaming services make money. because Apple and Amazon, just to name two, have paid
⏹️ ▶️ John tons of money to make TV shows and movies, right? You may have seen many of them. Those
⏹️ ▶️ John costs a lot of money to make. I don’t think either one of them is making enough in subscribers
⏹️ ▶️ John to their services, although Amazon, it’s part of Prime, so I don’t actually know how that works out. But they don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John worry that much about that. Whereas Disney spent so much money making programming for Disney Plus,
⏹️ ▶️ John but now they’re like, okay, Disney Plus, it’s great that you have this big launch and you got all the subscribers, But do you see
⏹️ ▶️ John a future in which you can be profitable for us? Because we kind of need you to make money. Yeah, we make money from
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of other things, too. But we don’t have an iPhone sitting in the side making billions and
⏹️ ▶️ John billions of dollars for us. So I need to at least see a road map where the streaming service would become
⏹️ ▶️ John profitable. Everybody’s saying that everybody who’s got a streaming service is saying, you know, we spent up front
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re all like, I think I think Jason said this on one of his shows, like they all want to be the last company standing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like we’re all going to spend a bunch of money up front and we’re just going to say, spend billions, make the best
⏹️ ▶️ John shows you can get. Tom Hanks on the phone like we were. We’re just going to spend this money and make the best shows.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the goal is not to make money. Don’t worry. The first few years, we’re just going to lose billions and billions of dollars. But we just need
⏹️ ▶️ John to outlast the other companies. And they go under and they get consolidated and they get bought out. Then
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll just be Netflix, Amazon, Apple and us. And everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to be the us. and they’re not all gonna be. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the manifest destiny is tech companies will own this sector because their circles are the biggest, as Casey pointed out,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ll outlast you. They can lose money for longer than you can. And they have,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially Apple, have so many huge businesses that are like, I think people were showing graphs
⏹️ ▶️ John like, which ones of Apple’s businesses makes more profit than all of Disney? And it’s like, AirPods?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like, I mean, you can just pick
⏹️ ▶️ John some, The iPad, like pick a random ass side business for Apple, like a
⏹️ ▶️ John hobby business or whatever. I was like, yeah, that makes more profit than all of these other companies, right? Forget about the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone, gigantic monster, and you know, just, or services, which you know, is
⏹️ ▶️ John its own giant amorphous blob of stuff. So if you think the tech companies are gonna own everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re looking at how is that gonna happen, how are tech companies gonna own anything? Are all the media companies gonna go
⏹️ ▶️ John out of business? No, someone’s gonna buy them. So if you believe in that manifest destiny and you look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the world and you say, okay, so who’s gonna buy who? The reason people always talk about Apple and Disney
⏹️ ▶️ John is because there is kind of a culture and ethos, a level
⏹️ ▶️ John of taste and quality and, you know, brand,
⏹️ ▶️ John well-earned brand fame. There are a lot of similarities between Apple and Disney and also Apple and Nintendo,
⏹️ ▶️ John which we’ve talked about in the past. That they’re companies with a reputation for caring a lot about the quality of
⏹️ ▶️ John their product. They have earned a reputation for producing a quality product.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have lots of attention to detail and both companies have at various times been willing to do things that are against the grain
⏹️ ▶️ John because they believe they’re the right thing to do and they make for the best long-term success
⏹️ ▶️ John of the business even if in the short term, they’re expensive and other companies wouldn’t do them. That’s why Apple is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s why Disney is Disney. That’s why people always talk about these two. And if you buy
⏹️ ▶️ John into the tech eats everything, Apple eats Disney. It makes perfect sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not entirely sure I buy into the tech eats everything. I’m not entirely sure that Disney can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John just outlast this on its own. Like, you know, if anyone’s capable of weathering the storm it’s Disney that owns everything
⏹️ ▶️ John now, right? And owning everything is lucrative. And if Disney is just managed well,
⏹️ ▶️ John it can hunker down and wait for the other ones to get eaten up and it can be the last one standing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, I believe if you had to pick one, which one is gonna be the last one standing. I think Disney’s got enough other businesses to
⏹️ ▶️ John keep itself up, but I’m kind of in the same camp as Jason where I had previously entirely dismissed
⏹️ ▶️ John it and now I can no longer do that. I can’t entirely dismiss it. I can still say that I probably wouldn’t bet on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although speaking of betting, when Gruber talked about this, he said, I would bet on it, or no, I think he
⏹️ ▶️ John said I would bet against it. And if anyone knows Gruber in betting, whichever way he bets, bet the opposite.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that means if we’re gonna follow that strategy, and I’m talking about actual bets, Gruber bets on actual
⏹️ ▶️ John things. His track record is not great. If he would not bet for it, then
⏹️ ▶️ John we should be expecting it to happen because he’s going to lose that bet because that’s the Gruber way.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So I don’t know what to think right
⏹️ ▶️ John now, but I do believe that it makes more sense than it has ever made. And I’m definitely watching
⏹️ ▶️ John it a lot more closely than I have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, any immediate thoughts before we start talking about what is Disney anyway?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I can’t see this going this way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless major changes at Disney happen like divesting a lot of their stuff. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of what we’re about to talk about and it’s part of what Upgrade covered in their segment on this. The thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, Apple has, as mentioned, a lot of money. Turns out, again, going back to our financial analyst from last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episode, Apple makes a lot of money, turns out. The thing is, Apple could buy lots of companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could buy almost any company. There are very few companies in the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple couldn’t buy, but they don’t because what would they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do with it if they bought it? A lot of times they can get the benefit they need to out of a company without buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, and so why would they spend not only the money but also then like the organizational overhead to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have this additional company as something they owned? You know a good example of this is like if you look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that would benefit Apple in to their core products. Look at all the components
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that go into an iPhone. You don’t see Apple buying Samsung display or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like you don’t see Apple buying memory companies and stuff like that. Like they still buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco components from other companies. Why? Because they don’t need to buy those companies. They can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just strike deals with them and you know, spend their money that way, you know, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have the mess and liability and risk on their hands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of running those companies.
⏹️ ▶️ John And not only do they not want to buy those companies, but they’re willing to spend billions and
⏹️ ▶️ John billions of dollars on those other companies, like a lot of the chip stuff they’ve done in the
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturing stuff they’ve done. Part of the deal is Apple pays for the equipment that will like machine out their little Apple watches
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Apple pays for that. And the the companies that build the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John for them use those machines, but Apple had to pay to get the machines and Apple doesn’t get to keep them like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they belong to the other companies. they’re basically willing to invest in these companies. And it’s like, well, at that
⏹️ ▶️ John point, why don’t you just buy the company? It’s like, well, no, I don’t want to, Apple doesn’t want to be in the business of manufacturing things,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s not like you can run a company just manufacturing Apple stuff, although TSMC’s 3
⏹️ ▶️ John nanometer thing is actually kind of doing that, because I think Apple bought all the 3 nanometer chips that the company could possibly produce.
⏹️ ▶️ John But on an ongoing basis, the fact is that at a certain point, Apple will no longer need
⏹️ ▶️ John any more of Widget X, but the company that builds, the factory that builds Widget X, or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John certain kinds of screws or whatever, that building still exists. Those employees still exist, and they have to find
⏹️ ▶️ John new customers to pay for them to manufacture something. They can be manufactured in that giant building. That’s what Apple doesn’t want.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Apple is so averse to buying these companies that they’re willing to pay billions
⏹️ ▶️ John and billions of dollars not to basically say, here, company, take a whole bunch of our money so
⏹️ ▶️ John you can be better at making the thing we want you to make. But we we don’t want to own you when we’re when we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John done with you. We’re done with you. If we decide we’re not using you anymore, we’re going to use a different manufacturer in a different country. We just wipe our
⏹️ ▶️ John hands of it and said, you know, it’s great that we bought all those CNC milling machines and we use them for 10 years
⏹️ ▶️ John and you get to keep them. See you later. We’re going somewhere else now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Like Apple could buy lots of companies, but they don’t because they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely don’t need to. And I think Disney could be similar. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a little bit more complex in that the areas that we think of as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you know what that would mean, what what Disney owns and what would come along with such a thing that includes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of things that we think Apple would probably want like movie and TV content. Obviously like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that’s like the number one thing that you that you can think of like what would Apple want Apple doesn’t want to run theme parks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know Apple doesn’t want probably like to run cable networks. You know there’s all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things that Disney owns that Apple probably doesn’t want to be in the business of I don’t think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wants to be like you know writing new songs for frozen for or whatever and then licensing that music to people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you know whatever there’s so many parts it’s such a big company. Most of that stuff Apple doesn’t really have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much use for and I think what it would actually be pretty averse to owning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, there’s a lot of that that you know you can just toss out the window like that Apple wouldn’t buy it as long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as that’s part of the company probably or Apple would buy it and immediately divest it themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, you know even looking at the core stuff okay so they’d have a lot of like you know movie,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV and maybe some sports stuff through ESPN or whatever like okay that’s I mean that’s interesting that’s valuable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but is that worth buying the whole company or can they just spend way less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money and have way less on their plates and just make deals with the company or whoever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buys it to license that content and that’s probably the more likely outcome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can also you know also whatever they would charge you like suppose they bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know Disney’s you know video content everything that that whole library Well, why would they want that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To have a streaming service, presumably? Well, they already have one. It’s called Apple TV+, Disney already has one. It’s called Disney+.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if Apple bought Disney, I honestly think those would remain two separate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple could have a nice bundle where they would sell both together for some discounted combined price,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but Apple TV+, can’t absorb all of Disney’s content
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without blowing up itself into something where you’d never be able to find anything ever again. and Disney Plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is doing so well on its own, relatively speaking, why would Apple want to dissolve it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and put it into Apple TV Plus, which is a much more kind of low visibility, low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scale service compared to Disney Plus, I assume. Those are better off being kept separate. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, just maybe having a bundle at some point, but it makes sense to keep those things separate. They have different,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the same way like one company can own multiple TV channels that have kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different styles of shows on them. Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very different styles of content that go on each one, and it doesn’t make sense, I don’t think, to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco combine those things. Similarly, buying Disney and all the many properties
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they own, yeah, that would give you access to a whole bunch of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole lot of TV content, like a huge library of old TV and movies and everything like that. But that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also doesn’t really fit in Apple TV Plus, Because again, like that’s, TV Plus is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more like HBO, at least the way HBO used to be. You know, much more like, we’re gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco original stuff and it’s gonna be this curated thing in this certain style that is gonna appeal to certain demographics.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s Apple TV Plus. It doesn’t make sense to dump all of Disney’s back catalog into that and all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the many, many companies that Disney owns. That doesn’t make any sense to me. So I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it going for that reason. And you know, maybe, I think sports, you know, They have a bunch of different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things in sports that are relevant. I don’t understand sports enough to comment on how relevant those are, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we already see Apple throwing around big money trying to buy sports rights in general through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other companies and that seems to be going fairly well overall. I mean, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have everything they want, I’m sure, but I think they can just keep doing that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I again I don’t see the value in Apple buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an entire giant conglomerate or even even assuming Disney might divest some stuff before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sale. You’d still be buying most of it and I just don’t see why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple needs to buy it. I think they’d much better spend their money just taking advantage of it. You know for as a third party.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’re not thinking like a big time executive Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I mean as you know I have a lot of experience being a media or it’s the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Apple, you know, so
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the reason, I don’t know about Apple and Disney, but the reason quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ John analysts are looking at this is they kind of look at the same things that you just described and they come away from
⏹️ ▶️ John it with a different take. Like, so you just mentioned Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus, right? Well, so think of it this way, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re trying to get into their mindset. Apple has been over the past several years
⏹️ ▶️ John paying money to creative people to make television shows and movies. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John is something that Apple previously didn’t do, right? They at all. And Apple decided we want to be in
⏹️ ▶️ John this business. And the reason they wanted to be in the business is because they wanted to have a streaming video service because that would get someone
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s services revenue. They would get people to pay Apple a monthly fee in exchange for a service.
⏹️ ▶️ John And once Apple has you paying for one service, they can try to get you to pay for others. They can do bundles. They like that whole,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, recurring revenue subscription services is a growth area for Apple. So they said, we’re going to have a streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John service. And they started from zero And they had to hire a bunch of executives who know
⏹️ ▶️ John how to find people who can make television shows and movies. And they gave them billions and
⏹️ ▶️ John billions of dollars and said, throw this money at movie stars, find people who know how to make good TV
⏹️ ▶️ John shows, bid against them to get them to not make it on Netflix, but instead to make it on our new thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV+. And they started with Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps. And they came all
⏹️ ▶️ John the way to, again, having movies with Tom Hanks in them and well-regarded TV shows like Severance and
⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of stuff, right? That’s the thing that Apple did. They did that for a reason
⏹️ ▶️ John that made sense to the business. I think that still makes sense to the business, that Apple wants to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a streaming video service with content. If you want to grow that business
⏹️ ▶️ John and say, how can we make Apple TV plus better? How can we make streaming video better?
⏹️ ▶️ John Acquiring Disney and all its assets and its streaming service is a shortcut to that, because Apple’s gonna say, we like
⏹️ ▶️ John the kind of content you have. you have the best IP in the entire world, no, they probably wouldn’t combine
⏹️ ▶️ John it into a single service, but having, as Jason said on one of the shows,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV Plus being kind of like the HBO icon inside the Disney Plus streaming app,
⏹️ ▶️ John or having them cross-linked to each other, or even just keeping them separate. It is a shortcut to saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John rather than organically growing our streaming service over several more years, as we have organically grown from zero,
⏹️ ▶️ John acquire this company, and all of a sudden, we have the ability to, we
⏹️ ▶️ John get all the subscribers to Disney Plus and we have the ability to grow it even more because unlike Disney who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John worried about where they’re gonna continue to fund this content for, because Disney Plus is doing well from a subscription perspective, they
⏹️ ▶️ John got a lot of subscribers, not doing well from a balance sheet perspective because Disney paid tons of
⏹️ ▶️ John money to make tons of content for it and that costs a lot of money up front and they’re not really making all that back
⏹️ ▶️ John on subscriptions yet or it’s not quite in the balance. They want, Apple’s like, don’t worry about that, we get the iPhone, we make that much
⏹️ ▶️ John money in a week, it’ll be fine. And they would be it would be a shortcut to growing your business.
⏹️ ▶️ John So from a big time CEO perspective, you’re like services is great. We want
⏹️ ▶️ John more subscribers for service. Here’s our graph of how Apple TV plus has been growing. We’re doing great. But if we simply
⏹️ ▶️ John acquire Disney plus, look what happens to the graph instantly after the acquisition, the number of subscribers goes
⏹️ ▶️ John up like this. And we think we can turn their business around and make them profitable and fund them for a few more years
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. So that’s a synergy that I think makes sense, even though as you noted, it’s not like you’re you’re just gonna combine
⏹️ ▶️ John them all into Apple TV+. You’re probably not gonna combine them all into Disney+. You’ll probably keep them separate, but it still services
⏹️ ▶️ John revenue and there are still synergies to be had there. And I think the same is true for IP,
⏹️ ▶️ John movies and stuff like that. Apple has made movies. Apple won an Oscar for one of their movies, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney has a lot of IP and a lot of movies and a lot of people know how to make movies. So Apple has been trying to hire those people
⏹️ ▶️ John and find people who know how, like Disney’s done that already. They have them. They’re there. They’ve got Star Wars. They’ve got movies
⏹️ ▶️ John lined up. They got all the Marvel, like it’s already there. It’s ready-made, it’s a shortcut to growth. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what Jason was getting at. Like when you’re as big as Apple, you’re looking for where is the next growth going to come from?
⏹️ ▶️ John Now you can say Apple should stop. They’re the biggest company in the world, they don’t need to grow anymore. But
⏹️ ▶️ John for in this particular realm of like making movies and TV, that ship has already sailed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has decided this is the thing they’re gonna do and they’re doing it because they think it’s a growth opportunity. So you’re either gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John say Apple stop doing Apple TV Plus and don’t buy Disney, or Apple if you’re gonna keep doing Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John plus buying Disney starts to make a lot more sense. So the particular one where you, that you were hung
⏹️ ▶️ John up on like their content and the movies and TV, I think from a growth at all costs, not growth
⏹️ ▶️ John at all costs, but from a growth in avenues that Apple has already chosen perspective, it makes perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John sense to me. Like unless you’re going to argue that Apple shouldn’t be in streaming video
⏹️ ▶️ John and that the technology sector is not going to eat the media sector when it comes to streaming video.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think you can argue against Apple buying Disney just to get the streaming stuff. But now we
⏹️ ▶️ John should talk about all the other things that would come with Disney and which ones we think Disney should divest itself from before it becomes palatable
⏹️ ▶️ John to Apple. But Disney+, definitely, you want that to be part of the Disney that you buy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so we’re taking a page out of Upgrade a little bit, but Mike had the good idea to run through,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, the stuff that Disney does, like the broad businesses that Disney participates in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And, you know, I don’t know if this is the exact same list that Mike and Jason worked through.
⏹️ ▶️ John is not his list. This is my crappy list. I’m sure his list was more thorough, but I did want to just touch on
⏹️ ▶️ John some of the stuff so that people realize, especially if you’ve never looked at the giant Disney org chart or haven’t looked at it recently,
⏹️ ▶️ John to realize all the stuff that Disney owns or, you know, the, the diversity of steps. This is not all the stuff. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John like a sampling of the things that Disney owns that you may not have thought about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. So Disney parks. So this is Walt Disney World, Disneyland,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Shanghai Disney, Disney Sea, Disneyland Paris. They have parks all over the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I know Marco, like me, is a super fan of these Disney parks, but, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey genuinely, no, all kidding aside, I really am a super fan. Like I was snarking about Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I really genuinely adore Disney
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world. I have gone there as many times as I’ve I’ve seen Pulp Fiction. Corey Bennett Oh goodness.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s hope for you yet, I think. Looking at it this way, you have a bunch of fun new things to experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, I totally understand if Disney parks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are not for you. That’s okay. But they are for me. I love them. I adore them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We try to go as a family every few years. We were just at Disney World in January. I adore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Disney parks. In a lot of ways, they’re very appley. earlier today, we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey went to a King’s Dominion, which is a local amusement park. And I like King’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dominion just fine, but it is stark. The difference between King’s Dominion,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is admittedly a little bit on the rattier side, then Disney World,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is what if we spared no expense, you know, because we’re basically printing money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and not that Disney is Disney world is is perfect by any means, but it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stunning the difference between the two in every measurable way. Cleanliness,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how modern everything is. I rode a ride that was originally based off the Italian
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job and now it’s like, I don’t know, some stunt coaster or something like that. And there’s a billboard in the ride
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because you’re riding in, you know, pretend mini Coopers and it’s supposed to take after the movie,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though they lost the rights to the movie. And at one point, you know, you’re supposed to be driving kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of sort of on a street and there’s a billboard, I don’t know, 30 feet from your face. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey billboard has clearly seen years and years and years of sun and is almost white at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can guarantee there is zero chance that an equivalent billboard in a ride at Disney
⏹️ ▶️ Casey world would look anything but brand new ever, ever. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an app, very Apple like attention to detail. I adore Disney parks. Uh, they, they are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey such incredible user experiences. And in that sense, I see so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much in common with Apple. But why on earth would Apple want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything to do with this? Like, I just don’t see that as being something,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t see Disney parks as being something Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ John interested in. I think they, so I think they would definitely have to keep parks. And part of that is the old diagram that you’ll see from like
⏹️ ▶️ John the Walt Disney drew, like on a piece of paper, or I don’t know if he drew it himself, but it’s part of the original Walt Disney era.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a bunch of boxes and lines and arrows that have changed over the years, but the the fundamental idea is still the same. How
⏹️ ▶️ John does Disney make money? How does that company work? And the lines basically are like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we make a bunch of movies that kids, we make good movies that people like, and kids love
⏹️ ▶️ John them too. And then we make toys from the movies that people buy. We have television shows that kids
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna watch because they have their favorite characters. And then they come to Disney World and pay us for these very expensive tickets
⏹️ ▶️ John so they can see their characters and ride the rides. And it’s like this cycle that says we create the content and then we
⏹️ ▶️ John get money from people who like the content because our movies are good. Like we make good movies, we make good TV
⏹️ ▶️ John shows, we get fans, and those fans wanna give us money. And the parks are one of, as Casey knows,
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the really big funnels for getting that money. So if you take parks out of the equation,
⏹️ ▶️ John part of what you’re buying in Disney, like you’ve broken the machine a little bit. Now the downside to parks is, as
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Ben Thompson has talked about recently, because he’s Mr.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Businessman, parks don’t scale, right? It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like being a consultant. Like people think, I’m gonna program, or I’m gonna be a consultant, or I’m gonna run a consulting company,
⏹️ ▶️ John and people are gonna hire us and then we’re going to, you know, write their code for them or whatever. And it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John consulting or anything like parks or that involves people, whatever, it scales with
⏹️ ▶️ John the number of people that you can run through the machine. So if you have a consulting business, the amount of money you can make
⏹️ ▶️ John depends on how many people you have, how many programmers you have, because you can’t say some company says, we want you to write all this
⏹️ ▶️ John billions of lines of code for us. You’re like, oh, but I don’t have that many employees and I can’t hire them that fast. It
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t scale. You know what scales? streaming services, selling software, things where when you
⏹️ ▶️ John make a new copy of the software, it doesn’t cost you anything, or streaming services, you pay some minimal fee for the extra bandwidth
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re gonna cost or whatever. Those businesses, those kind of software businesses where the unit cost
⏹️ ▶️ John per extra customer is very, very small, or sometimes even close to zero, depending on how you squint at it,
⏹️ ▶️ John those scale really well. But parks, there’s only a certain number of them, and you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have one around every corner. And if you did have one around every corner, it would take away from the specialness. So parks don’t necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ John scale, but they are very powerful, very good money funnels for Casey and his
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that is an important
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the cycle. You watch the movie, you see the thing, oh, now there’s a Star Wars land. You love Star Wars because
⏹️ ▶️ John you love Star Wars. And it’s saying, oh, there’s a Frozen parade. And the people, like, that’s part of the Disney machine. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you absolutely have to keep parks because otherwise you’ve broken Disney. Like, why would you like disconnect
⏹️ ▶️ John that part of the cycle? The second thing is parks, as you mentioned, kind of feel like Appley because Disney
⏹️ ▶️ John has that attention to detail. It’s part of the cultural similarity between the companies that they care, that they would care
⏹️ ▶️ John that their billboard is faded. They would not accept that it’s faded. They would fix it, right? Someone would note it. Like there’s a culture
⏹️ ▶️ John of everyone who works in those places and the companies that run is that we want to have a quality
⏹️ ▶️ John product. And if it is not quality, we need to fix it. And so many companies aren’t like that. So Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John and Disney have that in common. But that said, the very first thing I thought of when I was seriously considering this is that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s particular culture and design philosophy is
⏹️ ▶️ John especially poorly suited to Disneyland, I feel like. And the analogy that sprung to mind
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately was like, you know, in Disney, they do a really good job of incorporating the garbage cans into the
⏹️ ▶️ John landscape. They’ll be styled like whatever land you’re in. They’re not like out in your face with
⏹️ ▶️ John an ugly trash bag on them, the flies buzzing around them. Like that’s part of the Disney experience. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney, you know, hidden, well-incorporated trash cans. They’re right where you need them to be, but they’re not in
⏹️ ▶️ John your face until you’re looking for one. And when you’re looking for one, you find it and it’s pleasantly integrated, but otherwise they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, stinking up the joint and getting in your way, right? An Apple solution to that would
⏹️ ▶️ John be no garbage cans. Kind of like in the Apple store, they said, you know what, lines are annoying. Apple store,
⏹️ ▶️ John no lines, no registers. And how many times have we talked about, I wish I just, I wish there was just a
⏹️ ▶️ John Like Apple’s philosophy is very often aspirational when it comes to human
⏹️ ▶️ John nature. We wish humans would act this way. Caleb Sasser, Caleb, I might, does that have
⏹️ ▶️ John friend, my daughter has a friend named Caleb. Cable Sasser recently posted a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John about things people put in theme parks that are used in unexpected ways by patrons.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you build anything in the theme park, anything at all that can be sat on by
⏹️ ▶️ John humans, they will sit on it because they’re tired and it’s hot. And you’re like, but that’s not a seat and people shouldn’t sit there.
⏹️ ▶️ John So then they have to like patch them by like putting a bar or a sign. You put a sign, people don’t care. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you build like a sculpture that’s supposed to be like a sculpture that’s part of like whatever, you know, I don’t know if it was like part of Avatar land
⏹️ ▶️ John or the aliens ride or some, you know, property franchise that had some particular
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that fits within the world, but it’s chair height, people are gonna sit on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can’t stop them. And if you put rope around it, it looks ridiculous or whatever. And that’s Apple’s blind
⏹️ ▶️ John spot when it comes to design of physical spaces. Talk to anyone who’s worked in Apple Park. It’s an amazing,
⏹️ ▶️ John beautiful building and a bunch of the stuff in it is, again, aspirational with respect to human
⏹️ ▶️ John nature. It doesn’t reflect the actual physical reality of humans.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sometimes leans too far into form and less into function
⏹️ ▶️ John and Disney strikes a much better balance than that than Apple. All right, so that brings me to the next thing as
⏹️ ▶️ John we go on this list, kind of like when Apple bought Beats or when Apple buys anything, The question is, does
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple buy them and, you know, Star Trek Borg-like assimilate them and make them be just like Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or does Apple allow the company that it acquired to maintain its individual culture and continue to
⏹️ ▶️ John do what it does? And I think if Apple ever acquires Disney, it is absolutely essential
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple allows, for example, Parks to continue to do what Parks
⏹️ ▶️ John does well without, I know this isn’t a problem now because he doesn’t work there, but without, for example, imagine if Johnny Ive was still there,
⏹️ ▶️ John Do not parachute Johnny Ive into Disney parks. He will ruin it.
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s great. And the things he does is better than anyone else, but Disney parks does not need
⏹️ ▶️ John Johnny Ives help at all. What that part of Disney needs is
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s money and Apple’s overarching philosophy of quality,
⏹️ ▶️ John attention to detail, long-term thinking, just that whole vibe, which Disney mostly has, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John having more money loosens that up. So by all means, Apple should lean on the idea of like, It’s really important
⏹️ ▶️ John for us, you know, at Big Corporate Apple for you and Parks to do a great job, but we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just gonna let you do that. Like, we’ll make sure you’re doing a good job, but we’re not gonna tell you how to do it. We’re not gonna say, there’s too many garbage
⏹️ ▶️ John cans here. Why don’t you just get rid of them entirely and just tell people to carry their garbage with them back to their car? We’ll give them little bags that are
⏹️ ▶️ John made out of recycled paper so they can do that. And the Parks people should say, Apple, step back. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve been doing this a little bit longer than you have. I think we know how to do this. And so that is the
⏹️ ▶️ John danger of buying something as big as Disney is Apple has to have the
⏹️ ▶️ John wisdom to know when to back off. And I think they do. They mostly let Beats continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to be Beatsy. Like Beats didn’t turn into Apple. Like the AirPods Max is different than the
⏹️ ▶️ John Beats products that probably have a lot of similar tech under the covers. Beats was allowed to still be Beats. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just Beats. Disney is Disney. So if Apple acquires Disney,
⏹️ ▶️ John A, they should keep Parks and B, they should keep their hands off Parks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I don’t know that Apple, I don’t know that they want to acquire things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they would have to keep their hands off of.
⏹️ ▶️ John Agreed. But they did it with Beats? Not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite. I mean, they sort of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, we don’t know all the details of it. It seemed like a lot of the reason they bought Beats
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was really also to get Johnny Iovine to be like an executive there for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was actually kind of an acqui-hire, I think. but modern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Beats headphones are nothing like the Beats headphones when Apple bought the company. But they’re also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing like Apple headphones. No, they’re actually, so modern Beats headphones are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like the sport version of equivalent Apple headphone models.
⏹️ ▶️ John But can you ever imagine Apple shipping anything Apple branded that look like Beats headphones? I can’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, well, it depends. I mean, but it’s clearly a sub-brand of Apple. You know, like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of, there’s lots of like, you know, high-end goods that have like sub-brands, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but like, that’s just Beats though. I wish I could think of a better one because Apple doesn’t buy lots of big companies.
⏹️ ▶️ John Beats is actually one of their larger acquisitions. But like, but Disney is Disney. And I think, like, that’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t, if you’re gonna buy Disney, you can’t break Disney. You can’t break the machine that is Disney, nor can you assimilate
⏹️ ▶️ John them, Borg. Like, you have to let them be Disney.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I agree with you that you would have to let them be Disney. I just don’t know if that’s really an Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey DNA because I, I hear what you’re saying about beats and beats is certainly way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more in island on their own than, than I think any of us expected, but they’re not an island.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re best a peninsula. Like what was it? It wasn’t a Clarice or something. What makes it like file makers?
⏹️ ▶️ John Poor Clara. So that’s a little bit of, so this actually leads me to the next thing. This was an ask ATP question and it is actually
⏹️ ▶️ John relevant to this. This is a random ask ATP chucked into here. Um, Aaron Thomas S it
⏹️ ▶️ John seems like Nintendo Sony etc have good relationships with game developers what can Apple and Google learn from video
⏹️ ▶️ John game manufacturers to have better relationships with their third-party developers this might seem like it’s not that relevant but I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like it is so this whole thing of
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple allowing some sub set of its company to do its thing
⏹️ ▶️ John without interference maybe beats wasn’t the best example because maybe their headphones have become more Apple like than
⏹️ ▶️ John I realized over time but a good example that’s relevant to this question about Nintendo and Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John and game developers is Apple TV+. Apple had nobody at the company who
⏹️ ▶️ John knew how to make movies and television shows because Apple had never done it before. And they had to start from
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing and build their way up by hiring, essentially industry people who
⏹️ ▶️ John have experience doing that, paying them a whole bunch of money and saying, we don’t know how to make movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t know how to find directors and scripts and who to give money to and
⏹️ ▶️ John how you can tell when you should back a project. and like, we don’t know any of that. So they hired people to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there was all those stories early on about exactly what we’re talking about. Is Apple messing around?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like is Tim Cook coming in and said, there’s too much swearing in this movie. I don’t like it. We only wanna make family friendly
⏹️ ▶️ John things. Change the blood to green. That’s a Nintendo reference. Is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mortal Kombat on the Super Nintendo, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, yeah, because Nintendo had the family friendly thing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco going. Yeah, they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John changed it to sweat. I think it was just green. Yeah, well, one of them had green blood.
⏹️ ▶️ John So maybe it was Doom that had green blood. I forget the exact reference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you had to have a Genesis to see the actual blood and blood content.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And so that was the story before anything really happened with
⏹️ ▶️ John that. It was like, Apple interfering. Tim Cook says that there’s too much violence in this show or too much sex
⏹️ ▶️ John in this or whatever, right? Because that was people’s fear, that Apple is going to screw it up. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ John now enough time has passed and enough content has been produced on Apple TV Plus, both movies and television,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we can safely say that Apple is not really messing with the
⏹️ ▶️ John content. They are not ensuring everything is family friendly. There’s tons of cursing, tons of nudity, tons of violence.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything you could possibly imagine is there. It’s not, you know, over the top. It is branded in a
⏹️ ▶️ John certain way, but pretty much like HBO stuff was branded, right? That it is that it is high quality,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, highfalutin stuff like, you know, a smaller number of better quality things.
⏹️ ▶️ John But as far as I can tell from the outside, Apple has let the creative
⏹️ ▶️ John subdivision of its company that makes television shows and movies do its job without much interference. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John how could they interfere? There’s no one in Apple who knows anything about that. That the way Apple supports them is
⏹️ ▶️ John we will hire the best people who know what they’re doing and then not mess with them. I don’t know if they’re doing that with the car
⏹️ ▶️ John because that seems to be not as successful, but the TV and movies we can see,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think Apple has messed with them. I think they built a wing of their company that didn’t previously exist and
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially are letting it run like a television and movie creation studio.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because if they weren’t, I don’t think they would be successful. Because Apple, previous executive, have no expertise in this area.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just would have screwed it up. So I think Apple can keep its hands off in areas where it knows
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t have expertise. Their only job is to find the people who do and let them do their work. And guess
⏹️ ▶️ John what? In Disney, you don’t have to find them. They’re already there. For the most part, except for the Star Wars directors. You wanna talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John that a little bit. But anyway, I think Apple has demonstrated that it can keep its
⏹️ ▶️ John paws off of stuff that it doesn’t understand, even within parts of its own company that it builds up from zero,
⏹️ ▶️ John let alone acquiring Disney. So I am much more optimistic that if they did acquire Disney
⏹️ ▶️ John they absolutely would be able to keep their hands off of things that they don’t know anything about.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, animation. That falls under the category of people who make TV shows and movies. The reason I listed that is
⏹️ ▶️ John because they have Disney animation, but also Pixar, of course. Don’t forget about them, acquired by Disney a while back,
⏹️ ▶️ John and their relation to Apple. Anything like that, where people are doing creative things? I think
⏹️ ▶️ John even Steve Jobs, not that he’s there anymore, but showed that he more or less, like he
⏹️ ▶️ John acquired Pixar and ran it for a long time. He didn’t mess with stuff on a creative.
⏹️ ▶️ John knew, I don’t know how to make movies. I just know how to hire smart people who do. And I may offer
⏹️ ▶️ John a bit of advice here and there, but read everything you can about the history of Pixar. Steve Jobs is not going into individual scenes and
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this guy should move over there like that. Why is he saying this? Nope, Steve Jobs did not do that. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney has a whole bunch of animation. They’ve got 2D animation, their computer animation, all the, you know, Frozen and all those
⏹️ ▶️ John franchises, Pixar animation, Marvel, Star Wars, all
⏹️ ▶️ John the stuff from 20th Century Fox, which I can’t believe we can’t call 20th Century Fox anymore, but it makes perfect sense because it’s not owned by
⏹️ ▶️ John Fox. It’s just, what is it called? 20th Century Features? I forget what it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Something like that, yeah. All the Disney IP, Snow White, Seven Dwarves, Donald Duck,
⏹️ ▶️ John Mickey Mouse, all that stuff, all the people who make that content and all of the
⏹️ ▶️ John content itself. A Apple super duper wants that and B Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John would not, should not, and probably wouldn’t touch the people who are making it because they know what they’re doing. They would guide it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They would herd it in the right direction. They would insist on quality. They would sort out any issues with funding
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, acquisitions, new acquisitions of IP and stuff like that. But when it comes time to make the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John movies, I think they would let the people who do it, do it. And that’s, This is all exactly in the
⏹️ ▶️ John realm of like, Hey, we have a streaming service where people watch video. This all feeds into and supports that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this, this also relates to, you know, Marvel and star Wars. And like you said, in 20th century or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the Disney IP, I think, was it Marco earlier that said it? Maybe I’m sure it was John. It’s always John, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was Marco that said, you know, why would Apple buy Disney?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, I think if it were Apple, they’re fine without any big marketing agreements
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other than Toy Story on your watch, you know, I don’t think they need to buy Disney to get this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If anything, I would see Apple swooping in at, as Disney gets ever more desperate in just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying, here’s a bunch of effectively free money. And the only thing you need to do is let us use some of your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey IP and stuff that we want to do it in. Like, I just, I just don’t see buying Disney
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as necessary. Like Marco was saying earlier, why bother buying it when you can give a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seemingly ever more desperate business, a bit of a parachute to get to do whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ John Then you’re betting on Disney not being the last company standing, because you’re saying, we’re just gonna sit here with our arms folded,
⏹️ ▶️ John and we think Disney is essentially going to have to give up on their efforts to have a streaming service. And at that point,
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney will then be out there saying, okay, well, we tried to do this on our own, it didn’t work out, so now we have a bunch of IP
⏹️ ▶️ John that we’re willing to license to you. And Apple, do you want to license it? Netflix, do you want to license it? Like, kind of where they were
⏹️ ▶️ John before they had Disney+. Disney content could be available elsewhere. And of course, Disney sells things through
⏹️ ▶️ John the, you could buy Disney movies on Apple’s iTunes store or whatever the hell it’s called now. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if I want to take that bet though, because I think if I’m thinking which is going to be the last company standing, I think Disney
⏹️ ▶️ John can weather the storm of, oh, we just blew a lot of money up front on Disney Plus
⏹️ ▶️ John and a bunch of content for it. And COVID really hurt our
⏹️ ▶️ John movie ticket sales or whatever, and everyone’s not doing well. I think Disney can weather that. And so first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t want someone else to acquire them because that would be bad, like some other tech company, cause then Apple’s getting none of that
⏹️ ▶️ John and second, Disney’s not going to license anybody that stuff when they’re still pursuing their own strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John of doing a streaming service. So it’s kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey all the companies. I don’t, I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them as equivalent. I understand what you’re saying, but the sort of licensing I’m talking about isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey broadcasting Disney stuff or making new Disney or new shows with Disney. IP. What I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying is Apple would want to do like they do today. Like, let’s make a watch face with Toy Story characters.
⏹️ ▶️ John But a watch face with Toy Story is nothing. You want 100 million Disney Plus subscribers to be paying you money every month. You want to be
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey able to make new movies in Star Wars.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s where the show is. Again, it gets back to, if you think Apple is and should,
⏹️ ▶️ John are they pursuing having a streaming service where they pay for content to be made? Disney
⏹️ ▶️ John and all of this stuff is a way to massively grow that business and to have a potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John insurmountable moat of IP against all of your competitors in the tech world, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not about a Mickey Mouse watch face. Like that is peanuts. Like it’s-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a fair point. Yeah. And actually, the more you talk about it, the more I’m getting convinced, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this will happen, but I think the avenue to this happening could be a defensive play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than it could be anything else. Like I don’t feel like Apple is in the position that they’re really desperate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to find new ways to earn money. I agree with what Jason said, that they are getting to that point, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think they’re there yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not desperate, but it’s like, that’s again, it’s a C-level executive thinking, which is foreign to us. It’s like, you’re already the biggest company in the
⏹️ ▶️ John world. You already make so much money, but it’s like, but where is the next big growth gonna come from?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, where is the next big, you know, and services revenue, that’s why they’re pursuing this. Services revenue, look at the service
⏹️ ▶️ John revenue line going up. How can we grow that even faster? A Disney acquisition would be part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but like, isn’t it kind of, Like doesn’t the relative sizes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these companies now kind of prove that maybe this wouldn’t be enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to move the needle for Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that’s a great point too,
⏹️ ▶️ John But it would, so think of it this way. If you look at how Apple TV Plus has grown organically, like by
⏹️ ▶️ John itself, versus how much Disney Plus has grown organically by itself, you can look at those things and
⏹️ ▶️ John say, I mean, we don’t know Apple TV Plus subscribers, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Disney Plus has more?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I would assume so.
⏹️ ▶️ John just has, Disney has more content and Disney has better content. Apple has done a good job with the content that it’s made,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it cannot compete. It couldn’t even compete with what Disney had before it started buying every company under the sun. And now that
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney owns everything under the sun, like, you know, if it’s not gonna be Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t want one of its competitors to get that. And it can’t organically race to catch up with it. Yeah, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but what you have to do is not compare the Disney dot to the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John dot, compare the Disney dot to the Apple TV plus dot, which we don’t know how big the dot’s gonna be, but I’m gonna say it’s gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John again, that’s not the only, like it is a Disney machine. It is not just like a streaming service system IP. It is
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of things that all work together to get people to love Disney properties and go to Disney parks and go on Disney
⏹️ ▶️ John cruises and buy Disney toys and licensed Disney stuff, which then if Apple owns them, they’re getting licensed material
⏹️ ▶️ John and it all circles back. So it is a shortcut to growth because somebody has already built
⏹️ ▶️ John a entertainment mecca of just everything under the sun that tons of people
⏹️ ▶️ John want that makes movies and TV shows and all the people who know how to make them, that’s ready-made sitting there for you,
⏹️ ▶️ John just $160 billion. Although we should go through some more things that they own, because there’s a bunch of crap in there that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple definitely does not want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Stuff Apple doesn’t want?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so here’s the next line item here is, Disney also has Hulu apparently in the US?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. I mean, I guess they would take that because it’s part of a streaming service, but then we get to things like ESPN. And I think that’s part of what
⏹️ ▶️ John the discussion of selling things off. I do not think Apple wants to have anything to do with what they
⏹️ ▶️ John call in the biz, apparently the linear TV market, which is code word for television that is not
⏹️ ▶️ John like an internet streaming service. That is a big world, and it is a big world that is going through a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of radical changes. And I think Apple wants absolutely no part of that. So Disney owns
⏹️ ▶️ John ABC, FX, the Disney Channel, Disney Junior, a bunch of channels that are part of cable
⏹️ ▶️ John packages. ABC is a network, right? I don’t think Apple wants any of
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And they shouldn’t. doesn’t fit into any of their businesses.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think that Apple wants ESPN, the cable network,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think that’s kind of, you’re thinking, you’re not thinking far enough past the end of your nose.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think Apple would love to have access to all the sports deals and sport
⏹️ ▶️ Casey related things that ESPN has access
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to. But those
⏹️ ▶️ John are two separate things. That’s what the CEO was saying. They were trying to sell the linear part of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple does not want the linear part. That I agree with. They want the other part of it. And so a lot of these things
⏹️ ▶️ John like are separable. So ABC has a streaming service and a bunch of IP, but ABC is also a television network.
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of these companies, especially like ESPN, make money by being part of cable packages or whatever. Apple doesn’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John any part of that business. I don’t care, you know, that business of making money by being part of everyone’s cable package
⏹️ ▶️ John is on its way out. We don’t want that, but we do want, to your point, whatever sports rights
⏹️ ▶️ John that ESPN has, you know, streaming sports rights or whatever, like the type of deals they did with
⏹️ ▶️ John MLS or whatever, Apple definitely wants those, but does not want the linear things. And I don’t know how they’re entangled, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know how easily they would be to separate. But the divesting of loser businesses, a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of it is divesting of the stuff that has to do with all-world cable, linear television,
⏹️ ▶️ John while trying to keep the stuff that Apple or any acquirer does want, which is, oh, I have the rights
⏹️ ▶️ John to broadcast these sports teams or whatever. How cleanly separable are those? How long would it take
⏹️ ▶️ John to separate them? Are they separable at all? But I think, in the end, if any of these things are encumbered by
⏹️ ▶️ John linear TV baggage and can’t be separated, Apple doesn’t want them. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John blame them, because again, look at what Apple does. Is Apple trying to get into linear television? No, everything they’re doing, even the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with sports rights, is internet focused, streaming focused.
⏹️ ▶️ John The rumors are Vision Pro focused, right? It is, you know, they do not wanna be, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, as evidenced by Apple TV+, they do deals with cable providers, so you can get Apple TV Plus
⏹️ ▶️ John at a discount as part of your package, but it’s not a channel on your cable television dial.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what the hell do you call it now? They don’t have dials.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey On your cable television
⏹️ ▶️ John box, whatever. So anything that has to do with old-fashioned
⏹️ ▶️ John cable television or broadcast television, like ABC is broadcast over the air, right? The
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple does not want that. And so if Disney wants to be as attractive as possible to Apple, they need
⏹️ ▶️ John to rip out the old crappy linear TV cable bundle broadcast
⏹️ ▶️ John crap from the juicy, delicious intellectual property and other stuff and contracts
⏹️ ▶️ John and sports rights and everything that are part of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I’m happy to talk about this as long as we want, but I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still, other than defensive posturing, I’m just still unconvinced. I just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze. I really don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we were thinking, or as we were talking about it earlier, I couldn’t help but reflect back to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WWDC 2013 intro video, the dots, speaking of dots. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey although a lot of that video was very cringey, as I would say, or cringe, as the kids would say now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it did do a pretty decent job of explaining
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Apple ethos to those of us who are not within Apple, and from the best I can tell. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was scanning through it as you guys were talking, and there were a couple of lines that stood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out to me. One of them was, if everyone is busy making everything, how can anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfect anything? And I feel like the way that’s applicable here is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple has already spread a little bit on the thin side. I mean, granted, they could hire,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they could do a lot of things to make more stuff work, but it certainly seems like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spread a little thin. And if you look at reports about how the betas are going right now, apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not great, Bob. And so-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is coming in hot this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. And so it seems to me like adding a whole bunch of very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different, um, types of businesses to that plate just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t seem like a recipe for success. Much less the probably hundreds of thousands of employees. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in so many ways, it just seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John year was the dots video.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So this is another comment that Jason made, uh, in various,
⏹️ ▶️ John in his various discussions of this. if your picture of Apple is the Apple of, I think he said 2010, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not the Apple of today.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I remember the dots video,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that Apple did not decide to start a movies and television studio to support a streaming service. That Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think had not decided to try to make a car or whatever the hell they’re doing there. That Apple didn’t even have a headset
⏹️ ▶️ John in the works, right? I think that Apple had maybe wasn’t yet planning
⏹️ ▶️ John the watch. Like Apple today is different than it was. And so like, this is the thing. Apple has decided
⏹️ ▶️ John that it wants to pursue these new things that it didn’t do before for whatever reason. Is it because of
⏹️ ▶️ John growth? Is it because they think they can make an impact or whatever? But they’ve already decided to
⏹️ ▶️ John be in a lot of the areas where Disney works. And the things that don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John seem like they work, like parks or cruises, just keep thinking of succession every time I say that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It seems like, well, yeah, but that’s, like Apple’s not into that. Apple has a park, but you’re not allowed to go to it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t have cruises.
⏹️ ▶️ John have cruise ships. Like that seems like it doesn’t work, but parks and cruises is part of the Disney machine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I said, that if you get the IP, you shouldn’t also break the machine. So that is kind of a new thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that machine does have kind of a cultural fit with that. But Apple, Disney also has
⏹️ ▶️ John music and Apple, I don’t think, Apple doesn’t make any of its own music. It doesn’t pay to
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, like a record label. As far
⏹️ ▶️ John know. For artists to make music, right? But Disney does, you know, Disney does that. And that would also be a new thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it does have some synergies, right? So the thousand no’s for every
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, the Apple that had that philosophy, it’s not that it’s totally changed
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re not like that anymore because they are. And I think the way, but they’re definitely different than they were, like
⏹️ ▶️ John as evidenced by what they’ve done. Forget about any acquisitions, just look at what Apple itself has decided to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, setting aside the car, which they haven’t actually done yet, but they decided to pursue that and have been pursuing it for years. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a little bit of a different tack then those dots were
⏹️ ▶️ John leading us towards. So I think the way Apple’s attitude that you’re both getting at and a vibe that
⏹️ ▶️ John I also feel from them is that they’re not gonna do something like this unless they can do
⏹️ ▶️ John it on their terms. And very often they can’t. Very often like Apple is in the bidding war for like sports rights or
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is, you know, trying to acquire a company or whatever. And if it turns out that
⏹️ ▶️ John that company won’t accept Apple’s terms, Apple walks away. Yeah. And that’s why they miss out on a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John things. And I think that’s how the thousands of nos the manifest. I do not think Apple is going to
⏹️ ▶️ John acquire Disney if they can’t do it the way Apple wants. And if that’s the, you know, that Apple wants
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney to get rid of X, Y and Z, they don’t want to buy these parts. They want these things to be separated, whatever their conditions
⏹️ ▶️ John are. And if you hear rumors about like the conditions that Apple puts on companies that it’s acquiring or
⏹️ ▶️ John companies like Apple’s conditions are complicated and onerous and unexpected and
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple does not budge on them. So that’s how I think the modern Apple manifest that a million knows
⏹️ ▶️ John for every yes. But given the special relationship
⏹️ ▶️ John between Apple and Disney and particularly their new old returning CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John and how those relationships might exist at the level of the board of directors and everything like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John the possibility that they could come to an agreement that meets all of Apple’s requirements is probably
⏹️ ▶️ John higher than it was for, say, like the NFL or whatever, where it’s just like some company that has never really
⏹️ ▶️ John had direct contact with Apple coming into contact with Apple and being like you can’t just dictate term like
⏹️ ▶️ John no man Apple’s like I’m sorry we’re we’re not budging on this it’s like well you don’t get the deal then and Apple’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John fine you know a thousand no’s for every yes but with Disney again not that
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s absolutely going to happen but the odds of Apple getting
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple style deal that it wants out of Disney are higher than with another company that Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John had less contact with because Disney knows what to expect from dealing with Apple, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though Steve Jobs is gone or whatever. But like. Disney has Disney has definitely had direct
⏹️ ▶️ John contact with Apple over a long period of time, including the actual CEO being on the board of directors for a while. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think. I think it’s possible they could get the Apple style deal they want out of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just to go back a quick step, WWDC 2013. Apple unveiled redesigned models
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the Mac Pro Airport Time Capsule, Airport Extreme and MacBook Air and showcased OS 10 Mavericks. iOS 7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I work for iCloud. So just to put things in perspective.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was the whole the dots video was about iOS 7. They had, you know, and it was a thousand nodes for every yes, a million
⏹️ ▶️ John nodes. I don’t remember how many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thousand. There are a thousand nodes for every yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John There we go. A thousand nodes for every yes, but then iOS 7, the fonts were still way too thin and they fixed it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to our members for sponsoring this episode. You can join us at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh it was accidental John didn’t do any research, Margo
⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so long
Our ad market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s an unusual outro for the show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Because this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week we were exclusively member supported and This is not the first time this has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened, but it’s certainly not a common thing and it’s becoming more common and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s because our ad sales have been in the toilet recently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and There’s a bunch of kind of bigger picture sure moves in the industry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the economy that are causing this. We wanted to discuss it here just because, okay look, let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start by saying we’re fine, the show is fine, no one’s in trouble, not even you Alex, no one’s in trouble, everything’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. So anyway, what I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen in not only our show, but in the podcast landscape in general, including things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overcast podcast ads, that like those little banners that support a large part of overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco business. Something happened around January.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, and you know, there’s obviously been some economic changes in, in the, you know, the, the larger landscape.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, but since January ad sales and ad prices have dropped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significantly, uh, to, to, to the point where like we, I’ve never seen a drop like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this since we, since I’ve been selling these kinds of ads, either, either since we’ve been selling them for this show or,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the, the ads and overcast like it’s on the order of like 50% lower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prices this year and you know fewer sponsors fewer buys
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and lower prices so it’s been a tough environment to try to sell ads and for podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like ours there’s been a lot of factors for that you know the industry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of ad that we do it’s it’s called a host read which means I read it and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco baked in which means that I record them and I stick them in the show and everyone gets the same copy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the show with the same ads in it. And it also means that no matter how many downloads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that show gets, those ads are going to get that number of impressions, which might be higher or lower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the advertiser might want. And over time, those ads aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changed. So if you go back and listen to an episode from five years ago, you’re going to hear the ad that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there five years ago, not like a new ad. So that’s the kind of show that we do and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of show that we’ve always done. That’s not where the industry has moved largely. The industry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has largely moved towards first of all dynamic ad insertion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you download a podcast and every download might have different ads spliced into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it at download time. Now sometimes this is for somewhat innocuous reasons like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know if you want to have the same ad spot you know included in four or five different episodes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can do that if you want to put new ads into new downloads of old episodes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if you get a lot of back catalog traffic for your show, you might want to monetize your back catalog a little bit better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know and sell ads that will run in back catalog episodes so they get spliced in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. But it’s also often used in really annoying or creepy or both ways. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for instance, because dynamically add dynamic ad insertion can check your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco IP address upon serving it to you, it can then do various targeting things based on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tracking and other behavioral information that they can derive from you either themselves or through other services that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sharing all your crap with and tracking you across and it’s really super creepy and that’s why you can get like personally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco targeted ads in dynamic ad insertion or DAI. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get those ingested in your show or they can use your IP address to perform rough geolocation and figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco roughly what region you’re in and for instance serve you an ad for a local car dealership,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a radio ad, like stuck in your podcasts. Listeners hate this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s awful for listeners, as you know, if you listen to any shows that do this, and most large podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publishers are now doing this style of ad. For us, first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ad market for shows like ours first got abstracted away from us by ad agencies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When we first started the show, we were largely being contacted by sponsors directly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or we were contacting them directly and we would talk to their ad person or whatever, and they would buy it and that’d be it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Over the years, that has shifted more and more towards we have to deal with agencies and the agencies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal with the sponsors. And there’s pluses and minuses to that, but I think it’s proven to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly a minus. Now we’re even moving away from that into these dynamic ad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco insertion worlds. And when people are buying dynamic ads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely they’re not saying, you know, give me episode 546 of ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What they’re saying instead, because they have access to not only dynamic insertion, but also they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco access to some kind of demographic targeting usually, what they’re able to say instead is they’re able to go to a large ad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exchange or platform and say, all right, I want to buy a hundred thousand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impressions at this CPM or lower this cost per thousand or lower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of men, eggs, 25 to 34 in the U S you know, like they’re able to target it to that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco level. That’s not the kind of ad that we sell and frankly that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of ad that we want to sell. We don’t want to track you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or to get your information like that or critically we don’t want to enable anyone else to track you in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. We don’t want to make a show full of dynamic ad insertion because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listeners hate it. And again, you’re all podcast listeners. You probably listen to at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one show with DAI and you probably hate it. We also don’t want to join some kind of big ad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marketplace for lots of reasons, chiefly of which we probably make a lot less money. And part of that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they will, you know, ad marketplaces take their own cut and it’s usually huge. And they also would take away control from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us. And that would give us less control over things like we don’t want to track people and be creepy and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We also don’t want to join a big podcast network. It honestly would have to be a big network
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make a difference here because the small networks are having many of these similar issues. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t want to join a podcast network because we are our own show. We don’t want to share our branding. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t want to have some network badge on our artwork and have ATP just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be another show brought to you by Big Network X. That’s not our style. That’s not our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Meanwhile, in 2020, we launched this membership program.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Membership started out as a nice side bonus income, kind of like when we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sell merchandise, when we sell t-shirts and stuff. That makes decent side income. It was nowhere near
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the main income of the show, but it’s decent side income. Membership started that way, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco membership is growing. It’s been going really well. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really so much appreciate that and we wanted to all get it. We wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say first of all how much we appreciate that because right now, as you’ve heard, the number of sponsorships on our shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has gone dramatically down since the beginning of the year. If you look at previous years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the amount of times that we had less than a totally full ad load, like less than all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three ads before 2023, it almost never happened.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now in 2023, I think it’s more unusual when we have a full three ads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than not. And meanwhile, membership is going great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we wanted to just kind of brainstorm in public, like, you know, where it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of what directions we might want to take the show. Because the landscape is, is has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so radically changed in the last six, seven months, to the point where the ad business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really it has become something that not only is it that not working nearly as well for us as it used to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the direction that the podcast ads have gone has gone in a direction that we don’t really wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go. You know, right when we first launched the membership program,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we said, and this is still the goal, was we don’t wanna take anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away from the show. We wanna only be additive. So members will get things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were never given to everyone else for free. It was extra content here and there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extra perks like you know side stuff and I think now I think where we are now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I don’t think the show is ever going to go like you know behind totally behind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a paywall because none of us want that but you know at some point because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the landscape is now very different I have argued you know we don’t all agree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on everything but I have argued I think we should put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more behind the member pay wall if we’re going to be a more member supported show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what everyone else does is like their, their after show, their or their pre show, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone, that’s what, like, if you look around the landscape of other podcasts that have member programs kind of in the same,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, extended universe as our show, that’s a pretty common thing. A lot of relay shows do it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, like, there’s a lot, a lot of shows that do that. And we kind of wanted to, you know, discuss this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, with you, the listeners, I know you’re not like here in the room with us, but but kind of just get some feedback like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can see a future in which we might go all membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have no ads and then and just put like you know the after show and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chapter markers or something you know some combination of like you know most of the show would still be free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we would have on a regular basis promos for membership in the show the same way we have sponsorship
⏹️ ▶️ Marco breaks now we would have like you know a member promo or two or three in every episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then the maybe the after show becomes member only and chapters or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something else. Whatever we come up with plus the stuff we do now
⏹️ ▶️ John you did so well before telling everybody they weren’t in trouble. I think you need another disclaimer. Now we are not announcing anything. We’re not changing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Chill out. We’re just this is
⏹️ ▶️ John just discussing it because and the reason by the way the reason we’re discussing it like Marco alluded to this but to
⏹️ ▶️ John be more concrete. So yeah, the ads are super duper down this year, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But we’re not thinking of doing anything right this second. But for example,
⏹️ ▶️ John if next year has a similar decrease to this year, like if the ads just go away, like
⏹️ ▶️ John not by our choice, but like, hey, guess what? No one wants to buy these kinds of ads anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John They only want to buy the kind of ads that you don’t want to have on your show. And by the way, even before
⏹️ ▶️ John dynamic ad insertion and everything, we were already kind of at a step with the market
⏹️ ▶️ John in that where we have 100% control over what ads we run. And we’re picky.
⏹️ ▶️ John We will reject ads from companies that we don’t want to have
⏹️ ▶️ John ads on the show. We have always done that. We continue to do that even though we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have enough advertisers to fill the slots. They still get the same thumbs down. We will
⏹️ ▶️ John remove advertisers that we thought were good but turned out not to be. That is not something
⏹️ ▶️ John that happens in in a marketplace where people are like, oh, I just want these ads, everything’s a commodity, I don’t care what shows they run
⏹️ ▶️ John on, blah, blah, blah, it’s just, you know, we’ve always been out of step with that. So anyway, if we continue
⏹️ ▶️ John down this road and it’s like next year, and the year after the ads just disappear, we need to think about
⏹️ ▶️ John how can we support the show. So that’s why we’re musing about this. First, A, that’s not why we’re making any, we’re not making
⏹️ ▶️ John any changes right now about this, but we have to start thinking about it because thinking ahead is an important part of running a business.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t think about this after the ads go away entirely, You think about it when you could see a possibility
⏹️ ▶️ John that they might go away or dwindle to a point where they’re no longer worth having it at all. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then you have to think about what can we do to, you know, how can we get
⏹️ ▶️ John some of that back? And so this year, membership, which used to be, so,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, in all previous 10, whatever years of the program, advertising is how we made
⏹️ ▶️ John the vast majority of our income. And then membership came along and advertising was still the way We made the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey majority of our income.
⏹️ ▶️ John Suddenly this year, membership, it’s flipped. Membership has become the way,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s edged out ads. And not because membership has grown that much, although membership has grown and we thank you a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John for it. The ads have gone way,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey way down, which is not
⏹️ ▶️ John the way you wanna see things go. Like if your income’s gonna flip from like it used to be, you know, mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John it was this and then this was a little pool on the side. If it flips, fine. But if it flips because the thing that used to be big becomes
⏹️ ▶️ John really, really small, that’s not great. So we’re staring at this and saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John what happens if that ad number, which used to be the majority of your income, like think about
⏹️ ▶️ John this with your own income. If the way you make the majority of your money went down by half, you’d be thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John about stuff. You’d be thinking about, what can we do about
⏹️ ▶️ John this? What can we change going forward? So we’re definitely thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John about things. And it’s tricky. If you think about it, I’m sure people will send us feedback or whatever, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John part of what you’re buying as part of membership is you get an ad-free version of the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if the show is already ad-free, that makes it less valuable because everybody gets an ad-free version
⏹️ ▶️ John of the show. So why would you pay extra for it? You just don’t have to be a member or you can get the ad-free version of the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John We also sell the bootleg, you get a merch discount, you get to get the member specials, there’s all sorts of stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. That’s why Marco was musing about, okay, in a world where there are no ads,
⏹️ ▶️ John how do we essentially we shore up the value of membership? Because if we just got rid of the ads, we think membership
⏹️ ▶️ John would go down. But people would say, oh, I was being a member because I didn’t want to hear the stupid ads. Now the ads are gone, and
⏹️ ▶️ John now also membership gets cut in half, and it’s pretty soon, pretty soon, our income just goes down, down, down.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can see why we’re thinking about this. My idea, which we may or may not do, we haven’t discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John it yet, is I sent out that survey about, what was the survey about originally? I forget.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, it was about tech versus non-tech stuff, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, that’s right, we did a survey about the member special, because we wanted to hear if we were doing the right things for the member special, and that was incredibly valuable.
⏹️ ▶️ John We found out that our mix of tech versus non-tech was incorrect, but also
⏹️ ▶️ John that it was kind of about in the middle and it wasn’t, you know, anyway. It was really valuable. It was like a three question
⏹️ ▶️ John survey or whatever. So probably at some point, I would like to send out another
⏹️ ▶️ John survey that asked people’s opinions about membership. Now this is tricky because you can ask people what they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John do. Like if we did X, how would you feel about it? How do you feel about membership now? And people will give their opinions,
⏹️ ▶️ John but people’s own predictions about their future behavior is not always accurate. That’s just part of the world of surveys.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ll have to think about whether that’s worth doing or if we’re going to do it at all or how we’re going to do it. But basically,
⏹️ ▶️ John you, the listeners, have always been the most important customer. That’s part of
⏹️ ▶️ John our value to advertisers is you, our listeners, because we think our listeners are
⏹️ ▶️ John more valuable than the average listener, which is why we get pretty good ad rates, because the people who listen to the
⏹️ ▶️ John show who interested in technology are not the same as just random people who
⏹️ ▶️ John are flipping through a bunch of podcasts on Spotify. Like our audience is valuable
⏹️ ▶️ John and no, we’re not going to give you all their demographic information and you know, give you their IP
⏹️ ▶️ John addresses so you can figure out where they live or whatever. But we know for a fact that they are valuable because advertisers
⏹️ ▶️ John get value out of them. Because you know, people with services that appeal to this audience, we can
⏹️ ▶️ John we can characterize the audience where by the kind of show we we are. So the audience of this show
⏹️ ▶️ John is where all the value is. And so that’s why we’re very interested in what the audience of this show thinks about the value
⏹️ ▶️ John proposition of membership of the current ad thing of things that they would find
⏹️ ▶️ John attractive going forward and things they would find not attractive going forward. So we are definitely musing
⏹️ ▶️ John about this. But as you can see, if you think about it, it’s not an easy problem. There’s no sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John like, just do this and you’ll be fine. None of those exist. So we are thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. We’d love to hear your feedback from it about this issue. And
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe at some point in the future, we will compel you to, we will ask you nicely to fill out some other
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible Google forms thing where we’ll gather some data. The problem, the problem with the surveys though, is like
⏹️ ▶️ John the people, the number of people who filled out that survey about membership, even though it was not confined to members like, Hey, what do you think of
⏹️ ▶️ John our member specials? Very few people filled it out in terms of our, the percentage of of our audience.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the question we have about the future of the show really needs more of our audience to fill out. But who wants to
⏹️ ▶️ John fill out surveys? All right, so I don’t know, like, I’m not a survey master. I don’t understand sampling theorems
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff like that. But if and when the time comes, I’m sure the same subset of enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ John people who really care about the show will answer the survey. But when it comes to questions like this, that enthusiastic subset is
⏹️ ▶️ John probably the ones that we need to listen to because they’re the ones who care the most about the show. They care to fill out a survey or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, we’re thinking about it. We hope you’re thinking about it too. We just wanted to keep you in the loop so you
⏹️ ▶️ John know what we’re dealing with over here and why we’re thinking about this topic at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also like, I think it’s worth, you know, for you hearing and, you know, trying to throw out ideas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, or thinking about like what we should do and everything, we could be a solely member supported show in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco theory. Like that is actually within reach. You know, we’re not there with today’s member numbers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but seeing how far we’ve gotten with membership, you know, without having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that much that’s member exclusive, I think we could get there. Like I think we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could replace our previous sponsorship income
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 100% with membership in theory. But again, it would take some growth from the number base, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a totally ridiculous, unattainable number. It’s something that we have now proven is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually within reach and could be done.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll show you the numbers after the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You’re being very optimistic. I also believe we could
⏹️ ▶️ John do it, but it is not a slam dunk, especially in light of the things I just mentioned. It’s like, oh, so you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have ads anymore? Membership could go down. That doesn’t grow membership, that decreases it. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of thinking we have to do. And I’m sure people are already writing their emails. Right now they’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would be a member if you just lowered the price. I can tell you that the math about lowering the price, because obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John as we talk about the Casey’s app, whatever your price is, it needs to be lower. Yeah. Until it’s free. And then we get back to
⏹️ ▶️ John advertising based things or whatever. It’s really hard to make that back in volume. If you cut your
⏹️ ▶️ John price in half, you’d get twice as many customers. It’s almost never true. I’m sure there’s some economic theorem
⏹️ ▶️ John involving the word elastic that I don’t know the term for that explains this or whatever. But if you do the math on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially with where you’re changing things, where a lot of people are paying for with membership is an ad-free show, and now the show is
⏹️ ▶️ John ad-free for everybody, it’s not so simple. Again, I agree with Marco that it is definitely plausible,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is not simple or easy. And it’s not something we
⏹️ ▶️ John would have to again, ask our listeners how they feel about it before we say, Oh, this will totally work because it’s very easy
⏹️ ▶️ John to just not only not fix your problem, but just to make it 10 times worse.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I think it’s important. We, we talked about this a little bit already, but I think it’s important
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say it again. You know, I’ll, I’ll speak for myself. ATP is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lion’s share, overwhelming majority of the list family income to the point that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything else is basically like, it’s a Disney sized dot, if you will,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, compared to everything else. Um, compared to ATP. I would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey losing my mind if, if members weren’t here
⏹️ ▶️ Casey helping keep us afloat. And I mean us in both contexts. I mean, ATP. And I mean, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four of us in the family, five, if you include penny. Genuinely, I know this sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I’m just sucking up and maybe I am, but I also really mean it. If it weren’t for members and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amount of members that we have, I think the list, I won’t speak for you guys, but the list family would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be in a real tough spot right now. Like, uh, to the point that I would probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be starting to think about applying for jobs, if not actively applying for jobs at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ John And part of that, by the way, for people who don’t haven’t dealt with advertisers is that membership pays
⏹️ ▶️ John monthly, essentially for the monthly members or annually for the annual members. Advertising does not
⏹️ ▶️ John work like that. Advertising pays whenever you feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like you can get the money from them. And yes, they’re supposed to, you know, they’re supposed to pay after X number of days
⏹️ ▶️ John or Y, but I can tell you that one part of the business, kind of like shrinkage, and if you know the retail business,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know what the term shrinkage means?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco People just have to- I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the Seinfeld term. I think the retail, they call it just shrink, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I think shrinkage is what
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it is. I’ve heard
⏹️ ▶️ John people who don’t know, that’s a term of like, if you run like a clothing store, some percentage of your stuff’s gonna get stolen.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you have to factor that into your business. And one of the things you have to factor into your business if you have a
⏹️ ▶️ John podcast or you have advertisers, especially in the tech world, is that some of the people who buy ads on your show will never
⏹️ ▶️ John pay you. That’s just a thing that happens. The ad will run and you won’t get paid. Then the company
⏹️ ▶️ John will go out of business, right? If it’s like a startup and they paid for an ad for their startup, they may go out of business before they
⏹️ ▶️ John pay for your ad. And believe me, when it comes time for the creditors of that VC-funded startup, Podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John advertisements are really low on the list of getting that money. So that’s just something we have
⏹️ ▶️ John to factor in. But second thing is, when people do ad buys, they buy them in a big chunk very often,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you get that big chunk after they have all run much later. So Casey’s family would be flipping out because
⏹️ ▶️ John he’d be going literal months with no income waiting for that big ball of advertising money
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not a sure thing to hopefully land. And that is a potential cashflow problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, but membership on the other hand, is nice regular income that comes on a monthly or annual
⏹️ ▶️ John basis that is way more predictable than getting money for advertisers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. This is exactly it. And not only that, but on top of everything, this is what Marco was talking about. It used to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be that, you know, you would wait for all your ads to run and they would pay you in one big lump. And it was like Christmas, even if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was in February or whatever. But that was when we had a direct relationship with advertisers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now we have these agencies. And so the agencies are potentially doing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or getting a tremendous lump sum of money from the advertiser, and then the agencies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wait for the advertisers to pay them. And then of course, because it’s an agency, they have to make everything difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then it takes literally months for the money that is owed to us to eventually arrive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at our doorstep. It’s, it’s really, it’s more difficult than you would imagine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yeah, again, I say this because I want, I want members to know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how incredibly valuable you are to all three of us, because hand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to God, I would be in a bad spot right now if it wasn’t for membership. Obviously we have savings. I’m not saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would be like destitute or anything like that, but, but I would be dramatically changing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my life and thus my family’s lives if it wasn’t for members. I, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know how to stress how serious I’m being. I, I, I am being extraordinarily serious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that’s how much we appreciate the members. And, and I can speak for myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we’ve floated some of these ideas, again, we’re not changing anything right now. When we floated some of these ideas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about like taking the after show and pulling that behind a paywall or what have you. I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devoutly against it. And, and we haven’t gotten serious enough about it to get into a,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, a proper fight about it, but there may be a fight brewing between the three of us, if it gets to that point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that being said, at some point, my, my kids got to eat. And although
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are a trillion things I would rather do than pull the aftershow behind the paywall, that is something that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is on the table if we really get that desperate. And gosh, I hope not to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really hope not to. And again, we’re saying all this in front of you because we don’t want this to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seem like a, oh, they had one bad week, now they’re pulling everything. Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not at all what this is. But it would be a bad idea not to think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it, like Marco was saying. And because we respect and value all of you, member
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or not, so much, we want you to know kind of where our heads are because we don’t want this to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a surprise if in six months or a year or maybe five years in the best case scenario, something changes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and in you and all of you are like, wait, what? That we don’t want that. Wait, what? That’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re, that’s why we’re here with you right now. Again, you’re not in the room, but you’re in the room having this conversation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with us. And we’ve got some stuff that we want to try. We have, um, some member specials that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we are, we, we have ideas queued up. We haven’t, we don’t have any specials queued up, but we are recording
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one this week. Uh, we don’t know when it’ll be out, but we’re recording one this week. We truly think you’ll like.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we’re trying to do what we can again, to be additive and not take away something that previously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey existed, but eventually everyone’s got a price. And if things get bad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough, you know, even I, who is devoutly against, and I’m picking on the after show, just cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s an obvious example. I am devoutly against taking the after show behind the paywall, but there will come a time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that if ads continue to stink, if membership goes down
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot, or if we need more membership in order to keep the three of us going,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even I will have a price at some point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and also we have other options on the table. We just would rather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not take them. One thing we could do is drop our ad rates down and drop our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco standards down so that we can get more ads. That I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not the direction we want to go. I don’t want to be reading crappy ads for things I don’t really believe in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to stick our name on something that we would rather not stick our name on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there are certain price floors below which it’s not really worth doing the ad and taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the risk and everything. That’s why I think I see us leaning more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into membership in the future in all likelihood. I mean, again, we’re not announcing any changes yet because we haven’t made any changes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we haven’t decided any changes yet. And heck, I mean, ads take so long to pay us that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we could stop taking ads today and we would still have ad income for the next year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Or more. Or more. Depending on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how things go. Yeah, like we have, we, I mean, the amount of money that we are owed.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the other thing to consider is the ad market does fluctuate. This is the biggest downturn we have ever seen by far. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it could just be continuing to crater, which is why we’re thinking about this, but it could also turn back up again. And that’s another reason
⏹️ ▶️ John why we shouldn’t suddenly start taking ads for like garbage, fake nutritional supplements that we don’t believe
⏹️ ▶️ John in or like, you know, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John of terrible ads that you care about, uh, you know, that,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, on other, on other programs, you hear these ads, you’re like, I can’t believe that they’re actually smart. Like that would
⏹️ ▶️ John destroy the value. It would, I think it would destroy reputation, but also
⏹️ ▶️ John it wouldn’t be recognizing the value of our listeners. Cause we don’t, our listeners are not just a random subset
⏹️ ▶️ John of the population. They are attentive listeners who care about our program,
⏹️ ▶️ John who are interested in products related to technology. They’re not probably interested in products
⏹️ ▶️ John that have nothing to do with it. Or like, that’s why when we pick our advertisers, we try to pick
⏹️ ▶️ John advertisers that are a good fit for our audience and that who are willing
⏹️ ▶️ John to recognize the value of our audience and not treat them like an undifferentiated
⏹️ ▶️ John sea of people that are the same is the average customer for all podcasts across the entire world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the problem, is like, the way, where the market has headed with all these like, you know, big agencies and now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big exchanges and big DAI platforms and everything, you’re not really buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the show as much as you used to. And so, our extra value of like, how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good our listeners have been to direct advertisers and direct response advertisers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, you hear Squarespace a lot, that’s not a coincidence. They are a direct response advertiser, We work with them directly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they see a ton of value in our ads and that they have been our longest running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and biggest sponsor by by far.
⏹️ ▶️ John We should we should mention Linode here. By the way, this is a thing that particularly hurt ATP. Linode has been a past sponsor.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a company that Marco was using before they were a sponsor, a company that he liked that was a perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John fit for our show. Technology related product we believe in and like Squarespace.
⏹️ ▶️ John The reason they’re willing to pay for ads on our show is because they know our audience is potentially in the market
⏹️ ▶️ John for like hosting on Linode, right? And because once they get a customer, that’s recurring
⏹️ ▶️ John revenue, because once you start hosting something, you pay that hosting bill every month, just like with Squarespace. So it is absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ John worth it to them to pay what it costs to run an ad on our show to acquire those customers, knowing full
⏹️ ▶️ John well that our show is full of people who might want to host something on Linode. And they were
⏹️ ▶️ John a great sponsor for us. We loved having them as a sponsor. They were a great fit for our, our listeners
⏹️ ▶️ John and we liked them. We liked the business. And then Akamai acquired them and they stopped advertising on podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that hurt us a lot above and beyond. Like it’s like, yeah, so that market is down, which, you know, Marco sees in
⏹️ ▶️ John a general way and across overcast advertising. But ATP in particular, Linode was
⏹️ ▶️ John such a good sponsor for us. And why did they buy so many of our ads? Because they were such a good fit for our audience. But Akamai
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t want to run podcast ads. So, yeah, that was, you know, adding insult to injury.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Like if you look at how many of our episodes last year were sponsored by Squarespace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Linode. It’s very frequent. It was like, they probably bought a similar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of ads like between the two companies each. And so to lose Linode really did hurt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was a huge amount of our inventory that is now just, that used to be sold and now is gone.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you think about next year, Squarespace says, yeah, we’re not doing podcast advertising anymore. Like that would be massively
⏹️ ▶️ John destructive to the entire podcast industry, but also particularly to ATP, because again, Squarespace,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you hear Squarespace ads on everything, right? But Squarespace for ATP listeners, that is much
⏹️ ▶️ John better than Squarespace on a comedy podcast. Who on a comedy podcast is running a website at all? I know
⏹️ ▶️ John Squarespace isn’t gonna pitch it, but people listen to ATP, they should have a website
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and they should buy
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey domain from one of our sponsors and they should host
⏹️ ▶️ John it on one of our sponsors. Like it’s a perfect fit for us. So I really hope they don’t go the way that Linode did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, if Squarespace ever pulls out of our show as an advertiser, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kills our ad program. Like I that’s when we go member only. I think because I don’t think the ad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco program, I don’t think our ads could survive that. Losing Luna was bad enough. Losing Squarespace also would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devastating. And that’s also, that’s part of the reason why I’d like to push us more in the direction of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco member only because I don’t like having to rely on one source of income like that. Like that’s not good for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diversification and security. So yeah, but yeah, in general,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of relationship where, we’re dealing directly with the sponsor when they’re selling a tech-based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subscription income product where it makes sense for them to pay the high acquisition cost of podcast advertising.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and believe in and think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good? Yeah, exactly. Like Squarespace and Linode, I’m able to talk about those constantly because I use them both.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas, any other random podcast… Can you believe Squarespace and Linode didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John sponsor this episode?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I know, right? Right. random podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad you hear is not nearly as easy for us to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh my god, this is perfect for our audience, and have it be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth it to them as well. So anyway, all this is to say, as the industry moves towards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything in podcast advertising being just commodities, where you’re just buying a certain number of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impressions on a certain demographic, our show loses that because no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one is buying high-quality listeners, specifically on a marketplace. What you’re buying is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers and demographics. And we can’t give you that. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John they just want warm bodies and they need to know the demographics. They wanna know where you live
⏹️ ▶️ John and they wanna know your IP address so they can find out everything that you can find out from an IP address, which is a frightening amount
⏹️ ▶️ John of information. They need that information to target their ads. And once they have targeted their ads, they don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ John where they run and what shows they run. They just want to target those things no matter where they are. And it’s just an undifferentiated
⏹️ ▶️ John sea of warm bodies. and that is value destructive to our podcast, which has a particular
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of listener that has a particular kind of value to a particular kind of advertiser.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, it’s worse is worse than than that, than that targeting. They also want quote, attribution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is this is like possibly the most invasive form of ad tracking usually because what attribution means
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the ad world is they want to track who the ad has been served to. And that way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if later on that person makes a purchase, they’re able to associate this purchase was made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after this person saw or heard or whatever this ad and that ad might have been a week ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it might have been on a different device so that’s why they have all these like all these different tracking mechanisms try to fingerprint
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people and try to track you between different apps and services and different devices and different times because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if an ad platform can tell advertisers this purchase was directly attributable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to somebody who clicked on or listen to or whatever this particular ad you ran, that’s a pretty strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature for an ad platform.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they don’t want you to have to remember to use code ATP because code ATP doesn’t identify you. There’s no identifying
⏹️ ▶️ John information in that ATP. They want to know which specific person bought and they do not want to rely on you remembering
⏹️ ▶️ John to go to the landing page or clicking a link in the show notes or entering a promo code. They’ll do it all behind the scenes
⏹️ ▶️ John and they won’t just know this person came from ATP, they will know literally who you are based on your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and they don’t have to do it themselves because there’s lots of podcast tracking and hosting and ad serving services that do this for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. You know, I made this feature on Overcast a while ago where I added this privacy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco button on every podcast’s page in Overcast. You can tap that and you can see what domains
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and services those episodes are served through. And if you look at the privacy page
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of any major podcast, any podcast that has a big name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a staff, click that privacy tab and you’ll see the same handful of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco services on many of them. And those and many of those are inter podcast tracking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco services that will take this data that you know they’ll know who they served each DAI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco copy to they’ll be able to track it to certain demographics, they’ll be able to attribute purchases to them later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which means a lot more tracking. So that’s that’s the world of podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advertising largely. There are still exceptions like our show, but we’re dwindling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the world is becoming more hostile to us and more difficult for us to sell our ads in. And so this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the direction it’s going. This is the direction it has already gone. This fight is largely over. Shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like ours lost. This is not the way things are mostly done anymore. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only moving more in that direction. We are very lucky that we have the membership program and that we established
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it relatively early so that that way we have been building an alternative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we could run the show entirely on that theoretically, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with some growth. But it’s not, again, I don’t think it’s out of the question. I think we could actually get there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All this is to say, the future, the specifics of the future are uncertain, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the future of this show is very solid. And I think we have lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of solid ground to rely on here to keep building on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our members are great and we thank you so much and hopefully we will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco continue to try to figure out ways to get more members because when the ad market does finally crater
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this show, whenever that happens, hopefully it never happens, but if that happens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s not out of the question, we now have something else we can move to and that’s pretty great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Truly, truly and genuinely, thank you to all the members. I cannot overstate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how much we appreciate you. I think I’m pretty sure I speak for all three of us, but certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all four of us in the List family, that’s what we appreciate about you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Thank you so much. It’s incredible that we have such a strong backstop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to fall back on as our ad sales are tanking.
⏹️ ▶️ John And part of that is because we panicked when COVID was coming. Not panicked, but in general, again, forethought.
⏹️ ▶️ John We are all very good about sensing danger. But we sense danger,
⏹️ ▶️ John and we sense danger at COVID because no one knew how anything was going to happen when COVID was like, everything was up in the air. Who knows what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to happen? And so we need to have a backup plan and we started a membership. And in hindsight, that was,
⏹️ ▶️ John in hindsight, we didn’t need it to save us through COVID because actually advertising, yes, it went down, but it kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of picked back up again. But boy, are we glad that we did that back then. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, we love our members and stuff like that. Here’s the thing. it’s also a more comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ John business relationship for us because we feel like you’re paying for a thing directly that you want from us and we give
⏹️ ▶️ John it to you. And that makes so much sense and it’s so straightforward. Advertising in the midst,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not impossible and there are, you know, we, but it complicates it because there’s three parties
⏹️ ▶️ John here. There’s the listeners, there’s the advertisers and there’s us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t forget the agencies and the marketplaces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and the salespeople. Yeah, and obviously they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John over-complicated but like conceptually, like again, we can navigate that. We can try to find good
⏹️ ▶️ John advertisers for our customers and have a good fit and all that or whatever, but it’s so much simpler to just say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you listen to the show and you like the show and we wanna give you the show and we wanna give you the show that you like and then you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it. And it’s just so
⏹️ ▶️ John straightforward, right? It’s just, it is mentally
⏹️ ▶️ John a relief to the degree that we can make more of our customers be like that
⏹️ ▶️ John than like advertising. But we just not entirely sure how to make that happen
⏹️ ▶️ John to the degree that we don’t need advertising at all anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but you know, when we first started doing this, like the idea that it would ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be in like, you know, possible reach distance of replacing ads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we would never have guessed that. We specifically didn’t. Like when we were talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about doing this, like we never thought it would even be a chance that it might replace our ad income.
⏹️ ▶️ John Advertising going down the toilet really helps it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes, it definitely has closed the gap looking a lot better.