The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 81

 

Episode 81: Psychotropics, Small Businesses, and Supplements

It’s already mid-February, are you keeping up with your new year’s resolutions? Eat better? Get more exercise? Listen for some of the crazy supplements and age-defying stunts Silicon Valley's elites are playing with. Despite continued layoff across the board, our hosts are pleased to hear that JP Morgan is actually hiring small business bankers to serve the beating heart of the economy. This week is all about positivity! The IPO index is up nearly 20 percent from the start of the year, which is great news for Q1! Also on tap, AJ and Shane cover Google’s AI event fumble, wellness supplements, and more. Tune in and turn up the volume!

Read the Full Transcript:

 Presenter:

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice. Welcome to The Liquidity Event, a show about all things personal finance with a laser focus on equity compensation. Hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Each episode will take you through the week's news on Fintech, IPOs, SPACs, founder wins and fails, crypto, and whatever else these nerds think is interesting. Learn more and subscribe today at brooklynfi.com.

Shane:

Buenos días and welcome to The Liquidity Event. We are your host Shane...

AJ:

And I'm AJ.

Shane:

And this is episode number 81 of The Liquidity Event. This week we'll be discussing psychedelic mushrooms.

AJ:

Psychotropic, whoo.

Shane:

We've got AI back in the news-

AJ:

And that's all folks, thanks for being...

Shane:

This is now a drug podcast. Surprise, surprise. No, we've got psychotropics, of course. We've got some supplements for tech founders. We have a lot of AI today. We've got some good news in the small business space. New Yorkers are paying a singles tax as well as San Francisconites. What do you call people from San Francisco?

AJ:

Friscans. No, I don't know.

Shane:

All right. Yeah, we got a spicy episode today, as usual. Episode number 81, recorded on February 15th. Happy belated Valentine's to those of you that celebrate, airing on 2/17/2023. AJ, how we doing?

AJ:

I'm doing okay. I've been better in my life. Happy Valentine's Day to you. What did you get up to?

Shane:

Nothing. I walked Charlie around. I do have a girlfriend, but she's in New York for work, so I was solo loco for Valentine's. Charlie and I did some walks around Mexico City.

AJ:

Nice.

Shane:

I forgot it was Valentine's Day. We kind of did it yes-

AJ:

Oh, no.

Shane:

No, no, no, I got her a nice present before she left.

AJ:

Okay.

Shane:

That was a little while ago, and then I forgot, and then I was walking around Mexico City and I saw all the Valentine's people at dates and stuff and I was like, "Oh, right, yeah, of course."

AJ:

Right, right, right.

Shane:

Big teddy bears. They went pretty ham down here. It was pretty fun. How was New York, oh, you're in Palm Springs?

AJ:

I'm in Palm Springs.

Shane:

Did you see anyone? Did you leave your house?

AJ:

I did leave my house. I went to physical therapy because I have a pinched nerve in my shoulder because-

Shane:

Did you have a date with a doctor?

AJ:

I had a date. I actually, I love my physical therapist and I think she's actually moved appointments around to see me because I've gotten to see her three times this week because I have a pinched nerve in my shoulder, which if anyone has ever experienced that, I would not wish this pain on my worst enemy. It's not fun. So remember to get up and walk around folks, otherwise you could end up like me on a bunch of steroids.

Shane:

Yeah. What happened? You want to give us a no-brainer to the audience?

AJ:

Yeah, the no-brainer is don't sit at your computer for 14 hours a day without getting up and drink water and eat healthy, which we'll talk about on this episode in depth a bit later, I believe. But yeah, pinched nerve, not due to a single incident, just sitting and being sedentary, not healthy. And it was a big wake-up call for me, so I'm ready to... I went on two walks yesterday. I just got back from a beautiful 45-minute walk around my neighborhood. So I'm already making positive changes.

Shane:

So you can move around now? There was a period over the weekend where you were...?

AJ:

Yes. My pain went from a 10 and bedridden until now, I'm like at 5.56. So it's there, but I can function and move around and stuff.

Shane:

All right. So word to the wise, get some exercise.

AJ:

Yes. Seriously.

Shane:

Speaking of wake-up calls, Alphabet had a wake-up call last week when they debuted their Bard, their AI response to ChatGPT, at a live event. Somebody asked the newest entrance, the newest player in the ring, "Tell me what can I could tell my nine-year-old son about the James Webb Telescope?" And it provided two facts and a farce.

AJ:

Wait, it wasn't even live. It was just in their deck and it was wrong.

Shane:

Oof, oof, we hate to see it.

AJ:

That's the way I read it.

Shane:

Shares fell 7% following the events. Thoughts? Thoughts? There was a great tweet about it, "Misinformation at scale, bullshit as a service."

AJ:

Oh my God. That's going to be the tagline for my next company, our next company. Thoughts here, basically, obviously ChatGPT's been in the news, Google feels left out and wants to say, "Hey, we're still in the space. Don't forget about us. We're number one in search. We've been catering to all your search needs for the past decade. We've been working on something. Hold on." And they had this big splashy event, and the gist is that it wasn't that splashy and it is not perceived to be better than ChatGPT. So investors were kind of like, "That's it? You made a big deal out of this event?" I think some of the commentary I read was that it was too early and that they should have, it was they actually rushed it and that was a bad call and they should have spent more time working on the tech and then made a splashier debut because, yeah, they've got ChatGPT and Microsoft coming for their googly-eyed lunch. Speaking of which, have you ever been to the Google cafeteria?

Shane:

No, I've never been to the Google... Which Google cafeteria?

AJ:

It's freaking awesome.

Shane:

Sure. There's 50 of them around the country.

AJ:

I went to the one in Chelsea in Manhattan, and it was freaking awesome.

Shane:

Oh, yeah.

AJ:

If I worked there, I would be a hundred pounds heavier because it's just free food all day long. No.

Shane:

You never forget the first tech cafeteria you walk into. Mine was Spotify and it was unlimited almonds was the thing that blew my mind. It's just like, "Excuse me? What's that?"

AJ:

These are like $22 a pound, what's going on?

Shane:

Exactly. Yeah.

AJ:

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like ChatGPT, it feels magical when you're talking to it, right? It feels like you're having a conversation. And I don't think Bard yet. I don't think it has quite the sense of humor of ChatGPT, at least in what I've read about it. That's my hot take.

Shane:

Yeah, we'll have to wait and see. Takeaway from this, is that the information that go-

AJ:

Bullshit as a service. That's amazing.

Shane:

Yeah, that's great. So I went down that rabbit hole of that tweet and the guy responded to him, some other astrophysicist responded to him and he said, "Well, actually, on the NASA website, it does say that the James Webb was the first telescope to find an exoplanet, to take a photo of an exoplanet." So it's just a reminder that, and even if you were a journalist you saw that on NASA's website, what are you going to do, fact check NASA on which telescope discovered that first? So we have to remember that these tools really only can, garbage in, garbage out, if you give it bad information, it's going to spit out bad information. So it's kind of a wake-up call for those people that are thinking that they're going to be relying on these tools to provide facts, which is the point, right? To provide context, provide some semblance of an answer instead of just giving you links to all these other sources, which could take you much more time to sift through to find an answer. And if you had Googled this and you found NASA's website, you would've been wrong too.

AJ:

Right. There's a Disney movie about this, and I'm struggling to Google it right now. It's from the '90s. I remember watching this as a kid, it's called Smart Kid or something. And this is when the internet was just a thing that we were all hearing about. And the plot of the movie, if I recall from being 11, was that a kid accidentally, through a Spider-Man type electrical storm, accidentally absorbs all the power of the internet. And he's so smart, he starts making friends and getting all the girls, and his life is so great, and he's competing in this challenge competition and he gets a fact wrong because it was wrong on the internet. So life is now imitating fiction from a Disney movie made in 1996. I will find it. Share it next time.

Shane:

Yeah, pause-

AJ:

Listeners, if you know what I'm talking about...

Shane:

Listeners, can you spare five? Why don't you ask Bart, ask ChatGPT the movie.

AJ:

Okay, I will ask ChatGPT the movie.

Shane:

I thought you were going to say WALL-E.

AJ:

No, it's not WALL-E . No, it's definitely, this is made for TV, not wide release kind of situation.

Shane:

A Disney made for TV movie?

AJ:

Yeah, the Disney Channel, like cable in the '90s would, like Air Budd. This is around the same time as Air Budd, I would say in the same class.

Shane:

Yes, for sure. A Lamborghini is definitely in the same class as a Ford Fiesta. That you're describing-

AJ:

Are you saying Air Budd is the Lamborghini?

Shane:

No, I'm saying Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, et cetera, are Lamborghinis. I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about.

AJ:

Oh, anyway, I don't either. But anyway, I think I made it up.

Shane:

Some Hannah Montana trash.

AJ:

I probably made it up. It was pre pre Hannah Montana, please. And also do not take the Lord's name in vain, thank you very much.

Shane:

Well, I was watching HBO while you were watching the Disney Channel. Moving on to bust the problems with my personality. I'm ready for Bard to get its ass involved in Google Maps at this point. Give me some AI integration with Google Maps, with Gmail, with all the Google tools that we use on the re-

AJ:

Yeah, "You seem hungry. Have you thought about this restaurant?"

Shane:

Why? Wait, wait. Why would you seem hungry? Because I can hear you being mean to your husband?

AJ:

Exactly. Yeah. Stop refreshing the page so erratically,

Shane:

You seem fussy. May I make a recommendation?

AJ:

Stop refreshing me so much. The internet sucks. It's not my fault. Go eat a sandwich.

Shane:

Yeah, I think it's great for the general population to realize that a wrong answer can come out of one of these tools and it costs, I don't know, a couple hundred, over a hundred billion in market caps slid off of Google's valuation after it provided the wrong answer. It's a bit of a heads-up to anyone that is relying on these tools to generate blog posts, to generate chapters of your book that you're writing to help you with anything that, any research that you might be doing. You need to double check all your facts. So journalists, jobs are not on the line, at least the ones that write in-depth articles, such as the ones for the information that wrote our next article about supplement stacks, all the pills, powders and potions, filling text, kitchen counters. This is a profile piece on supplements, but tied into all of the tech founders that over, some would say over supplement themselves in order to reduce the wrinkles in their skin, maybe extend their lifespan, enhance their eyesight, all the things that are wonky tech people back at it. What do you think, AJ?

AJ:

Yeah, I mean, you and I have been talking a lot about this recently because we've been listening to this podcast called Lifespan, about basically all the things, all the lifestyle changes you can make throughout your life to prepare your body to live longer. There's a super smart Harvard chemist, biologist, I forget, he has a million different degrees.

Shane:

David Sinclair.

AJ:

He's a very smart guy.

Shane:

Five out of five stars.

AJ:

David Sinclair. Yeah, love the podcast. Highly recommend. But it just makes you think about, hey, of course there's cancer, of course, but there are things that you can do to take care of your body. There are supplements you can add. There are ways you can eat. There are ways you can exercise that literally can slow down. And he believes eventually reverse the aging process entirely. So we've been nerding out on that podcast, and then I saw this article and I was like, "Oh, these are the people who have the money and the wild entrepreneurial brains to literally test all this on themselves."

All these supplements are, what I found most interesting about this article is that the whole supplement industry got kicked off in 1994 when the FDA basically approved the idea that you could just say, this might help your skin improve, or this might help your aging clock slow down. And that just kicked off. You could basically say snake oil, and some of this is snake oil, but we have a bunch of tech founders spending between a hundred and a hundred thousand dollars a month to try to stay young and feel young. So I don't know. I think a lot of the examples in this article are extreme. A $17,000 machine that jiggles you awake. Not sure about that, but I'm interested in the bleeding edge of interesting supplements. How about you?

Shane:

I'm jiggled awake by an anxiety attack every morning. So no need for a tiny little machine. I'm good on that. Yeah, no, overall, I do think that there is the line in here about one of the tech founders that says that they believe that they should be on the edge of tech, and frankly, extending your lifespan or supplements that would reduce the aging process are really thing.

It's kind of a tech, it's biotech. So they find it that they find that they should be the ones that should be experimenting with these things, self experimenting in order to blaze the trail for the rest of us. I am kind of obsessed with lifespan. I've been a longevity follower on Reddit for a while. I just find it interesting that aging could be not a fact of life or not required element of life. So I've been following along for this for a while. So when the lifespan thing popped up, probably for 15 years, actually, just curious about why we need to die due to aging. And one of the main takeaways from the Lifespan podcast is fasting is the best way to extend your life, is to not eat very often. Have you been fasting at all since you listened to the podcast, AJ?

AJ:

No, I have not.

Shane:

You're not a faster.

AJ:

I am not a faster. It's not possible.

Shane:

The kitchen princess eats breakfast.

AJ:

I don't want to say it's not possible, but the kitchen princess does eat breakfast. Although I've never been a big breakfast eater and also, I don't eat breakfast for breakfast. I'll eat leftover steak or something from the night before. So I guess you could say I've been a little bit more conscious about pushing my breakfast time a little bit later. It's a little easier on the West coast because I wake up so early to work our East Coast Hour. So I am maybe on a natural longer fast because of my early to bed hours.

Shane:

Yeah. Apparently it works on dogs too. So Charlie hasn't eaten in weeks.

AJ:

That is not true, folks. For those who would like to cancel Shane Mason. Do not take that out of context. He's a very healthy, luscious, well-fed Australian shepherd named Charlie.

Shane:

His future. He's a good boy. Some of the other fun stuff from this article, I mean, some of the main takeaways, for those that are listening, Ivermectin, no, not Ivermectin. Sorry. That's right.

AJ:

What the fuck?

Shane:

That is actually cancellation. Because I guess I'm on a white guy on a podcast. I have to say Ivermectin every once in a while.

AJ:

But it's funny. Yeah. You say you've been following this narrative for years. Yeah. We have Tim Ferris, who's talked about a lot of these supplements for years. Gwyneth Paltrow has talked a lot about this stuff. Like Goop, there was a whole TV series about her meeting with one of David Sinclair's colleagues and talking about how to actually reverse your aging clock. So there's been discourse about this. I think this guy seems quite impressive because of his studious career and his access to the cutting edge research. But one thing that is really, and what this relates to this article is that it's really hard to get a human study approved for cutting edge drugs.

A lot of it's in mice, a lot of it's in tape worms, and all these creatures, but a lot of these tech founders and all these people at Silicon Valley are just taking this stuff on their own. So actually science is able to learn from these people just because they're like, "Sure, I'll try this wacky psilocybin composite to try to improve my brain function." So science is actually learning from some of these innovators, which I think is pretty cool. Obviously, some could be dangerous. We don't know. These are untested, yada, yada yada. Not FDA approved, but I'm very interested in this stuff. We can have a whole podcast of us listening to Lifespan and commenting.

Shane:

That's true. That's true. It'd be super fun. But I guess we got to move on. I guess we need to move on to JP Morgan at this point.

AJ:

Why? That's so boring.

Shane:

I know. That's why I'm bummed. I stopped reading as soon as one of the founders revealed that he was spending $3,000 a month on supplements tax. Come on, man. If it's working, I guess you could live forever. You could spend all your money on that. But I want to see this guy's Schedule A, I want to see his charitable contributions. I need to see them. I need to see how much he's contributing to charity each year before the 36K advice wears off on me. What do you think?

AJ:

Yeah, I don't know. Honestly, having gone through this complete debilitation of my body for 72 hours, health is everything. Like what? Yes, I agree that you should be making the world a better place, but if you're going to spend money, if it's on your health and your family's health, I think it's a pretty good use of resources. And health is, I mean, I don't know. I just feel very, it was a very come to Jesus moment where I was just like, I literally can't do anything. I'm in so much pain. Life is beautiful when you can walk around outside and smell the flowers. So that's my little sappy moment. But I'm sure all of you listening have been through something like that where you're like, feel like you're locked in a cage and you can't do anything. So I'm very grateful for my health, even though it's shitty, mostly. I'm grateful for Western and Eastern medicine.

Shane:

I got a dark Shane comment. Some people would say their body is a cage and they can't wait to go to heaven. All right, moving on. JP Morgan to hire small business bankers. Article from LinkedIn, just kind of summarizing some good news. We see a lot of catastrophizing in the news about layoffs, and we have a bit of news in the opposite direction this week. It looks like JP Morgan's going to hire 500 new employees in the business banking division, which means they're going to touch a lot more than 500 businesses because they are optimistic about where small business profits are heading and they're going to need those bankers to help them set up loans, to help them get lines of credit, to help them do acquisitions, to get working capital and inventory pumping throughout America. What are your thoughts?

AJ:

So the headline is they made cuts in the mortgage division because mortgage rates are pretty high right now. So many families are backing off buying that home, but they're adding all these jobs. Yeah. I read this the same way. This is positive bankers. Small businesses need capital to grow, to expand, to survive recessions. So this is just a great signal, I think, to the power of small businesses in this country.

Shane:

Right on. Right on. Moving on to two things that are sure in life. Love and taxes. Oh, I'm sorry. That's death and taxes. We have a special section for you folks. We got two articles.

AJ:

Happy Valentine's Day.

Shane:

Happy Valentine's Day.

AJ:

There's actually only one article and then some commentary, but yes.

Shane:

Yes, yes. Well, let's enjoy it. Let's enjoy this little subsection we have here, a little Feb 14 heart shape box. We have an article from Bloomberg, New Yorkers pay the highest singles tax in the United States. You know I posted this one.

AJ:

Well, I've never paid the singles tax because I will immediately move in with anyone slightly interested in me to save money on rent.

Shane:

It's true. You're a serial move in a mist. How many people have you moved in with?

AJ:

Third time's the charm. Third time's the charm, fellas.

Shane:

Was number three, Nabil?

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

Nice.

AJ:

But yeah, basically this article is about how much more, based on Zillow data of a one bedroom apartment, how much more expensive is it to live by yourself? And the results are fairly dramatic. It's almost $20,000 more a year you're spending on rent as a single person than you would as a couple cohabitating. That's in New York. And what? San Francisco's not far behind, right? What is it?

Shane:

No, they're number two. San Francisco. It costs you an extra $14,000. So I think the way that the math works on this is that he just took the one bedroom median price, and then they just multiplied by 12.

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

No, they split it in half and then multiplied by 12. Because ostensibly, you would be living with somebody in that one bedroom. So if you just double that 50% discount, then you get the big price outcome. Now, I know for a fact that a one bedroom in Brooklyn, the places that you and I typically live in aren't 3,200, but New York City, most people consider Manhattan to be New York City. So that's why it's the most expensive. San Francisco comes in here a second place with a $14,000 singles tax, which means that the couples discount, if you double the amount of the tax, supposedly will save you $40,000 to shack up in New York City. We have seen other articles, I don't know if we've talked about it at length, about how being married in your mid-twenties leads to gigantic financial outcomes by your thirties, and how much further ahead you are than those that remain single. It's looking like a policy change is due-

AJ:

In the Mason household?

Shane:

In the Mason household. I'm going to start writing my senator, Senator of Mexico City. So represent me.

AJ:

Oh boy. But yeah, I mean, yeah, there's obviously a lot of benefits, financial benefits when you can split them with somebody else, right? Utilities, you can split your internet. You just, it's basically half off because-

Shane:

Yeah, this is just rent.

AJ:

It's costs that you can share. Right? Health insurance, that's always a big one. If you're able to get on your significant other's health insurance through domestic partnership, or you work for a tech company that just lets anybody on your health insurance, which is awesome, by the way. So yeah, what is the alternative? Basically, as a single person, you just have to have a lot more cash on hand. You just have to make more money to make up for that deficit or live with a roommate. Lots of very successful people have a companion that they live with. That's a great situation if you're traveling a lot or you're working all the time. So it's expensive to be single in New York, which is why there's so many rom-coms about singles in New York City. Shane, what's your favorite rom-com of all time?

Shane:

It's not really my genre. I couldn't think of anything. I just remembered, I saw your McConaughey reference, and I remembered Failure To Launch, which is, he's a yacht salesman in that one. So McConaughey is a yacht salesman immediately-

AJ:

McConaughey and SJP, right? She's the love interest?

Shane:

I think it's Heather Graham, or is it SJP? I don't-

AJ:

I think it's SJP.

Shane:

I don't care.

AJ:

I'm pretty sure.

Shane:

I hate rom-coms. I don't find them particularly funny. I get that they're chintzy. I only watch-

AJ:

It's SJP.

Shane:

I only watch cinema. I only watch cinema. I don't watch rom-com.

AJ:

Oh, okay. Anyways, my favorite rom-com, I have so many. I love rom-coms. I think they're, I'm a girl who grew, born in the eighties. Of course. I love rom-coms. How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days is my favorite rom-com. I could watch that movie over and over again for 10 days straight and be totally fine.

Shane:

What's the one with Heath Ledger that's in high school where he sings in the bleachers?

AJ:

Oh, 10 Things I Hate About You.

Shane:

Right. So I'm just, all of mine are derivative of yours. It was actually a really solid rom-com? It was with, is in The Big Sick. Where she gets sick?

AJ:

Oh, yeah. With what's his face?

Shane:

I always mispronounce his name. Yeah.

AJ:

Yeah. I can't remember his name. But yeah, that was great. I cried very, very much in that movie. Jesus Christ. What's your favorite tax movie since rom-coms aren't your thing?

Shane:

Oh yeah. So this one I struggled with. I at first was going to say Stranger Than Fiction with Will Ferrell, where he hears a voice, someone's narrating his life. And then I went through our movie channel in Slack where we post all of our favorite tax related or financial planning related movies as they come up. And I remembered, I watched The Firm with Tom Cruise on a flight recently, and it's all about-

AJ:

That's a good one.

Shane:

Tax evasion down in the Caribbean, and it's just extremely nineties with the way that the conspiracy works. So yeah, very, very, very super nineties movie about a firm that serves the mob and Tom Cruise getting wrapped up. He's like, he's a jet fighter of a pilot, of course.

AJ:

Right. Obviously. It's Top Gun meets-

Shane:

Yeah. He's smarter than like-

AJ:

Lincoln lawyer. Yeah,

Shane:

Exactly. He's smarter than 25 lawyers that have 30 years of experience in his first six months at the law firm. Bro, they all went to Harvard, not just you. Yeah. Sorry.

AJ:

I think my favorite tax movie is Everything Everywhere All At Once, which has a very serious IRS plot line throughout it. Also, the accountant, Ben Affleck.

Shane:

Ah, it's about three minutes of tax and then an hour and a half-

AJ:

There's a great tax scene about your schedule. See, I was like, oh, this is-

Shane:

Yeah, that's the first three minutes of the movie.

AJ:

You want to learn about taxes? Okay.

Shane:

And the rest of it, he's John Wick.

AJ:

Right, right, right. Okay. Anyway.

Shane:

No, but wait, he does audit that company. You remember that?

AJ:

Yeah. I only watched the first half and it was all tax all day long. He comes in Anna Kendrick or Anna Kendrick, just the busy bee accountant who found the discrepancy in the first place. Like, great.

Shane:

Well, listen, the fact that he does audit and tax is just frankly unrealistic. And it took me right out of the movie. You got to choose a path. You can't be both, Ben.

AJ:

Fine, fine, fine. Man. Speaking of-

Shane:

I don't know how to segue into this next one

AJ:

Yeah. I don't know how to segue in this one. New York City baby. New York City based startup Capsule could see its valuation cut in half. Article again from the information. So Capsule, for those who don't know, is a pharmacy delivery service. I freaking love capsule. I use it all the time. But essentially, the growth of the pandemic, people being at home, they saw explosive growth, but as people return to work, there's less reliance on things that arrive at your house. So they have seen their evaluation slashed. Seems like a very expensive service to scale. So they basically have warehouses. I think they have one in Manhattan, and then they actually hire their own bike couriers to go out and deliver all the prescriptions, which is awesome. I have never had an issue with them, and I've probably ordered from them 20 times over the past three years or two years.

But they're basically trying to be Amazon. They're trying to build all the infrastructure to get this delivery out. Whereas their competitors are, there's one called Nimble RX, which is one of their main competitor. They're plugging into Uber driver networks already. So they're relying on existing other service providers, whereas Capsule's trying to build from the bottom up, it's very expensive to do that. So they need more cash. They're trying to raise a hundred million dollars this year. So yeah, basically, this is a really interesting case. It's a great product. It's a great idea. It's going to take a lot of investment to make it work. And they're kind of at this break point right now where it's like, we got to make this work, or we're going to be dead in the water because competitors are going to figure out a better way to do this.

But the way that the business is being built totally reminds me of Amazon, which is like, nope, we need to own the process from start to finish because we know how to do it the best. And if we can figure out the logistics, we can solve this problem. And this is a huge problem. A lot of people can't leave their house. So a guy shows up with this beautiful little bag, with a little bow on it and says, "Here's your prescription that keeps you alive or keeps you from hurting yourself." That's pretty cool. I'm long on Capsule. I've been a big fan of this company since day one.

Shane:

Yeah, I mean, the way Amazon pulled it off, I mean, we're talking about supply chain and really the last mile there, which have, are very, very hard to pull off. And we've seen a number of companies snatched up by Uber and what was the Go Puff? There's a bunch of them that can't really figure out how to be profitable on last mile. And then supply chain, I feel like to get that done well, you really need scale. And Amazon was able to do it because of their flywheel. So somewhere you get Amazon Prime, you get TV, you get the deliveries, you end up buying so many more things. I'm not sure what Capsule, how they're going to reach scale if they're just selling pharmaceuticals. I mean, maybe they dip into Walgreens and oh, along with your pharmacy, people already associate pharmacies with probably high margin items like toothpaste or beauty products, et cetera.

AJ:

Right now, you could get Advil and Band-Aids, but it's pretty limited in terms of the things that are not just prescription drugs, but it's truly a concierge service. They will call your doctor. They are a pharmacy, but better than the pharmacy who's just going to be next person. If you go to a brick and mortar for pharmacy in New York City, nine out of 10 times you'll have a bad experience because it's just too crowded and too many people, and it's understaffed. Where here, you're texting with someone who's on the phone with your doctor. It's very white glove, but I don't know how to scale it, and I hope that they can figure out how to scale it.

Shane:

Yeah, I mean, going to CVS is the gas station experience. It's just horrible. It's impersonal. People are listening to you ask for your drugs.

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

I said on a previous podcast, I've never had prescription drugs before, and then two months later, I had to go into a CVS and I forgot my ID, and then I had to come back. Then I had my ID, but the prescription wasn't ready yet, and it was three visits and someone was yelling out my drugs to the person behind me. I was like, "Okay, sick. I love this. I love this so much."

AJ:

Hemorrhoid cream aisle two for Shane Mason.

Shane:

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, is this y'all's first? Y'all haven't thought of a different way to do this?

AJ:

Yep.

Shane:

Yeah. Anyway, speaking of a different way of doing things, Apple has decided that it's Head of Retail will no longer be in charge of HR at Apple instead of, what's that?

AJ:

Biggest company. This huge company has an executive in charge of retail and all the 200,000 people that work there.

Shane:

Yeah. I thought that was really strange that they've decided to bring in its first people officer at a company with 160,000 employees. It turns out that the previous person in charge of "people" was also the Head of Retail, which made a lot of sense for a company.

We've talked about this in the past about the percentage of the people at Apple that make up its workforce are about, almost half of them are the people that work probably close to minimum wage jobs at the Apple retail outlets in the malls, all around the country, all around the world. So it makes sense for that person to previously hold that position as the head of retail to be the head of people as well. But it looks like they're going to be shifting those responsibilities away from retail, which makes me wonder, what are they planning outside of the retail space? What is coming down the pipeline that requires a shifting away of these responsibilities? Is it the Apple car? Are we finally going to see a new big division? It makes me think that they're going to be launching something in the next six months, or hiring a lot more people outside of the retail space to develop additional products.

AJ:

Apple prefab homes is what I'd like to see. Prefab homes with all Apple products all built in.

Shane:

Wow.

AJ:

They've got industrial designers.

Shane:

What an Apple stand.

AJ:

I love Apple.

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

Although I do love my pc, my Think Book. I'm not going back to Apple laptops, and I have you to thank for that. I'll give you credit for that. I don't give you credit credit often, but I'll give you that one.

Shane:

Hey.

AJ:

What I found I found interesting about this article and just was news to me, maybe I'm naive, but that there are still new market. There's lots of new markets for Apple to go into, right? Apple's not ubiquitous it's in a lot of countries, but markets like India and Malaysia, there's no Apple in India yet. So that's a market that they're going to expand into over the next couple of years, which I thought that was cool. So still Apple has been experienced explosive growth through its focus on hardware, and there's still these massive markets that they haven't even dipped a toe into yet. So lots of potential for growth there.

Shane:

All right. Light bulb moment. Apple Gaming. Gaming console sits in your house, integrates with everything else in your house, Apple TC, headphones, your phone. You can take your games with you on your phone.

AJ:

VR.

Shane:

Yeah, it's coming. Called it. Calling it here.

AJ:

I would buy that for Pokemon Go, but probably nothing else.

Shane:

Well, that's an Nintendo product. Slowly, AJ. So exclusive rights, just like you can't play the Last Of Us on your Xbox.

AJ:

Right? So Apple wouldn't let it in their store, anyway. Oh, quick, quick, quick. IPO recap. We have some sort of exciting news. So six IPOs began trading this past week.

Shane:

Did you hear that listener? We got some sort of exciting news for you. Don't hang up just yet. This is sort of exciting.

AJ:

It's sort of exciting. Yeah. I don't want to make a big deal out of it because it's not that exciting. But anyway, there were four IPOs that raised more than a hundred million dollars. So we are hopefully out of our 2022 Q2 and three and four IPO slump. Related to what we were speaking about earlier, microcap, Canadian psychotropics, psychotropics, or psychotropics, whatever, the company is called, Lucy Scientific Discovery, or L S D I raised just 8 million at a 67 million market cap. So they are the makers of the raw materials, aka the Psilocybin psychedelic drugs for other pharmaceutical companies, beauty companies, food companies, to buy those raw materials and put them into their own products, which I thought was cool that you can buy that. I get ads for psychotropics on Instagram and psychedelics have been very illegal for a very long time.

I think that's a step in the right direction, personally. And then we've got the IPO index is actually up almost 20% year to date while the S&P is up almost 8%. So it's a positive outlook for IPOs. The Renaissance Capital IPO index says, good. They're green today, not red like they have been for the past 12 months of our existence. So that's all we've got today for you folks. You can always email us at the liquidityevent@brooklynfi.com. You can leave us a voicemail at memo.fm slash the liquidity event. We will play you on the air shownotes@brooklynfi.com slash episode 81. Stands can be weird and leave us a review. I said that backwards. Love you guys. See you next week. Thanks for listening,

Shane:

Adios.

Presenter:

Thanks for listening to the Liquidity event, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Head on over to brooklynfi.com where you can subscribe to the podcast or YouTube channel or if you want to learn about their full service, financial planning, tax, and investment firm specializing in tech professionals and creatives on the path to financial independence. We'll see you next time on the Liquidity Event.