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Kevin Garber: [00:04] Good morning, good evening. Hello, wherever you are in the world. We are in Sydney, Australia Downtown, summer, beautiful, beautiful day. I just love summer in Sydney. I know my friends in America are struggling a little bit.

[00:22] Thank you for joining us on "It's a Monkey" podcast, where we talk about everything relating to technology. This podcast's gone out on Friday, the 16th of December, but we're actually recording it on Wednesday, the 14th of December.

[00:34] We're actually live Periscoping it. If you're lucky enough to watch us or listen to us, and watch us and listen to us, I'm just going to hit quick greet tweets on the Twitter so that the people following us on Periscope can follow us.

[00:53] As usual, we have a fantastic show coming up. Later on in the show, we chat to Barbara Gray. I did an interview with her a little while ago.

[01:01] Barbara is really, really interesting guest. We have had Barbara on the show before. It was episode 42, almost two years ago, so quite some time back. Barbara wrote a fantastic article about the sharing economy Uber, Airbnb, etc.

[01:19] Barbara is an Analyst and Strategy Consultant at Brady Capital Research. She's just published the book, "Ubernomics -- How To Create Economic Abundance and Rise above the Competition." Barbara and I had a great chat about all things relating to political economy, and Uber, Airbnb, etc. That's coming up later on in the show.

[01:38] As usual, with me is my co-host and the Design Leader at ManageFlitter, Kate Frappell. Kate, thank you very much for joining us.

Kate Frappell: [01:47] Great to be back.

Kevin: [01:48] You're becoming a bit of a veteran now, about podcast number 6 for you, somewhere around that?

Kate: [01:52] Something like that, yeah.

Kevin: [01:53] You're welcome.

Kate: [01:55] I don't remember. I really don't.

[01:56] [laughter]

Kevin: [01:58] Do you enjoy them?

Kate: [01:59] Yeah, I'm getting used to it. It's a little bit different, breaks up the day.

Kevin: [02:03] When you first get behind the microphone, it's like, "What's this thing?"

Kate: [02:07] Yeah, and now I'm behind a video.

Kevin: [02:09] Now, we're behind a video and microphone. We have the grand total of four people on Periscope watching us.

[02:13] Over the time, we'll get over. If we advertise the time, and we'll do it early in the day, so our American friends can listen to us...just another experiment. As usual, we talk about a few tech stories that have happened this week. Apple AirPods finally announced that they are shipping, they announced their price. Tell us a bit more about Apple AirPods.

Kate: [02:41] Today, Rolling Stone have described the Apple AirPods as -- excuse my language -- pretty fucking cool.

Kevin: [02:47] Let's take a step back. When Apple announced their new iPhone, they announced that they're going to get rid of the headphone jack.

Kate: [02:58] Yes, and they have wireless.

Kevin: [03:00] Wireless. Not only wireless headphones, wireless headphones in two pieces, right?

Kate: [03:06] Yes.

Kevin: [03:06] Which I don't believe has ever excited, as far as I know. No wireless two pieces, there's wired two pieces. There wasn't more details at the time of pricing specs and when they will be available, and now they've announced that.

Kate: [03:21] I believe that for a little while because as there's all sort of reviews coming out now and I'm starting to see that people are testing and really they like the product. They like how clear, concise, and the sound, there's no noise cancellation, but basically people have been using them, and they got some nice things to say.

Kevin: [03:43] They may be out in the US, but also I was reading so sites that say, they promise to ship before Christmas, so that might be the UK.

Kate: [03:50] Might not be everywhere in the world.

Kevin: [03:53] Might not be everywhere. I saw some really interesting features of the AirPods that it has motion detectors and other interesting detectors. It can tell when you take them out of your ears, and the music stops automatically.

Kate: [04:06] Yes.

Kevin: [04:06] That's cool. I'm so often yanked on my headphones and mid podcast or listening to a podcast, and then you have to rewind back, that's quite a cute feature.

Kate: [04:16] They detect when they are nested inside your ear, which I'm not sure how they exactly do that, but it is a good feature. Another one would be the ability to double tap, and it's got a built-in microphone so you can talk to the assistant Siri. Siri can play and fast forward, increase and decrease the volume, but only within the Apple Music, not within Spotfire or any third party applications.

Kevin: [04:44] Are there any other nifty little features of Periscope?

Kate: [04:49] Periscopes?

Kevin: [04:50] Sorry, [laughs] I'm making a Periscope. Apple AirPods.

Kate: [04:58] People are wanting more than a double tap feature. At the moment, they love the microphone and the ability to bring up Siri to take phone calls. Again, you can answer your phone by double tapping, but they almost want a button that does those actions for them, like it increases the volume, play, and pause.

Kevin: [05:24] It's almost like they're moving the user interface up into the ears as well. Right, in a way?

Kate: [05:30] Yeah, it's starting to. That's what people are wanting. At the moment, you've got the double tap microphone. It's all connected by Bluetooth in the sense that it's in your ear or it's out of your ear.

Kevin: [05:41] What about the quality, the actual music quality?

Kate: [05:45] People seem to like it. They say it's not bad, but better indoors than outdoors. If you're the type of person that wants to listen while interacting with the real world, then these are perfect. If you're the type that wants to zone out completely and have a more sonic experience, these are not the headphones for you.

Kevin: [06:06] I actually like two different types of headphones, exactly like that. I like my headphones that seal really well and can be in the zone. I use that maybe on a plane or at a certain environment. I like the more open ones, which where if I'm doing exercise in a park or I'm at the beach, I actually want to hear the sounds as well.

Kate: [06:29] You want to have a sense of where you are.

Kevin: [06:31] Exactly.

Kate: [06:32] It's also dangerous if you're not.

Kevin: [06:33] It is.

Kate: [06:33] If you're crossing the road and you're completely zoned out.

[06:37] I mean, potentially the over-ear headphones are the way to go in terms of if you want that kind of deep experience. These earplugs for on-the-go use, they look pretty good.

Kevin: [06:51] You going to buy a pair?

Kate: [06:52] One day.

Kevin: [06:53] How much are they in Australia, or in the US?

Kate: [06:56] About...they're $160.

Kevin: [06:58] That's not too bad at all.

Kate: [06:59] They're not too bad. They're pretty affordable for what they are.

Kevin: [07:02] Until you lose one of them. I'm always losing headphones. I've probably spent thousands of dollars on headphones. They just disappear and sometimes they pop up again.

Kate: [07:14] Sometimes, it's hard to find a good pair. I will pay the extra money and buy a replacement, Apple headphones, if I lost them, rather than go and buy a cheaper one from somewhere else.

Kevin: [07:28] Because you're happy with them?

Kate: [07:29] Yeah, super happy. The other ones break in a couple of months. Apple ones at least last a long time.

Kevin: [07:34] I've currently got three headphones at the moment. Bose, the Bose wired ones. I really like those for exercise. They got a silicone earpiece which is really nice. I've got a Plantronics Bluetooth headset, which I love. Battery life is not huge on that so you can't go on a long air flight or something with it.

[08:01] I've just bought a Bang & Olufsen in-ear, small wired headphones, which are also pretty cool. I've got the ones that I'm wearing now, which I use at work, which are sound cancelling, isolation headphones. I forget the brand. It's not a PSB. It's not a hugely well-known brand, but they are a well-known particular set of speakers.

Kate: [08:28] Speaking of batteries, though. That's the other feature with these AirPods, it's like a dock that you can carry with you. You put the AirPods in there, they charge for another three hours of listening.

Kevin: [08:41] Terrific.

Kate: [08:42] It's got a portable battery pack as well.

Kevin: [08:45] Apple always comes up with something interesting. Anyway, that's Apple AirPods.

[08:52] Interesting story I bumped upon, and it's probably only interesting to people of a certain [laughs] vintage, say goodbye to MS-DOS command prompt.

[09:04] Way back when PCs came out, Windows didn't exist. Windows 3.1 didn't exist. Windows 95, Windows XP, Mac, all of that. We actually had to use a command prompt, which was just like, "How do you describe a command prompt?" Just a little flashing letter. You just, literally, type in commands. You get access to the computer that way.

[09:21] Of course the command prompt still exists in Linux and things like that. Developers really still like command prompts because you can do things really quickly. Even in the days of DOS, you could do things really quickly. Just type a few things in a word as opposed to click, click around.

[09:39] Think of keyboard shortcuts. Kate hadn't even heard of the MS-DOS prompt. [laughs] I thought I'd drag someone else in who's a little bit closer to my vintage. He's the Tech Lead at ManageFlitter. He's knee deep in all the tech stuff, to talk a little about the MS-DOS prompt.

[09:56] Ricky, you hadn't even heard that the MS-DOS prompt was going to be deprecated from Windows.

Ricky McAlister: [10:01] Not at all. It wasn't on my radar. As a 100 percent Linux user, I've kind of missed that.

Kevin: [10:09] You must have started on Windows somewhere along the line, right?

Ricky: [10:12] Absolutely. It's certainly a nostalgic situation. I've had a little bit of experience with MS-DOS over the years. Obviously, it's where Windows begun. It's come a long way. I can tell why they've deprecated it.

Kevin: [10:32] Originally, Windows was actually built on DOS. They built it from the ground up without DOS, then retrofitted DOS back in. Is that right?

Ricky: [10:44] There were components of MS-DOS throughout the Windows operating system for years, until very recently where they've been able to literally strip all of these components out. The PowerShell replacement is what developers really need rather than what MS-DOS provided.

Kevin: [11:09] The PowerShells existed for a while which is why it's a similar type of DOS IDE environment?

Ricky: [11:16] It's a shell environment. If you are familiar with UNIX operating systems, you'll be familiar with shell environment to generally bash. This one has been around for a long, long time. Windows has missed that where PowerShell popped up to fill that void. It's been there for a while to allow that extra control for system administrators for Windows based servers.

Kevin: [11:48] It's a command line as well?

Ricky: [11:50] It is indeed, yes.

Kevin: [11:52] On standard Windows 10, you can get to that?

Ricky: [11:55] Yeah. It's been around for a while.

Kevin: [11:58] It's just the old-fashioned type of DOS that's going to be, which, of course, goes back way back to the early '80s. Of course, those of us that started with PCs, it was pre-Windows 3.1. We all started with dir. What other commands were there? That's the only one I remember.

Ricky: [12:18] Any of those basic type commands would be fairly familiar to someone operating in DOS.

Kevin: [12:26] They're going to load *.* or something like that. I'm really going back into...but, of course, people working on Linux still deal with command line, etc. We should definitely show Kate what a command line looks like.

Ricky: [12:42] [laughs] Indeed.

Kevin: [12:43] It's quite interesting that someone can be knee deep in our industry and not have access to a command line.

Ricky: [12:50] So many graphical user interphases these days, we don't need these command lines to do our everyday bits and bobs. It's more of a niche now where you're involved with administering systems.

Kevin: [13:07] Except for, in Windows Check Disk used to be the one when there was an issue with your computer. You'd Google something and land up at the command prompt, and check disk and fix disk, just desperately trying to fix something from the DOS command line.

Ricky: [13:25] It's solving a crash from Windows. [laughs] That's where most people would have experienced DOS generally.

Kevin: [13:31] Do you remember Window 3.1, the first proper version of Windows? How absolutely painfully unstable that thing was?

Ricky: [13:42] Totally.

Kevin: [13:43] The stability. We dealt with it because it was such a seismic change and to have multiple windows open. The other thing about DOS machines -- I'm looking at Kate at the moment because she probably doesn't realize this either -- you can only work on one application at a time, right?

Ricky: [13:59] Yeah. [laughs]

Kevin: [14:01] Kate's looking at me very confused. It was quite transformative to be able to work on multiple applications at a time. If on DOS you were working on your book keeping system on your computer, that was it.

[14:16] If you wanted to work on your inventory system or your spreadsheet, you have to get out of that and then go into the spreadsheet. Kate [laughs] is looking at me with very perplexed eyes. That's why it was such a seismic change. You could work on multiple applications, particularly when Windows 95 came in.

[14:43] Windows 3.1, it couldn't quite pull it off neatly. Windows 95, you could open multiple browser windows, that alone when that came in. It started off, you can only have a one browser window, and then multiple browser window.

[14:57] When I used to show people, "Hey, do you know you can have multiple browser windows?" they were like, "Oh, wow. I didn't know that."

[15:03] Anyway, that's Ricky McAlister. He's Tech Lead at ManageFlitter. Ricky, thanks so much for joining us. We might drag you in every now and then to talk about the more techy parts of some of our new stories.

Ricky: [15:17] My pleasure.

Kevin: [15:20] That's MS-DOS. We'll put links to some of those articles on the show notes. We're going to take a short break.

[15:27] After the break, we're going to be talking to Barbara Gray. We talked to Barbara about the economics of Uber, the economics of Airbnb. Barbara's the author of Ubernomics -- How To Create Economic Abundance and Rise above the Competition. We'll just take a short break. We'll be back right after.

[15:45] [music]

Dave Zoradi: [15:48] Hi, my name is Dave Zoradi. I'm the Customer Support Specialist here at ManageFlitter. ManageFlitter is a tool that helps you work faster and smarter on Twitter. With ManageFlitter, you can clean up and grow your Twitter account.

[16:00] You will also get access to useful Twitter analytics, social content scheduling, and much more. Go to manageflitter.com and start your free trial today.

[16:09] [music]

Kevin: [16:11] We're back. It's a Monkey Podcast. You're listening to Kevin Garber. I am the CEO of ManageFlitter. A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon an article on LinkedIn. That was a fantastic article that spoke about Uber and Airbnb, and how they're so representative of a new chapter in economic value ad.

[16:34] At the time, I tracked down the author all the way to Canada. We spoke to the author of the article, who's Barbara Gray, on Episode 42 of the podcast. I was excited to get an email a couple of months ago from Barbara saying she will be publishing a book, which is now actually published. She'd like to come back in the Podcast. Of course, I said, "Absolutely."

[17:01] I'm excited to say that at the end of my Skype line is Barbara Gray, who's an Analyst and Strategy Consultant at Brady Capital Research. She's also the author of this great book, Ubernomics -- How To Create Economic Abundance and Rise above the Competition.

[17:14] Barbara, thanks so much for joining us.

Barbara Gray: [17:16] Hey. Thanks so much, Kevin. It's great to be back. It was two years ago. It's very exciting.

Kevin: [17:19] A little while ago. It's gone fast. I was very interested to see that the former CEO of Lululemon gave a thumbs up to your book.

[17:29] She said, "Barbara is one of the most astute and forward-looking analyst who covered Lululemon. Ubernomics gave me a framework to think about the sharing economy capital structure and the value that can be gained from that." That's a real nice pat on the back there.

Barbara: [17:43] It is. I was actually quite surprised when she gave me that review, but it was great. One of the things I love about Christine Day and Lululemon that I mentioned in the book is she's always been about purpose-led companies. She was one of the first employees at Starbucks, working under Howard Schultz. She went to Lululemon, and her new startup, Luvo, is about purpose as well.

[18:06] It was wonderful to get that endorsement.

Kevin: [18:08] Of course, Lululemon is one of the darlings of Vancouver. It's Vancouver-founded, isn't it?

Barbara: [18:15] It is, yes. I actually used to live, I guess, a decade ago, right a block away from the first ever Lululemon store.

Kevin: [18:24] There's a couple in Sydney, and of course, they're very popular in Sydney, because Sydney is a very much sunshine, beach, fit, look good, a lot of people do yoga. You see the yoga classes, you just see that little -- it's an omega sign, right? A stylized omega sign that's the logo.

Barbara: [18:42] Exactly.

Kevin: [18:42] You see that in the back of a lot of people. It's an incredible company. They turn over billions, don't they?

Barbara: [18:48] They do. Actually, as I talk to you, I'm actually sitting here in my Lululemon pants with the logo. It's basically what I wear every day, because it's so cozy. I've actually also got my Lululemon hoodie on, because it's raining here in Vancouver right now.

Kevin: [18:59] I actually asked a friend in New York once. I said, "What's the thing with Lululemon?" and she said, "It's just the quality. It's great quality."

Barbara: [19:06] The quality is amazing. The pants, I probably wear almost every day, and they last for years. It's incredible. It's a premium product, but functionally, it's amazing because it's long-lasting.

Kevin: [19:19] We definitely, despite what people think, this is not an advertorial for Lululemon, but let's get into the thick of it. Last time we spoke here, we just published that article, which went viral, and which must have been pretty exciting, I think, you've noted here. How many people have read that article in total so far?

Barbara: [19:38] Now, it's over 397,000 people.

Kevin: [19:41] For a niche economic-style article, that's pretty good.

Barbara: [19:44] It is. It's amazing. What happened was that, somehow, by some magical force, it got put on two of LinkedIn's channels. It just went out to everybody. It's interesting in LinkedIn, and I don't know if you've noticed this, but it is getting so hard on their platform now and their publishing platform to get any form of distribution.

[20:05] A perfect example is I just actually published an article this morning, because I just got back from attending the Airbnb Open LA Conference, which was amazing. I wrote an article, which I think is really good.

[20:17] Anyways, I published it about two hours ago. It's gotten 23 views, which I'm still trying to figure out, because I have 4,000 followers and over 500 connections.

Kevin: [20:30] The social platforms muck with their algorithms. If you get on the right side of their algorithm, boom, away you go. If you're on the wrong side of the algorithm -- I even notice it on Facebook where I'll post something sometimes, and sometimes it's just an inconsequential comment. I'll just get all these likes, comments, and sometimes I'll post something with a bit more gravitas, and crickets. Nothing.

[20:54] They definitely do funny business with their algorithms. What do you think of Medium versus LinkedIn as a publishing platform?

Barbara: [21:00] I love Medium's style. It's sleek, it's beautiful to publish on. It's a nicer experience to publish on than LinkedIn, but it's harder. What I like about LinkedIn, when it works for you, is you can actually see the character and the credibility of the person, because you can see what their job title is, what their experience, what their education is.

[21:19] Whereas, Medium is a bit more abstract. It just has the person's profile, whatever they choose to add. I prefer LinkedIn, because it's much more valuable in terms of creating bridging capital. I wish LinkedIn would buy Medium, because it is a much sleeker form of publishing.

Kevin: [21:39] Microsoft, of course, now owns LinkedIn. I've never been a huge fan of LinkedIn. I have fantasies, sometimes, of building a competitor to LinkedIn, because it's a wonderful idea, a corporate social media network. I've never felt -- and it's easy for me to say, because it's always easy to criticize when you're not in the driver's seat. I always felt that it could execute a lot better.

Barbara: [22:04] Especially now, I'm actually getting quite discouraged with it, because before, you could get, basically, 100 views for every like when you did posts. Now, you're lucky if you get 10 views per like. The problem is that because it's so popular, and you have millions of people now that have discovered the magic of publishing posts.

[22:26] Because, when you're a professional, it's a great way to promote yourself, like share expertise, but then also, promote your personal brand. There's no real estate space left anymore. You published an article and it used to go out to everybody. I don't know where it goes. It doesn't go anywhere. It just sits there. It's interesting.

Kevin: [22:48] Engagement across the board is harder to get. There's a lot more noise. Content marketing has become such a well-known strategy that people are pushing out a lot of content. I still think quality content is still going to cut through, but as I say, "Ain't no free lunch."

Barbara: [23:09] No, definitely. It's interesting, because what I love Twitter for, not so much on trying to get distribution because Twitter is almost impossible, I find, for distribution. Unless actually, the one thing I do tweet about, because I live in Vancouver and our housing prices, probably like in Australia are just sky-high here. It's ridiculous. We actually have a huge housing crisis here.

[23:31] I do tweet about Vancouver real estate and the different things that are happening to bring the market down to earth. I find when I put out a tweet there, there's a huge community that's so involved. They latch on, and I get like 23 re-tweets, but if I try to tweet anything about Ubernomics, I get nothing. It's very interesting.

Kevin: [23:53] Interesting. The house pricing thing is a very, very big thing in Sydney in particular. You cannot go to a social event and people are just talking about expensive to rent, to buy, to -- what's interesting about Canada and Australia is there's a lot of similarities in big empty countries. I think about this a lot with some foresight, and it obviously takes years of planning, etc.

[24:18] The issue is not really that there's a scarcity of space. The issue is that there's a scarcity of livable places with infrastructure and jobs, and community. If we would just do policy for -- I can't speak for Canada, but for Australia better -- high-speed rail, for instance, they would make a lot of rural areas that are very accessible and very cheap, but there's no jobs. Much more accessible and people would go live there.

Barbara: [24:49] For Vancouver, it's very similar to Australia. The problem is we've had so much foreign inflow of capital come in. We've got so many homes that are sitting vacant, lots are vacant, condos are vacant, and the city is actually just going to implementing in the New Year, a one percent vacancy tax, which is very interesting.

Kevin: [25:07] I saw that. That's really interesting.

Barbara: [25:10] The other thing that's interesting, so it's just at the Airbnb Conference. Although I'm a huge fan of Airbnb, there is a problem when you've got a 06 percent rental vacancy rate in the city. I don't think you should have corporate Airbnb rentals in that instance. The city of Vancouver is actually looking in bringing in really, really strict regulations on Airbnb as well in the New Year.

Kevin: [25:30] I've always noticed that Sydney, we've got some wonderful areas by the water, the very sort of upper end of the market, and I've always noticed at night there how few of the lights are on, particularly in the big houses. In the apartment blocks, there's more, and the big houses, there's always...

[25:50] They're obviously second, or third, or fourth homes of the 01 percenters. It's a hard one, because there's freedom of choice. We all love that, but at the same time, there's an onus to be part of a community, and also the egalitarian to contribute to the egalitarian nature of these communities, particularly Canada and Australia.

[26:14] As usual, with economics, it's a balancing act, isn't it?

Barbara: [26:19] It's interesting. We might see the supplied housing got shifted from scarcity with abundance, because what's happened in Canada is the government's now eliminated the loophole for foreign buyers to claim the 40 percent exemption. They can no longer claim the capital gains exemption.

[26:37] The other thing they've done in the city of Vancouver is they've brought in a 15 percent foreign buyer's tax. You've had, now, three levels of government that brought in measures. It's going to be very interesting to see how quickly the inventory starts to rise, how much sales start to drop, and how much prices start to go down. That's the real estate conversation.

Kevin: [27:00] People here love your prime minister.

Barbara: [27:03] He's good, yes. He's much better than the American one.

Kevin: [27:08] We could talk for hours on that. Let's talk about your book. Whilst I was reading your book, I was thinking back to my days of university and the Internet was just starting to flap its wings. You talk so much in your book about moving from the economics of scarcity to the economics of abundance.

[27:33] What's so interesting is even just in the university case study, when I joined university, universities had the absolute monopoly on knowledge and education. The libraries, the lecturers, the resources -- it was scarcity.

[27:51] If you didn't get into university, that was it. By the time I left university, there was an abundance of knowledge and education. Suddenly, the dynamics were totally different and stuff for someone who wanted it. University wasn't the only place. This is playing out in all sorts of areas in our economy, right?

Barbara: [28:12] Exactly. The one example I talk about in my books, so my background is a sales-side equity analyst, and one of the last calls I made before I left the Street back in January of 2008 was I put a sale on a company called Yellow Pages, The Yellow Pages directory companies.

[28:27] At the time, it was the biggest directory company in Canada. It took four years, but the company eventually filed for bankruptcy. I've actually been going around the last couple of months meeting with fund managers and Canada investment fund managers basically talking to them about this is the call I made eight years ago. The call I'm making now is that we've gone from Yellow Pages to Yellow Cabs.

[28:53] As an example, I talk about a company. It actually must have been just right after we'd spoken two years ago. I decided to short a company called Medallion Financial. At the time, 70 percent of their loans were to Taxi Medallion holders in New York City and Chicago.

[29:12] As you know, with Uber and Lyft, the price of a Taxi Medallion, that was created by artificial scarcity. It's basically gone from, at its peak, 1.2 million in New York City to now between 400,000 to 600,000.

[29:25] Anyways, a stock, it was interesting because it basically held up. It was a scary stock to own, because it paid a 10 percent dividend yield. When you short a stock, you're on the hook for that dividend yield.

[29:38] Finally, in August of this year, the company cut its dividend by 80 percent and the stock completely tanked. It's now down to 350. I shorted 10 bucks, but it's really interesting.

[29:49] It's good to see your ideas play out. It's showing you there's this emergence of what I call these Ubernomics fault lines. That's what I'm passionate about exploring right now.

Kevin: [30:00] Do you know in Australia in Sydney, they actually subsidized taxi plate owners? They gave them $25,000 when they put in some new regulations to allow Uber, they actually compensated them, which there was a lot of criticism at the time, because it was saying, basically, look you're just...

[30:16] As a business owner, if you have a competitor that comes in, the government just doesn't go, "Oh well, Google is coming to your space now. Here you go, take a check."

Barbara: [30:25] Yeah, that's wow. The motivation for doing so was to basically keep them alive?

Kevin: [30:32] Probably to keep them alive, and probably because they've made a lot of taxes, as well, from them. In a way, they may have wanted to share some of the loss with them in a way. I'm not entirely sure, but Uber's always been...I believe in Vancouver...How come there's an issue with Uber there, I believe?

Barbara: [30:57] Yeah, it's not here. Uber actually came into Vancouver initially in 2012. Back then, there was no consumer demand for it. Nobody knew about it. The taxi lobby was basically able to quickly force them out of town and they haven't been able to come back.

[31:15] I was actually speaking at a panel presentation a few weeks ago on Vancouver Island. One of the people in the panel with me was from BC Tourism, and he advocates for the taxi companies. He was telling me that Uber is probably going to come in and the ridesharing companies are probably going to be able to come in to Vancouver next year.

Kevin: [31:33] You guys really standout. Sydney is allowing Ubers at airports now, officially, which maybe one of the first official ones. I know airports have been a bit of a gray area for a while. You guys really...being the progressive city that you are.

Barbara: [31:54] Exactly. When we spoke two years ago, Uber was in, I think, 60 or 70 cities around the world. Now, it's in over 400 cities. It's really amazing. The valuation of Uber back then, I think, was 12 billion. Now, it's 68 billion. It's pretty incredible.

Kevin: [32:10] They're still not turning profit though, right? Not that profit at an early stage is everything. They're still bleeding very badly.

Barbara: [32:17] They are. If tomorrow they decided to basically stop all spending on expanding into new countries and stop acquiring new drivers and stuff, they would be completely profitable.

Kevin: [32:30] When do you think Uber is going to go all self-driving?

Barbara: [32:35] It's going to be a couple of years. You have to get the technology right.

Kevin: [32:37] Do you still think that's that far away?

Barbara: [32:39] I do, because you have to get the technology of companies. You don't want your self-driving cars to crash. What's amazing, actually, on that topic...I was just down in Los Angeles for the last couple of days at the Airbnb Open Conference, and it was a fascinating event.

[32:57] They had 6,000 hosts from a hundred countries around the world all gathered. It was almost like a tribal gathering of all these people that have a cult-like devotion to Airbnb. It was incredible.

[33:13] What I realized then was that Airbnb is really working to empower their hosts. Whereas Uber, which is also leading in movement, that they are not working to empower their drivers. If anything, they're trying to drive down the wages that they make by continuing to encourage to increase supply of vehicles, Uber drivers on the road, and then also, ultimately, eliminating them.

Kevin: [33:38] Even though they throw it in the same sentence a lot, Uber and Airbnb, they're quite different. The ability for an Uber driver to add value beyond just driving you from A to B is very, very difficult. You sense it sometimes when you get in an Uber and he'll offer you chewing gum and water and he'll try to be chatty. They're all a bit on the margin in that.

[34:01] Whereas with Airbnb, you can do a few things to your place, have a unique place. You can fill up the fridge. You can be a friendly host. You can take them on tours. There's a lot more. It's more open-ended in the way that you can add value than just an Uber, not just an Uber driver but in a way, just an Uber driver.

Barbara: [34:26] That's because Uber is a non-demand commodity service, where Airbnb is a high-fidelity proposition. What's interesting is I've always thought of Airbnb as a company that's democratizing personal assets, democratizing homes. What I realized when I was at this conference and spoke with these hosts from all over the world, is that Airbnb is a community of hosts. It's not just a community of spaces.

[34:51] What they announced on Thursday, Brian Chesky made a huge announcement for Airbnb, and they announced that they're getting into a new area called Experiences. Basically, they're disrupting the accommodation market.

[35:07] Now, they're disrupting the experience market. It's fascinating, because they're allowing anybody, and they're starting with their hosts, to go on to their platform and create a curated excursion, either a one day or a couple of hours trip, or a multi-day trip based on their passion.

[35:27] If you think about it, it's absolutely amazing. If you go into their app, they now have this Experiences tab and it looks incredible. You can go truffle hunting in Italy. You can do yoga in LA. They've launched in 12 cities now. It's opening up this...

Kevin: [35:42] Is it launched in Sydney yet? Do you know?

Barbara: [35:46] I'm trying to think if Sydney is one of the 12 cities. I'm not sure if they are. There are 12 cities around the world. I have to check them out. Next year, they expect to be in 50 cities. It is just amazing.

[35:58] I think they've realized that they're getting so much. They're getting a lot of flak on the regulatory side, cities like Vancouver. They're expanding their market though into new areas.

Kevin: [36:09] Do you think Airbnb will ever get on to the property side of things? Taking it the other way and actually having an Airbnb hotel of some sort.

Barbara: [36:22] I don't know. In essence, there already are Airbnb hotels, because I was in Toronto two weeks ago for business and it was a condo and I went to check-in. I didn't get to meet my host. I went to the pole outside the condo. There was 75 lock boxes attached to it, and I had to punch in the key and take out a key.

[36:43] Essentially, this brand new condo was really an Airbnb condo. I don't think Airbnb will actually own the physical assets. That's the beauty of the platform, is because it is asset light. They are going to start inviting...like bed and breakfasts are already on their platform. They're not adverse to having boutique hotels put their inventory on the platform.

[37:06] They did say they do not want to become an Expedia. They don't want the large hotel chains on their platform. They're OK with the boutique hotels.

Kevin: [37:13] I always thought a branded hotel, whether they actually own or lease the property, would also be interesting from a political play in the city, because suddenly, then a way of traditional hotel operator. I can certainly understand the benefit of their platform of not having the hassle of...actually, physical assets as a huge, huge win.

Barbara: [37:32] From a financial perspective, it gives you a much higher multiple.

Kevin: [37:38] Airbnb and Uber are often other ones, when we talk about sharing economy, and collaborative consumption, and a great example of disruption where value is unlocked due to a combination of new technologies, and social media networks, and the democratization of communication. Are there any other examples though?

[38:03] It seems like Airbnb and Uber have done a fantastic job in disrupting. What are some of the other examples where values being unlocked in new and exciting ways?

Barbara: [38:16] The one company I really like is LiquidSpace. I don't think they're in Australia. I think they're only in the states and Canada. What they do is they're basically unbundling the traditional office lease.

[38:26] The problem with a lot of companies, especially growth companies, is you have to find office space.

Kevin: [38:33] It's a nightmare. It's one of the biggest nightmares. Actually, commercial leases, as an owner or CEO, it's just a pain in the head.

Barbara: [38:41] Because you don't know what your space needs are going to be, especially, 5 or 10 years out. What they do is they allow people to go on and basically find sublease space on either a monthly, annual, or multiannual basis.

[38:56] In the flipside, if you're a business and you've got excess space either because of an economic downturn or because you've got too much for your needs right now, you can go on and sublease your space.

Kevin: [39:09] Sorry. Go.

Barbara: [39:10] No. That's fine.

Kevin: [39:11] I was just going to say, I think a lot about this unlocking the value of excess capacity. I feel it every day when I cook at home and there's excess capacity of food. You can freeze some and it may or may not get used, or you can take some to work the next day.

[39:31] I've always had this vision of a nice community sharing app where you can even make a little bit extra on purpose, and you pop it on the app and those within a few kilometers can come and pick up a meal, a fresh home-cooked meal. Even for free, as an altruistic community service.

Barbara: [39:51] That would be good. I think there might be food safety issues with that though, because if somebody did get food poisoning from your cooking. Not that they would, but I think there could be liability issues. The interesting thing is there were actually two kitchen sharing, meal sharing companies -- Kitchensurfing and Kitchen -- and they both went bankrupt this year.

[40:15] That model is not necessarily playing out.

Kevin: [40:18] I thought there would be health and regulatory issues. A few years ago in Sydney, there's a woman that started up a charity that goes and collect leftover food from corporate events, and takes them to homeless shelters. I suppose they're coming from commercial kitchens though. That might be the difference.

[40:40] She's using that excess capacity of these corporate events where there's a whole heap of amazing foods sometimes. You have some of these shelters in Sydney getting some of the best food in the city that would have just gone down the drain.

Barbara: [40:53] That's great. That's really, really good.

Kevin: [40:58] Your book talks a lot about the long-tail of supply as well. Which I guess this long-tail concept has been around for a little while, that the Internet has really enabled and made it so exciting that you can help build entire businesses around niches.

Barbara: [41:19] Chris Anderson wrote the book "The Long Tail" which he published back in 2006. I actually read it back then. He was really talking about the democratization of content. It was the long-tail of content.

[41:31] What I did in my book is actually I took a mash-up of the Long Tail with "Blue Ocean Strategy", which was also published a decade ago. My thesis on the Long Tail is that when you apply the concept to the sharing economy, what you get is you basically get a long-tail, or a niche of underutilized or latent assets, goods and services. It's fascinating how many different forms there are.

Kevin: [42:02] You note in your book as well, you said your thesis over the next decade, most companies will either be on a marketplace or build their own marketplace. It's capital efficient, and part of the trend towards access versus ownership. I think there's a lot in that statement, if you could just unpack that for us.

Barbara: [42:19] What I've been doing since December, because my background and my passion is being a research analyst. I've actually started researching the intersection of what I call a sharing economy with traditional corporations.

[42:32] I've actually identified 150 publicly traded companies that have partnered with sharing economy companies and sharing on-demand economy companies, which actually blew my mind. They're in 58 sub-industries. It's extensive. It's not just isolated to one sector.

Kevin: [42:52] Barbara, I know we are running out of time. Give us some thoughts or takeaways if you are a want-to-be entrepreneur, or you're an entrepreneur. How can we imagine? We always have to think about skating to where the puck is going to be going? I think that was a Canadian player, or was it an American?

Barbara: [43:14] Yes.

Kevin: [43:14] Was he Canadian?

Barbara: [43:15] Wayne Gretzky, yes

Kevin: [43:15] He's Canadian, right?

Barbara: [43:17] Yes.

Kevin: [43:17] I don't know much about sport, but at least I got that one right. What entrepreneurs need to start thinking about in terms of all these words of unlocking capacity and long-tail? Give us some tangible approaches that can be taken.

Barbara: [43:39] I think the biggest takeaway, and actually being at the Airbnb conference and the last couple of days really reinforced us, is if you want to create a marketplace, you can't just create a marketplace, you have to create a movement, because you have to get people passionate about what you're doing.

[43:55] The problem with the economics on marketplaces is not just worrying about on the demand side about customer acquisition costs and customer attrition rate compared to the lifetime customer value. You also have to worry on the supply side about supplier acquisition costs and supplier attrition rates.

[44:15] The problem is, is there's so much competition in all the different verticals, because everybody is coming out with the Airbnb of X, the Uber of Y. What's happening when competition increases, the acquisition cost go up, the attrition rates go up, and the economics just crash.

[44:31] I put out a big report a year ago on the top 75 sharing on-demand economy companies, mostly in the US that had raised, at least a series amount of financing. Nine of them have gone under since last year.

[44:46] The thing is you have to create a movement. If you want to create a movement, you need to have a social mission. You have to have a real social mission that's aligned with your business models, revenue drivers. What I've identified in the book is it can either be about community, like Airbnb is.

[45:03] Their thesis is belonged anywhere about accessibility like Uber is, because Uber is about building transportation as reliable as running water to everyone everywhere, or like Lyft, whose social mission is about sustainability, which is basically to eliminate vehicle ownership and get cars off the road.

Kevin: [45:23] Of course, your social mission has to have a little bit of depth to it and obviously tie in with the actual value you're providing at conscious. I think there's a danger in just having a tokenistic social mission that's shallow and it doesn't really link up with what you're actually doing.

Barbara: [45:38] Totally. It has to be completely aligned with your revenue drivers, and that's really, really important. It's not the CSR thing. It's not a corporate social responsibility thing. It has to be integral to your business model.

Kevin: [45:51] Barbara, your book is available on Kindle. It's available on paperback and not audio yet, I believe. That's on Amazon, right?

Barbara: [46:02] It's on Amazon, yeah. Amazon in Australia, Amazon in Canada, Amazon in US.

Kevin: [46:06] I've already got it on my Kindle. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. It's a fantastic book.

[46:14] We've been talking to Barbara Gray She's an Analyst and Strategy Consultant at Brady Capital Research, author of Ubernomics -- How To Create Economic Abundance and Rise above the Competition. A lot of food for thought there. I really encourage you to get a copy.

[46:27] As always, Barbara, thanks so much for chatting to us.

Barbara: [46:30] Thank you, Kevin. Wonderful to chat with you again.

[46:35] [music]

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[47:10] [music]

Kevin: [47:16] I really enjoyed talking to Barbara Gray. We went a bit all over the place there about property in Vancouver and property in Sydney, and tax on. What do you think about that tax that Vancouver has put in, that if you're not a resident but you own a property and you just have your property empty, you get taxed?

Kate: [47:37] It's fair. It's optimizing the space in the city, I guess. They want people to live there and not waste it.

Kevin: [47:46] They want to just incentivize people not contributing to the community. The Airbnb and Uber phenomenon is definitely interesting. Obviously, it's become so established these days that they've become verbs. Just Airbnb, or just Uber, that's when you know.

[48:11] I think a lot about some of the points Barbara and I made in there that we're moving from the world of scarcity to that world of abundance. It brings different set of problems. Even like the problem of obesity is a problem of abundance, not scarcity.

Kate: [48:24] Scarcity, yeah. Interesting thought on the one percent tax. If you're one of those people that has multiple houses and one that's on the beach or a prime location in the city, why wouldn't you Airbnb and then avoid the tax?

Kevin: [48:43] Think about it. If you were a multibillionaire and you owned five houses and you don't need the money, and the hassle, and the headspace, you would just leave your house locked up. When you use it two weeks a year, you come in and your house is there.

Kate: [48:59] There's still a lot of benefit to having people actually use the facilities in your house. If things go unused, they can decay as well.

Kevin: [49:07] They can. It depends. It's cost-benefit. I don't know any billionaires personally.

Kate: [49:14] None either.

Kevin: [49:15] As I mentioned in the interview with Barbara, I live in a suburb that has some apartments, which I'm in. There're mere mortals in the apartments, and then there are some houses which are just these amazing houses where even Nicole Kidman used to live in one of them.

Kate: [49:34] Oh, wow! Like equivalent of a penthouse.

Kevin: [49:38] No, actual houses. Some of those houses' lights always seemed to be off. My theory is they're second, third, fourth homes, and they're not used very often. They don't rent them out. The apartment is always full, because as mere mortals, and we, the one that contributes to the community. It's a difficult thing to decide. People should have freedom of choice what to do with their assets. At the same time, it's community.

Kate: [50:05] It's seems such a waste of space though if people could be using it.

Kevin: [50:11] They could be, but if it's your property, you should be able to dictate as well.

Kate: [50:15] It goes both ways.

Kevin: [50:17] It goes both ways. Anyway, Barbara's book is pretty interesting, Ubernomics -- How To Create Economic Abundance and Rise above the Competition. She also made some interesting points about LinkedIn and Twitter and how it's gotten harder to get engagements on these platforms.

[50:34] Her first article a couple of years back just went ballistic, and she just got...which was the precursor to this book. She built this article into a book. She got tons of engagement on LinkedIn. Interesting, today, I saw LinkedIn has rolled out a new UI.

Kate: [50:51] I thought they changed it relatively recently.

Kevin: [50:54] I think about a year ago, they did. I see today, they've freshened it up again. It's definitely a weak point of their service has been their UI -- huge, huge weak point.

Kate: [51:06] They could be refreshing it, since they bought Lynda as well for online learning. I heard the other day, I went to a morning breakfast conference thing, and those are representative from LinkedIn, and she said, "You can actually do these courses on Lynda, and then when you've completed them, it shows up on your LinkedIn profile that you've completed a course."

Kevin: [51:26] That's cool. Of course, Microsoft owns LinkedIn, now. There's that connection, as well.

[51:35] The founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, is a fantastically smart man. He's an ex-PayPal, part of what they call the PayPal Mafia with Elon Musk, David Sacks, and all these guys that have gone on to do great things.

[51:46] If you're an entrepreneur listening to this and you're looking for some interesting talks, just Google Reid Hoffman, super, super smart man. He created LinkedIn all those years ago.

[51:58] That's about it for us for Episode 72. Last week, we spoke to Cathy Hackl, fantastic chat about AR and VR, technologies that Kate and I both fell in love with. I'm just excited. We've still got to book that Microsoft AR technology demo, which will be really exciting.

[52:19] If you are listening to this podcast and you are enjoying it, please tweet us @MonkeyPodcast, send us a Facebook message, podcast@itsamonkey.com or if you can take two seconds and leave us a iTunes review, that'll be very much appreciated.

[52:37] We are also doing these podcasts weekly, to try keep them up and keep ourselves a little bit more engaged, because if we do it every two weeks it's...

[52:49] If you do something frequently, you tend to get better at it and you optimize it, then if you do something...I've got a couple of admin tasks that I do once a year, and it's always the overhead to get myself back into, it is just so dramatic. If I had to do it every month, it would probably be a lot easier. It's actually helping us, in a way, to do it weekly.

Kate: [53:13] It gets easier with routine.

Kevin: [53:15] Gets into a rhythm. Of course, you can follow Kate on Twitter @KateFrappell, PP, LL. I'm @KE_GA. If you're a ManageFlitter user, a special shout out to you. Next week will nearly be Christmas.

Kate: [53:33] Yeah, I think we're only a week away from Christmas.

Kevin: [53:37] Today is the 14th, so I hope you're starting to enjoy the wind-down to the New Year, although I know some of our listeners come from countries where there actually isn't a holiday. There's many countries that don't celebrate Christmas in its full steam ahead. [laughs]

[53:55] Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next week on It's a Monkey Podcast.

[54:03] [music]