| Forecast | Forecast | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| W. Texas Oil | $53.01 |  |
Soybean | $9.16 |  |
| Coffee | $98.58 | |
Olive Oil | $3,119 | |
This week, Silicon Valley IPO bankers will get the stiff arm and no return phone calls everywhere from San Francisco to Austin and Boston after WeWork fell through. No confidence they can pull off the con and flip operating losses to the public shareholder anymore.
IPO lawyers will throw bankers under bus and are hatching out direct listing protocols faster than spring chickens. Just a tad of rejuvenation here—I almost got blackballed when I asked Credit Suisse, “What do you do for 6% of our IPO proceeds?” They pulled the Cadillac dealership routine: If you have to ask, you shouldn’t be here. It worked then, but not now.
Last Tuesday, a small, secret off-site in San Francisco to plot kill off IPO roadshows mushroomed into a meeting of loud noises, people and car headlights that looked like a Jacksonville skating rink party on a Friday night. Airbnb is the ringleader and next unicorn up for an IPO where, so far this year, 88 IPOs priced above $5 per share went up an average of 24% on first day and more than half of that bunch is now trading below the price. Our investment club had been selling IPO shares on day one when they reached 30% gain. New Deal—23% gain.
By the way, Eric, founder of Zoom, had 12 roadshow meetings. He took 11 of them from his desk—11of 12 is probably good ratio for the rest of us in all meetings.
By end of year, Papa John’s will go with Grubhub and eliminate its drivers. I’m doubling down on Dominoes. Shack can’t help this—bad management.
Best place to read in the Fall is Jade Lake in Washington State. Warning: The trail to the lake is rough and rigorous but worth the afternoon delight. Tina Turner told us, “We don’t do nothing easy.” She is real deal. Already have tickets to Broadway play, Tina, opening on Oct 12. Don’t take the bait on “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which is as close to entertainment malpractice as you can get.
How did you like that Cattlemen’s Association pay-for-play PR story? OK to eat all the red meat you want. Did you notice they didn’t even differentiate between grass fed or whatever Walmart shoots it up with to make it bright pink-red.
New kick: eating elk for zinc and vitamin B6 because they graze on grasses, trees and gallberries instead of corn and hormone pills. I barter elk jerky with Ladell’s for his molecular nutrition smoothies, which are going for $50 a quart jar and worth every penny. I see Steve Harvey and Dr. S. Gupta are basically becoming his co-national spokesmen.
Write this down: Politically Correct Berkeley Re-elects Trump. City council passing a law to change the name of The Gourmet Ghetto. Been at the heart of the Bay Area’s culinary culture for decades as a little strip of wonder in north Berkeley where Alice Waters started a food revolution back in the 1970s. You have to go before they change name. I always find new foods there that I see in Atlanta five years later.
Raising all the hell is a guy who runs a coffee shop—named Wrecking Ball Coffee—who says the word “ghetto” is insensitive and should be done away with. Dude, this is the coolest, hippest place in the country. I called Dogg, rapper in Atlanta, and asked him if I were being racially insensitive, which is the last thing I want. I think he is fine with it because he said he eats the ghetto burger over on Memorial Drive. I didn’t quite bring my point home with him on Berkeley and Ghetto. By the way, city council set to vote on outlawing the name as it in February voted to eliminate the word “manhole” from city’s training manual on street repair.
Dire Straits: Uber CEO, GE or Atlanta Falcons. Go with GE because I am all-in with accounting sleuth Harry Markopolos who believes GE is engaged in accounting fraud so vast that the conglomerate will soon be forced into bankruptcy. Markopolos was the lone person to sound the alarm on Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi operation, and gained fame by turning out to be spectacularly right. GE goes down.
I love brands and I am loyal to brands and I am sorry my hometown airline Delta is mad. Here is the deal: You charge me ticket change fees sometimes higher than the original ticket and Jet Blue doesn’t. I love them for that. Delta, you might want to think about the Golden Ticket. You could make more money off of me and love me like you used to, when our love was brand new. Love Me Like You Used To.
Speaking of love, I am in a bigger rut than a WeWork landlord. Jim Jacoby called me and said, “I’ll break it to you gently—Natalie Allen is getting married to Jeff Rosensweig.” Actually, this makes sense. Gentle on My Mind. Least I got Loren out of the deal. She introduced us.
If I ever had the time to do all the legwork that follows a dating site subscription, I would put the following test where they asked to describe yourself.
I saw Disney’s low-cost, Walmart-like marketing plan to compete with Netflix. What a disaster. Walt always told his team: “Make those kids smile and the parents will not care what the price is.” But everybody who left that park would have in their hand a one-month free Disney streaming coupon and then a $29.95 thank-you. Netflix will easily beat Disney, Peacock and AT&T.
By the way, Dad’s dish out by the garage might be going away. NFL signed off on new term for Dish’s Sunday NFL Ticket, which has 2 million subscribers. AT&T, owner of Dish, said the $1.2 billion price tag was mighty high and they “might pass.” Oh, you are going to play PR hardball with the beast. NFL has more money than God. My team was always surprised that I rolled over like Snoopy with our Chick-Fil-A negotiations. I always told them, “I'm going to turn it over to the Lord and let him handle it.” Earth to Dish: You will lose the 2 million subscribers the next day if you don’t have that feature. AT&T is the second most bizarre company I know.
Noun
A residence of 200 square feet that sits behind another house on Oregon street and charges $1,100 per month. No pets. No parking. No pool. More coming. Biggest real estate innovation in the queue right now is to turn mall space into $500-a-month micro apartments. The New American Beauty. King of the Road.
