This week, the boys discuss the Olympics, layoffs at Paramount and Cisco. Plus, they analyze the financial performance and strategies of companies like Indeed, Upwork, ZipRecruiter, and Seek. They also touch on the challenges faced by job boards and the impact of AI on the industry. Additionally, they discuss the potential breakup of Alphabet (Google) due to antitrust concerns and the use of OnlyFans by Olympic athletes to fund their dreams.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION (blame AI for errors)
Joel (00:28.012)
just two guys who want to do karate in the garage all night long. Hi kids. It's the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel surprise attack cheeseman.
Chad Sowash (00:38.825)
This is Chad Reagan, Sill wash.
Joel (00:41.592)
And on this episode, it's earning season, rapid fire, and no taxes on tips. Let's do this.
Joel (00:55.01)
Chad, the Olympics are over. Are you sad? Are you sad? I know you were super into it.
Chad Sowash (00:59.193)
No, I'm very sad. I'm very sad, which is one of the reasons why I want to be able to share this with the world. Okay, everybody watching on YouTube, here you go. And by the way, you're welcome.
Chad Sowash (01:19.005)
Little ray gun action. Look at that.
Chad Sowash (01:29.907)
God. Shit, dude.
Chad Sowash (01:37.935)
Yes. Okay. So.
Joel (01:37.988)
The one guy in the front row in the yellow laughing his ass off is great. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (01:42.249)
Dude, so I got to say, got to say, I feel like Australia trolled the entire world with that breakdance competitor, Rachel Gunn, aka Ray Gunn, who lost her breakdance battle matches, three of them, 54 to zero. She didn't score a fucking point. So it feels like Australia was like trolling us in a good way at an entirely different level where Russia uses, you know, like their trolling methods for evil.
Joel (01:48.942)
Mm -hmm.
Joel (02:11.662)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Sowash (02:12.069)
Australia trolls the world with love with ray gun. So yeah, this is hilarious
Joel (02:16.9)
Dude, if that's, if that's their representative, what did the, the ones that didn't make it, like what in the hell is going on in Australia that that's what break dancing is? Yeah. That's the, could, I could make the Olympics doing that. could dance like that. Trust me. I broke, I was breaking electric boogaloo back in 84, baby. I can still do some of that stuff for sure. Bring it. Bring it.
Chad Sowash (02:23.251)
You
Chad Sowash (02:26.493)
Dude, they're trolling us. They're trolling us.
Chad Sowash (02:33.438)
yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (02:40.366)
I would like to see you against ray gun that would be fucking awesome Bring it ray gun
Joel (02:46.5)
Sponsored by OutHire, friends in Australia will do that. Good God.
Chad Sowash (02:51.753)
But I gotta say, man, I hate that the Olympics are gone. 40 golds, we have like 125 in total. It was great. And it was it's always great to be an American when the Olympics are on because there's a lot of winning. I'm here in Portugal. had four total goals, medals and
Joel (02:58.616)
Mm -hmm.
Joel (03:06.499)
Yep.
Chad Sowash (03:12.785)
Yeah, so I mean it was was great to be able to sit there and watch something come on TV and then you've got Americans sometimes, especially when it was track and field in the finals. He had three fucking competitors. I mean it was like, holy shit. You know, we have half almost half the field. yeah, no, I love it. Love it.
Joel (03:19.256)
Mm -hmm.
Joel (03:29.156)
Dude, Steph Curry. That's all I got to say. I'm watching the game against France with my wife. think France was up by, it was like a three point game and I go, it's Steph Curry time and 12, four threes in a row. And it was over. It was amazing to watch. That dude is awesome. Awesome.
Chad Sowash (03:33.01)
Jesus.
Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (03:48.561)
But you always felt like the men could take over the game whenever they wanted to, right? It's just kind of like, OK, now we're going to knuckle down and we're going to take it over. Like Steph Curry was just like, I'm just going to shoot this. I'm going to shoot this bitch. And he can make it from just about anywhere in the damn arena. The thing that got me was the women's final against Paris. That was a mess. It was.
Joel (03:55.481)
Yeah.
Joel (04:12.473)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (04:13.501)
well, I'm not Paris, France. It was a mess. you didn't feel like the women had control. And they were a supremely talented team compared to the French team. the French team played great. And they just made it into just an all out brawl. It was messy.
Joel (04:31.844)
Yeah. Yeah. Steve Kerr, the, or the basketball coach said at the end, which I thought was interesting. said, we're the only, we're the only team in the Olympics where if we don't win gold, we're a massive disappointment. And I thought that was interesting, but he's probably right. He's probably right. Well, let's, let's get to some shout outs and over this ray gun shit. What do you got?
Chad Sowash (04:43.283)
Yeah, easily, easily. No, he's definitely right. He's definitely right. All right. Yeah. I've got a shout out to Chris Pyle, who is a mechanic who spends the entirety of his work days wearing a tight white tank top in boxer shorts, sitting in a recliner, answering questions on JustAnswer .com.
Joel (05:04.078)
Me too.
Chad Sowash (05:08.009)
Chris quit his $75 ,000 a year job at Ford and last year made $170 ,000 as an expert for JustAnswers .com. Shout out to Chris Pyle and Side Hustlers turned into full time and the way Joel makes his money on a daily basis.
Joel (05:26.692)
Did you say 170 K to answer questions? Damn. That's those must, those must be life changing questions that he's answering there. my shout out goes to, to Waymo. Well, Chad, we've, we've talked about Waymo quite a bit. we've seen it in action in Phoenix. if you don't know about the auto, driverless cars that have hit the streets in places like Phoenix and San Francisco, they're quite a, quite a treat. Well, anyway, they, they recently updated.
Chad Sowash (05:31.847)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, mechanical questions. Cool. That's awesome.
Chad Sowash (05:41.481)
Who?
Joel (05:56.228)
the software to honk if like honk, if you're close to another car, sort of a safety thing. Unfortunately, the honking has, has gone awry in San Francisco, the way Mo's park at night because they're not driving people in a parking lot. Well, the cars get close to each other and guess what? They honk at each other. Residents in nearby San Francisco say that they've been awakened by the honking at 4 AM.
Not a good thing to do. I'm not a morning person. I wouldn't be happy about that. Waymo says that they've corrected the problem, but for a few unhappy San Franciscans being awakened at 4 a that's not a good thing. It's better than, I guess, getting beat up during Chinese New Year festivities because of stopping, because of fireworks. But still, Waymo is ironing out some issues. They'll get it right eventually. But shout out to our friends at Waymo trying to get it right.
Chad Sowash (06:53.769)
Apparently something can be a feature and a bug at the same time. One thing that's not a bug kids, that's free stuff if you go to Chadcheese .com slash free because we give away free t -shirts, beautiful design, soft, Chad and cheese hug t -shirts from our friends at Aaron app. Beer, one winner a month receives craft beer to their doorstep from Aspen Tech Labs. Whiskey.
Joel (07:05.316)
Hmm.
Chad Sowash (07:23.603)
Two bottles of whiskey from Text Colonel, now owned by Bullhorn, who we talked to president and COO this week. That was a good time. That's a teaser, kids. This is coming probably in a couple of weeks. And if it's your birthday, you can win rum from and or with plum, but you gotta go to chadcheese .com slash free to win.
Joel (07:31.256)
Teaser. Teaser.
Joel (07:41.515)
Ugh.
Chad Sowash (07:48.306)
Mm -hmm.
in my plans.
Joel (07:52.192)
All right, Chad, some loyal listeners are celebrating another year around the sun. Happy birthday to Candice Miller, Brian Thompson, Marlee Huckabee, Peter Suchy, Alex Campo, Julie Personius, Brittany Kaiser, Dan Heverin, Cassie Newman, Chris Long, your boy, Stephen Fogarty, Richard Cho, Jerry the Godfather Crispin, celebrating a birthday, and Beverly the Queen Bee.
Chad Sowash (07:58.099)
Yes.
Chad Sowash (08:10.343)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (08:16.223)
yeah.
Joel (08:21.07)
Collins is celebrating another year around the sun. Happy birthday to some of our loyal listeners.
Chad Sowash (08:22.451)
Collins. That's right.
Chad Sowash (08:28.158)
I think I forgot something for free though. When are we giving away the Kiaura maple, the Pappy's maple syrup? When's that happening? Starting in September. Yes.
Joel (08:34.67)
That's starting in September, Chad. Yes, Keora, formerly Rec Text, is sponsoring our Pappy's maple syrup giveaway starting in September. Just in time for fall, in those flapjacks in the log cabin out in Banff, it's gonna be all good. It's gonna be a good holiday with some good tasting maple syrup.
Chad Sowash (08:47.933)
Yes, flapjacks.
Ha ha ha!
Chad Sowash (08:55.601)
Yeah, well, I told the boys they better have some on my front door step when I get home because I'm coming home September, early September. So I want to be able to give the listeners at least a review.
Joel (09:03.524)
Dude, I'm thinking, I'm thinking Hattie B's on some waffles, chicken and waffles with some Kiara maple syrup. man. I'm getting, I'm getting, I'm getting excited.
Chad Sowash (09:14.09)
Yes. And you saying Hattie B's, you saying Hattie B's because Recfest is happening in Nashville. if anybody's ever been to Nashville has probably had Hattie B's barbecue if you not, if you have not. September 12th and 13th, get your ass to Nashville for Recfest.
We're going to be in the Shaker recruitment marketing green room at Recfest in Nashville interviewing speakers, drinking beer, and hopefully eating Hattie B's. Should be a blast. Now it's great to see Shaker step it up in the conference situation, right? Because for years, they've been viewed by the market as a small family business. And that's just not the case. They're a heavy hitter in this space, and they're coming out swinging at Recfest. We're also going to be hosting a VIP
Joel (09:50.915)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (10:06.009)
IP events with great people, higher clicks and job pixel at the end of the day on day one at rec Redneck everything's rec now Redneck Riviera Jesus
More info about it as we get closer, but again, look for Redneck Reviere, Chad and Cheese in Nashville. And you can't enjoy ReqFest unless you're actually at ReqFest. So go to chadcheese .com slash events, click on register, and we hope to see you there.
Joel (10:37.732)
That's right, Chad. Shaker is not some bush league operation. want to add that. Unlike, unlike the Chicago Cubs, which were just, just swept by Cleveland. I gotta, I gotta just throw that in there for a, all the Cubs fans out there as clean sweep. That's right. That's right. And speaking of clean sweep, Chad, there has been no clean sweep when it comes to fantasy football on Chad and cheese. That's right. It's fantasy football season, sponsored by our friends at factory fixed.
Chad Sowash (10:42.334)
no,
Chad Sowash (10:50.655)
Ouch.
Joel (11:06.252)
I'm sporting this season's t -shirt. That's right. All of our contestants, we'll get one as well. You gotta go to the website, Chadcheese .com click the fantasy football link or hit Chad and I up or look at anything that we're posting on the socials. Sign up. You'll get a chance to potentially play in this year's league again, sponsored by our friends at factory fix.
Chad Sowash (11:26.0)
Mm -hmm.
Joel (11:32.622)
Are we doing news now? All right, let's do news.
Chad Sowash (11:35.037)
Yep. Or do we have a thing? Where's, where's? There we go. Topics!
Joel (11:41.611)
Actually, we got, we got some layoffs chat. Geez. You think after seven years, we'd have this podcasting thing nailed. Well, Paramount global, the parent company of CBS, MTV, and your favorite Nickelodeon announced it will begin laying off about 15%, roughly 2000 of its us -based staff starting immediately. About 2000 positions will be effective, but wait, there's more. Cisco is slashing 5 ,500 jobs.
Chad Sowash (11:46.009)
Okay, okay.
Yeah. Yes.
Chad Sowash (11:55.848)
Mmm.
Chad Sowash (12:07.602)
Idiots.
Joel (12:10.82)
As it announces in its quarterly earnings report profits of $10 .3 billion. Chad, what do you make of all the layoffs this week?
Chad Sowash (12:22.333)
Well, first and foremost, thanks to our friends over at HRGreatvine .com for the Paramount story because people are asking us all the time, where do you guys get your news? Where are you getting this from? Well, we get it from everywhere, but more specifically, I subscribe to HRGreatvine .com. So that's one of the sources. So Paramount layoffs, as the business pushes for profitable growth, McCarthy.
Robbins and Cheeks they have three fucking CEOs the layoffs they said the layoffs would focus on quote -unquote Redundant functions and streamlining corporate teams end quote. So can you feel the irony here? We have three fucking CEOs So which of the two are going to be layoff laid off for redundancy number one, right?
Joel (13:08.046)
Mm
Chad Sowash (13:09.193)
This is ridiculous. How do you have three CEOs and then say, we're getting rid of 15 % because of redundancies? The fuck is this?
Joel (13:22.564)
I mean, paramounts a mess. Paramounts a total mess. acquisition. don't, mean, that's just, that's a, yeah, that's a, that's a train wreck. That's going way too slow. That thing needs to get put out. It's misery. Cisco. there are some big layoffs happening at big companies that we know. we've talked about Intel recently who, yeah, let's lay off a bunch of people after we've taken a lot of billions of dollars, from the government. look,
Chad Sowash (13:23.089)
It's fucking crazy. Yes, they are.
Joel (13:51.332)
More profitably, this is good for stocks. think Cisco is up 5 % on the day following the layoffs. Wall Street loves this stuff. Year of efficiency, AI is replacing some of these jobs potentially. I mean, it's great if you're a big company, layoffs galore, more profits, shareholders are happy, but you're laying off tens of thousands of people. And that's a problem. Where are these people going to land? Are there enough startups to
to support them? they all going to go to Upwork? This has got to come to a head at some point. I don't know what it looks like when it does, but we're reporting way too many companies and way too many layoffs at big companies for it not to have some sort of an impact going down. Hopefully no more layoffs for the year. We won't report about layoffs anymore in 2024.
Chad Sowash (14:41.705)
So Cisco, I mean, is the blockbuster of the internet. Blockbuster didn't move to streaming services fast enough, and Cisco didn't move to the cloud. Before cloud computing, everybody needed to have their own servers, and those servers needed switches and routers. Networks. Cisco owned the business. Now Amazon, Google, and Microsoft's cloud computing businesses are drinking Cisco's fucking milkshake. This is a failure to move with the market.
And like Monster .com and CareerBuilder didn't move with the market, indeed sucked them dry. So that's Cisco's problem. But let's talk about another huge problem. And I'll use fast food as an example for you, Joel, because I know you love it so much.
Joel (15:18.318)
Mm -hmm.
Joel (15:22.742)
I appreciate that after chicken and waffles.
Chad Sowash (15:26.217)
Brian Nicol, the CEO of Chipotle, becomes the new CEO of flailing Starbucks. So at Starbucks, new CEO Brian Nicol was eligible for an annual equity award worth $23 million and would receive an additional stock grant of $75 million for giving up his shares in Chipotle. Nicol initial...
His initial salary, everybody knows that doesn't matter for a CEO because they get paid off of comp, is 1 .6 million at Starbucks. He will also receive a signing bonus of $10 million. So as we talk about layoffs, we have to understand the root cause. With Cisco, it was their inability to evolve. And with Starbucks, the problem with the business today is that a man, Brian Nichols,
steps into new Starbucks ivory tower and gets handed $108 million, which is the equivalent of 3 ,462 Starbucks full -time workers at $15 an hour annual wage. 3 ,462 employees. Now imagine if you paid that over 3 ,400 employees more money. Do you think that they might buy another latte or fucking muffin and boost sales? Get the money back.
Joel (16:36.782)
Mm
Chad Sowash (16:43.943)
into the hands of the people who are spending it. And Brian ain't that motherfucking guy, right? So we're not putting cash back into the economy. And that's why sales suck. We have the issues, obviously with Cisco, they've pretty much killed themselves. We've got the issue with Paramount. Again, they're not consolidating fast enough and they have three fucking CEOs and they talk about redundancy. This is not an issue of the market. This is an issue of
shitty leadership.
Joel (17:15.94)
You can buy a lot of burritos with that kind of salary, Chad. I just want to say that, you know, it's been interesting. So you Intel same boat as Cisco used to be hot shit. Used to be a hot startup. They're getting their ass kicked by Taiwan. Cisco was getting their ass kicked, Paramount. Okay. I mentioned MTV and Nickelodeon. When was the last time you watched MTV? The nineties, maybe two thousands. don't know. I like, it's not relevant anymore. And we're talking about these big layoffs. Look, they,
Chad Sowash (17:20.423)
Yes. Yes.
Chad Sowash (17:29.437)
Yeah. Yep.
Chad Sowash (17:39.931)
I, yeah, it's not relevant anymore. It's not relevant.
Joel (17:45.794)
You've brought this up before. They over hired when money was free, probably tried to find a new, new income stream or some way to spark. the business didn't happen. Now they're in between the rock and a hard place. A lot of people that they over hired are going to have to go. The businesses are failing. It's a bad, it's a bad situation, but let's go to earnings season. Speaking of, speaking of bad, bad situations, some of our faves reported earnings recently.
Chad Sowash (18:09.065)
Whoo!
Joel (18:14.852)
We touched on Zip last week, but let's dig in a little bit. ZipRecruiter reported soft hiring demand resulting in second quarter revenue falling 27 .4 % year over year to 123 .7 million. The stock is down 41 % year to date. Revenue at Recruit Holdings, HR Technology Division, which we know includes Indeed and Glassdoor, fell 2 .5 % year over year. US job postings on Indeed.
both free and paid continue to decline year over year. Revenue at talent platform Upwork rose 14 .5 % to 193 .1 million reporting active clients rose by 6 % year over year. And our friends down under seek their revenue slip 6 % year over year while EBITDA declined 14%. Their shares are down 20 % year to date. The good, the bad and the ugly. Chad, your thoughts on earnings season.
Chad Sowash (19:15.569)
Okay, so I see Indeed and Upwork's numbers intertwined, and here's why. As companies, and there multiple CEOs, cut full -time employees, they still have to get work done. So instead of going to Indeed with your job for full -time employees, you're looking toward project -based workers that aren't FTE. And since Upwork is trying to put a halt,
to their initial race to the bottom model with better enterprise gigs for more cash, they seem like the short -term winner in this scenario until the cycle swings back to FTEs. From a SIG standpoint, let's put this into context. Australia's GDP isn't even in the top 10 countries in the world. And they're trying to string together Asia -packed job sites, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, New Zealand. And mean, hell,
Thailand and Philippines don't even speak the same fucking language, right? I mean, they're like 20 plus languages within just those five sites I just talked about. So this reminds me of Monster .com trying to crack the Asian market with the same site structure and business model as their successful American site. It doesn't work. Then if you create separate sites for each of those markets, it's like herding cats. Imagine running seven different businesses with seven different business models in countries
that speak 20 plus languages. It's nearly impossible to scale. And so that's seek. It's going to be very hard for them to be able to gain market share and to keep it to keep it tight. Zip Recruiter, fairly simple. You need to do one thing, kids. We talked about this. We're going to continue to talk about this. You got to fire in. The guy had a good run, but it's over. You got to know when it's time to graduate to the next to the next level. And you guys haven't been able to do
You gotta get a new CEO. You need an adult in the room.
Joel (21:21.252)
So the silver lining recruits business overall is pretty good. Their stock is almost up 40 % year over year. Apparently you need to diversify and get into staffing. If you want to have a successful business, the whole job posting advertising thing doesn't seem to be to be paying off as much as it should. Look, these sites have no
Chad Sowash (21:33.619)
diversification is good.
Joel (21:49.794)
No growth and there's no catalyst for future growth. Everyone's talking about a slowing down economy, fewer jobs, AI is going to take jobs, we're upscaling more and more of our workforce, sourcing is more of a way to get talent, programmatic has taken a piece out of all this stuff, there's the commoditization of jobs. This isn't like Philip Morris where they can buy Zen tobacco pouches and replace cigarettes.
There is no replacement for what these guys do. They're not innovating themselves out of a bad situation. You talked about Ian, will a new CEO bring ZipRecruiter innovation? I don't know. It's not like the most innovative CEOs in the world are standing in line to take over job board jobs, right? It's not exactly the crème de la crème of CEOs that are out there to take these jobs. Upwork is a little different to me. They did show growth. That's an instance of
How much is AI going to impact these jobs? And we talked about it before. Look, if I want a banner ad, I used to go to Upwork to get a banner ad. If I needed like a blog post, I'd go out to fire and get a blog post. Now, if I need an image, any of that stuff, I can go to AI and get it for free. So that's a lot of people that aren't working that used to be doing these things. And we're looking at development jobs being more and more hurt by AI. So the, the, the jury on Upwork,
Chad Sowash (23:11.953)
Mm
Joel (23:13.986)
Yes, we'll contract more people. Yes, we'll be a more remote workforce. Yes, we'll be contracting more folks, but how much is AI going to take a bite out of that business? I don't know. So the jury's still out in my opinion on, on Upwork. ZipRecruiter screwed. Seek is screwed. Indeed. Till they get into staffing, staffing apparently is still a pretty good business, but the job posting thing is not working. So this looks, this just looks like.
a car wreck all the way around for me, an earnings season. Look, the numbers are the numbers. You can talk to me all you want on LinkedIn about these are good business, they're not going anywhere. And I don't know if I can call you the doctor yet, but we know that you bought the job board doctor. So I don't know if you got your PhD in job boardology yet. Just let me know when we can start calling you that. But look, these are tough businesses. They're great. They're great frozen yogurt.
franchises in your local market, but they're not great global businesses and the numbers prove that.
Chad Sowash (24:17.161)
Well, that's the thing is that they don't have to be great global businesses, right? They don't. You can have 100 ,000 job boards that are out there that are all doing something, nation doing it well, right? Now, if you take a look at Upwork, you're conflating a couple of things. First off, Upwork is moving up to enterprise. So it's more project based work. It's not doing your logo anymore, right? It's more of a project. So a logo along with schemes and those types of things. So that they're trying to actually go upstream
opposed to race to the bottom. And that to me again...
We're looking at employment cycles. You've got people shedding and laying off. Okay. Well, then you're not going to be looking for full -time employees, which means you don't need to go in Indeed because I don't look for contractors on Indeed. Where do I go? shit. Upwork, right? So this is a cycle. Indeed's going to have to do one thing. They're going to have to buy Upwork or something like that. And they're going to have to diversify. Now, maybe they won't. Maybe they'll just go right into staffing. The biggest problem with that is, though, is cannibalism.
Joel (25:13.348)
flex.
Chad Sowash (25:19.623)
cannibalizing what they already have. So we'll see how it works. I think it's smart for them to push into staffing. Although the Upwork side of the house is still a piece in the market that they're not touching. And if they are, they're doing a really bad job of it, right? So yeah, it's to me, it's just the job dynamics and the different types of audiences that they're going after. And again,
Joel (25:45.518)
Yeah, k
Chad Sowash (25:47.645)
Being able to take a look at the ecosystem of job sites, I think is incredibly interesting from the standpoint of if you take a look at Europe and you know that all the different European countries have their own number one job sites, right? It's an ecosystem. It works together within those specific areas and, you know, they're great businesses within those areas. You don't have to be a global powerhouse per se and or go IPO and fuck yourself like Zip did.
Joel (26:01.209)
Mm -hmm.
Joel (26:13.956)
Yeah. Upwork to me, think is just something to watch. I think it's incredibly interesting. You mentioned enterprise, but we've also had people on the show talk about big companies don't want their IP in the hands of contractors. They want to control sort of who works there. And some companies will have that mentality. I think it's trading at 10 times earnings, which is pretty cheap. A lot of analysts think that the sell off is overdone. So I think, I think Upwork, the jury's still out. It's going to be fun to watch. Frankly,
Seek and zip should not be public companies. should, Apollo should come in or whoever, buy this thing up, chop it up, sell it to somebody. you know, zip recruiter went public at 19 bucks a share. It's trading between eight and $9 probably go into five soon. Like these are, these don't need to be public companies. I think indeed flex is going to be really interesting and how they get into staffing, but yeah, two of the.
Chad Sowash (26:46.981)
No. No.
Chad Sowash (26:52.371)
Take it private.
Joel (27:10.116)
50 % of these should not be public companies, frankly.
Joel (27:17.732)
Well, let's get to, let's go from that to rapid fire. What is rapid fire? You might ask, basically it's not by yourself, but it kind of feels like it. talk about three companies that were in the news. and just our quick takes on what we think about what happened. Let's start with sprockets, which makes me giggle every time I think of it, because I remember the nineties and SNL, but a lot of our younger, a lot of our younger viewers won't mention or recognize the, this time on sprockets when we dance,
Chad Sowash (27:22.257)
Chad Sowash (27:39.379)
Touch my monkey.
Joel (27:45.828)
Anyway, Sprockets is calling itself an AI driven hiring platform. They've acquired our work. That's with an H a Boston based company focused on AI driven recruitment and retention for hourly workers. Our work funded in 2007 by our friend, Rikki Morris. We did a voices with him. Check that out at Chadcheese .com. They say that they've served 10 ,000 quick serve restaurant locations. This acquisition, Chad, what are your thoughts?
Chad Sowash (28:17.033)
First question is, do you change your name from Sprockets to Ourworld?
I mean, that's my first question. I mean, it's ourwork .com. You like sprockets because you like Mike Myers, Michael Myers. It looks like most of the industry's sprockets targets are great fits with our work. I think the hardest part is going to be integration. And this to me looks like more of an aqua hire.
Joel (28:22.232)
That's a tough one. That's it. I like sprockets, man. I don't know. Touch my monkey, baby. Touch my monkey at sprockets.
Chad Sowash (28:45.447)
than it does anything else. So consolidation, my friend, that's that to me is good. And this is a very hard, hard industry when you're working with franchises, unless you're working with big corporate and they're feeding down to the franchises. Again, this is more like herding cats, right? You've got to go franchise to franchise. Obviously, some of these franchisees have multiple franchises, but still, that's a hard, hard nut to crack.
Joel (29:11.748)
Did you know Mike Myers was Canadian?
Chad Sowash (29:15.558)
Of course.
Joel (29:18.254)
So I'd go with sprockets. Mike Myers doesn't have much going on these days. Have him be your spokesperson. I think that'd be a great, great move for the company. So sprockets to me feel it. feels like a poor man's paradox, chat bot sort of same things, but then they're integrated with paradox. So I'm a little confused about exactly what's going on. They only have other two other integrations that they tout, on the site, all the data for them.
Chad Sowash (29:43.251)
Mm
Joel (29:46.18)
on, on LinkedIn is not great. they raised $10 million. Their head count is down 25 % over the, over two years ago. it, just does not seem like a company on the fast track, to big bucks to me, our work since they got their $2 .5 million. I think that was in 2020, 2021, their head count is cratered.
Chad Sowash (29:55.421)
Yeah.
Joel (30:12.482)
since then, all signs of what's going on there is just total annihilation of the company. I had talked about this on, the shred, their CEO sprocket CEO guy named AJ Rishishi. I think that's how you pronounce it. Messaged me on LinkedIn. said, quote, I think there was some misinformation about our work status in the market. lots of shade from their competitors about to get spicy. So.
Chad Sowash (30:13.789)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (30:18.099)
Mm
Joel (30:40.516)
It's going to get spicy. It's South Carolina style with our work and sprockets aside from a cool name, a fun name to say, I don't see anything going on that you should be excited about going on between our work and sprockets. We don't know if Rakeem is going to be maintained. That wasn't in the press release. I'd like to think that they would have mentioned that if he was. So guess we'll see on that one, but to me, there's nothing to see here. carry on.
And that brings us to our next rapid fire story. Bandana, a New York based startup that focuses on helping lower wage workers find better paying jobs closer to home, reducing commute times has raised $8 .5 million, bringing their total to $12 .3 million. Chad, what you got on Bandana?
Chad Sowash (31:34.141)
Yeah, we've heard this story before. It's interesting. Eight point five million dollars. That's that's a great round. But the founder is a Harvard grad and McKinsey consultant. So he's smart, but not but not smart enough to stay out of this industry and more specifically this segment. We just talk about sprockets and a company.
I don't believe we've ever heard of before, obviously Sprockets, acquiring another hourly work app. This to me just doesn't make sense. We have so many people getting into this space thinking they have the answer, the solution, when they don't really know what the fucking problem is. And that's what I'm seeing here, unfortunately.
Joel (32:20.74)
bananas, bandanas, what are going to do? look, I, every week we do the show, I go to the website, I do like a quick perusal of what's going on. I I've been around long enough that I can kind of figure out what they do with a pretty quick take. This is a job board. This is, I mean, like it's a local job board. it's New York based, the biggest city in the country. So they're bound to sort of get it right at least twice. So, know, twice in 24 hours, like a clock.
Chad Sowash (32:21.767)
The bandana.
Joel (32:48.388)
they got a great domain bandana .com is fantastic. they're touting 150 ,000 job seekers that they've gotten organically. they're looking to grow in, where do you go when you're on the East coast? When you want to grow chat, you go to the West coast, right? So they're going to open up shop in California. basically this job board, that has Ivy league connections and dad's probably venture capitalist or know someone that has money.
Chad Sowash (33:07.091)
Mm
Joel (33:16.472)
got some funding to drive this thing. You know, can they sell it to indeed at some point, maybe will they sell it to private equity at some point? Maybe they probably saw the story about monster and Apollo. don't know. But anyway, nothing to see here just like sprockets. it's fun name to say, and, it's kind of fun to talk about, but, this is nothing, not this is much to do about nothing, which brings us to our final.
Story in rapid fire. Raleigh, North Carolina based CloudPay has secured 120 million in funding, bringing its total raised over the past four years to $228 million, founded back in 96. CloudPay serves over 280 corporate clients globally, processing millions of pay slips across 168 currencies. Yes, the most boring stuff usually is the most
profitable. Chad, what are your thoughts on Cloud Pay?
Chad Sowash (34:19.945)
Yeah, I think so what we're doing is we're seeing a lot of models changing and then you're seeing a lot of these companies. This one's been around for 28 years trying to stay in the same model. And I really think that you're going to see EOR companies like Deal and Atlas eat companies like this for lunch.
Because they are starting to they have a vehicle to actually get into different markets the employee of record market and then have an easy button for pay Right. So I think that's the thing is that we take a look at some of these and say wow This is this is a pretty big market. Yeah, but the problem is market penetration been around for 28 years Why haven't they been fucking acquired? Not to mention they they work with Oracle and SAP. Why haven't they been acquired? Why aren't they bigger?
Right. So for me, I see a deal, I see an Atlas, I see a lot of the velocity go globals of the world. They're starting to shift into payment platforms per se. And their their entry vehicle is EO are. That's what I see next. So unfortunately, I'm really bearish on this one.
Joel (35:27.396)
This is kind of what I think about this business. Look, we talked about off -boarding last week and how boring that is. It's sort of depressing to talk about layoffs, but these are very profitable businesses because people need them. They've been around since 96. You mentioned the threat of the deals of the world. That's coming. And you didn't even mention the daily pay folks, right? How many people are going to move to paying people daily with these services?
Chad Sowash (35:38.886)
Mm
Joel (35:56.59)
There's a ton of these companies, PayCore, Paycom, Bill and others. They're all public. They're all in the shitter. Frankly. I think that, that cloud pay has been around so long. They've got, they've raised money. They've been around. Someone said, look, we got to go public before we go, before we get destroyed. Let's put some money into this. Let's build some brand. Let's build some advertising. Let's get some, get some heat on this. Let's go public. Let's all make some money and call it a day. But this.
Three stories in rapid fire, all very different, but all much ado about nothing. But be back after the break and we'll talk about some companies that are probably worth your time and our time in talking about.
Chad Sowash (36:43.665)
Let's kill the power to the people because we only have like 10 minutes.
Joel (36:46.956)
Okay. All right. Let's talk about Big G Chad, a rare bid to break up Alphabet inks. Google is one of the options being considered by the justice department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market. No shit, but wait, there's more Google goodness. Big G's former CEO and chairman, Eric Schmidt says Google fell behind on AI because of wait for it. Remote work.
Chad Sowash (36:51.591)
Gee, babe.
Joel (37:15.234)
Schmidt said in an interview, quote, Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. And the reason startups work is because people work like hell. Chad, your thoughts on all things Google this week.
Chad Sowash (37:31.881)
Yeah, antitrust, this is good. mean, monopolies like Google search, which own over 80 % of the global market has hampered or snuffed out innovation in a variety of ways, like paying Apple $20 billion in 2022 to be Apple's default search engine.
Competitors simply cannot compete with Google and Apple devices when they're hardwired to Google search. So this is great. They should be doing this. They should be stopping it. And they should also be breaking some of this shit up. The work for home thing, mean, again, you can do both. Work -life balance and also get shit done. mean, it...
Winning doesn't mean you have to be in the fucking office. And this just demonstrates that again, you need to get we need to get past these old crotch the 1950s fucking leaders who look for you to fucking Yeah, it's it's fucking ridiculous. We need to actually get to the next level of leaders who understand that leadership isn't looking over somebody's shoulder isn't looking for them at the water cooler.
Joel (38:27.768)
Models, yeah, business.
Chad Sowash (38:43.505)
And is focused on getting shit done projects sales calls customer service Whatever it might be products widgets being sold widgets being made all of those things can be monitored From afar or hybrid right so it just it's it's it's just old -style thinking unfortunately
Joel (39:05.014)
It is old style thinking and it's pretty stupid actually.
Joel (39:11.694)
So the, Google antitrust is obviously interesting. think we've seen this story before. it was called Microsoft back in the day and Microsoft put their browser on every computer. So there was antitrust on the browser wars. Obviously fast forward to today. Explorer means nothing. everyone's on Chrome or Safari or, or Firefox. I think the same will happen today, but you have a much more diverse business with Google and you have the opportunity to break that up much.
Chad Sowash (39:17.833)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, 2000.
Joel (39:41.45)
easier, I think, than Microsoft, who was sort of a mono -mono -mono product at the time. You could take away YouTube. YouTube's a better product. If you created a separate advertising model on YouTube versus Google, that's very interesting. You mentioned the Apple thing. Apple, from what I understand, the internal professionals and knowledge and have been working on their own search engine. How do we tweak what you search on so far, your iPhone is?
Chad Sowash (39:53.437)
Mm
Joel (40:11.32)
I think it'd be really interesting if, if antitrust said, yes, Google, cannot be the default on Safari. And because of that, Apple goes out and buys Duck Duck Go, or maybe they go by perplexity or some other like AI startup. They've already, they're already partnered with OpenAI. So I think it'd be good for the search business. Like I was an SEO back in the day, there were multiple search engines. It was kind of fun. You had different algorithms, different ones. So that could be a whole new opportunity for,
Chad Sowash (40:24.733)
and they become antitrust targets.
Joel (40:40.142)
for job sites in our industry to like target certain search engines and be really good on that as opposed to have, have to worry about one, especially when that one becomes a competitor. that's not a great thing either. And then on the, the work from home, I just like, I just, I don't get it when Nike CEO says like the work from home has hurt our business. No, what's hurt your business is hookah and on, which are innovating better than you and branding better than you and building.
Chad Sowash (40:50.76)
Yes.
Joel (41:08.292)
companies better than you. The same thing as with Google. Like you think open AI is an at the office 100 % of the time business. No, it's not. And none of your other competitors are either Facebook isn't Microsoft isn't Amazon isn't none of these companies that are kicking your ass in certain areas are not all at the job nine to five 20, you know, seven days, five days a week, et cetera. You need to adapt to the hybrid remote, workplace.
Or else you're going to get your butt kicked and you're going to lose out on the best talent. Like, do you want shitty talent that's in the office five days a week, or do you want the best talent that's working sort of their schedule, working for your company? think most companies are going to say, we want the best talent. They have to work from home. They needed a hybrid hybrid model. That's what we're going to go with. So to me, it's just like yelling at the clouds, the government and telling the kids to get off your lawn. It's just a matter time before, you have to realize that.
It's not a moral issue. It's not like we're not innovating. It's just you're failing as a, as an executive and as, as an organization.
Chad Sowash (42:13.54)
Stupid. As a leader.
Joel (42:17.092)
Do you want to try to fit in Power to the People or do you think you have no, like we have to jump right? Okay, all right. We'll be right back with Olympians on OnlyFans. That's right.
Chad Sowash (42:21.373)
Nope. Nope. Let's advert.
Joel (42:33.24)
All right, Chad, OnlyFans is back on the podcast. know that you've, you've missed it. Olympic athletes are turning to OnlyFans to fund their Olympic dreams due to lack of financial support from the Olympic system, which is criticized for being broken. Despite the platform's association with naughty content, many athletes post non -pornographic material, using it as a lifeline for income. The international Olympic committee has not shown concern.
while athletes and advocacy groups argue that the current funding model forces athletes into financial hardship, sometimes akin to modern day slavery. Chad, your thoughts on Olympians on OnlyFans.
Chad Sowash (43:13.799)
Here's a little video of my thoughts.
Chad Sowash (44:04.681)
I'm sure it did. I'm sure it did. Seriously. I mean, these are amateur, amateur athletes. They don't get paid shit for the most part. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to only fans it, I mean, it was funny because Julie and I were talking about track, right? We were watching the four by one, four by four. We were watching these girls come out she's like, my God, all of these girls are fucking models.
Joel (44:11.417)
Mm
Joel (44:30.647)
Mm
Chad Sowash (44:31.379)
I mean, they're beautiful. They've got great bodies. And one of the guys on this article actually said, hey, it's a treat to look at a body that trains for six hours, six days a week. That's how he gets money on OnlyFans.
Joel (44:47.108)
Follow the money, baby. Look, this isn't, this isn't red range having the part -time job. and then just showing up at the Olympics and winning gold medals. these folks train 20 like all year for four years to compete at this level. They need to make a living. need to make a buck. and I say more power to them and thank God they have the ability to do this with something like only fans. More power to you. And I think that, this issue is more and more coming to a head.
Chad Sowash (45:01.201)
Yes.
Joel (45:16.58)
You have Michael Johnson creating like an, a year round, track league where guys can make guys and gals can make money throughout the year, running track across the world. Right. I'd love to see these. I'd love to see the 100 meter relay or a 400 meter relay and the, the y yard dash all year, or in the four years between that. So, and then you have like the steroid Olympics, which is coming, which is like they're, they'll enable people to take drugs.
That's going to be a whole XFL kind of thing that's going on. So look, it's very competitive. They need to make money. I say more power to them. It's a, it's a brand new world, but Chad, it's not a brand new show because we're doing a dad joke again, but this one is Olympic Olympic based. What did the hot dog say when it won the gold medal? What did the hot dog say when it won the gold medal?
Chad Sowash (45:47.986)
Yes, it will.
Chad Sowash (46:08.467)
get between my buns.
Joel (46:10.313)
I'm a wiener. I'm a wiener. Get it?
We out.
Chad Sowash (46:19.485)
We out.
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