David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…Is that lip service, David? Like, is it like how if you want to run for president you're supposed to say like “I’m not interested in being president” and then like you reluctantly do it so you don’t seem power hungry. Like, is it like, “Oh, you know, we never want to sell out” and then you inspire your employees and you're mission-driven forever and then until the day that it happens it’s never going to happen? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you could say so but then we’ve talked about this in so many episodes whether about Snap or about Facebook. These companies, the majority of them, obviously not Snap and Facebook, but have been private for so long now and they just keep staying so, like you know, Uber and Airbnb, all these companies and many, many others. Certainly could be public companies and probably should be. But the founders are for whatever reason either delaying or even saying they don’t want to. But I think also like there’s a tension here. I mean, on the one hand, I think we’ve been painting it for the last few minutes as bad or at least that this is a disconnect which it is. But on the other hand, if you go back to sort of what Blue Bottle is and this whole Third Wave of coffee which we’re using as an analogy for the state of the tech world right now, does it make sense for Blue Bottle to be a public company? I mean, it makes sense for Starbucks because Starbucks’ goal is to be everywhere and on every corner. But if Blue Bottle’s goal is to be about the cup of coffee and what is actually in the cup, does it make sense to be as big? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, Blue Bottle has 40 locations, right? They have plenty of growth ahead of them if they want to. Starbucks has 24,000 locations. You don’t need to be a public company to be a 40-location coffee shop. I’m actually very curious too. They also have this online business selling directly to consumers I’m super curious what the revenue mix looks like. I would suspect a lot more of it is either buying coffee in the stores in liquid form or buying the beans in the stores and then the online subscription business is smaller. But interesting to think about that too because then you start to think about it, still not an internet company. I’m really sick of the fact that, like, oh, we sell it online and people subscribe to it. That’s a slight business model shift but ultimately at fixed cost, distribution cost, still not an internet business. But then you at least drift closer to something where you're like, “Okay,” this is different than all the brick and mortar stuff that exist today.…

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