Down Round

Nike: The brand of brands. When it comes to brands, they're top dog. When it comes to returning money to shareholders, less so. At least this year. As Nike have pursued the quest to become as close as an apparel company can be to a tech business, their share price has tanked – this year by over 30%. A former executive's LinkedIn post went about as viral as a LinkedIn post can go, lamenting Nike's turn to e-commerce and performance marketing thanks to their current CEO, the former head of ServiceNow, and advice from McKinsey. Very Down Round areas. Links: Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction - Massimo Giunco See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's quarterly earnings season, and some of our favourite tech companies are looking a bit shaky. Not because they're not making money – they are – but because they're spending it on new data centres and AI research.  In this episode, we take stock of the current earnings reports, and touch on a few interesting tidbits like Amazon's softness in e-commerce and Intel's moment of reckoning. Also, when we recorded this, markets were teetering on the edge of meltdown. So get ready for some adjacent chat there.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta, shares his insights on the groundbreaking open-source Llama 3.1 model, designed for widespread accessibility without fees. He explains the shift towards open-source AI as a competitive strategy against giants like OpenAI. The discussion also navigates the evolving social media landscape, addressing authenticity in public personas amid AI-generated content. Plus, the ethical considerations surrounding AI management are revealed, challenging conventional narratives and highlighting the need for responsible leadership.

Recently, the eponymous founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz went public in announcing their support for Trump in order to protect what they called "little tech" – as opposed to "big tech" To them, little tech basically means startups, which they believe are under threat from "bad government policies". While big tech is trying to entrench it's advantage with regulatory capture, little tech just wants to party. We discuss the new battlelines, and – crucially – tell you which team to support. Links The Little Tech Agenda – Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You are no doubt aware that the world suffered a fairly significant IT outage at the end of last week, affecting everything from TV broadcasts to supermarkets and airports. Turns out it was because of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike releasing a thoroughly bung update to Windows machines. In this ep, we talk about the incident, how susceptible the world is to single points of IT failure, and other assorted and sundry topics.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A recent political incident involving the former president provide a stress test of X under Elon Musk. It also provides us with an opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison of how it was reported on the various post-twitter clones: Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon.  Additionally, the several loud noises at the Trump rally led to a cascade of Silicon Valley stalwarts to endorse the Republican nominee for president – we examine the profound political shift that has occurred over the past 8 years in our usual cool-headed and analytical manner. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Real estate tech is an underrated part of the broader tech ecosystem. From listing and buying platforms to property management apps and everything in-between, there's a suite of tech solutions for selling, buying, renting, investing and just having a squiz at property. In this ep, we take a little tour through real estate tech, which mostly ends up as a struggle session.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. While the northern hemisphere is on summer holiday, we grind. Given there's not much tech news floating around as a result, we continued the discussion of AI from last episode – this time getting wildly philosophical about legal rights and the art of creation. With a few diversions along the way ;). Links I Made This – Hypercritical See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the past few weeks, several equity reports – from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Barclays – have sounded the alarm on the amount of capital expenditure currently being spent by the tech industry on building out AI capacity. Analysts and investors are asking: how are you going to pay for all this? And how long do we have to wait for that? In this ep, we talk about the current discourse, connect it to the dot com bubble, and arrive at a 100% correct take no one could possibly dispute.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australia's experiment with forcing big tech to pay media companies like Nine and News Corp for content is running into choppy waters, as Meta refuses to play ball and Google seems less keen on news than it once was.  In this episode, we catch up with the media and how it's handling today's dynamics of the internet and – especially – the new era of AI deals.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.