Tesla Fires Supercharger Team & Can AI Save the Fast-Food Industry?

This episode discusses the implications of Tesla firing its Supercharger team and explores how AI might influence the fast-food industry.

1. Tesla's decision to fire its Supercharger team reflects a strategic pivot to focus more on autonomous driving technologies.
2. The move has caused confusion and concern among industry observers, as it seems to undermine the essential EV charging infrastructure.
3. Fast-food companies are increasingly looking to AI to address operational challenges and enhance customer service.
4. Consumer spending patterns are changing, with a noticeable shift towards more price sensitivity due to economic conditions.
5. There's a disparity in spending habits among different demographic groups, notably between higher income, older consumers and middle to lower income individuals.

1: Introduction

Hosts Neil Freiman and Toby Howell open the episode with a light discussion on recent company merchandise and a new offering from Wendy's. Neil Freiman: "This is joy in a cup."

2: Economic Updates and Inflation

The conversation turns to economic conditions, particularly inflation and interest rates, and how these are affecting consumer spending and the overall economy. Neil Freiman: "Inflation has remained frustratingly high."

3: Fast-Food Industry and AI Integration

The hosts discuss how AI could revolutionize the fast-food industry by improving efficiency and addressing labor shortages. Toby Howell: "How can brands experiment with AI?"

4: Tesla's Strategic Shift

The main segment covers Tesla's controversial decision to disband its Supercharger team, focusing on the potential impacts on the EV market. Neil Freiman: "It's laying the groundwork for the entire EV industry."

5: Wrap-Up

The episode concludes with a discussion on personal finance and digital trends, including a quirky segment on optimal movie lengths. Neil Freiman: "92 minutes is the perfect movie time."

1. Evaluate EV Options: For those in the market for an EV, consider the broader implications of Tesla's strategy shift on charging infrastructure.
2. Leverage AI in Business: Businesses in various sectors could explore AI solutions to enhance efficiency and customer engagement.
3. Mindful Spending: In light of economic pressures, consumers should reassess their spending habits, particularly in discretionary categories.
4. Invest in Digital Skills: As AI and digital transformations advance, upskilling in these areas can provide significant career advantages.
5. Stay Informed on Economic Trends: Keeping abreast of economic indicators can help individuals and businesses make more informed decisions.

Episode 314: Neal and Toby unpack the Fed’s meeting to keep interest rates steady where rich Americans could be a key reason. Then, fast food brands are feeling the hurt across the board with weakening demand… Except for… Wingstop? Next, Elon Musk makes a baffling decision to fire Tesla’s entire Supercharging team. Also, Neal’s favorite numbers include Binance, digital cameras, nearsightedness, and a bonus number on movie run times. Lastly, LinkedIn is taking a page out of the New York Times by introducing games on its platforms that can be shared with your network.

People

Neil Freiman, Toby Howell

Companies

Tesla, McDonald's, Starbucks, Wendy's, Cinnabon

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Neil Freiman
Good morning, brew daily show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today Starbucks got slammed on the market. Why does its stock taste so burnt?

Toby Howell
Then? Things are getting a lot more competitive in corporate America because LinkedIn is launching games. It's Thursday, May 2. Let's ride, Neil. I think it's time for another mug plug in.

Case you missed it, yesterday we launched a morning Brew daily mug. On one side it has our beautiful logo on it, but on the other side it says, let's ride, Neil. Already people are asking for more phrases on more mugs. Let's run it back tomorrow. I wish you all well.

I'm Toby Howell. We have a lot of catchphrases. They definitely don't want that one. But you have a lot of catchphrases. It was awesome to see the response from you all yesterday when the mug went live.

Neil Freiman
And the best part is we bought enough inventory this time, so there's still time to get yours. Toby, you want to share the link or should I? You know what? No. I'll do it today.

Toby Howell
Head to shop dot morning brew.com. That's shop dot morning brew.com to get yours today. And now let's take a moment to hear about the bundle of joy that is the wendy's cinnabon pull apart. Neil, this is joy in a cup. It really is.

Neil Freiman
It's a partnership between Wendy's and Cinnabon. And it involves warm cinnamon sugar rolled dough with a dollop of signature cream cheese frosting. But my favorite part is just how easy it is to eat. The pull apart aspect is way underrated. Everyone knows that the best part of a cinnamon roll is the middle.

Toby Howell
This is a bunch of middles stuck together. I know why you love that part so much, Toby. Because it's delicious. Well, yes, but you're a middle child. It speaks to you about time middle children got a little love, right?

Youngest, oldest, middle children alike head to Wendy's dot Morningbrew to try the new Cinnabun pull apart. Jerome Powell is like that stern dad in the driver's seat on a long road trip. The kids keep asking, are we there yet? And he keeps replying, no. Shut up.

Neil Freiman
At the conclusion of its meeting yesterday, the Fed did not change interest rates and signaled they would stay elevated for the foreseeable future since inflation has not yet returned to its target levels. Powell said recent readings on inflation have come in above expectations and that he would need greater confidence that price growth was moderating. But before lowering borrowing costs. And it's true, inflation has remained frustratingly high after falling rapidly during 2023. Investors thought that would continue into 2024, and this would be the year the Fed goes on a rate cutting rampage.

But that proved to be a false hope. So far in 2024, inflation has stopped falling and leveled off above where the Fed wants it to be. But at the same time, the economy and hiring have stayed remarkably strong, defying high interest rates. So there's little urgency for the Fed to do much of anything except keep a steady hand on the wheel. Toby, what were your takeaways?

Toby Howell
My takeaways is you have a lot more contentious road trips than I did. No, shut up. But, yes, you're absolutely right. Jerome Powell basically has to just keep regurgitating what he's been saying time after time, because not a lot is changing. Businesses continue to hire, consumers continue to spend.

Policymakers are almost looking in the mirror and saying, what? Where the heck did this all go wrong? But the answer is almost staring right back at them, because the reason why the economy has remained so resilient is that the people who drive the most spending are the least affected by these higher interest rates. If you look at older people, boomers who already locked in very good housing deals on their houses, so they're not as affected by those higher mortgage rates. They also, their wealth has been building because the stock market has remained elevated despite these higher rate environments.

So the answer might be looking right back at them. And it's the fact that boomers are still doing fine in this economy. Right. The older Americans who drive much of the spending just aren't impacted by interest rates. And they're sitting on assets that have grown so much in value over the past few years.

Neil Freiman
Stock prices are up 72% from five years ago. Home values are up 58% from the end of 2018 through 2023. Americans household wealth has grown from 98 trillion at the end of 2018 to five years later, 147 trillion. Meanwhile, 60% of homeowners are locked into mortgages that are below 4% and they're above 7% now. So the people, you know, interest rates are supposed to filter through the economy by raising borrowing costs, but a lot of people who are spending aren't affected, aren't borrowing anything, so they're not affected by interest rates.

And that's one reason why inflation has stayed so high, because people just keep spending on leisure, on travel, on discretionary items. That being said, on the other side of the coin, some people are feeling the cuts. Some of those indicators are credit card rates have skyrocketed, delinquencies on auto loans are rising. So that does suggest that people with lower incomes are struggling under the weight. But again, these people with higher incomes on the higher end of the income spectrum, who have assets to their name, are not as affected.

Toby Howell
And yeah, it turns out it's just really hard to bring down the price of goods and services when a lot of buyers just don't really care about the price. Another unusual aspect of this specific higher interest rate cycle is that unemployment really hasn't budged. And that's usually something that you see happen when you raise interest rates. You see the unemployment jump a little bit, but job openings have come down a little bit, but hiring is still very strong, joblessness is still very low. And as a result, lower income people, who usually are vulnerable to job losses, also aren't.

They are still working, they're still earning money, which has led to this hotter overall economy. And it's such a, it's such a fine line because you don't want to send a lot of people into unemployment. But Jerome Powell is desperately trying to cool down the economy, and that's usually a byproduct that you see for this, but it's not happening this time around. Yeah, if you check your portfolio this morning, you'll find that it actually went up. Yesterday, the stock market s and P went up 1%.

Neil Freiman
And that is because Jerome Powell took off the table the possibility of an interest rate hike. There were warnings and rumors going around that the next Fed action would not be a cut, but because everything has stayed so strong, inflation has been so high that the Fed might raise interest rates. He said that that wasn't going to happen. So investors responded pretty positively to that. Interest rates aren't the only economic indicator that show the health of consumers and the economy.

Toby Howell
Fast food earnings also act as a sort of tea leaves for us to read and divine how people are feeling. And fast food earnings are telling us that consumers just ain't spending like they used to. Execs at McDonald's, Starbucks, Domino's, Burger King's parent company all echoed similar sentiments that essentially boiled down to us consumers are becoming a lot more prudent with their spend. Starbucks is perhaps the best example of this. It has.

It had its first quarterly sales decline since a pandemic impacted 2020, something its CEO attributed to a more cautious consumer. McDonald's said essentially the same thing with its CFO echoing the consumer is price wary to explain its smaller year over year increase in same store sales in the first quarter? Restaurant brand International CEO, which owns Burger King and Popeyes also said on its earnings call that we've seen consumers become a bit more sensitive to price. Neil, it feels like if you pulled a parent trap and switched fast food executives, they all could have pulled off each other's earnings calls. They're all saying the same thing.

Consumers are price conscious right now and pulling back on spending. Right. It appears there is a bifurcation. From what we just talked about in the first story. We said higher income, older Americans are spending, you know, generously.

Neil Freiman
They're sprinkling their money around. But because of higher interest rates and inflation, middle income and lower income people are definitely being more wary about spending at fast food places. They are taking their money from restaurants and, and going to grocery stores. And what fast food CEO's are saying across the board is that we need to focus on affordability. And places like McDonald's, their prices skyrocketed in price to the point where there was, you know, a 16 or $17 Big Mac meal going around in Connecticut.

And that just can't happen. You lose your complete value proposition there if you're McDonald's and you're selling something for 17, $18. And meanwhile, somebody like Chipotle can undercut you with $13 burrito. So the number one thing that all of these execs are working on is value and promotions and figuring out ways to get people back in there. Starbucks is also just kind of a litmus test for the, the current environment right now.

Toby Howell
They said they were having trouble luring those occasional shoppers in, people maybe like you and me, who don't get our Starbucks drink every, there every morning, but might go in if we see a dealer promotion that we like. So they're going ham on launching a lot of new products there. They have plans for a boba like tea drink, a zero to low calorie energy drink, which had a lot of people rolling their eyes because what is coffee if not for a zero calorie, a low calorie energy drink. But yeah, it just goes to show that they are trying to re entice customers because some of those sheen has worn off Starbucks a little bit. There's like, they're not the best coffee.

They're kind of in this messy middle right now. There's so many locations, as we often say. So, yeah, they're trying to figure out how to lure the, those occasional consumers back through the doors. There is one fast food restaurant that is bucking this trend completely, and that is, I wonder if anyone can, can guess what it's going to be wing stop wing stop sales were up 21.6% last quarter, and it's. And its stock is skyrocketing 90% over the past year.

Neil Freiman
So a place like Wingstop, for some reason, maybe we can venture a few guesses, is actually lapping the competition and defying the overall stagnation of this sector. I think they do kind of slot into. It's both good value and it feels like an indulgent quality meal. Like, it. It does have that quality threshold that, I don't know, that it feels like you're not just eating fully.

Toby Howell
I don't want to say junk food or anything like that. Um, but, yeah, it does slot in very nicely into both quality. It has quality and value. They also really leaned into the digital side of the business. They have this platform called my Wingstop, where you can order.

It wants to digitize 100% of its transactions. It really wants to lean on the customer data it gleans from those transactions. And this is just something we've seen across a lot of different brands, is how can they. How can brands experiment with AI? Generative AI?

How can they infuse it into. I'm looking at KFC and pizza Hut. They have a literal, generative AI app that people can ask questions to employees like, how should I set this oven temperature? Things like that. So there are levers you can pull on the digital side of things.

Sometimes you roll your eyes when you hear a company like Wingstop saying, we're fully in on a digital revolution. But clearly it's been working for them. Up next, in a truly baffling move, Elon Musk decided to abruptly fire the 500 person team running its electric vehicle charging business this week. I say this is baffling because a lack of charging infrastructure is one of the biggest hurdles to widespread EV adoption. Range anxiety is often one of the top reasons people give for why they don't buy an EV.

And Tesla's supercharger network has long been something industry bulls point to and say, look, there's more charging stations out there than you think. It's long been one of the biggest selling points for Tesla cars, too. Recently, virtually every big automaker in the US committed to making their ev's compatible with Tesla's charging technology, creating what is now known as the north american charging standard in the process. And yet, in Musk's version of Zuck's year of efficiency, which is more like a year of insanity, he decided to cut the whole team to save money and also reorient the company around autonomous driving as its north star. Neil, people were incredulous at this move.

What is going through Elon's head right now, if you had to guess? Oh, man, that is. That is a very, very tough question. I mean, he did post a tweet saying that supercharger is not going anywhere. We're still going to roll it out just at a slower pace.

Neil Freiman
The analysts think that perhaps he's going to disband. He disbanded this team, and maybe he's going to reconstitute it, reconstitute it in a leaner, more efficient way and just slow down the build up. Now, I think when you're looking at Tesla right now, they have a cash crunch a bit. They're not selling as many vehicles as they used to, and they're looking at what they have and saying, okay, we have a little less, you know, money to spend on various initiatives. Where are we allocating our money?

We have to be very prudent about where we're spending. Um, and they're saying, okay, maybe the charger network just doesn't have so much potential for growth relative to our AI and tech and robo taxi ambitions. So they're taking some money from. From the supercharger group and going into the robo taxi situation. But it is a little baffling still, because Supercharger is laying the found work, is laying the groundwork for the entire EV industry, not just Tesla, but everyone else.

So there are a lot of warning signs here. Yeah, and it's so interesting, too. Cause Elon has long been a very big supercharger guy. I mean, it was literally last year, he was bragging about plans to open a burger chain at superchargers, make it a destination that you can relax at and have something to eat. And now he's done a complete 180 on that.

Toby Howell
I feel like he's in his Henry Ford horse and buggy era. Remember that famous Henry Ford quote where it's like, if I had asked people what they want, they would have told me they wanted a faster horse? So I think that he's trying to skate where the puck is going with this autonomous vehicle push. And maybe he's looking at his supercharger network and say, this is probably not the priority. This was maybe Tesla's vision a few years ago, but now we have a new vision.

So they're. They're reorienting things. But you're right, it is a very baffling move. And it makes you wonder, really, what is Tesla at this point? Because if it's not this great industry force, pushing forward this widespread adoption of EV's, then it kind of is a shell of its former self.

So just a lot of confusing questions, especially when it comes down to this decision to just gut the supercharger team. Up next. Good lord, I can hardly contain myself. It's Neil's numbers.

Neil Freiman
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Welcome back to Neil's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will cause your brain to melt like a Hershey's kiss in a jeans pocket. My first number is $43 billion, which is the net worth of Chang Peng Zhao, the founder of the world's leading crypto exchange. Binance. CZ, as he's commonly known, was sentenced to four months in prison on Tuesday, making him the richest inmate in american history. Last year, CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering violations, admitting that Binance allowed terrorists and other criminal groups to use its platform to raise money outside of the traditional, traditional finance system.

The sentence means that both CZ and Sam Bakeman Fried, the two former kingpins of the crypto industry, will now be behind bars. The sentences are wildly different, though, reflecting the differences in their crimes. Unlike SBF, CZ never used his crypto exchange as his personal piggy bank, and he was remorseful and cooperative with authorities. SBF stole $10 billion in customer funds, resulting in a 25 year prison sentence. And to make matters worse for him, his net worth is zero.

So all things considered, CZ is probably happy with this outcome. And he remains extremely rich. He remains extremely rich rich. And he probably will get richer while he's behind bars as well, because crypto is having a little bit of a bull market moment right now. But you're so right in drawing the comparison to SBF in CZ right now.

Toby Howell
You just can't have two more different approaches to the allegations levied against them. Sam Bankman freed tried to talk his way out of everything. He was posting on Twitter, he was posting on substack. He testified at his own trial. CZ, on the other hand, was very kind of cooperative, worked with authorities very closely.

And now you have, like, these very easily comparable numbers of their prison sentence times four months versus 25 years, and their net worth, 43 billion versus zero right now. And these two have always been spoken of together because they were the both leading, leading the top crypto exchanges that went haywire in 2021 and 2022. CZ at finance and SPF at FTX. There's so many freaking letters. But, yeah, so those were all.

Neil Freiman
They were always playing off each other. One was trying to one up another. They always had different approaches. When FDX was first collapsing, CZ offered to buy, buy FTX, but that deal collapsed. So there's always been a bit of a rivalry between them.

And now, I guess there's a rivalry between who can emerge from jail first. And it looks like CZ is going to win that one. For my second number are digital cameras. So back, at least in Japan, sales volumes for digital cameras rose 7% in 2023 from the previous year, their first increase since 2010, when Apple launched its first iPad. I don't need to explain why digital cameras went out of style.

Everyone listening to this probably has a phone with at least five cameras on it. They're really solid cameras, and you can share pictures you take nearly instantaneously with a single tap. But people are digging retro these days. And maybe the same energy that's fueling the renaissance in vinyl is also inspiring a revival in cameras that are just cameras. Also helping social media influencers are applying maximum influence by showing off their sweet looking pictures of exotic locations using their advanced cameras.

And to be clear, we're nowhere near peak. Digital camera sales in 2023 came in at 1.2 million units, about 10% of the peak 14 years ago. But still, you can't spell comeback without DSLR. Is that, is that true? I'm trying to do the math there.

Toby Howell
There is definitely not true there. Yeah. Part of the reason why it's so easy to bounce back is if you reach absolutely rock bottom, then the only place is to go is up. But I think you're right to compare it to something like vinyl. It does seem like there's these different tech arcs that a piece of technology take.

There's the briefly popular, then kind of falls into obscurity category, which are maybe things like Sandisk, floppy disks, DVD's, CDs, even. It doesn't really look like there's gonna be any renaissance for those. But then you have things like vinyl, like digital cameras, like film cameras that do carry a sort of nostalgia that will lead to kind of trend based and influencer based adoption cycles. So I was just at a wedding, I saw multiple digital camera cameras around. It just gives, produces pictures that feel different than what our smartphones.

They may not be, quote unquote, better pictures, but they've got a great feel to them. And I've been looking through them like, all right, I'm back in on the digital age. They might. Yeah, it might tie in also to the boom and travel and leisure spending that we've been seeing over the past few years. People are going to interesting places and they want to capture that moment, and they just feel like, hey, why don't I get, like, a fancy camera to do that and not rely on my phone?

Neil Freiman
My third number is for all the people, including myself. With myopia or nearsightedness, our ranks are growing by a lot. Optometry researchers estimate that about 50% of the global population will need corrective lenses to offset nearsightedness by 2050, if current rates continue up from less than a quarter in 2000, eyewear companies will see this as a glasses half full situation. After all, spending on corrective lenses, eye tests, and related expenses totaled $7.2 billion a year in the US. But it is a major concern for researchers, some of whom view myopia as an epidemic.

So what's causing the rise? If you're thinking it's because we stare at our phones all day, duh. You are somewhat right. Research shows that looking at close objects for many hours is associated with losing your ability to see things far away. Doesn't have to be a phone or a computer.

Reading a book at close range is also linked to myopia. On the other hand, getting outside and touching grass is an effective way at keeping nearsightedness at bay. A meta analysis from 2012 found that the odds of developing myopia dropped by 2% for each hour spent outside per week. Toby, what's your view? Well, my view is 2020, because I don't have nearsightedness.

Toby Howell
But this made me very concerned, because what do I do all day? I do all the things that you're not supposed to do. It was interesting, though, that you can reverse or halt the effects of myopia by getting that sunlight. The reason why myopia occurs is your eyes actually grow larger to offset some of the blurring that occurs when you're looking at close things, which then causes it to grow larger again. So it's kind of like this vicious cycle, but you can halt that cycle by just going outside, especially if you're raising young kids right now.

Get them outside because you do not want this to start developing early in childhood. So I learned a lot just by reading all this. I didn't know that eyes got bigger or can get bigger, and that is what's disturbing your vision. And I didn't know that sunlight was such an mvp in kind of preventing these things from happening. All right, Neil had too many numbers this week, so he kindly donated one to me to share with you guys as a bonus.

Neil's numbers. But since I'm introducing it, I'm calling it Toby's tallies. And my Toby tally is 92 minutes. That is the perfect movie time. According to a poll of 2000 american audience members from Talker research, just over an hour and a half seems to be the sweet spot for people with anything longer, really just not jiving with people.

Only 15% want to sit through a movie that is 2 hours or longer. But maybe people don't actually know what they want because nine out of the ten highest grossing films of all time have clocked in at over 2 hours, with three Avengers, Endgame, Avatar, way of Water, and Titanic lasting over 3 hours each. As for movies that are the perfect length, tune into classics like Dodgeball, Kung fu Panda, Beetlejuice Monsters, Inc. And toy Story two. Neil, how did I do?

Good. Toby's tally? Oh, so good. The longest movie I've ever watched in a movie theater was 4 hours, and it was a documentary about a french Michelin star restaurant. I sat there for 4 hours.

Neil Freiman
I did take a bathroom break, but I was thinking to myself, this is a long movie, first of all. But it wasn't terrible. So I. I understand why people want shorter movies. I want shorter movies.

92 minutes. I would say that's the perfect time. It does feel like people are willing to tolerate longer movies, and movies have gotten so much longer, for whatever reason you can point to. Maybe it's streaming, maybe it's. They are spending all this money on special effects.

They want to, you know, make it worth it and cram them all in. So it does seem like people are perfectly willing to tolerate it. But this really came to a head recently with killers of the Flower moon by Martin Scorsese, which is almost three and a half hours. And some theaters offered bathroom breaks in the middle, which got Scorsese pretty pissed off. And he's like, you sit on your couch for 5 hours watching streaming.

Why can't you do that for a movie? It is so funny that movies are ballooning and becoming longer and longer. But then when I go through those 92 minutes movies, they are absolutely like, those are perfect movies to me. Comic book panda, one of my top five movies. Dodgeball, incredible, like Monster Sing, Toy Story.

Toby Howell
I do think that if we returned, that could be like a good marketing play for like one studio. The night, call it 92 movie productions, and you just produce movies that don't go too long. I think people would really kind of rally around that concept. So I don't know movie producers who listen to the show out there. There's an idea for you.

Neil Freiman
All right, finally, you just finished a long day of cold sales outreach on LinkedIn. What's your plan to wind down? LinkedIn is hoping you'll stay on LinkedIn with its new offering, games. Starting yesterday, users on LinkedIn mobile or desktop can play three different games that are available once per day. One is similar to Sudoku, another is a word association game, and the third is a trivia wordplay hybrid.

While only a couple years ago LinkedIn releasing games might have gotten everyone very confused, these days it's the least surprising thing ever. As the New York Times has showed with its hugely successful games, Apple Games can be a powerful source of engagement and revenue. In fact, people spend far more time on times games app than on its core news app. So LinkedIn is hopping on the trend and hoping that people will play these games, share the results with their connections, and generally spend more time on the platform. But just because there's a big wave doesn't mean you should paddle out and try to ride it.

Toby, is this a reach? I don't know. I was playing them this morning like good journalists should. I was, I was doing the work, and they are fun. The social element I'm a little dubious about, though, because remember, the vector for sharing a game like connections or wordle, is that you can dm this very recognizable string of emojis and you can clearly see that LinkedIn was trying to do something similar.

Toby Howell
But I mean, I was messaging you my scores this morning. It's just not quite as elegant like the emojis that they chose to use isn't. It's not very intuitive what you're actually sending. They also included a link, which I think is a little bit of a no no at this point because no one really wants to click a link from someone that they receive. So as for the social element, I don't know if they've actually nailed it, the games themselves were a good difficulty.

They're not going to take up too much time in your day. Like, they, they both took me, all three took me less than a minute each. So I think that the games, they did well on, but I'm not sure about the social element. It is just crazy to step back and think that every media company is leaning into games so heavily. And you can understand why LinkedIn, it might seem, seem a little incongruous to say, oh, LinkedIn, you're a professional network.

Neil Freiman
Why are you getting into games? You know, we might think of that as, as not really, not really, you know, part of its core value prop. But if you're going to invest in anything these days, and you're a media company trying to keep people on your platform, trying to keep people engaged, then why not try games? I mean, wordle changed everything. Wordle changed everything.

I mean, we just have to say, in 2021, everyone played wordle and they're still playing it. The New York Times bought it for more than a million dollars, and it's just found to be an incredible way to keep people on your platform. It's super sticky. So it's, it's very understandable why every company, including Morning Brew, is investing in, in their games business. Yeah.

Toby Howell
If you, if LinkedIn makes part of its money via advertisers. So if you want to show advertisers that people are being more sticky on the platform, make things that are sticky on the platform. And right now, the stickiest of all are games. You want to play games with your connect, your LinkedIn connections. I was thinking about that, and I do think the leaderboard idea is interesting because if we could see a morning, they do art, they're going to sort you and give you leaderboards based on the company you work at.

And if we could see a morning Brew leaderboard, then absolutely I would want to appear on that leaderboard. I also saw I was popping up on a university leaderboard on where you went to school, even though it was too early. And none of my connections have played it yet. But I do think that aspect of it can be interesting because, yeah, I want to see where I'm falling within the company and if I'm beating Neil, if I'm beating you, China and Billy Menino on audio and all those people. All right, let's wrap it up there.

Neil Freiman
Thanks so much for listening. Have a wonderful Thursday. For any feedback on the show or digital camera wreck, send us an email to morningbrewdailybrew.com. Don't forget to get those mugs as well. Let's roll the credits.

Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Yuchenoa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio, hair and makeup wants to connect on LinkedIn.

Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

Toby Howell
Let's run it back tomorrow.