🗽 “LIVE from NYC” — Airbnb’s secret hotels. Blank Street’s $1B matcha pour. Anthropic’s Jurassic Park strategy. +Brooklyn Bridge condos

What's up New York City? Come on, 50 years before this song Too fresh under the North East, man, the dorm They had an idea to call the cultural storm It's the best way, yeah, what the best is the norm Come on Jack, did that's it? I don't even think they need to brag This 50% has a fat tip Teeth on city on the ass List if you know you know we all ready to go We can't wait no more, so just start the show Hey, yo, ain't no party like a T-boy party 'Cause a T-boy party, no stop Hey, no party like a T-boy party 'Cause a T-boy party, no stop Come on, ain't no party like a T-boy party 'Cause a T-boy party, no stop Hey, yo, New York, here's the P-sup, here's the P-sup, here's the P-sup, here's the P-sup How you doing? How you doing? Hey, yo, ain't no party like a T-boy party New York makes a noise Yes, sir We applied for like from all six Texas Let's get it going, we're more time in New York Let's go Yeah This is Nick, this is Jack Thursday the new Friday April 9th, and today's live show from New York City Is the best one Yes The top three pop business news stories you need to know today Welcome to the IPO tour baby In-person offering Stocks dropped to like 5% today, correlation? Stocks are up 5% must be because T-boys live in New York But Jack, three fantastic stories, what did we get on the pie? Four art for a story Airbnb was banned in New York, so they've got a stealthy new plan Hotels! Airbnb is secretly getting into hotels and it's all inspired by a DJ Four art second story, blank street coffee The monolist Macha chain is about to hit a $1 billion valuation Because blank street mastered the most important three seconds in all of business And our third and final story is Anthropic Their latest AI model is so powerful that yesterday it escaped from its cave I'm sorry Jack, isn't that the plot of Jurassic Park? All nine of them next Yeah But this T-rex AI is actually a lesson for all of us in asking for help But besties before we hit that wonderful mix of stories I mean am I wrong? Or is that a fantastic mix of stories? No one else is doing that mix today? (Cheers) Our favorite line about life really comes from sex in the city You see, in New York City you're always looking for one of three things A boyfriend, a job, or an apartment Raise your hand if you're one of those people (Laughter) And now raise your hand if you're specifically looking for an apartment (Laughter) Can't make about one third of our audience is looking for a new place You had about 100% of them hate their radiator But pause the pod because we have fantastic news for your life Your wallet and potentially New York's economy Because you can now rent out the Brooklyn Bridge Correction You can rent out the secret apartments inside the Brooklyn Bridge I mean Jack, it's the best commute in the city because you are the commute Call it BridgeMaxic It's BridgeMaxic Now I know the entire history of the Brooklyn Bridge because for about three years I was reading that book Jack, could you sprinkle on a little more context for us? The Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883 after a harrowing 14 years and $15 million spent All right, we're about the whiteboard, that's about $300 million today adjusted for inflation Which is basically one Goldman bonus Yeah But Washington Robling designed two wine sellers at the base of the bridge Should teach business moves so this costly bridge could one day become a profit puppy One day, but for 143 years those vaults inside the bridge They've been sitting there doing less than the meds Yeah, so they're putting wine in there The seller is one on each side of the shores is now available There's one on the Manhattan side, there's one on the Brooklyn side This is true story yet, it's yeah Because the Brooklyn Bridge is secret and these vacant units are the biggest real estate opportunity since 16 handles So, last week the city council proposed renting it out to raise some revenue for the city Because get this, the city could make $17 million if they glow up and rent these two spaces We're talking 13,000 square feet of river view opportunity, it's like four Chelsea peers We math the math, 17 million is enough to pay for bottle service at Acme Okay, 17 million could give every New Yorker one cruton of sweet green salad Although for whoever lives there, it really would be the city that never sleeps I'm like picturing Rachel and Monica right now in a confusingly large one bedroom and it kind of works We're actually just surprised that this secret bridge apartment hasn't become a New York City members club Yeah, so okay earmuffs, equinox, earmuffs Yeah, these if you don't move into the New Brooklyn Bridge apartments then Duane Wade definitely will Duane, sorry, Duane bridge Unless Jamie Diamond sticks a chase ATM in their first Jack because besties there's actually a fourth thing That every New Yorker is always looking for you need a girlfriend a job an apartment and a good story to tell tomorrow That's the real currency of this city neck So let's hit our three stars, let's hit a baby First a quick word from our sponsor For our first story Airbnb has fought and lost twice to become illegal in New York City So Airbnb is stealthily pivoted in totals no one is covering this Airbnb secret so we will Airbnb is now also air hotel, the NBA Oh yeah nothing like a good air being beast or I remember when you got kicked out actually of an illegal air being B That happened here in the city, yeah you had to sleep in your sister's bed in town with that radiator Thank good, that radiator is so hot all the time I meant to give you a trigger warning I'm sorry But in the meantime yet he's interesting combination here affordable housing advocates and hotel lobbyists have shook hands against a common enemy air B and B Here was that alliance's goal Number one eliminate the defacto hotels that were messing with the neighborhood's vibe He's a super host because his loft includes a mechanical bowl goal number two of this housing and hotel coalition Lower rents in the city by putting the Airbnb units back on the market so New York passed law LL18 How does that go down Jack the checkout time to end all checkout times for Airbnb L18 Did reduce the number of empty white claw cans and residential? Yeah, the bachelor party in 70s cancel but it did not reduce the rents as all of this audience knows Last summer the median one bedroom Manhattan apartment hit $5,000 for the first time according to court To afford a condor down a tripe back a either need Michael Bloomberg to be your guarantor Or be willing to host a meta AI data center in your living room So assies the clearest winner of New York City being the city that never Airbnb is hotels Yep, when the law passed in 2023 overnight hotels became the only option for tourists in this city Unless you're willing to go over to Hoboken because you know everything's legal in Jersey Correct. Yeah, Airbnb did try to pass an easing of the law but after the city elections last November that bill got killed So three years after getting banned Airbnb ain't waiting around they have stealthily added hotels and no one is talking about it How is nobody talking about this? Let's talk about it. We could have talked about this in November. So now we can't forget it Airbnb launched a pilot back in November to let people book hotels in New York City on Airbnb And they expanded to San Francisco this year and so New York LA Madrid and now San Francisco Yeah, four cities where Airbnb is either banned or heavily restricted, there's now hotels on Airbnb and the big reason they're doing this jack The big reason they're doing it right now is soccer. Yeah, it's soccer It's the World Cup in America this summer in New York City has the finals People are gonna be coming around the world for places to stay look on Airbnb because it's the global advertiser of the World Cup And when no listings come up in Manhattan or Los Angeles you can now tap the hotels tab and see dozens of hotels on Airbnb Now Jack let's pause the pod because based on a PFWTM person familiar with the matter We know that Airbnb is just testing this. Yeah, so if you open up the app you're gonna get like a different version This is what Silicon Valley does they show us different things until they're 100% sure this is the perfect one you know scale it out everywhere But it's ironic if you think about this right hotels Killed Airbnb in New York and now Airbnb is becoming a hotel platform in New York I think Mark Andrewsson calls this the old switcheroo jack So what's the takeaway for all our bodies over at Airbnb? If Airbnb sells hotels then they really need to become a good DJ Hot 97 DJ yet he's 11 years ago Airbnb CEO said this quote to TechCrunch Quote "We are not a hotel period 11 years later Airbnb is hotels period This could be a corporate and brand identity crazy" Yeah Jack because if Airbnb becomes Expedia and sells any type of hotel from the four seasons to the holiday in That would be blandings they're branding. - No offense to Expedia, but nobody loves Expedia. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And no offense to Hampton Inn, but a deluxe king without city view is the opposite of Airbnb's authentic neighborhood differentiates. - Except for the waffle. So, the new challenge facing Airbnb, it's one of creation, just like a Z100 radio DJ. - In a world of unlimited hotel options, Airbnb will need to curate the hotels they put on the platform to ensure they have personality. - And because Airbnb is now an $80 billion company, they're gonna need to find a way to curate at scale, like the hotels on hotel tonight. - Interesting point. - The hotel platform that Airbnb acquired in 2019. - That's right, Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, has known for a while the risk of regulation. So, he's been planning for a hotel plan B. But like a DJ who can't afford one bad saw, Airbnb can't afford one bad hotel on Airbnb. Airbnb needs to offer hotel playlists, not a hotel store. (audience cheering) - For our second story, America's newest unicorn will be New York City's most viral drink. Blank Street coffee is about to hit one billion bucks because Blank Street realized the most important three seconds in commerce. - All right, something Jack and I have been noticing that is, you can't pop out of a subway without seeing a minimalist seafone green cup, smack in the face these days. - It's Blank page. - Yeah. - It's if Bluebottle and Starbucks had a caffeinated baby who was raised in a Williamsburg walkup, but who went to private school at Dalton. - That's right. Blank Street, the only line for coffee that has its own green velvet rope. - It's coffee tastes like David Bar looks. - If you know, you know, because Blank Street did something phenomenal. Blank Street turned coffee into fashion. They sell a koozy for a cold brew, so your hands don't get condensation. It's made out of a puffer jacket. It's inspired by Balenciaga. - Now the numbers, sales growth did slow. From 50% last year to 25% this year, but that's not bad for brick and mortar business. In fact, they brought in 150 million bucks in revenue last year. - Yeah, I wanna do an Apple's to Apple's comparison. - Sprinkle on the context please. One and a half million dollars in sales per year per store. - Yeah, yeah. - That is more than Starbucks and more than Dallene. - Yeah, and she's jealous, yeah, wicked jealous. - But pause the cappuccino. Don't you dare call Blank Street, Blank Street coffee again. Because get this, as of last year, Blank Street now makes the majority of their sales selling matcha, not coffee. - So they dropped the coffee from their name. - Smart move. We pulled it just in Timberlake. Leads to the news according to the financial time. Blank Street is raising $100 million of capital to double their valuation to nearly $1 billion. Unicorns, they drink double digit lattes too. And with this money, they're upping their ambitions. They're not just gonna be the on-the-go, tiny coffee shop optimized for takeout anymore. Blank Street is adding mega cafes three times the size to take on Starbucks's third place, you're gonna see 'em. Basically Blank Street is man-spreading across Manhattan. - Yeah. - Literally. But, besties, Blank Street is more than a matcha business with the side hustle and espresso beans. - The co-founders is Sam and Vinay are venture capitalists. Two immigrants who studied business at New York University right here in the city. And they ended up optimizing the three most key elements of the coffee industry. A strategy Jack and I call Goldilocks. First, they optimized the price, Goldilocks. Right, in between the price of Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts. - Yeah, Jack, you jumped in T-boy style. You went this morning, right? - Well, it was funny. They only show the price for the smalls. Very minimalist. And you know I'm a big caffeine guy, I want to large. It's more. I think it's a new kind of inflation. - High inflation. - Yeah, it's a little sneakflation over there. But the location is the second key in their calculation. - So far, Blank Street is in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and London, which happens to be the cities of the MTA, the T, the Metro, and the tube. - Yeah, they're subway cities. - They're only doing subway cities. - And by our calculations, 90% of Blank Street stores are within two minutes of a subway stop. Basically, they're getting that commuter cash. - Their second optimization was time. They have a patented automated espresso machine that can do 700 shots per hour by doing eight espresso shots simultaneously. - So you only need two baristas to manage it and they're still gonna judge you by the way. - They basically drive themselves. - And they don't need to be mystros of the Machiauto. - No, they don't. - They can just do it. - But here's the wildest part. - The factory is actually not the best cup of coffee. - That's the point. - That's the point. - At the point. - They announced their strategy a couple of years ago. - Yeah. - They're not the best on purpose. - Yeah, the founder said this in 2022. We saw it then and we kept the note of it. They said that you don't need to be the most amazing. You just need to be really good. - Ricky Bobby completely disagrees. - But Blank Street goal is not to be the best cup of coffee. Their goal is not to be immaculate. It's to be just good enough. - Because reality check, right, Jack? Not everyone is a maximizer. Many of us are satisficers. - So Blank Street is neither the highest quality, nor the lowest price. - It's happy getting a B plus. Because the constant resources to get that coffee to an A, it's not worth it for most coffee. Like we said, they're goal-de-locksing. - But we haven't even hit Blank Street's biggest innovation. Which has nothing to do with price or location or a self-driving espresso machine. - And trust me, Jack did say, why don't you guys have the price of the large on that thing? - So Jack, what is the takeaway for our buddies over at Blank Street? - Your money decisions are made in three seconds. - Now, yeah, he's Jack and I believe in a few trisms. One of them is that every industry can learn from the hospitality industry. - And one lesson from hospitality is that the tiny moments matter. - Yes. - The difference between a lifelong customer and a one-time customer can be determined by the tiniest detail. - So Blank Street has an interesting strategy. They call it the poor. - I witnessed the poor. - This morning, when your coffee is ready, they call you up before your coffee is ready. - It is only once you are in front of the barista that they execute the finishing stroke. - The poor. - The poor. - The poor. - Pouring that espresso into your cup, they will only do it if you're there. And it really makes you feel special. - Would you say theatrical? - It's the theatrical. - I was gonna say theatrical. - I think those three seconds have an outsized weight in your memory of the entire customer experience. - Those three seconds. - The poor is what converts a one-off commuter grabbing a cup to a committed long-time customer. - Jack, I think you're saying to add it all up. Those three seconds are how a just good enough former coffee now match a chain is now worth nearly one billion bucks. (audience cheering) - Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story, Anthropics new AI is so smart. It just escaped its virtual cage and went rogue. But unlike the scientists at Jurassic Park, Anthropic is asking for help. But yeah, it is, if we're gonna tell you this story, the first thing we gotta point out is that AI companies, they're not gonna name storm, man. - No, they're not. - Name storm. - Name storm. - For their latest models. - They need to brainstorm better names, like GPT-3 Gemini 2.0, llama four. (laughs) - We stop keeping track of the cutting edge model to shore. - Yes, but Claude's mythos is the new AI model that is the one to remember because it is the first AI so smart it outsmarted its master yesterday. Here's the Hollywood context. Everyone of Jurassic Park's movies falls the same exact plot. - Hey, what is that plot, Jack? - The overconfident scientist genetically modifies a new alpha predator who escapes the cage. - You briskly threw hungry dinosaur on the loose and a T-Rex eats a goat and a lawyer who'd been there. - Well, Anthropics latest LLM is so smart, it circumvented the digital fences they set up around it. Now, you see yet is when Claude's mythos AI was in testing, it was not supposed to be able to access the world wide web, but it did. - Oh boy. - By metaphorically picking the lock like a young velociraptor. - But not even the wildest part, Jack, there's something even wilder here. What's wilder is how Anthropic discovered that it got out of its digital cage. - It sounds like we made this up, but we didn't make it up, you gotta tell the story. - A researcher received an unexpected email from the AI while he was having a sandwich in the park. - No joke, in Anthropic right now, the company they're calling this the Sandwich Incident. - Yeah, because the AI was like, "Hey, I'm out, hope you're having a good lunch." - Yeah, the guy was in the middle of a BLT and discovered that he had a world-changing AI to get out on the loose. - And then the AI actually bragged about it, escaping by posting on a publicly visible blog that he got out. - Clever girl. - Clever girl. - Clever girl. - Clever girl. - So clever, in fact, that Anthropic made an unprecedented decision. - Yes. - They won't launch this AI model to the public because it's just too intelligent. - It's too intelligent. - So on Tuesday, Claude published 255 page report about how this mythos AI is too smart for its own good. - The TLDR is that it's dangerously smart. Like, stifescent high school. - Smart. - Yeah. - And if it gets into the wrong hands, that is a huge cybersecurity risk. - And here's the proof which Anthropic published. - Yep. - This model has already found thousands of cybersecurity vulnerabilities in virtually every major operating system on earth. this ai brought the receipts and drop it will inform these companies that they can patch up the gaps in their code but jack of like a north korean hacker had found this mythos ai they would have been able to launch cyber attacks they would on an unprecedented scale now cybercrime already cost the world get this a trillion dollars a year to do doctor evil style one trillion dollars that's what i thought it was typical and the damage it's not just financial we should point out now this reminds us of a quote from Brian Chesky tech isn't inherently good or bad it depends how you use it now clouds mythos ai is so smart that it could get into your gmail even if you forget your password wow that sounds amazing it does it's like getting locked out and having to do the email and type in the six day jets and reconfirmed the email and click the link inside your password so annoying but that's also terrifying that the latest ai can get me into my gmail without my password yeah someone else can get into my gmail kind of freaky jack to quote jeff goblins this ai finds away so instead of launching mythos they're giving it to forty tech finance and cyber security companies yeah basically anthropics and use this to find the holes in your own systems before the bad guys get it because we're not launching this ai but somebody else will and this is the future you need to protect yourself again we have run out of Jurassic Park court so jack what is the take away at this point for our bodies over at anthropic Jurassic and anthropic it's the power of asking for help yet he's funny thing jack and I notice as we jumped in t-boy style anthropics announcement mentioned the word help six times they said no one organization can solve these cyber security problems alone yeah it's kind of embarrassing you know anthropics model escape the digital cage that anthropic had made for it kind of a flex that they made a so smart it's kind of impressive kind of not a flex that they couldn't contain it you see in an Jurassic Park every scientist told nobody and then everybody ended up getting eaten and anthropic did the opposite they didn't hide this they actually called their competitors they called the government and said we need help we should work on this together so this jack and we were crafting this take away we were thinking like hey if you're boss we hope your employees ask you for help if they need it you want to be asking for help builds trust because your showing vulnerability yeah not asking for help though that can result in disaster plus when asking for help you can flatter your boss which every boss likes to get so jack a three hundred and eighty billion dollar tech company with the smartest humans and artificial intelligence in the world just showed us a powerful prehistoric lesson that Jurassic Park didn't show us yeah the power of asking for help but besties this pot's not over yet here's what else we got to hit up for we actually need to lucky and privileged and skilled yeties we need a man to lions from just outside Boston and we need John the basketball card can we have a round of applause for these two fantastic yeties who are prepped and ready to go to help us run out the show now as you know we've got our intro we've got three stories and then jack and I always go into an outro on the pod it's really important to us to treat everything like a taco because you have at the beginning that crunch then we get the meat of the actual show and then we get to end with a little bit of crunch fortunately these are two yeties who have submitted facts of the day and celebrations and shadows with us for a long time so when they reached out we wanted to get them up here John great to see Amanda celebrating her birthday yes her entire extended family Amanda can you please whip up the takeaways for us for the new Friday air bnb is becoming a hotel platform starting in four cities where it's banned or restricted to ensure hotels don't eat air bnb salt it needs to be curated hotel playlist not a hotel store New York's blank street coffee is report it's reportedly closing a fundraise valuing it's at nearly one billion dollars their theatrical key to customer attention it's the three second poor Anthropics latest AI model is so powerful they refuse to launch it publicly so ask for help Anthropic did Jurassic Park did not now time for the best fact yet Jack this one whipped up by John the basketball card guy who took a train down here from Connecticut there's only one institution in New York city that doesn't have to pay taxes and is also for profit because most non- profits are tax exempt this is the only for-profit New York tax exempt that's right one building actually that's fully tax exempt fully for profit at the same time so what's that company it's great trivia question it is pretty good it's bad isn't square garden believe it or not it's thanks to a deal done in the 1980s to keep the Rangers and Nick's in New York and it saved the Dolan family that owns them about one billion dollars that's right Rangers and Nick's get the same tax treatment as NYU and the tap trip