Acquisitions, Acquisitions Everywhere

Brian: [00:00:23] Welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about cutting edge and next generation commerce. I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:00:29] I'm Phillip.

Brian: [00:00:30] Today, we're talking about awesome news in eCommerce.

Phillip: [00:00:34] It's a news episode. This is our first news episode.

Brian: [00:00:39] Lots going on. Lots going on out there right now. Ton to catch up on.

Phillip: [00:00:44] Had a couple of weeks off. And as it happens in this industry, take a couple of weeks off and a bunch of people get acquired and a bunch of people get sued. So we'll get into that in the show a little bit. {laughter} But great. Yeah. Hey, we want you to give us feedback about today's show, so please make sure to hit us up in the comment box below. And you can also subscribe on iTunes or on Google Play, so you can always get the newest episode of Future Commerce right into your mobile phone. And also, if you want, you can listen from your Amazon Echo on TuneIn radio with the phrase, "Alexa, play Future Commerce." And I've remembered to turn my Echo off, so I'm not going to have that problem this go around. But anyway, how you been?

Brian: [00:01:29] Good, man. Good. Busy as always. Lots going on with camping and lots of fun stuff with the family during the summer. So that's always good.

Phillip: [00:01:40] That's good.

Brian: [00:01:41] How about you, man?

Phillip: [00:01:42] I just got back. I had a little bit of a continental US tour. I was on both coasts back and forth, back and forth for a couple of weeks. Really, really cool. Actually, I went to some training for an order management platform and out in LA, and I really feel like the whole industry, everybody is sort of feeling this grown towards the traditional eCommerce platforms just aren't going to cut it for the stuff that we talk about. And so it's kind of interesting to see how the big boys have been doing order management for a very, very long time. And it's interesting, some things that we don't really talk about that I think we take for granted that are logistically incredibly difficult to pull off, like buy online pickup in store, you know, even home delivery. Those things are incredibly... Like they're like logistical nightmares.

Brian: [00:02:39] Yep.

Phillip: [00:02:39] And thinking about how to execute those in terms of marketplaces, which is essentially what we kind of talk about, which is how do businesses connect with their customers but not have to go through a marketplace to get to it? It would be direct to consumer, but outside of a traditional, web channel. And so, yeah, having a little bit of training there helped me sort of wrap my head around a bunch of topics which I've been right in the thick of. Yeah, cool. Cool stuff.

Brian: [00:03:10] Yeah very cool stuff.

Phillip: [00:03:11] So hopefully love to sort of get into that a little more. I know most of the people that are listening are engaged in commerce and they're engaged in the traditional B2C or B2B commerce that's happening right now and looking toward the future.

Brian: [00:03:24] Call it out. Yeah, you were at a Magento training.

Phillip: [00:03:31] Oh you've now made me think that I don't want to talk about it. I'm like afraid to say the M word. Yeah. So Magento which is the eCommerce platform formally from, well formally under the ownership or management of eBay, recently spun out as a startup on its own into private equity. They brought along with them from eBay Enterprise an order management platform that was built from the ground up by the Magento team. And it's fairly new. It was built in 2013 and they call it Magento Commerce Order Management or MCOM, if you will, and which I won't because it's a terrible name. But by the way, this is not a Magento podcast, even though I do have a Magento podcast that you should listen to called MageTalk at MageTalk.com.

Brian: [00:04:20] It's a good podcast. You should listen to it.

Phillip: [00:04:23] These guys are just. I love them to death, but they have, like this chronic naming problem. They need sexier names. And actually, I will tell you, this, naming things is incredibly hard.

Brian: [00:04:36] Wait, wait, wait. I mean what's sexier than Magento? That's pretty sexy.

Phillip: [00:04:38] Yeah, that's true. I guess they just kind of win in that regard. Actually, you know what's funny is they tried to, they put out like a a survey at one point. This is not MageTalk. I don't know why we're talking about this, but this is why I'm not allowed to mention Magento, because I just got off on a tangent.

Brian: [00:04:51] I brought it up. I brought it up. The reason why I wanted you to bring it up is because MCOM is legit. It's really filling in the market that not many other order management systems out there actually even can fill.

Phillip: [00:05:05] None of them do. None of them do. Because there are no standalone order management platforms. All of them are tied directly to ERP platforms, ERP systems that are monolithic and require huge teams of people to administrate.

Brian: [00:05:22] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:05:23] And so if you are in certain areas of retail, you may even have multiple order management platforms that deal with different parts of your business or even ones that are specific to specific vendors. So getting to understand this... I'm relatively new to eCommerce. I've only been doing this, you know, 15 years. There are people who have been doing retail a lot, lot longer, especially the people that are involved now in the product management side of eCom. Anyway, incredible amount of logistical calculation has to go into building a platform like that and understanding the space, understanding the need of merchants that have a need for a platform like this. And they get it because they understand digital commerce. And now kind of wading into future commerce and all of these, you know what, I think people are starting to call clickless commerce, which again makes me want to puke.

Brian: [00:06:21] {laughter} Another wonderful buzzword,

Phillip: [00:06:23] Terrible buzzword.

Brian: [00:06:24] All along it's clickless commerce.

Phillip: [00:06:26] This clickless because that's so easy to say. Anyway. So all these new trends, I think that will be happening in commerce, you'll need an order management platform to consume those things and sort of unify, you know, the way that you fulfill for your customers. Very, very cool. I'm excited to have been in that training. I think it kind of clarifies a lot of things that I've been wondering about how they're traditionally done in retail. It's great. It's kind of like that thing where you're a kid, and you look at your parents, and your parents know everything, and your parents are basically one step below God and they cannot do anything wrong. And they are you just idolize them. And then you get a little bit older and you're like, oh, gosh, these people know nothing. These people are complete idiots. Right? Like, I could do this so much better than them. And now then you get a little older and you have kids of your own and you're like, how did my parents do this? My parents are saints. And I feel like that is the bell curve that we've come through in digital commerce of how can people even run retail operations, to we can do this better to, oh my gosh, I have so much respect for traditional retail. And that's sort of that's been my progression. You asked. I've told. I'm excited about it. I can't get enough of it. But we have a lot of news. And that's the news in my life. Yeah, all right, so kick us. Let's get into the show.

Brian: [00:08:05] Yeah let's get into it little bit. Yeah, I think one of the things that really caught my eye recently was that Android Pay is releasing a nearby tab, which plays into a lot of stuff. We talked about a few episodes back regarding sort of location based commerce and vicinity commerce and so on. And so I think, you know, honestly, if a business taps into this early on, it's going to result in a lot of net new business. I can see it sort of driving the early adopters are going to see, because there's not going to be all that many people on this initially. I think those early adopters are going to have quite a leg up until more people join the platform. I think it's a great way to hop into Android Pay and probably pick up some additional business just out of the gate, like initial thoughts.

Phillip: [00:09:08] Well, so when I took a look at this, which, by the way, I use Android Pay. Do you use Android Pay?

Brian: [00:09:14] Not really, no.

Phillip: [00:09:15] See, you know, I only use it in one place. Cabs. That's it.

Brian: [00:09:21] Makes sense. Yep.

Phillip: [00:09:22] Yeah. I use it in cabs. But yeah so it's interesting. I just don't think these payment apps are not destinations. Why are you going into like it's just a weird place to put this sort of thing. This feels like it belongs in Google Now.

Brian: [00:09:39] Yeah. I think it probably will get integrated into Google Now eventually. It's like oh they'll probably be some sort of icon or something for anyone that accepts Android Pay. And so you'll know that you can just walk in and walk out.

Phillip: [00:09:53] You know, if I had only my phone on me for some reason and I didn't have my wallet, I may want to find a place that accepts Android Pay. And then maybe this comes in handy, but building a feature for like the five people on Earth who use Android Pay that forget their wallets every day is kind of a weird thing.

Brian: [00:10:10] It is true.

Phillip: [00:10:12] I like this. It's interesting.

Brian: [00:10:15] It's a step.

Phillip: [00:10:17] It's a step in the best kind of direction, which is the direction that confirms all of our conspiracy theories. For me, this is a win.

Brian: [00:10:26] Yeah. I think like win. Like you said, probably not super, super useful, I think. But I do think that people that sort of do adopt it that actually take the time and add Android Pay as a way to check out, they might see some lift on this initially just because there's not going to be very many people that are on that list.

Phillip: [00:10:52] Yeah, I mean, I looked at it and it was it was really depressing, actually, it was quite a lot like when a friend of mine asked me for a restaurant recommendation in Kissimmee, Florida, which is like touristville, you know, right outside of Orlando. And my response to him was like, I hope you love Subway because there's literally nothing that's not a chain fast food restaurant in that area. And that's kind of what Android Pay feels like to me right now. Everything's McDonalds.

Brian: [00:11:26] Speaking of Android and Android Pay, one of the reasons I'm pretty hesitant to use payment tools right now, and obviously this is kind of silly because I've given Android all my information already, is things like what was announced just this week where Qualcomm just announced that there's a bug that could be exploited. And now nine hundred million Android users are at risk as a result of this bug.

Phillip: [00:11:59] No, no, no. No. I saw on ExtremeTech that that number has been revised to almost a billion devices.

Brian: [00:12:05] Oh, my gosh.

Phillip: [00:12:07] And apparently, you know, so these things don't really get a lot of press, which is kind of weird.

Brian: [00:12:16] It is weird.

Phillip: [00:12:17] You know, these things are way scarier to me than a certain politician's emails. But I would say that, you know, a billion devices, that's like apocalyptic now, as much as we depend on phones. And I mean, I don't know. Maybe if you had to get, you know, your Subway sandwiches with your Android Pay, I mean, think about it. Yeah, but you're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. It's scary.

Brian: [00:12:43] This is honestly, this is one of the reasons why I was kind of nervous about switching to Android. I was on a Microsoft phone, Windows Phone, which everyone can laugh about now.

Phillip: [00:12:53] Windows. {laughter}

Brian: [00:12:54] But I felt a little more confident because, frankly, no one was really I don't think there are all that many people out there looking to hack Windows phones {laughter} because the user base was so small. And honestly, Microsoft does a pretty good job of being conscious of this. So I was tempted to move to Apple off of a Windows phone just because I felt like Apple took security a little bit more seriously than Android.

Phillip: [00:13:28] Are you serious right now?

Brian: [00:13:30] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:13:32] What makes you think that?

Brian: [00:13:34] At least privacy. I'll say privacy at minimum.

Phillip: [00:13:41] Is that just... Do you get that feeling? I want to poke at this. Hold on.

Brian: [00:13:45] All right. Poke at it. Poke at it.

Phillip: [00:13:46] Do you feel that way because Google is the world's largest advertising platform?

Brian: [00:13:53] Yeah there's an element of that.

Phillip: [00:13:56] How would how would Apple even use that data? Is that what you're getting at?

Brian: [00:14:01] Yeah, definitely. There's that element. But ultimately, I think, you know, Android was open. It is open source. I was nervous about getting on to some off brand phone that wasn't really going to push updates as effectively as I wanted them. And so that's why I ended up on a Nexus phone on Google Fi because I knew that I was going to have the best updates all the time.

Phillip: [00:14:28] Yeah, you would always be up to date.

Brian: [00:14:29] Yeah exactly. So that's why I felt confident in it. But there are a lot of Android phones that are out there right now that are sitting around on T-Mobile and, you know, other maybe slightly lesser phone or cell providers out there. And they are not up to date. People don't update their phones. And some of those earlier editions of Android, frankly, are definitely exploitable.

Phillip: [00:14:59] Yeah, I think that's true. But I think that's the fault of the carriers and not the fault of the user.

Brian: [00:15:05] It is.

Phillip: [00:15:06] And until we have a major carrier who lags behind... The problem is that these products have such an extremely short life cycle. It used to be that you have a phone or even a computer... I mean, even just a regular old computer. It is very rare for someone to have a computer seven years now, like, you know what I mean?

Brian: [00:15:27] So true.

Phillip: [00:15:29] So the life cycle is so short. It's all of what? Twenty four months maybe?

Brian: [00:15:35] Yup.

Phillip: [00:15:35] You know, much shorter, I guess, probably in aggregate because of breakage or that sort of thing. So the window is very short for exploit. You know? These things can't live on forever. But anyway, I think the terrifying thing for me is that this is beyond the software level. This is in the chip itself.

Brian: [00:15:57] In the chip. Yes.

Phillip: [00:15:59] This is the equivalent of like a boot sector virus back in the old days of like... You can't even wipe your hard drive. When there's an exploit in the chipset, there's like what could you possibly do? I think, yeah, if I were a privacy nut, which I'm obviously not because I have like four Echoes in my house. If I were a privacy nut, I'd care about this, but I can't find... I think it's a problem, but I think it's one that the carriers need to fix and they won't fix it until, like everybody in business, you won't fix a problem in your business preventively. You're going to fix a problem when it reactively, right?

Brian: [00:16:37] Yeah, hopefully that's not true.

Phillip: [00:16:40] I would hope. I would hope. But at least this is public. You know, they could have swept under the rug. I don't know. How many things do you think, like happen like this that need you never know about?

Brian: [00:16:48] Probably more than we want to know about. They're going to only going to go to go to the public with this once they're 100 percent certain that they can fix it I think, or they're 100 percent certain that everyone's data is going to be stolen.

Phillip: [00:17:08] {laughter} Well, you're already at your data is out there in the hands of people that you don't want it to be.

Brian: [00:17:13] That's so true. That is so true.

Phillip: [00:17:15] It's already going to happen.

Brian: [00:17:16] I think in short, the world of data privacy is gone.

Phillip: [00:17:25] Yeah. I mean, you really honestly like to the point where, you know, here in the United States, there's all kinds of Fourth Amendment issues and precedents that are being set in courts right now about your right to privacy, even within your own home, because so many people, it's become so commonplace to share your personal life in public on the Internet, especially with Facebook and all of the other social media presences that we have, even location sharing. You know, find my iPhone.

Brian: [00:18:00] Checking in.

Phillip: [00:18:00] All these things that you sort of you there are so many things that you opt yourself into that even privacy is not an expectation in your own home, according to certain court decisions and legal precedents that's taking place in the United States right now. So I think that's very scary. I always seem to be the like, you know, legal doomsday person on the show, I guess. But for me, it's... I don't know that we have a reasonable expectation of privacy anymore. You have to work very, very, very hard if you come anywhere within five foot of an Internet connected device to not have something that you say or do be somehow, you know, turn into a data point and a spreadsheet.

Brian: [00:18:46] And the truth is, I'm going to make a little bit of a sweeping generalization here, but the generation that's kind of just after us and we're both in our 30s, it seems like they don't care as much. That it's not as big of a deal to them.

Phillip: [00:19:08] You think? I think they care more. And I'll make an argument there.

Brian: [00:19:15] Ok. Make your argument.

Phillip: [00:19:15] Snapchat is a really good example. The things that we do don't necessarily have to live on forever, we want some sort of guarantee that they're temporary and ephemeral and they'll expire at some point, right?

Brian: [00:19:30] Yeah, but the thing about Snapchat is now you can save on Snapchat, basically. I mean, obviously, everyone can always screen cap, but...

Phillip: [00:19:40] But you got like a notification when that happened. Right?

Brian: [00:19:43] Right. That's true.

Phillip: [00:19:44] I just I felt like that was the draw of that platform. It's become muddy like all of these platforms do through acquisitions.

Brian: [00:19:51] You're probably right. I don't know. I think at least the people that I've talked to that are sort of in that generation, that then again, my circles may be outliers, no doubt. But it just feels like it's not quite as important to them to sort of keep where they are private to themselves. And I think that the reason for that is, you know, remember when Airbnb kind of first came out and everyone was like, oh, my gosh, you're going to end up with an ax murderer in your house? Right?

Phillip: [00:20:27] Right. Right.

Brian: [00:20:28] That was the general consensus among adults.

Phillip: [00:20:33] Yeah. This is a terrible idea. Why would they ever do this?

Brian: [00:20:35] Yeah. Why would you ever do this? Who in their right mind would do this? And then it started to sort of take hold and people saw that they weren't really having ax murderers stay in their homes. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, yeah, I can share my home with people. and oh yeah, I can share where I'm at with people. I can share like personal information with people with the Internet because it's not affecting me in ways that are bad. And so, you know, at least for the time being.

Phillip: [00:21:07] Possibly and in some cases, it's actually providing positive income streams for people and enabling them to live in a better way. I do think it hurts something. You know, hotels in New York apparently are having a pretty rough year.

Brian: [00:21:24] Sure. Sure.

Phillip: [00:21:26] I think it does disrupt industries and industries employ thousands and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. So I think it doesn't come for free, but it is something that can't be ignored. And but I think it brings up a larger topic, which I think is is somewhat tangentially related to our show, which is the sharing economy is a new form of commerce. But in my opinion, it grows out of the fact that for the past, what, almost 10 years here in the United States, we've really had a dragging economy.

Brian: [00:22:01] Yeah, we've got a recession. That's driven a lot of it. It's a little more than that. I think our culture is shifting to some degree, to some degree towards being more careful with what we have. And it's not just the recession. It's environmental. It's taking and using the resources that we best possibly can and not wasting things.

Phillip: [00:22:30] That's why Walmart purchased Jet for three billion dollars... Conserve what they have.

Brian: [00:22:39] So true. Oh, my gosh.

Phillip: [00:22:40] Was that the worst segue ever?

Brian: [00:22:42] That was an excellent segue.

Phillip: [00:22:46] The worst segue made even better by calling it out. I don't know. Do you care about this? Who even shops on Jet?

Brian: [00:22:55] I know. We were kind of talking about this earlier. And it's like I know one person, that shops on Jet. He tried to get me to sign up, but I might have even signed up for free. And I never even purchased on it. What I had a free subscription. You know why? I'm a Prime member. I don't need Jet.

Phillip: [00:23:16] So I went on Jet once when it first launched.

Brian: [00:23:19] Yeah. That's about it.

Phillip: [00:23:20] And I had no clue, like it didn't make any sense to me. Like what it was. Like Amazon? Like I don't know, I couldn't really wrap my head around. It's a marketplace obviously, but it's like why would I buy something here, like what you said, when I have Amazon? Like why would I ever need this? And then now it's like, I don't know, it's weird. It's like you kind of get, like there's kind of suckering people into like, you know, I don't know...

Brian: [00:23:51] There's some crazy things on Jet.

Phillip: [00:23:53] They give you money off because you shop or something like that.

Brian: [00:23:57] Yes, that's right. And they say that there's like a guarantee that you'll make your money back and they'll refund you the difference if you don't. They're saying that...

Phillip: [00:24:07] It's Costco, right?

Brian: [00:24:09] It's ten to fifteen percent cheaper than anywhere else online. But you know what is absolutely insane? How much money Jet is losing right now? I don't have exact numbers on this. But there are certain products where if they don't have them in stock, they will go out and buy them off of a different site and have them shipped to your door from that site if they don't have that product.

Phillip: [00:24:39] So, yeah, so there's a customer service aspect to it, which is interesting. We have a couple of the retailers, you know, in my day job that use Jet as a marketplace. And I think it's just one of those. Oh, we can do that too? Click. I don't know. I don't know. I think like anything, if it sells for three billion dollars, it's probably cloud based and built in Java. So that's probably... That's probably why. It's like literally it doesn't care how many people, it doesn't matter how many people actually use it or not or how many businesses are signed up for it. It's like it's cloud based. It's built in Java. So three billion. That's it's valuation.

Brian: [00:25:25] Yeah. No, and to continue on with this, I mean, what it does show is how serious Walmart is about Amazon.

Phillip: [00:25:35] Yes. Yes. This is the story. OK, this is the story.

Brian: [00:25:38] That's the story.

Phillip: [00:25:39] Which Walmart actually has. Walmart actually has a pretty kicking marketplace that they're...

Brian: [00:25:51] I mean, I think it's legit. They've actually seen quite a bit more activity in the past, you know, even just a few months.

Phillip: [00:25:59] I mean, Walmart has all those things that you would never expect. They're even doing like Birchbox competitor. They have like subscription boxes. They have it's like everything you could think that you may get from Amazon or other, you know, ancillary type services. Walmart's competing there, but they also have a brick and mortar presence.

Brian: [00:26:26] Yeah I think that's their biggest asset right now.

Phillip: [00:26:27] They can do more. If they wanted to do in home delivery. Amazon has to either build that service out, their Prime delivery service, they have to build that out around their DCs. Where Amazon or I keep calling them Amazon because it's hilariously... They're starting to tread on that territory. But Walmart has DCs on every street corner in the United States. They're called a store, it's just Walmart, the Walmart brick and mortar, so it's interesting.

Brian: [00:26:59] Is so true. So true. I mean, I think Amazon, you know, is trying to get around this with their vision for drones, which, by the way, took a much bigger step recently when I believe the first approved drone delivery actually just happened in the US, just in the past week or two.

Phillip: [00:27:23] By someone you wouldn't expect.

Brian: [00:27:26] Yeah, by 7-Eleven. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:27:28] This is ridiculous. This story is ridiculous.

Brian: [00:27:31] Yeah, no, they delivered a chicken sandwich, coffee, hot coffee, and donuts.

Phillip: [00:27:36] By the way, that person like that sounds like the beginning of an episode of House where like he has some sort of debilitating disease that makes hot coffee and chicken taste good together and somebody has to figure that out. It's just a very strange thing to deliver.

Brian: [00:27:53] It sounds more like a Seinfeld episode than me.

Phillip: [00:27:59] Yeah.

Brian: [00:28:00] I won't pursue that any further.

Phillip: [00:28:02] It's interesting, I cannot believe this was 7-Eleven. {laughter}

Brian: [00:28:06] {laughter} I think it's legit now. 7-Eleven surprisingly enough is actually making some pretty bold moves.

Phillip: [00:28:16] {laughter}

Brian: [00:28:16] I think they were one of the first people to have that Amazon lockers, which failed miserably.

Phillip: [00:28:23] Miserably.

Brian: [00:28:24] Was it Amazon with lockers? 7-Eleven had some someone's lockers.

Phillip: [00:28:29] There was like a locker service of some kind.

Brian: [00:28:30] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:28:31] Yeah. I feel like 7-Eleven is desperate...

Brian: [00:28:33] They had a big presence at Shoptalk, which was really cool to me as well.

Phillip: [00:28:37] Are you kidding?

Brian: [00:28:37] Like there you are thinking about the future. And they should because I think, you know, convenience stores when they came out and 7-Eleven came out, that was actually pretty innovative for its time. So, I mean, it's not surprising to me that they're out there thinking about drone delivery and other cutting edge stuff.

Phillip: [00:28:54] Yeah, I agree with you. I think. Yeah, I agree with you. I think there's just no cachet around that brand anymore. I think 7-Eleven is probably known for things like a Slurpee whereas...

Brian: [00:29:09] Slurpee. Yeah. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:29:09] You know, which by the way, like has been and is a mainstay of many people's childhood, mine included. But I would say Wawa... Wawa has some cachet, right? Wawa has a, you know, there's a lot of people that think that Wawa is an excellent brand in the convenience store space.

Brian: [00:29:28] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:29:29] Cumberland Farms is in the same spot. I feel like it's always, I don't know, it's strange that there's all these what I would consider... I don't know... When you say something is the Walmart of something, it's never in a good connotation.

Brian: [00:29:48] Right. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:29:48] You never mean that it's quality and high end. You always mean it as like bargain basement, lowest common denominator. Everybody's there because they have to be, not because they want to be. And that's how I think of 7-Eleven. So it's kind of interesting that they're in the drone business or looking to be in the drone business. But yeah, interesting. I'm excited to attend Shoptalk next year. Hopefully I get to meet 7-Eleven people.

Brian: [00:30:17] Yeah. We'll see if they come again. But it is interesting. So lots, lots going on. I know that I kind of derailed us for a second there with drug delivery.

Phillip: [00:30:26] No, that's good. Drug delivery is huge for this next generation. The big players are obviously, you know, they have all the money and the capital to be able to do these sorts of things, but they're going to be massive 3PL providers that are going to offer this as a service.

Brian: [00:30:46] Yes, there's no doubt of that.

Phillip: [00:30:48] In the future this is going to come to the masses soon.

Brian: [00:30:52] Totally. Yeah, I think that's the reason why we're bringing it up on the show is like this is not something that's like too far in the future. This is the legit. This is like there was an approved drone drug delivery in the U.S. This is happening. They're testing it in Australia and the UK. It's almost a foregone conclusion that it will happen unless some sort of crazy litigation gets in the way.

Phillip: [00:31:13] I mean, I can't see how it would. I do think that it's going to be you know, this is a different area of tech that I think would be that's really interesting. It sort of overlaps a little bit with some of the augmented reality news and some of the Pokémon Go stuff today. But, you know, people campaign pretty hard in their neighborhoods to keep planes from flying overhead and route air traffic. Who actually owns the right to the airspace over your house?

Brian: [00:31:41] Totally.

Phillip: [00:31:42] And in general, the FAA and the government and county and state government and even federal government have the rights to those spaces. And that's the next you know... How can we create areas of, I don't wanna say no fly zones, but this creates just a whole new level of of territory and property rights.

Brian: [00:32:10] Territory and private property. That's so true. Actually I had this crazy idea like a couple of years back where I was like, man, someone should go to like businesses in cities and like ask them if they can buy their their  airspace above.

Phillip: [00:32:23] Yeah.

Brian: [00:32:24] Or rent their airspace. I think I probably told you this idea a while back.

Phillip: [00:32:27] This is something that happened in New York, you know, 30, 40 years ago is like option rights on airspace in case somebody ever built a skyscraper there or something.

Brian: [00:32:37] Yup.

Phillip: [00:32:38] Yeah. I think that's cool. But it's more about what's sacred anymore. People complain in in LA about, you know, leaf blowers. I mean, can you imagine hearing... Have you ever heard a drone that came over?

Brian: [00:32:54] Oh yeah.

Phillip: [00:32:55] It is a God awful noise and hearing that all day long from all the people around you buying stuff all day, it's crazy.

Brian: [00:33:04] Yeah. I mean, it's think this kind of comes back to, this might sound unrelated at first, but like back to privacy and you know what people of the next generation are going to accept as normal. I can't help but thinking that, you know, seeing drones fly around, it's just not to bother a lot of people. Obviously, there's going to continue to be a contingent of people that are really bothered by it. No doubt.

Phillip: [00:33:34] Sure.

Brian: [00:33:34] I even saw like something about like a drone zapper gun where you can, like, zap a drone out of the sky.

Phillip: [00:33:44] Oh my word.

Brian: [00:33:44] I know. I know. It's crazy stuff.

Phillip: [00:33:47] Well, anyway, I'm looking forward to my Slurpee. I, for one, welcome our Slurpee overlords.

Brian: [00:33:53] I welcome them as well. I mean, frankly, you know, a Slurpee in the hand is better than two at the store, so...

Phillip: [00:34:03] {laughter} I like it. Wow. There's our choice for episode titles right there, so we can sort of pick from them. I do, actually. You know, what's really interesting is Uber just released... Since we were talking about sharing economy. Uber released their corporate app recently, just a few days ago, actually, at the time of this recording.

Brian: [00:34:25] Yes. It's kind of overdue almost. I feel like. It seems like a no brainer.

Phillip: [00:34:28] A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. But I do think this sort of brought up this thought to me, which was you had what was it Gear...? What was that? There was a site that had like an on demand auto mechanic or something like that.

Brian: [00:34:45] Oh, yeah. Just just announced. It's GetWrench.com. That is going to be huge. I am super excited about this.

Phillip: [00:34:53] Yeah. So what's so what's the value proposition of GetWrench.com?

Brian: [00:34:58] So are you tired of driving your car to the auto mechanic and leaving it there forever?

Phillip: [00:35:04] Sure.

Brian: [00:35:04] Why not just have auto mechanics come to your house on demand? Like that makes so much sense. There's shopless shop.

Phillip: [00:35:11] Yeah.

Brian: [00:35:12] Obviously there's going to be certain things that they can't do, but oh my gosh, think about this. Getting your company as a perk to have like a regular oil change day where you bring your...

Phillip: [00:35:26] So that's awesome. Yeah.

Brian: [00:35:29] I know.

Phillip: [00:35:29] Routine maintenance, that sort of thing. I think that's great. We used to have that at my old company. There would be a guy that came every like Thursday to wash cars.

Brian: [00:35:38] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:35:38] And, you know, like dude he would clean up. He worked hard but you know, there'd be like ten or twelve people in the office that all get in on it. And yeah, so this is huge. I think this is a big deal, but I think it's the first step because I think Tesla will probably have your car just drive itself to go get service and come back.

Brian: [00:35:59] Oh, certainly. Absolutely. It's going to be like iRobot of iRobot cars. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:36:06] Exactly. Yeah. Which is kind of cool, but so yeah. It's like Uber for mechanics, which is nice. I still think that... Yeah. So getting back to the Uber corporate app, you know, I feel like this is heading in a really interesting direction where Uber has just it's kind of the next level of convenience and it is commerce. It's a different way of connecting people who are willing to sell something, which is their time and a service that they're willing to provide and connecting it with people who are in demand, and I think that this is taking it to the next level. This is businesses now offering that same sort of service to people that maybe aren't the target demographic. Really good examples where, you know, a hospital can call a number for a patient or a nursing home can call an Uber for someone to go out and do their shopping.

Brian: [00:37:13] It's great because they can set limits in like times and all kinds of really cool stuff to help.

Phillip: [00:37:18] Those are so that's so cool. And I think that we're going to see more of this. And I think it's a it's a really good step. Uber tries all kinds of really interesting things. Hopefully this is one that sticks.

Brian: [00:37:32] I really can't see it not sticking. Really.

Phillip: [00:37:35] Yeah. I mean, but, you know, they do like flower delivery around, you know, Valentine's Day in the United States. And so it's interesting. I wish there were more of this. I wish there are more of this from other players, not just Uber.

Brian: [00:37:49] Oh, we're getting there. I mean, I think, this is a direct competitor to Uber. But, you know, Lyft is coming right along. I think Lyft is doing some cool stuff, too, like they're going to have and they might have already released this... I haven't kept up on it. But being able to schedule ride the day before, which is pretty awesome. If you take that to extremes, you can schedule some really cool stuff.

Phillip: [00:38:14] Yeah. That would really be interesting. But it's sort of you know... Yeah. It's like the person that picks you up from the airport, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: [00:38:28] Speaking of cars, since we are on the topic, I got to mention that the auto pilot, Tesla's auto pilot, just save someone's life, which is awesome.

Phillip: [00:38:39] I wanted to talk about this just because I want to talk about Tesla, because I like Tesla. This is super cool. But I think the story was kind of blown up in the press, just kind of blown out of whack. Headlines certainly didn't follow what the actual story was. Somebody was having medical distress, turned out to be some sort of an embolism, and utilized autopilot to sort of safely drive themselves to the hospital. The autopilot didn't drive the incapacitated person to the hospital. So let's make sure everybody understands that. We know that. So that people don't call us out. But I do think that this is, you know, at least now, at least now Tesla is one and one, so there was one person that died using autopilot and now this is a person that's lived. So now they're 50/50 here.

Brian: [00:39:34] Batting five hundred.

Phillip: [00:39:35] Exactly. Which is pretty good. Actually when to bat 500.

Brian: [00:39:40] One life saved, one life lost.

Phillip: [00:39:42] Yeah, exactly. And that's not bad. We may have talked about this before on the show. I cannot remember, but I will continue to talk about it because the thought of this drives me insane. But Tesla, the new model three... I believe it's the model three or the model X, it's escaping me right now, and I should look it up, but I won't. One of the downmarket models is artificially limited by software. And you can upgrade it to the newer version with an in app purchase of like eight grand. Have you seen this?

Brian: [00:40:19] We talked about this. Yeah, I think we talked about this, and I was like, yeah eventually going to be able to get the ad free version. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:40:28] Ok, so we did talk about it, but I think it's innovative and I think this brings to light sort of the digital commerce aspect of real world goods. I kind of love the idea. I was big in like shareware or trialware back in the late nighties.

Brian: [00:40:49] {laughter} Back in the day of the floppy disk.

Phillip: [00:40:51] Did you ever download when WinRAR? Come on.

Brian: [00:40:54] Maybe way back.

Phillip: [00:40:57] Everybody downloads WinRAR. Here's the thing. It's like I have the option to have... Like I have a limited version of a piece of software, and if I want the whole thing I can buy buy it. But it's not like I don't have the ability to have it now or that I have to go download a different version and install that. The functionality's there the whole time. It's my decision to opt into it. And I think that there is a whole Internet of Things wave that's going to come where we will have the entire ability in the package. But we'll have to kind of opt in to those features with in app purchases.

Brian: [00:41:36] You're just you're absolutely right. Digital goods will start to feel a lot more like physical goods in that sense. It's like, OK, a lot of time and effort and maintenance is required for these features. So you have to pay for that.

Phillip: [00:41:49] Yeah. Exactly.

Brian: [00:41:51] And so I think in the past people have kind of thought about software as like this sort of the real thing that just happens sometimes. And no, wait, hold on. It has to get paid for somehow. Otherwise it will not happen. Commerce drives innovation.

Phillip: [00:42:10] Yeah. So I think, you know, the new iPhone supposedly is rumored to be announced soon.

Brian: [00:42:19] Yes, the all glass one.

Phillip: [00:42:23] And it's interesting, just at the risk of being a general technology show, you know, it would be really interesting to see a single iPhone version, you know, and if you... Yeah, maybe there's ads on it. Maybe it's artificially limited and in its processor and RAM or something like that. Maybe that makes people angry. I don't know. I don't know that I hate that. I don't know that I hate the idea is what I'm trying to say.

Brian: [00:42:57] This brings up another whole idea, which is planned obsolescence, which is kind of like crazy topic. I don't even know if I want to get into that right now, but...

Phillip: [00:43:09] Yeah. That's out of the scope, I think, of our show at this moment. Speaking of out of the scope of our show, what is firmly in scope is we've been talking a lot about augmented reality. Our last show about Pokémon Go, I think.

Brian: [00:43:23] Yes, that was such a good show. I really enjoyed it.

Phillip: [00:43:25] Honestly I think that's where we hit our stride was that show. I think we talked about a lot really interesting things. Since then, a lot of litigation in the space.

Brian: [00:43:34] Yeah. So I think we had some good stuff here on that last episode. And now, you know, Pokemon is facing trespassing lawsuits, you know, and I think that's just the beginning. There's going to be quite a bit of of litigation that happens as a result of augmented reality, which is going to force a lot of the other things we talked about, about security, where they're going to, augmented reality software makers, are going to have to put some... Be more careful about limits and sort of fencing different areas up. And I guess it's not just augmented reality, but anyone that's doing any sort of location based gaming or activity or or whatever it is, they're going to have to be really careful about where they allow their users to use their app.

Phillip: [00:44:36] Well, and, you know, this is now the fourth time this has come up on the show about Apple's patent to be able to disable the camera and speaker.

Brian: [00:44:47] Yes.

Phillip: [00:44:48] Based on geo fences. I think I'm going to call it now. We won't be doing a podcast ten years from now, I'm sure. But in case we are and the world still exists in a post Trump society. But in the case that that happens, I want you to remember this and mark my words, we had Cam Spam, you know, 15 years ago or 12 years ago or something now we had Cam Spam come into effect where effectively it's federal legislation here in the United States and the EU has gone even further, and I think we're probably going to see even more with Brexit. There are federal laws now around being able to manage your rights digitally, your digital rights, and your ability to protect yourself from harassment. And I think that that sets a really nice precedent for some things that are sorely needed on a regulatory level in this space. Now, this is a very new thing. But mark my words, ten years from now, global unsubscribes for territory or even for your own home, you'll be able to...

Brian: [00:46:05] I don't even think that's ten years out.

Phillip: [00:46:06] You don't think that's ten years? I think it's ten years out because...

Brian: [00:46:08] I think that's sooner. Like "unsubscribe my location" is going to happen a lot faster.

Phillip: [00:46:13] I think we're going to have to have, and I don't know how this gets done, but there needs to be a federal registry for just like there's a federal do not call list. I think there's going to be a federal do not track for I think it'll start with online privacy and all the things around third party cookies and being able to choose how your data gets stored and used and who has it and being able to track who has it, that will pave the way. But I think what will soon follow is, you know, virtual and augmented reality will have to subscribe to some opt in or opt out lists of locations where people just... We need to create sacred spaces. And I know that there's been a lot of really hard talk in our country about what safe spaces are. And that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about sacred spaces. When you go into, you know, when you go into a sacred space, let's say a house of worship, there's an expectation that you're there for a specific purpose, and it's probably not to engage in certain types of activity or technology. And I think we're going to start to see public spaces become much more hard lined on these types of activities, especially with Pokémon Go. I was in Bryant Park last week in Midtown in New York, and you could not even walk through Bryant Park. You could not walk through Bryant Park. Let me stress this. You could not even walk through Bryant Park because it was wall to wall people all battling each other on Pokémon Go. And what's insane about that is that a year ago, this time of year, there was nobody in the park. There was like some people that are like relaxing on the grass and like, you know, laying on blankets. But people weren't standing around on their phones.

Brian: [00:48:09] I mean, I'm not going to lie. That's actually kind of awesome in one way. Absolutely.

Phillip: [00:48:12] No, no, no, it's awesome. But I think there need to be spaces. There need to be spaces where people can go to avoid all of that, where people can go. If you combine Pokémon go with the Qualcomm bug, all of a sudden you have a window into everyone's pants pocket all in one location. These can be very scary things in the wrong hands. And, yeah, I think it's a very interesting thing for us to be thinking about. And anyway...

Brian: [00:48:46] It is. You're right. I think things are going to happen fast and I don't think it's going to be 10 years. I think it should be five years or less, even like I think fewer years than that. Because the thing about it is, I think a lot of technology is advancing a lot more quickly than we even want to think about. And I'm looking at companies like Blippar and actually something I was thinking... Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm spacing on this, on this show, of all places. Maybe I shouldn't even say this because now... I'm not going to say this.

Phillip: [00:49:28] Ok. Don't say it. Don't say it.

Brian: [00:49:29] But anyway. People are releasing all kinds of crazy augmented reality stuff right now.

Phillip: [00:49:34] Right.

Brian: [00:49:35] And it's going to become a part of our everyday lives, I think, in the next few years. I mean, it already is. It's part of our everyday lives.

Phillip: [00:49:51] The AR functionality, it's sort of a gimmick. Like, it's kind of cool, but it's sort of a gimmick. For me, it's more about the virtual spaces, like utilizing real world spaces as as topology for creating virtual spaces. And so I think that's the real play here.

Brian: [00:50:11] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:50:11] The thing I'm more concerned about is there's such incredible promise. You have to be careful of things that overpromise, right? No Man's Sky. Have you heard of this?

Brian: [00:50:26] No. I don't know about No Man's Sky.

Phillip: [00:50:27] OK, so No Man's Sky is this video game that everyone's been talking about it for a year.

Brian: [00:50:36] Oh yes. I didn't hear about this.

Phillip: [00:50:36] Indie video game that has procedurally generated universe with all like a quintillion number of worlds.

Brian: [00:50:46] You know, like a couple of days they discovered 10 million species or something.

Phillip: [00:50:51] Yeah. It has more species that have been discovered in the game than actually exist in the world. I don't know some garbage. You know, it had this incredible promise of creating a virtual space, literally virtual space, but creating a virtual universe in which they don't even the developers don't even really know. There could be planets that are barren that nobody wants to go to because they don't have any resources. They're planets that are plenteous that people will automatically migrate to and habitate. That's not a word. Inhabit. But the problem it has this incredible promise, not really able to deliver on the promise and really people are sort of kind of bummed about the game because the game has this incredible promise that, you know, of infinite variety. But in actuality, it's just everything sort of kind of chroma skinned with everything is just a little bit of a different color. And, you know, it's like world after world after world of all the same stuff. And that's how I feel about a lot of the VR technology is incredible promise, but it really comes down to, you know, someone being able to deliver on sleeper hits like the Amazon Echo. I think that that's what's going to be the game changer is a Pokemon Go and Amazon Echo. It's going to be the sleeper thing that no one expects that will legitimize the space.

Brian: [00:52:21] Sure. Yeah, well, yeah, and I think that's already happening. It's already happened because of Pokemon Go. I think...

Phillip: [00:52:33] Related to commerce, I'm just still trying to come back to where where does this take us? Are people putting on VR headsets to look at products, you know, to buy stuff online yet?

Brian: [00:52:45] No. Not yet.

Phillip: [00:52:45] I don't think so.

Brian: [00:52:46] No, that's still a couple of years away. Three years away or so. I think, you know, video gaming and VR is one, two years out from mass adoption, probably. But actually doing a little bit more with it, purchasing things and doing some other cool stuff that we talked about is probably three years out. So I feel like we should get back to one more thing before we wrap up here, because it's kind of a big deal.

Phillip: [00:53:19] Massive deal.

Brian: [00:53:19] A really big deal. And that is the NetSuite acquisition. Like, I think, you know, it's kind of a long time coming, obviously, Oracle has been a huge investor in that NetSuite.

Phillip: [00:53:37] Yeah, it was Elison, like one of the original...

Brian: [00:53:41] Yeah, the largest original donor.

Phillip: [00:53:42] So it's been kind of expected for a long time, but it's finally happened. And I think it sets a little bit of a precedent in the ERP world. And maybe that precedent was already set. We saw Demandware go for quite a bit. Obviously Demandware is not ERP, but I guess I think it's kind of saying this, OK, yes... Oracle is saying, yes, NetSuite is the future. This is how we should do things. And we are going to invest in this because at this point, it's getting to the point where it's going to grow beyond our reach if we let this go too much further.

Phillip: [00:54:27] Well, so NetSuite, for those who are uninitiated, is a software as a service cloud. Well, is I guess you could call it software as a service, like a software as a service cloud based ERP platform. Right. And that's that's sort of the the gist of it. But this wouldn't be the first time that Oracle thought that something was the future, bought it, and did nothing with it. You know, ATG is a great example. Why did they invest in ATG? Oracle Commerce, what are they even doing? Like, they're certainly not a player in the broad market. They're probably a massive player in the markets where they already have a massive amount of business or lock in, vendor lock in, from businesses that are already using Oracle would then use ATG. And so, yeah, that makes sense. But why would a business that uses Oracle for their ERP then use NetSuite instead? This is a like a mid-market play. They don't have a mid-market commerce engine. So it's weird. I don't know. This is weird to me. I think it makes more sense when you look at, you know, the fact that it's maybe just more consolidation of investments.

Brian: [00:55:49] Sure.

Phillip: [00:55:50] Less than a strategic like. I don't know.

Brian: [00:55:55] I feel like there is a strategic element to it. NetSuite is doing so well.

Phillip: [00:56:02] Making its own acquisitions, by the way, you know, like Bronto.

Brian: [00:56:07] Bronto. Right.

Phillip: [00:56:08] Right. Email services platform. Interesting stuff. I don't know. I really don't know what to say about this. It's like every single week there's just a new acquisition, more consolidation in the space, you know, in digital commerce. It makes me worried a little bit. It makes me worried about what some of my favorite platforms might wind up, who may wind up owning my favorite platforms.

Brian: [00:56:36] Yeah, because your favorite platforms are Shopify and Magento, right? And those are like two of the last independent platforms.

Phillip: [00:56:43] Like literally the last ones. Right?

Brian: [00:56:45] I mean, last legitimate ones. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:56:50] Big Commerce. Like, do we care about Big Commerce?

Brian: [00:56:53] Not really. I don't know.

Phillip: [00:56:55] I don't know if that'll come back to bite us. I'm sure one day.

Brian: [00:56:57] Yeah, probably. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:56:59] "We have Tim Schultz on today. Remember that time that we said that we didn't care about the Big Commerce?" It's weird. I'm trying hard to care about this story. But part of me... Actually, I do care about this because as a consultant, there are NetSuite developers right now out there making two hundred and fifty dollars an hour. And they're really it's only because there's such a bubble, because there's huge demand for the product and no one who's specializing in platform consulting. And so really, you have, like I don't know, 20 big players in NetSuite integration space. And that's it. So my take is that there's probably a lot of people in the consulting space that are going to be looking for work pretty soon. Oracle just has a way of killing off products. I don't know. Maybe they go to quietly go out to pasture. I don't know.

Brian: [00:58:03] We'll see. I don't know, man. I don't see that happening. I think that there's such high demand for it that would really have to bungle it right now to make that happen.

Phillip: [00:58:14] Right.

Brian: [00:58:14] I don't really see demand decreasing for NetSuite unless Oracle takes it and tries to do something with it that's just ridiculous.

Phillip: [00:58:22] Yeah, it's interesting. So  maybe it's ripe for mid-market eCommerce platform acquisition, too, because...

Brian: [00:58:30] Yeah that might make more sense. If they went out and purchased...

Phillip: [00:58:34] Well, actually, NetSuite has its own thing called Suite Commerce. Maybe they invest in that.

Brian: [00:58:38] {laughter} I don't see that happening.

Phillip: [00:58:40] Yeah. {laughter}

Brian: [00:58:42] Yeah. I mean, we've migrated too many people off of NetSuite or heard too many horror stories about it. The commerce, their advanced commerce suite. For me to take that seriously, I think they would make more sense for them to build something new from the ground up or go out and acquire someone like Magento. Actually, Magento is probably the only one in my mind that would make sense in that spot. I don't see Shopify...

Phillip: [00:59:14] Well Shopify is public.

Brian: [00:59:14] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:59:15] So I mean, they've already got their own. They've got their coffers full. You know, it's like, what was it, two point one dollars billion market cap at the last I looked?

Brian: [00:59:23] Yeah. They could totally still get bought out though. I don't discount a public buy.

Phillip: [00:59:28] I know, but they'd have to have a real reason. It wouldn't be for money that's for sure. They've got plenty of it. I mean and it continues to rise too. I mean full disclosure, I own Shopify stock. Up forty four percent by the way. Their market cap right now is... Sorry. Three point one seven billion and rising. Unbelievable. Well there you go.

Brian: [00:59:55] That is unbelievable.

Phillip: [00:59:57] How much is that... Oh they can almost buy a Jet.com for that. {laughter}

Brian: [01:00:05] {laughter} Imagine if Walmart had purchased Shopify instead of Jet.

Phillip: [01:00:10] Yeah. I mean Walmart. Yeah. Walmart should have. Yeah, I don't know. That's interesting. I don't know, I think the news this week tells me if we had to come out, what's one thing we take away from this? More consolidation in the space. I think there's more certainty than ever that, you know, traditional brick and mortar or big... Sorry... Traditional enterprises? Massive enterprises investing in digital commerce, because you don't have NetSuite if you're not engaging in digital commerce. And Jet is is an interesting acquisition, isn't it? You know, it's Walmart's kind of just consolidating its marketplace business.

Brian: [01:00:57] So I think that there's quite a few takeaways from today. But I think that the ultimate takeaway is there's so much going on right now. It is a wild world right now. And the future is very much I mean, I think it's it's very much up in the air about how it could look in terms of the digital landscape.

Phillip: [01:01:20] Right. Well, we know for a fact that innovation thrives with competition. And so, you know, I think we're going to see more and better come out of companies when there's less M&A activity and there's more healthy competition, spurring innovation. And so I'd really like to see more of that rather than, you know, people sort of selling out. That being said, if I had my own business, somebody wanted to buy it for three billion, you are more than welcome to buy me for three billion dollars.

Brian: [01:01:53] I can't help but think that was Jets' original intention all along.

Phillip: [01:01:58] Probably No. They were going to overtake Amazon, dude. They're going to take on Amazon. They're going to build a cloud platform. They're going to you know, they're going to have like they're going to take on Etsy...

Brian: [01:02:12] Going to be the omnichannel solution to...

Phillip: [01:02:14] Yeah, they're going to be an incredible... They're going to build massive data centers and solar farms and they're going to build distribution networks and distribution centers worldwide. Now, of course, this is definitely... This was their play all along.

Brian: [01:02:28] Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Absolutely.

Phillip: [01:02:30] But to Walmart, that's fun. That's really cool. And you know what's weird? We can close at any time. But they did such a great job, in my opinion, of creating a brand. They created what is probably an indispensable brand.

Brian: [01:02:48] I don't think it's going away. I don't think the brands going to go away.

Phillip: [01:02:51] But that's so strange because Walmart has a bigger brand. Why does Walmart need Jet? It's not a...

Brian: [01:02:58] That's not true. It's like Sam's Club, right? You know, it serves a different purpose than the Walmart brand does. Everyone knows they're owned by Walmart. But it's to say this is something else besides your standard Walmart.

Phillip: [01:03:15] Right.

Brian: [01:03:16] And so I can see Jet sort of kind of falling into that category. Now, wouldn't it be crazy... Oh, now my wheels are spinning a little bit. Wouldn't it be crazy if Jet becomes a part of Sam's Club and gets approved in the membership.

Phillip: [01:03:32] I can see that.

Brian: [01:03:33] For Sam's Club. You can get a membership or Sam's Club, you get Jet subscription for free. Oh man.

Phillip: [01:03:39] Yeah, I like that.

Brian: [01:03:42] Now, I mean, to me, now the three billion dollars makes it a little bit of sense.

Phillip: [01:03:48] I mean that is if they haven't already. Walmart's probably already built out a huge Sam's Club digital infrastructure.

Brian: [01:03:54] They have. They have put it kind of sucks. Jet is way better.

Phillip: [01:03:58] I mean, so does Costco's, you know, maybe...

Brian: [01:04:00] Yes, it does. Oh, my gosh.

Phillip: [01:04:02] Costco is the...

Brian: [01:04:04] Costco is like my favorite retailer ever of all time.

Phillip: [01:04:08] Yeah.

Brian: [01:04:08] And their online experience is something that I wish that I could take part in changing. I want it to be better so badly.

Phillip: [01:04:18] Don't even start me on the whole American Express debacle. You know what? Here's the deal. This is we were talking about M&A activity. Yahoo! was just acquired by Verizon?

Brian: [01:04:30] Oh, my gosh. How can we not bring this up? That is insane. I really, really hope it doesn't affect my fantasy football league. That's all.

Phillip: [01:04:40] Yahoo's fantasy app is the best of all the fantasy apps.

Brian: [01:04:43] No doubt.

Phillip: [01:04:44] I've used the NFL.com. I've used CBS.

Brian: [01:04:49] ESPN.

Phillip: [01:04:49] I've used all of them. So yeah, Yahoo is definitely is the best. But yeah, it's such a strange acquisition. Also, Alibaba not included in the acquisition. Speaking of marketplaces having all the money. So it's a very strange, very, very strange landscape right now. You know, and I'm sure the next episode we'll talk about more mergers and acquisitions for forty five minutes, because that seems to be the recurring theme here.

Brian: [01:05:18] Oh my gosh, I hope not. No, not at all. Our next episode. OK, we should we should make a commitment on air. So that we actually like get into that.

Phillip: [01:05:25] Oh this is good stuff guys.

Brian: [01:05:26] I think our next episode should be the body data episode.

Phillip: [01:05:31] I like it.

Brian: [01:05:32] I think we might be able to get an expert on the air, if not this episode then the following one. Maybe we end up making a two parter. But I think we need to dive into this because there's a whole world of commerce that's I think it's about to be a lot because of body data.

Phillip: [01:05:51] So beyond quantified self. It's what? Can you set it up for us? Is it like marketing data from, I don't know, physical activity, that sort of thing? Are those things that we're going to be talking about?

Brian: [01:06:10] That's part of it. No, it's more like, OK, so absolutely. So health data is a part of it and activity, you know, activity data, but also like body measurements and like deeper, deeper scans that will relate back to virtual health.

Phillip: [01:06:30] Got it.

Brian: [01:06:31] So, you know, it plays into fashion and apparel. It plays into an ergonomically designed furniture and in other things. Plays into video games and VR and other all kinds of other activities that I'm not going to get into. But there's a lot that's going to happen with measurements and with like physical measurements and also health measurements. There's a ton just a few years away. So we'll talk more about that next episode.

Phillip: [01:07:11] Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for listening to Future Commerce. We want you to give us feedback. We want to hear about your thoughts about today's show and maybe your rumors or your predictions for the next acquisitions. {laughter}

Brian: [01:07:27] {laughter} Yes.

Phillip: [01:07:28] You know, I would love to hear that. So if you have those thoughts, leave them right now, if you're listening on FutureCommerce.fm, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page you're on right now and hit us up in the Disqus comment box below. And if you are subscribed on iTunes, please leave us a five star review. That helps us get found by other people that listen to these types of podcasts. And we always appreciate your reviews and your feedback there on iTunes. We appreciate those. Also, you can subscribe both on iTunes and Google Play or listen right from your Amazon Echo with the phrase, "Alexa, play Future Commerce." Oh, I woke her up. I did it. I said it wasn't going to happen.

Brian: [01:08:11] You paused.

Phillip: [01:08:11] Yeah, it's because paused. I totally paused. Anyway. All right. Well, thank you for listening and have a great week and go build some awesome stuff.

Brian: [01:08:20] Have a good week.

Phillip: [01:08:21] Alright. Adios.

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