Will a driverless fleet give truckers more time at rest stops . First, to our top story. Start says job cuts will this week. They said cuts will improve efficiency and accountability. Bloomberg has learned that about 2000 jobs have been eliminated s global 60 of wework workforce. Ellen huet joins us with more. What do we know about these layoffs and their broader strategy of slimming down, if you will . Ellen it seems, based on this new memo that the executive chairman sent this morning, it going to start in ernest going to start in earnest in the u. S. This week. It seems like maybe this week is going to be the big time. They had originally scheduled an all hands meeting for tuesday and another part of the memo says the meeting will be moved to friday. On friday, we expect a fiveyear plan of the company. Taylor do we have any indication of what that fiveyear plan will look like . Ellen if it is anything like what is talked about in the memos, it will be similar to that path that is trying to focus on getting back to the core profitability. That goal, easier said than done for a business that, even if they managed to make the right cuts, they will be suffering from employee morale. This was a hard few months for employees who felt in june or july were on the brink for a successful ipo and now the company has seemed to go through a 180. Many people who, even if they have not even if they are not going to be cut this week, may be leaving. There are people who want to stay but others who feel like it is on shaky ground. Taylor to get a sense, this couple thousand that could start to be getting laid off this week, is that within weworks Office Sharing business specifically or does that also include some of the side businesses you were talking about . Ellen it probably will include side businesses. The total number will probably be up to a little massaging. There will be side businesses that are probably expected to be shut down. It also gets a little bit complicated. Many of the cleaners at wework were inhouse employees for years, called Community Service associates and other titles like that. They were inhouse for years and it seems like they will be slowly transitioning to being hired by an outside contractor. There is some job shifting going around so that final number of layoffs may be difficult to pin down. Taylor it is interesting that you mentioned the ceo because there have been rumors circulating about a new ceo, john legere, who we have learned today will be stepping down from tmobile, his name in the mix. These twoy have coceos who stepped in after adam neumann left. It seems like softbank and or maybe the company as well are starting to ask around and see if there is someone to take over. I think they recognize it will be important for someone to step in with a lot of confidence, ability to set a new course for leadership. It has been so shaky for leadership since then. Asy had marcello step in executive chairman. I think the expectation would be that he would work alongside whoever ends up becoming ceo. I am sure this is a search that would weigh heavily on the minds of the board. Morale boosting employee can be so key to that strategy. Thank you, Bloomberg Technologys ellen huet. When alphabet looked into acquiring fitbit, it turned up a familiar name, lazar, the Investment Bank that goes back to the 1800s. It can count on the Silicon Valley giant as a surprising and steady source of business. Joining to discuss is bloombergs leanna baker. I have to ask, why the googlelazard partnership . It goes back to a decade ago when one of lazards investors, known as being a confidant to bill clinton and d. C. Insider, had a relationship with googles top lawyer, david drummond. Google has been advised by lazard since 2011. They have quietly become googles house bank. Taylor we have learned they recently acquired fitbit. What are some of the deals they have been an advisor on . Liana lazard has stepped into advise google on its most transformative deals. Nest a few years ago. It started with motorola, almost a 10 billion deal in 2011. They worked on looker technologies. They have done smaller deals. Lazard is on retainer with google so they dont just advise on the largest transactions. They are paid a retainer fee and they will weigh in on anything google is looking at. They did advise google when they looked at twitter. How all of sense of those fees you pointed out stack up into lazards broader Business Strategy . Liana according to consultants, lazard has only made about 70 million estimated fees from google. That is not make or break from lazard, but it is this sort of repeat business and Investment Banking that the boutique has come to rely on. Lazard, one of their top bankers left in france a couple of weeks ago. The dealmaking is not what it used to be. Lazard has a ton of teak rivals that have taken a big share. In Silicon Valley, ever view. They now have competition in this independent advisory space. Taylor within that Competitive Landscape that you just highlighted, how dependent has lazard become more and more on those Silicon Valley giants come on those repetitive clients that they do have that seemingly permanent relationship with . Liana they have some big names like ibm. Working with google, some rivals have said maybe they are conflicted out of working with other tech giants. They may not be able to work with, say, apple or facebook. So they are kind of planting a flag on this relationship and they are committed. That is what google likes. They like the secrecy, that they are behind the scenes. Until now, they havent really been in the headlines connected to google. Taylor thank you for joining us. The state of california has sued marketingllegedly products to teenagers. Has become a target of government regulators trying to stop an epidemic of new, young users. We break down the washington tactics next. If you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio, the bloomberg app, bloomberg. Com, and in the u. S. , on sirius xm. This is bloomberg. Taylor now to a story we are following, the continued pursuit of big tech by the u. S. Government. Senator josh holly of missouri has introduced a new bill keeping data being acquired by countries seen as being a National Security threat. Saysxample, the bill tiktok could not collect user data deemed unnecessary to its business and transmit operations within china. Joining us, bloombergs ben brody. Let me start with you. What are your thoughts on this. Ill ben lawmakers continually feeling that they have to grapple with chinas tech ambitions. The rules for the web not just in china where there are one billion plus people, but here in the United States. Do they sent the content rules on tictoc, the surveillance rules do they set the content rules on tiktok, the surveillance rules . Withor hawley was angry tiktok and apple for not showing up. Taylor is this kind is this the kind of protection that big tech wants that Consumers Want . Curt probably to some extent. We have seen google, facebook, and others to push for regulation. What they mean is they want to be involved in shaping the regulation. If they can have guidelines or rules where they can follow those and that solves all of their issues, that looks good for them especially if it keeps potential upstarts or startups from keeping up. Tiktok is obviously a threat, i think, to facebook. Certain regulations may hurt facebook a little bit if they hurt foreign competitors like tiktok, they might be on board. Taylor on a day where there seems to be more and more proposed legislation, headline that the ftc says they are looking at multiple antitrust probes underway and that they will review all of these antitrust laws in the wake of these probes. Does this indicate that the size and scope is bigger than we saw before . Ben i think, absolutely. We know that the federal trade commission and Justice Department are doing these wideranging probes into digital marketplaces and they are all doing google, facebook, amazon, and apple. We know the doj is formally looking into google and facebook, we know the ftc is formally looking into facebook. What we dont know is whether they are doing those other companies. Raised that the chairman the question today that they may be doing all four of those, maybe two or three. If i were an investor, i would be looking at the question of how intense that scrutiny has gotten. Taylor does this meet the level of the bar that needs to be set in terms of harming competition. The Tech Companies that could potentially be in play. Ben facebook has talked about this the most Kurt Facebook has talked about this the most. Their argument has basically been out of the accusations are really about harming consumers, that we are being penalized big, and that is the crime. You have facebook, google, amazon. When you talk about app stores, google and apple having these really dominant app stores. It is tough to say who is being harmed in what way but those are the ultimate questions we are looking at. Taylor i was looking at another story about google and facebook donating to privacy groups and think tanks, and this kind of extends their reach beyond just traditional lobbyists. Lobbying, we understand, sort of a normal course of business. How much does it concern you now that you see big donations from facebook, google, and the like, to these privacy advocacy groups, think tanks, that in some ways appeared to be neutral . Ben i think that is exactly the point. This is nontraditional lobbying. This is about shaping the narrative, shaping the conversation as it goes to the public, but also as it sort of appears to the washington class among supporters, staff, lawmakers. It is always the concern, going talk about, a balanced is this, who is presenting, do we know their biases . It is always a part of how everyone in washington is weighing the policy process. I think these groups will often push back and say, we have lots of different sponsorships, and we put forth the best solutions we think we can. Some groups are even more forthright and some groups are largely captured by these companies and essentially putting forth their agendas in the shadow lobbying. Taylor some of these think tanks, companies we know of, cato institute, access now, center for technology and democracy. Is it ist stood out hard to exactly say because some of these were hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of these were as low as 10,000. What does that really buy you . I think when it comes down to it, this is a play about leverage. You want to be able to make a call to someone, get your point of view across. When you have that existing relationship, it is probably easier to do that. The dollar amount, you could almost set aside. This is about building a relationship with people who have the ear of the media, the general public. Taylor thank you to bloombergs kurt wagner and ben brody. Coming up, we talk investing in startups. 157irm announces a million funding. Isomberg technology livestreaming on twitter. Check us out technology. This is bloomberg. Taylor just eight years ago, new york raised venture firm bold Star Ventures raised funds. Millionaised 157 across two funds. The news comes just days after softbank announced 2 billion funding for its Second Division fund. For more on the latest funding, we are joined by Boldstart Ventures partner ed sin. Ed sim. Where you see the best opportunities and where to nvest to invest . Ed if you think of every fortune 500 as a software company, from Cloud Computing to a Developer First atmosphere is an awesome opportunity to invest. If you think about it, salesforce is over 20 years old so the opportunity to build parts of salesforce is super impressive. Companies like kustomer are going after Service Cloud in a pretty impressive way. Your fund sort of focuses on different companies. Transforming sort of existing companies that are already in play. Between those two, what has been harder to raise money for . Kind of our first Institutional Fund and it took us time to play out, being the First Investor in technical enterprise founders. A lot of our Portfolio Companies have gone on to raise over 100 million to get them off the ground. We can point to those Success Stories and they had real metrics, whereas the prior fund was more about vision. Surprisesat aspect you the most when they are handing over what aspect are they asking about the most when they are handing over capital . Ed we are trying to help them understand that, for us, it is fit, sounder market realizing things that already exist or have new categories. Withategories involved what categories they buy. Taylor i have asked this question and i have yet to get a solid answer. That is, at what year, on average, do you want to see profitability from these companies . Ed when we invest in companies, we are only investing in Enterprise Software companies so from a gross margin perspective, we dont have to think about what that would be because it is high gross margin. We dont invest to think when this will be profitable, we have to think when the total gross margin is potentially massive and if the founders can execute on product. They have to focus on building the best product, finding the first user and dozens and dozens of users after that. If you focus on that first in the beginning and have a great product, you will be able to win customers. Taylor softbank was looking to win their Second Division fund and will be closely looking at Enterprise Software. How overvalued is this space now with too much cash chasing too few opportunities . Ed that is an interesting and leading question. I think there are some companies overvalued but we are still in the second inning. If you look at Cloud Computing space, i think it is about 10 . If you take that number and look at the next five or 10 years, i think no matter what Economic Cycle we are in, there will be plenty of space for enterprise technologies. Whatever the value is today, i still think three or four years from now, we will be in good shape. Taylor how much is softbank a threat seeing how overvalued became . S like wework of there is always a Risk Companies being over capitalized. I was on your show in august you about how money still have to have balanced growth, growth at all costs. With wework, you wont see that in the enterprise space. I think most enterprise advisors are more practical. The lag time of selling into these large enterprises. Taylor Boldstart Ventures partner ed sim, thank you for joining us. Latest iphoneles is scoring early success in the second largest market, china. That is next. This is bloomberg. Taylor this is Bloomberg Technology global link where we join bloomberg daybreak australia to bring you the latest in global tech news. I am taylor riggs in san francisco. Lets take a look at the top global tech stories of the day. Paul thanks very much, taylor. Taylor i am going to start here with softbank. Theyre going to create japanese net giant to battle rivals like google and amazon. Theyre going to combine with messaging service, line. That will be a venture in a deal that will not close until october. It is driven by sense of prices, that global giants are increasing their hold on the tech industry. Tmobile ceo john leger is stepping down. Rebel will leave april 30. He will stay on the board. It is a long planned transition. The new tmobile chief executive and chief operating officer will be mike seeger. Has rejected a takeover offer from xerox. The company says the bid is too low. Plus, it raises questions about xerox in the printing industry. Hp says it is open to exploring a merger, but there are fundamental questions that need to be answered. Tope are a look at the global tech stories. Chinese consumers are rediscovering their appetite for iphones. Bloomberg crunched the numbers and found that apple shipped 10 million iphones in china during september and october. That was a 6 increase from a year earlier. That confirms the iphone 11 is selling more strongly than its predecessor. Lets bring in mark gurman, who covers apple for us. Demand . Driving the the funds do not even have 5g. Market i think this is an upgrade cycle. People coming from the iphone x. Last year, the iphone x, 10 asked, and 10 are not big upgrade, or it were too expensive. Prices for the 10 as max were very high. Now, we are in a year where there was a more significant update. It would make sense that in a year where the improvements were minimal compared to a year like this year where the improvements were more significant. Taylor looks like they worked on the battery life, they have updated their camera. Give us more details on that, how important it is, and what they have to do in the future. Mark they upgraded the camera. There is a triple and system on the back. You can take wideangle photos. If you take a picture, you can take it at 0. 5 x, which means you get more content in the frame. People are liking the battery life. Apple is quoting between four and five hours of vitally life. Enhanced video Recording Capabilities as well. These are way that apple is sparring upgrades. Theyre making money in other ways with the air pods and the apple watch. It fits into the larger ecosystem. Taylor i was surprised there was not a sense of nationalism, given the trade fight between the u. S. And china, that they were not going out and buying huawei funds. Is there a sense of nationalism there when it comes to phones . Generally, in china, the iphone is not doing as well as it used to do. We have not had large gigantic iphone sales we used to have. 2014 through 2016 was the peak of the iphone in china. This trade war in part, three things for a wrench. In manyumers in china, cases, offerings from huawei are more capable. They integrate better with the chinese consumers. That is the fundamental iss