Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg West 20150919 : vimarsan

The entire world is watching. A solar powered plane going around the world. First, to our lead. Tech investors live to see another day of easy money thanks to the fed. The decision to keep Interest Rates on hold should keep fueling the funding for startups but with shares of high valuations and slowing growth in china how will investors respond . Joining me now, two investors with their hands on the polls of investment. I want to start with you, what do you think these low rates mean for the tech giants and Tech Startups . Guest low rates are not the point. The giants have boatloads of cash. They are not impacted that way. The startups and the private companies have good cash coming in. What is important is the state of the market. The Public Markets, that drives the ipo market, that drives the private invested market, that is what the tech world needs. Emily i hesitated to use the word Funding Party. How much of that is due to low Interest Rates versus due to the potential for real tech disruption . Guest i dont view Interest Rates as an indicator of what investing cycles are life. It is almost a tail wagging the dog to talk about Interest Rates swaying people to invest. Emily could it work in reverse . Guest it definitely could. That is where there is a palpable danger. We are talking seven years in a recovery economy. This is the time when investors get over exuberant. Too many are asking for venture capital, too many founders are bidding each other out. This is exactly the danger of starting a company in an economy and why investors are savvy about saying we should start in down economies. Emily i hear you nodding out there. If rates increase does that mean the Funding Party stops . Guest i think it is built on the Public Markets and the availability of an ipo future. As long as we have that we will continue to have lots of funding in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. The one thing i will say, yes there is a lot of money out there by having tried to raise a bunch of it myself it is not that easy. Emily the wall street journal had a piece today about unicorns. You probably have hedge funds and mutual funds investing in you somehow. They will feel the pinch when Interest Rates go up. Could that affect things . Guest absolutely. Im in the lending sector. We make personal consumer loans. We are at the bleeding edge aware Interest Rates could intersect with start up support. The consensus seems to be that rising Interest Rate environment, it is not like hedge Fund Money Goes away, but i will say we should prepare for higher rates and pay higher costs for the debt instruments we take on. If anybody is out there now and you are in the middle of a venture Debt Financing or a commercial loan process you should seek to get that button. Emily what about china . How does that affect things . Were still seeing dramatic volatility in chinese markets. Guest the volatility impacts us here and that is the more important thing. What we need, we need good markets and nonvolatile markets. To give everyone the confidence to continue investing in building. Emily how are you preparing . You are in a startup stage now. What are you doing in this environment . Are you thinking of these macroeconomic issues . Guest definitely. It is the one thing that keeps me up at night. Writ large for all of the companies in the alternative lending space we need to care about where we are in the macroeconomic cycle. In general my advice, we should prepare for being able to withstand a sudden doubling of the consumer loss rates we have seen. We should prepare for at least a one and a half axing. Emily thank you. Interesting to hear that perspective. Thank you for joining us. Currently ceo personal capital. Thank you. Turning to camera technology, go pro is dominating the action camera market with 67 of Global Market share but one company is hoping to get a bigger cut. Ion camera is taking on 13 of the market. 9 of the market. The video capturing industry has lost the female customer. Young adults, moms, they are not carrying camcorders anymore. This is going to recapture that female customer. The idea you can send out a facebook message and it says im about to go live, do you want to take a look, that is what will go on. The next level is live streaming. This is a product that will have a high uptake in volume. For us the volume is going to be there. We finished short of 9 . We are going to double digit market share. The thing about this camera is that if the market accepts this as being the accessory to the smartphone or the third lens to the smartphone the volume is going to grow. We are going to be in a great place for that. The growth is there. The market is there. It is a great place to be. Emily coming up, the ceo of taskrabbit. Why her startup has staying power. And the dream lives on. The pilot of the solar plane talks about his audacious upcoming flight. Emily uber, airbnb and taskrabbit, the big players shaping the future of the u. S. Workforce. I had a chance to sit down with the ceo of taskrabbit and asked her how she plans to scale up the business. First, we are in 20 markets across the u. S. London was our First International market. There is tons of opportunity in europe. There is also a massive opportunity here with a lot of partnerships that we are rolling out. We launched with amazon in march, if you are shopping on amazon and need a tv, chances are you need it mounted. You can book a tasker. Those are areas of growth we are going to invest in. Emily what is the most common task . Leah about four categories. Housecleaning, handyman services, moving help. It is split evenly. Emily taskrabbit preceded the rise of instacart. Where do you see taskrabbit in this exploding landscape . Leah we started in 2008. We are proud pioneers of this. But we hear from customers is they want a onestop shop for all the services. They dont want to have 20 apps on their phone and brands they have to trust. What were focused on is delivering the one stop shop experience, consistent quality. Emily could you see yourselves in food delivery, or is that what you dont want to do . Leah the margins are tough. We have tried different test before. It is not a big focus area. We would much rather help you with a high trust situation around your home. Emily you mentioned the economics. I was talking to bill gurley who said that he is struggling to understand the economics of and instacart. How do you see the sharing economy play out . Maybe economics dont work longterm . Leah there is a big concern. There is a lot of investment and companies burning through capital at a high rate that are subsidizing a lot of the costs and the economics. When i started taskrabbit, this was a tough economic time. That forced me to be disciplined about how to spin and capitalize my business. We have created a longterm sustainable model. Emily the other debate is how to classify workers. Should they be considered employees or contractors. Taskrabbit is contractors. Leah they are. Taskrabbit is a marketplace for the only set up to allow tasker to set their own schedules and accept and decline work. Those are three big differentiators. A lot of these other companies are top down and saying this is the pricing and i am just going to dispatch you. We are set up differently. Our mission is to employ a workforce. Emily when it comes to uber, would you say that is a situation where maybe it would make sense to classify them as employees . Leah for us, it is not even something we have had to tackle or deal with today because we are set up so differently. We havent had to face these lawsuits, regulatory issues. People to realize when they dig into our model it is different. We have the opportunity to say here is a model that is working. How can you guys apply what we have built into your own business is Going Forward . Emily where is taskrabbit in two years . Leah we have barely scratched the surface. Our mission is to revolutionize how people work on a global scale. I want to see us in more countries on the Global Market and europe, more partnerships like what were doing with amazon. Emily time for a status update. You remember the solar plane that captured attention this year. Solo flights, one leg of the trip finally got the best of the plane. The ocean stretch from japan to hawaii. The planes 17,000 solar cells are taking a breather and before the pilot continues he told us how he is preparing for his next recordbreaking flight. I trained with yoga and meditation, techniques that help you keep the right mindset to fly so long. I know how to use the bathroom, i learned how to survive in the ocean. I have prepared for the worst case. Emily why do you do this . Guest we like to show the technology that we have available. The Clean Technology that can help us and allow us to do what we do everywhere, not only in aviation, the way we moved in Energy Efficient ways. Instead of just thinking of producing more and more energy, lets use the energy we have in a better way. That is what we want to promote. Emily will we all be flying in solar powered planes . Guest maybe in 3040 years. As a passenger you should be patient. Emily the pilot of the Solar Impulse plane. Fascinating guy. He sleeps 20 minutes at a time. Incredible. Coming up, one of amazons most aggressive attempts to undercut apple. Amazons new fire tablet selling for 50. Burberry is debuting its spring collection on snapchat before it hits the runway. Emily it is time for the daily byte, one number that tells a whole lot. Today it is 24 hours. The amount of time you will have to see burberry spring collection on snapchat. Pictures will be shown on the Burberry Snapchat channel starting 2 00 p. M. Eastern sunday. Then the collection will vanish. Snapchat will bring its life story coverage to burberrys show by curating videos and backstage clips. Users snapchats watched more than 4 billion videos a day. I wonder how many users can afford anything from burberry . Anyway. Now to amazon, selling its new tablet in a six pack. The new fire tablet costs 50 are you can buy six of them for 250. Meaning you get one for free. A long with the new fire tablet, amazon announced a new fire tv and a voice activated wand that makes your tv double as a personal assistant. Joining me now, ryan, on one to start with you, what do you think of this strategy . Market share is negligible. Why are they making hardware at all . Guest the market is declining. Emily the tablet market is declining, but amazons share is basically nonexistent. Guest true. Less than 1 by our numbers. The strategy is putting more screens in front of people that can buy services and goods. That is amazons Business Model altogether. They are not out to make money on the hardware. They have revolutionized the tablet game 23 years back when they introduced the original fire. The lowest price we had seen. Emily but no one is buying it. Guest good point. [laughter] emily what do you make of this strategy . As far as i can tell, it doesnt make any sense to buy one of these if you dont have amazon prime. Guest we take a look at that Business Strategy across the media assets, including their hardware and software, all they are trying to do is to drive more membership to their amazon prime membership because that drives profitable ecommerce business for them. Prime members spend a significant amount more than the average amazon user. All of their media businesses , including their hardware, it theot necessarily to wow market from a technological standpoint it is to drive , traffic to amazon prime. Emily you can watch video on demand, you can use amazon. Com and order things more easily. What about the price . 50, or 40 bucks a tablet. Will be priced drive demand . Guest the price drives people for kids tablets. Its about putting screens in the car, extra screens around the house. It will drive some demand there. I dont think the sixpack thing is going to drive volume. People dont need six new screens. But they will drive some volume with 50 screens. Especially around the holiday quarter. Not only will they drive more prime services, but other content that is geared towards kids. Curated web browsers built into this as well. It will be successful with kids and those that dont necessarily care to use this as their primary tablet but a screen for recipes and so forth. Emily what about the fire tv settop box . Is that doing better than the tablet . Is there more of an argument to buy Something Like that as opposed to apple tvs new settop talks, as opposed to roku . Guest right. It is one of many that are trying to get into the household and bridge the gap between traditional Linear Television and internet delivered television. There is a lot of competition. Most notably apple. What amazon is trying to do is put as get as involved as much as possible in the media consumption, so that they can drive those consumers and have them subscribe to amazon prime because that is where the economics are made on the ecommerce side. It is on the software, the programming, the movie programming. They are starting to step up investments and looking at proprietary content coming down the hike. Emily Holiday Season coming up. What are people buying . Are they going to be buying amazon or apple . Guest iphones are going to be the number one thing and that is has not changed. These are compelling. The fire tv is compelling. Consumers are a little confused what to buy. If you dig in and you are a casual gamer, these are compelling boxes. They support 4k. There is a gaming option they will announce. Emily and the apple tv doesnt support 4k. But they do have gaming features on apple tv. Guestzl there is a more popular brand when you think about hardware . 90 and 50 for streaming in cluding gaming into the house . That is compelling. Emily how about you . What is going to be under your tree this season . Guest go back to apple. The samsung phones, it seems to be more of the phones as opposed to the tablets. The tablets are not showing much growth, actually some declines in some categories. It seems to be the more mobile, the better. Emily apple going after the Business Market with the ipad pro. Thank you both, and thank you for watching this edition of bloomberg west. It is friday everybody, have a wonderful weekend. Phil im phil mattingly. Mark and im mark halperin, and with all due respect to the others nominated for an emmy come on. Its jon hamms time. On the show tonight, hillary, bernie, and a filling in the blank, but first, someone at a donald trump event last night called president Obama A Muslim and trumpeted not correct him. Mr. Trump this man, i like this guy. Amen, okay. We have a problem in this country called muslims. We know our current president is one