Elon Musk’s X is no Twitter: Is there still any magic left?
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Welcome to Most Innovative Companies. I'm your host, Yasmin Gagne, joined by my producer, Josh Christensen. Josh, what's your favorite Twitter account? Oh, well, is Cat Turd still alive on Twitter or X? No, I'm kidding. That's so hard because I haven't been on it in a while. So I'm going to turn it back on you. What's your favorite Twitter slash X account?

There's a Twitter account called Liminal Spaces. It's like photos of like hotel hallways or like, you know, like a small pool. It's like these like weird sort of eerie, but also kind of soothing images. An empty computer room from middle school. It's like, and I just like scroll through it when I'm...

anxious that seems like a little bit like in the realm of like asmr of just like the oddly satisfying videos or like the soap carving videos actually i do have an answer now there's one i don't know if it still exists but there's one twitter account that just tracked things and people that liza manelli has outlived and yes i follow that account yeah i i just i don't know why it just tickles me all the time because then i just think of liza manelli and she's delightful and it makes me giggle

Well, later on today's episode, I'll be talking with 13 Loon co-founder, Nikeo Greco, about her experience as a Black female entrepreneur. But first, it's been a year since Elon Musk took over Twitter, or X, or whatever you want to call it. And here to break that down is friend of the pod, Max Offberg. Hey, Max. Hey, Yaz. Hey, Josh. Ooh.

Welcome back, Max. Thank you. So we all know that, you know, in the past year, Twitter has gotten so much better for all of us. And I guess I want to ask you to take us through the changes that Elon has made, chronological or non-chronological, but like what are some of the biggest sort of developments we've seen this year? Well, he changed the name to X. That's a big one. Right. He laid off the majority of the staff. Right.

which really hurt the company in areas like content moderation. As we're seeing now with the election and with the Israel-Palestine war, misinformation is kind of running rampant. He also blew up the verification process in favor of what's essentially a pay-to-play scheme. Hell yeah. I lost my blue check. Did you guys lose yours? I never had one to begin with. I know Max paid. Yeah, I'm a Twitter blue hardcorer.

But I mean, to my earlier point, like by blowing up verification in these major global events, it's meant that it's harder than ever to know who's a sort of trusted source. You had people, I mean, currently, right now, you have people making fake accounts claiming to be journalists or some sort of expert authority and then buying the blue check, which lends like a veneer of authenticity. But it's totally bunk.

I would say in the last year, things have not been great for Twitter for its bottom line or for its sort of staff morale. But you're both still on Twitter, right? I can't quit. Not really. Yeah, I check in every once in a while solely for like, honestly, like reposting this podcast. Like that's about it. Josh is more into threads. I'm a big threads guy. I'm more of a Mastodon boy.

We haven't really seen any like big, I think there were just maybe too many of them. Like I know we talked with Spill and Spill is doing well for a sort of certain community, but we haven't really seen any sort of big rivals that have made sense, right? No, I mean, we saw...

Quite a few rivals pop up in the last year. We've got Mastodon, CoHost, Blue Sky, Pebble, which was formerly known as T2. Pebble just shut down. Yeah, exactly. Oh, it did? There's been a number of those rebrands, though. Isn't that happening too right now? Pebble rebranded and now it's shut down. People are changing their names and trying to come at it again.

Right, exactly. And it's also, you know, even the ones that haven't been shut down, their growth is still pretty minuscule compared to Twitter. So Blue Sky has a million accounts. Mastodon has 1.7 million users. These are still pretty tiny numbers when you compare to Twitter, which, you know, even in its down years is still over 100 million users. But how many of those are bots?

That's a good question. That was Elon's whole premise with it? Yeah. Yeah, right. Wasn't that his thing? He's like, the reason I'm making people pay for shit is bots? Right. Elon claimed he wanted to sort of banish the bot problem, then used the bot problem as an argument to be allowed out of his initial purchase for Twitter, right? Because he made the $44 billion offer. Then he didn't. He kind of tried to renege on that. Then he was forced into purchasing it. I mean, plenty of people have said since the beginning, like,

44 billion is way overvalued. I mean, that's sort of at its peak. People would have said it was like 25 billion. And Musk himself claimed in the spring that the company was worth 20 billion. And even that seems like a bit of an over-exaggeration. A little too high. Yeah, this is like when Donald Trump ran for president and then he actually won and he was like, damn. Yeah, now I gotta be president. Yeah.

That is something that I feel like gets lost in this a lot is that like Elon Musk didn't try to back, like he didn't actually want it. In the end, like it kind of, he got forced to buy it by like a lawsuit. Are there any positive aspects to his takeover? Like, is there anything you're seeing that has changed or made the platform better?

I mean, it was like a no. You will hear people, you know, former Twitter employees saying that there was a bit of bloat at the company, honestly, and it wasn't a like optimized organization. Having said that, I think cutting 80% of the staff is maybe a bit of a, you know, an overstep. I mean, I want to be fair to him, but I would be hard pressed to find any

anyway, that to me, Twitter has gotten better. I think if you like enjoy watching absolute freaks just sound off on something, maybe Twitter is a lot better now because, you know, that's the other thing is like the algorithms change to basically promote people paying for Twitter blue and all these kind of weird, sheisty accounts. So like I'm seeing accounts that I used to just have absolutely no insight into.

Yeah, 100%. Me too. Where do you think Twitter is going in the future? Before this episode, I was doing some background reading and I totally forgot when Twitter acquired Vine, right? Back in the day. And there was a weird NFL deal a few years ago to try and stream on Twitter. They have tried...

a lot of stuff that could have been successful, I would argue, but was like either managed very poorly or like they didn't have the technology. Do you see them expanding in any way? I mean, he's done everything at Twitter to date, I think, in the name of turning the company now known as X into this everything app that he's

long dreamed of, which is kind of similar to China's WeChat. The problem there is that he hasn't really built anything worth paying for. So, you know, in theory, if you want to build this everything app, that's your town square, your marketplace, like everything in one, it has to just make sense on a basic level. But there's still it's still unclear why you pay for Twitter blue. Yeah. Also, can you imagine like integrating shopping with Twitter? I mean, just like the weirdest products. Right. Oh, God. John's already a TikTok shopper, which has led him to some

Purchases, I would say. I've got the Jaws of size. It's all I need in my life. Just a closet full of Shein and a thing of rubber in my mouth. Well, if he does want to turn it into some kind of, you know, commerce platform, he's scared off all the, not all, but he's scared off many of the major advertisers. So that's why, right? Like, whereas it used to be, I don't know,

some big bank or something advertising. Now it's like, what's a good example? I don't know. What's a good example? I can't even think about who's advertising there. I'm going to relate it to podcasts for a moment. There's a particular sect of podcasts that has a very particular sect of advertisers, like the Joe Rogan podcast that has alpha growth and all of these particular things. But the mainstream advertisers don't want to touch that type of content. So it's all these weird, odd,

The best way I would put it is like, I'm seeing a lot of, maybe this has something to do with, I don't think so. My account, but I'm seeing a lot of like,

Tucker Max adjacent people. You know what I mean? It's like weird, trolly, kind of pickup artist type stuff on like any product. And I should say, just to kind of put some numbers here, Elon said in July that ad revenue is down 50%. And then Insider Intelligence projected this morning that Twitter will bring in 1.9 billion in ad revenue this year, which is down from 4.1 billion in 2022. So that's a 50 some percent drop.

I want to talk about the Linda Iaccarino of it all. I think we all saw that clip of her at, I don't remember what conference it was, but she basically just like, it was kind of a disaster on stage. Tell me how she fits into the picture and what you think her job and her future is at the company. I mean, it seems like she's still sort of susceptible to Elon's whims.

She may well have the best of intentions, but Elon still seems to be running the show here and making like unilateral decisions to some extent that she's essentially just another employee of his. It doesn't feel like she's really steering the ship in like a traditional CEO role. Yeah, I wouldn't say that either. Can I ask a question more about just like Musk himself and being an idiot? Yeah, yeah.

He's like white Nick Cannon at this point. Wow. They might. He's competing with kids now. Yeah. I wanted to like circle back to like the everything app sort of thing because to me it sounds like a very like sophomoric idea. It sounds like what like a kid

freshman computer science major at Stanford who's actually not that bright would be like, I want to disrupt the world. I want to create the everything app. And it's just like, does that actually make any sense? Like, it just sounds stupid to me. I mean, it's worked in China. I think whether or not it makes

sense. It's very much in line with Elon's approach to business. You know, when he bought Twitter for 44 billion, let's not forget that that comes out to 5420 per share. So there's the 420 reference and like, Oh, no. Yeah. So I know, right. So when you talk about like it being sophomoric, I mean, he operates by the seam of his pants, like he kind of he's had a lot of success kind of as a marketer, right doing things that he thinks sound cool. And with Tesla, it's

It worked. I think this is arguably a lesson for the way billionaires work. It's like you're really good at one thing, and that doesn't necessarily mean you're really good at 10 other things. It might mean that you're good at putting a team together to accomplish those 10 other goals. But in Musk's case, he makes so many top-down decisions that everything bears his likeness.

For better or worse. His memes are so crazy. Like the ones he personally posts or the ones that he is like a feature in? The ones he personally posts. Oh, yeah. But also I was reading Max Chavkin, former Fast Company reporter, currently Bloomberg, really good biography of Peter Thiel. And he talked about, well, there were two things that I thought were interesting. One is the fact that Musk wanted to rebrand PayPal to X. Mm-hmm.

So he's sort of just like... He's like a kid, you know what I mean? He had like a bad idea. Yeah, he's had this idea for like, at this point, 20 years or something. He just keeps trying to make fetch happen. It's just that sort of thing. But it's just like the Hyperloop was like in the same thing where it's just like this big, like half-baked grandiose idea and it ends up like...

being a big nothing burger. And it just feels like that's his MO. Look, he's a really good marketer. Like him or not, he has some skill in that. Like, in the way that Steve Jobs is a really good marketer. I think...

I think he's more in the line of how Donald Trump's a good marketer, though. Yeah, but that's a skill. Do you know what I mean? It is, yeah. Yeah, totally. Twitter seems like the moment, or X, seems like the moment where the public kind of finally totally turned against him in this, at least in this particular product, where it's like, oh, you're really just making the shit up as you go along. Yeah, and the thing is, even his stans are like, you're making the shit up as you go along, and that's awesome. But there's always a recognition that he doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah. Yeah.

We're going to take a quick break followed by my interview with Nakea Grieco about creating a beauty brand that's exclusively inclusive. So to start off, I'd love to hear about your background and how you first got started in the beauty business, because it sounds like you worked in entertainment before. I did. I did. So I'm a first generation American of Kenyan descent.

I was born in New York, but both my parents were from Kenya. And I went to Kenya for the first time when I was eight years old to visit and meet my grandparents. And my grandmother, Nikao, who I named my first beauty brand after, was a Kenyan coffee farmer. And so she taught me my first beauty secrets using Kenyan coffee from her farm. And my grandfather had been a medicine man. He passed away before I got the chance to meet him. But, you know, all of these sort of rituals and

practices and timeless remedies were passed down to me through my parents growing up here in the States. And so after I graduated from college, I graduated from the University of Oklahoma. I moved to LA to work in the quote unquote, the business, like many young people do that land here. And I found myself in many different roles over the years working in entertainment, but I found that I really loved the fashion and beauty aspect. Were you in sort of marketing, business development?

I started as an assistant at a big agency in the television department. And then I worked at a management company as an assistant. I worked in production for a little while at Universal. Really loved representation the most as far as the entertainment industry was concerned. And so I ended up working at a management company, mostly with actresses.

at a really pivotal time in the business when actresses were starting to show up on magazine covers and in beauty deals more than models.

So got to really experience the negotiations of those deals, being on sets for all of the, you know, these activations that these actors were having. And I saw a lot of beauty products, but I didn't see a lot of beauty products celebrating the sophistication of Africa. And so I ended up leaving my job to create my grandmother's coffee scrub. That's how I started out in this industry almost 23 years ago.

So you had a first brand, Nikkeo Beauty, that had a bunch of stops and starts and eventually sold to Unilever in 2017. Tell me about that acquisition process. Well, I had become a part of a portfolio of

that Unilever ended up buying all of the brands within the portfolio. And so it wasn't necessarily a direct acquisition that I was negotiating on my own behalf or with lawyers on my own behalf. I was really part of this larger portfolio of brands. That being said, I did stay on with the brand for some time. And that process was really interesting. As you mentioned earlier, I had a lot of stops and starts in my business, mostly due to challenges

around access to capital. And so while it was such a key time for the brand, I learned a lot in that process. It made me appreciate sort of my independent days, my early days, even though they were challenging and a struggle, you know, you had sort of this autonomy to kind of create what it is that you wanted to. But, you know, stepping into this larger portfolio of brands,

While there were challenges, there were wins. But for me, I think it was always just a great reflection of the successes in the journey. It's not in the end result. And that was a really significant part of my journey as a beauty founder, especially as a Black woman and a founder of color.

to experience, you know, taking a brand from my apartment into the halls of Unilever. Well, it sounds like the journey was very important to you, but maybe the outcome wasn't exactly what you wanted or didn't go the way you planned. And I'm curious how that whole experience informed your business decision making when it came to 13 Loon. Well, it was a really significant part of the journey when Nikkeo had been acquired by Unilever and

It had originally been distributed under the previous portfolio at Ulta. And then when we joined the Unilever portfolio, we moved over to Target. And so Nikkei Beauty had actually launched into Target in January of 2020, if you can imagine. And so, you know, I was still working on the brand. We had started online, moving into stores, and none of us had any idea what was coming next.

but at the magnitude of not only a racial reckoning and a global pandemic happening at the same time as a national store launch had such a significant impact on creating the business for 13 Loon. When that happened, Nikkeo Beauty all of a sudden received more attention than it had ever received at that point, 18 years since I had developed the brand. All of a sudden, I was on all of these listicles of top Black-owned beauty businesses to shop and to follow and

And while it was lovely for the brand to receive that attention, it was built on the precipice of a very hard time. So I'd say the impetus of 13 Loon really came out of my deciding at that moment to take that pain and turn it into purpose. Prior to that, you were saying some of the stops and starts when it came to Nikkeo were from access to capital. Did that moment in history sort of change how much capital you were able to access? Absolutely. Absolutely.

I mean, I had never in my previous brand with Nikkeo Beauty received venture funding. I, you know, had a little bit of private equity, but not huge venture funds until 13 Loons. So yes, I mean, I think it was a combination of a lot of things. I think that, you know, in the times that I raised money on and off for 18 to 20 years with Nikkeo in the early days, I mean, I don't even think I ever had a meeting with a private equity firm or a venture fund.

having this moment to create the beauty retailer I wished I'd always had and doing it with such intention to not only celebrate the experience of being a beauty founder, but to bring others along on the ride to help build generational wealth and help black and brown founders who make products for everyone take up more room and space in the beauty industry. I think it was a combination of the intention and

the drive and the access to actually get in those rooms or on those Zooms, I guess, because that was in 2020 that we were, you know, started raising with angels and friends and family and then moved on to raise with funds in 2021. It was fascinating. Do you think that sort of enthusiasm is still there now? You know, I feel like a lot of claims were made around that time from stores, from VCs or what have you. Do you think people have followed through? I mean, listen, there's still so much more work to do.

Black women are the fastest growing segment of entrepreneurs in this country, yet still receive less than 1% of venture funding. So yes, there's a lot of work to do, but I do usually try to come from a place of hope and optimism. And what I will say is that when I started out on this journey decades ago, I never met anybody that looked like me, much less women.

in private equity and venture, and that's starting to change. And I think what gives me hope is that, you know, there are more and more people, diverse fund managers, diverse check writers coming onto the scene. That's what we're really going to see and experience a significant difference. And I do believe that this was...

An interesting time. I think a lot of people, you know, wanted to do, quote unquote, the right thing and got very enthusiastic and maybe overpromised and underdelivered. That being said, I do believe that those that are in it for the right reasons, that really actually not only look at it as the right thing to do, but also see it as the most important thing to do when it comes to business and the way this world is going to look in the next decade to two.

From now, being mostly multicultural people are the ones that will continue to make significant investments in people of color because not only is it the right thing to do, it's a really good business move. You started your second beauty line, Relevant. And it's, you know, for all skin types and tones, specifically looking at, you know, melanated skin. Tell me about your goal when you founded this brand. And also tell me about the platform 13 Loon and how you sort of founded that and what ethos were behind it.

I'll start with 13Loon. So 13Loon, you know, obviously was founded in December of 2020. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to create the retailer I'd always wished I'd had. So 90% of the brands that we carry are created by people of color who create products for everyone because we wanted to debunk the myth that black and brown people only make products for ourselves.

And 10% are dedicated to fostering allyship because we wanted to honor brands that were not owned by black or brown people, but who had long thought about serving all consumers in their brands, the opportunity to partner with us and partner in our mission to create more generational wealth.

That is forever and always the precipice of 13 Loon, which started as a platform. We knew it would always be omnichannel at some point. We didn't expect it to happen as quickly as it had. And so now we're excited to have the platform and our retail locations as well. And relevant, relevant, relevant, your skin scene. You know, after I left Unilever and working with the Nikkeo brand, it was really exciting to step into the role of the 13 Loon brand and becoming a retailer.

but I really missed having my own brand. And it was important to me that there was a brand that sat under 13 Loon that really represented the journey that I had been on. So Relevant is really a culmination of my decades of experience, but it's really the first time I've ever had the autonomy, the support, the runway, the capital to really launch the brand of my dreams. And when I say I really want to serve and recognize Relevant,

and prioritize a consumer that's been underserved for so long, these products are for everyone. And so when we look at the levels of acids that we use, you know, I say that this is a melanin safe brand. Everybody has melanin. It's fascinating to me how many people will, you'll say melanin and they just assume it means a darker person. We all have melanin. So this is a melanin safe brand for all. But what I really wanted to do was take a deep dive with my chemist who also happened to be people of color,

doing a deep dive into products that wouldn't be harmful to people who have more melanin in their skin. We are prone to more skin conditions. The more melanin you have, the more prone you are to eczema, rosacea, hyperpigmentation, hypopigmentation. So we wanted to build...

products steeped in history and timeless ingredients as well as married in the best science to make sure no one feels left out at shelf. 13 Loon started out as an online platform, but now it's replaced Sephora and a lot of JCPenney's. Tell me

about getting it into brick and mortar and why that partnership makes sense. My co-founder Patrick and I always knew we wanted 13 Loon to be omnichannel. Even though we launched in the middle of a pandemic, we knew that retail wasn't dead. We knew that it would come back strong and that people would really be craving community and in real life experiences.

which is the best way to experience beauty. So we always knew we were going to open stores. What we didn't expect is that 60 days after we launched that we would get a call from JCPenney asking us to become their new beauty partner. Oh, so they approached you? Yes, their new beauty partner within the JCPenney stores as they were reimagining the JCPenney beauty space.

We were really excited at the opportunity because we knew that we were going to open stores, but to be able to do it in partnership with America's oldest retailer and really understand what it meant to go to a brick and mortar space was a dream realized.

But the most important thing is that all of a sudden, now these brands that we carry, you know, 13 Loon is really a place of discovery. When we think about the early days of some of the world's biggest retailers, they all started as this place that you would walk in and be mesmerized by all there was to discover. And that's where I say that the really superhuman

sweet energy sits within 13 Loon, but also it gave us the opportunity to bring brands that may not otherwise have had the opportunity to go into national retail, to do it quickly and to help them scale their businesses accordingly while still nurturing them in the process.

because I knew firsthand what it felt like to go to national retail, to be so excited to get such a huge opportunity and then realize once you got there that you couldn't afford to be there or that budgets weren't being laid out for your brand being a niche brand within a portfolio to really support the business. And so this has been an incredible opportunity to really work with our 13 Loon at JCPenney store associates and brands to really help these brands learn how to play in the big leagues.

So, you know, recently had the opportunity to open our first standalone flagship store here in Los Angeles, which has also been an amazing opportunity. We opened it here on Larchmont Boulevard and, you know, historical part of Los Angeles and what I've coined now Beauty Row because there's a lot of beauty offerings on this small boulevard. But that's given us an opportunity to really create a space of community. And it's not your typical beauty store. Like you come in, you feel like you're at a party.

And you want to hang out all day. And it was exactly as I envisioned, but it's really become a place that we very heavily event and have panels, give our founders a space and relevant for myself as a founder, a space to really celebrate our brands and reach a lot of consumers. We've

seen some online beauty brands, beauty platforms shut down recently. I would say like Farfetch is a really big example of one. And I'm curious, you know, 13 Loon seems to be thriving. What sets 13 Loon apart? Like why do customers keep coming back? Is it the market? Is it the offerings? Like how do you think about that? I think it's

a combination of everything. I mean, as I said earlier, I believe that we really offer the space of discovery that's sort of been missing in beauty for a while as larger brands start to take up more space in traditional retail. And I think that is a really crucial piece is the discovery piece. I think also that we are omni-channel so that you can visit us in 607 13 Loon at JCPenney stores, or you can come experience us at our flagship store with more to come.

In today's age, obviously I'm not telling you anything you don't know at Fast Company, but customer acquisition costs are so expensive. We're all still confused about how to figure out the algorithm and how to reach our guests. And so I think the reason that 13Loon is also thriving is that we're showing up in multiple ways as an omnichannel business. And I also think that we just offer people the opportunity to make their beauty shopping more meaningful. Everyone loves beauty. It is community. It's a way to come together and celebrate.

each other's beauty rituals and timeless rituals that have been around for thousands of years. But it also is an opportunity to really purchase from brand founders who, you know, I say people buy into people before product. And we have a lot of really incredible people carrying their beautiful brands within efficacious brands too, within 13 Loon. And so it's sort of this one-stop shop for making an impact in the world, but also having, you know, the most beautiful lipstick and great skin and great hair and

It's a lot of fun. It seems like half of the new sort of beauty brands coming out are celebrity driven at the moment. And some of them have worked out. You know, I think actually on our cover this month is Selena Gomez with Real Beauty. She's done an amazing job. I think Fenty is an example of another one that's really worked out. Some of them haven't, though. You know, I'm thinking of Item Beauty closed down. I mean, there's any number. And I guess I'm curious how you think about the celebrity beauty brand boom.

Yes. It's so interesting. I've been asked this question a lot lately and I love it because it gives us an opportunity to really speak to, A, although there is an element of celebrity brand fatigue, I think, happening in the industry. What I do find is that any brands that we carry, Tracee Ellis Ross, Pharrell's Human Race, we just recently, a few days ago, launched Tyler, the creator's Golf Le Fleur brand. I don't think of those brands as celebrity brands. The authentic

brands created by authentic founders. And you know, when I speak specifically to those founders that we carry their brands in our store, these are engaged founders who have created a beauty brand as another medium for their talent. There's a significant difference and being that type of a founder

And so I don't call them celebrity brands at 13 Loon because they're not. They're just other founder-driven brands that we have by people who have many talents. And this is one of their mediums of talent is the creation of these brands. And I think the fatigue comes from maybe brands that, you know, maybe set out to really wanting to be in beauty, maybe became less engaged with their brands. There have been elements of people just

slapping their name on a product. And the guest is way too smart for that. There are so many choices to make within beauty. And as I said, people buy into people before they buy into products. So yes, you have to have an extremely efficacious, amazing, unique product. But what you really need is somebody with passion behind that brand that is evangelizing, you know, the brand in a way that any beauty founder does, not just a celebrity. If you're somebody who wants to start out in the beauty industry today, what is the biggest piece of advice you're giving them? Hmm.

Well, have a plan. But I think most importantly is find out your why. I get the opportunity to mentor so many budding founders and people who want to come into this industry. And it can seem really glamorous from the outside, but it's very, very hard work. So you have to make sure that your why, that your reason for being is so uniquely authentic to you. Ask a lot of questions and

Don't be afraid to talk about money. I think especially as women, something that I'm really starting to step into being more comfortable discussing money because unless you're independently wealthy, and even if you are, you're still most likely gonna wanna go after some sort of investment if you're not bootstrapping. So learn how to talk about money. Don't be afraid to talk about money. And also when it comes to money, don't take dumb money.

I learned the best lesson from a female founder friend of mine who said to me when I was starting into the venture world of funding, you know, make sure that you ask at least three people who they've invested in what their experience has been like. And I've had advice on all the time because I do realize that some of my greatest heartbreaks as a founder were not doing that. And most importantly, trust your gut because it's your greatest tool. Well, this was great. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. Thank you.

Okay, we're back with Max and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each of us shares a story, trend, or company we're following right now. And Max, since you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on? Uh...

Let me think. This is great. Well, I am keeping tabs on the drama in the House of Representatives. Oh, God. This was mine a few weeks ago, but there's been so much that's happened since then. Yeah, we've got Mike Johnson now stepping into the speaker role. Which is a fake name. No.

That's not a real person. That's the most innocuous name in the world. It's like either Mike Johnson or like a guy named Orrin Hatch. There's no in between. Yeah, Mike Johnson or Orrin Hatch.

I mean, this is like someone who was pretty central to the 2020 election denial campaign. Very anti-abortion, just very hard right. It's not a great time for Democrats in the House or Democrats in the country, I guess I'd say. But he also tried to build a real life Noah's Ark or something. Do you know about this? Yeah, he also said he also believes dinosaurs were on the Ark. He has a lot of extremism.

Extremely crazy belief. Like even the what is popular kind of shit for Republicans. He's just not in line with any of that. Also, I had to fact check myself and he won taxpayer funding for a Noah's Ark amusement park. I was working as a lawyer. Well, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah. So that's what I'm keeping tabs on. How about you guys? On the complete other end of the spectrum, I'm keeping tabs on the NBA season.

Hell yeah. I'm back on my sports game now. I love the NBA. It's my favorite sports league. I'm a huge Celtics fan. I'm really excited for the season. It kicked off this past week, and I'm just excited to be watching real basketball again. And it's a really exciting year for basketball. I feel like it keeps being really competitive in ways that it hasn't been for a while, but this year is particularly exciting.

How are you feeling about the Celtics this year? I feel great about the Celtics. Watched opening night, Kristaps Porzingis, the unicorn, looked incredible to our producer, Blake's Dismay, who is a Knicks fan. And, oh man, he looked, obviously, Kristaps Porzingis, for those who don't know, started his career with the Knicks, left, came back around, and then the opening night Celtics game was against the Knicks, and Kristaps just absolutely buried them.

I'll say this. I know the Knicks aren't doing well, but Madison Square Garden is the coolest venue ever. It's so cool. And the Knicks are actually a good team this year. It's such a cool venue. But yeah, I'm looking forward to going to a Knicks-Celtics game later in the year. What are you keeping tabs on, Yas? So I've been listening to the audiobook of Britney Spears' autobiography, The Woman and Me, read by Academy Award winner Michelle Williams. What? What?

Yeah. That's so random. That's why I wanted to consume it via audiobook because I was like, wow, they really like hired someone impressive to, you know, I sort of realized that celebrity memoirs these days tend to be good. They get really good ghostwriters. Like Jessica Simpson's memoir was very compelling read. Actually, I hated the way Prince Harry's memoir was written, but they did get somebody famous to do it. So I actually had

had pretty high expectations for the book and they've really exceeded them. It's a really good book. It's like... What's the biggest revelation so far? So I would say this has been on Twitter a lot but Justin Timberlake's black scent when he was trying to befriend Ginuwine is pretty rough. When he kept going, Foshiz, Foshiz. Oh, yeah.

What did Brittany have to say about it? Like, was she embarrassed by her then partner? He was like a little bit embarrassed, but she was also just really in love with Justin because she was like 19 or whatever. I feel like the zeitgeist is finally coming around on Justin Timberlake and is very...

And like, I can't believe I ended up in this camp, but I was talking to Lou about this and I was like, we have to listen to Justin Timberlake now because he's about to get canceled. I'm pretty sure. Because people, Stan Twitter has been really angry about a few things that were said about him in the autobiography. Like he cheated on Britney a lot and then like made Cry Me a River accusing her of cheating. Yeah.

which she did, but like once. She also had an abortion and he like tried to cheer her up by playing guitar. Not great. But they were also like 20. I'm like, you know, if anybody broadcast literally anything I did when I was 20 to the world, like it would be definitely that bad, you know? Yeah, I would not. I would not want to be famous at 20.

20. I remember when like when Justin Bieber was getting into all this trouble when he was like, I mean, was he a jerk? Maybe. I mean, probably. Yeah. Didn't he like pee in a McDonald's parking lot or something like. Yeah. And you're like, well, nice. He did sign. Do you remember this? He went to like Anne Frank's house and wrote like. I thought she would have been a believer or something like that.

I think a lot of the times within terms of like the canceling thing, one, I hate the term like canceling overall because I think it gets used largely by like really nefarious people to lump in truly terrible stuff with the kind of like medium, cringy, awful or weird stuff. Yeah, yeah. You can be shitty and not like criminal. Exactly. Then that gets lumped in with like, of course, there's going to be people on X to loop it back around that like go way too hard at.

like someone like Justin Timberlake. But then also at the same time, like Justin Timberlake's gonna be fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's fine. I feel bad. Sorry for him. I feel like we need a new term for this sort of thing. It's not canceling. It's being moved off of. It's like being moved from your time slot. Or just like being exposed as a real person who like makes mistakes. I will say, Justin Timberlake, I thought was pretty good in the movie Reptile, the new Netflix Benicio Del Toro. I really, I thought he was great in that. I haven't seen that yet. The movie is... And he's so good in the social network. He was pretty good in the social network. Like he's not a bad actor. Yeah.

He's a better actor than Harry Styles in terms of pop stars gone stuff. Harry Styles is not a good actor. Also, Future Sex Love Sounds as an album, so good. Every track is good on that album. Even What Goes Around Comes Around, Love Stoned, they're all good. Faux shiz. Just not for me. Faux shiz. Faux shiz. And on that note...

And on that note, that's it for this week's episode of Most Innovative Companies. Max, thank you again for joining us. Thank you. Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom, mix and sound designed by Nicholas Torres, and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we'll see you next week.