Latest / The Curve / Samsonite buys BÉIS, Selena Gomez gets sued & Anthropic's $1 trillion IPO

Transcript

Samsonite buys BÉIS, Selena Gomez gets sued & Anthropic's $1 trillion IPO · The Curve

0:01
Coming up in today's episode, how has 116 year old luggage company become cool?
0:07
They have bought a portion of Shane Mitchell's luggage brand base.
0:10
This is a really good example of why sometimes buying a business rather than building a business is the way to go.
0:16
So we'll be unpacking that.
0:17
Selena Gomez has been sued for fraud.
0:19
So investors put in millions and for three years, there was absolute radio silence.
0:24
Is it a case of where there's smoke, there's fire?
0:26
We're gonna dig into the WonderMind lawsuit.
0:28
And finally, an AI company that did not exist five years ago is about to IPO as one of the biggest tech businesses to ever go public.
0:36
This is The Curve Weekly, where we read the finance news so you don't have to.
0:40
I'm Vic Harris, a finance professional who's had a career making money for other people.
0:43
And I'm Sophie Hallwright, ex-television and radio producer who is sick and tired of not understanding the economy or how to grow my wealth.
0:49
So we started this podcast.
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Pathfinder Asset Management Limited is the issuer of the Pathfinder KiwiSaver Plan.
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1:22
So wholesome, getting sunflower plants for your birthday.
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I know.
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So Emily, our producer, knows I'm obsessed with sunflowers, and she's grown three giant sunflowers for my birthday present.
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They were just sitting on this chair when I came in.
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And I was saying, I actually think this is the best gift anyone's ever given me.
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Because I want them, but I don't know how to grow them myself.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Okay, I'm going to read my birthday card.
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All I love, Lucy, Emily, Vic, G-O-K.
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Thank you, guys.
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That's so cute.
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Okay.
2:14
How are you?
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I feel like I haven't seen you.
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There's been many things going on.
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It's been a wild month.
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Wild ride, hasn't it?
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Wild ride.
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PSA, public service announcement.
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It's so exciting.
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Yes.
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I have decided I'm going to start automating £400 a month.
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nice as my recurring amount into the fund love it i might even film myself setting it up so anyone that's like i don't know how to do this they can oh great idea great idea love that it's such a it's quite an easy setup it's super easy yeah i'm kind of i feel like i often avoid anything admin related because it feels like it's going to be a big deal yeah but getting your money in the in the fund is super easy so i might just film myself doing it
3:10
I don't know if this is just because all of a sudden the research is phenomenal.
3:16
Is that me?
3:16
Maybe, yeah, I think it's you.
3:18
Or it feels like the landscape with the investing space is just changing so much.
3:23
It comes in waves, I think.
3:24
Yeah, sometimes I'm...
3:26
sitting here talking about interest rates, trying to make it real fascinating.
3:29
And other times we've got Shea Mitchell and Samsonite and deals with Selena getting sued and all of that.
3:36
It's all go.
3:37
So Shea Mitchell, for anyone that doesn't know, pretty little liars, does that mean anything to anyone?
3:43
Did you watch that show?
3:44
Yes.
3:45
It's like a breakout series.
3:46
Was it?
3:46
Yeah.
3:46
Yeah.
3:47
It was like six seasons of Who Is A?
3:49
And it was like tormenting these teenagers about like who was sending them weird messages.
3:53
And I was completely addicted to it.
3:56
She's one of the main characters in that show.
3:57
Ah, she's also in You.
3:58
Oh, yeah.
3:59
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:00
Later on.
4:01
Yeah.
4:01
So she's an amazing actor.
4:03
Yeah.
4:03
But she's turned businesswoman.
4:05
So yes, she has created this company called Base.
4:08
And it is a travel bag brand.
4:10
Now, this started because she had so much frustration with traveling and things not fitting and just travel bags not being created for women.
4:20
So she was like, you know what?
4:21
I'm going to create my own.
4:23
And the reason it's in the news today in the Curve Weekly is because Samsonite, one of the oldest suitcase companies, has just acquired 85% of it.
4:33
Samsonite is one of those odd ones where it's still, even though it's old, and I know they're not that chic, for some reason it still feels like quite a solid brand when I think of Samsonite.
4:43
Which is incredible given how long it's been around.
4:45
It was in 1910 that it started.
4:47
Yeah, 100 years ago.
4:48
This is a really old, historic brand buying a younger, more feminine brand that is attached to a celebrity.
4:58
And so it's all about...
5:01
How do you diversify your, or I guess, increase your reach without diluting your own brand?
5:08
And so you purchase other brands that already cater to that demographic rather than if Samsonite went out and did like a new range of like trying to be iconic for Gen Z and didn't quite land, you know, instead of like there's like the whole buy versus build.
5:21
Why don't we just buy brands?
5:23
Someone who's already in market that has done a really good job of hitting the demographic we want to hit.
5:28
I've just signed up for the waitlist for the expandable backpack in Maple.
5:33
Nice.
5:34
No, can I play a clip as to why I thought I was going to start a backpack brand in the last 24 hours?
5:39
Because I was like, I need to get on a line bike constantly.
5:43
I'm sick of having a side bag that almost kills me every time I get on a bike.
5:48
I've got out of whack back problems.
5:50
I'm like, why am I not just putting a backpack on?
5:52
There's no cool ones.
5:54
And her backpack's really cool.
5:55
Listen to this.
5:56
As a woman.
5:57
Yeah.
5:57
Yeah.
5:57
Deciding to wear a backpack instead of a side bag is the highest form of self-respect.
6:03
Because when you wear a backpack, you are essentially choosing good health, spinal alignment, no more shoulder pain at the expense of looking ugly.
6:19
Because let's be honest...
6:20
I have not seen a backpack that I'm like, oh, she looks really cool.
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Stylish.
6:25
Stylish.
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Like even the coolest.
6:27
You get the point.
6:28
Yeah.
6:29
And I thought, genius.
6:30
But actually, this is quite cool.
6:31
The thing about this and the reason that this purchase from Samsonite is really interesting is it stems off the back of all the conversations we're having about Alex Earle and her VC.
6:42
It's the idea that there's all these celebrities that have distribution and
6:47
Even Poppy, you mentioned in the podcast last week, that was one of the drink brands that was bought by Pepsi for $2 billion.
6:54
Alex Earle owned a percentage of that.
6:57
Yes.
6:57
Think about how many drink brands there are.
6:59
It's not as though you look at drink brands and think, do you know what we're lacking?
7:03
Drinks.
7:04
Yeah.
7:04
Never.
7:04
It's about marketing.
7:05
It's about marketing.
7:06
toilet paper, as long as it's got good marketing.
7:09
This is a really good example of she hasn't done anything.
7:12
I mean, yeah, the backpack's kind of cute, but it's not as though it's the coolest backpack.
7:15
It's not revolutionary.
7:16
It's not like it's a circular bag instead of a square one or circular suitcase instead of a square suitcase.
7:21
It's kind of like a circular bag.
7:22
I understand it, but it's just, it is a little bit cooler.
7:24
But Base has generated $210 million in sales last year, and it was bought for that price.
7:33
So it was bought for what we call one-time sales, which is pretty conservative.
7:38
Because normally it's way more than that, right?
7:40
Like four or five times.
7:41
It totally depends on the industry.
7:42
Like tech, if you're like growing massively, which we're going to get into soon when we talk about anthropic IPO.
7:48
If you're growing your revenue like super, super fast, then you'd be on a higher multiple.
7:54
If you're...
7:55
But one time's very, very conservative.
7:57
So they kind of got a bit of a steal, but she still does own 15% of the business.
8:01
So she'll still be incentivized to continue growing it, I assume, in some sense.
8:06
I also wonder if they're consolidating where and how they're being produced, because it could also take her costs down massively by getting access to Samsonite's factory or whatever.
8:17
Yes, exactly.
8:18
Yeah, the CEO of Samsonite explicitly said that this deal would expand its reach among younger, mostly female consumers.
8:26
I feel like this is probably the fifth story we've had on the Curve Weekly of companies and brands from a target woman.
8:31
Well, do you know what it is?
8:32
Everyone's trying to get to us.
8:34
I think they know that we have money to spend.
8:37
Yeah.
8:37
That we are not stupid when it comes to marketing.
8:40
We're becoming way more conscious of how and who we're buying products from.
8:44
And we trust people that we see marketing in the same way that Shane Mitchell has done with her brand.
8:50
Like it speaks to us because she kind of is us.
8:54
And guys that try and emulate that by building their own businesses or products struggle to sell to us because it's not relatable.
9:01
It's the classic, like if you can't beat them, buy them, you know.
9:04
And it's like Samsonite, you're right, could try and target females and a younger audience.
9:09
Pretty impossible for a company that's been around for a very long time.
9:14
sister brand or a subsidiary or something like that or they can just buy base which is exactly what a lot of companies have done Facebook did it back in 2012 when it bought Instagram they bought it for 1 billion which at the time though would have sounded like at the time massive yeah it's now because it's within Facebook you don't actually know but it's estimated to be about 100 billion dollars now
9:35
What an absolute steal.
9:37
This could be a scenario where we look back and think, wow, that was an absolute steal.
9:42
Now the revenue – It's worth $2 billion or whatever.
9:44
Yeah.
9:45
Yeah.
9:45
But it happens quite a lot in businesses.
9:47
You know, they think, okay, well, how long would it take us to create a brand and target a new audience?
9:55
And will it cannibalize our existing brand?
9:57
All of that.
9:58
And yeah, it's been done very successfully in the past.
10:01
Someone was saying the other day, you probably know more about this, that Google Alphabet had the equivalent of ChatGBT before it was released.
10:10
Yeah.
10:11
But chose not to release it because it was going to kill their Google search.
10:14
Yes.
10:15
It was, oh my God, deep, deep mind.
10:18
Yes, deep mind.
10:19
Oh my gosh.
10:20
There's a great story about it.
10:21
And it was started in the UK, actually, which also frustrates me because I'm like, the UK is not the most innovative country.
10:28
But yet...
10:28
It had this amazing idea.
10:30
We were miles ahead in terms of AI and, what is it, agentic AI and all of that.
10:35
And then Google bought in it.
10:37
Yeah, it was this whole thing.
10:38
You can buy companies.
10:39
You can create companies.
10:41
A lot of businesses are scared to either buy or build something that is going to cannibalize their existing business.
10:46
But...
10:47
You have to be brave because if that's the way that business, products, consumer behavior is heading, the business is doomed either way.
10:55
You may as well be the ones that are buying or building rather than waiting for that to happen by another business.
10:59
So I guess this company can see travels on its way back up.
11:04
There is such a status symbol or it's almost, I would put it in the same bracket as American Express cards and there's a sort of feeling of luxury or it gives I am expensive by traveling with.
11:16
something that looks quite nice.
11:17
It's a statement piece.
11:18
It's like Ramoas are the like premium luxury suitcase.
11:22
But Samsonite, a bit of history.
11:23
So yes, it's been around for 100 years.
11:26
It was founded in the US.
11:27
It actually listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and it's still listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange because the thinking was that there was going to be this growing Asian consumer, Asian travel trend.
11:39
And so nearly went bankrupt in 2001, post September 11, nobody was traveling.
11:44
Who runs it?
11:45
Who's the CEO?
11:46
Kyle Grindereau.
11:48
Gendereau.
11:49
Gendereau.
11:50
Yeah.
11:50
He stepped in in 2018.
11:52
So in 2018, there was this company that came out with a short report.
11:55
Now, this is a company called Blue Orca Capital, and they are a hedge fund, and they short companies, and that's how they profit.
12:03
So they profit when a stock falls.
12:06
They are incentivized to put out these investment reports.
12:10
effectively like ridiculing companies.
12:13
And they put out a report saying there was accounting irregularities, overpaying for acquisition.
12:17
Oh, they're trying to shit all over a business so that the stock price goes down because they've shorted.
12:22
And then they buy back the stock at that lower price and they're like, boop.
12:26
And usually a lot of companies, what's the saying?
12:29
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
12:30
It's quite damning reputation-wise to have a big short report come out of you because even if like nine of the things aren't correct, one of them is it's like people are now looking at you.
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Anyway,
12:39
It's also, it's so true because it doesn't actually matter what's true or not.
12:44
People just remember the thing that was sticky or gossipy, even if it's not true.
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Like Nike.
12:49
Nike still to this day cannot shake the fact that it had.
12:52
I mean, that was kind of true to be fair.
12:54
Yes, but it's like even all the like changes they've made, like everything, you've still got this thing.
13:00
Yeah.
13:01
That's why when people say there's no PR that's bad PR, I'm like, I really disagree with that.
13:05
Something can damage your brand infinitely and forever, especially with wrong, false information.
13:11
Anyway.
13:12
Yeah, so they had that report come out and the CEO came in and he's still there.
13:16
So he would have made this decision.
13:17
Yeah, and there's COVID.
13:19
They've had COVID.
13:20
They've had some pretty shit times since they've been listed, but they're still around.
13:24
Do you know from a business model perspective –
13:27
You know, when you look at businesses and you think, oh, there's so much that this business can grow, people don't buy that many suitcases.
13:34
I bought a Samsonite.
13:35
It has a lifetime warranty.
13:37
So I'm not exactly going to be purchasing again and again.
13:39
Yeah.
13:40
Sort of surprises me that it has so much space to grow or that it still exists.
13:44
I mean, I know there's a lot of people that don't own suitcases, of course, but it's a one-off sale.
13:48
I don't know.
13:48
I wouldn't look at it and think, what a banging business model.
13:51
No, but like you said, travel is booming.
13:55
And also influencer travel has been absolutely massive.
13:59
Can someone, can we be put on a flight for free anywhere?
14:04
Oh, I know.
14:04
I'll go to.
14:05
I will influence.
14:06
I will influence people.
14:07
Yeah.
14:08
Any airline, any destination.
14:10
Get me on a plane.
14:11
Give me a suitcase.
14:13
I'll have one of those hand wipes.
14:14
I don't even care if I'm in economy.
14:15
Just send me on a bloody free flight somewhere.
14:18
It's too expensive for me.
14:20
Because I did.
14:20
I saw, actually, Lucy, our social media manager, linked when she read the story.
14:24
She was like, oh, my God, there's so many people, though, that are being paid to go and market brands.
14:30
There was this New Zealand and Australian duo, Riley and Jazz, and they were sent on Emirates.
14:35
And they did this really great video that went quite viral, being like, we're on Emirates.
14:39
I was like...
14:40
Can I go on Emirates?
14:41
Yeah.
14:42
I've just booked my 1,500-pound one-way flight on Emirates.
14:46
Oh, my God, I know.
14:48
It's so expensive up here getting home.
14:51
Help.
14:52
I'm poor.
14:53
But, yeah, they pay so much to get people to market flying on certain airlines.
14:58
But it seems – and, look, I know it's probably people that disagree, but, like, it's a way to get to an audience.
15:03
And if it is – it depends on the influencer, but, you know, it does seem genuine sometimes that it's authentic to a point –
15:09
It also doesn't matter if it's authentic.
15:11
Everyone knows they want to fly and go somewhere.
15:13
Totally.
15:14
You know, if the food's great, the seats are comfortable, it worked.
15:18
And I've got Emirates in the front of my mind.
15:19
Like there was US travel companies alone spent $1.5 billion on social media influencing in 2025.
15:26
And American companies paid influencers $11 billion last year.
15:30
So there is a huge influencer economy here happening.
15:34
And then you're combining this with travel.
15:36
I think this is an incredible acquisition from Samsonite in terms of they got it at a good price.
15:42
Shay Mitchell is tied in as creative director.
15:45
So she is going to be staying there to see it through.
15:49
And that's also in a space that...
15:52
is absolutely booming at the moment.
15:54
And there was a graph that I will put on the screen, but it shows just the absolute takeoff in travel in the last few years.
16:01
Yeah, there's been a pent-up demand from COVID still.
16:04
Pent-up demand sounds a bit horny.
16:06
It's a term.
16:07
Pent-up demand.
16:08
Pent-up demand.
16:09
I don't know about that one.
16:11
It's like gyrations of the market.
16:13
I think we could have not used that in that context.
16:18
pent-up demand it does sound right yeah oh god and they're also sorry the brand these brands are getting really creative as well like they're not just well some of them are like you said you know putting influencers on planes and getting them to do a story about it it's like they're really doing getting influencers and their friends and like creating these like experiences like they did this acquired acquired style as like an influencer in the u.s they did
16:43
A brand paid for a whole hen's do for her and her friends to fly.
16:46
I don't know where it was.
16:48
And then the Allo Super Yacht, they got Alex Earle, Jake Shane, all their friends.
16:53
How fun.
16:54
I've had an idea.
16:55
I have friends.
16:55
Yes, I have lots of friends.
16:57
We've also got many people who listen to this podcast.
16:59
Imagine if we could get the curve.
17:02
everyone who listens to the podcast on a flight and over the loudspeaker we're just talking about investments the whole time now if you'd like to invest and grow your money hello your food is about to arrive oh my god that'd be great like an hour or two hours of just like education education and then we all have a holiday somewhere cool yeah
17:19
Great, we could do it.
17:20
We could do a two-hour podcast.
17:22
We could do it for 24 hours.
17:23
Between takeoff and landing.
17:24
We could do 24 hours, Vic.
17:26
I will not sleep if it means that we could get a thousand curve people on a plane somewhere.
17:31
We need a lot of coffees talking about finance for 24 hours.
17:33
We could just go have a quick nap because we'll probably be in business and we could lie down.
17:37
In New Zealand, hello.
17:38
Instead of a live show, we do a live air show.
17:41
Oh, my God.
17:43
Let your money grow sky high.
17:45
Oh, we could – Love it.
17:46
Yeah.
17:46
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:47
Planes, investments go up and down, but, like, it's – yeah, there's always some turbulence, but it's going to be okay.
17:52
And you land at the destination in the end, i.e.
17:55
more money and you're at your retirement amount.
17:57
If anyone thinks of any other good taglines, please just comment.
18:00
Yeah, comment below.
18:01
Any zone would be our preference.
18:02
We're open to Emirates.
18:03
We will actually go Malaysian Airlines.
18:05
We'll do any, actually.
18:07
We –
18:08
We're not.
18:08
Permiscuous airline.
18:09
Yeah, yeah.
18:09
Singapore Airlines.
18:10
Singapore.
18:11
Anything.
18:11
We are head of the train.
18:12
A world first.
18:13
Not just friends hanging out and travelling.
18:15
We are doing one step further.
18:17
And we could get Wi-Fi on the plane so people could action their financial, you know, their investments, their budgeting plans while we're in there.
18:24
And we are trapping them there.
18:25
They're not getting off until they're invested.
18:26
Yeah.
18:27
it's a financial retreat absolutely not legal but um yeah moving along okay sorry coming up after the break we are going to be diving into kind of an adjacent story selena gomez is being sued yeah it's almost the exact opposite of the acquisition that we've seen with shane mitchell in the sense that she actually i'm not going to give too much away first we've got a word from today's sponsor
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And thank you so much to Pathfinder for making this episode of The Curve Weekly possible.
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19:38
Selena Gomez, she's been in the news.
19:40
She has been sued for fraud by investors who say they were misled about her mental health startup app.
19:47
Wonder Mind.
19:48
Could we explain what the app does?
19:51
I don't know anything about this app, and I've also never seen it market it, which is probably this whole story.
19:57
Yes.
19:57
So the vision for Wonder Mind was to be a mental health ecosystem.
20:03
So newsletter, podcasts, TV shows, apps, films –
20:06
And kind of they were modeling it off Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine, where she did the book club and everyone talked about it, but for mental wellness.
20:14
So she's obviously gone through her own mental health struggles.
20:19
And so she was like, look, this would be a great platform.
20:21
It started in 2022, co-founded by her, her mother, and another entrepreneur.
20:27
They raised about $5 million.
20:29
Wow.
20:30
And the business was valued at about $100 million.
20:32
Huge.
20:33
And then it all kind of started to unravel because there was a group of investors that came on board that invested about $1.2 million of that $5 million.
20:43
So they were probably the lead investors.
20:45
Yeah.
20:45
And they were told three things.
20:48
They were told that Selena Gomez would be active in it and building it and promoting it.
20:52
And she has over 100 million followers.
20:55
She's one of the biggest, I would say, online personalities in the world.
20:58
Yeah.
20:58
Yeah.
20:58
And the entrepreneur that they're bringing in was described as like an executive that had already got partnerships at JP Morgan and Videlity, like, you know, promised the world.
21:07
And there was a lot of advertising deals, cover stories, an app.
21:11
Anyway, what the lawsuit is saying is that Selena Gomez signed a contract and completely ignored it.
21:17
The partnerships weren't there.
21:19
The app was never built.
21:21
Just things that were promised were not delivered.
21:24
And there was actually last year, The Cut did an article on the business and exposed effectively a lot of things that investors were like, what the F?
21:35
So anyway.
21:36
When I first saw this on social media, I thought, I actually think that this is just clickbait.
21:42
This can't be real because it would be so damaging for her brand and it feels really off-brand for her as...
21:50
public figure who's been open about having bipolar and other mental health illnesses.
21:56
To say she'd do something and they're not, I just assumed there's no way there'll be truth to this and must just be a clickbait story.
22:02
Well, yes.
22:03
Her lawyers are calling it completely false.
22:06
But investors are like, it was three years of silence and their money just slowly disappeared.
22:13
And I think this is kind of, I guess, one of the learnings is that having a famous face attached to a brand doesn't always necessarily mean they're going to be involved.
22:22
Like there needs to be, you need to look under the hood.
22:24
And like with the Shay Mitchell example, like she is going to be in there as creative director because there's so much brand equity tied to that person.
22:33
And the fact that the investors probably bought into the fact that, yes, Selena has huge following and she's going to be involved and all of that.
22:39
But...
22:40
To say that, but to not get it in writing because – It seems so stupid though.
22:44
That seems like the most obvious thing any investor would ever ask to say.
22:47
And if it was in writing, then that's when you can – Then she's in trouble.
22:50
Yes.
22:51
Yeah.
22:51
But if it wasn't and it was just, okay, this is – she can – because you can co-found something and not have anything to do with it.
22:58
you know, day to day.
22:59
And therefore she could just slap her name on it and not have anything day to day.
23:02
So yeah, it's a hard balance.
23:04
But also as an investor, the fact that they've had, they say there's been silence and no updates and things have just like unraveled.
23:12
Like you are entitled to updates.
23:14
Yes, you're not a public company.
23:15
This is a private company.
23:17
So therefore, you know, there isn't, I guess, as much...
23:21
in terms of financial updates that you are legally entitled to, but you still are entitled to.
23:26
But it would have been in the shareholding agreements that we will update monthly or six-monthly or whatever it is.
23:32
And, yeah, it's different because, obviously, if a company is public –
23:37
If they are giving false information or they're not keeping investors updated, it's so much more scathing.
23:43
Whereas this would have all been happening privately, via email, directly to whoever these private investors are.
23:48
And it's like communication is key.
23:51
Even if you have invested in a private company and things aren't going well, like just –
23:55
Let your investors know.
23:56
But do we know that this is true?
23:58
No, no.
23:59
But I'm meaning also if you have invested in a private company, push for communication.
24:04
Get things in writing because, I don't know, unfortunately if things do go tits up, at least you've got it in writing.
24:11
You just never know.
24:12
Like all these investors would have thought things would have gone swimmingly.
24:15
And so it's kind of like with prenups and things.
24:18
Like, yes, things are great right now, but you also have to protect yourself when it comes to your read documents like shareholders agreements, you know, reading prenups or contracting out agreements.
24:28
Like always.
24:29
Get forward.
24:29
Just be a bit pessimistic.
24:30
Say forward.
24:31
Just be pessimistic.
24:32
Give me every red flag in this.
24:33
Yeah, exactly.
24:34
Exactly.
24:34
I am the person investing in this business.
24:36
What are things I should be looking out for?
24:38
I just find it really hard to imagine that this is legit because the investors that would have put over a million into this surely are somewhat of an experienced private angel investor.
24:51
You would assume.
24:52
Someone that has that much cash.
24:54
to put into one investment, most high net worth individuals would put, you know, 200 grand, 500 max.
25:02
Generally above that is family offices, people that are more professional private investors.
25:09
So it kind of blows my mind to think that someone put money into a business like this and didn't read the docs, if this is true.
25:14
Yeah, exactly.
25:15
And I think that's, there's things about like people saying that her mom was like sleeping at the office, missing meetings
25:24
this app big deal payroll not going out twice come on that's not that big of a deal in three years I mean it's not ideal but it's also not like I think there's way bigger it could have been an accident it was a day late you know like and this app was apparently supposed to be coming for years so I think it's the devil be in the detail in terms of what was said and what was delivered and all of that but also I'm sorry but the reputational damage from this like if I was an
25:50
That's the most frustrating thing, right?
25:53
Oh, you mean not for Selena, but actually for the people that have invested in the business.
25:57
They now know that this whole business has been tarnished by the story.
26:00
So even if it is creating an amazing ad and it was about to launch –
26:07
what the story is doing is going to damage their investments so heavily.
26:10
You're saying, yeah, no PR is bad PR, but it's like when a pretty damning report... No, I'm saying there is bad PR.
26:16
And this is bad PR.
26:17
And also on the side, investors are seeing her rare beauty brand be worth $2 billion and going, hang on a second, what about this other company that you started and you're pouring all your effort and time into... Yeah, you're backing the wrong horse.
26:30
Sorry, the investors are backing the wrong horse.
26:31
But anyway, so yeah, just two stark contrasts.
26:34
And also...
26:35
Yeah, I think the lesson for this is if you are investing in a business where the founder is so integral in its success, make sure there's like watertight contracts in that.
26:47
Because I reckon if you pulled Selena out of this, it'd be a very different business you'd be investing in.
26:52
And I think that's probably…
26:54
Well, I would say most people who are investing in businesses where there's a celebrity attached, all they see is marketing, distribution.
27:01
Yeah.
27:01
It doesn't really matter what it is.
27:03
I think that it kind of goes back to the example of Poppy and that drink brand.
27:07
By the way, I think the drink's delicious.
27:08
I'm not saying it's a shit product.
27:10
But it's so much about the cat table, the marketing, who's involved, what is that public perception?
27:18
Yeah.
27:19
someone else could have started Poppy and had no celebrities attached to it and the investment would be very different.
27:24
Yeah.
27:25
I think that the world we live in now is like it's very easy to create a product.
27:29
It's really not easy to shift product and to sell it.
27:32
Well, there's so much in our face, right?
27:35
Like it's so – we feed so many different ads and brands and products –
27:40
That to cut through the noise, it needs to be in front of you by someone that you trust or you admire or to get that cut through is really important these days.
27:49
And this is this is just one example where it hasn't quite worked, unfortunately.
27:58
So, so with your sunflowers.
27:59
Yes.
27:59
What did I tell you off mic to do to make sure they survive?
28:02
Water them.
28:06
Oh, Claude, how to put them in the ground so they don't die.
28:09
Yes.
28:10
Well, great segue.
28:14
Claude, or Anthropic, the parent company, it last month hit $65 billion in revenue.
28:22
And that is up from, at the end of 2025, it had a revenue run rate.
28:27
So like it's, you know, if you take that revenue and you times it by 12, it had $9 billion.
28:31
So it's gone from $9 billion to $65 billion.
28:34
In the space of six months.
28:35
That's crazy because when we were talking about them going public, everyone was quite skeptical about their business model, if they were going to be able to make money.
28:43
They were really valuing themselves so, so much.
28:47
And there's not a lot of AI companies that are actually making money.
28:50
So the fact that they're actually nailing this is crazy.
28:53
Well, or were they not nailing it?
28:55
They're making money.
28:56
They're making $65 billion, but they're spending a lot of money.
29:00
Are they spending more than that?
29:01
They're not profitable yet.
29:02
Oh.
29:03
But their growth, and this comes back to what we were talking about before with the one times revenue for base.
29:11
This company is growing its revenue.
29:16
It's growing roughly 80 times growth in that six-month window.
29:21
It's gone from $9 billion to $65 billion.
29:24
They're growing their revenue by about –
29:26
80 times in six months.
29:28
That's huge.
29:28
Like, what value do you put on that?
29:32
Well, it's looking like they're going to be a $1 trillion company when they IPO at the end of this year.
29:38
Wow.
29:39
Making it the largest tech IPO in history.
29:41
So SpaceX was about $1.8 trillion.
29:44
So this is massive, massive, massive company.
29:48
We also have OpenAI supposedly listening as well, but this company was only founded five years ago
29:55
And it is now estimated to be worth a trillion dollars.
29:59
It is on track to out-earn every publicly listed software company except Microsoft.
30:05
So it is generating more revenue.
30:07
Do you love that fact?
30:07
I know.
30:10
Microsoft.
30:10
In case you want to say it.
30:12
Because obsessed, always has been, always will be.
30:14
So what we're getting at here is we've done nothing in five years and Anthropoc has made a trillion dollar company.
30:20
That was not the crux of it, but yep, you're kind of putting up what I'm putting down.
30:23
It is.
30:24
That's insane.
30:25
Yeah.
30:26
And it's a really interesting company because it describes itself as a public benefit corporation.
30:32
So it is your typical company.
30:34
It's not a charity or anything like that.
30:37
As in it's profit making and it is trying to make profit.
30:40
It is profit making.
30:40
It is tax paying.
30:41
But being a public benefit corporation means it's legally obligated to consider more than just profit.
30:46
Wow.
30:47
which I'm really happy to hear because AI companies, I'm kind of a bit, slightly a bit nervous.
30:53
So the best way to think about that is like, it's like a B Corp, but with actual legal teeth.
30:57
So like legally, it kind of has to be B Corp teeth.
31:02
Love that.
31:02
Yes.
31:03
So the idea here is that there is some kind of morals or parameters that it has to adhere to to be able to claim that.
31:11
Which is what the issue was with DeepMind and Alphabet.
31:15
And they wanted it to be, you know, morally.
31:18
There was morals associated with that.
31:19
They had like a moral board member that their sole job was to make sure that it didn't get out of control.
31:24
And then I think that all kind of got deprioritized.
31:28
when Alphabet came aboard.
31:29
Anyway, so that was kind of the issue going on there.
31:32
But this is, if we look at that revenue growth, so you've gone from $9 billion in December.
31:39
And when we talk about annual run rate, you're taking the month, the amount of revenue that you made in that last month in December and you're timesing it by 12.
31:47
So you're going, okay, cool.
31:48
That's like the annual amount.
31:50
considering what we're earning in December.
31:53
And I just run that back to you.
31:54
Yeah.
31:55
So the annual run rate is kind of like how much is someone earning over a 12-month period?
32:02
Yep.
32:03
So I take my salary in December and I times it by 12 and that's what I'm earning.
32:08
And because this is a software company and it's got that recurring revenue and that predictability because we pay monthly subscriptions –
32:15
you can see, you know, it gives you a level of predictability of what the next 12 months is going to be.
32:20
So that was $9 billion in December.
32:23
It is now $65 billion.
32:26
Do you mean based on the growth they're seeing, if you then project that out by the 12-month run rate, that's what $65 billion?
32:32
Yes.
32:33
Holy shit.
32:34
Do you think that's realistic to grow again by that much?
32:37
Well, so the current revenue – so it's moving so fast that people are expecting that in 2028, it's going to have about $200 billion as its revenue kind of figure.
32:48
So how the hell do you value that in terms of like a multiple of revenue when the revenue amount just keeps growing exponentially?
32:56
So – It's almost – and yeah, I guess an analogy for that would be –
33:00
you know in the same way if you would use like a maths equation to figure something out if you've got a plus b equals c or whatever there's some kind of predictability like the rate in which this is growing is so beyond what you could really put into a formula that it's super hard to look at this business and say how much its value is going to be yeah because it's unlike anything anyone's seen and if i was this brother and sister there um danielle and danielle and daniel that's right they're a
33:27
family business daniella and and sorry dario because they left um open ai right and started the competitor god you just love that don't you also his wife who has been a bit of scandal with her so she used to be married to uh the google founder who's that eric schmidt she's married to schmitty yep she's really hopping around she's she's really what's your type billionaire
33:50
billionaire tech moguls yeah shit anyway sorry that was that was a tangent but yes so if I was to sell my business and I was to go in our business oh sorry I was metaphorically being if I had a business and I was selling it I selling the curve
34:08
And we were going to – because when you IPO and when you go public for the first time and you're just on a stock exchange, you're essentially selling your company.
34:15
You're selling your company to a whole lot of new investors.
34:18
So if we were to sell our company and we were growing this fast –
34:23
and someone wanted to value our business on our current revenue, you'd be like, absolutely not.
34:28
Like, look at how we've grown.
34:30
Look at how we've grown in the past.
34:31
Look at how we're going to grow in the future.
34:33
Why on earth would you value it on today's financials or today's revenue?
34:38
I want you to value it on the future financials.
34:41
And if they're just jumping so high so quickly, then that's when your business starts being valued on ridiculous multiples.
34:49
Is that why SpaceX and stuff was being valued so high?
34:52
Because the growth.
34:54
It's so hard to even pinpoint that you can be ridiculous with the valuation.
34:58
Like people on Mars.
34:59
Okay, how on earth do we value that?
35:01
So with this business, they're looking at current – like other businesses that are similar, that are publicly traded, and they're looking at what they trade on in terms of their share price and the value of their businesses versus the revenue they generate.
35:15
It's like you've got Palantir on 50 times revenue.
35:18
You've got SpaceX on 41 times revenue.
35:22
And that was ridiculous.
35:23
When that came out, everyone was saying this is absolutely insane.
35:26
You would never...
35:28
But what on earth do you put Anthropic on?
35:30
People are saying $1 trillion for the value of that business versus its revenue is ridiculous.
35:35
But...
35:36
If it's revenue is growing, then the – yeah.
35:38
So it's like this whole thing of – and then do you trust the revenue that they're expected to get?
35:43
That it will keep growing.
35:44
Because everyone's drinking the AI Kool-Aid right now.
35:46
And so it's like is that actually going to come to fruition?
35:49
Because if it doesn't, then the whole value of the business doesn't exist.
35:52
Anyway, it's like – yeah.
35:53
When it comes to investment as well –
35:55
It takes months to get things over the line.
35:57
So if they're going public, this is something they'll be working on now for a long time.
36:01
So all of those documents in terms of how the business is valued, they might send out documents to investors saying, this is what we're valuing it at.
36:09
And by the time someone's even opened the email, the revenue has changed.
36:15
And with any investment, you're betting on the future.
36:17
You're betting on something that hasn't happened.
36:19
You're betting on forecasts.
36:21
I'm surprised you're using the word better and giving you hate the idea of that.
36:24
Well, you know what I mean.
36:25
You're making a judgment call on the future and what the future is going to look like.
36:28
And that's, yeah, that's why IPO investing in particular is so risky because you're paying for a story –
36:38
so much right now as a business.
36:40
Like, you, you know, it's not a Samsonite that's got a track record of, you know, historically showing that it can grow through really tough times.
36:49
This is a business that has literally been around for five years and,
36:54
and growing massively and you wanting to pay a trillion dollars for it.
36:57
But then on the flip side, it's so integral in what we do every day.
37:00
It's only getting bigger.
37:02
So, yeah, you kind of have to weigh up these.
37:03
I am on team Anthropic.
37:05
I think they should value their company outrageously and I would probably buy it.
37:10
I mean, obviously I will continue to listen to the Curve weekly, follow your research, then make a call.
37:14
But I feel like there's going to be a few big winners in the AI space.
37:19
I mean, I think the Claude interface sucks, but what we've managed to build for the Curve in terms of our own platform using Claude is insane.
37:27
Yeah.
37:27
Save just money, time.
37:29
Like what it can do is incredible.
37:33
And I feel like as someone that's using it and seeing those benefits, yeah.
37:37
I mean, I don't know what it should be valued at, but I probably would invest in this.
37:41
Not investing advice.
37:43
Not investing advice.
37:44
No, no.
37:45
Do your own research.
37:46
Also, it's like the public right now.
37:47
No, yeah.
37:49
What we're also seeing with a lot of these IPOs like SpaceX and also with Anthropic is how the everyday investor is getting kind of –
37:58
out in terms of their voting rights.
38:00
So you're seeing these founders come in and they're like, we want to dominate.
38:05
We still want to have control in terms of what's done with the business.
38:09
Elon Musk and SpaceX, he had a whole lot of different rights when it came to how he wanted to run the business compared to other companies, didn't he?
38:15
And Anthropik's the same.
38:17
So the founders still only own a small, small percentage.
38:21
But in terms of voting decision making, they're keeping their rights.
38:24
I get that, though.
38:25
Think about what they've done and how they – and I know that's the opposite of the point of a public company is that everyone is a shareholder, so you kind of have a vote.
38:33
But if someone has built a business that's worth a trillion in five years, they've kind of earned their right to have control over how that business is run, I think.
38:41
Yeah, I just think it's – You disagree?
38:43
I kind of – I think it's –
38:46
The great thing about being a public company is that it is owned by the public.
38:51
That is a decision you make when you become a public company.
38:53
We're getting into a world where it's like, okay, well, why even have... Democracy makes no sense.
38:58
Yeah, and why?
39:00
No one follows the rules.
39:01
So it does feel weird.
39:05
SpaceX, when it IPO'd...
39:08
It had new rules.
39:09
It was put into indexes and all sorts, which hadn't been done before.
39:14
And it's Elon Musk demanding, I want things done differently for myself.
39:19
You're basically saying what we're starting to see is that is now becoming more common.
39:23
The founders, even though they only own a small stake, they still are controlling.
39:28
It's not power to the people in the same way it used to be.
39:30
Yeah, and you just have to make sure that you're very aligned with that founder.
39:34
If they've got outsized voting and outsized rights, and you don't have as much of a say, then you're kind of at the whim of what they do, which can be great, don't get me wrong, but it can also be when you've got an Elon Musk at the helm.
39:47
can be very volatile and yeah.
39:49
People change so much.
39:51
I'm not saying Elon changes.
39:52
I'm just saying you might invest in a company and a founder and be a one.
39:57
He'll change me.
39:58
I can change him.
39:59
I can totally change him.
40:00
I guess what I mean is when you invest in a founder initially, you might think, I really agree with them and I think they're great.
40:05
A lot of them change in three years time and the way they're running a business can change.
40:09
So that's, I guess, when you have to keep making decisions on do you still align with the founder if they have majority control.
40:15
Yeah.
40:15
Yeah, it's just a red flag from a governance point of view.
40:18
And yeah, I think it's just like one of the reasons that you own shares in a business is that with part of that, you do get to say who runs it.
40:25
You know, if you own enough shares, you do get a say on who's on the board and who gets to run it.
40:29
And so, yeah, it's just interesting that a lot of these –
40:33
It's becoming quite, I don't know.
40:35
It's very ego, ego, ego, isn't it?
40:36
Yeah, and it's very, I don't know, are we just going to see this as the norm now going forward?
40:41
And it's like the whole point of this, of being public and having shareholders that can buy and sell your stock is so that...
40:50
I've got a counter opinion to this.
40:52
As someone who owns £100 or whatever of Google, I do not sit there thinking...
40:58
do you know what, I'm going to write to the founder or the CEO and tell them I think that they should do things this way.
41:04
I don't, as a small everyday retail investor, feel like I have any power in saying what that founder does.
41:11
So this sort of news to me doesn't feel like a big deal.
41:14
I understand if you're a huge investor that has millions of dollars
41:18
invested in a company that you would expect to have some kind of say but as someone who is not investing anywhere near that yeah i don't feel put off investing in public companies based on this but it'll be interesting to see if this does become the norm
41:36
In case you missed it, hopefully you have subscribed to wherever you're listening to this podcast.
41:40
If you haven't, please do, because it means that every time an episode comes out, you'll be notified.
41:44
But on Friday, we put an episode out called, Is Your Wedding For You or For Instagram?
41:49
We were speaking to Margie, who's the founder of Vale Magazine.
41:52
We did a bunch of data gathering with the audience a couple of months ago where a lot of people, thank you so much, everyone who sent their details in, basically shared what did they spend on, what did they regret spending on, and it was so fascinating looking through that data.
42:06
So yeah, we just talk about the evolution of weddings and the spending and how it's changed a lot in the past 10 years.
42:12
Oh my God, also, at the end of this wedding episode, we're giving away- A wedding.
42:17
Not a wedding.
42:18
We're giving away- A husband.
42:19
A husband.
42:20
Okay, no, it's actually neither of those things.
42:22
We're not giving away a husband or a wedding, but there is a fun giveaway.
42:25
So if you listened to that episode, keep an eye on socials, definitely enter.
42:28
But before we wrap up, we have... Our ethical hotline.
42:33
The question that's come through from the ethical hotline, which I wanted to pick for this month, is all about space.
42:40
We've seen Elon Musk talking about his outrageously audacious goals to get a million people living on Mars.
42:47
It started to become something that everyone is aware is now an investable place or industry.
42:55
And so this question came through and I wanted us to answer it today.
42:58
So, Lily, this is from Anonymous.
43:01
Space exploration seems like an exciting and growing industry and I would love to invest in a space ETF.
43:06
Okay.
43:07
But space themes seem to be very tightly connected with defense and therefore conflict.
43:13
Is there a way to be involved in this industry without supporting the development of weapons and war?
43:19
For extra context, I currently have a small amount invested in ARKX, but I'm not feeling entirely comfortable with that.
43:26
Firstly, what is ARKX?
43:28
ARKX.
43:30
So ARKX, I reckon you say it ARKX.
43:33
It's an ETF and it's got space defense stocks in it.
43:37
So I actually agree.
43:38
I think space feels like an exciting new, oh my God, is this happening?
43:45
And I made a joke about it actually to my boyfriend.
43:47
I was like, oh, how exciting.
43:49
So cool that there might be a million people living on Mars.
43:51
And he was like, you know you can't go outside at all, right?
43:54
And I was like, oh yeah.
43:56
It's actually a little bit sad if you think about it like that.
43:58
But yeah.
43:59
I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
44:01
Yes.
44:02
I love this question because it got me thinking in the same way as you.
44:05
I get quite poetic about space.
44:07
I think of observatories and if there are alien species and like the stars are so pretty.
44:14
That's not what we're talking about when we're talking about investing in space.
44:17
It's just like investing on Earth, but doing it in space.
44:20
So we're actually talking about the kinds of things that a lot of people are doing on Earth.
44:25
So like terrestrial activities, things like mining and travel.
44:29
You mentioned travel, going to Mars.
44:31
That's just like space tourism.
44:33
So it's an amazing sector or industry.
44:37
But yeah, we're talking about way less romantic, way less magical stuff.
44:40
We're talking about data centers.
44:42
We're talking about missile tracking systems, all that sort of stuff.
44:46
So when it comes to the military stuff, there's the question asker saying, like, why are space themes tightly connected to defense?
44:55
Well, interestingly, it's because doing stuff in space is really expensive.
44:58
It's really risky.
44:59
It's really time intensive and it takes a huge budget.
45:01
Who's got a huge budget?
45:02
Governments have got huge budgets.
45:04
And then also, often this stuff has dual use.
45:08
And by that I mean it has commercial or civilian utility as well as military utility.
45:15
So a really good example of this is if you think about a company that develops satellites, for example, that could be for communication or navigation or observing Earth, the same technology can also be applied to military things, so like targeting systems, monitoring
45:32
battlefield coordination, missile guidance.
45:36
So what you often see is that governments fund R&D for these space companies.
45:42
They get contracts from the defense department.
45:45
So a percentage of their revenue is from sales to the military.
45:48
And then also a percentage of their revenue is from commercial sales to, you know, normal folks.
45:53
It's so funny when you dig beneath the surface of something.
45:57
I'm really impressed, actually, this person thought to ask this question rather than just saying, is investing in space ethical?
46:04
Well, I think people are saying it, right?
46:06
Like if you go to an ETF and you want to invest in space and you're like, wait, but why is there so much defense in this space investment vehicle?
46:13
Yeah.
46:13
And it feels really unavoidable.
46:15
There is like some picks and shovels.
46:18
So you know, like the gold rush analogy where you weren't just panning for gold.
46:22
Some people made money selling people the stuff that they used to pan for gold.
46:26
Oh my God.
46:27
Can I guess where you're going with this?
46:29
Is it the idea, like with AI, in the same way you just think computer chips or electricity, there's a whole lot of other infrastructure that will benefit as an adjacent industry because it's so used in AI?
46:44
Like Vic's recently talked a lot about water and the investment of water because it's used so much in AI.
46:49
Is it the same thing?
46:50
kind of thing absolutely yep totally spot on so like infrastructure companies called kriston communications and broadband or space tourism or like geospatial stuff for earth that observes earth which can be used for climate modeling all of this stuff is uh technology that companies are making and then selling but you will have some usually you will have a little bit of exposure to defense it can be quite hard to um to avoid it entirely
47:16
Okay, this is so interesting.
47:17
And you've done a whole deep dive answer on this question.
47:19
So we don't have time to get into all of the detail right now.
47:23
But if anyone does want to read up more about how they can be investing in a way that's ethical, but also they want to invest in space and they want to understand the nuances there.
47:34
they can read your full answer.
47:36
We've put the link in the podcast show notes.
47:37
So thank you so much for doing the research on that, Lily.
47:40
And if anyone else has a question after listening to this and you're thinking, oh my God, I'd really love to hear a deep dive or an explanation on a different sector or anything that you are, yeah, wondering, is this ethical?
47:52
We'll be answering a question every month with Lily.
47:55
So you can find the ethical hotline to submit a question also in the podcast show notes.
47:59
The views expressed by Pathfinder via the ethical hotline are of a general nature and are not specific to Pathfinder's product.
48:05
To learn more about Pathfinder and what they do, please visit pathfinder.kiwi.
48:10
Have a great week, everyone.
48:11
We'll see you on Wednesday for our episode on – ooh, we're actually talking about Emma Greed on Wednesday's Curve Weekly.
48:17
Yep, yep.
48:18
She's not coming on the podcast, unfortunately.
48:21
But we're doing everything we can to get her on.
48:23
Exactly.
48:24
Yeah.
48:24
Okay, bye.
48:25
Bye.
48:26
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48:28
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48:33
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48:37
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48:41
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48:43
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48:46
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48:49
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48:52
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49:04
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49:10
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49:19
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49:24
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49:28
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49:29
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49:30
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