Wheels Up To NAMAD, Elon (still) Buying Twitter (Maybe), Non Auto Minds Joining Auto

October 5, 2022
Welcome to Wednesday as we get ready to cover the 2022 Namad Annual Meeting. We’re also talking about Elon holding true to his original offer for Twitter, an outside automotive tech joining the automotive ranks to help improve auto tech, and a big step forward in home connectivity.
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In another turn of events, Elon is in for $44mm again

  • Twitter shares jumped 12.7% to $47.93 before trading was halted for the second time, while Tesla shares rose by about 2.4%.
  • Deal is supposed to close at the originally agreed upon $54.20 price
  • Twitter employees, caught by surprise in the middle of meetings on Tuesday, expressed disbelief in tweets. "I am sitting on 2023 company wide strategy readouts and I guess we are going to collectively ignore what's going on," wrote Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter's director of machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability.
  • Take away: Anyone want to guess what impact brand has on value?

Salesforce VP of Engineering joins auto digital retailing leadership team

  • “Dan’s proven track record of building and maintaining top-talent culture at Salesforce is truly impressive and unique in any size of engineering organization,” said Andy Park, CEO and Founder of CarNow. “His experience combined with our organizational growth tees up an exciting next chapter at CarNow as a technology leader.”
  • Jemiolo led the team responsible for integrating Slack into Salesforce following the acquisition
  • Take away: We are seeing more and more enterprise tech enter and be connected to auto, both the tech and the people.

Matter 1.0 is finally ready for launch, changing smart home connectivity

  • Matter is a protocol to connect compatible devices and systems with one another. Smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. And with Matter, they are.
  • Layman's terms: the smart home industry just agreed on a data centricity
  • The first rollout also includes Matter controllers and bridges. These are devices that already connect and communicate with other devices in the smart home ecosystem.
  • Take away: Sounds a bit familiar with what auto data sources are trying to figure out. Maybe another industry we can look to for guidance.

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SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly


Paul Daly  00:26

Welcome to Wednesday, its wheels update for Kyle and I on our way to the name mad annual meeting. We're also gonna talk about Elon Musk probably selling but buying Twitter may be an amazing revelation to people. I call it a transfer backwards, a transfer from non auto to auto. We're gonna talk about transfer


Kyle Mountsier  00:51

remarket today into the rundown in stock market today in the transfer market today.


Paul Daly  00:59

To tu tu tu tu tu tu tu. So, today's the first day the name at annual I think they call it an annual meeting convention. I don't know. But is it an annual meeting? I like kind of like the Annual Meeting thing. But Kyle and I will be in Miami not too long from now. I think I got to touch around 11 or so I'm going into Miami you're flying into Fort Lauderdale. We're going to rendezvous at the Fountain Blue, which is a pretty amazing hotel, by the way, named Matt knows how to throw down if you haven't gone to a name, you have to go. Like Wait, it's like there's like pictures of Frank Sinatra. They're like the whole hotel has got this whole vibe going on. It's gonna be awesome. I mean layman


Kyle Mountsier  01:38

knows how to go to a place with a vibe. Say in itself,


Paul Daly  01:43

not the place doesn't have the vibe, but name that brings the vibe to and it's going to be it concludes on Saturday morning, we're gonna be there for most of it. We have a panel we're hosting. And just looking forward to talking to a lot of dealers. Because whenever there's a lot of dealers in one spot, you know, we're bringing microphones and like these little things, the podcasts and video and so stay part of the content. Maybe we'll do some live streams from there as well. Be fun. Hey, you got podcast dropping on podcast? I don't know. Uh, so to concessions, search it up, check it out.


Kyle Mountsier  02:14

And I'm excited about I can't wait to listen to one of them today is Danielle, who has a lot of you know, from the asoto ECOSYS is the amazing, Darrin don't who a lot of you know in the in the ecosystem, and they just they sat down. And none of you left a press record. And we were like skirt. But what happens when we listen to it yet?


Paul Daly  02:37

Me neither. This is what happens when we leave the podcast gear unattended. Right? It was late in the event. We're all feeling a little groggy look up and then you know, just do people or podcasts and then you know, we're gonna release it, because that's what we do around. Absolutely. I bet it's really great though. Honestly, I bet. I'm really thoughtful. They probably get into like some I'm gonna download it before I take off so I can listen to it on the plane. So I'm gonna do Hey, we have some fun stuff to talk about today. Hey, did you hear Kyle that Elon Musk is gonna buy Twitter and then he wasn't gonna buy Twitter, and then they're gonna fight over Twitter. And now today, it's like, you know what? I think I'll buy it at the original terms.


Kyle Mountsier  03:15

Do the thing. Yeah. So essentially, what has happened is is he was about to be called into court for like multiple days of questioning. There was some data questions around all of the bots, the possible bots, maybe not bots, his team was researching it. The Twitter team was providing data. And it just seems like everything was going to shake up not like he was quite expecting it to shake up in the whole fight. And so he just said, forget the fight. We'll buy the thing. And yeah, at a $54.20 cent price per share. Now, here's what here's what blows my mind right here. This is the step ready. Now, this from an article earlier, this was from an article earlier, Tesla shares rose by about 2.4%. They closed the day at 2.2%. And then Twitter shares initially jumped 12.7% They close the day at over 22% price increase on their shares. Unbelievable. Like


Paul Daly  04:21

what is everybody's in? Do you know what the price is? Because I mean, 5420 is the price that would be purchased and what you would get if you own a share Twitter, right. So what's the price that actually ended up? It's probably right near that. Yeah, I think that'd be close.


Kyle Mountsier  04:34

So it closed at 52 right at 52. Which is


Paul Daly  04:38

funny. So it's like if you bought Twitter stock and it goes through like share two bucks a share. Why not?


Kyle Mountsier  04:46

We'll see what happens to it today and over I think I think the transaction won't close for another month or something like that. I love this. So the Twitter employees you know, obviously found out via Twitter, because about a roller coaster. Alright, Where Elon announces everything. So, Twitter's director of machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability room and Choudry said, I'm sitting in on this 2023 company wide strategy read out, and I guess we're gonna collectively ignore what's going on. He's like, we're just like doing strategy all the while over on our actual platform, everyone's yelling about the fact that we're about to get bought, and we're just keeping rolling.


Paul Daly  05:26

Yeah, I guess we'll just ignore that and just keep doing what we're doing. I love it. I mean, it's just this is so 20 this whole story, so 2022, who knows where it's gonna happen, the fact that, you know, Elon is tied to automotive and pop culture. And it's like this big convergence all the way around. It is it's just a wild ride. But it's fun to talk about. It's fun to watch. Because, you know, like, what, what do you think this does do to the text and Twitter brand, the Tesla brand? You know, it's funny, the Tesla brand watching that stock react. It doesn't have anything to do with Tesla's performance. Right? It's a voting machine. Right? It's sentiment passing back and forth. But that really is what brand is it's sentiment being transferred back and forth. So it's been interesting study to watch these two brands react in the sentiment sway this way, and sway that way speaking of people swaying one way or another segue. So we talk a lot about non automotive talent mentalities, successes, trying to, like lure them into this automotive universe, because we need more outside automotive talent to come inside automotive to help see than all the things that are working around the other retail, retail executions. And there's kind of a big announcement from car now, you know, friends of ours, but obviously, a very strong player in the industry just a year or two ago, and we're like, see the Roadster and Google were getting acquired. Everyone's looking at car now as like, are this what's what are they going to do? What are they going to do? Well, they gave it they tip their hand a little bit about what they're doing today call out you talk about it, you know a little bit more about it than I do.


Kyle Mountsier  07:09

Yeah. So. So just recently, they brought on the X, VP of engineering now acts of Salesforce now, this, the gentleman, his name is Dan J. Emilio, Jim, Jim neolo. Sorry, Dan gemmy, Alo, Dan, actually began a team in Raleigh, North Carolina that started from zero, and became a team of 150 people. It was the it was the first research and development team actually created within Salesforce. And the other really interesting thing about them is they actually were the the main team, if you don't know, Salesforce is the largest CRM in the world. And the majority of probably, if you're an industry partner, you probably use them. If you're a dealer, you're probably in an industry partners, Salesforce CRM. Yep. And I'm telling it's like, it's massive, if you watch f1, if you watch anything around the world, you just see their logo everywhere, but they are a massive company. And I think, gosh, it was probably a year, maybe two ago at this point, Salesforce acquired slack, which slack is probably the top business communication platform. And so Salesforce acquired slack. And his team was the one responsible for deepening the level of integration between Salesforce and slack. So just a lot of credibility from an engineering perspective. So for Karnow to bring that in, especially with what they've done, you know, a lot of people around the industry know that they've kind of coined this real time real time retailing thing. They've got their dealer hub, which is essentially like a secondary CRM to the main CRM, and it really sits in that trend sales transactional space, you know, Yeah, gotta think that they're headed in a couple certain ways.


Paul Daly  08:54

Just haven't pressed this button in a really long time. That's my nerd alert button. I'm the resident nerd flagger. I just flag it when I hear The Nerdery going on. But here's the bottom line that I accept. It's like, you know, you know, when, like the saying was, I don't know if it was like the 70s 60s 70s. I mean, neither of us were really around them. But there was a saying that said Better Living Through Chemistry. And it was when like, the farm, like, you know, there was all these things that could help with ailments and things like Better Living Through Chemistry, dishwashing detergent, right? Better Living Through Chemistry. This is like Better Living Through nerdery that's what this is. Right? It is exciting to see The Nerdery coming into the automotive industry. And, you know, it's fun to watch. Let's and let's, let's hope for more of that right across industries across you know, technology partners, and in sales departments across the country. We always talk about let's get that retail savviness that consumer customer experience savviness let's this hustle it and shuttle it All into retail automotive


Kyle Mountsier  10:02

dealers are going to win because of this, because they're gonna start to see these enterprise ways of doing business in the software world brought more and more into auto like, you know, we actually talked on the auto collapse podcast with John clavate venture, who was originally with cars.com. Left Otto went into a retail space and then has come back into it. And you know, I am sure what he's gonna experience in that company outside is gonna experience a similar types of things where they're gonna press more into what enterprise tech is doing, and bring that back, bring that to dealers so that they can serve customers more. So when you're looking at these companies look for who is like pushing the boundaries from, from a tech perspective. And it's not just car now and outside. I mean, there are a ton of companies, you know, upstart buying prodigy, like, there are a lot of contacts that are making these enterprise tech moves. So really excited about that was speaking of enterprise tech. Oh, segue. Paul, do you have? Do you have any smart home stuff in your home? Are you like one of those guys where like you're winning your shades go,


Paul Daly  11:11

you know, strikingly relevant to this story. I'm one of those guys that gets frustrated when everything just doesn't work together. So I just, I just kick it, I'm like, give me a light switch.


Kyle Mountsier  11:23

Every time, the only thing that I really have that's a smart home in thing is the garage, which has been extremely useful, really is? Well, yeah, because I can like, open and close my garage door from my phone, or my watch, which is great from like coming back from runs, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to bring a key or anything, you just


Paul Daly  11:45

say something to it like James Bond, like open record store, you got to press C that's when you that's when you really know. So but what


Kyle Mountsier  11:53

Paul is saying is that a lot of this stuff, you know, there have been these kind of silos where like Amazon and Apple and Google and then all these other companies, Samsung, and Chamberlain and all these other companies have created different levels of smart home tech, well, over the years, the tech is kind of like spiderwebbed out, but there's nothing central holding it all down to where they can talk to each other. So actually, when you buy these things, you start to have to look in like the fine print, like


Paul Daly  12:18

everybody's got their own cameras, right? Like, oh, this works for this, but not with that, this with that with that it's a pain in the butt.


Kyle Mountsier  12:24

And that's a pain in the butt from a consumer perspective. So just a I mean, it was probably just a couple years ago, kind of the a Connect, it's called the connectivity standards alliance was created. And they were set on a course to create matter 1.0. So that's just the version, that's the name of it, in order to grab all these technologies, and create a standard for how they operate, integrate and work together so that anybody can play in the sandbox that it's listed on the website. Med Mater is a protocol to connect compatible devices and systems with one another. smart home devices should be secure, reliable and seamless to use. And with matter they are, which I think is a great value


Paul Daly  13:09

prop from so this this. So what this means is that once once, you know these new products are going to come out, they're going to operate. According to this, you know, this agreed upon protocol. And whether I have an iPhone or an Android arm connecting through, you know, a phone or a watch or whatever, it's just going to be likely to just work. Yep. So what you're saying. So that means like the trigger grill, and the LED lights, and the home cameras, and all that stuff will just be like, oh, there it is. And look, Well, it's interesting, because


Kyle Mountsier  13:38

it's still going to take a lot of work, right? In what it's because because there's a standard, right that okay, well, you're saying it's gonna take a lot of work for them to like, get it to the point of adoption, not a lot of work for the consumer, because I'm like, Well, what TOS is a standard, right? Bluetooth is a standard. It's a protocol that says this is how you connect to that. Now you still have to do the development work to make all that happen. It's gonna be a lot of redevelopment here. That's great. For the average consumer. At some point, these will start to connect more and more often. And the reason why I brought this story up, I've actually been watching the story for a little while. But now on November 4, they're actually a month from now. They're going to be launching this and kind of like celebrating it the first few devices that are going to be on this protocol will will be on display. Google is really one that's like pushing the boundaries and moving first. But for me, this is huge. You know, we had any right at at a zoo con talking about the standards, the star standards that the na na da has set aside a group a nonprofit, to put data standards in place for auto API standards, the way that data flows, so that all of these technology companies can start to intersect They can start to work together. And customer data and vehicle data and all of that can more seamlessly move through the ecosystem which serves the dealer serves the customer and all that. So, like, there it I think sometimes we get in our industry and we're like, Oh, nobody else deals with this, right? Yeah. Everybody works in a world where everything works together. And the reality is, is there are still major companies, I mean, Google, Amazon, Apple, that are trying to figure out like, how do we play nice in the sandbox? And so for Otto to do this, it's very possible and we can get to that place. It's just gonna take a lot of work together. You know,


Paul Daly  15:33

Well, speaking of getting to a place you and I have to get to Miami, so we're gonna shut this down. It's got to be wheels up. Listen, you know what works every time going up to someone smiling and giving them a compliment that works every time.


15:47

Right

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