Short answer: Sam Nadler says Allbirds sold last month for $39 million and announced an AI pivot. Jordan Metzner says a shoe company becoming a GPU-as-a-service and AI cloud provider feels like peak cycle, like Long Island Iced Tea's blockchain pivot.
Watch this answer from Episode 39 (starts at 14:40) · Episode 39 notes and transcript
From Episode 39: This AI Tool Turns Meetings Into Jira Tickets Instantly, starting at 14:40.
Sam Nadler [14:39]: Thank you. That was a great internal tool Matias built. But to jump into the news, I saw this morning. I don't know if you got a chance to read it, but, know, Allbirds, the famous Silicon Valley shoe company, huge explosion. I forget the time period. Was it the twenty tens? It was, everyone and their mother had had a pair of Allbirds. They were everywhere. I think, hit some rough waters, eventually sold last month for 39,000,000. So, like, a huge decrease in valuation from their peaks, which I believe was over 1,000,000,000. Just announced it's entering pivots to AI. So I barely skimmed this article, but tell me, what is it doing?
Jordan Metzner [15:23]: Well, I mean, I think everyone knows Allbirds, obviously, or maybe not, but obviously, they were the famous wool shoe. And, they had a big hot online presence and they eventually opened retail stores. Amazon copied them. If you remember, there was a whole fiasco and lawsuit there. Amazon made their own like wool sneakers. But I think, it's definitely, peak cycle when a tennis shoe company is going out of business and pivots into a new AI company that is a fully integrated GPU as a service and an AI native cloud solutions provider. I don't know. It feels like peak cycle. So who knows what all, Allbirds or as it's now new, gonna be called Newbird AI will be able to do, but I can't imagine they're gonna be able to gather a whole bunch of investor confidence. So, it looks to me this is kind of like a reverse IPO with some guys with some capital that are kind of like turning it into a new entity and leveraging it off the name.
Jordan Metzner [16:21]: But, yeah, this is certainly obviously a funny conversation to be had. And sad in the sense that kind of Allbirds obviously, like, didn't make it and, has now gone out of business. But, yeah, do have do you have a pair of Allbirds, Sam? Don't lie.
Sam Nadler [16:33]: I never did. And I there's definitely a period of time where I wanted to get some. I'm not gonna lie about that. And I as I'm scanning through this article, I do remember in 2017 when the Long Island iced tea company pivoted to the blockchain. I do not
Jordan Metzner [16:48]: Yes.
Sam Nadler [16:49]: Yes. Yes. I don't remember how that panned out. It's the peak.
Jordan Metzner [16:55]: It's always the peak. Yeah. It's always the peak. Remember what remember the guy in, like, Philadelphia who had that, like, crazy business, and it was just like a shed, you know? And he was running this crazy ex in business out of it. So he always when these things happen, it feels like it's the peak market. But Yeah. Anyway
Sam Nadler [17:12]: Well, I wish them luck. We wish them well. So, yeah, that's it's funny. It's exciting. Maybe, we'll see what they do in the AI space. But, anyway, lots of things going on. It's always exciting here. Anything to finish out the episode?
